Phase 3: Profit !

Dear Reader, it has been a while. What with getting married and all, I did not think it was a good time to ask for more to do in January. And yes, it is late February now… but February is still February, and I consider this to be in under the wire. So if you, Dear Reader, have questions or ideas, go ahead and put what’s on your mind as a comment on this post. We here at P3P read and respond to the best of our abilities.

And now, a few short things that didn’t really warrant a full post:

- First some housekeeping stuff: as I imagine you’ve noticed, I haven’t had much to say about gold making recently. The evidence of this? I haven’t posted. (Duh.) I haven’t found an area recently that I think is of the quality that I like. So the lack of posts isn’t a blogfade, it’s more just a quiet lurking, waiting, hiding in the corners of the AH… waiting to add value.

-Call To Auction, likewise, is still very much alive, but we haven’t been able to record. The truth is that we three have wildly different schedules. Markco and Euripides did an excellent show with Drew from Fark.com. Unfortunately, I couldn’t be there. However, we’re all still talking every week about schedules, and we’re going to make it work.

-Speaking of podcasts, there’s a new goldmaking podcast! Cold and Wes have teamed up and are through Episode 4 of Auction House Junkies. It’s a good show, and I like it. So go check it out if you have a minute.

(Note: Being a podcaster is kind of weird, at least for me, because I’m never sure if there should be enmity or not between our show and other shows. I don’t think so, but sometimes the podcast/blogosphere realm gets a little testy. I don’t like it when people do things better than I do, but I do like a quality product. And that’s what I think of AH junkies thus far; I like it. ANYWAYS, there’s room enough for all of us in the podcasting universe, so like I said- take a look at AH Junkies if you have a moment. Hopefully you’ll find that you like it.)

Edit: after perusal of their respective blog lists, P3P isn’t on either. At least I don’t think it is. So, maybe they don’t like us here at P3P. But then again, as I don’t control our bloglist and didn’t follow either of them on Twitter until today (my bad), I guess I can’t read into this too much. Meh, I’m rambling. Like I said, this is a miscellany. This is not the paragraph you were looking for. Move along.

-The State of the Market right now is VOLUME. There is an amazing amount of stuff on the AH every day.

-Ore Prices are still too high for my liking.

-Trade Skill Master is back, and the Consortium did a great writeup. Check it out.

-The Undermine Journal is back and has 1000% more awesome. It’s excellent. The functionality is much broader than the first incarnation. AH Junkies talked about this in their Ep. #4, and there’s a great article on the Consortium. So check those out too.

Finally, a passing thought. I have been thinking about real money transactions recently. Specifically, I’ve been thinking about Monetization.

WoW Bloggers, Podcasters, and Community members monetize by selling something associated with their site/brand. The Instance is a prime example, Markco sells his guide, and most blogs have ads. BRK sold toys and T-shirts, and other blogs do that too. I’m curious how people feel about monetizing, so if you want to say a few words about that, I’d appreciate it.

Thanks, as ever, Dear Reader. We here at P3P look forward to your feedback, and we read all of it. Leave us a question, and we’ll try to answer it as best we can. I promise.

GL! /bow

-Jimm

Dear Reader, this is a serious post. Don’t worry about the “State of the Market, pt. 2” for a while. It’s half written, and will be released soon. Here’s my motivation for this post: I was recently listening to the AIE Podcast (#68), an excellent podcast for AIE members and non-members alike. The start of the podcast got me thinking in a serious fashion, and I thought I’d use my blogger bully pulpit to reflect a bit.

You see, the podcast starts off with a heartfelt remembrance of an AIE guildy named Brad Kranz. I didn’t know Brad at all. Brad apparently passed away recently. I don’t know the details of his passing, but I do know that he leaves behind a partner, Kate, and a tremendous amount of well-wishing from the members of AIE.

It’s an odd thing to consider the impact that one has on a “virtual” community. As we all know, when your character dies in WoW, you rez and come back. But death, a true physical death, will come to us all. And it scares me to consider it.

Please consider how you act in game. If we’re all as lucky as Brad, we’ll be remembered in such a laudatory fashion as he was. In any case, enjoy the time you have here. No matter how you spend it- playing WoW too much, not enough, whatever- take a moment to consider your mortality, and to enjoy playing while you’re at it. Anyone and everyone reading this blog is blessed to be able to spend so much time enjoying WoW, and sometimes people find that blessing doesn’t last as long as it should.

Okay, that’s the end of my post. GL Kate, we’re all pulling for you. Dear Reader, there will be more gold-making posts soon, but I was moved by the content of the recent AIE Podcast and couldn’t stop myself from chiming in.

GL! /bow

-Jimm

Edit: It looks like Alto and I have the same idea. He posted this post at almost the exact same time as I did.

Sometimes things work out the way you want, and sometimes they work out in a way you did not expect. Sometimes you say or do something, and it just doesn’t work out. There are countless examples of this in both of our lives, Dear Reader. Some of them are even funny. For example, I remember reading a quote from a backup NFL quarterback a few years ago. He was asked, during pre-season, about a receiver’s abilities, and he answered something to the effect of:

“I was his roommate in training camp, and let me tell you, he has great hands.”

Take a sec and re-read that; I’ll wait for the unintentional comedy to seep in. (Sorry, I searched for the article for a link, but couldn’t find it.)

Okay, picking apart athlete quotes is an easy source of comedy (ever since Mike Tyson said he was going to “Fade into Bolivian.”) Let’s try another example. Here’s a picture that a friend sent me a while back. I imagine he found it on the Internet, but it seems to be from a community dinner somewhere:

There's a whole station for that?

Ummm… yeah. *ahem* While I like a good salad as much as the next person, I’m amazed that this made it to public viewing.

I thought of these things the yesterday as I was listening to my guildies rave about all the whiptail they were finding in the post-4.0.6 world. From what they were saying, the spawn rate has been buffed and it is much easier to find. Apparently, this is true of herb nodes generally- more nodes, all the time, everywhere.

I looked through the patch notes and didn’t see any mention of buffing of spawn rates, so we’ll just have to guess why Blizz buffed herb spawns (if they did; I’m not certain). If they did, I’d guess that it has to do with Glyphs; the Blackfallow market is not saturated yet, the way the Ink of the Sea market was in WotLK. Consequently, prices for some glyphs are on the rise. Maybe they want to encourage more herbing in the old world, or simultaneously drive down the price of the finished goods that Alchemy and Inscription create, while simultaneously giving more income to Herbalists. I don’t know.

But I did feel for my guildies. That’s the unintended consequence- yes, they may now have 300 more pieces of whiptail than they a day ago, but how much will it be worth? It looks like a supply spike pushing prices down, but maybe the demand is there, at least for now. Some of my guildies were planning to hold their herbs slowly, but I’m sure others were going to post everything. And if they weren’t, then another farmer would. I’m not sure if they realize that more herb spawns for them= more herb spawns for everyone= a price drop per piece. But, time will tell. What do you think, Dear Reader?

One final note: I’m thinking of scrapping the second part of the State of the Market post, so let me know what you think. It was a new theme for a post, but I’m not sure it’s a good one. Give me some feedback, either way. Thanks, Dear Reader, in advance. We love to hear from you, and read everything you say.

GL! /bow

-Jimm

Postscript:  A second quick edit. I spent a few minutes on my druid herbalist flying around Uldum to test out the new spawn rates. I did this right before work, and after 6 minutes flying in one loop, I got 25 pieces of Whiptail. That’s crazy. That time includes me messing around with mobs, and fighting over spawns with TONS of other pickers. And killing one Dranei Hunter. (eat it level 81 Alli! Yeah!) So, as Euripides just put on WoW Insider, there is a lot of Whiptail now.