A very basic principle

Browsing through official WoW forums there's something that always seem to pop up no matter how much me and others there try to say. There's this one little thing that somehow is really difficult to grasp. Here goes, in big and friendly letters:

TIME IS MONEY

Yes, it really is. So learn it now so you don't need to do silly mistakes later. A lot of players think that when they farm materials for their professions, they are free. "I mined this myself so it's free for me!" To keep it simple, that is just not true. Every minute you are farming something is a minute you could spend doing something else. I don't mean that you necessarily should, but indeed you could be doing something else. To calculate the time spent you simply need to know how much you would earn if you'd sell everything you farm in the auction house. 

There. You're time is not free. Everything you gather, has a value. That value can be cashed out by selling the raw material and thus receiving its value in gold. Other option is to craft it into something else and by that add some more value to it. Let me make an example here. Let's say we have ten stacks of elementium ore. If you mined it, you can choose if you put it in auction house or process further. Elementium ore would sell for something like 50g/stack so for ten stacks you would earn 500g - 5% ah cut = 475g. That's the value of your time mining them. But then if you don't just sell them, but prospect them instead. The value of elementium is usually about double the raw price when prospected. Prospecting will give you gems. A lot of green quality and some blue quality gems. Then you can sell the raw gems in auction house or process them further by cutting them. You sell the cut gems, the final product of jewelcrafting for nice profit. With ten stacks of elementium, you're likely to end up to something like value of 700g-900g when processed through jewelcrafting. Why is it more value then? Well, you've obviously put some more time into it and time always converts into money. And not just the time you spend by prospecting and cutting but also the time you've spent in leveling your jewelcrafting and obtaining the recipes for cutting the rare gems. It's only natural you'll end up with more value.

The trick in gold making is to learn to calculate that how to convert smallest possible amount of time to biggest possible amount of gold. Auction house pros quite often calculate their income not just as simple amount earned, but as a value of gold per hour. It's not a way to show of how awesome you are, it's a tool used to determine most effective gold making methods. Let's imagine you have two reliable ways to make 4000 gold every day. One of them takes you 2 hours each day (literally the time you spend in front of your computer performing all the actions required to have the gold in your pockets) and the other one 45 minutes. Which one would you pick for your regular daily gold making routine?

Getting started on the goldmaking

Everyone is a noob when starting something new. That also happens when you are starting WoW and dream of fortunes. Sorry, can't do it in an instant. Ok, so you begin your search in the wonderland of internet and find several ways to make gold. But when starting, do you have several maxed out characters with maxed professions and 50k spare gold? No, you don't. You need to start up somewhere and that's what todays entry is about.

Starting on a new server or being completely new to World of Warcraft? The truth is, getting your professions rolling you need some starting capital, a reasonable amount of gold. There's no way around it, some professions are expensive to level and take initial investment to get enough materials to start crafting seriously. No worries, though, there are easy enough ways to build up your wealth so you can start to play the serious gold making game. 

Even if you're an experienced player it's good to try once in a while to start a new character on a new realm without support from alts or guildies. If you know what to do, getting gold in lower levels is easy. I will give some tips first for lower levels and then for 85s who just don't have the money to start heavily in professions.

But let's imagine that you have a fresh lvl 1. Any race, any class, it doesn't matter here. First thing to do when entering the world is to have a look around the starting area if there's an another character getting names for his guild charter. Do him a favor and sign his charter, but at ask at least 5g for it. Easy gold! Then the basics you'll continue through the whole leveling process: loot everything. It's simple enough, especially if you have the auto-looting option turned on, but it's still surprising how many people don't loot the corpses. Vendor all grey items. Green quality boe items can always be sold in auction house for more than their vendor price. One thing you will run into is of course bag space. If you can, try to get four Netherweave bags to start with. They are cheap enough if you have a  higher level alt to get them for you. If that's not possible yet, luckily these days starting quests offer some 6-8 slot bags so you have something. Update to bigger bags when you can, they make life a lot easier.

At level 5 you can have learn your professions. To maximize gold when leveling, always take two gathering professions. Which two out of three you get is up to you. These days you can track both herbs and ores on minimap so you can take mining/herbalism-combination if you feel like it. Whatever you pick up, use it while leveling. I recommend mostly questing, feel free to fill in some dungeons and battlegrounds but stick mostly to questing so that you will explore the world and gather things. Everything you get from gathering professions you want to list for sale in auction house. Don't bother with the crafting professions at this stage. When leveling, keep your gathering professions in level with the zone you're in. I recommend taking dual gathering for every single new character you make. The exact point when to change profession or two to crafting ones can be tricky. On your first character I recommend you level all the way to 85 with dual gathering. By the time you reach max level you should have artisan flying skill and continue gathering until you have a comfortable amount of gold to continue to crafting. 

Most meat you pick up from mobs while leveling can be sold in auction house. If you want, you can level cooking and fishing while leveling your character, but most gold you'll get if you just sell everything you don't absolutely need yourself at that stage. And remember to kill a rare mob if you run into one while leveling. They always drop some boe gear that can be sold. 

Other thing to remind of is of course cloth, sell it. All of it. Wool cloth goes usually for insane prices. There are several maps to point good farming locations over the internet, if you're into farming. When you get into Northrend, Frostweave cloth will net you huge profits (downside of which you will of course face again when leveling tailoring...).Characters with high enough tailoring skill will loot more cloth from Northrend corpses.

What if you're already at 85? Still, gathering is the way to go if you don't have much gold. But at this point there's many possibilities. With gathering professions, you should check out which ores, herbs and leathers are most profitable to farm. Quite often these are not the endgame ones where the competition can be fierce and profits low. Usually mithril, thorium, adamantite and cobalt will net you much more than elementium. You can also solo low level instances and sell or disenchant what you loot (if you happen to have enchanting already that is). You can also farm different types of elemental materials required for crafting. Herbalists gather volatile life from all Cataclysm herb nodes and volatiles net good gold as well. Same goes with lower level elemental materials like crystallized/eternals (WotLK) or motes/primals (BC) or even Vanilla ones. 

A good option for casual gold making for level 85s are daily quests. I believe that dailies are at the moment the most common way to make gold for average players. There are dailies available at level 70, level 80 and level 85. Molten front dailies at Hyjal were released with patch 4.2 and they are still a nice way to make gold. Level 80 dailies at Argent Tournament in Icecrown give nice gold as well plus with the special currency you earn there you can buy pets that sell for good prices in Auction house. Combining gathering and daily quests is very efficient way to make a good starting capital for level 85s. Then it's time for the serious business.

Gold-making addons

Making money - Tools for the job

So you want to make gold? Ok. You know that big fortunes lie in utilizing professions? Ok. Do you know what else do you need? No worries, I'll tell you. 

This time it's time to go through some basic gold making tools. These really are the bread and butter of auction house goblins, but if you are just starting or only dreaming about big fortunes, you will need to learn the basics. So with basics we start.

Bank alt

You are going to sell a lot of stuff if you want to make a lot of gold. That’s simple enough. So you need some way to handle the amounts of things you put to auction house. If you want to be efficient, you’ll need a bank alt. A bank alt is a character that’s purpose is to live between auction house and mailbox. It will be the character handling all your auctions. Also an added benefit is, that your bank alt is anonymous and different from your other characters. Don’t make the idiotic mistake and name your bank character to “Joesbank”, “Isellstuff”, “Iundercut”, “Buyfromme” or something in those lines. You want your bank alts name to be as unmemorable and normal as you can. Of course the other ah players come to know you, but the average player doesn’t recognize that this character is a bank and ah character. There’s a psychological factor involved: People are less likely to buy from a character that says in the name they are going to make profit on your expense. And whatever you do, don’t name your bank alt in the same formula that you name your other characters. Let me repeat one more time: You don’t want people to know that this bank alt is connected to your other characters!

What a bank alt then actually does? Usually bank alts are in lower levels. They are easy to make and sometimes easy to get rid of if that seems a good thing to do. You don’t want your bank alt to be level 1. Level him or her to at least level 10. Many people have addons that block whispers from people who are under certain level range. Many gold sellers try to whisper from random level 1 characters and people want to block those whispers. Sometimes you need to whisper with people, don’t let them block you. The second thing for bank alt is that you want to have the biggest bags you can afford. Currently the biggest normal bag is tailoring-crafted Illusionary bag. Then you just send everything you craft or other stuff you want to sell in auction house to your bank alt and he or she will handle auctioning and ah mail. That way your other characters are not clogged with crafted stuff. It’s also easier to keep record of sales and other relevant information.

Bank guild

When handling large amounts, even the biggest bags are too small. That’s why it’s important that in addition to your bank alt you’ll get a bank guild. Bank guild is simply a guild that you use to have the large guild bank space available. If you get hundreds of stacks of ore for example, guild bank is the only way you can keep them waiting the time to be prospected.

Making a guild is easier than ever. Go to your capital city's guild npc and make a guild. You'll get a charter that needs five unique signatures from other players (from different players, you can’t have them with different alts) who are not member of any guild. You should advertise in trade chat that you want people to sign your guild charter. Stand in a place like Stormwind or Ogrimmar bank stairs so it’s an easy place for the people to come to. Offer to pay some gold to the people signing your charter. 5 or 10g is the usual amount. Also you want to inform the people signing that they will be removed from the guild as soon as you have all the names. Other good spot to hunt the signatures is the respective starting areas for different races. Especially for new players 10g is a big amount and a nice way to get the game going. You get your signatures and same time you help other people to get started in the game. Win-win for everyone! But remember to not be rude and spam your guild invite to people without asking first. They'll just end up ingoring you. Always ask first and offer some kind of a reward.

 When you have the signatures, turn the charter in to the guild npc and you have your guild. First thing you need to do when the new guild is formed, is kick the other characters from your guild. Then go to the bank and buy yourself as many additional bank tabs that you see necessary. You can buy more later if you need. With the Cataclysm guild leveling system, level 1 guild can have up 6 guild bank tabs. You want to organize bank tabs so that you find without much frustration what you are looking for.

Same thing applies to bank guilds that I said about naming your bank alt. You want your bank guild to meld in. So NO names like “Pile of Gold” or “Auctioneers anonymous”… 

Auction House

You have your bank alt and your bank guild. Now what? Obviously you need a place to sell your products. The marketplace of WoW is the auction house, the only real home your bank alt has.  You can access your faction’s auction house from any capital city; they are all connected. There’s also neutral auction house that can be used by both Alliance and Horde characters. It’s run by goblins of Steemwheedle cartel and can be accessed from Booty Bay, Gadgetstan and Everlook. Neutral ah is the only way to trade items between factions.

Auction house is simple to use. You can search things from different categories. All products can have two different prices, bid price and buyout price. Bid price means that person bids that amount and unless someone bids more before the auction time runs out, he or she wins the item. Buyout is the more common method where you can pay the buyout price and have the item instantly in your mailbox. Items can be listed to auction house with both bid and buyout price or with just bid price. We will discuss the fine art of item pricing some other time.

When posting an auction, you can post it for 12h, 24h or 48h duration. Items have a deposit price that is higher the longer the auction is. When items sell, 5% of the selling price is reduced the price. This is called ah-cut. Basically it’s a method for Blizzard to control the amount of gold in the game and reduce inflation. Faction based auction houses have 5% cut and the neutral auction house has 15% cut from the selling price and higer deposit costs. So selling things in the neutral ah is always more expensive. When you think prices for your items, you must always calculate the ah cut to the price so that you don’t end up selling for a loss.

Anything else? Plese share in the comments. :) Next time I will talk about addons, those nifty little things that are absolytely essential to serious auction house play. 

Until next time,

Adel

Don't buy gold - a defense of honest gaming experience

If you’ve spent at least some time in World of Warcraft, you must have encountered a gold seller. They advertise on tradechat and whisper people to buy their “cheap” gold… There has always been gold selling in the game almost as long as the game has been in existence.  I know it’s obvious, but it’s still good to say that any exchange of in-game items or gold for real money is bannable offense.

 

What’s so bad in buying gold, you might ask.  Gold farmers work and earn their living? Well, in the beginning of WoW, a large bulk of gold for sale came from gold farmers who literally played the game for their living. Many of these farmers were Chinese and especially in the US servers people knew the stereotypical Chinese goldfarmer type.  These farmers played the game usually without any cheating, but they were extremely efficient in their farming routines and produced a large amount of gold for their companies to sell. I've heard stories of people befriending and actually getting to know the farmers who were honest blokes doing their job.

Those times are gone, but gold selling is unfortunately well and alive. What has changed from Vanilla times however is that alarmingly large amount of the gold for sale comes from hacked accounts. Maybe you have received a whisper from someone pretending to be Blizzard gm saying that you’ve won a free mount or some kind of reward and they’ve given a web address to go to redeem your price. Or you have received an email saying that your account is under investigation or something and again there’s a link where you need to log in. If you didn’t know, don’t ever click those links! They’ll get you hacked. There have also been many reports on power leveling services (paying someone to level your character, again it’s against the rules) etc. getting the account hacked some time later. Similar reports come from people who have actually bought gold, sometime later they get hacked and lose everything. 

Gold sellers do their thing because people buy gold. I strongly advice against it. First of all, by playing the game, you agree to a set of rules. Don’t want to respect the rules? Don’t play the game then. Secondly, gold selling compromises accounts. You don’t want to lose your well-earned gold only for it to be used some gold-buying lowlife to buy his übercool pwn-mount or whatever. If you have had experiences about gold hackers and such, share it in the comments.

But still, one more time, don’t buy gold! And if you’re irritated buy the amount of gold spam, there are addons like BadBoy that automatically hide and even report gold selling messages. Let’s make World of Warcraft a better place for everyone. And besides, making gold by honest means is fun. :)

- Adel

Aspects of gold making

Everyone needs gold in WoW. For some it's just an annoying thing that accumulates so we can buy our abilities and gems and such. Most of those folks always remember to complain how dreadfully expensive gems and enchants are. They may have professions, but they don't really sell stuff at auction house. Gold is something that accumulates slowly. If they don't spend much, they actually might get if not rich, but still wealthy enough to buy something if they really need to. Things are easier these days. Questing can earn nice gold when you're max level and things don't cost as much as they used to. No more 1000g dual spec in Cata.

People have different approaches to making gold. Some  fund their in-game life by doing dailies and running dungeons. Some people combine this with some profession based gold, but most people just don’t know how insanely profitable all the professions are. And I mean all of them!

Well, to be honest first aid and maybe archeology need to be excluded here, but every other profession is a potential gold mine.  I’ve tried my fair share of different things, and I believe that utilizing professions is the best way to make lots of gold. In upcoming entries I will explain how the professions work. When you have done your pre-work, learned professions and different tools. Casual gold making becomes easy and doesn't take a lot of time. Of course if you're aiming for the sky-high fortunes and huge piles of gold to sit on, you can do that as well. It only requires more time spent. But let's put it like this: You spend 1 hour doing dailies and earn about 500g. That's what many players do. And usually on more than one character. In comparison, I'll repost my auctions and collect sales which takes about 15 minutes. Couple of times a week I spend half an hour more to restock my stuff so I have things to sell. If I'd go more hc, I'd need to spend like an hour a day to play ah and professions. Then my daily earnings would be something like 10k per day. Now I'm using more casual approach and collect some 2-3k sales every day. Wanna learn how to do it? No worries, I will show you.

Next time some talk about dirty stuff: the gold sellers. Keep in touch.

Adel

Introducing Adel, the Trade Prince

Hi folks,
I am called Adel and in this blog I'm talk talk about all things in WoW.

Well, obviously not all things...maybe it's good to start with an introduction. I've been playing World of Warcraft since earlyish WotLK so I'm not the new kid in the playground anymore, but I didn't get the chance to enjoy BC and Vanilla times. Over these few years I've accumulated quite a bit of experience about the different aspects of the game and I think it's about the time to start sharing some of my little findings. I've done a lot of different things in the game although to this day I haven't played a single arena match (that will change soon, I believe).

Some time ago I started to write a guide on how to utilize WoW professions in the best way possible to make lots and lots of gold. My first idea was to make a well written and nicely edited, comprehensive pdf guide that I could sell and make a little bit extra income. But then I realised that it's not very nice. I don't want gold guides to be purchasable and there are plenty of good WoW gold blogs online these days. So that idea is buried and I'm not gonna make money here. Then I thought that I could release my guide in pieces, through a blog. The difference to the existing gold blogs is that I do it systematically covering every aspect about making gold with professions. Simple, isn't it?

Unfortunately it isn't that simple. If I'm starting a blog I am very well gonna write about other things also. So now, let me present you with what this blog is going to be about:

• Making gold with WoW professions. Big time. Read my tips and utilize them and you will be millionaire. (In WoW that is of course...)
• Raiding. I love raiding, the tactical aspect of the game, team work and the triumphant feeling when progressing. I'm gonna write about pve gameplay, how to play different classes etc.
• Roleplaying and lore. I love good stories, we have them also in WoW, believe it or not.
• Interface tweaking and ui improvement. I love clean and well thought out interface, there will be discussion about them.
• Fun stuff. It can't be avoided. It will come eventually.

 And of course I'm not writing to myself. I enjoy a good conversation so feel free to comment as much as you feel. A lot of enjoyement in WoW blogs come from sense of finding things out and sharing so that everyone can be better at what they like to do. I'm gonna add new entries couple of times a week, there will be plenty of things to talk about.

Thanks for reading and please, feel very welcome to join discussions here.

With best wishes to everybody,
Adel