Phase 3: Profit !

Editor’s Note: The title of this post is appropriate, and is an homage to Linedan’s excellent post of the same name over at Achtung Panzercow! It’s a great warrior tank blog that I like reading, so I encourage you to take a moment to check it out. (To further encourage you to do so, you can click through to find the translation of the title via his post, but not here.)

Sometimes, Dear Reader, things happen that force P3P to change schedule. Consequently, Part 2 of the State of the Market will have to wait until next week. What happened?

In short, Markco retired from gold blogging.

Personally, I was not expecting this. I’ve known for a while that Markco has been backing off of regular posting to work on other endeavors. But I did not anticipate a full-fledged retirement. So let’s take a moment to consider Markco, to think about what he accomplished, and to generally give him a good send off.

WoW gold blogging, in the form it currently exists, was more or less invented by Markco. Before Markco, there weren’t any free sources of quality information about how to make gold. If you weren’t a serious player who’d invested a lot of time developing strategies, your only option was buying a gold guide. And those guides were shady sources of information (at best). They were heavily advertised, but the ads were short on details. They promised huge gold per hour, but didn’t tell you how those promises would be fulfilled. You had to put your real life money down and hope for the best. And that sucked. And don’t forget that this was at the end of TBC/release of WotLK, when gold was much more difficult to make; 5,000g for 280% flying was a king’s ransom.

Then Markco started Just My Two Copper, and everything changed. Not only was his site free, but it was good! He was the first person to tell everyone things that we now consider very basic, but were relatively unknown at the time. Among other things, he: taught everyone how to use auctioneer; demonstrated that items were regularly listed below their vendor value on the AH; scolded Mike Schramm for vendoring Netherweave Bandages (instead of turning them into bags); told the world about the Saronite Shuffle, and then upgraded it; worked hard to demonstrate profits for cross-faction AHing; promoted the value of a number of toons with integrated professions; talked about profits from BOE items… I could keep going, but I think I’ve made my point.

However, the amazing thing is that he didn’t stop at giving out good gold tips. Markco sunk his time and money into creating the JMTC community, a place where anyone could go (for free) to learn about making gold. And he pushed his site relentlessly. Not only did he let us all learn more, he made gold making a legitimate reason to play WoW. If you think I’m overstating his impact, consider this: he was the only WoW goldblogger to be invited onto the all-time great podcast, How I WoW. There were 21 How I WoW shows, and most of the current WoW titans were guests on it- Scott Johnson, Randy Deluxe, Curt Schilling, Felicia Day, Turpster, The Spags, Mike Schramm, etc. How I WoW was one of the few places for people to find out about old-school players, like Alachia and Jim Moreno. And Markco made the cut; he was the last guest before How I WoW retired.

When I started posting at P3P, Markco and Gevlon were basically the only people writing about gold-making. At that time, Gevlon was hot. The Instance had just given him a huge boost by making his site the Drop Of The Week, and he’d been tearing up the WoW blogosphere with a new style of posts. Gevlon was unforgiving, and he was making a ton of gold with Inscription. When he threw Markco under the bus, it would have been a death-knell for a lesser blogger. I was one of many people who were critical of him on the JMTC forums.

How did Markco respond? He got better, and did more. He wrote more posts, published every day, made youtube videos, and created a top-notch gold guide that people could pay for if they wanted to. Yes, Markco selling a gold guide earned him a lot of enmity across the WoW Blogosphere. But I think that enmity was unnecessary and unfounded- no one was forced to buy the guide (all the content was there on JMTC if you were willing to look); and if you wanted to buy a guide, you were able to see what Markco was promising before you actually had to pay.

What was the result? Now JMTC is the only game in town. It pushes and promotes the community via Blogging Carnivals. It’s captained by some of the best goldmaking gurus around. And Markco even took the time to make sure that JMTC was left in the hands of a very capable and worthy successor, Mageshadow. Whereas Gevlon stopped writing about gold (until very recently, when he started including tips again), Markco didn’t bat an eye. He worked hard, published, and made JMTC successful.

In fairness, Markco was not without controversy. And he has his flaws. But he was the first and the best at WoW gold blogging. If you were going to make an analogy, Markco is the Babe Ruth or Dr. J of his era- better, stronger, and unlike anyone else before him. We here at P3P wish him nothing but the best, and hope that his retirement is followed shortly by a return.

Finally, we here at P3P were incredibly flattered that he named one of my early posts as his favorite post of all time. It was one of my favorite posts to write. I wrote the post before I was asked to host Call To Auction, when I was still just a fan of what Markco was doing. I found myself thinking of an idea for a post, looking around, and then realizing that I’d been beaten to the punch by some content on JMTC. I sat at my computer for a while, thinking, “Why even bother posting? Markco’s saying everything before I can.” I did not realize (until I read it in the retirement post) that I’d given Markco some sort of boost to his morale. I really thought it was worth noting that he was doing what every other WoW gold blogger was trying to do, and was doing it better. We all were, and still are, playing for second place.

That’s about it for this week. Thanks, as ever, for your time, Dear Reader. This post might generate some ill-will towards Markco. (Somehow the trolls are never too far from the door.) As long as all comment are civil, they won’t be deleted. However, outright flaming is not tolerated. With that said, we look forward to your feedback. We read it all.

GL! /bow

-Jimm

Related Post

• November 20, 2010 -- Would You Buy A Book Of Stories? (And A Piece Of News.) (7)
• August 11, 2010 -- I Answered The Call (8)
• April 15, 2010 -- Making money off of Markco (and other blogs too!) (1)
• December 23, 2010 -- Chimera’s Eye Gems, To Sell Or Not, and Inflation (4)
• October 1, 2010 -- OT: Pulling Back The Curtain (1)