Phase 3: Profit !

When I start reading for Wow Economy, I found gems on Gevlon’s site.

Yes, sometime he takes on extremes, his wording is not nice, and not politically correct, as he put it. But to the point, he don’t hesitate to point out the right thing with the meanest word.

I like his thinking, most of them, I agreed.

Recently, he get to his cap, the limit by Blizzard, the great gold cap limit of 32bit integer. (or whatever meaning to the non-Computer geek). He consider to stop making money, therefore gaming, therefore blogging.  In this post

While I agreed with him most of the time before, I found there are quite lots of problem on his conclusion. And I bet he didn’t think clearly on that. (Shocked by the Gold Cap maybe?)
I have a list of thoughts on his post though…

1. If he doesn’t get guild invitation, it doesn’t means making money is worthless.
A guild takes many things to support, money is one of them. Human relationship is important too, I am not talking about helping those M&S but inter social networking. Money may not take over the whole thing, but it is still essential to a guild…
My point is, Even if the gold do not change a guild discussion that much, do not necessary means that his work is pointless.

2. Blogging is not essentially had to be WoW-related.
I know this is a wow-blog, but we do enjoy the
Working hours and rewards
Globalization trap
They are not wow-related, but with wow examples. Which help us wow-player understand clearly. The part I found most interesting on his post over other Wow-Economic post is his observation of the World around us.

3. Yes, you don’t owe us.
On the post, his said some commenter “demand” posts. in a sour tone. No, you never owe us post.

4. But. It’ll be a lost (to us) if you stop blogging.
I do believe Gevlon enjoy his writing, at least for most of the time.
And we enjoy reading them.
But isn’t that enough?

Side Note: It’s late when I read his post (Hong Kong Time). So may be I can’t organize clearly, but I do have those word in my mine.I had to put them up somewhere.

Change of name

No, Your link is not hijacked
I had change my blog name! previous known as Zekta’s Stuff!

[Start - boring background, skippable]
I was write a main blog, and here was some random thoughts dump..
But recently I found that I have more and more to say about WoW’s Trading here and many support from others.

The Name was Zekta’s Stuff, but it seems too generic and personal. So, I keep thinking about a new name for it.
[End - boring background]

So, I decided to hunt for a new name. While I am doing this, I find a new nice blog over

http://ahtrader.blogspot.com/2009/04/new-direction.html

by Marvco’s Suggestion. After reading his post, I got a sense “That’s also what I need to do too: Focus!”

Keep Focus!

Now, what I am going to do, Gevlon is really cool on the philosophy thinking on raid and market, Skrooge is good at all the fun stuff and encouraging discussion, and I won’t talk about Addon for sure.

What I excited me and get me interested, is the big question, Why?
There are reasons behind everything (Most of the time), and I am eager to find them out. It won’t be 100% of post here, since these topic is somewhat dull and hard to find(But I like it anyway).
I’ll try to pick once a week.

The Name, The Name

Here comes the hard part,

Most the great name had been taken, for instance (Goblin and Gnomish). I decided to use a catch phase of South park.
Phase 3, Profits

What Phase are we now?

What target of mine is to feel the gap on the big question mark, (of course it didn’t start at collect underpants)
Where is phase 1 and phase 2?
Where is Profits?
Why there are Profits?

that’s what I want to answer here.

Being Polite and Profits

What is the cost of being nice?

by “nice”, I mean talking politely, giving direction to others… Without costing much resources of your own

Most of the time, zero.
Well, sometimes it cost a lot. Since some people will abuse others on that, but then you can stop it right away, by an unshameful “NO”.

What is the cost of being bad/a jerk (Bad to others without any benefits)?
Alot.

If someone asking for direction in the the general/guild channel .
You can -

• Tell him the direction. – He or others may have an good impression of you
• Ignore him – not being nice but not being bad either. You just do not lose much other than “he/she is quiet”
• “You don’t even know that? NooB” – that’s a jerk. And people will ignore you when you ask for help or any request. That’s the price you pay

Being nice and polite is profitable.
And I had a recent experience on that.
The average “Sign Charter” Fee on my server is 5g-10g, depends which faction you’re on.
On a Saturday Afternoon, (Time of picking for the charter is important for creating your personal guild, See another post for details)
I urge to create my own guild for the “research” project
I ask around for 5g per person on sign up. 3 low level lowbies show up, so I paid 15g. and I had 7 persons to go,
but there are no more people coming

So instead I ask people come to me, I go to them

/hi
/whisper Would you mind signing this charter for me, please?

/thanks (if they sign)
/whisper Thank you

Then I got my charter filled in 15 minutes. That’s 35g straight. Better than many daily quest. What did it cost of doing so? Zero, other than walking around. Rewards? 35g saved in the pocket.

Being Nice is good to business.

=====
Updates,
While I wrote post a week or two ago, I put it into schedule.
(My guild for bank alt had been formed for 2 weeks now.)
Couple of thoughts appear on comment on several “post” on another site as well.
(I won’t talk about how similar that post’s topic with a post I had written before here, but that’s why I won’t mention their name here, cause I am still waiting their editor reply (for record, which is nothing yet, not even a general reply on “we had received your email”))

But even so, I guess it’s worth to mention that someone had the same thought on, being polite should able to pay for that dues.

Kitty on Sale!

After got my hands on my four kittens. I kept thinking about when I should let them go?
Re-list right away?
Smuggle them to the Horde’s AH?
After some consideration, I’ll hold on them for the market price to raise.

Here is why…

Upon release of 3.1, Elven new vanity (non-combat) will be added. While more supply means lower price (the pool of existing pet increases, while the achievement only requires 50/75) The overall vanity pet price will drop only a little.

Acquiring new pet get more people close to the pet achievement goaland thus more eager on finishing it (consider a person with 38 pets and one with 48 pets). The incoming child week will also add 2-3 pets into play. While the urge of getting the achivement had lay low on the market for long. New obtainable pet will make some of them start their collection again, and they need to wait another week to obtain a new one.

Will you pay 300-400g to get the pet  achivement today,
rather than wait for another week?

I don’t know you, but I know many people will say yes.

As rare pet’s production will not increased over night, there should be a 1-2 month increases in price for my kitties.

I’ll place my bet on those cute kitties. How about you?

=====
Edit
Another factor may affect the market is that: there are fewer Gold around as the Dual Spec consume a large amount of it.
That’ll lower their avaible cash for luxuries (e.g. expensive pets)

=====
Update
The Patch 3.1 finally hit Taiwan server yesterday. Getting the pet is much hard than I thought. That’ll increase the price they willing to pay, but the demand will raise pretty slower.

On the other hand, the easy pet for children day will hit nevertheness. So the prediction of pet price raises should remain correct.

This post was writen a week ago,
since our 3.1 patch delayed, I had delayed the post as well.

Things changed a lot,
e.g. the first market still hold, the third as well
but I was lucky that I don’t get hurt by the stockpile prediction
(Although I still got 20 stacks of [Saronite Bar] in bank…)

As I said the market will be chaos, and seems the prophecy came true to me….

=====
I know patch 3.1 is coming.
And it like a storm on US and EU Server
But I could not do a daxx thing about it in the TW Server.

Couples of reasons….

But I am not a Scribe!
Round 1 – Glyph [Inscription of Triumph]

The main battleground will be on the glyph market.

Since Dual Spec is coming and every single crazed player,

who never though about building a second spec will buy glyph on that day.

However, not a single reseller can able to beat that market with the scribes.

and I never pay my school fee to get my hand dirty with ink, so I am out of the game.

Reasons? my previous comment on skrooge’s post

Major Glyph market is very similar to the cut-gem market, unless you know much what’s going on, don’t set foot into it.

Say for most given class, only the a handful Glyph is used by the raiders and all else is useless.

On the other hand, the usefulness of any given Glyph changes whenever patch hits, and for the recent patches blizzard apply so close to each other, the price is very unpredictable, stockpiling is not an option.

One may only gain profit on a very short period of time in this market.

Why can the scribe handle that? They stock ink instead of glyph.

And restock the missing glyph coordinately.

The only thing I can do is get my hands on the inks and herbs.

However I had no idea on the inscription industry,

and even I look up the info on wowhead.

I bet my chance of winning is low.

Wow, that’ll cost a lot

Round 2 – High End Goods

[Titansteel Bar] and [Moonshroud]

while I can stockpile both of these.

The cost of both trade is high, and I am not so available for those trade.

I am doing “good” recently, if you count my asset base.

Not so risky trades. Suitable for me now

(Despite I throw a “big” move on enchanting material market)

I followed the Goblin’s wisdom (quote from Greedy Goblin)

You can sell fast or sell high, but can’t sell high fast.

So I have my patient pay out.

Generated a steady cash flow for me each day, since I buy really low.

and keep the market away from saturation.

However, since I am started so late (One week or two before the 3.1 Hit),

this revenue speed do not grant me the ticket to the big game.

Ethereal, Titan Ore and Steel, and Cool Down Cloth will skyrocket, no doubt.

At last, That’s where I could play
Round 3 – The Great Chaos

I had no idea where the round 3 is on.
However,
I am pretty sure there will be a very unstable market in those days

Unstable means Risk, Risk means profits…
By All mean, I should liquidize my asset soon for a fast track trading on those days.

I got my [Chronicle of Dark Secrets] preparing as well

Holmes in a rush

I started my time racing.
Many may not know that, My server (on TW)
have had a different patch schedule than the US and EU

That is we are still not on 3.1 yet.

Normally it’ll be 2 days behind (Our Maintenance day will be on Thursday)
Last week’s 3.1 outage on US server delayed the patch for a week (may be another?)

As many WOW Economy results come out from US,

JMTC and  Warcraft Econ

Things does not go as we predicted.
(I’ll wrote a post on why I was not prepared for 3.1 tomorrow, but it seems outdated for now)
E.g.
Ethereal is not required that much in BS recipes
Raid are having difficult time at Ulduar,
and PUGs seems cannot pass through the barrier anyhow.
Flooding on the market for the gold for dual spec.

All of these, forced me to have a change in plan in my investment.
That’s Liquidize for now, and do stockpiling when 3.1 hits.
And I”ll only had 1/2 days for it. (The earliest I can get in is 7pm)
While trade fast is not my style.
(It induce lose of profits)
The market price change will have devaste impact on my end game stocks.

So wish me luck on that…

Plan

Must do:
Sell half of the bars I got before
Sell ALL meats (Since people will keep farming, and fish will fulfill their needs for raid)
Sell Excess Etheral Earth

May do:
Sell all TitanSteel bars

I’ll mostly sell them thought channel to reduce the trade time….

=====

I failed to sell those [Saronite Bar] and [item]TitanSteel Bar/[item]
the buyout price on AH is already 30% off the market price
and I am not ready to say good bye to them in these price,
I’ll pay for the rent in bank for the price to climb back.
(I am considering to think like goods place should count rents,
since it’ll take resource for me to take care of it,
and earn extra space for them, Opportunity cost in some sense)
I had sold the [Saronite Bar] by crafting them into arrows.
Although I don’t how long will they keep on buying on that price.
At least it can slowly consume my stockpile.

The Meat sold beautifully however.
Which gain me more cash for the buying berserk next week.