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Guildwatch: "Enjoy the Soviet Union"
Oh my -- we've heard about undercutting prices on the AH before (and everyone knows that when you get undercut on the AH, you just buy the lower sales and bring them back up to your prices), but I don't think I've ever seen someone get quite so angry about it. Blueroot was just chugging along, selling Runecloth at what his Auctioneer claimed it should be, and all of a sudden Crunkya showed up, angry that he'd been undercut so much and had to invest so much money in someone that was clearly an Obama voter. Wait, what? Yeah, we're not sure how he got there either, but you can see the result above. Lots more drama, as well as downed and recruiting news, in this week's Guildwatch, which starts up right after the break below. If you have a tip for us, from your guild or just a guild you've been following on your realm, please do take a second and email us about it at guildwatch@wow.com. We get a lot of tips and it takes a lot of time to sift through them, but as long as you make it look like what you see below (keep it short and sweet, include all necessary guild info), you'll see it here.
Breakfast Topic: The best city for shopping
This discussion site we linked the other day, Epic Advice, is humming with activity, and full of interesting queries and answers about the World of Warcraft. Like this one: which city is the best for running to and from the bank and the AH (the question-asker also wants to get the mage portal in that circuit, but for the purposes of our discussion, we'll assume you're on a bank alt, so no portal necessary)? In terms of speed and ease, which is the best capital city to set up shop in?
The Queue: Where's my bailout Blizzard?
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Adam Holisky will be your host today. Dear Blizzard,I've spent the past year and a half writing about WoW. I need some gold. Can you bail me out?I can provide you with a promise I'll restructure my daily questing and resource farming, providing a leaner and meaner gold flow for my raiding activities. But I'm going to need some start up help.Regards,Adam.P/S: If I don't get my gold bailout, I'll Blame Canada and not you (which happens to be today's music selection).Athinah asked..."I'm so happy that signs of the new druid forms are coming out but...When exactly are they coming out? Is there a chance that they could come out sooner if Blizzard finishes them sooner? If not, what are the chances of the next patch coming out in a month or so?"
Time is Money: Owning your own guild bank
Kebina Trudough here, offering you the best gold making secrets they don't want you to know about! I was like you once, poor and homely, before I discovered my patented system. Now you too can fill your pockets with the good stuff without ever breaking a sweat! Why spend all your time toiling when you could be vacationing in the Hot Springs? I'm not offering these tips for 100 gold, or 90 gold, or even 50 gold! No, not even 20 gold! My system is yours for FREE! Satisfaction guaranteed or I'll give you a full refund (handling charges may apply).A character's bank is a special place meant to store gear, consumables, novelty items and a whole mess of other things (and I do mean mess!). Because of this, many players have at least one "bank alt" which is an additional character created primarily to house and auction items. The value of your banker's ability to store things should not be underestimated. Today, I will walk you through the steps to and costs of purchasing bank space, and show you an example of how it can be utilized to help you make gold. Banking Costs: Guild vs. PersonalEvery bank alt should purchase the first four bag slots within their own personal banks. This will cost you a total of 36g10s, and require that you purchase actual bags to place in those slots. The more slots the bags can hold, the more storage you will have.
Addon Spotlight: AuctionLite
Addon Spotlight takes a look at the little bits of Lua and XML that make our interfaces special. From bar mods to unit frames and beyond, if it goes in your Addons folder, we'll cover it here. Slightly continuing in the vein of "alternatives to," today's Addon Spotlight looks at an addon that some prefer to the mighty Auctioneer. Auctioneer is one of the all-time great WoW addons; it's been around forever and offers pretty much every auction-related feature you could possibly think of. Unfortunately, massive feature set and good book-keeping facilities come at a cost: system resources. There's no denying that Auctioneer is well up there on the list of mods that use rather a lot of memory and CPU. Enter AuctionLite. The "lite" applies both to its feature set and its resource footprint. It doesn't cover everything Auctioneer does, but the core use cases, at least for me, are covered: Track average prices Suggest prices for listings based on what's on the market right now (undercut) Rapid listing and buyout Calculate disenchant prices Show auctions that look like good deals
The state of the Azerothian economy
Thermalnoise over on the WoW LJ thought of a great poll, and the results are interesting. He asked readers there what the average amount of gold they had on their characters was, and I thought the amounts were relatively high: between 2,000 and 10,000g for about 40% of those polled. The other big chunk is between 200 and 2,000g (a little under 30% of respondents), which is where I'd expect most of the player base to be, but no: apparently Blizzard's bigger rewards in Wrath of the Lich King (not to mention the higher gold sinks, requiring us to try and raise more gold if we want to fly around or ride a mammoth) have made us richer as a whole.Thermalnoise also asked how much your savings of gold fluctuates, and for most people it apparently stays pretty much the same, or generally increases (probably as they run professions, do quests, or sell off drops and pay repairs). I'd imagine Blizzard is keeping a pretty close eye on just how our gold moves around, and that "steadily increase" is what they'd want all of our money to do, just to keep the game's economy moving around.In fact, though I'm probably repeating myself here, it'd be nice to have them give us some insight on just what's happening with the ingame economy. We've gotten a few hints at what sells and doesn't on the realms, but it would be interesting to see some official numbers about the average amount of money that players have and keep at the various levels of the game. and exactly where it all goes when we spend it.
10 things I learned from a destitute alt on an RP realm
I have a few alts on an RP realm that I visit from time to time, and I remember thinking to myself at one point: "These characters are a bunch of deadbeats." I'd gotten too used to the alts on my main realm being a bunch of pampered brats, spoiled rotten by the presence of a hardworking main, so financial discipline had grown to be a thing of the past. Not so on another realm where you don't have a main, and I realized that unless I went back to a few monetary basics, my alts would wind up dancing naked on mailboxes in pursuit of gold. This is a fine tactic with a long and storied history, but when your most promising alt is a level 16 Undead Mage, you're up the proverbial creek. No one wants to see a rotting, naked corpse.So I started not being a deadbeat, and it was with surprise and delight that I logged on to find the little tyke sitting on a pretty respectable pile of gold by level 21 -- as in, he can afford to pay for his level 30 mount and training several times over, and still have enough left over to train himself all the way to 45 even if he doesn't make another penny.
The many benefits of being a high-level Cook
I agree with Relmstein: Cooking is awesome. Unlike, say, fishing (which I said on the podcast last week will never really stop being boring, since boring is "working as intended" for that one), cooking has really transitioned over the years. Back in the day, it was kind of a silly way to make new foods to eat, in Burning Crusade it became a pretty solid extra buff to have, and it Wrath it has really become a necessity for anyone looking to make their characters and their raids the best they can be.Plus, as Relmstein notes, there's added functionality -- the feasts let you lay out an entire meal for your party, and the addition of the Dalaran cooking quests (and the recipe rewards) have turned the daily cooking quests from just a few extra gold and mats per day into a whole currency system on its own. Fooding it up ingame has become a minigame of its own, and with food giving out such diverse (and significant) stat bonuses, not to mention that it often fetches great prices on the AH, there's no reason for your level 80 character to not have worked a little bit on leveling up cooking.Sold yet? One of the last things I did at level 70 was level up both cooking and fishing using El's Angling's great guide, and though it took me the better part of two weekends in a row, it's paid off many times over since. Cooking has definitely moved from kind of a fun third profession to mess around with to something that will seriously benefit you as a character in quite a few ways.
On the search for Heavy Frostweave Bandages
One of the weirdest changes in Northrend so far is the way First Aid training works, strangely enough. Used to be that once you hit a certain level, you could just go run to the trainer to train up the next wave of bandages (or you could buy a manual from a trainer somewhere), but not so in the expansion: to get Heavy Frostweave Bandages, you have to depend on what seems to be a world drop.The rules are still a little hazy, and the plans to get it seem to be somewhere between experiment and superstition: we know for sure that you need to have 390 First Aid already to get the book to drop (though you need 400 to actually use it), and we know that it can drop from almost anywhere in the world. But apparently there are a few places where it drops more often: in Zul'Drak, sometimes in Sholazar Basin, and sometimes in dungeons. Other than that, everything else is just rumors -- I haven't gotten the book yet, and I've been 400 since I had enough Frostweave to level up. I heard it was on the AH for around 20g, but of course that varies by realm, and when I checked today, it wasn't on the AH at all. And we've also heard that once you learn it, it won't drop for you again, so there may eventually be an AH market for these -- until all potential sellers actually learn the recipe, that is. And then there's this, which just makes my head spin. We may see another level of Frostweave bandages in a future patch.Very strange, and strange choice by Blizzard to do it this way in the first place. It also appears that a stack of Heavy Frostweave Bandages sells to vendors for only 5g, so the days of nabbing lower-than-3g stacks of cloth on the AH and selling them to vendors for a profit may be over. Which is fine, because your guild's tailor could probably use it anyway. But I am bummed I haven't see the manual drop yet -- the better my gear gets, the less the non-heavy bandages do for me.Update: Yes of course they can't be on the AH, because as you can see in the screenshot above, the manual is BoP. Never mind. Thanks, commenters.
WoW Enchanting mats are selling high, opportunists -- to the auction house!
Virtual economies are a fascination for us, and EVE Online isn't the only game with people who spend much of their time playing the markets, of course -- World of Warcraft is rife with opportunities for rampant capitalism. Case in point: gold-making advice blog The WoW Economist reports that some materials used by the Enchanting profession are selling for outrageously high prices at the auction house post-Wrath of the Lich King launch -- an excellent time for money-minded players to cash in. Writer John Murphy points out that Infinite Dust and Greater Cosmic Essences are selling for 150g and 250g per stack, respectively, and that he made 2,300g in one Sunday afternoon taking advantage of the situation. The recommendation: disenchant, sell now! Level up Enchanting later! There are always these oddly destabilizing surges after expansions in these games, so it's good to know how to exploit them to the max. Go forth and become filthy rich, guys and gals!
Tracking the BoE market in Wrath
The folks over at WoW Economist have started up a blog on one of the most popular problems in World of Warcraft: making money, and lots of it. The truth is that it's not hard to do, whether you're working with professions, trying to hang in the AH, PvPing, or just starting out, but everyone's got a tip to share, it seems, and WoW Economist is no exception.This time around, they've got a good short analysis up of what might happen to green BoEs in Wrath of the Lich King. Once upon a time, there was actually a good market for BoEs on the AH -- some of them even challenged Karazhan gear in the early days of level 70, so anyone new to 70 could just spend some time in the Auction House and pick up some nice gear for running the basic instances and starting to build up blues and epics. But in my experience the market has thinned out lately -- while there's always a market for enchanging materials you can get from BoEs, people aren't that interested in buying green gear with epics so easy to get elsewhere. Most of the time, I get more from vendors for greens than I can actually sell them for on the AH.But WoW Econ says there's a bump on the way -- Death Knights are going to be shooting through 60-70 directly after Wrath, and they're going to want the level 66-70 greens floating around (plate gear with Strength and Stam on it), so that will probably sell well. But everything else is pretty much dried up -- DE it if you can, or just vendor it away and move on. The gold will come quicker in Northrend anyway.
Noncombat pets bought before the patch not selling on the AH
Reader Dave sent word of another bug in the game after the latest patch (thanks!) that might cost players some money. A player was trying to sell his Hyacinth pet on the Auction House (there's a small craze on vanity pets right now, thanks to the achievements) when he ran into a problem -- an error told him that you couldn't AH "an item with used charges." Except that he hadn't used the pet yet -- it wasn't in his pets screen. But Blues have confirmed that with pets purchased or obtained but not used before the patch, this can happen -- the pet will be unsellable.Darkmoon Faire cards are apparently having the same issue, but as you might expect, it's unlikely that Blizzard will take steps to fix this, both because all we're talking about here is AH selling (not a critical game mechanic), and because this problem doesn't seem to be affecting new pets and cards, only cards that were purchased and owned before the patch. But maybe they will hotfix it, we'll just have to wait and see.Anyone that horded pets to sell on the AH could be in trouble, though -- if you've got a significant amount of gold stored up in pets you were intending to sell, you might be out ot luck.
Key items and tabards out of the bags soon, says Tigole
Tigole has gotten over his little weekend rampage on the forums and gotten back to business: he's got two tidbits about a popular subject among most players: making more bag space available.First up is tabards -- he says that there are no plans to move tabards from the bags to the UI (as with the pet and mount changes), but that players shouldn't worry too much, because Blizzard is making it easier for players to get lost and destroyed tabards back if necessary. Since the Championing mechanic means we won't have to wait till Exalted to get tabards, there'll be a tabard vendor in Dalaran that'll have most of the tabards you need at a relatively cheap price.And "keys" that aren't keys are also mentioned -- by this, we mean things like the Scepter of Celebras or the Mallet of Zul'Farrak; attunement items, in other words. Tigole says there's a plan for these also (another "keychain" tab, maybe?), but that we won't see it in time for the expansion.Good news on both ends for people short on bag space, even if we have to wait a while. Personally my bag space is freeing itself up lately -- it's an "everything must go" sale on the AH for me as I try to convert all my soon-to-be obsolete crafting items into gold.
WoW Insider Show Episode 55: The PvE to PvP transfer
The latest episode of the WoW Insider Show is now up for your listening enjoyment over on WoW Radio. Unfortunately, Totalbiscuit (who runs things over there) tells us that they're having more issues with a Google false positive of malware, so this week will be the perfect week to jump on into iTunes and both subscribe to and review our show from there if you haven't yet. Right there in your music player, you can find all of our shows so far, and you can subscribe to get any new ones we do for free right on your new iPod touch (or whatever ya got). Topics on last week's show include: The usual email answering: we answered questions about why there are no Auction Houses in Shattrath or Dalaran, what to do when your guild won't let you roll on damage gear when they ask you to heal, and why getting Champion tabards at Exalted would be a horrible idea. We talked about PvE to PvP transfers and why they might be a problem, but probably won't be. Racial abilites (and the suggestion to free them up a bit) came up in conversation We hit on Mages and why they're thrilled with Mirror Image (stay tuned for more Mage talk next week). And finally we asked around for AH tips, so if you want to make more money on the AH, definitely listen in. If you've got tips or questions of your own, definitely drop us an email: the address is theshow@wow.com. We do this every Saturday, so if you weren't free last week but happen to be around next Saturday at 3:30pm Eastern, jump on over to WoW Radio and tune in to hear us live. Thanks for listening, and enjoy the show!Listen here on the page:
Three tips for the wacky world of AH pricing
I have a confession to make: I've been playing the AH pretty hard for a few weeks now (ever since I started grinding up to the 5000g for my epic, and yes I got it finally), and I've come up with a lot of good tips for you guys, but I've kept them to myself, because I was selfish and didn't want my sources of gold to dry up. But now, I've got pretty much all the gold I need, and I'm ready to bring these to the world. Lots of you will already know what I'm going to say here (some of you might even be angry that I'm telling everyone), but for those of you who haven't found these little holes in the AH, here you go.First of all: level up your First Aid to 325 right now, because I've got three words for you: Heavy Netherweave Bandage. Think all that they'll do is heal you? Think again -- they vendor in the game for a whopping 6g per stack, so every time you log on your AH alt, the first thing you should do is run to the Auctioneer and buy up all the Netherweave cloth you can find for less than 3g -- crafted up into bandages, each stack of cloth is worth at least that, so anything you buy for less than 3g (I've seen it as low as 1g 50s -- people are throwing away money) is pure profit. This is the biggest moneymaker I've found (you don't make much per stack, but after you've "processed" a few hundred stacks, the money adds up), and it made me regret selling Netherweave for anything less than 3g before I figured this out.Second big tip: don't ever buy anything on the weekends. Ever. Prices soar on the weekends, so much so that you'll often be able to take advantage of huge bargains during the week, and then turn around and craft or just resell those items on the weekends, when everyone else is playing. I know you really, really want that Primal Air on Sunday so you can finish off your profession leveling, but wait three days -- by Wednesday, all of the AH sellers will have seen their auctions expired and will be ready to lower the price.
Ask WoW Insider: Cashing out Badges
Time once again to put the considerable brainpower that you, dear readers, have to good use (and by good use we mean other than making funny things about the Failoc). It's time once again to Ask WoW Insider. This week we have a question for you from fordarkness over on WoW LJ -- it's about Badges of Justice, and just when and how would be best to cash them in before the expansion.Obviously, the expansion isn't going to bring in new badge vendors that we can use these for.... Epic level 70 gems will probably still be around and used for your intro raiding gear, but chances are they'll be replaced pretty quick too.I'm debating liquidating my badges into gems, nethers and vortexes and selling them on the AH. Of course, there's the issue of "how soon is too soon" and "what if the patch puts in some new vendor items", along with "I need to get the items out on the market before it becomes flooded and no one wants them due to the imminent release of the LK expansion"!So whaddaya think? If you have extra badges, liquidating them into Nethers and Vortexes isn't too bad an idea, since even Badge gear might be overtaken by green gear a few quests into Northrend. But then again, even crafted gear that uses those items might end up being useless within the first few levels, so what's a Badge hoarder to do?What's your plan for getting rid of the Badges you have left? Are you just going to spend them as you need them and see what solutions present themselves when Wrath arrives? It would be interesting if Blizzard, say, offered an XP reward in exchange for them after level 70. Or have you already liquidated your stock by selling out Primal Nethers on the AH? What happens to your Badges when the way to Northrend opens up?
Do botters really matter?
Blizzard has had the big botting ban now in place for a couple of weeks, and there are a few people I've noticed who are not online. Additionally I've noticed a change in the auction house price. There are some items like low level enchanting mats that are going for tons more, and others such as high level crafting mats which are going for much less. This is outside of the normal market fluctuations on my server, and many people attribute to the removal of botters.This could be a fallacy of causation – the removal of botters might not have lead to the shakeup at the auction house. There really is no way to prove it, other than the circumstantial evidence of price fluctuations timed with the removal of often-botted items. And in the end, these price fluctuations end up being a wash anyways – the extra that is spent on the lower level items is more than likely offset by the cheaper higher level items. Between the recent wave of bannings and the seemingly nominal impact the ban has had on the overall economy, this begs the questions – do botters really matter? And should Blizzard just ignore them?While it might seem like the answer is a firm no, let's take a look at some of the underlying reasons and assumptions that people bot and why it's considered bad. In particular we'll look at reasons surrounding leveling, playing the economy, and engaging in PvP.
How to make 10,000 gold in a month
I like to have a bit of gold on me at all times. When I see something I want for one of my alts, it's nice to be able to just buy it without thinking about the ramifications for next week's farming and raiding. There's a strategy that I've been using for a couple months now that'll let those that follow it earn upwards of 10,000g a month. To use this strategy, you need to have access to the following: Rare T5/ T6 patterns A steady stream of Badge of Justices or Hearts of Darkness 5 hours a week set aside for hard core farming A second account Those might look like insane requirements to some, and they're not wrong. They are a bit steep. However making this amount of gold should not be easy and be able to be done by everyone. But with that said, it's not too hard to get into a T5 guild these days, and weekly Kara runs plus a few heroics can get you 30+ badges a week.Read on after the break for the complete strategy.
Breakfast Topic: Biggest AH sale?
Once upon a time, before Burning Crusade was released, my Alliance druid was hanging out in Felwood and a Krol Blade dropped. I was able to sell it on the AH on the first try for 700 gold, which in those days was a lot of in-game cash.More recently, my Horde druid picked up an Eye of the Sea from the Fishing Quest reward. I sold it for 379 gold which was 21 gold less than my first asking price. Not as big of a haul as my first big sale, but still a welcome addition to my Epic Flight fund.What is the most you have sold anything for on the Auction House? Was it your first asking price?
WoW Investor helps you fund that potion habit
Will, one of the two bloggers behind this new site, sent us a tip early this morning hoping for a shout-out, and I'm glad to oblige. WoW Investor is a new blog that I've already added to my RSS reader. Their stated purpose is "to keep this blog updated with the latest strategies to increase your wealth using purely financial means," and so far they've been sticking to it.What do they mean by "purely financial means"? You won't be finding advice on what mobs to grind or which daily quests are the most profitable. Instead, your WoW investment team Will and Jeff bring you ideas on what you can do to earn some gold without leaving the cozy confines of your favorite capitol city. Here are a couple of money-making opporunities they've posted already: If you see Netherweave Cloth going for much less than 3g a stack, buy it, make Heavy Netherweave Bandages, and vendor them. One stack of cloth makes 10 bandages, which will get you 3g from the vendor. At the moment, low-priced Primal Nethers are flooding the AH, so you can make a tidy profit by crafting various Spellthreads. Even if you're not a tailor yourself, you should be able to find one who will make you the Spellthread for mats plus a tip, without killing your profit margin. Looking forward to more, guys!
