It's pretty strange that I am writing a post about an announcement for Diablo. In truth, I have very little experience with the franchise. I played Diablo one for a little while after sold for a heavily discounted price. I never touched Diablo 2 and had/have no plans to try Diablo 3. This isn't a comment about the quality of the franchise; it's a matter of so many things to do and so little time. So I think you can see why it is strange for me to post about a Diablo announcement, but this one cuts very close to WoW.
In case you haven't seen it already, Blizzard has announced a new Auction House feature in Diablo 3 that will allow transactions both in game-gold and real-life currency. For the full details, please look at Blizzards site.
An Attempt at Fairness:
First and foremost, I need to qualify my comments on this subject. As stated above my experience with Diablo is very limited. While I can envision a lot of bad things if this type of feature was introduced in WoW, I can't say with any experience that the same bad things would happen in Diablo. In fact, Bashiok has made some decent arguments as to why having this type of AH in Diablo is different then having the same type of AH in WoW.
It should also be said that Diablo 3 is not WoW. Just because this is happening in Diablo doesn't mean this will be added to WoW as well. Blizzard has said in the past that this type of feature won't be implemented in WoW, and they have also said that real money transactions provide any game advantage. This could be a feature that is only intended for Diablo and will never interact with WoW. I recognize that players who have an opinion similar to mine could be overreacting, because there really is no intention of ever implementing this type of feature in WoW.
That said, it's incredibly hard not to see this as a step down a new road for Blizzard. If you had asked me yesterday if this type of feature would ever be considered I would have given you a complete and confident "NO." This step definitely increased the chances of this type of feature being added to WoW, especially when you consider other features like Race and Faction changes which Blizzard claimed at one time or another would never happen. That is why I think my concern for WoW is justified, when Blizzard adds a feature to another game that could possibly be added to WoW as well, even when the games are unrelated.
I really don't care if this feature is added to Diablo 3 or not, but I do have very strong opinions about if this type of feature should be added to WoW. And when I see posts like Mathew McCurley's on WoW Insider absolutely drooling over a real money AH I feel the need to post an opposing view of why this would be bad for WoW.
Dual Auction Houses are a Lie:
One of the big selling points Blizzard is trying to make is that there will be two Auction Houses that you can use depending on your preference: a Gold AH and a Currency AH. Bashiok has gone so far as to say "I have no doubt that the gold auction house will by-far outweigh the real money auction house in scope and amount of items available."
While I am sure that there will be in fact two Auction Houses, the idea that you can choose which one to use based on preference is an illusion. You can tell by answering one simple question. Which is better, fake money or real money? If you answer real money then you are like 99.9999% of the people who will play the game.
Anyone who thinks about this situation at all will realize that the Currency AH will drive the postings on both auction houses. Bashiok may be right that the Gold AH will be bigger, but all of the prices will be determined by the Currency AH.
For example, let say that the Boots of Uberness are listed for $5.00 on the Currency AH, and 1000g is selling for $1.25. How much gold are the Boots of Uberness worth? Clearly they are worth 4000g in this situation. You can list this item on either AH, but the price is clearly going to be determined by the Currency AH. I could list this item on the Gold AH for 10,000g but why would someone buy it there? They could just sell 4000g for $5.00 and buy it off the Currency AH.
So, as you can see, any suggestion that the Gold AH is an independent auction house is an illusion. This isn't to say that the prices between the two AHs will be in perfect lock-step. The fees charged by Blizzard and the less liquid nature of gold will cause some differences, but don't be surprised when they are fairly close most of the time. If WoW's AH has taught us anything, it has shown that there are a lot of very smart people who can work the system to make fake currency. Just think what will happen when people are motivated to make real currency.
Legitimizing a Shady Industry:
Another suggestion that seems to be popular is that is that this is a big blow to the shady business of Gold Selling. In his WoW Insider piece Mathew McCurley says "Blizzard could remove the profitability of gold farming by making everyone a gold farmer."
Yes, how could the gold farmers possibly be profitable when you can buy and sell gold and other things from anyone in game? Let me think. How could they survive?
Oh, I've got it!!!! THEY COULD BUY AND SELL GOLD IN GAME!!!!
This isn't a death blow to the gray market. This is just legitimizing it. Claiming this is any kind of weapon against the gray market is like a politician saying they won the war on drugs by legalizing them.
Some of you might then argue, that because all players are now allowed to participate in the market this will reduce the profitability and that gold farmer won't make enough money, and therefore leave the market. At first that point of view may sound logical, but it's missing a few key points. First, the gold sellers’ biggest problem currently is finding gold buyers. While legitimizing the market will increase the number of sellers, it will also increase the number of buyers, and may not change the profitability of the market at all. It may even increase the profitability of the market.
The other thing proponents of this argument are forgetting is that the gold sellers won't play fair. Gold Sellers are more then willing to bot and hack their way to create their product, and that's not going to change if Blizzard legitimizes their market. Botting will still be the most efficient way to gather trade goods. Since Blizzard tends to allow bots to operate for a few months and then ban them in waves even when the bot is obvious, the gold sellers are unlike to stop using bots. Hacking has a similar issue. It's obviously profitable for them now, and there's nothing about a Currency AH that would make hacking unprofitable on its own.
In short, anyone who thinks that a Currency AH is a silver bullet against the commercial gold sellers is just deluding themselves. It will definitely change their business model, but it's not going to prevent them from doing harmful things like Hacking. In fact, legitimizing the gold sellers could harm the casual player more then botting and hacking ever have. If the gold sellers are significantly more efficient with their gold farming than the average player, then that will push the price of gold extremely low and inflate gold prices on the AH, thus forcing players to play long hours to earn enough gold to buy an item or to buying gold.
The Social Hazard:
Finally, I want you to think about this situation if a Currency AH was introduced to WoW. Let’s say you are the GM of a moderately successful guild with 100,000g in the guild bank along with plenty of items. After a while you grow bored with the game or just want to go casual. What do you do?
Of course, there are a lot of GMs that would leave the guild bank intact and step down without issue. At the same time, I'm just as confident that there will be plenty of GMs that will take the money and run. Being the GM of a guild is hard work, and I assure you that fore some people it will be easy for them to justify taking the money by saying they earned over there time as GM in the Guild. I've heard that excuse several times in my 4.5 years of WoW without a Currency AH.
And guess what, you as members of the guild are powerless to stop them. Guild Masters have total control of their guild. They determine who has access to the guild bank and who can be in the guild. They could justify locking up the guild bank by saying they want to protect it from people who might take the items for themselves to sell them. Then the next thing you know, you log in one day with everyone kicked from the guild except the GM and his alts. I can't say how often this will happen, but I guarantee you it will, and you might be surprised what your friendly GM is capable of justifying when several hundred dollars of gold and stuff are on the line.
TL-DR:
To be fair, I have very little experience with Diablo, and a real money AH may be perfect and helpful for that game. I also recognize that what Blizzard does with Diablo doesn't necessarily relate to WoW in any way. So, my concern for WoW at this announcement may be an overreaction. However, since they are willing to implement it for Diablo, it's reasonable to assume that they might conceder it for WoW as well. That is why I think it's important to lay out why I think a Currency AH is a bad idea for WoW.
While Blizzard can create and claim to have two separate AHs, it's impossible to have them operate independently. The Currency AH will set the prices for both AHs because gold will aways have a price. Some people are arguing that this is a damaging blow to the gray market businesses that deal in game items for real money, but it is no such thing. It just legitimizes them and makes their business easier in some respects. It also isn't going to prevent harmful activities like botting and hacking in any way shape or form. Finally, if this type of service was added in WoW it would create new hazards for players. Guild Masters and other players with access to community gold and items can easily take them and sell them for personal gain. And if that personal gain can have a real financial impacts expect that activity to become more common.
Showing posts with label Goblin Activity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Goblin Activity. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
WoW Auction House: There's an App for that.
Yes, I know this title will be used by a thousand different blogs, but I con't think of a better one.
Back in February Blizzard announced that they were working to integrate the Auction House into the Armory so that players could review the Auction House while they were a way from the game. The the post was short on details but that didn't stop people from predicting doom and gloom or saying this would be a huge advantage for gold sellers and the like.
The details of this new service were announced today, and I am sure we will see a new round of dire predictions about the future of AH PvP. In this post I will give my reaction to this new service.
The Free Services:
The only question I have here is if there is any level requirement to use the Web AH? Toons have to be level 10 or higher to be viewed on the Armory. Since most bank toons are level one or close to that, this could put a big downer on this service. I know it isn't hard to level a toon to 10, but I would rather not spend the time.
The Premium Services:
For $2.99, you can receive the following services for 30 days.
1. "Collect all outstanding gold with a single click." For big AHers that can be a lot of mail. Basically you would be opening dozens if not hundreds of pieces of mail with a single click. That would save a lot of goblins a lot of time.
2. "Relist items for sale from your expired auctions." Assuming relisted auctions can have a new price, this would effectively eliminate the mailbox from the AH equation. If it doesn't sell, just relist it. If it does sell collect the gold with a single click.
3. "Create auctions from items in your bags, bank, and mailbox." I currently have 3 alts devoted to selling inscriptions. I have to have 3 because it takes that many to hold all the glyphs in the game in player bags. If I could post auctions from my bank I could consolidate them into one toon.
I'm not entirely sure it would work, but if these three things were added to the ingame version of the AH it would be huge for Goblins.
The Implications:
I think a lot of the doom and gloom predicted 3 months ago was unreasonable, and I doubt these changes will have a major impact on how the AH operates.
No Addons: Most of the doom and gloom I've seen predicted ignores the facts of the current AH game. To really play the AH, you need addons. You need addons to scan the AH and find the market price and current price for items. You need addons to list multiple items with a single push of the button. You need addons to search for deals and purchase them quickly.
I don't know if it is possible to write a program that will perform these tasks outside of the game, but even if it is possible there is the question of legality. Blizzard has long banned third party applications like Glider that automate the game outside of the LUA language. It wouldn't surprise me if Blizzard took the same view for AH automation, and started handing out bans for using such programs.
Transaction Limit: It's also important to take note of the transaction limit. With only 200 transactions a day it would be difficult to do any serious trading with automated transactions. Even on my slowest AH days I listed over 300 items in a day. At my peak, I would probably listing close to 2,000 auctions a day. A 200 transaction limit is pretty high if you are doing everything by hand, but with automation it you could blow by it in minutes. Therefore there is very little incentive to automate anyway.
Who Would Use The Premium Service?
Lets take a look at it from the perspective of several AH user types.
Casual AH Users: I don't know why they would spend the money to get access to the premium services. If money is no concern then they may buy it for the convenience, but most will probably stick with the ingame AH. If they do buy it, then it will help them look for deals, or list things when they can't get to the computer. They would use it purily for the convenience.
Moderate AH Users: People who stick to fairly small markets within the AH could really be helped by the premium services. They aren't listing a ton of auctions so the 200 limit shouldn't be an issue. They are also in few enough markets that it is easy to search for deals by hand. For example if you're in the flask market it is easy for you to search for deals on Lichbloom and Frost Lotus without the help of an addon. Again though I'm not sure why these people would buy the premium service. The extra money they would make would be hardly worth the 3 dollars a month they pay.
AH PvPers: I can see why these people would pay for the service. They play the AH as a game and gold is a way of keeping score. Anything the helps them get a higher score is valuable to them. However, the lack of automation and and transaction limit will limit how useful the the service is for them. I think they will primarily use the service to look for deals. You may not be able to list hundreds of glyphs, but you can look for cheap herbs to buy. Also, the truly dedicated can manually search the AH for deals on high value items in the hope to relist them at a profit.
Gold Sellers: I see Gold Sellers as another form of AH PvPers except that if anyone can automate the web AH it is these guys. That said, I don't see the benefit of doing it. These guys play wow for a living. They don't need to access the AH when they are outside the game because it shouldn't be a problem for them to stay logged into the game and just scan the AH.
TL-DR:
I think all of the of the services being made available with the new Web AH sound great. I would love to have access to them all as a player. However, the free services while convenient lack any real power or significance. Yes, I can check the AH from work, but I can't do anything about it without paying for the premium service. Unfortunately, I see little reason to purchase the premium service. I couldn't maintain my wow industry when I'm outside of the game because the web based service lacks addons and the transaction limit prevents be from posting as many actions as i would need to.
Beta Testing: If you would like to test the new web based AH you can find the necessary information here.
Back in February Blizzard announced that they were working to integrate the Auction House into the Armory so that players could review the Auction House while they were a way from the game. The the post was short on details but that didn't stop people from predicting doom and gloom or saying this would be a huge advantage for gold sellers and the like.
The details of this new service were announced today, and I am sure we will see a new round of dire predictions about the future of AH PvP. In this post I will give my reaction to this new service.
The Free Services:
All cool stuff that I don't think anyone can really be unhappy about. There are many times that I am tied up crafting, raiding, leveling, or something when I have a little extra time and want to check the AH quickly. I may just want to see if something sold or maybe I'm looking for a deal but it will be nice to not have to log on to a bank to see the AH.
- Browse the Auction House
- Get real-time notifications when your auctions sell or expire
- Get real-time notifications when you win auctions or when you are outbid
- View your characters' current gold
- View the status of your auctions and search for similar auctions
- View the items you can sell in your bags, bank, and mailbox
- View the status of auctions you are bidding on
- View the items you've sold in the Auction House
- View your expired auctions
- View the status of auctions you created
- View your successful auctions
The only question I have here is if there is any level requirement to use the Web AH? Toons have to be level 10 or higher to be viewed on the Armory. Since most bank toons are level one or close to that, this could put a big downer on this service. I know it isn't hard to level a toon to 10, but I would rather not spend the time.
The Premium Services:
For $2.99, you can receive the following services for 30 days.
In the FAQ Blizzard answered a very important question.
- Bid on auctions
- Buy out auctions
- Create auctions from items in your bags, bank, and mailbox
- Collect gold from successful auctions
- Collect gold from unsuccessful bids
- Collect all outstanding gold with a single click
- Cancel your auctions
- Relist items for sale from your expired auctions
Is there a limit to the number of transactions (purchases and sales) I can make?Mostly it allows you to do what you already can do in game without addons, but it does add three features that I hope make it into the game version.
Yes. In order to help prevent abuse of this service, there will be a system in place to limit the total number of Auction House transactions (including bids, buyouts, and creating auctions) that a single World of Warcraft account can perform through World of Warcraft Remote each day. For the purposes of the beta test, the limit is set to 25 transactions per day per World of Warcraft account. When the Remote Auction House beta test ends and the live World of Warcraft Remote service launches, we plan to increase the limit to 200 transactions per day (with a World of Warcraft Remote subscription), though this limit is subject to change. Our goal with this system is to ensure that most players who are using the service will not reach the limit, and we will be continuously monitoring how the service is used and making adjustments to the system as needed.
1. "Collect all outstanding gold with a single click." For big AHers that can be a lot of mail. Basically you would be opening dozens if not hundreds of pieces of mail with a single click. That would save a lot of goblins a lot of time.
2. "Relist items for sale from your expired auctions." Assuming relisted auctions can have a new price, this would effectively eliminate the mailbox from the AH equation. If it doesn't sell, just relist it. If it does sell collect the gold with a single click.
3. "Create auctions from items in your bags, bank, and mailbox." I currently have 3 alts devoted to selling inscriptions. I have to have 3 because it takes that many to hold all the glyphs in the game in player bags. If I could post auctions from my bank I could consolidate them into one toon.
I'm not entirely sure it would work, but if these three things were added to the ingame version of the AH it would be huge for Goblins.
The Implications:
I think a lot of the doom and gloom predicted 3 months ago was unreasonable, and I doubt these changes will have a major impact on how the AH operates.
No Addons: Most of the doom and gloom I've seen predicted ignores the facts of the current AH game. To really play the AH, you need addons. You need addons to scan the AH and find the market price and current price for items. You need addons to list multiple items with a single push of the button. You need addons to search for deals and purchase them quickly.
I don't know if it is possible to write a program that will perform these tasks outside of the game, but even if it is possible there is the question of legality. Blizzard has long banned third party applications like Glider that automate the game outside of the LUA language. It wouldn't surprise me if Blizzard took the same view for AH automation, and started handing out bans for using such programs.
Transaction Limit: It's also important to take note of the transaction limit. With only 200 transactions a day it would be difficult to do any serious trading with automated transactions. Even on my slowest AH days I listed over 300 items in a day. At my peak, I would probably listing close to 2,000 auctions a day. A 200 transaction limit is pretty high if you are doing everything by hand, but with automation it you could blow by it in minutes. Therefore there is very little incentive to automate anyway.
Who Would Use The Premium Service?
Lets take a look at it from the perspective of several AH user types.
Casual AH Users: I don't know why they would spend the money to get access to the premium services. If money is no concern then they may buy it for the convenience, but most will probably stick with the ingame AH. If they do buy it, then it will help them look for deals, or list things when they can't get to the computer. They would use it purily for the convenience.
Moderate AH Users: People who stick to fairly small markets within the AH could really be helped by the premium services. They aren't listing a ton of auctions so the 200 limit shouldn't be an issue. They are also in few enough markets that it is easy to search for deals by hand. For example if you're in the flask market it is easy for you to search for deals on Lichbloom and Frost Lotus without the help of an addon. Again though I'm not sure why these people would buy the premium service. The extra money they would make would be hardly worth the 3 dollars a month they pay.
AH PvPers: I can see why these people would pay for the service. They play the AH as a game and gold is a way of keeping score. Anything the helps them get a higher score is valuable to them. However, the lack of automation and and transaction limit will limit how useful the the service is for them. I think they will primarily use the service to look for deals. You may not be able to list hundreds of glyphs, but you can look for cheap herbs to buy. Also, the truly dedicated can manually search the AH for deals on high value items in the hope to relist them at a profit.
Gold Sellers: I see Gold Sellers as another form of AH PvPers except that if anyone can automate the web AH it is these guys. That said, I don't see the benefit of doing it. These guys play wow for a living. They don't need to access the AH when they are outside the game because it shouldn't be a problem for them to stay logged into the game and just scan the AH.
TL-DR:
I think all of the of the services being made available with the new Web AH sound great. I would love to have access to them all as a player. However, the free services while convenient lack any real power or significance. Yes, I can check the AH from work, but I can't do anything about it without paying for the premium service. Unfortunately, I see little reason to purchase the premium service. I couldn't maintain my wow industry when I'm outside of the game because the web based service lacks addons and the transaction limit prevents be from posting as many actions as i would need to.
Beta Testing: If you would like to test the new web based AH you can find the necessary information here.
Monday, April 19, 2010
Gold Capped: My Thoughts on the WoW Economy
Some of you may remember that I jumped head first into the goblin arena at the end of last summer. I didn't need the gold for anything specific. I did it for two reasons. First, I'm cheap and I don't like being low on gold. I want to be able to buy any gold sink that available that I think is useful with worrying that I will be low on gold. Second, it sounded like an interesting challenge.
Well, the goal has been met. I reached the gold cap a few weeks ago. In the end, reaching my goal was both easier then I thought it would be and harder then I thought it would be. In this post I hope to explain that dichotomy, share a few of my thoughts on how to improve the WoW economy, and maybe give a tip or two on how to make gold.
Easier then I Thought:
Reaching the gold cap was easier then I thought it would be because there is no real trick to it. There are no hidden secrets. I don't know what I expected, but earning 215k gold when you are at about 20k feels like a big task. The bloggers who write about gold making give you all these little tips, but many of them didn't seem to work for me in the way I expected them to. I always felt like there was some trick or secret that I was missing.
As far as I can tell I wasn't missing anything. I didn't find any secret product that I could sell and make 20k gold a week or a magic farming spot (I didn't farm at all in fact). My process of making gold is all about crafting and selling. Buying the mats cheaper then the finished good will sell for and then posting it on the AH. And I wasn't crafting odd things. Most of my gold came from Inscriptions, but I also made quite a bit from selling the obvious things like spellthread, meta gems, and bags. I just looked for markets where the mats cost less then the AH prices, and participated even when there was a lot of competition. So, making gold was a lot easier then I thought because I already had most the tools I needed just by having my professions leveled up.
Harder then I Though:
If you ever have read a gold blog, then you know that some of the claims sound outlandish. They make it sound like once you find the right system the money truck backs up to your house and dumps a bunch of gold in. Gevlon at the Greedy Goblin made it sound particularly easy when he claimed he was making around 15k a week with just 30minutes to an hour a day of work. That may not sound like much but it is more then you may think. If you spend an hour a day on the AH that is 7 hours a week. That is almost as much as I raid each week.
In the end, working the AH is a lot of time consuming work. You are able to automate a lot of things with the right addons, but there are some things you can't automate like crafting and milling. Therefore I spend hours each week in front of my computer hitting a single button. It isn't a lot of fun for me and I know understand why you find very few people to play the AH for extended periods of time. Even Gavlon has taken breaks after reaching the cap.
How to Improve the WoW Economy:
Just so you know, I work in the financial industry. I have a degree in Economics and a MBA. So, I have some experience with economic theory. That is why I find some of the common gripes amount the WoW economy so funny. Everyone seems to think that the goblins out there are ruining the market in one way or another. One guy will complain about getting under cut. The next guy will complain that people shouldn't be able to post a glyph for 50g when it cost 3g to make. They all eventually say that these people need to play fair or be punished and they want Blizzard to put more controls on the market. The funny thing is they are 100% wrong.
The problem with the WoW economy isn't the lack of control that allows people to do pretty much what ever they want. The problem with the WoW economy is the artificial roadblocks that make goblinish activity more difficult and ultimately cause people to quite after artificial goals are completed. This reduces the competition in the market, creates more imperfections, and ultimately increases the prices for consumers. Here are my suggestions.
Allow for more batch processing: When you mill herbs you currently have to hit a button for every herb you mill. The same is true for prospecting. It's not unusual for me to mill 3000 herbs in a sitting. In a perfect world it would take you 10 minutes to mill 3000 herbs, when you add lag and such into the equation you will take at least 15-20 minutes.
Crafting is even worse. When I make my glyphs I usually have to make 50 different glyphs in varying amounts for a total of about 800 glyphs in a sitting. Since most glyphs take 1.5 seconds to create that is a minimum of 20 minutes spent crafting, but longer when you consider lag and such. As you can probably imagine the process is quite boring and I think is the primary cause for most goblin burn-out.
Blizzard needs to create an interface to mill and prospect much like they have for smelting ore currently. That way I can tell it to mill and walk away and use that time to do other things around the house or on the computer. They also need to upgrade the crafting interface. There are several mods that already allow you to queue multiple crafting jobs, but they all require you to push a button to go on to the next step. Removing that button click would again allow the goblin to walk away during one of the more tedious portions of the crafting process.
Allow for Batch Mail Retrieval: This may be easier said then done, but the next big time sink in a crafters process is picking up the mail. I list 1200 - 1600 glyphs a day across 3 alts. Since you can open only 50 mails every minute it takes at least 25 minutes to go through all of my mail generally. I recently found the addon Mail Opener that allows me to go AFK through that process, but I think it can be done better.
The Auctioneer addon currently allows you to download the entire auction house in just a few minutes. Why couldn't we have the same thing for mail. The only issue I see from a player point of view is what would happen if your bags were full, but I think we can find a work around. Gold requires no bag space and therefore could always be pulled in a lump sum. The cancelled and expired auctions could also be consolidated into fewer mails to make them easier to view and empty.
Allow for more stacking: I made some of my gold with Jewelcrafting, but avoided it for he most part. Since cut gems can't stack it is very difficult to mass produce gems and achieve the economies of scale that you can in the glyph market. This is one of the things that I think seriously holds back JCing as a profession.
Reduce some deposit costs: Another key thing holding back Jewelcrafting as a profession is the fact that it costs several gold just to list a gem on the AH, but Glyphs and Enchants have little or no cost to post.
Why I think these Changes are Necessary:
Don't get me wrong, I understand that these suggestions would hurt a lot of the producers currently in the market. This would likely push all prices down to the materials cost of those professions. However, it would be good for consumers, because it would be easier for people to enter and stay in the market. This would increase competition and push prices down.
The key to the WoW economy's problems and the solutions is the fact that it is a fictional economy. No one's kids are going to starve because daddy didn't sell some glyphs last night. Participating in the market is purely optional and has few real world consequences. The fact of the matter is that the problems with a perfectly free market in the real world don't apply to the virtual world. If someone trys to monopolize the bag market, all you have to do is go farm a few mats, list the goods cheaper and their monopoly is broken. Since it is impossible for any player to control the market for any length of time then there is no reason to not allow perfect competition.
Tips for Making gold:
Use Addons: The key to making a lot of gold on the AH is selling in volume. To sell in volume you have to do a lot of things, and addons are required to automate those things. Without this automation you would spend all of your playing time on the AH and not out killing stuff.
The gold related addons I use are: Auctioneer, QA2, Skillet, KTQ, Lil Sparky, Postal, Mail Opener, and Altoholic.
Sell Armor Vellum and Runescrolls: It's funny whenever anyone talks about Inscription as a money making profession they always talk about selling glyphs. I rarely if ever hear anyone talking about vellums or scrolls, but I swear I've made 50% of my gold off of these two products alone. The key here is that they are in high demand, but not an obvious market. You don't need vellums to make enchants, and you don't need runescrolls to raid.
I think the primary purchasers of Armor vellum is the guy that needs to send an enchant to an alt. Therefore thy are not going to bat an eye at spending 4g to pick up a vellum.
Watch Trade Chat: I know that this can be a horrible experience, but trade chat is the best place to find deals. For some reason some people don't like to post things on the AH and will sell their goods for much less then they are worth in trade chat. I've bought Herbs for a third of their market price. You may also be able to pick up some BoE epics cheaply and flip them. Also, always bargain with trade chat sellers. Never offer to pay their price from the start. Most of them can be talked down.
Recruitment: My guild has had a bad run of some real life issues and burn out, and we are recruiting once again. If you are interested in a serious progression guild that only raids 3 nights a week you may want to consider Lords of Eternity. You can find more information here.
Well, the goal has been met. I reached the gold cap a few weeks ago. In the end, reaching my goal was both easier then I thought it would be and harder then I thought it would be. In this post I hope to explain that dichotomy, share a few of my thoughts on how to improve the WoW economy, and maybe give a tip or two on how to make gold.
Easier then I Thought:
Reaching the gold cap was easier then I thought it would be because there is no real trick to it. There are no hidden secrets. I don't know what I expected, but earning 215k gold when you are at about 20k feels like a big task. The bloggers who write about gold making give you all these little tips, but many of them didn't seem to work for me in the way I expected them to. I always felt like there was some trick or secret that I was missing.
As far as I can tell I wasn't missing anything. I didn't find any secret product that I could sell and make 20k gold a week or a magic farming spot (I didn't farm at all in fact). My process of making gold is all about crafting and selling. Buying the mats cheaper then the finished good will sell for and then posting it on the AH. And I wasn't crafting odd things. Most of my gold came from Inscriptions, but I also made quite a bit from selling the obvious things like spellthread, meta gems, and bags. I just looked for markets where the mats cost less then the AH prices, and participated even when there was a lot of competition. So, making gold was a lot easier then I thought because I already had most the tools I needed just by having my professions leveled up.
Harder then I Though:
If you ever have read a gold blog, then you know that some of the claims sound outlandish. They make it sound like once you find the right system the money truck backs up to your house and dumps a bunch of gold in. Gevlon at the Greedy Goblin made it sound particularly easy when he claimed he was making around 15k a week with just 30minutes to an hour a day of work. That may not sound like much but it is more then you may think. If you spend an hour a day on the AH that is 7 hours a week. That is almost as much as I raid each week.
In the end, working the AH is a lot of time consuming work. You are able to automate a lot of things with the right addons, but there are some things you can't automate like crafting and milling. Therefore I spend hours each week in front of my computer hitting a single button. It isn't a lot of fun for me and I know understand why you find very few people to play the AH for extended periods of time. Even Gavlon has taken breaks after reaching the cap.
How to Improve the WoW Economy:
Just so you know, I work in the financial industry. I have a degree in Economics and a MBA. So, I have some experience with economic theory. That is why I find some of the common gripes amount the WoW economy so funny. Everyone seems to think that the goblins out there are ruining the market in one way or another. One guy will complain about getting under cut. The next guy will complain that people shouldn't be able to post a glyph for 50g when it cost 3g to make. They all eventually say that these people need to play fair or be punished and they want Blizzard to put more controls on the market. The funny thing is they are 100% wrong.
The problem with the WoW economy isn't the lack of control that allows people to do pretty much what ever they want. The problem with the WoW economy is the artificial roadblocks that make goblinish activity more difficult and ultimately cause people to quite after artificial goals are completed. This reduces the competition in the market, creates more imperfections, and ultimately increases the prices for consumers. Here are my suggestions.
Allow for more batch processing: When you mill herbs you currently have to hit a button for every herb you mill. The same is true for prospecting. It's not unusual for me to mill 3000 herbs in a sitting. In a perfect world it would take you 10 minutes to mill 3000 herbs, when you add lag and such into the equation you will take at least 15-20 minutes.
Crafting is even worse. When I make my glyphs I usually have to make 50 different glyphs in varying amounts for a total of about 800 glyphs in a sitting. Since most glyphs take 1.5 seconds to create that is a minimum of 20 minutes spent crafting, but longer when you consider lag and such. As you can probably imagine the process is quite boring and I think is the primary cause for most goblin burn-out.
Blizzard needs to create an interface to mill and prospect much like they have for smelting ore currently. That way I can tell it to mill and walk away and use that time to do other things around the house or on the computer. They also need to upgrade the crafting interface. There are several mods that already allow you to queue multiple crafting jobs, but they all require you to push a button to go on to the next step. Removing that button click would again allow the goblin to walk away during one of the more tedious portions of the crafting process.
Allow for Batch Mail Retrieval: This may be easier said then done, but the next big time sink in a crafters process is picking up the mail. I list 1200 - 1600 glyphs a day across 3 alts. Since you can open only 50 mails every minute it takes at least 25 minutes to go through all of my mail generally. I recently found the addon Mail Opener that allows me to go AFK through that process, but I think it can be done better.
The Auctioneer addon currently allows you to download the entire auction house in just a few minutes. Why couldn't we have the same thing for mail. The only issue I see from a player point of view is what would happen if your bags were full, but I think we can find a work around. Gold requires no bag space and therefore could always be pulled in a lump sum. The cancelled and expired auctions could also be consolidated into fewer mails to make them easier to view and empty.
Allow for more stacking: I made some of my gold with Jewelcrafting, but avoided it for he most part. Since cut gems can't stack it is very difficult to mass produce gems and achieve the economies of scale that you can in the glyph market. This is one of the things that I think seriously holds back JCing as a profession.
Reduce some deposit costs: Another key thing holding back Jewelcrafting as a profession is the fact that it costs several gold just to list a gem on the AH, but Glyphs and Enchants have little or no cost to post.
Why I think these Changes are Necessary:
Don't get me wrong, I understand that these suggestions would hurt a lot of the producers currently in the market. This would likely push all prices down to the materials cost of those professions. However, it would be good for consumers, because it would be easier for people to enter and stay in the market. This would increase competition and push prices down.
The key to the WoW economy's problems and the solutions is the fact that it is a fictional economy. No one's kids are going to starve because daddy didn't sell some glyphs last night. Participating in the market is purely optional and has few real world consequences. The fact of the matter is that the problems with a perfectly free market in the real world don't apply to the virtual world. If someone trys to monopolize the bag market, all you have to do is go farm a few mats, list the goods cheaper and their monopoly is broken. Since it is impossible for any player to control the market for any length of time then there is no reason to not allow perfect competition.
Tips for Making gold:
Use Addons: The key to making a lot of gold on the AH is selling in volume. To sell in volume you have to do a lot of things, and addons are required to automate those things. Without this automation you would spend all of your playing time on the AH and not out killing stuff.
The gold related addons I use are: Auctioneer, QA2, Skillet, KTQ, Lil Sparky, Postal, Mail Opener, and Altoholic.
Sell Armor Vellum and Runescrolls: It's funny whenever anyone talks about Inscription as a money making profession they always talk about selling glyphs. I rarely if ever hear anyone talking about vellums or scrolls, but I swear I've made 50% of my gold off of these two products alone. The key here is that they are in high demand, but not an obvious market. You don't need vellums to make enchants, and you don't need runescrolls to raid.
I think the primary purchasers of Armor vellum is the guy that needs to send an enchant to an alt. Therefore thy are not going to bat an eye at spending 4g to pick up a vellum.
Watch Trade Chat: I know that this can be a horrible experience, but trade chat is the best place to find deals. For some reason some people don't like to post things on the AH and will sell their goods for much less then they are worth in trade chat. I've bought Herbs for a third of their market price. You may also be able to pick up some BoE epics cheaply and flip them. Also, always bargain with trade chat sellers. Never offer to pay their price from the start. Most of them can be talked down.
Recruitment: My guild has had a bad run of some real life issues and burn out, and we are recruiting once again. If you are interested in a serious progression guild that only raids 3 nights a week you may want to consider Lords of Eternity. You can find more information here.
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
General Update: 9/8/2009
Edit: Randomsmo has started a blog and posted on the 2T8 vs 4T9 debate I talk a little bit about below. Since I already gave him credit for sparking idea, I think it is a good idea that I link to his post. You can find it here.
It’s been a little while since I wrote a real post. Since I don't have anything specific I am ready to post on, it is time for a new General Update.
Raid Progress:
Well, Anub'arak became available and everyone marched into the loot piñata that is ToC. Once again, the normal mode boss was pretty much a push over in my opinion. We got him down in two shots, and the first was a 2% enrage wipe. If we had been a little more comfortable with the fight mechanics it would have easily been a one shot.
Granted, one of our 10man groups did get in there on Tuesday and had a little bit of trouble. However, that was primarily due to a flawed strategy that they took from the PTR. Once they figured out it wouldn't work they downed him easily.
So with Anub'arak down, we moved onto Heroic ToC. I will admit my expectations were pretty low for the Heroic version of ToC. Given how easy normal was, I thought we would walk in there and down a couple of bosses. Boy was I wrong. Heroic ToC is pretty darn tough. We had a couple of issues with Group Composition given that some of our regular raiders weren't available, but we couldn't get out of phase 2 cleanly on the 25man version. My 10man group didn't even attempt it because we are trying to finish up the Ulduar Meta for a couple of people, but the other group did get in there and downed the first 3 bosses on heroic.
Heroic ToC is definitely doable, but it will take some practice. Unfortunately this poses another problem. We still have some fights left to finish up in Ulduar. We still want to get the meta achievement in there which means we need to pick up Firefighter, Vezax hard, and 1 light in the darkness. Since we have only a 9 hour schedule it will be a little difficult to work on both the ToC and Ulduar hard modes. Luckily they haven't announced the removal of the Drakes yet so we have at least 30 days to finish it up.
BiS Lists:
In some of my comments and emails, I've had a couple of questions about my BiS choices. I would like to address what I think are a couple of misunderstandings. First off, everyone needs to understand that a BiS list is just a Christmas wish list. Ninety nine percent of players in the game are unlikely to be able to get everything they want before a new tier becomes available. So, basing all of your gearing choices on a BiS list is pretty unrealistic.
Second, I never intended anyone to make loot choices based entirely off of my BiS list or the larger gear list. The list is a tool to help you see how things relate. It also organizes all of the options in one convenient place. What I expect players to do is to take a look at what is available and come up with a gear plan. What choices are best for you given the gear you already have and what is likely to be available.
For example, my back is pretty old. I picked up the [Shroud of Luminosity] from Naxx and have been rocking it for a long time. There haven't been a lot of good upgrades since then, and what there has been hasn't really dropped for us. [Jaina's Radiance] is BiS for me, but let’s be honest. I am nowhere close to being able to complete a ToC 25man tribute run. I can't hold how for that item. On top of that, most of the best items are from ToC tribute runs, so I need to realize that picking one up might take a while. On the flip side, [Shawl of the Refreshing Winds] is number 11 on my list, but it is an upgrade and drops off of Normal Beasts. The next time it drops I will probably invest a significant amount of DKP into it, despite it not being on my BiS list.
Tier 9 vs Tier 8:
I've commented on this before, but I want to take a look at it again, since I've heard some interesting new ideas, and continue to get questions about it.
Toon Update:
I haven't done much with the Lock or the Priest lately, because Grayvik my mage has been getting all of my alt attention. He is currently level 69 and I am trying to get him to Northrend as quickly as possible. (I know I could take him now, but I want him to be 70 first. It just makes it easier to use the guide that way.) He has been advancing pretty quickly for a couple of reasons. First, Outland is much more fun to level in than Azeroth is. The quest lines are easy to follow and you can do a lot of quests at once. Also, since I can fly, it's a lot easier to complete some of the quests. Second, I need a herber in Northrend. Since I dropped Herbalism on Graylo, I am at the mercy of the Auction House for my herbs. That's not a big deal if you plan ahead, but I don't like not being able to farm if the prices are unusually high.
Overall his levelling has gone well without issue. I did find one very surprising thing, however. The quests in Nagrand have been nerfed quite a bit. I think I remember seeing a note saying that the animal slaughter quests were nerfed, but it doesn't stop there. My guide lists what it thinks the quest requirements are and what the actual quest requirements are. For almost every quest where I had to "kill X number of this" or "collect X number of that," the number of items or kills needed had been reduced, by between 33 - 66%. That is huge. It has made the zone go a little quicker but to be honest I am a little disappointed. I was looking forward to skinning all of the beasts. Anyway, I am about half way through 69 and should ding 70 in the beginnings of Blades Edge Mountains.
One Quick note: Thank you Myraxa and Tigeris. I was doing the bird quest in Shattrath and couldn't seem to solo it. I was getting through the 3 add rushes with no problem, but the last bird did too much damage and had too much health for me to kill on my own. So I asked for help from the guild. Myraxa and Tigeris helped out, and wanted to be mentioned on the blog.
Goblin Activity:
I am continuing with my AH activities. I've had my ups and downs, but overall I think it is going pretty well. A guildie of mine, Nosismyhero, walked me through Auctioneer and explained a little bit of the functionality that I didn't understand. It has made playing the AH a lot easier.
My bag business has been tough lately. The cost of mats has gone up quite a bit. I used to find a lot of the mats around 4 gold and below, but lately a lot of it has been above that. In addition to that, the price of bags has gone down quite a bit, with prices being between 7g and 7.5g. There is still money to be made but it's not a lot. The flask business seems to be on the rebound. The flask prices have gone back up, but the price of Frost Lotus has gone up as well.
Also, I have a lot more respect for people like Gevlon who have been able to make a lot of money from Inscription. Since picking up the profession, I have tried to make money from it a couple of times, but haven't been able to find the right glyphs yet. I may not have discovered the right glyphs yet, but most of what I make has sat on the AH with little profit. It's definitely not as simple as some of the other professions. With Alchemy and Tailoring there are really only a few things you can sell for a profit so it is easy to figure out. Since there are literally hundreds of glyphs it is much tougher to learn for Inscription.
The bright spot in my Goblinish Activity is that I think I've found a good market to play in. It is the Armor Vellum III market. The volume is high, and the competition seems relatively low on my server. I sold several hundred over the weekend for 100% - 150% profit. On top of that, there is no deposit cost for listing them, so the market has very little risk. If this past weekend is any indication I might be able to make 1k gold a week off of just this item.
If anyone reading this is experienced in the glyph market and has any suggestions, please pass them on.
(Edited by Flamedor)
It’s been a little while since I wrote a real post. Since I don't have anything specific I am ready to post on, it is time for a new General Update.
Raid Progress:
Well, Anub'arak became available and everyone marched into the loot piñata that is ToC. Once again, the normal mode boss was pretty much a push over in my opinion. We got him down in two shots, and the first was a 2% enrage wipe. If we had been a little more comfortable with the fight mechanics it would have easily been a one shot.
Granted, one of our 10man groups did get in there on Tuesday and had a little bit of trouble. However, that was primarily due to a flawed strategy that they took from the PTR. Once they figured out it wouldn't work they downed him easily.
So with Anub'arak down, we moved onto Heroic ToC. I will admit my expectations were pretty low for the Heroic version of ToC. Given how easy normal was, I thought we would walk in there and down a couple of bosses. Boy was I wrong. Heroic ToC is pretty darn tough. We had a couple of issues with Group Composition given that some of our regular raiders weren't available, but we couldn't get out of phase 2 cleanly on the 25man version. My 10man group didn't even attempt it because we are trying to finish up the Ulduar Meta for a couple of people, but the other group did get in there and downed the first 3 bosses on heroic.
Heroic ToC is definitely doable, but it will take some practice. Unfortunately this poses another problem. We still have some fights left to finish up in Ulduar. We still want to get the meta achievement in there which means we need to pick up Firefighter, Vezax hard, and 1 light in the darkness. Since we have only a 9 hour schedule it will be a little difficult to work on both the ToC and Ulduar hard modes. Luckily they haven't announced the removal of the Drakes yet so we have at least 30 days to finish it up.
BiS Lists:
In some of my comments and emails, I've had a couple of questions about my BiS choices. I would like to address what I think are a couple of misunderstandings. First off, everyone needs to understand that a BiS list is just a Christmas wish list. Ninety nine percent of players in the game are unlikely to be able to get everything they want before a new tier becomes available. So, basing all of your gearing choices on a BiS list is pretty unrealistic.
Second, I never intended anyone to make loot choices based entirely off of my BiS list or the larger gear list. The list is a tool to help you see how things relate. It also organizes all of the options in one convenient place. What I expect players to do is to take a look at what is available and come up with a gear plan. What choices are best for you given the gear you already have and what is likely to be available.
For example, my back is pretty old. I picked up the [Shroud of Luminosity] from Naxx and have been rocking it for a long time. There haven't been a lot of good upgrades since then, and what there has been hasn't really dropped for us. [Jaina's Radiance] is BiS for me, but let’s be honest. I am nowhere close to being able to complete a ToC 25man tribute run. I can't hold how for that item. On top of that, most of the best items are from ToC tribute runs, so I need to realize that picking one up might take a while. On the flip side, [Shawl of the Refreshing Winds] is number 11 on my list, but it is an upgrade and drops off of Normal Beasts. The next time it drops I will probably invest a significant amount of DKP into it, despite it not being on my BiS list.
Tier 9 vs Tier 8:
I've commented on this before, but I want to take a look at it again, since I've heard some interesting new ideas, and continue to get questions about it.
- 4T8 vs 2T9: The 2 piece T9 set bonus is better. My math from several months ago showed that instant Starfires were worth about 2.5% DPS while critting Moonfires were worth about 4.0%. When you consider the additional stats from T9 the 2T9 set bonus is an easy winner.
- Which 2 pieces of T9: This really depends on what items you have and what you can pick up, but let’s assume you have full T8. If that is the case then I would pick up the T9 Chest and Helm. You're giving up 2 pieces of Spirit for two pieces without. Also, you wouldn't be making any big shifts regarding the hit cap by replacing your T8 gear in this way. Your T8 chest doesn't have hit on it and neither does the T9 chest. The T8 helm has hit on it and so does the T9. This makes for a very easy transition.
- 2T8 vs 4T9: Mathematically, 2T8 is a clear winner unless you’re able to build a full set of T9.258. However, I read an interesting point on the WoW forums recently. (Randomsmo posted his point on his new blog here.) The point was that while 2T8 is better than 4T9 mathematically, 4T9 is a lot more consistent. Every Starfire and Wrath you cast will benefit from 4T9, while you can get screwed by RNG with 2T8. When you combine that with the stat advances you get from the T9.245 gear you can make a good argument for the upgrade. I will have to plug it into the model to be sure but I don't think it is a big DPS sacrifice.
Toon Update:
I haven't done much with the Lock or the Priest lately, because Grayvik my mage has been getting all of my alt attention. He is currently level 69 and I am trying to get him to Northrend as quickly as possible. (I know I could take him now, but I want him to be 70 first. It just makes it easier to use the guide that way.) He has been advancing pretty quickly for a couple of reasons. First, Outland is much more fun to level in than Azeroth is. The quest lines are easy to follow and you can do a lot of quests at once. Also, since I can fly, it's a lot easier to complete some of the quests. Second, I need a herber in Northrend. Since I dropped Herbalism on Graylo, I am at the mercy of the Auction House for my herbs. That's not a big deal if you plan ahead, but I don't like not being able to farm if the prices are unusually high.
Overall his levelling has gone well without issue. I did find one very surprising thing, however. The quests in Nagrand have been nerfed quite a bit. I think I remember seeing a note saying that the animal slaughter quests were nerfed, but it doesn't stop there. My guide lists what it thinks the quest requirements are and what the actual quest requirements are. For almost every quest where I had to "kill X number of this" or "collect X number of that," the number of items or kills needed had been reduced, by between 33 - 66%. That is huge. It has made the zone go a little quicker but to be honest I am a little disappointed. I was looking forward to skinning all of the beasts. Anyway, I am about half way through 69 and should ding 70 in the beginnings of Blades Edge Mountains.
One Quick note: Thank you Myraxa and Tigeris. I was doing the bird quest in Shattrath and couldn't seem to solo it. I was getting through the 3 add rushes with no problem, but the last bird did too much damage and had too much health for me to kill on my own. So I asked for help from the guild. Myraxa and Tigeris helped out, and wanted to be mentioned on the blog.
Goblin Activity:
I am continuing with my AH activities. I've had my ups and downs, but overall I think it is going pretty well. A guildie of mine, Nosismyhero, walked me through Auctioneer and explained a little bit of the functionality that I didn't understand. It has made playing the AH a lot easier.
My bag business has been tough lately. The cost of mats has gone up quite a bit. I used to find a lot of the mats around 4 gold and below, but lately a lot of it has been above that. In addition to that, the price of bags has gone down quite a bit, with prices being between 7g and 7.5g. There is still money to be made but it's not a lot. The flask business seems to be on the rebound. The flask prices have gone back up, but the price of Frost Lotus has gone up as well.
Also, I have a lot more respect for people like Gevlon who have been able to make a lot of money from Inscription. Since picking up the profession, I have tried to make money from it a couple of times, but haven't been able to find the right glyphs yet. I may not have discovered the right glyphs yet, but most of what I make has sat on the AH with little profit. It's definitely not as simple as some of the other professions. With Alchemy and Tailoring there are really only a few things you can sell for a profit so it is easy to figure out. Since there are literally hundreds of glyphs it is much tougher to learn for Inscription.
The bright spot in my Goblinish Activity is that I think I've found a good market to play in. It is the Armor Vellum III market. The volume is high, and the competition seems relatively low on my server. I sold several hundred over the weekend for 100% - 150% profit. On top of that, there is no deposit cost for listing them, so the market has very little risk. If this past weekend is any indication I might be able to make 1k gold a week off of just this item.
If anyone reading this is experienced in the glyph market and has any suggestions, please pass them on.
(Edited by Flamedor)
Friday, August 21, 2009
Why Cartel's Don't Work in WoW.
A couple of weeks ago I mentioned how I am trying to make more money off of the AH. I've had modest success but I'm not going to reach the gold cap anytime soon. I am in several markets but this post will focus on my activities in the Netherweave Bag market. It's a great market because the bags are in high demand and the cost of raw materials is relatively low. I don't make a ton of money from it but it is a decent little chunk.
So, the other day I was at the AH making some bags to put up for auction when I get a tell. I don't have the exact quotes but the conversation went like this:
What is a Cartel?
According to Wikipedia:
First, new producers will enter the market. When people see that they can sell bags for 10g and the mats cost only 5g, they can quickly turn those mats in to bags and have hem on the AH for close to a 100% profit. This will drive the price down.
Second, cartel members are encouraged to cheat. All of their main competitors are holding the line at 10g. All you have to do is create a new alt. Transfer a bunch of bags over and sell them at 9.50g. Why sell 50% of your bags at 10g when you can sell 100% of them at 9.5g. You will make a lot more money that way.
Due to these two reasons the cartel will ultimately break down.
Where Cartels Can Work in WoW.
There are two times when cartels can work in WoW.
So, the other day I was at the AH making some bags to put up for auction when I get a tell. I don't have the exact quotes but the conversation went like this:
[Cartel]: I noticed your making some bags. People are willing to pay 10g per bag. Please don't post below that.Funny thing is, every single one of my bags sold. I did not lose a single deposit. I made money on every sale, and I don't have a single piece of inventory. Being a part of a cartel may sound good to the inexperienced reader, but let me assure you, almost all WoW cartel's are a bad idea.
[Me]: Thanks, but no thanks.
[Cartel]: Grumble, grumble grumble. You're an idiot. You're losing money. We have over 1,000 bags and we are going to undercut you so that you don't sell any bags and lose your deposit.
What is a Cartel?
According to Wikipedia:
Cartel - a formal (explicit) agreement among firms. It is a formal organization of producers that agree to coordinate prices and production.For a cartel to work, you need to control one of two things.
- Delivery Channel: If you control how a good is obtained and used then you can dictate terms to both suppliers and consumers. I think MicroSoft is a good example of Delivery Channel control. Windows is by far the most used computer operating system in the world. MicroSoft has taken advantage of this by forcing Internet Explorer and other programs to be installed along with Windows.
- Supply Chain: If you control the raw materials needed to produce a good then you control the good. OPEC is a great example of Supply Chain control. Its member nations control a significant portion of the world's oil production capacity and can increase prices by cutting production.
Why it Doesn't Work in WoW.
- Delivery Channel: There are only 2 delivery channel's in WoW: The AH and the chat channels. Obviously players have no control over either. A player could make a lot of money if it was possible to exclude all other producers from posting on the AH, but that's just not going to happen. The delivery channels are completely controlled by Blizzard. So, if you want to maintain a cartel you have to control the supply.
- Supply Chain: There are exceptions but it is virtually impossible to control supply in WoW. Especially for a product like Netherweave Bags. To craft the bags you need 3 things.
- The pattern: It's available to every Tailor form the profession trainer. So you can't limit the supply by limiting the number of people that can craft the item.
- Netherweave Cloth: It is dropped by 200 different types of mobs in Outland. Therefore you cannot prevent other people from farming it, or picking it up in normal play.
- Rune Thread: Available from 182 vendors in the game in an unlimited supply. So you can't prevent people from buying it.
First, new producers will enter the market. When people see that they can sell bags for 10g and the mats cost only 5g, they can quickly turn those mats in to bags and have hem on the AH for close to a 100% profit. This will drive the price down.
Second, cartel members are encouraged to cheat. All of their main competitors are holding the line at 10g. All you have to do is create a new alt. Transfer a bunch of bags over and sell them at 9.50g. Why sell 50% of your bags at 10g when you can sell 100% of them at 9.5g. You will make a lot more money that way.
Due to these two reasons the cartel will ultimately break down.
Where Cartels Can Work in WoW.
There are two times when cartels can work in WoW.
- The first is when there is a limited number of crafters within the market. This can only happen when it is difficult to obtain a pattern, which happens fairly often in WoW. If you get a pattern first you can dominate a market until the rest of the community catches up. This happens most often when new content is released that drops a new rare pattern, or when a pattern is a random discovery.
- The second is when the raw materials are not farmable by a majority of the player base. I haven't seen this occur in WotLK, but it happened in TBC with the Epic Gems. For nine months in TBC, the only way to get epic gems was to run Black Temple or Mount Hyjal. To run those instances you had to complete a very complected attunement process that including killing two of the most difficult bosses in the game. This gave the top guilds a gold mine where they could sell gems to PvEers who could not complete the attunement process and PvPers who had no interest in completing the attunement process and raiding.
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Patch 3.2: First Impressions
It was a pretty typical patch day for me. Lots of lag, broken addons, and I even had a short queue when I logged in. You may not be real happy with my first impressions. My guild doesn't raid on Tuesdays, so I didn't experience the new raid and I didn't even get into the new 5-man. That does not mean I was not busy on my first day. Here is what I was up to.
New Eclipse:
It felt very odd at first. In fact, I had forgotten about the change while I was running a 5-man and it kid of shocked me at first. We were working on a boss and I was going through my normal rotation and all of a sudden Solar Eclipse proced on the first SF cast after the buff. It just felt way to soon and just strange. It will be interesting to see how it feels tonight when I get in a raid.
Goblinish Activities:
I don't claim to be a goblin, but I am trying to make more money off the AH and take advantage of temporary situations. The only pre-patch position I took was to buy several stacks of Titanium Ore, to try and capitalize on the Epic gem feeding frenzy that was going to take place when the patch was released. When I looked at the AH when I got home from work, my position seemed like it was going to pay off. Gems were selling for 350 - 400g. Stacks of Ore were selling for about the same. The big question I had was do I sell the Ore or do I prospect it and sell the gems.
I ended up prospecting the or and got a decent haul. I put all the Gems on the AH and most sold. Oddly enough it was the blue gems I had the biggest issue with. In the end, I've made a little bit of gold. I wish I had taken out a larger position, but this opportunity has definitely past. Gem prices have already been cut in half after the first day feeding frenzy.
The other funny thing I saw was that in all the chaos people seemed to forget about other parts of the market. For example, there were no Chaotic Skyflare Meta gems on the AH. I put several on the AH at way above market price and most of them sold. The Flask prices on my server also rebounded a little bit.
All in all, I didn't make a lot of gold, but it gave me great experience for the next patch and gave me a little more confidence to take some positions.
Isle of Conquest:
When I was buying gems I noticed that I was just a few hundred shy of being able to buy another gem with Honor. So, I took this opportunity to try out the new BG. For those of you that don't know IoC is kind of a combination of several BGs that have come before. The best way to describe it is AV/AB + Vehicles, and I had no idea what I was doing. It has the Cap and Hold aspect that you find in AB and EoT, but it also has the Kill the Boss aspect that you find in AV. Of course, I knew none of this since I paid very little attention to the PvP aspects of the patch before release.
That said, I did have fun. It was very lagging, and I didn't know anyone in the BG, but Alliance won and I got the honor needed to get a new gem. It's not going to spur me into a lot of PvP play, but I think it is something that the PvPers will enjoy.
Daily Quests:
I'm not exalted with The Silver Covenant so I didn't do any of the new dailies, but they did change the old AT dailies. They basically made them a little more difficult to complete and it makes me wish I had finished this up before the patch. First off, the two scourge quests are now different, so you can't just kill 15 mobs and complete both quests. The second thing was they changed the number of commanders you have to kill in the jousting quest. It may have been the lag and the number of people trying to complete them, but it took forever to kill 3 commanders. I can't wait until I am done with this whole thing.
I also did the Heroic daily which was Drak'Tharon Keep. It was a pug with what seemed to be a bunch of casual players. I didn't expect it to be hard but it was beyond easy. The hardest part about it was getting into the instance. Everyone and their mother was running instances last night so it took us 10 minutes to zone in. If it had been a guild run with chain pulls I'm sure we could have completed the instance in 15 minutes. Now I just need to do it for the next week or two straight so that I can get 25 EoTs to get the new idol.
Addons:
The biggest disappointment of the night for me was how few of my addons were updated. I usually log in and most of the main ones have a new version out, but I think I updated 30% of my addons at most. Hopefully this won't present a big problem for raiding tonight.
Toon Update:
Graylo - Our raiding has hit a little bit of a snag. Like most guilds, we are having a lot of absences due to vacations and such which is slowing down progress, but we've also seemed to have lost some of our focus. The good news is we recognize the problem and the guild leaders are taking some steps to try and correct the issues.
Other than that Graylo has been trying to complete the AT dailies and get ready for raid. I am in the process of updating all of my gems to epic gems. Thank goodness I have a large stock pile of emblems.
I am also thinking about dropping herbalism on him and picking up Inscription. My original plan was to level Grayvik up and make him my herbalist/inscriptionist and have Graylo pick up jewelcrafting instead of herbalism. With the changes to jewelcrafting that doesn't seem to make sense anymore and I was unsure what to do with Graylo's second profession.
After thinking about it a little bit I think I am going to keep Grayvik a herbalist/skinner and have Graylo pick up Inscriptions. I already have most of the herbs to level it up, and I don't really do any farming anymore, so it wouldn't be a big loss to not have Herbalism on a level 80 toon. I may make the switch over the weekend. Please let me know if you know of a good way to power level inscriptions.
Graypal and Grayfel: These guys are really just profession mules for me at the moment so not a lot has happened. I do need to try and get Graypal into the new 5man though to try and pick up some more gear.
Grayvik: He is now in Outland and progressing quickly. I went into the zone at level 58, and wasn't able to pick up some of the quest when I wanted to but after a couple of quick runs through HFP and BF I was back on track very quickly. The funny thing about it right now is being able to fly. I didn't buy the epic land mount when I hit level 60 because I new it would be cheaper when the patch hit. So, I went from the slow land mount to flying in a day. Its just a little strange.
Graybel - I used up all of my rested XP on Grayvik so I put a little effort into the shaman. I started leveling him using Brian Kopps guide, and I'm now trying to level him up using the Zygor guide. The problem is that due to all the rested XP I am way ahead of both guides, and they are very different in the beginning. For example, the Kopp guide has you going to level 20 in the Draenei starting area. The Zygor guide has you only going to about 12. So, switching from one guide to the other has been difficult, but I think it is all worked out now.
Final Note:
So that is my experience with the patch. Let me know what you guys think.
New Eclipse:
It felt very odd at first. In fact, I had forgotten about the change while I was running a 5-man and it kid of shocked me at first. We were working on a boss and I was going through my normal rotation and all of a sudden Solar Eclipse proced on the first SF cast after the buff. It just felt way to soon and just strange. It will be interesting to see how it feels tonight when I get in a raid.
Goblinish Activities:
I don't claim to be a goblin, but I am trying to make more money off the AH and take advantage of temporary situations. The only pre-patch position I took was to buy several stacks of Titanium Ore, to try and capitalize on the Epic gem feeding frenzy that was going to take place when the patch was released. When I looked at the AH when I got home from work, my position seemed like it was going to pay off. Gems were selling for 350 - 400g. Stacks of Ore were selling for about the same. The big question I had was do I sell the Ore or do I prospect it and sell the gems.
I ended up prospecting the or and got a decent haul. I put all the Gems on the AH and most sold. Oddly enough it was the blue gems I had the biggest issue with. In the end, I've made a little bit of gold. I wish I had taken out a larger position, but this opportunity has definitely past. Gem prices have already been cut in half after the first day feeding frenzy.
The other funny thing I saw was that in all the chaos people seemed to forget about other parts of the market. For example, there were no Chaotic Skyflare Meta gems on the AH. I put several on the AH at way above market price and most of them sold. The Flask prices on my server also rebounded a little bit.
All in all, I didn't make a lot of gold, but it gave me great experience for the next patch and gave me a little more confidence to take some positions.
Isle of Conquest:
When I was buying gems I noticed that I was just a few hundred shy of being able to buy another gem with Honor. So, I took this opportunity to try out the new BG. For those of you that don't know IoC is kind of a combination of several BGs that have come before. The best way to describe it is AV/AB + Vehicles, and I had no idea what I was doing. It has the Cap and Hold aspect that you find in AB and EoT, but it also has the Kill the Boss aspect that you find in AV. Of course, I knew none of this since I paid very little attention to the PvP aspects of the patch before release.
That said, I did have fun. It was very lagging, and I didn't know anyone in the BG, but Alliance won and I got the honor needed to get a new gem. It's not going to spur me into a lot of PvP play, but I think it is something that the PvPers will enjoy.
Daily Quests:
I'm not exalted with The Silver Covenant so I didn't do any of the new dailies, but they did change the old AT dailies. They basically made them a little more difficult to complete and it makes me wish I had finished this up before the patch. First off, the two scourge quests are now different, so you can't just kill 15 mobs and complete both quests. The second thing was they changed the number of commanders you have to kill in the jousting quest. It may have been the lag and the number of people trying to complete them, but it took forever to kill 3 commanders. I can't wait until I am done with this whole thing.
I also did the Heroic daily which was Drak'Tharon Keep. It was a pug with what seemed to be a bunch of casual players. I didn't expect it to be hard but it was beyond easy. The hardest part about it was getting into the instance. Everyone and their mother was running instances last night so it took us 10 minutes to zone in. If it had been a guild run with chain pulls I'm sure we could have completed the instance in 15 minutes. Now I just need to do it for the next week or two straight so that I can get 25 EoTs to get the new idol.
Addons:
The biggest disappointment of the night for me was how few of my addons were updated. I usually log in and most of the main ones have a new version out, but I think I updated 30% of my addons at most. Hopefully this won't present a big problem for raiding tonight.
Toon Update:
Graylo - Our raiding has hit a little bit of a snag. Like most guilds, we are having a lot of absences due to vacations and such which is slowing down progress, but we've also seemed to have lost some of our focus. The good news is we recognize the problem and the guild leaders are taking some steps to try and correct the issues.
Other than that Graylo has been trying to complete the AT dailies and get ready for raid. I am in the process of updating all of my gems to epic gems. Thank goodness I have a large stock pile of emblems.
I am also thinking about dropping herbalism on him and picking up Inscription. My original plan was to level Grayvik up and make him my herbalist/inscriptionist and have Graylo pick up jewelcrafting instead of herbalism. With the changes to jewelcrafting that doesn't seem to make sense anymore and I was unsure what to do with Graylo's second profession.
After thinking about it a little bit I think I am going to keep Grayvik a herbalist/skinner and have Graylo pick up Inscriptions. I already have most of the herbs to level it up, and I don't really do any farming anymore, so it wouldn't be a big loss to not have Herbalism on a level 80 toon. I may make the switch over the weekend. Please let me know if you know of a good way to power level inscriptions.
Graypal and Grayfel: These guys are really just profession mules for me at the moment so not a lot has happened. I do need to try and get Graypal into the new 5man though to try and pick up some more gear.
Grayvik: He is now in Outland and progressing quickly. I went into the zone at level 58, and wasn't able to pick up some of the quest when I wanted to but after a couple of quick runs through HFP and BF I was back on track very quickly. The funny thing about it right now is being able to fly. I didn't buy the epic land mount when I hit level 60 because I new it would be cheaper when the patch hit. So, I went from the slow land mount to flying in a day. Its just a little strange.
Graybel - I used up all of my rested XP on Grayvik so I put a little effort into the shaman. I started leveling him using Brian Kopps guide, and I'm now trying to level him up using the Zygor guide. The problem is that due to all the rested XP I am way ahead of both guides, and they are very different in the beginning. For example, the Kopp guide has you going to level 20 in the Draenei starting area. The Zygor guide has you only going to about 12. So, switching from one guide to the other has been difficult, but I think it is all worked out now.
Final Note:
So that is my experience with the patch. Let me know what you guys think.
Friday, July 10, 2009
General Update: 7/10/2009
Ok, I've been a bit of a slacker lately and haven't posted much. My life has been very hectic with holidays, work stuff, Raiding, and even some trips to the hospital (don't worry everything is fine). So, I will try and give a general update of what is going on in my WoW life.
The Gear Guide:
I've updated my raiding gear guides to include every item in Ulduar. So, it should now be complete until 3.2 comes out. I want to point out that this list is still based upon a pre-3.2 Lunar Rotation. I probably one updated it for 3.2 until right before the patch is released.
Regarding the guide don't expect any serious changes. It is very similar to previous lists, and most of the changes were due to the addition of Algalon gear. Basically, its not important to study the new list. If you already have a good gear plan it is still probably good.
Raiding:
I must admit that Raiding has been quite draining lately. My 25man schedule is the usual 3 nights a week for 3 hours, but my 10man group now raids for another 2 or 3 hours after that. To some of you 15 - 18 hours of raiding a week may not seem like much, but it is tough when you combine the late nights with my family responsibilities. Hopefully it won't go on for to much longer.
The 25 man group is doing well. We have 4 hard modes down and are working on a couple of others. Despite our success I am starting to feel a sense of urgancy. Time is running out on the Meta Achievement and I want an Ironbound Drake before they are removed. The four hard modes that we have could probably be considered 4 of the easier ones leaving most of the heavy hitters to still be downed.
The good news is that our 10man groups are going very well. My group is only missing the Vezex and Yogg hardmodes. The guilds other 10man is just missing Yogg +1 and they got the Ulduar Undying achievement. So, we are in a very good spot to complete the meta on 10mans, and the additional experience we are getting on 10mans should help us meet our goals for the 25man raid.
The other positive sign is that both 10man groups are working on Algalon. My group has worked on him for 2 weeks now, and he is hard, but maybe not as hard as he seems.
Algalon feels like a break through fight. There is a lot of stuff that gets thrown at you very early in the fight and when you wipe after just a few minutes it sometimes feels like your not making much progress. However, that feeling can be misleading. There is so much to adapt to from the very beginning of this fight that it is hard to pick up quickly. Healers have to deal with the huge raid damage when a Star dies. Cosmic Smash is much more difficult to avoid then your standard void zone. The freaking constellations running around beating on people. Figuring out how to survive big bang and at the same time dealing with the massive damage that the tanks are taking.
That is a lot of stuff that all of that happens in the first minute or so. So, as you try to hone your strategy it may feel like your not making progress because most of your attempts don't' last more then a couple of minutes still. However, when we make a break through the fight will be come much easier. Our attempts will go from lasting 2 minutes to testing the 6 minute enrage timer very quickly once we figure out how to deal with everything. So I am happy with our Algalon progress. Hopefully he will be down soon.
My Inner Goblin:
I've been reading the Greedy Goblin for quite a while and I have often wondered how much gold I could make on the AH if I really put some effort into it. I don't really need the gold because I made plenty while leveling 3 toons to 80, but I'm interested in the challenge.
I started my experiments in the Flask market. Specifically the [Flask of the Frost Wyrm] market. I am kind of risk adverse when it comes to this sort of thing. I didn't want to get really far out on a limb with a lot of stuff and lose a bunch of gold, so I selected this market for my first attempts. The average cost to produce a flask seemed to be less then the average flask prices on the AH. Plus, I am an Elixirs master Alchemist so the procs mean added profit, and if my effort completely failed I could always use the flasks for my raid consumables.
The next two businesses I picked up for dual purposes. I hate not having my professions leveled up all the way to 450. It looks sloppy and I hate finding out that I can't do that enchant because my skill level isn't high enough. So I got into the Meta Gem business with my warlock and into the bag business with my priest. The results were mind blowing.
The Meta Gem business is easy. [Skyflare Diamond] were selling for 25g - 30g on my server and [Chaotic Skyflare Diamond] were selling for 50g - 75g on average. You do the math. I've decided though that this is a weekend market. The cut gem prices seemed to go down quite a bit on raid days. It seems to me that the real money to be made is on the weekend players.
The bag business is a little more difficult because you have to look at several different mats to figure out if it is profitable at this time, but for some odd reason it also seems to be a less developed market on my server. There never seems to be a lot of bags on the AH. For that reason undercutters don't seem to matter. I seem to be able to put my bags on the AH at my prices and they will sell even if there are undercutters with posted for a 25% discount.
Not all of my efforts have been successful. I've tried buying Eternals and selling Crystallized pieces and that hasn't been that successful. People on my server seem to be a little more savy in that regard. I also bought a ton of Shoveltusk flank before patch 3.1 was released for personal use and as an investment but Fish Feasts seemed to have killed that market. I have been focusing on the raid nights so far. I'm going to be switching to the weekends here and hope I have better luck.
All in all, I've made several thousand gold over a week or so with just a couple of hours work. Not bad, but I'm not going to be hitting the gold cap anytime soon at this pace.
Other Toon News:
Outside of raids, Graylo has been working on the Ardent Tournament stuff and getting his rep up with the different alliance factions. All in an effort to be able to access my bank once every 8 hours and help my alts to level up a little big quicker. Indicated above Graypal and Grayfel have been forced into business. I would love to raid both of them if I had the time but, given my already busy raid schedule its just not possible.
Grayvik has also suffered some due to my renewed interest in the Ardent Tournament. He is up to 53 right now, but he would easily be a couple of levels above that If I wasn't spending so much time on Graylo doing the Tournament stuff. On top of that, leveling has become more difficult for him. I am now about 2 and a half levels ahead of my guide. All of my quests are green and on occasion I have to fight grey mobs. He is in searing Gorge at the moment but I am going to look at jumping ahead again once I get out of the zone. I guess the good news is that 58 is just around the corner and then I can jump to the easy Outland leveling. That will be a great day.
The Gear Guide:
I've updated my raiding gear guides to include every item in Ulduar. So, it should now be complete until 3.2 comes out. I want to point out that this list is still based upon a pre-3.2 Lunar Rotation. I probably one updated it for 3.2 until right before the patch is released.
Regarding the guide don't expect any serious changes. It is very similar to previous lists, and most of the changes were due to the addition of Algalon gear. Basically, its not important to study the new list. If you already have a good gear plan it is still probably good.
Raiding:
I must admit that Raiding has been quite draining lately. My 25man schedule is the usual 3 nights a week for 3 hours, but my 10man group now raids for another 2 or 3 hours after that. To some of you 15 - 18 hours of raiding a week may not seem like much, but it is tough when you combine the late nights with my family responsibilities. Hopefully it won't go on for to much longer.
The 25 man group is doing well. We have 4 hard modes down and are working on a couple of others. Despite our success I am starting to feel a sense of urgancy. Time is running out on the Meta Achievement and I want an Ironbound Drake before they are removed. The four hard modes that we have could probably be considered 4 of the easier ones leaving most of the heavy hitters to still be downed.
The good news is that our 10man groups are going very well. My group is only missing the Vezex and Yogg hardmodes. The guilds other 10man is just missing Yogg +1 and they got the Ulduar Undying achievement. So, we are in a very good spot to complete the meta on 10mans, and the additional experience we are getting on 10mans should help us meet our goals for the 25man raid.
The other positive sign is that both 10man groups are working on Algalon. My group has worked on him for 2 weeks now, and he is hard, but maybe not as hard as he seems.
Algalon feels like a break through fight. There is a lot of stuff that gets thrown at you very early in the fight and when you wipe after just a few minutes it sometimes feels like your not making much progress. However, that feeling can be misleading. There is so much to adapt to from the very beginning of this fight that it is hard to pick up quickly. Healers have to deal with the huge raid damage when a Star dies. Cosmic Smash is much more difficult to avoid then your standard void zone. The freaking constellations running around beating on people. Figuring out how to survive big bang and at the same time dealing with the massive damage that the tanks are taking.
That is a lot of stuff that all of that happens in the first minute or so. So, as you try to hone your strategy it may feel like your not making progress because most of your attempts don't' last more then a couple of minutes still. However, when we make a break through the fight will be come much easier. Our attempts will go from lasting 2 minutes to testing the 6 minute enrage timer very quickly once we figure out how to deal with everything. So I am happy with our Algalon progress. Hopefully he will be down soon.
My Inner Goblin:
I've been reading the Greedy Goblin for quite a while and I have often wondered how much gold I could make on the AH if I really put some effort into it. I don't really need the gold because I made plenty while leveling 3 toons to 80, but I'm interested in the challenge.
I started my experiments in the Flask market. Specifically the [Flask of the Frost Wyrm] market. I am kind of risk adverse when it comes to this sort of thing. I didn't want to get really far out on a limb with a lot of stuff and lose a bunch of gold, so I selected this market for my first attempts. The average cost to produce a flask seemed to be less then the average flask prices on the AH. Plus, I am an Elixirs master Alchemist so the procs mean added profit, and if my effort completely failed I could always use the flasks for my raid consumables.
The next two businesses I picked up for dual purposes. I hate not having my professions leveled up all the way to 450. It looks sloppy and I hate finding out that I can't do that enchant because my skill level isn't high enough. So I got into the Meta Gem business with my warlock and into the bag business with my priest. The results were mind blowing.
The Meta Gem business is easy. [Skyflare Diamond] were selling for 25g - 30g on my server and [Chaotic Skyflare Diamond] were selling for 50g - 75g on average. You do the math. I've decided though that this is a weekend market. The cut gem prices seemed to go down quite a bit on raid days. It seems to me that the real money to be made is on the weekend players.
The bag business is a little more difficult because you have to look at several different mats to figure out if it is profitable at this time, but for some odd reason it also seems to be a less developed market on my server. There never seems to be a lot of bags on the AH. For that reason undercutters don't seem to matter. I seem to be able to put my bags on the AH at my prices and they will sell even if there are undercutters with posted for a 25% discount.
Not all of my efforts have been successful. I've tried buying Eternals and selling Crystallized pieces and that hasn't been that successful. People on my server seem to be a little more savy in that regard. I also bought a ton of Shoveltusk flank before patch 3.1 was released for personal use and as an investment but Fish Feasts seemed to have killed that market. I have been focusing on the raid nights so far. I'm going to be switching to the weekends here and hope I have better luck.
All in all, I've made several thousand gold over a week or so with just a couple of hours work. Not bad, but I'm not going to be hitting the gold cap anytime soon at this pace.
Other Toon News:
Outside of raids, Graylo has been working on the Ardent Tournament stuff and getting his rep up with the different alliance factions. All in an effort to be able to access my bank once every 8 hours and help my alts to level up a little big quicker. Indicated above Graypal and Grayfel have been forced into business. I would love to raid both of them if I had the time but, given my already busy raid schedule its just not possible.
Grayvik has also suffered some due to my renewed interest in the Ardent Tournament. He is up to 53 right now, but he would easily be a couple of levels above that If I wasn't spending so much time on Graylo doing the Tournament stuff. On top of that, leveling has become more difficult for him. I am now about 2 and a half levels ahead of my guide. All of my quests are green and on occasion I have to fight grey mobs. He is in searing Gorge at the moment but I am going to look at jumping ahead again once I get out of the zone. I guess the good news is that 58 is just around the corner and then I can jump to the easy Outland leveling. That will be a great day.
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