Phase 3: Profit !

Undeniably, Cataclysm is coming. Starcraft II is also coming, which will only suck away more players. The Lich King is dead, and the ICC debuff is at 15%, halfway to the maximum 30%. If it hadn’t happened already, things in the game are slowing down and people are bored.

Consequently, many people are preparing for Cataclysm. Stompalina of Rawrcast has all but given up on raiding and is looking ahead, and Markco wrote a week of posts about stocking up. I advocate doing something different: forget Cataclysm for a while, and finish Wrath first.

Let me explain this advice. I assume that most people reading P3P have a fair amount of gold to spend, especially at this point in the expansion. People have their professions set up, their niches in the market controlled, the good items for arbitrage figured out, etc. So, here we are, in WotLK, with all this gold. What should you do?

Spend it!

What should you buy? Buy an experience or bunch of experiences that will cease to exist when Cataclysm arrives. Mike Schramm (of WoW Insider/WoW.com and TIPOAA fame) has a great expression- he says that he doesn’t “buy pixels” but rather “buys experiences.”* This is a great way to think of what you can and should do with your gold. I mean, just imagine what you could get! For example, you could: buy an Ulduar run for a mount or even just to see Yogg; buy an Algalon kill for a neat title and the experience of a gorgeous fight; buy a Trial of the Crusader hardmode run for a Tribute to Insanity (yes, some guilds sell them); buy a spot on an arena team to get to 1800 (or even the much more difficult 2200) personal rating; buy an Immortal or Undying title in Naxx. Heck, you can even buy (at least part of) the Insane title- pay people to farm the various items for turn-ins and thereby decrease your time seriously.

Granted, my personal experience thus far with this approach has been mixed. I did try to buy an Ulduar 25 run and, as of posting, it hasn’t happened. However, that’s largely because of my schedule (working at night). And, I was able to successfully buy a 25m Lich King kill. (I’ll talk about this in a more thorough post later, but I am Bigjimm the Kingslayer.)

I’m not just being sentimental here either- there’s a serious economic argument for spending your gold right now. Every piece of copper you have socked away is losing value the longer you hold onto it. This is inflation. Because of the unique characteristics of the WoW economy, prices for items move up over time (with a huge jump for specific item-types from expansion to expansion). And there is no Bank of Azeroth out there, offering X% for your deposit.

Inflation is one reason people are stocking up. (Investing in commodities and other items that hold value over time is one of the oldest methods to safeguard against inflation.) This is rational. But, in my humble opinion, it is still too early to start stocking up- Cataclym doesn’t even have an official release date, and people are guessing sometime between August and November. If you start stocking up now, you’re wasting the chance to experience the best content in the game while it is still relevant.

So rather than stocking up, I say you should go the other way. Spend the hard-earned gold to see something that will not be as meaningful after Cataclysm. The raids of this expansion, with the possible exception of the Trial of the Crusader, are all gorgeous raids. I’m sure there’s at least one raid or experience out there for everyone. The reason you have gold is to make access to these experiences possible (or at least easier). I don’t know about you, dear reader, but I do not want to be in Cataclysm, looking at 10k more gold on my bank alt, wishing I had spent that 10k to get a mount or title that doesn’t exist anymore. Use the gold now, stock up later, and finish Wrath first.

GL! /bow

*I’m taking Mike Schramm’s expression about buying “experiences instead of pixels” out of context a little bit, because he said it to talk about why he didn’t buy the sparkle pony. With that acknowledged, it was such a good quote and was so applicable that I couldn’t pass up the chance to use it.

Related Post

• March 11, 2011 -- Change (10)
• January 26, 2011 -- The State of the Market, January 2011 (Part 1 of 2) (4)
• December 7, 2010 -- The Bank Of Jimm Goes Public (9)
• November 30, 2010 -- Post-Wrath, Pre-Cataclysm (1)
• November 20, 2010 -- Would You Buy A Book Of Stories? (And A Piece Of News.) (7)