Since I found that uninteresting and you’ll probably not came here for that. So instead I’ll post a teaser here. (Along with excuses)

As requested by Dan and Sarmation, I am working on the Gold-Raid / Gold Pug Topic now… (Although kinda slow)

Step by Step of a Gold pug, to economic impact and comparisons to other loot distribution.

(Excuses But I am still working on RL stuff, my raiding schedule and blog caring.
I will get them coming… once I got spare time

With trading,
Anyone in azeroth can be in a farm-free state
Anyone in azeroth no longer need to grind for consumable, repair bill, enchanting and gemming
Anyone in azeroth can be on baby mammoth (Not recommended however)

Excuses

“I don’t need gold” -
you need, let’s face it. Even you are not into vanity like Me/Gevlon/Seth. You still need to pay your repair bill / consumption/ gear enchants etc. Unless you stop raiding and pvping altogether, you need money. And there are different way to gather the money you need. Why don’t take your time and find a good way for it? (And proven profitable e.g. crafting)

“I don’t have time for this” -
Trading didn’t mean AH-camping, which some of our fellow trader trade in that style, but it’s not necessary. You can still be rich without camping. Yes, you may earn less compared to those camper. (Here’s why). But so are working, you work less, you gain less. I would said the loss is acceptable, Trading still give you much higher gold/hour then other form of grinding.

Take my glyph industry as example, I post twice a day, which takes me 1 hour, which reward around 1-2k gold per day, While the mail getting and posting part is mostly afk.

“It’s too complicate for me” -
if you notice, this is the same line a M&S would said. “I can’t do 1800+ dps” , “I can’t get out of the fire”, “I can’t interrupt/CC/[Insert any task here]“. No, trading is not hard, compare the time you need to grind to the same amount of gold. Some area in the trade is easy to learn, e.g. Cross Faction Pet Selling, Cooking Receipt Gathering.

I know the picture is scary to some of us, but this is not the only way.

“I am not that kinda evil trader, who prey on poor and clueless people” -
These group of people, In Gevlon’s word, Social. Trading is not evil, in terms of economic, a efficient trade will give everyone better off. Econ 101: Alisa want an glyph/[whatever goods], she is willing to pay 20g, Bob want to sell a glyph, he’s willing part with it at 5g. When the transaction happen, we had a 10g net gain. The bargaining only occur between 5-20g range, otherwise, the trade will never occur. The so-called evil-trader can and will do his twit and twist on pushing the price near 20g, but can never exceed it, the trade will always be efficient, as long as the trade is voluntary.

“I may lost money” -
This is the greatest resistance for anyone to get into trading.
Translated in Social’s word, “losing make me feel stupid, and that should be avoid at all cost. Grinding, Farming, Doing Daily is risk-free, I rather spend my time there”.
Everything induce risk, and the price for “risk-free” is so high that you don’t even had to think twice on that. And, the risk factor usually is over estimated by ignorance. Trading is not about luck.

For 100% risk free investment, everybody will be drawn into it, and thus the profit will be lowered. Simple Demand Supply rules.
However, since most of the people drawn to those risk-free option, which left the risk bearing opportunity much more profitable. Identify those risk, and when odds are good, strike. That’s what it takes for a trader.

Conclusion

Did you hear these word from your guild mate? Or did you hear this from your heart?
It’s okay, everyone prefer a comfortable place and afraid of change, but given embracing this can change the very game play of yours (farm-free state, anyone?)

At least give it a try.

Spaces are not created equal
Some space is more useful than others.
No, I am not talking about profession bags. That would be too trivial (It’s still trivial for some trader though).
When it comes to trading there are different types of space.

1. Backpack
Backpack space is most useful, since all your traffic from AH is on your bags, All the mail first go into your bags. Here is a tip: Consider having different bag for switching
My Glyph and AH alts had both normal bags and glyph bags, in case I need to route my traffic to other alts. I can change an empty glyph back to a normal one, and switch back to glyph bags after.
2. Bank Space Slot
Bank space is second most valued, because of the ability of switching; you can switch a bag from your bag directly with one in the bank slot. This is the Dual spec of you backpack.
Use other means for long term storage, if you do this a lot. (E.g. My shaman main will also do some auction posting; I’ll switch her normal bag with the 3 scribe bag in the bank, and switch back after posting)
3. Mail box Space
The beauty of Mail box is that it’s near infinity. The Cons, only the top 50 mail can be retrieved (No random access beyond that), and risk for out dated mail to be lost if you are not careful. It takes a long time to clear out the storage, and block your traffic as well.

4. Auction Hall Space
It’s a specialized storage, for low deposit cost goods, you can actually store your material on AH! One of my friends stores all his enchanting material stock on AH. He set an overpriced price of each component. If anyone request an enchant, he cancel those auction. And a plus, if anyone buy his overpriced material.

5. Guild Bank
The first 3 tab is much cheaper than an alts’ bank. Good for storage for a long term investment. As mentioned bank space is better for switching, from a trader, it easy to over stock goods. This should be your largest temporary and long term storage (Though Gevlon against long term storage, since the econ is always deflating. That would be another post)

I come to notice that Sarainy had two similar post about the very topic.

But since I already finished this one, and scheduled this, I am not going to trash this…
This post is more on trader’s perspective than storage. There will be another post about the different (if this is not too trivial)

Be sure to visit Sarainy for some complement information I missed.

A little short blog update…

As you may notice, I started my raiding career with my New Main Notus..
I am still work hard to balance time on blogging, raiding, work and family (especially with gf)

I would really want some help on having guest poster here…
A little summary of the state of the blog. There are 5 type of post we had here now

1. Reactive post – post that reply to others’ post, thoughts and comments
2. Wow Econ, Some economic perspective to Wow, including trading, player behavior, guild, pug etc. (Included but not limited to Gold-Making)
3. Trader Tips – Fellow trader’s tips, e.g. how to start a bank guild
   (notice: not guild bank), New Add-on, Market Change
4. Me as player – Rant, Goblin type – thoughts on Raiding,
5. Others – Silly post and Not-so-Weekly Report for instance

I had been posting like 4(Player), 1(Reactive), 5(Others), 3(Trader), 2(Wow-econ)…

In which I would like more post on 2(Wow-Econ) and 3(Trader-Tips).

I would consider Wow-econ post is hardest to write (for me), since it’s usually long and hard to polish…

I am continuously looking for guest poster on these topics, If you had an idea would want to talk about, and think this blog is worthy for your publication, please contact me

Did you notice, after each patch,
The price of Fish and Eternal Water will raise?
And then fall back to normal after 1-2 week?

Demand for buff food increases after patch? That’s one of the factor…
But Today I’ll tell you a secret one….

Fishing activities, reduced a lot after each patch. But after 1-2 week, they’ll return to normal.
The shortage of supply will cause the spike.

One of the reasoning would be fisher gone to raid, after the patch.
That’s possible too…

The Reason

But one of my friend got another explanation.
The 1-3 week is highly co-related to the bot-program update schedule.
On the very day the new bot version hit the net, price start to drop significantly.

You don’t need a bot nor be a fisher to get profit

By knowing this cycle, you can just buy those fish when the price lay low and Supply the market in those 1-2 weeks. Beware that you need to sell all stock in 2 weeks though…

Thoughts

Sadly,
I don’t have enough data to prove this observation…
Maybe anyone can continue this work?

Especially true on the 71 to 80 AV Bracket (As of pre-3.2.2)

Player Composition

1. Serious Pvper – Who want to win the battle with strategy and group work.
2. Gankers – Who want to show how powerful they are, by one hit others. And they can’t twink anymore, since they can only face player who are twink as well (From the XP lock system). They want to slaughter, not a fair game… (I am not saying all twink are ganker, but the ganker had a large portion of the pre-3.2 twink community)
3. Low level pvper, (and now, Leveler) – The High level player (e.g. 80 or 70) used to boo them for dragging back the team. But they become the major group in Battle Ground now.

What happened in 3.2

Group 3 increase dramatically, just like what happened welfare Epic handed out back in TBC.
Incentive of leveling in AV is huge (I got a level (73) in AV in 8 battles on Sunday as well).

Group 2 increased as well,
Since the twink battleground do not work anymore, rather than spending hour in the wild for picking low level player, they can just kill those 72-74 player, who are definitely squishy for them.

Conflict of interest

Player in Group 1 and 3 want smooth battle, fast-game since XP only reward on achieving goals only.

While Group 2 (Gankers) don’t give a damn, they just want to show how IMBA (they think) they are, they are the guy who (attempts) kill everyone they come across, start fight in cross road, which will ends up in a turtle game.

Summary

Pre 3.2, the effect of gankers is much more devastating. Since in the past, opposite group 1 players are powerful enough out-weights the gankers,

while in 3.2 the leveler is helpless against them (And thus fuel them with oil).

Thus the setup will shift the balance of fast game to turtle game.

The 3.2.2 71-79, 80 bracket change should able to ease the problem.

I should be happy, since I sold around 800+ glyphs last week, I was making 1-2k per day. Consider the price range is 4-10g each, that’s a lot.
(due to my over-stock setup, the glyph to craft number is larger)

but yet, I had some problem crafting them all….
Aside from a very long craft time, my bag was full, when I try to buy all those parchment (177g+ )
And also bag space when crafting….

I also used up half of my stockpiled ink of the sea.
Time to get more herbs….
(It’s funny that, every time I wonder if I am overstocked, I’ll run into shortage soon)

It’s nice for a quick revision and education material for those financial struggling guildmate we all have.

The Opportunity Cost session is my favorite. I was having a hard time trying to explain that to others.

Now, with no more delay, Here it’s, Enjoy

This would be yet another boring post

Thoughts

A little wrap up

it’s the start of a new month, I guess I would have some review on the state of blog
It had been around 5 months (153 days) from the time I started this project.

We had 3.1 and 3.2 patch through the time. I gathered gold from 4k to 60k now, with my own guild bank and a steady income of 1-2k per day (compare to 100-200g/day on AH flipping when I started)

Had been learning a lot from blogging and the blogosphere.

Once you start thinking like a trader, many thing changes, e.g. opportunity cost, human behaviors etc etc, all have an interesting interpretation… I am having fun on discovering piece of gem by reasoning that.

Met lots of people, Seth, Larisa, Gevlon, Markco and all the fellows on JMTC forum…
I even started to listen to podcast every week, The Instance and Twisted Nether

And yes, I still found gevlon’s idea fascinating.
(Are we that sure he’s a single person?)

Will continue and find some interesting piece to share Stay tuned.

Business

Oops, nothing new here, except I am on 70kg now. And My shaman Alts is still stuck on Outland…

Blog

Recent Posts

I shared a little tips on my inscription setup and a little DK I came across in Stormwind…

LF Co-Author

I had a lot of plan, and not much of them worked. I was planning to write a session on the geology of Wow, Talk about Econ-book I read about, and introduce blogger I appreciated.  May be I am just too lazy or hard to stick to a fixed scheme for things.

I still looking for co-author on the Food-Chain topic or the site, so if anyone is interested, please contact me. (Oops, I didn’t say that I want a co-author before?)

(I guess I’ll need another indivial post for the invitation?)

As I said before, I had been using KevMar’s Addon Beta, I changed some config to suit my own need.

I’ll share that with you guys here.

From the code and KevMar mentioned, there would be a threshold function, skipping the glyphs which are too cheap to produce. (Better to buy them from the Auction as he suggested, not working on my beta version yet…)

There is also a skip single option which skips all the one glyph only entry.

It is nice, but I would like a more extensive one.

My setup:

I am listing 4 glyphs at a time (by QA2), and I would maintain a stock of 8 glyphs. I post the glyph twice a day, so this effectively a 2 rotation of glyph listing. I am crafting every two day, with KTQ, that save my time a lot.

My hack to the Mod:

Instead of filling up the stack, I get to work like this.

I wouldn’t craft a glyph, unless it’s lesser than 4 in my stock. (The 1-2 crafting entry will increase the queue a lot)

For the glyph I had to craft, I make some more. I’ll craft [Amount Need to Craft] * 150% instead of [Amount Need to Craft].

That is

Objective

What I am trying to do, is to bulk the crafting queue of each craft into a bigger stack, so I would reduce the time I need to click the XXX process button in Skillet.

I’ll wait till I lack a large amount (Instead of crafting one or two), and also restocked over the the target size, to allow more room for buffer.

Example:

• The worst case scenario: one glyph sold between each ktq scan.
  In the previous system, I had to craft that glyph each time it scan, now I only need to do one every 6 scan (Re-craft at cycle 4, then I am overstock with 2 glyph), A longer craft time, but I reduce my queue click at 6 to 1.
• Popular glyph, the faster the glyph consume, the system will overstock more, effectively increase the buffer space.

Some of you may notice, in this scheme, even with the extra crafting, I will never overstock a glyph more than 20 (The stack size), so I will not run into bag slot problem as well.

Summary

This reactive setup hopefully will save up much of my time on restocking. Now only if I can get my mail faster……..

P.s 1

If anyone interested in my little hack, just leave a comment,

I’ll have the code released. (And I guess that would be after KevMar’s public release first)

P.s 2

Some explanation, if you care enough – I don’t like camping the AH, so the possible profit is my acceptable loss, and I am not able to sustain the need of my server, the profit per glyph and the glyph crafting time will overwhelm my play time, so, No, I didn’t use the Gevlon Method.