Phase 3: Profit !

I found that wowenomics had feature my post (month ago, I drafted this post for a long time ),
Since someone is interested, I’ll write another article about game theory and Wow.

You needta drink da bottle thingy ta kill me?

Consider a common case,
A PUG go for Normal Naxx 10 man for the first time, there are 2 tanks and 2 healers and 6 dps…

Let’s assume a tragedy setting, the DPS are all under-geared. But to remedy, if half of them takes flask (However they had no idea of this), they’ll had enough dps to down the boss before the rage timer.
After they wiped on Patchwerk once, They understand that they need more Dps.
And Every Dps had bought a flask in the bag.

Is it wise to drink the flask right away?

Your Inner-Goblin will yell “Hold it mate! if they all drink the flasks, we can save our flask and still get that boss down !“, and indeed, it will.

Say
L=Loot which is makes player Happy
F=price of the Flask, which makes player Sad
R=repair bill,which makes player Sad

In both case, if no-one change their mind, Play dumb will earn most (or at least loss less)

Enough people took flask : win-much vs win
Not enough people took flask : lose vs lose-much

If we ignore reputation/fairness, everyone had an incentive to skip using the flask. And if no-one enforce a every-dps-take-flask or all-low-dps-take-flask policy (for whatever reasons: social or careless), someone will become sneaky not using them.

Generalization

Isn’t the same apply for

• no-well-feed-buff
• gear-with-out gem
• none-enchant gear
• under-geared
• low-skilled

? Anyone will decieve if no-one announce it.(giving a social penalty for not taking flask, aka an incentive for taking one.)

Taking flask or not, is not very noticable, unless RL do not run a addon annouce who lacks the buff. (To Larisa’s question, the buff check addon actually let the respondsible player be praised. By pointing out the slackers)

There are incentive for players to decieve. In order to set it right, we must be provide a counter incentive for them to balance out (Same for crime penalty, So that robbing-bank is not profitable). I believe it’s work for the RL or Guild.

There will be another article on guild, but I guess it’ll take me much time

Side Note 1: [Warning : non-Econ related post]
I’ll be start writing on non-Econ related content as well.
More about my wow-thoughts other than money-making, may be side-track a little. But hope that you’ll enjoy. (Didn’t have a name for it yet)
Side Note 2: As promised on yesterday. I was having a bad sleep, maybe due to excess work yesterday, so I decided to finish the post first.

Side Note 3: Damn! I lost my edit version yesterday. Seems like I only previewed but not saved the content >.<

Sin of being Red

The Sin of Being Red.

Recently, I was quite busy at work and for my wow game hour, I spend most of the time with my girlfriend, as she just started to join me in Azeroth.
(Thanks for the effort, my love). (Another reason for slow update on blog as well. No, darling, I am not blaming you)

Okay, there is a lot of curious question a new player will ask, when they just started. And there are some I find particular hard to answer, here is one of them.

“Why we are killing these animal/people ? they looks pretty cute to me”
“Because they name is red, that means they’ll attack us if we get too close”
“My kitty(in RL) will bite you if you piss her off, will you kill her too?”

and I recalled recently Larisa talked about moral, and Gevlon talked about raiders of dungeon. This raise some question for me, long ago.

Reasons

Why should I kill them
because their name is red,
because killing them drop loots,
because killing them give me XP,
because those NPC asked me to! (Which give me gold/loots/xp)

This question strike me before twice..
1. when I was leveling my paladin, and I would try to role-play it, upon each judgement I would try to come up with some war-cry. “May the light forgives you”
I am not having problem with miners, and students, but for helping a crazy prince for killing his citizens?. “You are damned since your name is red to me.” seems the only universal answer for me. Other than that, it’s hard to come up with any “rightful” reason to justify myself. Isn’t that paladin means to be good? or I am just some zealous paladin which kill everything on the “path of the light” which is not good (aka, the name is not green?)

2. The Second time is my paladin’s first run on Alterac Valley, on my way to get my [Cold Forged Hammer] . My BE paladin is my first Horde Character, I kept running on Alterac Valley with my Alliance main, and did little pvp on my BE. That run is a slaughter, and I am healing my way thought there. I put a macro for playing “Lament of the Highborne” on my BE’s hotkey bar, And I played the song all along that battle.

It’s go like this

By the light, by the light of the sun
Children of the blood
We ride through the “cross road”

Our enemies are breaking through
On the first tower, the battle is swift, 5-6 Hordies vs 1 gnome warlock,

Children of the blood
By the light
Failing children of the blood
They are breaking through

The are trying to resist on the First Towner, an Female Draenei paladin try to defense, but was chopped down Brute-force by Tauren Warrior, we burn that flag right a way

O’ children of the blood
By the light of the sun
Failing children of the blood

The Alliance formed a defense line on the bridge, as any other “turtle” game in Alterac Valley. Billzard, Arrow Rain, Rain of Fire…
Tons of corpses of Gnome, Dwarf, Draenei. (My Alliance is a Gnome Mage).
We finish the battle with exceeding alliance’s resources, aka creating Corpse Piles.

Post-Alterac Valley Syndrome

That shocks me, while I was so get used to, the alliance’s races.
We won, single handedly, but I was sad.
I never set foot again in Alterac Valley with my BE Paladin. (I do in winter-gasp later thought, when I get used to it)

Finally, I gave up reasoning or justify my brutal killing again in the game. It just pure self-fish earning as a person, not big heroic thing, I kill because I need that/this as a hunter preying on its prey.

I still refuse to kidnap kids everyday just to make those cute Seal-Men happy.

Others percept this differently from me, some could just rightful themself, and even ganking others. In which I never understand, it seems meaninglessly to me just to grief others, and the ganker cannot generate any profit either, just a waste of both time (At the end of the day, Blizzard wins with the game time consumed)

Some refused killing for leveling,
but for others it’s too much to be leveling that way. (Which I admire the effort on doing so, I can never done that myself)

How did you reasons for the dreadful life for your wow character? especially if you are “Holy” as priest or paladin.

(Sidenote: My Warlock alt, smirk a lot and find it very enjoying just to see other suffer, so no guilt at all, MuWahahaha~~~~ )

Warning: This is not a econ-related post

Okay, I admit My BElf Paladin is not as sexy

My raider career

My raider career started back at TBC.

I was a late comer, When everyone is raiding on DT, I had just ding 70 and started on raiding Kara. I got my T4 set and then Wotlk came out. And I raised my main and alt to 80 since then.

I had a healer (Paladin) and two dps (Mage and Hunter(just ding 80 in two weeks ago)).

I am a traditional (and responsible one) instance runner,

that’s I’ll only go to a heroic instance/raid, if I

• Run the normal instance once (for heroic), and know what’s going on
• Read notes about the boss changes and his skills

And I also raid much, the same reason for Gevlon. I can’t stick with the “every week raiding” for 2-3 nights for 3-4 hour thingy. It’s just not my playing style. I’ll talk about my Healer career.

The Pug

My gears are from pug, and pug are disaster, always.

Under-gear tank, what-is-healer-mana-bar tank , and the I-am-in-a-hurry tank. Mindless DPS, Mr. I-like-stand-in-fire-or-anything-look-funny etc etc. (I guess everyone is familiar with them)

Well, to be honest, I wasn’t a good healer either. But it’s really hard to tell, if it’s the tank’s fault, the dps fault or my fault.

I got my gear to 1600sp (from reputation and drops) and then I started to raid Naxx with my guild.

The Raid

I started raid for Naxx-25 (Yes, not 10-man) since my guild is lack of healer (as it’s always be) willing to go. While there are more than 40 people of naxx-25 gear-ready people, They seldom join our raid. (That’s a little specious) We had to take 10-12 pug people to fill the remaining slot.

While I knew(thought) I am under-gear, I take 4-5 [Flask of the Frost Wyrm] with me.

That raid was horrible. First day (Fri), 8pm-12am, Second day (Sat) 12pm-12am, Third (Sun) 12pm-1am. And yes, we take down Kel’Thuzad after 28 hour.

And I was one of the only 2 guild members left in there.

You'll know when it came to the end

The Burn Out

I run couple of time with them afterward, but not a full run, 28 hours of raiding exhausted me. But then raiding is so repeative for me.The only different is what gear drop, and what people we take with us. I do know every single boss in naxx will do, and what to do about them. And yes, there are many M&S who does not take flasks and not even have well-feed buff which piss me off.

I can’t said I excelled in healing, There are many things I can learn (and My reflex is not that  good either). (Side note:I am not a good “dancer” yet either) But raiding to me is no more fun.

And I hate farming for gears, and with M&S dragging you backward is much more painful.

What to do?

What I did

I didn’t raid with my healer anymore (That was two month ago) , I seldom login as well on the horde side (My healer is on the horde faction, while my other toons are on Alliance side). I leveled my NElf Hunter Alt to 80, and do the mindless dps afterward.

I may go back to my BElf Paladin and /gquit one day and start my raiding again, but with the poor quality of PUG and gear farming process, It’ll take a long time to recover.

I Can Haz Dual Spec, Already ?

Everyone got their Dual Spec now, right?

No, I didn’t.

All my toons are still in the old, cold, monotone single spec world.
For some reason, I didn’t go for instance and raid for nearly two weeks now. And I consider it’s time to buy more and earn more, instead of spending on the static priced dual spec system. (I did the price of waiting though…)

This is Madness! no, This is the Patch!
(Okay, I admit it isn’t fit very well here)

[Titansteel Bar] Hits 50% marks of pre-3.1, [Saronite Ore] and [Saronite Bar] still at their 60%.
But I didn’t start buying,…. yet. I expect it’ll drop more later.

I do get a lot of profits from the [Mammoth Cutters] and [Saronite Razorheads] from those rushing hunter, and reinvest them into the [Eternal Life] as suggested by WoWenomics

And I do take my time on making the [Nesingwary 4000] for my hunter who just ding 80. With merely 200-300g cost. Someone sell the [Sun Scope] in 10% price on the very day of the 3.1 patch. (For reference, someone had sold lots of epic that day with 888g for the [Nesingwary 4000], but the price raise back to 1000g on the following day)

I keep selling my stockpiled of pre-wrath’s material, and make a nifty profit on it. Especially on the Primals. The increased traffic more “price-insensitive” seller and buyer had entered the market, I got lots of sweet deals to pickup. With the 10kg asset base, and 2kg cash. I do gain 2kg this week, not as good as the inscription industry, but still, looks nice for me.

I may find a tailor for the [Netherweave Bag], as the market had no idea of the material cut yet. (I found more people step into the trade already though…)

On a side note about the white kitties though, there were 6 kitty show up on the market recently, on price 120-140g. I do pick them up with bid, and tends to dry up the market.

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.

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.