Phase 3: Profit !

Hi everyone, I am back. kind of…

My leave had been prolonged to the whole December and January. Trying to recover from the last dreadful project and reconsidering RL issue, I am still putting myself together.

I hadn’t been login to Wow for around two month, one of the reason is I take my time on looking into eve (I didn’t login there for a month as well), another reason is that raiding the normal content did not pose enough challenge (Doing the toc with M&S was not that hard after all) to me, and I don’t want to spend much time for the Hardcore challenge. I want to stay casual, while hard mode required much dedication, I don’t even want to reschedule my RL time for a game atm. (HC in Gevlon’s term)

Seeing lots of Wow-econ entry in my rss dim out kinda make me sad. Thanks Jimm for the updates we had when I am on leave. Or I may give up updating as well already. I understand why people stop writing, for one reason is that there aren’t much exciting things happen in Wow now, another is that there aren’t many topics left unexplored.

Since I am not directly involved in the world anymore, I won’t be able to give hot news regarding our beloved Azeroth. But for the coming post, I’ll summarize learning from wow-econ, other topic in virtual-econ (Things that shared in Wow, Eve, UO) and other topic I had come across.

BTW,  Happy New Year, and Happy Chinese New Year

Zekta

Hey everyone,

Zekta and I are getting back on track. I have an idea for a post, but as I started to write it and it turned out a little bit… whiny! So I’m going back to what I know best, which is answering the questions you have!  If you want a particular column written, let me know. I don’t have a P3P e-mail yet (we’re working on it), but until that time, just put them in this post as comments. Ask me anything about WoW gold, warrior tanking, grammar… whatever you like! If I can answer it, I will. (If it’s about inscription, it will probably be Zekta. I don’t like that much math in my fun!)

Also, re: the last post. Thanks for the replies- it seems that most people are keeping the hilt. I can’t blame anyone for keeping it; the quest is a fun quest (especially if you liked the Burning Crusade content) and the reward is good for most classes/specs (tanks, arms warriors and others being a glaring exception).

I’d like to say, however, that I believe the Primordial Saronite and Hilt will lose value fast, especially the Primordial Saronite. With the inclusion of ICC weekly quests, frost badges are more available than ever, especially for raiders.* The members of any 25m guild/raid run that can clear the content and do the weekly will be swimming in frost badges. The Shadowmourne quest (and it’s required 25 primordial saronites) will keep demand high for longer than similar items in the past (ie: frost orbs), but not much longer. Primordial saronite will hold value for another month or so (that’s my guess), but by that time should be well downhill.

(*I would like to note that I think the ICC quests are, at this point in time, a case of the rich getting richer. As a member of a newly-formed 25m guild that is struggling with Deathbringer Saurfang, the quests are just too much for us now. But the next level of guild above mine, which is already clearing more content and getting more badges… now has extra badges? Maybe this will have a trickle-down effect, or maybe it’s aimed at making that shadowmourne quest more achievable… but I’m not sure. I am curious to see the end result.)

That’s all for me! GL everyone!

/bow

Hey all!

I’m alive, and I think Zekta is too!

And… I finally installed Wordpress! That’s right, Zekta made me official. I have the password, I don’t have to send him my posts anymore… I’m in! I’m feel like Borat, “King in the Castle, King in the Castle!”

This is just a short post until we formulate something more substantial, but I have had something on my mind recently. Now that 3.3 is rolling along, there are two things that are obvious potential sources for profit: selling your Primordial Saronite and (should you be lucky enough) selling your Battered Hilt.

As I’m sure you’re all aware, Primordial Saronite is going for 1.9k-2.4k server to server, and it costs 23 Frost Emblems. The hilt is a very rare drop from the Icecrown heroic 5-Mans (FOS, POS, HOR) that sells for 10k-20k, depending on server. I want to know…

…will you (did you?) sell them or keep them?

I can see the logic in doing either. Personally, I’ve purchased a hilt (for an absurdly low 5k) and used it, won a second hilt and sold it (for 12k, which turned into BOE endgame tank boots tyvm!), and sold 2 primordial saronites from an alt. Because I’m in an endgame guild, I’m okay doing this- I have the 2 pieces of BOE gear I need at i264, and I already did the hilt quest once, so I’m selling and selling now. But for alot of folks, especially those that don’t raid, frost badges and the hilt will get you the best gear you’ll see outside of raids. So, put it in the comments- what would you do? I’m really curious.

GL! /bow

(PS: if the formatting is messed up, that is because this is my first foray into blogging. I’ll fix it, or Zekta will… I swear! lol)

Hi everyone, I am back…

I didn’t’ said much about the vacation thing before, but I’ll explain more in this post.

This is not a Wow-Trade related post or even a trade related post however, so for those who want to read about that, can skip the rest of the article.

I had to take a vacation on the blog since my software project in work (two years long one) was concluded at the beginning of Dec. I didn’t mention much about my RL business here, but I would share this little project with you.

The project was a disaster, not saying the code base is not good nor the work is hard. However it takes very long time to work and iron out every detail of it. When a half year long project spring into two, that’s wouldn’t be good. Consider the opportunity cost for the project. The loss is significant. While I talk a lot about trading in Wow, I am not that bright in my (first) RL business.

Do I feel regretted? Kind of, I should have a more detail contract and charged more…. However while I pay much cost of being a contract freelancer, I learnt a lot. One can’t learn swimming without getting into the water. At least I am not drowning by this learning. Something you just can’t learn from book and classroom…

Getting into grind is easy, and they paid well in the beginning. But as risk is everyone avoiding, there are full of opportunity there.

We pay much for grinding jobs (Job specialization, universities); maybe we should put some cost on non-grinding skill as well?

I am happy it’s over

As my Corp CEO (@eve) saying “The most important thing is that lesson had been learnt”

Fishing, lowbie money, and profession talk.

Oh, loyal readers, it’s been so long since a post from either Zekta or me. We’ve each sent the usual, “Man, I should have posted by now,” emails to each other, and we’ve each received the usual, “yeah, I know. I should really have posted by now,” replies. My point in all this is that I should have posted more recently… but I digress.

First, a quick post-3.3 checkup. I did very well on my server on patch day, mostly by liquidating my stacks of Saronite Bars transmuted into titanium. I sold the titanium in stacks at about 75% of the previous server norm, and they were all gone in a few hours. Maybe others had this experience as well. I imagine I was just preying on people who didn’t know the removal of the Transmute: Titanium cooldown, but shame on them for not reading P3P!

I have also been stacking epic gems, cut and otherwise. They’ve been moving more slowly, but I imagine that their value will generally go up for about a month or more, at least. As people get new gear, they will need new gems. I believe the place to make money in gems will be similar in 3.3 to what it was in 3.2: at first cut gems sell well, then they stagnate and uncut gems sell.

(The question I have- which is the one that makes the big money- is when exactly does this switch occur? 4 weeks? 6 weeks? More? I really don’t know. If anyone has a bright idea about this timeline, please put it in comments. My gut says 4-6 weeks, but that’s about all I’ve got. Anyone, ftw?)

ANYWAY, I want to get back to responding to a comment posted in my first post. Hugmenot said:

One thing I rarely see discussed is opportunities for new players to make decent coin while leveling. The standard recommendation is to pick up two gathering professions but no almost no one talks about the meat, fish, and cloth markets.

Before beginning, I’d like to point to JMTC, who recently stole any thunder I may have had about this topic. The recent topic on “How to make gold pre-level 50” is full of great ideas. Read this post, then read that one, and then go make money. (And, if you make a lot of money, come back here and tell us how you did it, in the comments!)

ANYWAY, in my experience, making money as a new character depends, in part, on what level your toon is. For the sake of argument, let’s say the person is brand new, no other toons, no 80s, no ability to make a deathknight… nothing. Just you and your level 1 toon. Here is what I’d recommend.

First of all, let’s establish a goal- flying and dual spec by level 70; coldweather and *cough* maybe even epic flying by 80. Here’s how I’d do it.

First, I’d start w/the advice that Hugmenot originally mentions: two gathering professions. One should absolutely, positively, without question, be Mining. I never ceases to make money, at any level. At last check, Copper Ore on my server was selling at 4-5g/stack (it was a Thursday, fyi). You can get 3 stacks of copper walking around outside of Stormwind for 5 mins at level 15 or so. That’s 10-20g (depending on market fluctuation) at a very low level. That’s crazy money.

Going further up the chain, mining keeps paying. Mithril ore is at a (relatively) low 35g/stack currently. Thorium Ore continues to be the winner on my server- the market standard is currently 80g/stack on my server (I think because someone is messing with it), but is normally closer to 60g/stack.

Anyway, my big point is that mining pays at every level. As for a second profession, Skinning is often recommended, and it’s solid. There’s lots of stuff to skin as you level. However, leather isn’t in demand the way that mining and Herbalism mats are, and so I would recommend Enchanting. As you level, you’ll get plenty of items that you won’t need that are BOP. This is a great way to not have to vendor them. Also, Enchanting mats are valuable at any level- any greens you pick up will sell better as enchanting mats than as the item itself (people will buy the greens to DE, so you might as well do it yourself). And, most importantly, Enchanting is great at endgame, so if you can make money while leveling it AND have it rock at endgame, that’s a win-win.

Finally, there is only one other profession that I’ve found to be close: Fishing. As Hug mentions, fishing is potential cash cow. Fishing in the home cities (Stormwind, Ogrimmar, etc.) and the starting zones (Goldshire, Barrens, etc.) isn’t rewarding. However, outside of that, it’s very lucrative. I recently decided I liked the tranquility of Azshara and so I went to fish up that effing RNG fish there. After about an hour I had 5 stacks of assorted Winter Squid, Stonescale Eel, and Large Raw Mightfish. They all sold for about 60/g stack, and so that hour made me 300g. That was easier than doing dailies, and certainly more money than any zone-appropriate (level 55-ish+) can make questing in a similar amount of time.

As for the other things that Hug mentions- cloth and meat farming- they’re both viable. I don’t know much about farming meat, so I’m not going to say anything about it. In my experience, cloth farming is preferable to farming meat. I say this because often cloth farming will also generally happen while you’re questing. By this I mean that you will often be killing humanoids (that will drop cloth) while you’re questing. In my experience, the sweet spot is the Scarlet Monastery. However, picking up Linen Cloth in the Stocks/RFC or farming Mageweave from the Dunemaul Ogres in Tanaris can also be very lucrative.

Okay, that’s about all I’ve got. Hopefully this post helps. 3.3 is here all, so make that money! I’ll keep answering questions, and taking new questions in comments to this post.

GL! /bow

Bigjimm’s pre-3.3 post, and a few other odds and ends

Hey all,

First of all, thanks for the comments in my previous post. I’ve read them all. In fact, I’ve read them all multiple times. In fact, I was so excited to see my first post in print that I may or may not have clicked refresh obsessively for a few minutes after I saw it was up, and then I may or may not have forced myself to take a walk after telling myself to “just CHILL OUT about this stuff for a day!”

ANYWAY, let’s move on. At the behest of Sarainy’s comment in my previous post, let’s talk about the upcoming patch 3.3. The question was:

I’d be interested to hear your take on stockpiling for 3.3. It is something that more and more people appear to be doing, not just as we get closer to the patch, but in every patch there seems to be more stockpiling going on than the patch before. It would be interesting to hear your take on it, as well as your personal opinion on how worthwhile it is, and so on

Before beginning, I’d like to say that I don’t think 3.3 is coming with the next downtime. (11/24/09 on US realms.) It still feels too soon to me, and I don’t think Blizz would drop the last big content patch two days before a huge national U.S. holiday (Thanksgiving). My guess is that it happens in the first or second week of December, but I’ve been wrong before. Anway, two-part answer to the question, incoming!

(1) Regarding 3.3 specifically

Let me preface this by again saying that I’m good at making WoW gold, not great. I do not take the time to use spreadsheets, do Zekta-caliber analysis, or do much more than use auctioneer and look for what I personally consider “obvious” AH winners.*

[* “AH winners” meaning, specifically, items that I’m sure I can sell (a) for a profit (however modest), and (b) that I can do so quickly. My personal strategy involves turnover. But I digress…]

The only thing I’m stacking ahead of 3.3 specifically is saronite bars. With the upcoming change to transmute: titanium (it’s losing the 20 hr cooldown entirely), their value is sure to move upward, if only in the sort term. However, this isn’t a hard decision to make: on my server, I regularly win stacks of saronite bars for less than the vendor cost (20g-24.5g; vendors at 25g). So my “stocking” was really more just deciding not to vendor them, which isn’t much of a risk. Moving on to Hot and Cold for 3.3.

Hot: Items that I think will be hot in 3.3 fall into a few categories:

(i) Typical “everyone’s getting new gear” stuff: Leg armor, spellthread, epic gems (cut or not), belt buckles, and enchant scrolls.

(ii) Typical “ZOMG there’s a NEW RAID!111!!!” stuff: buff food and feasts, flasks, runic health and mana pots, and other niche markets, such as ammunition and potions with specific application, ie: armor or speed pots.

(iii) The raw mats for all the above: I feel like I should just write Frost Lotus here and be done with it… wait, what’s that? It’s my post and I can do that?! Done and done!

Many readers will probably have figured out some or all of the above; it’s not 3.3 specific advice so much as it’s general patch-time awareness.

Also, after looking over the patch notes, a few profs will see little or no change from the patch. I personally don’t think that Inscription will see much change because there is little in the way of new glyphs or talent changes in the patch. (That’s right inscribers, you’ll just have to suck it up and continue making tons of gold without a 3.3 boost. QQ!) The other looser I see is Engineering, but that never makes money anyway.

Cold: Items that I’m selling now because I’m sure they’re going to tank in 3.3 include Titanium Bars (due to the alchemy change), crusader orbs (duh), and artic fur (because it will be vendor-sold in 3.3). Sell. Sell them all, right now. And then run away from these markets unless you really understand them on your server.

Conclusion: My personal opinion is that 3.3 isn’t going to be as big a money maker as 3.0 and 3.1 were. In fact, I don’t think it will be close (especially not if you were an inscriber early on. Good golly! Those guys made a killing.) For me, 3.3 is more about avoiding losses than it is about making big money. Get out of the “Cold” items above, sell the tankards you have left over, and keep your regular businesses moving along.

(2) Regarding pre-patch stockpiling generally

Since this is a long post already, I’ll try to keep my answer short. I, personally, don’t think there’s anything wrong with stockpiling pre-patch. On the macro scale it keeps prices steady because it evens out supply and demand. Honestly, I don’t have strong feelings about stocking, other than I think it’s something it can be profitable, and I do in moderation.

The more interesting question to me is how does it effect the individual AH type. In my experience, how much to stockpile depends on the size or the server/speed of the AH. On large servers, the population will make stockpiling more profitable for a number of reasons, but mainly because the volume of players will push demand higher much higher, much faster.

However, on lower pop servers such as mine, I don’t recommend stocking up as aggressively. I actually use pre-patch as a time to make money off of other players who are stocking up- ie: I’ve been making a killing on fish and gem markets because people are starting to anticipate 3.3. Weird, right? Anyway, I try not to outthink this sort of thing too much, but in my experience, slower AHes punish a mistake in stocking very hard, so be careful.

Okay, that’s it: my 3.3 wall of text. I’m going to talk about the other comments from my previous post in the future. Most of them deserve answers, but I wanted to get the 3.3 post out as quickly as possible.

Finally, because I wrote such a long post, I thought a little bonus was appropriate for anyone who actually got through the whole thing. Here’s my pro-tip of the post: one little item that I think has potential for profit in the near future is Snapper Extreme. Why? Well, there is a tremendous lack of hit on all tanking gear currently, and I don’t see most tanks trading in their T9 gear for at least a month into 3.3. More and more tanks are turning to snapper instead of other foods as a method to increase threat. Consider checking out the market on your server. (And, if you do, tell me if I’m right or not. I haven’t actually done it on my server yet!)

GL! /bow