Tag Archives: gold
Can gold making skill translate to the real world?
Happy new year folks! I’m going to kick start posting for 2011 with an interesting one for you. A topic that comes up often in reader emails and in-game chats is transferring gold making skills to the real world.
It’s easy to see how this could be a frustrating issue for some. The economies of online games can be incredibly complex and data-rich beasts. Mastering the knowledge and techniques to best your fellow gamers and profit is no small feat! So what stops this talent translating to real world profit and riches?
I think the best answer to that question is that it is at once both as simple and as difficult as you think. As simple because the underlying key to making money is what you’ve already mastered online. Acquire a product at one price then resell it at a higher price – that’s it.
The complexity (and the roadblock) is in the detail. In real life product availability and pricing are much less transparent. There’s no auction house search option that instantly tells you if the price you’re looking at is the best one you’ll find.
What should you sell? Where will you source it from? Where will you store it? How will you sell it? Who should you sell it to? How much should you sell it for? How much do others sell it for? How much do you have to sell to cover costs? How much do you have to sell to profit? Is that worth your time? What’s your backup plan?
Provided there’s sufficient interest I’d like to use this series of articles to encourage discussion and promote learning around real world markets. I’ll post about noteworthy real world examples that I encounter or that people leave comments about and we can explore the mechanics behind them together.
Market Saturation and the Glass Jar Paradox
I really like this first example. I don’t plan on providing all the answers along with the examples – that’d defeat the point wouldn’t it! Instead I’d like to present information, maybe with a little direction, and get you thinking.
Leading up to the holiday break my girlfriend and I few batches of Jam to give out to friends as gifts. When it came to looking for glass jars to put the Jam in we checked out a few stores looking for the right kind of jars. After visiting a variety of stores to find the right jars the prices ranged from around $2.50 up to $5 per jar depending on the quality and the type of store. Nothing struck me as terribly unusual about the prices and we continued on to our grocery shopping.
With jar hunting still fresh on my mind, I noticed something interesting when we arrived at the condiment aisle. There were quite nice jars on the shelves there, filled with jam and various other things, for as little as $1.30!
So what’s going on? How can an empty jar sell for more than a full jar? How is it possible that the process of making a product and putting it IN the jar has lowered the sale value?
I’ve pointed toward the answer above and I think it’s a fantastic one to ponder. Let me know how you go! If anyone has similar observations to add leave a comment or send me an email.
Make lots of gold with Archaeology
Busy Busy Busy! Have been caught up in Cataclysm a fair bit lately and working on a number of side projects for the site. Probably will be a little quiet with Christmas and all the family stuff the next few weeks but rest assured cool things are coming!
After hitting 525 Archaeology on the first day of Cataclysm I’ve felt compelled to continue working on uncovering everything. I’ve recovered 15 rares so far and after recovering another 5 more I’ll receive the title ‘Professor’.
One of the most interesting developments for me has been the realisation that there is substantial profit to be made from selling the Keystones. For other completionists out there you too can stand to make a lot of gold here.
The key to profit is patience. Based on the distribution of sites per race some are going to take longer than others to recover 100% of artifacts. If you want 100% of the Tol’vir relics, for example, you’re going to reach 100% in Fossil and Night Elf relics LONG before you get there.
This means that you should NOT be using Keystones for those races to speed up solving. Even without them you’ll reach 100% recovery before you do Tol’vir. So sell the keystones! I’ve had no problems selling Night Elf, Troll and Vyrkul keystones for 100g each on my server. Unbelievably I’ve also see the Tol’vir keystones fetching up to 2000g each.
There’s an interesting opportunity cost calculation people are making here! “I have a rare item in my archaeology book and I can wait longer to farm enough for it – or I can spend and have it now!”
It’s amazing how often now wins :)
Reverse Speculation
What am I talking about? Instead of making a profit from accurately predicting upcoming market swings you make a profit from market swings that have already occured but for which your target market remain unaware.
A really good example of this kind of market – throughout early WOTLK one of my best selling enchants was [Enchant Boots - Surefooted] and for the life of me I could not figure out why. I was creating the scrolls for around 15g and selling them for 150-200g each.
I had no competition and these things kept selling. I tried to figure it out – there were now better boot enchant options and this particular enchant wasnt viable for twinks as it required a level 35 or greater item. So what was going on?
After some time thinking about this I eventually whispered a random purchaser and asked. What response did I get? “Oh, well I didnt know there was anything better”.
Pristine Black Diamonds in the wake of 4.0.3a
So the world has changed and with it the Shen’dralar reputation quests are out. [Pristine Black Diamonds] were selling for around 400g on my server leading up to all the recent announcements. With the patch in the diamonds are worthless…right?
Well check this out:
Although there’s a definite negative trend in pricing it certainly doesnt reflect the lower value you’d assume. This could be for a few reasons:
- They have potential value if Blizzard reinstates Shen’dralar rep quests
- They have potential value if buyers don’t know the quests have been removed and pay the listed price
- Nobody is actually buying them, so the prices are slowly slowly trending down over generations of undercuts
Whatever the reason I think it’s very interesting to examine trends like this one where the anticipated or intuitive outcome has not eventuated! anyone have thoughts or wisdom to add on this?
Interview with The Undermine Journal
I had a chance to catch up with Erorus over at [The Undermine Journal] recently.
If you’re not already using the site then have at it! You can configure it to monitor auctions and even email you when something you’re after gets listed – how cool is that! Click here or on the thumbnail below to read the interview.
Huge thanks to Erorus for taking the time to answer my questions! :)
Suspended for ‘Abuse of Economy’
Story time! On Thursday night I logged in to discover someone had listed [Reins of the Crimson Deathcharger] in the AH. They were in there for 40k which was an excellent price given they routinely go for much more. I bought them. I woke up the next morning and attempted to login, but discovered my account had been suspended.
I opened up my email and sure enough amidst the other fake blizzard emails was the suspension notice. It stated the following:
Account Action: 72 Hour Suspension
Reason for Action: Terms of Use Violation –
Exploitative Activity: Abuse of the Economy
Since I have an authenticator on my account and my activities in game are only ever legitimate I wasn’t overly concerned. It was obvious that the system had triggered off some recent account activity (such as the 40k AH purchase) and automatically taken action. It felt the action was necessary to potentially protect both myself and the integrity of the game economy.
My main concern was actually that it might take a few days to clear up and that my 5-box shaman alts would miss the rest of brewfest! :p It’s a long weekend here in Australia too so I wasnt looking forward to the prospect of not being able to login.
I’m extremely happy to say that after emailing Blizzard on Friday morning at 8am (Sydney Time) I had a response in my inbox at 9:55am! It advised that after a review the action had been reversed and apologized for any inconvenience. Colour me impressed!
I have a genuine interest in figuring out why their system has inconsistent false positives like this. I’ve posted a similar breakdown to the one above in the Customer Service Forums. You can see the thread here and I would encourage anyone with constructive input to participate in the discussion.
Since all this has occured I’ve also noticed that something unusual appears to be happening with the [Reins of the Crimson Deathcharger] items appearing in great numbers. A blue poster has already commented stating that ‘duping is impossible’ but the data do not lie! Be wary folks, and think carefully before buying these up for resale!
Posted in Gold Making
Tagged abuse, crimson, economy, gold, market, mount, suspended, temporarily
Crash Gold Spammers? Someone has to try this!
So two seconds ago I read this in IRC:
[16:57] [janneman] right so apparently you can crash the goldspammer bots with a [Piccolo of the Flaming Fire].
You know those annoying 20-box level 1 toons that have been plaguing towns lately? Flying around in the air and making gold spammer urls and stuff? Apparently if you play your Piccolo, which makes all the players around you /dance, it can result in them crashing.
I can’t believe I havent seen/heard about this sooner! Someone has to give it a go and post results, I’ll be online late tonight and would love to hear stories or see screenshots :)
Let me know!
New Free Gold Guide – Gold for Dummies
Hey Hey, well this is exciting! I’ve just finished putting the finishing touches on my new gold guide [Gold for Dummies]. I’m pretty happy with how the graphics turned out and I think the information is basic but informative so I hope people find it useful.
I decided to do something different for this as well. I’ve included a 2 minute video introduction to the guide that I hope takes some step toward breaking the ‘..but I have to read?’ dread that those-in-need often encounter with material like this.
I hope you enjoy the guide, and as always appreciate any comments, feedback and suggestions you might have!
How dare you!
I’m honest and open when people ask me questions. I’ve got a track record of demonstrating that here in my guides and my posts each week. I always make time to talk to people in-game when I get random whispers. I always make time to listen. I enjoy the contact, I enjoy teaching, I enjoy helping. With me so far?
There’s one thing that seriously pisses me off though – when someone approaches me, asks for my advice and upon receiving it actively refutes it.
Now I freely admit to being wrong on occasion – ok once, in June of ’97 – but this is a different kettle of fish.
Imagine one day Continue reading
Warcraft Word Jumble – Anaalius
Shout out to a good friend, Anaalius, this week! Check out his gold making progress on his blog [Anaalius' hunt for Gold].
Anaalius actually supplied the words for this one. All the items on this week’s list are his favourite things from various parts of the game. For example number 3 is ‘favourite zone’ and so on.
Bonus points this week for correctly identifying what category of ‘favourite’ the other words refer to once unscrambled. Enjoy!
Gold Update
It’s been a while since I posted about how I’m doing with my gold. Time for an update!
Since reaching the gold cap I’ve relaxed on levels of activity but didnt by any means stop posting auctions or making gold. I bought the [Grand Black War Mammoth] drop for 10k off someone after I lost the roll since I’m a sucker for feats of strength.
I also slowly gathered the materials to craft a [Sulfuron Hammer] in the naive hope an [Eye of Sulfuras] will drop for me one of these weeks. Interesting to note the price variability (and rareness) of [Blood of the Mountain]. Definite profit there!
With that said and a little gold spent I’m currently around 220k liquid with a lot more than that in materials. I’ve been enjoying using the remote armory lately too, mainly for searching for and buying cheap materials. I think it’s too inefficient to use to cancel/relist undercut auctions at this stage.
Here’s a few screenshots:
I’ve been buying up hugely on enchanting materials whenever the market takes a dip. I’ve also been buying up loads of cheap items on US-Shadowsong to transfer across with my old alts when I finally move them to US-Aman’thul with Saate.
Here’s a quick mashup of two screenshots I took this morning showing some of the stuff I’ve been saving, probably most notable in that lot is the 70 x [Pristine Black Diamond] that I’ve been buying on US-Shadowsong for 50-150g!
What’s gold progress like for everyone else? Anyone else been using the remote auction house app? Would love to hear how you’re going in the comments below!