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Five Easy Ways to Make More Gold
Your gear starting to smell from overuse? Your weapons rusting up because you can't afford new ones? Your mount looking a little rickety (or nonexistent because you haven't seen 100g yet)? Worry not! We're here to help. Here's five easy (and TOS-compliant) ways to rake in the moolah.1. Get some greedy professions. If I could tell people two things about professions, I would say: always take First Aid asap, and, if you want to make money, get herbalism and skinning. Those two, skinning especially, are your best bet at making tons of cash on the Auction House. Leather is used by almost all the professions (not just leather workers), and as any alchemist will tell you, even though Silverleaf literally grows on trees, there's never enough of it around to make the potions you need. Some people will say enchanting or mining, but for the first, I'd rather auction my green items off seperately, and in the second case, well, maybe that's just my personal taste. Mining seems to sell well on the AH, too. And speaking of the AH,2. Get real familiar with the Auction House. Don't ever sell anything to a vendor unless you really, really need the space in your bags, because even stuff that seems worthless to you can usually find a buyer on the AH. Twinkers are looking for good low level items all the time, and even fish scales are used by Shamans as reagents. If you're serious about making gold, you've probably already done this by now, but make yourself a level one alt, get him or her to a city with an auction house, and park them there, then mail things to them from your other characters. One more note about the Auction House...3. Get Auctioneer. This is a no brainer-- if you haven't heard of this wonderful addon yet, then it's no wonder you don't have your mount. Once you've installed it, run to the nearest AH, let it do a scan, and boom, you've got all the AH prices cached on your computer. Then, when you're out in the world, you've got exactly what every single item in the game should sell for. Plus, when you have things to sell, Auctioneer will tell you the best price to put your items at so they'll sell and you'll make money. Usually, you can sell a little higher than the price Auctioneer puts your items at (especially in the high levels, this can squeeze you a few more gold), but there's nothing easier than just throwing all your extra stuff on the AH, and letting Auctioneer set them up for you. And having Auctioneer around will help you...4. Look for deals everywhere. Don't ninja anything, but there's no shame in casually announcing, as your party makes their way to SM, that you're saving for your mount, and so you'll be rolling on everything that no one needs. When you get quest rewards, most of that stuff is soulbound, so if you're offered a choice of two things you can't use as a reward, always take the most expensive item. And watch vendor prices, too-- every once in a while, Traveling Salesman Antonio Perelli (or any of the other NPC vendors) will be selling a potion that's selling for a few gold more on the AH.5. Play! Finally, the best way to conjure up more gold also happens to be the best way to conjure up experience-- get out there and kill stuff. Any looting at all is better than standing around Orgimmar telling Chuck Norris jokes. Of course, you should choose where you're killing stuff, too. If you're just grinding for XP, pick humanoid mobs-- they drop much more money, and usually better items. And if you can get a group together, an instance run is (literally) a goldmine for hard-to-find items.But above all, the best way to make a lot of gold quickly is just to have fun playing the game. Do what you want, enjoy it, and before you'll know it, you'll have the epic mount you so desperately desire. Just in time to start saving for flying mounts...
Precious metals infect Pharrell's BlackBerry 8700
Look, do what you want with your hard-earned dollars, we say -- just don't come running to us when you leave your six-figure phone on the bus. That there is hip-hop's Pharrell Williams, doing his best not to show any signs of discomfort while struggling to hold up his 18-karat gold BlackBerry 8700. We have to believe that thing weighs a proverbial ton if it's anything close to solid, and to pick a device as utilitarian as the friggin' BlackBerry 8700 to pimp out seems a bit off to us. At any rate, if RIM had anything to do with this monstrosity's manufacture, at least it probably put a decent dent into their legal bills.
Breakfast Topic: Fewer Farmers?
I wrote a while back about an odd lack of farmers on my own realm at the time. And, with yesterday's additional account closures, I wonder if other realms are starting to see similar relief. Will Blizzard's continued efforts against the gold selling community really have a long term impact on the game's economy? Or will the farmers simply continue finding new methods to avoid Blizzard's watchful eye? I personally think it will be a constant battle on Blizzard's part - but if they stick to this sort of approach, they can make farming sufficiently difficult that it may become a less lucrative business. But that's a long-term view - the important thing for current players is how are conditions today? Does your realm seem to be lacking in farmers since all of these account closures?
59,000 More Accounts Closed
In their continued effort to rid Azeroth of hackers and gold farmers, Eyonix announced this evening that 59,000 accounts were closed during the month of June for terms of use violations. Have you seen anyone behaving suspiciously on your server? An account that's being controlled by a bot isn't too difficult to spot if you spend a bit of time paying attention - and Blizzard investigates all reports. So if you suspect such behavior, report it to a GM, and help the community be rid of the annoyance of hackers and bot farmers.
The Economics of Warcraft
This interesting article attempts to explain the economics of Azeroth in terms of real life economic theory. As players, I'm sure we can all poke holes in this theoretical view of our favorite game, or perhaps find the lack of game knowledge frustrating. For example... Goods rarely cost less in the neutral auction house (though sometimes lower prices will reflect lower prices on the Alliance or Horde side - but usually neutral prices are jacked up to the highest possible profit rate), due to the higher cut the Goblins take out of the transaction. Trade-skill items are of less economic importance than seems to be placed on them - very few craftable items being desirable, long-term, over bind on pickup drops found in dungeons. And it does not consider Blizzard's continued efforts to rid the game of gold farmers, which has an ongoing (though variable) impact on the available supply of gold in the economy. However, it is always interesting to see how real economic theory can apply to a virtual game world, and I would say the article is worth a read.Update: The comments below may well shed more light on the subject than the initial article - so read on!
RIAA establishes Master Ringtone Sales Award
The big wigs over at the RIAA have established a new reward system, much like the one they use for traditional albums, called the Master Ringtone Sales Award. They're keeping track of how many times a song has been downloaded as a ringtone -- it has to be the original recording, not some clunky midi version -- and once that number hits 500,000 it's considered to have gone Gold. One million sales merit Platinum status and two million marks the start of the ever-expandable Multi-Platinum category, into which the Black Eyed Peas' "My Humps" and three others have already climbed. Check the link for a list of all 128 songs honored -- including some Mariah Carey recorded for Pepsi -- at the inaugural ceremony held in NYC. Rumor has it that next year's event will have a lifetime achievement award for the late Crazy Frog. [Via Slashphone]
Blizzard Closes Another Round of Accounts
In their never-ending war against the evil gold farmers of the planet, Blizzard has announced that during the month of May, over 30,000 accounts have been suspended, removing over 30 million in gold from the economy across all servers. Now, just look at those numbers for a moment: 30 thousand accounts closed. That's a number of subscribers that many small game companies would love to claim as their entire playerbase, and those are not only just the cheaters in WoW, but only the ones who got caught! And 30 million gold out of the economy...that's...well, I'm actually not sure what the hell that means, because I'm not an economist. i'm sure Ben Stien could tell you.In any case, the bottom line is, don't cheat, or Blizzard will get you. If they're lucky. You can read the full announcement at the official homepage right here.
$40 XBL Vision camera & UNO bundle detailed by MS source along with prices & dates for other 360 accessories
Our friendly anonymous source at Microsoft has provided us with a few more details concerning the 360 accessories announced back at E3.Perhaps the most important involves the bundling of the Xbox Live Vision camera with a wired headset, the popular Live Arcade title UNO, and a month of Live Gold service for $39.99 when it releases in the States on September 19, 2006.Granted, this is still an unofficial report (based on a leak of "official" info), so understand that you're probably not gonna get much confirmation from MS until they're good and ready to give it. If you'd like information on what other peripherals are coming out "Holiday 2006" (so sometime in the 4th quarter) and at what price, read on for more.
How to put a premium price on a low-end phone: gold. Lots of it.
Typically, the Sony Ericsson J230i is barely a phone we'd bother writing about. Dual-band 900/1800, 128 x 128 pixel display, built-in FM radio. But unlike most of the J230i's out there, this one isn't available in the phone's stock colors of Cosmo White, Cherry Red, or Deep Blue. Instead, UAE's Cellucom, in cooperation with hypermarket chain Carrefour, is offering up ten solid gold renditions of the bare-bones candybar in a contest running through June 2. That's right, ten lucky folks will walk away with this brick for free -- that's a little more palatable than $1,000,000 for mobile opulence. The phone's specs remain basically unchanged from its more pedestrian counterpart, except for the weight of course, which gets bumped from 84.5 grams to about 130. Call us crazy, but no amount of gold makes up for a boring spec sheet.[Via textually.org]
The million dollar cellphone
How much would you pay for "the Bentley of cellphones"? $1,000? $10,000? Try a cool million bucks. This one-of-a-kind quad-band handset by Goldvish sports a blinding 120 carats worth of VVS-1 grade diamonds, according to designer Emmanuel Gueit, and as you'd expect from a seven-figure phone, features such amenities as Bluetooth, a camera with 8x digital zoom, MP3 playback, FM radio, included 2GB memory card and an EDGE connection (though curiously no 3G option or WiFi -- it seems a million bucks isn't what it used to be). For those of you not willing to drop such an obscene amount of money on a phone that even the designer likens to a boomerang, Goldvish also offers several other diamond-encrusted 18k gold models in your choice of rose, yellow, or white, starting at a much more reasonable $25,600.[Thanks, Langer]
The Challenges of Azeroth
What was your greatest challenge when traversing Azeroth? Of course there are epic monsters to conquer and countless bloody PvP encounters, but character after character I find that the most challenging and time-consuming obstacle in the game involves acquiring a mount. Even though I consider myself a conservative spender, I've never reached level 40 with anything near the 100 gold needed to buy one, and the following hunt for gold in all its forms usually lasts for several levels of scrimping and saving. And after all that work, there's nothing quite like running furiously back to town and buying that mount. There doesn't seem to be a single quest or monster that occupies my time as much as the attempt to acquire that first mount does every time. Is anyone out there with me on this?
Rumor: 360 wireless gaming receiver $20; wheel $130; headset $60; camera $40; Halo and Forza faceplates $20 [update 1]
Thanks to a reliable source from Microsoft, we've learned some important details about the new peripherals announced for the Xbox 360, including pricing and a few Halo faceplate (non)specifics. Check out the leaked info and prices below: 360 wireless gaming receiver (which enables wireless 360 controllers, headsets, and wheels on your PC): $20 Wireless racing wheel: $130 Wireless headset: $60 Xbox Live Vision Camera (with headset, one month of Live Gold, and one arcade -- presumably Xbox Live Arcade -- game): $40 New faceplates for Halo (with the Master Chief on 'em, but not Halo 3 specific) and Forza (no word on connections to the sequel): $20 each 256 MB portable memory unit (MU): no official price yet, but definitely not four times the cost of the older 64MB MU Besides acknowledging that the PC is "the biggest gaming device of all," MS appears to be setting an agressive price for its most relevant new PC accessory, the wireless gaming receiver (at least in comparison to the outrageously priced 360 wireless networking adapter). Unfortunately, no price was revealed as of yet for the USB-based HD-DVD add-on.We've speculated in our recent podcasts as to what would happen to the various 360 SKUs when price drops inevitably occur. An interesting theory bandied about by prolific Joystiq Contributor epobirs (on our earlier bump-to-256MB-MU post) was that a $20 price drop for the Core system, coupled with a $20 price drop on the 64MB MU, would finally allow folks to pick up a capable non-Premium bundle for the original $300 Core price point. (Not a bad way to undercut PS2 memory card prices, too.) We hope to get official confirmation on this info in the not-too-distant future.[Update: Sorry, had the camera price wrong in the headline; it now matches the price of the bundle listed in the body of the text below.]See also: 360's Mem Unit getting a bump to 256MB? (Comment from epobirs) Use 360 wireless peripherals with a PC Engadget & Joystiq's live coverage of Microsoft's Xbox 360 E3 event Joystiq / Engadget podcasts from Day One and Day Two of E3 2006
In-Depth Article on Gold Farming
One of my favorite new WoW sites, Metroblogging Azeroth, has a great article today that goes deep into the controversial world of gold-farming. Author Jonas Luster details the many ways that buying gold outside of the game impacts players, developers, and the gameworld itself, with a knowledge of the game that makes his observations all the more relevant.There are plenty of things that the average gold buyer (who is almost certainly not some intrinsically evil person) probably never takes into account when they purchase gold from a farmer, aside from what shiny new armor it will buy them; they could care less what it does to the economy of the game. Then, there are those who actually believe the practice of gold farming is healthy for a virtual economy, and for people coming from that school of thought, Luster makes a convincing case why, in the end, everyone suffers from the actions of those few. Not to mention the connection he makes between the largest network of online gold-selling sites, and a trio of convicted child molesters. It's good readin'. Check it out here. Thanks to Sean for the link.
Breakfast Topic: Cash for Questing
Making money in the endgame isn't as tiresome as it used to be. With the addition in patch 1.10 of an xp-to-gold conversion -- any level 60 players undertaking quests get gold for them instead of xp -- my guild chat is full of boasts about cash rather than complaints about grinding.Farming for specific drops is still an excellent way to ensure lifelong riches, but now you can do some off-the-beaten-track quests and still get rewarded. Have you found yourself seeking out quests more, now there's cash involved? Or are you annoyed because you earned your epic mount "the hard way"? What's your favourite money-spinner?
Confessions of a Middle School Cheater
In yet another sign of the decaying morals of our youth, today's Salt Lake Tribune has an article on 'cheating' in MMO's that contains some shamefully unremorseful confessions by some local youths of their nefarious gold-buying & pay-per-level activities. Where are these kids getting the cash to buy hundreds of dollars worth of powerleveling services, anyway? At that age I was lucky to get 35 cents to buy a comic book (yes, they were 35 cents...and I was still pissed about the price hike from 25).I love how these kids absolve themselves of guilt with statements like "Yeah, it was cheating...but I got a whole bunch of weapons". I'm pretty sure Lex Luthor said that once...
Gold Farmers Sending Out Press Releases?
As you might imagine, part of my job (aside from crime-fighting) involves poring through the latest WoW-related news items on the web & deciding which are worth pointing out. Sometimes there are some questionable items out there, but today I came across a story on PRWEB, apparently out of Halifax, Nova Scotia (Trailer Park Boys rule!), that is essentially nothing more than a big PR release for a gold farming/powerleveling site, no doubt trying to further bleed our beloved virtual economy dry. I won't mention the actual site in question, as I don't want them to recieve any traffic thanks to us, but I do think that this is A: a pretty ballsy move by the company in question (although they claim not to sell gold or powerleveling, only to rate other sites that do), and B: a pretty telling comment on the state of the virtual goods market; if these businesses are making enough money to have their own community of peer-reviewed sites, then it's obviously getting to be a bigger issue than anybody intended...most of all Blizzard.
Frequent Gamer Miles?
As the discourse over the new economic implications of the MMO market grows, I guess it makes sense that the next step someone would posit is the gaming equivalent of frequent flier miles. In other words, according to this article on Makezine.com, in the not-too-distant future, we will have credit card companies offering purchase incentives for gamers, much as they do for other consumers, by offering them free playtime, virtual currency, or other digital rewards.I find this line-blurring between actual money & virtual currency endlessly fascinating (even though I haven't yet found a good way to get rich quick at it), and the idea of Visa teaming up with Blizzard or the like to try & get gamers to spend more money on their credit cards makes so much sense that I can't believe it isn't happening already. of course, as you read this, some venture capatalist somewhere is already picking up his phone...
No free Xbox Live Gold weekend in Europe
While we recently brought you news that there will be a free Xbox Live Gold trial weekend (albeit not necessarily on the weekend of April Fools' Day), gamers outside of America can stop rejoicing now. The event, sponsored by Verizon, will only be available to U.S. gamers.This makes some business sense, as there is little point for an American phone company to sponsor gamers who cannot even buy their products, but it's disappointing for Europeans -- we often feel that we are losing out when it comes to gaming, and news like this doesn't help. One of the major benefits of Xbox Live is that it is not region-specific, allowing gamers all over the world to play together, and yet the free trial won't play to this strength.
Dubious practices #2: Buying gold
A secondary gold market has sprung up quickly within Azeroth, offering players the ability to use real world earnings to endow their characters with virtual gold, and it's now flourishing. There are two sides to this business -- buying and selling -- and we'll leave discussion of the farming aspect for a future article, concentrating for the moment on the activity players either love or loathe: buying gold. Our recent survey of readers showed that a surprisingly large percentage of you have bought gold or are considering doing so. Especially for the casual player, without spare hours every day to dedicate to endgame raids or grinding for mount money, buying other people's hard-farmed gold may seem like an easy option which enables you to keep up with your guildmates and friends. The benefits for your character are immediate: you can shop in the AH to your heart's content, buy that epic mount, and have some cash to flash when twinking an alt.
Poll Results: Do you buy gold?
Well, folks, the results are in, and some of you may be surprised at the outcome. After asking you all the simple question "Have you ever bought gold?", it turns out that over one quarter of you either have bought gold or are planning to do so later on. However, the majority vote was clear -- you don't much care for the idea. Thanks for voting!
