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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.
Insider Trader: The patch 3.1 glyph market
Insider Trader is your inside line on making, selling, buying and using player-made products.If you are a Scribe who has not yet stepped into the glyph market since patch 3.1 went live on Tuesday, April 14th, then you'd better hustle! As we discussed pre-patch, the glyph market is undergoing a radical shift. For a limited time, perhaps very limited, it is soaring to epic heights. Unfortunately, this will not last, and I expect the market to take a sobering downturn in the next couple of weeks. This upswing is also affecting related markets, such as those for inks and herbs, and although we will likely see a bit of a price crash once the glyph market deteriorates, these should stabilize relatively quickly. Today, I will be reviewing why and how the glyph market is changing, and make some predictions for the future. I will also discuss how you can earn some of this post-patch wealth, as well as ways to continue making some profit even after the demand for glyphs drops. I will also be pointing you to some interesting stories around the web of how other Scribes are cashing in this week!
Starting out in Vana'diel: The auction house
Hello adventurers! It's been a while, hasn't it? We've been put off track thanks to an anime convention and a certain holiday, but we're back and better than ever! Last time I said we were going to talk about the auction gouse, and that's exactly what we're going to learn about today!Final Fantasy XI's auction house isn't your standard ebay-esque system. While there is bidding, there is no such thing as a buyout, and you can't actually buy from a specific person. Items are put into the auction house, you can see if there are any of a certain item in-stock, and you can choose to place an amount of gil for that item. This type of auction is a variant on the silent auction, where there is no auctioneer and rising bidding price. Interested? Keep on reading and we'll get into the specifics of how this system works -- it's a little tricky at first.
Time is Money: Using the unmodified Auction House
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).The Auction House is something that you've probably been using since you were a wee little thing, still counting coppers. Despite this experience, there may still be a few things about the system that you might not know, and these tricks will help you buy smart and sell with confidence. Purchasing itemsi. Price per itemWhen asked what the focus of my public school math classes were, the first thing that comes to mind is grocery store navigation. Seriously. I'm pretty sure that we spent an ample amount of time, spread out over the years, working on making change, understanding tax, and learning that price per unit (such as $1 per pound) is sometimes convoluted in order to trick us into parting with more cash. When looking at the basic, unmodified Auction House, you can quickly determine which stacks of cloth are selling each piece for the cheapest. This is easy to do when looking at several stacks of 20, but often, there are several partial stacks for sale as well, and sometimes you can actually get a bargain by snatching those up. Other times, they're priced at a huge mark-up!Mouse-over the icon for the item, and the tooltip that appears will tell you the Bid Price Per Unit and the Buyout Price Per Unit. In seconds, you'll be able to tell what to bid on, what to buy out, and what to avoid.
Time is Money: Low-level cloth
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).Cloth has always been a farming staple. It doesn't require any special skills, and you can begin right out of the gate. Changes to the game over the past year have put some cloth in even higher demand, making it an incredibly lucrative business. While any cloth is worth farming, there are two types in particular, wool and mageweave, that fetch a high price. This is because, compared to the other types of cloth, they have a short window of appearance when leveling. Depending on how often you linger when questing, you practically jump straight from linen to silk, and from silk to runecloth. To add to this, Blizzard has increased the speed at which we level, and even added bind on account shoulder armor that speeds us up even more. You can even Recruit-a-Friend for an unprecedented bonus. The advent of achievements has also increased the demand for cloth, as people are eager to earn reputation, become pirates and then buddy up to the goblins again, and maximize professions. So how can you best take advantage of this market?
Starting out in Vana'diel: Community, controls and cooperation
Hello there adventurers! It's Thursday, and that means more tips for those of you who are new to Vana'diel.This time around we have some less documented topics to talk about -- the controls of Final Fantasy XI, how to get into groups and how to run groups, and answer one of the questions presented by reader Green Armadillo in last column's comment area.I know these topics may seem weird for a recurring feature that is suppose to be a guide to starting out in Final Fantasy XI. You would think I would be tackling more game play issues or tips on how to level. However, these topics play right into getting the most out of your FFXI experience. Knowing these things is going to help you tremendously in Vana'diel, so let's stop talking about it and get down into it.
Time is Money: Selling vs. Disenchanting
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).Today we'll be discussing the benefits of disenchanting items, and weigh them against your other options, such as vendoring and auctioning. For the purposes of this discussion, I am going to assume that you aren't using the materials to level, but rather, are interested in making the most gold possible.
Insider Trader: Patch 3.1, profits and preparation
Insider Trader is your inside line on making, selling, buying and using player-made products.Patch 3.1 is looming ever closer, and things are about to change in a big way. Today I'll be discussing how the patch is going to affect your professions, and how you can take advantage of this by maximizing your profits on the Auction House. Players have become increasingly bored with raiding because the content that was released with the expansion pack, Wrath of the Lich King, was too quickly conquered. Across the board, players are showing up to raids on an inconsistent basis, and many people now spend much of their time on the Public Test Realm playing through Ulduar. This has contributed to falling prices on the Auction House for raiding materials and consumables, because not only have many people stopped raiding, many others have decided to save their gold and raid without being buffed to the gills. What should you do in these tight times? Aside from the things for which you are currently saving, the patch will bring with it a 1000g bill to learn how to dual spec, costs to fund raid wipes, bring new consumables, and enchant and gem new gear. By learning what to sell and purchase and when, you can minimize your post-patch costs and make some gold while you're at it.
WoW Rookie: Bank on it
New around here? WoW Rookie points WoW's newest players to the resources they need to get acclimated. Send us a note to suggest a WoW Rookie topic.Got stuff? You need a banker. Creating a dedicated character to do nothing but hang out in town, store goods and handle your finances may sound redundant at first. But time is money, friend -- and a banker can save you both. The benefits:Eliminate travel time. No more hearthing back to the city at the end of every session, and no more trudging back to your current base of operations when you're ready for some action. Trust us – when you hit the Outlands and have to travel from Shattrath City all the way back to the Old World to use an Auction House, you'll be glad to skip that whole process.Put the entire Auction House at your fingertips. Anything item you need is instantly at your disposal when your banker is at the ready. Log in the banker, buy what you need, mail it to whichever character needs it. (Remember, mail between characters on the same account is now instant.) It's that quick and easy.
The Chronicles of Spellborn interview explains game's unique aspects
The Chronicles of Spellborn is a game we've been hearing more about lately. We recently noticed an interview by Nolvadex at the Italian gaming site Gamesource with The Chronicles of Spellborn's lead community manager Pierre-Yves "Mirage" Deslandes. Mirage discusses a relatively smooth European launch for the title and some of the complexities of their publishing deals, insofar as they affect the European market. The challenges of balancing PvE and PvP content in the game comes up, and Mirage also addresses why The Chronicles of Spellborn shipped without an auction house, stressing that a marketplace is indeed on the way. In terms of building upon the game's combat systems, Netherlands-based developer Spellborn NV doesn't plan to make any major changes to the game's combat system, which Mirage states is the trademark and backbone of The Chronicles of Spellborn. Adding greater depth to what's presently offered instead of simply adding more races and classes to the game is clearly a priority for the developers.
One Shots: There's no place like home
For some World of Warcraft players, the weekend is a great time to run up an alt, or just to pop back to the old world and work on your achivements. While we don't know what takes Khaldun from Maelstrom's Horde back to Undercity, he grabbed this nifty screenshot to show off this area near the auction houses. Perhaps he's out to get some PvP in on a lower-leveled alt? Or just grabbing something from the AH to send to another character. One Shots is in need of more screenshots, so if you've got some time while out adventuring, why not gather some up for us and send them to us here at oneshots AT massively DOT com? Add your name, the game it's from - guild, server and description welcome too - and you're set!%Gallery-9798%
Insider Trader: Zapping in the North
Insider Trader is your inside line on making, selling, buying and using player-made products.Engineers have plenty of fun tricks up their sleeves, and that includes a hip, quirky means of gathering. Specifically, they ride around on fancy machines zapping clouds into Crystallized elements, at least in the far North. Such elements are used in crafting, or combined in stacks of ten to form Eternal elements, which are also a common reagent in patterns and schematics. Both forms of these elements sell for handsome sums on the Auction House, and can be stockpiled for one's own needs, such as updating item enchants. This week's Insider Trader is devoted to helping you find those clouds and zap them with a vengeance!
Insider Trader: Your bad self
Insider Trader is your inside line on making, selling, buying and using player-made products.In the World of Warcraft, as in life, we are constantly being faced with morally significant choices. Some players try their best to listen to the Angel on their shoulder, while others will do whatever suits them at the time. Proper etiquette is always in debate.Of course, as this is a virtual world, the moral implications of our actions are on a much smaller scale. Hitting someone for being annoying could cause many problems in my personal and professional lives, yet blasting someone similar off of a cliff in-game can be almost therapeutic. When it comes to gathering and crafting, greed crops up. There are many ways to get what you want, often at the expense of others. This week, Insider Trader will discuss the underhanded side of the professional world.
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.
Insider Trader: Finding your niche
Insider Trader is your inside line on making, selling, buying and using player-made products.In the World of Warcraft, just as in real life, your professional duties seem to extend beyond your job title. Perhaps most of your guild can cook, but are they all farming and contributing raid food? Which guildmate is the go-to-person for enchants, and who is donating materials instead of selling them on the Auction House for personal gain? Don't get me wrong, here. Personal gain is a perfectly legitimate pursuit. We all have to support ourselves, and we all have expenses as well as things that we simply want. Still, there is a difference between someone who has maximized a skill and someone who really works it. What is your niche? Are you the master of profits, a provider, or someone who brings the goods that no one else can? Today I'll be talking about how we practice our professions, and the roles and styles that we can adopt to enrich our in-game professional experiences.
Northrend's Gross Domestic Product: 719 million gold
Our friend The WoW Economist started a little project the other day: he added up, according to the top items lists, all of the products sold from Northrend across the servers, and then multiplied each by what he calls a "median" price (though exactly how that's reached, we're not sure), and landed on a huge amount of gold: 719,918,239.7. Obviously I'm not a WoW Economist (I'm not even that good at math), but that sounds to me like Northrend's gross domestic product: players are creating an economy of 719 million gold in Northrend from week to week.Unfortunately, that number alone doesn't tell us much, except that there's a lot of gold moving around in Northrend (it would be interesting to compare this to, say, Azeroth or Outland's equivalent, though the more useful numbers would probably be Outland before the new expansion hit, when everyone was still farming and selling items from there). And it will be interesting to see this tracked in the future: the real GDP is usually used as an indicator of both standard of living and a country's economic health, and while there are drawbacks to using that number to gauge both of those qualities, it's probably fair to say the economy in Northrend is booming. Maybe tracking this in the future will let us see how new content patches or item or even class updates can affect what the economy does there.Very interesting. EVE Online's creators, CCP, have actually hired an economist to help run their ingame economy, and while WoW's isn't generally seen as quite that complicated, there are still plenty of big numbers to play around with..
The Daily Grind: On MMOs and Alts
Sign in on the auction house mule in World of Warcraft, check mail, and then scan the AH. Log in to EVE Online, pull up the markets, check what's up in Jita. Figure out if you need to make something to sell or use then log in the alts to do the dirty work. For some people, an alt is as simple as having a bank character that you send everything to for selling, or as involved as having a string of alts who can do every single production/tradeskill in your favorite MMO. Personally, I'm one of those folks who has a bank alt on pretty well every MMO account possible and a couple of profession alts purely for the professions I think are fun or interesting. This morning we thought we'd ask you - do you have any of those alts floating around, and if so, what are your alts for?
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!
Wrath 101: Upgrading equipment in minutes on the AH
New Wrath greens are dropping fast and furious, as are BoE blues, plus crafters are cranking out new Wrath pieces to level up and much of this is getting dumped on the Auction House. If you're still wearing Outland greens and blues, I highly recommend heading directly to the AH and search the Armor and Weapons section. Sort the results by level so new Wrath items will show up at the top. Now, go crazy.Last night I found four pieces that were significant upgrades to what I was wearing. On my Feral Cat Druid I replaced my Staff of Beasts with an Aquatic Great Staff of the Tiger (+40 Agi, +40 Str.) I also picked up Vrykul Shackles, Arctic Chestpiece and Deacon's Wraps (for his healing kit). Clearly this won't work well for those who are Kara geared (and beyond) but for everyone else, you can grab some excellent pieces for 10-50 gold. If you have trouble determining if a piece is an upgrade, install the RatingsBuster AddOn that translates stats into direct benefits (i.e. +5 Agility displays as +0.13% Crit & +0.26% Dodge for my Feral Druid.)Arthas awaits and so do your questions. Find the answers you've been looking for that will help you with your journey into Northrend and to level 80 with Wrath 101.
