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Gold sinks and entitlement in WoW
I recently published a news piece about the price hike of the Grand Expedition Yak from 60,000g to 120,000g in the Mists of Pandaria beta. I was not overly surprised by the reaction to the piece at first; I had expected something of an outcry, as there often is at the introduction of gold sink items. But then I began thinking about why. Why do gold sinks promote such ire in the WoW community? I first approached the question from the angle that it's hard to earn that sort of gold. Whatever you think, for the beginning Auction House player, it is. It's hard to transform 500g into 120,000g. And it's hard to imagine that such a transformation would ever be feasible when you're the person with 500g across all their characters or even the person who's always sat at about 30,000g -- no more, no less -- despite having a go at playing the Auction House. That latter one is me, by the way. I do try at playing the Auction House; I'm simply not very good at it or very dedicated! Worrying, really, when you consider I used to work for a hedge fund. I was managing real estate, in my defence.
A First Look at Mists of Pandaria Professions: Inscription
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Fox Van Allen and Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Feed Fox's ego by emailing him, tweeting him at @foxvanallen, or sacrificing your first-born to him. I know there's some disagreement between myself and Basil over this, but inscription is hands down my favorite profession. That's not really because I like the process of finding or buying herbs, and I absolutely detest the whole milling procedure. It's because I like money. Inscription made me stupid rich. So, it would only follow then that I have great interest in what scribes will be up to come Mists of Pandaria. After all, Cataclysm brought the advent of the ultra-profitable and high-demand Mysterious Fortune Cards, so Blizzard must have something cool up its sleeves for this next expansion, too, right? Well ... sort of! I mean, let's face it, Mysterious Fortune Cards are a pretty big bar to set. That being said, there's some serious love coming scribes way in terms of new things to sell, new items to equip, and new, fun things to have fun with. But don't take my word for it. See for yourself.
How to set up your alts for gold making
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen and Fox Van Allen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Check out Fox and Basil's reboot of Call To Auction, and email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail! One of the things I simply can't do is spend time on alts. Between the Auction House and playing my main, I simply don't have the time or interest to seriously use the other character slots on my account the way most people do. And then there's this guy: Hey Basil, I've been playing WoW for quite a few years now, and just recently stuck my pinky toe in the water that is the Auction House to profit from various sources. I have alts. Lots of alts. 8 at 85 currently. All of them are able to do HoT dungeons. Now my question is, is there an easy (or efficient) way for me to make multitudes of gold utilizing these alts at all? I would assume leveling as many professions as possible, but there has to be other ways I'm missing. Thanks for your time! Mellark, altoholic, Hyjal US. Having eight level 85 characters is a definite advantage when you play the AH. In fact, one of the things that holds me back to this day is lack of profession slots on level 85 characters. I have all the ones I absolutely need, but I'm missing some compared to a lot of my competition. Every character is an opportunity to have two professions, and each profession is a different way to make (or save) gold.
A First Look at Mists of Pandaria Professions: Engineering
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Fox Van Allen and Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Feed Fox's ego by emailing him, tweeting him at @foxvanallen, or sacrificing your first-born to him. I've said it before and I'll say it again -- if you're not having fun while playing World of Warcraft, you're doing it wrong. Sure, raiding is great, and so is having pockets full of gold. But if you don't find either of those fun, then why bother? Find something that is fun. Fun, of course, is what the engineering profession is all about. It's certainly not about money, after all -- engineers make very few things that non-engineers can use. But while you're struggling to make money in MoP, you'll at least be getting a lot of new perks to enjoy while doing all that struggling. There are cool new pets, new conveniences, new gear, a new world-altering device, and even new mounts -- yes, mounts with an s! Exciting times are most definitely ahead for engineers. So strap on your goggles and have a robot roll up your sleeves -- we're going to dive right in.
Gold Capped: Things that still sell at the end of an expansion
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen and Fox Van Allen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Check out Fox and Basil's reboot of Call To Auction, and email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail! The end of an expansion is a tough time to make gold. There's a lot more competition for a lot less demand. Many people see gold-making as a nice casual way to play while they wait for the next content dump, and fewer people are playing seriously (which is the root of demand for a lot of popular and profitable markets). To top it all off, we know that inflation is going to take a huge chunk out of our net worth when Mists launches, and there are a bunch of new things to save money up for. What kind of things can you still sell to make a profit?
Wowscan: A new tool for making gold
I have had my hand in the cookie jar that is the Auction House a few times during Cataclysm, and if there's one thing I learned, it's that information is your best friend. I downloaded Auctioneer / Auctionator to spot cheap bids and track how my own sales were doing. I browsed The Undermine Journal for data like average prices, standard deviations, and recent auctions. Even WoW Insider's own Gold Capped column helped me identify potential markets and provided general advice. All of these things made my profits possible. Well, a new tool has entered the mix: Wowscan. I have to admit, at first it struck me as a bit too much like The Undermine Journal. Certainly Wowscan works very similar in that it scans auction data and posts it on its site in a searchable format. Now, I'm no Basil or even a Fox, but after some experimentation it seems to me that there are a few advantages and disadvantages to a site like Wowscan in comparison to TUJ. First of all, and probably the biggest difference that I've noticed, is that Wowscan has the ability to compile all of its realm data into one searchable list. For example, if you wanted to find the absolute cheapest auction of Reins of the Swift Spectral Tiger, all you have to do is select All Realms and search for it. From all of my dealings with TUJ, I have never found the option to search all of the realms at once. Since most of my use of TUJ was focused on a single realm, searching multiple realms at once never really became an issue for me. This function becomes valuable when you are looking to buy an ultra-rare item and don't care how much money you have to spend on realm transfers to get it.
Should you change professions for Mists of Pandaria?
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Fox Van Allen and Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Feed Fox's ego by emailing him, tweeting him at @foxvanallen, or sacrificing your first-born to him. Last week here in Gold Capped, I gave you a sneak peek at the alchemy profession in Mists of Pandaria, including some of the new potions, flasks, and transmutes available to those willing to put in the work. That column apparently got a lot of you thinking, because immediately afterward, I got no fewer than three emails from players asking if they should change their professions to alchemy -- or more generally, whether or not they should switch to a better profession. It's a question to which there's no easy answer. Each profession has the potential to be profitable -- some more so than others, sure. But one person might make millions of gold from inscription, for example, while another player struggles to make a few silver. Aside from knowledge (which you're all getting right here from Gold Capped, natch), what's the biggest factor regarding a profession's profitability? It's your playstyle. Certain professions lend themselves to the weekend Auction House warrior, while others reward daily persistence. So what profession is right for you? And should you change to that profession for Mists of Pandaria?
Gold Capped: Unlimited long-term storage
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen and Fox Van Allen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Check out Fox and Basil's reboot of Call To Auction, and email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail! Ever see anyone trying to buy or sell a guild with bank tabs? There are people who will stop at nothing to store more stuff, especially those of us who play the gold-making game. One of the biggest challenges of making gold is, in fact, storing stuff. Bags are expensive, guild tabs are even more expensive, and there is a hard limit of 10 (for now) characters per realm. Each character has four bag slots and eight bank slots, as well as some built-in backpack and bank slots. This may seem like a lot, but what if you wanted to, for example, stockpile 10,000g worth of Hypnotic Dust, expecting it to sell for 70,000g in Mists of Pandaria? That could be over 700 stacks. Luckily, there's a simple and virtually free way to store unlimited amounts of stuff and save all your expensive inventory slots.
A first look at Mists of Pandaria professions: Alchemy
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Fox Van Allen and Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Feed Fox's ego by emailing him, tweeting him at @foxvanallen, or sacrificing your first-born to him. One of the most common questions I get as WoW Insider's (other) resident Auction House guru is this: What professions are going to be the best in Mists of Pandaria? Arguably, there's no absolute right or wrong answer to the question -- after all, each profession is going to have its pros and cons. (I like to hedge my bets by giving different alts different professions to have a max level of each profession.) That said, one of my favorite professions for the early days of any expansion is alchemy. It's likely one of your favorites, too, and there's no mystery as to why -- transmutes. In the earlier days of Cataclysm, it wasn't rare to see Truegold sell for more than 1,000 gold apiece. That provided a small profit to any alchemist, but for those lucky enough to see bonus procs, a single transmute could turn a 4,000 gold profit or better. Not bad for about 20 seconds' worth of work. Of course, that was then; this is now. Will alchemy remain as stupidly profitable in the early days of Mists of Pandaria? Only one way to find out -- ladies and gentlemen, it's time to datamine! To the beta!
3 items to unload and 3 to stock up on before Mists of Pandaria
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Fox Van Allen and Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Feed Fox's ego by emailing him, tweeting him at @foxvanallen, or sacrificing your first-born to him. As we approach the end of the Cataclysm expansion -- there are maybe four months left -- playing the Auction House gets a bit trickier. There's less enthusiasm on the part of buyers. More scary, though, is that the launch of Mists of Pandaria is about to render a lot of markets obsolete. It happened in Wrath and in The Burning Crusade too -- those potions and flasks that were top of the line suddenly became worthless. Gear that once cost thousands of gold could be had for hundreds. It's the nature of our in-game hobby. If you sit on stock, you're going to lose a fortune. (Shamefully, it happened to me out of laziness.) But not everything is set to crash. A few select items are going to increase in value, if not in the days leading up to MoP, then shortly after launch. These are the items you need to fill your bank tabs with. But which ones are they? What should you sell ASAP, and what should you buy?
Meet the new million-gold jewelcrafting mounts
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Fox Van Allen and Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Feed Fox's ego by emailing him, tweeting him at @foxvanallen, or sacrificing your first-born to him. I had an absolute blast with Mat McCurley, Mike Sacco, and Alex Ziebart at PAX East 2012 this weekend. If you've been living under a rock, the four of us put on a great live panel discussion in front of about 200 to 300 excited fans. We met our fans (you!), gave away a ton of crazy awesome prizes (including immortality as a WoW Trading Card Game card), and had a lot of fun. We also discussed the big news of the day, which was the new Mists of Pandaria beta patch. There's a lot of news in there for class columnists. But of interest to us as those who make and break the WoW economy, we've unearthed a new mount for jewelcrafters. And another mount for jewelcrafters. And another. And another. And yet a fifth. Yes, you heard me -- there are no fewer than five new JC mounts in the beta files. If any jewelcrafters in the audience are salivating, they have a right to be. These new mounts could be a veritable bonanza for those who take the time to craft them. And they could wind up saving the World of Warcraft economy at the same time.
Mists of Pandaria: Glyphmas 2012 for scribes is right around the corner
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Fox Van Allen and Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Feed Fox's ego by emailing him, tweeting him at @foxvanallen, or sacrificing your first-born to him. And be sure to catch the return of Basil and Fox's podcast, Call to Auction! Once upon a time, all was quiet throughout the land. Players had made glyph choices throughout Wrath, and they were good. Scribes made decent money. Then came patch 4.0.1. The opening salvo of Cataclysm, the Shattering, didn't just break the world. It broke players' glyph setups, as well. A slew of new glyph options were added to the game. Players had to choose nine glyphs, up from six. At the very least, everyone had to buy three new glyphs. For glyph sellers, times were good -- so good, in fact, that the magical time post-patch 4.0.1 was dubbed Glyphmas. We've already been told that major changes will be coming to glyphs once more for the pre-Mists of Pandaria patch 5.0.1. Prime glyphs are disappearing. A whole slew of new minor glyphs are being added to the game to promote fun. The opportunity for another Glyphmas is clearly present. But will scribes experience the same kind of gold rush they did at the end of the last expansion? What's different this time around? And what, exactly, is the best way to prepare to cash in?
3 things that will become more expensive in Mists of Pandaria
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen and Fox Van Allen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Check out Fox and Basil's reboot of Call To Auction, and email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail! If you save every gold you have right now until the next expansion, you won't actually be any poorer than you currently are, but you sure will feel like you are. Assuming there are no new gold sinks, the amount of gold entering your characters' pockets is going to skyrocket, and they will all buy stuff you want, raising prices across the board. Farmers will make more from crafters, who will charge more for crafted goods. World of Inflationcraft Inflation is one of those universal truths like taxes and hunter envy. Unlike hunter envy, though, it can't be avoided by simply upgrading your main from a support class to a hunter. The best way to deal with it is to plan ahead and tie up as much of your money on things that will go up in price. You want to aim for things that will rise at least as much as inflation will erode the value of your savings.
How I made 3,000 gold by level 30
I rolled an alt a few weeks ago -- nothing special like the Ironman Challenge, but I had a moment where I wanted to level a character from 1 to 85 on another realm just for the heck of it. So I picked a random realm, medium population, and rolled a worgen. Why a worgen? Well, it had been a while since I'd played through the worgen starting zone, and since I'd recently seen just about everything the Horde had to offer on the 1-to-60 front, I wanted to replay the Alliance experience again. So I rolled a worgen -- no heirlooms, no gold from outside sources, just me and the quests, like the old days of vanilla WoW. The most important part to me was that I was going to forgo buying any upgrade gear from the Auction House, instead using only what dropped from quests or instances. Call it a moment of vanilla nostalgia if you will, but that's exactly what I had to do on my first character back in 2004, so I was going to do it again. I expected it to be tough; I expected it to take a while before I could even afford a mount at level 20. I was so, so wrong. By the time I hit level 30, I had a little over 3k gold on my random alt, with little to no effort on my part. And I'm going to tell you exactly how I did it. It all started with a pair of boots.
Gold Capped: Transferring to a new server
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Fox Van Allen and Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Feed Fox's ego by emailing him, tweeting him at @foxvanallen, or sacrificing your first-born to him. And be sure to catch the return of Basil and Fox's podcast, Call to Auction! In the game world, just as in the real world, prices of even the most basic of materials fluctuates based on your location. A hamburger in Beverly Hills costs more than a hamburger in Milwaukee. Heck, just about everything costs more in Beverly Hills -- that's just the way it goes. Your dollar is simply worth less there. But what if we were going to move from Milwaukee to Beverly Hills? We could just brace ourselves and accept that we're going to have to pay more for hamburgers. Or, we could load up our car with hamburgers and resell them for a profit when we arrive. That concept is probably a bit disgusting -- I wouldn't recommend a cross-country trip with a car filled to the brim with ground meat. But when it comes to realm transfers, the idea's right on the money. On some realms, gold is worth more. On other realms, the stuff you buy with gold is worth more. Making the most out of a server transfer (or indeed, making a realm transfer with the goal of making in-game money from it) is a skill that could make you rich overnight -- literally.
3 things that need to change about WoW's auction house
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen and Fox Van Allen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Check out Fox and Basil's reboot of Call To Auction, and email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail! Of all the many things that could be done to make the Auction House a less frustrating and intimidating experience for players, three stand out to me. First, Blizzard needs to fix the insane inflation in the economy. Second, it needs to fix what people see when they click on an auctioneer, and lastly, it needs to allow farmers to fill buy orders instead of posting stock for sale. These three changes, if made, would greatly equalize the economy and serve to reduce the drudgery that the vast majority of players have to deal with. What the heck are buy orders? I'll start with buy orders because it's the least obvious issue. Right now, when a farmer wants to make some gold for a BoE or a mount or whatever, they go and farm and then come back to a city and dump everything they've made onto the AH. Nobody likes waiting for their money, and most farmers have been burned by a huge batch of goods coming back, minus the auctioneers' listing cut, unsold due to too much competition. In order to have to wait to lose money for all the hard work they did, they'll list their goods more cheaply than they're perhaps worth.
How to fix professions for Mists of Pandaria: An open letter to Blizzard
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Fox Van Allen and Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Feed Fox's ego by emailing him, tweeting him at @foxvanallen, or sacrificing your first-born to him. And be sure to catch the return of Basil and Fox's podcast, Call to Auction! Ladies and gentlemen who love the economic arts, today's column isn't for you. It's an open letter to Blizzard's game developers, with me begging on bent knee for them to improve our collective professions for Mists of Pandaria. Of course, you're free to read it too. In fact, I hope you do and add to it in the comment section. Don't get me wrong, this isn't a letter of complaint. Blizzard got an awful lot right this expansion, and I'm not going to be shy giving credit where credit is due. But there's always room for improvement. So let's roll up our sleeves, point out what needs fixing, and then hold the folks at Blizzard responsible for what we get next expansion. So, you with me? If so, let's begin. Dear Blizzard,
Can the WoW economy tolerate a cartel?
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Fox Van Allen and Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Feed Fox's ego by emailing him, tweeting him at @foxvanallen, or sacrificing your first-born to him. And be sure to catch the return of Basil and Fox's podcast, Call to Auction! One of the coolest things about studying the WoW economy -- at least for me -- is that there are a lot of interesting parallels between the fictional game world of Azeroth and the real world. Today, we're going to examine a very curious topic we've never discussed here before: cartels. Writer Nick sent in an email last week, posing a very interesting hypothetical question: Let's say you have a max level druid, I use druid as an example as they can fulfil all roles. To the best of your ability, you contact as many druids as possible on the server, which ideally would spread via word of mouth, and recruit your server's entire populace of druids into a single guild, a druid cartel if you will. From then on, if ANYONE on your server wants a druid for their raid, arena etc. they pay a premium to the guild in which profits are pooled, and all benefit. Perhaps you could have a comprehensive price structure in which say an ilvl 397 druid is at a higher premium than an ilvl 384 druid. Do you think this idea is at all feasible, and does it go against any Blizzard rules? I can't help but giggle at the potential repercussions of something like this on any given realm.
How to make gold on a small realm
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Fox Van Allen and Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Feed Fox's ego by emailing him, tweeting him at @foxvanallen, or sacrificing your first-born to him. And be sure to catch the return of Basil and Fox's podcast, Call to Auction! Last week, you responded surprisingly well to my column about fixing the economies on smaller servers. There are some big ideas in there, from merging Auction Houses to allowing the creation of buy orders. But there's a problem with big ideas -- they're unlikely to be embraced quickly. A lot of you are stuck on slow, economically depressed realms, and little about your realm's economy is going to change soon. But don't give up hope. It is possible to make money on a smaller realm that sees low economic activity. How? With a little bit of creativity, you can actually turn the problems of a smaller realm into avenues for profit.
Six gold-making macros that will save you hours
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen and Fox Van Allen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Check out Fox and Basil's reboot of Call To Auction, and email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail! As you start spending more time making money, you start to realize how much time you waste. Have you ever had to mail every single item in your bag to another of your characters? It's a lot of right-clicking. There are a bunch of tasks like this, including selling to vendors, buying from vendors, prospecting, posting for sale, and crafting. First, know that only some things can be really automated. If there's a cast time, for example, the best you can do with a macro is shorten multiple clicks into a single macro that can be clicked or hotkeyed. Luckily, there's no cast time on vendor and mailbox interactions!
