Foo's WoW musings

Successfully cursing

2012-02-11T12:23:00.002+11:00

Last post, I had a problem with transferring addon settings between PC's; using the curse premium client.

I think I have solved my problem; and I tried a few different options.

Now, the addon settings (on my XP pc at least) are in C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft\WTF\Account\AccountId; with one folder per game account you have. (Our household has 3 different WoW players, so many of the PC's have 3 different folders).

Also; both backing up and restoring WoW files are best done when not in WoW.

Option 1: Brute force and massive ignorance. Zip up the WTF\Account\AccountId on the source machine; and mail it to yourself. Mail often has a limit of 10MB; but my zipped up file comes to about 8M. When restoring it; rename the existing AccountId, and unzip the mailed version. This also works well with any file moving method; whether it is a thumb drive or an internet drop box.

Option 2, using the curse premium client. I did something very similar to the above option, but also (for completness sake) moved the C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft\Interface\Addons folder to one side as well, only keeping the addons that started with Blizzard_; then restored all the addons as well as their data files. In reaility this is nearly the same as Option 1, but uses Curse as a dropbox.

Curse you

2012-01-31T10:42:00.000+11:00

Whether it is raiding; crafting; selling and recipee collection; addons help.

Due to personal circumstances that I won't bore a lot of you with; I am bouncing between households and 3 computers a lot. I have played WoW on all three of these computers at some stage, and manually set up addons on these. But keeping 38 addons across 3 different computers in sync; and manually updating the settings to the be the same is beyond me.

So; I use the curse client to keep addons up to date. You have to supply them with an email address and create a login; but nothing too onerous. When using the free version you get a little advertising (which I disliked but accepted), have to click once per update that you want updated, and can have two addons being updated at once. All in all - adequate for a single PC for my purposes.

However, I said above that I now have 3 PC's that I am tyring to keep in sync; with the addon settings copied. Normally the only things I pay real life gold for in WoW are expansions and the monthly subscription. I also would not pay for a second WoW account with the sole purpose being for gold making. (Though I am currently paying 3 suscriptions - one for me; and one for my two kids). I broke down and am now paying real life gold for one extra option - a Curse Premium account.

The premium makes having the same addons and keeping them up to date easy. With the right setup, the addons (nearly) update themselves, no clicks needed and no advertising. It is also should make syncing addon settings between computers much easier.

I have not been posting auctions as much as I could because of the settings difficulties. So; over this weekend I used the curse client to backup the settings on my main PC, and restored it on one of my secondary ones. I then posted auctions. All my inferno rubies sold within seconds. For 160g each. Cry.

A very important (sanitised) rule of computing : Anyone can make a mistake; but if you really want to ... foul it up then use a computer.

I did not manually check the prices after the restore; so I sold my inferno rubies at pre patch 4.3 prices.

I know better. I wrote the computer disaster recovery plan for my (real life) work. A backup isn't a backup untill it has been backed up, restored and tested.

A single posting of inferno rubies below cost isn't any where nearly as expensive as AH gearing a mostly 346 tank with the best BOE's gold can buy.

TBC - how to fix it so it doesn't happen again.

Justice Points and Epic Gems

2012-01-15T21:46:00.000+11:00

I am still making a nice profit on cutting Epic Gems; and no - I don't mean Cataclysm ones.

I like to pretend that only twink toons use Northrend Cataclysm Epics; bonuses for twinking toons using gear with sockets or possibly a belt buckle. This makes sense; a Northrend gem can be placed in any gem slot regardless of level of gear; best upgrade available. The last time I checked however, way too many of my Northrend gems were bought by Lvl 85 toons in cataclysm gear (where a cata rare is better than a northrend epic)

Similar buying patterns exist with Northrend rares; cut Reds sell better; followed by cut Oranges; followed by the rest. However, I pay little attention to what is most likely to sell; and post the lot.

I am currently posting these gems for between 200-400g; and have very very little competition (so it is most often posted at 400g)

Supply is a solvable problem. On my realm, there are not many northrend miners; for a while I was prospecting saronite and titanium ore; making icy prisms (from the uncommon gems) and transmuting the rare gems (converting frozen orbs into the required element). However, this often left me with insufficient supply.

However, many players have an excess of justice points. 220 Justice points buys 1 uncut Northrend Epic; from the JC shop in Dalaran. I have been paying players between 100-130g per uncut gem (depending on my current supply); generally selling cut gems for ~350g.

For those without patterns, they are bought with tokens; (Northrend JC dailies etc); but you then have to choose between JC cuts and dragon's eyes (resold on AH as nightmare tears).

Some patients is called for; and I try to only cut what I will immediately put on the AH (for bag space reasons as much as anything).

Ragnaros

2012-01-10T11:35:00.000+11:00

Edit: 13 Jan 2012; and Rag is no more.

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our Alliance dead.

And once more we entered, and once more there were more Alliance dead. I have not had this much ... fun with a boss since Yogg Saron.

There are a lot of players out there with 6/7 Firelands; I am one of them. I'm 6/7 with an 11% attempt (he dies at 10%). Aarrrgh.

LFM Tank/DPS Ragnaros only, you should have at least seen some of the fight; Bonus Queen's Garnet. (Boot ungemmed unenchanted toons.)

I have had 6/7 for a while now: allowed myself to join a fresh run, and took a couple of weeks off. I now have a 6/7 lockout, and ... well it's worth more to me than most players have.

Two Friday's ago; we struggled on phase 2-3 transition. Last Friday, Saturday and Sunday; we started struggling on the final phase. How many wipes : I dunno. Don't want to know.

Now; in terms of players - I am not too fussy in terms of players; I do not expect others to have more experience than I do. There are a core of players that need Ragnaros too; a couple of DPS, myself as heals that have turned up every attempt; cast of 4 or 5 that have turned up for multiple evenings; and a few /trade LFM players - some good; others ... interesting.

I was convinced to try two healing (against my better judgment) : It works. 10 healers can't heal insta-death; 2 healers can heal the rest of the damage.

Now for the script (and problems)

Setup
Marker 1 on right hand side; against boss; about 1/3 around platform (on existing floor marking lines)
Marker 2 mirroring it on right hand side.

Set up macro with names of DPS1; Tank1; DPS2; DPS3; DPS 4; DPS5 (pref melee); Tank2, DPS6; Healer1 on LHS, Healer2 on RHS. Pref 1 Melee in the middle, and 1 ranged on the left and right; then strongest DPS in the middle.

Tanks; don't run up and auto attack the boss; that applies to DPS too. A dead DPS on the floor first up is an indicator.

Buff up. No (deliberate) pulls until you do.

/readycheck
/dbm pull 10

Please prepot. I am. You can too. Oh well.

Phase 1
Tanks in the front; taunt every 3 stacks.
Melee to the left and right of tank
Healers in the middle at range
Ranged spread out across the middle - in range of healers.
Everyone 6 yards apart.
Run out of swirly stuff; trap tripper; run in when it becomes a pool; use slowfall, blink, portal, something to land safely. (and yes - every trap not just the first one. cry)
Ranged and healers - watch for hammer; stand on the diagonals to avoid flamewall. You can see from the circles where the walls will go. Healers: remove debuff then heal . (its magic not disease you ... wonderful healer)

Phase 1-2 transition.
Run to your pillar; checking your position.
Stun if you can; don't slow or trap. Get your target to 50%, so it slows. (For blessed sake - no dots; !!@@ I said no slows or traps)
Move on to next target moving at full speed.
Healers help with DPS of fast moving targets. (Why? - are you using dots again?)

Phase 2
Line up on right hand side marker - still 6 yards apart.
Avoid hammer flamewalls; wait for seeds then run to other marker.
Healers : use big AOE.
DPS: AOE the many adds.
Everyone : Watch for floor on fire; if it is on the marker scream MOVE MOVE MOVE!! (mute vent. cry. omg they died. again.) Heal like mad if you had to move from AOE circles.
Spread out. Watch for firewalls.
Wait for it : Seeds haven't dropped yet.
Ok Seeds dropped : Run to first marker. and repeat
(Preferred) Rag to 40% or wait for seeds (how the hell can you run from seeds while dealing with a split hammer; oh well - run in ... again ... again)

Phase 2-3 transition
As per phase 1-2; but this time tanks only stun their adds; and then pick up the Lava Scions.
DPS the adds as before, but help out with the tank's add;
Healers DPS too on the close side; Tank takes damage - heal. (panic, do magic; how did I survive that? How much health did I have? 500? don't look - don't ask)
Try to keep the furthest son's alive while you DPS the Scions.
If you get the debuff you poop fire that hurts you, heals them; so run around the back of the raid.

Phase 3
Pray that this is the time.
Pop hero, Get the Lava Scion's down and pop hero (or should that be the other way around?). Drink pots, burn him, burn.
Kite the meteors (but not through the middle of the raid). Sprint abilities help (including a holy priests bubble). Use a ranged attack to knock the meteor away from the raid. Don't run against the outside boundary in case of being caught between the Meteors and the burning floor.
Die. I am sure it's in the script somewhere.
Oh look 15% you can do it. Really. Tank & Healer (8 dead); it's only 5% with 20 meteors up. GoGoGo.

Cry; rez;

Oh look - someone has to go. Thanks for coming; really it's all good. The DPS that did how little? wants to go - look even harder.

LF DPS that has seen the fight. Haven't seen him at all? cry. Gemmed and chanted - ok. (remember to put the healer next to the newbie for extra dps on transition phases)

Oh look at the time; We got really close that time. I know you said you could only do a few more attemps ... a long time ago. If you need to leave thats OK. If you want to stay, I won't boot you (but I have no idea how you will get to work tomorrow at 4am).

Oh. Its ... that time. I have no idea how *I* am going to get up in the morning to look after 6yo in first life. Thanks for coming? Same time next friday? Calendar invites incoming.

Until next Friday night 13 Jan 2012; 8:30 server Alliance, Caelstrasz. LFM Ragnaros only, you should have at least seen some of the fight; Bonus Queen's Garnet; whisper/in game mail Foofixit, when we Cry Havoc, and let slip the dogs of war.

Building a new tool

2012-01-05T00:20:00.000+11:00

I love tools like LilSparky's Workshop and TradeSkillMaster's Crafting; Addons that allow you to see at a glance what is profitable.

These are based in turn on AH scanning tools like Auctioneer, which you use to scan the auction house; and get recent pricing.

Bread and butter for established auction house players. But...., we have new tools available. First of all the auction house scan has been 'bettered' by The Undermine Journal. Something that scans the AH hourly; every day; does far better than I can with my intermittent scans; plus it is much faster and doesn't consume my in game time.

There is also the auction house API. It provides auction data (faster than I can scan inside the game) by item id, recipee lists (by item id, including recipee names) and names for items. This is nearly enough to make an out of game profitable crafting tool. What I am missing is an easily updateable, usable in a program, list of recipee and material items listing item id's.

The following websites (among others) have lists

http://wow.crafterstome.com/home.html
http://db.mmo-champion.com/

LilSparky's workshop and TSM's crafting also at least have a static knowledge of what recipees are.

The tool that I am looking at building will be a tool for someone with my skillset (fairly technical, not much in the way of pretty user interfaces); but would be very easy for someone with a flair for UI's to either build upon; or use the design to re-implement. This also is a project I would much rather someone else have written (rather than have to write it myself). What I don't want to do is manually re-type data that Kaliope or DB-champion have already discovered.

What I would ideally love is a WoW API that returns the materials (including duration of cooldowns) of crafting recipees (and no - the current recipee API returns recipee name but not materials). Failing that, a similar web based request to other reputable websites returning data would be good.

If we can put this last piece in the puzzle, we should be able to build a tool that shows us what is profitable, and what is not.

Zephyrite decision

2012-01-03T16:57:00.001+11:00

Just before I disappeared on of the internet; I was thinking about those blessed Zephyrite's filling my JC's bags.

The current uses for these gems are:

Fire prisms. Who's making these, and anyway they consume all gems equally - you will still have a surplus
Transmuting to Ocean Sapphires, but they don't sell either
JC dailies (As was pointed out in my last post's comments), a strong contender, but still too much supply to too little demand. Plus who wants to be up at 1 am (or whenever dailies expire), so you post 48 hour auctions, hoping it will be soon.
Vendor @ 50s each. Hohum.
Cut and Vendor @ 75s each. Boring, time consuming, and still hohum.
Levelling JC's

At the moment, the number of levelling JC's are few and far between; they exist, but their demand is dwarfed by the JC daily demand; let alone the requirement for useful shuffle gems.

Looking at a relatively useless gem from Northrend : Shadow Crystal, currently selling for 1g; but only 4 available. It would not be difficult to put together a partial JC levelling kit; aimed at 1/4 of the raiding panda's come next expansion. If I had more time or less spare guild bank space; I would probably recommend cut & vendor. However at the moment I have empty guild banks (not just tabs), and a bit of time to catch up on.

So; I will keep a couple of 20 stacks of Zephyrites on my gem selling toon to be sold in stacks of 3; 1 stack in my JC's bank and put the rest in cold storage until I either have enough time to cut and vendor (unlikely), or try to sell in weeks 2-5 of MOP. As with all speculation, there may not in fact be any demand (because of other speculators doing exactly the same thing), but at least I would still be able to realise cut and vendor costs at some stage.

I will also second guess this decision as time goes on and my stockpiles go up. Oh well, if they turn out to be in demand by someone, at least I will trickle them out onto the AH.

Clearing out the trash, then largely AFK for a week

2011-12-25T18:10:00.000+11:00

Happy Winter's Veil.

Having been excessively eloquent in the last week (or maybe not), I have not quite disappeared.

I have joined another guild; not being on enough during the week to keep people interested meant loosing members; those interested enough to group regularly went elsewhere, and several on the casual end took extended /AFK time.

The new guild had a lot of unused stuff in the guild bank, yet wanted to splurge on new gear. I (and my blog) was known to the guild leader, and now he has far less 'junk' with fallling value, and far more gold; even after buying some shinies. Currently here is very little point in holding onto most mats (with the possible exception of epic gem transmute mats, or maybe snowfall ink for inscription research - if we ever do get all glyphs taught by daily 'northrend' research)

Deathwing is 'dead' on LFR (not that it was particularly challenging); I tried on a Monday, and there was sooo much healing required; with the raid leader trying to kick anyone doing less than 40k DPS; I gave up. Immediately after reset, I tried again, got a very smooth run (0 wipes on both LFR raids; bored healing spine); with only moderate DPS in the group.

I will be largely /AFK over the next week; I might have sufficient internet connectivity to post auctions, but might not; The glyph market won't miss me; Both Horde and Alliance scribes are following 'drive em off' approach; and I have been having way to much fun (and profit) with gems to notice or care. I have been purchasing 'cheap' pyrite ore and prospecting the life out of it. Pity about the flood of Zephyrite. I am of two minds; either to cut and vendor, or take the very very long view; and sell for levelling cuts come Mists of Pandaria. Uncut Northrend basic gems are selling quite well at the moment. I don't need the immediate cash, and I have more than enough guild bank space.

Anyway; I'll have a bit of fun in first life over the next week; and come the new year concentrate on getting that blessed Ragnaros kill.

Multi toon ID done better

2011-12-17T10:54:00.001+11:00

I sometimes spend as much time on various AH toons as I do on my played toons, many of them have their own guilds for the banks.

I run an addon syncfriends to allow me to contact (or track) players regardless of what toon I am on; though it does not work cross faction. I also lurk in vent; those that know me can find me there.

I have never used real id; nor will I. Those that know me in game; know me as Foo, not some other first life name. My toon names all contain foo; so does my vent ID.

So, I was very pleased to read about battle tag's. I have already signed up even though it won't be in WoW for a while. No prizes for guessing my tag's name.

Ways to co-operate on the AH

2011-12-15T14:42:00.000+11:00

This post is part of a series on the WoW AH prisoner's dilema.

Today I'm talking about the co-operative sellor.When it works, you can make a fortune. Some of the items below would be of questionable legatilty in many western countries. Today, we are fleecing the buyers instead of other sellers.

In my last post on this I talked about defecting in different ways.

Undercutting (even by one copper), with special 'jerk' status applied to:

Camping the AH, immediately undercutting new auctions
Deep undercutting, pricing below thresholds.

Posting with long durations

We know that defecting sends sales your way; but also encourages others to either defect or, if markets get too tight, to simply bail. Others bailing is good for you (increased sales per sellor); others defecting again in turn is bad for you. On our AH; buy co-operating; we are raising the prices, and potentially encouraging others to co-operate as well.

Seperate the market you are selling to. This can be seperated by time (I post in the morning; you post in the evening), or by product (I'll sell glyphs for the first 5 classes; you sell the rest). Time seperation is easiest to organise. Just don't post immedieately after them.

High thresholds and fallbacks are also nice. More money to whoever makes the sale.

Sometimes we will organise to 'whitelist' individuals that you are not going to compete with. In tradeskillmasters, you can explicitly mark players that you will match prices with. However, there is no need to undercut at all. You have all been in the first life shop that 'price matches' the competition.

I also post 12 hour auctions in busy markets; knowingly letting AH postings expire. This allows both others doing the same thing, and the cancel/undercutters to raise prices, so when you come back, there should be much higher sales prices.

Drying up supply mid Jan 2012?

2011-12-14T14:24:00.002+11:00

Altolycus has a post about ... those tireless suppliers of mats, and Blizzard reaching an agreement with those that assist them. I am also going to assume that Blizzard are serious about stopping those that are truly tireless; and the jury is out on this one.

Now, if this works, we will see higher prices on the AH. I will start to stockpile mats against a mid-January 'famine' - but not a huge stockpile.

I have a different scenario for you. Lets pretend there is a persistent competitor on the AH. He continuously undercuts you, and is a pain. You offer a bundle of gold for him to stop competing; and he accepts it. Oh look; those toons no longer post auctions, but all of a sudden a new set of level 1 toons start posting auctions with exactly the same posting patterns. Didn't that agreement work out for you?

I expect that after a brief pause, tireless farmers will continue to be tireless, even when their support network is removed. I also expect that a renamed (or possibly even new) support network will step in.

I don't support automation. Well apart from addons like TradeSkillMaster and Auctioneer for the AH; and Deadly Boss Mods/Ensindia Fails/Player Score; because they are 'legal'. And those that sell my mats on the AH.

[(mostly) sarcasm] Tireless playing is bad when the others have it; and I don't. [/(mostly) sarcasm]

Most players don't like tireless automatons (or even players) that compete with them; but love those that supply to them. Personally I get annoyed when I am swiped within 1/10 second on the neutral AH. I am annoyed by campers continuously undercutting me on the AH (both tireless playing and live players). Secretly I love players regularly putting up pyrite ore; whiptail; etc on the AH. Broke players are already complaining about 250g cut inferno rubies yet will not mine their own; without tireless farmers; this would easily be doubled in price; and would result in more players mining.

I do have some cheese to go with my whine.

Currently we have the ability to 'vote to kick' from a random group. We can report for spam out of trade chat. Blizzard also has community volunteers that help with the official forums. Sites like slashdot use community moderation in some form or another.

Start with something easy - like the gold selling networks.

Give those players that already have moderator status on the forums the option to have moderator status 'in game.'

Track those players currently using 'report for spam'. Blizzard already has these stats. Give those that have a high true positive / low false positive record a moderator status as well. When 3 (1? 10?) moderators 'report for spam', then the account holder is warned first. The second (or third?) time it occurs, the account holder is suspended for 24 hours; with right of appeal to either a fresh set of moderators (from another realm), or even Blizzard.

Extend this to reporting especially tireless toons - with guidelines for how to determine whether toons are inappropriately tireless. When reporting tireless toons, evidence (screenshots, dates, times) would be required; and reviewed by a moderator from another realm. Again, first offence is a warning; second (third?) offences result in a suspension.

Again, there would be an appeal mechanism. Successful appeals would 'mark down' the reporting moderator; unsuccessful appeals would 'mark up' the reporter.

The advantage of such an approach is that it would be quick; and give an (in game) financial incentive for competitors to report each other.

The disadvantages are that: it is extra work; would be abused by competitors; and would result in false suspensions.

The market would be a very different place without the tireless players. Some players would adapt; some wont.

ps. There are times I go out of my way to avoid terms or names. This post was especially difficult to write while not using a certain term.

I sure hope it gets harder than this

2011-12-05T23:23:00.001+11:00

I enjoyed the start of cataclysm as a healer. Dungeons became hard, and a correct quick decision meant that the group might be upright, but an incorrect decision meant a wipe.

I like wipes. It means that I am attempting difficult content, stretching myself.

It's week 1 of patch 4.3, and I am already concerned about the patch's longevity.

I have completed the three new dungeons. I have completed, first evening I looked one of the LFR wings. The biggest problem I had completing the dungeons was that I ended up having to manually choose the last one as I couldn't get it entirely randomly.

Now, I do not consider myself the first of the progression raiders. This week was the first time ever that I capped valor points. My holy priest is geared in 378 for everything but trinkets. I will be queuing up for random dungeons to get a 378 trinket from the well of eternity, but after that? I'll help others out, but won't be seeking opportunities to re-run tthe 'new' 5 man dungeons.

My PC groans under the weight of 25 man raids. The LFR raids don't seem to have a high healing requirement, and topping the healing chart's on Yor'sahj was good for my ego. I will either have to upgrade my PC or find some settings to trim. I prefer my screen refreshes to be 30+ frames per second; so sitting at a single frame per global cooldown isn't ideal. I will either find something to turn off; find a better PC, or treat incredibly low framerates as my special hard mode.

Many (other) players are looking at the new 5 mans and LFR and revelling in their shortness and ease. I am happy to see the same fight from different perspectives; Tank; Healer; DPS. But I didn't enjoy bashing out "heroics" in Northrend. I am not likely to start now.

Here's to hoping that 10 man raids are tuned harder.

Nothing to see here, move along

2011-12-04T09:12:00.001+11:00

We know that there is a datamined epic gem transmute recipee : Transmute Queen's Garnet, but do not know where it drops.

So, today, I tried the usual suspects.

Profession trainer
Profession supplies
Research
AH (Recipee - Alchemy - tick usable items)
Ackis Recipee list (addon at curse)
Crafterstome recipee list
Look up the item on wowhead or similar
And of course a google search

So, no luck today - at least for my Queens Garnet. However, it is still worth cycling through professions doing the above items.

Who knows, maybe you'll find a recipee you overlooked; maybe even a new glyph.

Patch for auctioneer

2011-12-01T13:11:00.001+11:00

Auctioneer patch available. From the auctioneer website:

WoW 4.3

Nechckn - 2011-11-30 19:08:35:

Auctioneeros,

Since folks are missing the posts we have been making on our/curse/wowi forums, just wanted to put up a note that, yes, a working version of the entire Suite will be up as soon as we are able to finish with some coding tidbits and testing.

We are making strides to getting things up to speed with the lovely changes Blizzard made between what was on the PTR and what went live. We had a tiny bit of time to get some things fixed, but when the patch went live, there were some really big changes affecting the AH.

The Beta/Preview, 5.13, from http://AuctioneerAddOn.Com/dl/#preview , has the current changes included, so be sure to check that one out - it should scan and all, but there may be issues, yet, remaining. Please be patient.
*Be sure to read and follow http://Wiki.Norganna.Org/Installing to help ensure you have the old cruft cleared out, too.

Happy Sales,

Nikk B-)

I don't normally copy/paste some one else's post. (You can get into 'big trouble' for it). However, by doing it today I splash it accross the undermine journal.

In first life I am involved with systems development. Last minute changes outside of your control really can cause confusion and chaos. Thanks to the Auctioneer team for making these fixes.

Please note: While the Beta is likely to work better than the previous installed version, In Nikk's words "There may be issues yet remaining. Please be patient.". Auctioneer is a volunteer based addon; though it does take sponsorship. If you want more from your addons (this and many others); get involved in their creation and support. This can be done by volunteering to help with coding; with testing alpha/beta releases; with documentation or in many cases by donations of real life gold.

Patch day addon blues Domino working

2011-11-30T21:20:00.001+11:00

I use dominos as an addon bar, and when I first logged in, I had no toolbars at all. Logging off; disabling dominos; logging in (to get blizzard frames), logging out and re-enabling dominos seemed to fix it. I don't know if I was lucky or not.

For me, auctioneer is currently 'broken', and I will be posting with tradeskill master. Apparently auctionator is still working.

Finally, AskMrRobot doesn't seem to be 'equipping' toons with the latest gear drops. However, manullly telling him what you are wearing appears to help.

Oh; and I had an interesting discussion with a local shopkeeper; who came back into his shop after a large break. In order to change shoppers habbits he is buying potatoes for $1.50/kg; selling them for $1.49; with the sole purpose of chaning peoples habits. The deep undercut method lives and breathes in first life too.

Ways to defect in the AH Prisoners Dilema

2011-11-29T16:10:00.001+11:00

This post is part of a series;(TL;DR the collective wins from co-operation but the individual wins from defection)

The urban dictionary has a few definitions for jerk. In WoW AH parlance, a jerk is someone who prevents you from making sales. As such, I consider few players AH jerks. There are many who would consider me one. There are no care-bears on this page.

The selling jerk is the buyer's favourite nice guy.

Most customers that buy of the AH don't care if we are cheaper by 1 copper, 1 silver or 100g. However, defecting is a way to get the sale. There are different ways to defect in the AH.

Undercutting (even by one copper), with special 'jerk' status applied to:

Camping the AH, immediately undercutting new auctions
Deep undercutting, pricing below thresholds.

Posting with long durations

Gevlon, love him or hate him, is the pinnacle of the defector; He prefers defection to co-operation. It is worth reading his industry post talking about random sellers, vs campers, vs monopolists, vs deep undercutters, and their interactions.

When you post an auction, you are capping the price for that item until you are either bought out, or it expires. Posting a 48 hour auction is a form of defection.

Every time you undercut someone; you defect a little; We all do it. We want to be the one to sell.

I post daily (or maybe twice per day). In my 'co-operative stance', I am vulnerable to being undercut. Every undercut is a 'defection'. While campers hit my sales (and hence my profits), there is no difference between 1 player 'defecting' 24 times / day, and 24 players 'defecting' once / day; they both 'hurt'.

Deep undercutting is a way for a player to say; stuff it with the nickle and dime stuff; The price is heading down anyway - lets see where it ends up. If I post under a real market price; I will be bought. If I post over a market price; I will continue to be undercut.

Before I restarted my deep undercutting, I was selling 1-2 alliance glyphs/day at an average profit of 60g. I had a princely profit of lets call it 90g/day. I was also posting then collecting 500 glyphs/day. (call it 15 minutes).

In contrast, once I started deep undercutting, with 48 hour auctions initially at 20g each; currently down to 18g. I am now selling 10-20 Alliance glyphs/day; with a profit between 5 & 10g each, still for the princely profit of around 90g/day. Awful income but still better than dailies. I also only need to post and then collect 50 glyphs per day. (call it 2 minutes)

The majority of scribes have packed up and gone home. There are still 3 or 4 other posters. Where there was continuous competition, there is now leisurely posting. There are now glyphs sitting at 350g every time I login and post, at least until I log in and trash the market again. (I think this means that some of you haven't finished your research yet.)

The 3 or 4 other posters also consider 18g sufficient to stay in the game. I have a true threshold of lower than that, and I am genuinely curious to find out what their threshold is too.

There is nothing particularly personal about this, though I am taking notes on the names of still active scribes. I also don't think it was any one player dominating the market (unlike other times).

I am the nice guy in Northrend gems. I am also the nice guy with horde glyphs. I prefer co-operation, but I am also very well aware that the continuous nice guy ... will have a screwdriver applied. When I 'feel' the time is right: in a week, a month or maybe next expansion; I will become the nice guy again.

WoW AH's prisoner's dilema - background

2011-11-27T10:53:00.001+11:00

This post is part dealing with 4.3 recipees, and in part a response to recent comments. I am also largely talking supply of product (manufacturers); not demand side (customers). It is also background reading for later posts.

As technical background reading; it is worth looking at the Prisoner's dilema; taking note that the glyph market is traditionally iterated and multiplayer, with no fixed end. The TL;DR version is that the collective wins from co-operation but the individual wins from defection.

Some players advocate continuous 'defection' (Gevlon, Critical). Some players advocate 'cooperation' (Breevok, Brent #2).I prefer mild co-operation; I make more gold.

For me there are several stages to a market. At the top of the list it is worst for consumers and best for producers. At the bottom of the list, it is the the other way around.

Monopoly : Someone is the first to get the new pattern. Their only boundaries for gold making is raw material and what price the market will pay.
Duopoly : A second player will also get the pattern, traditionally more raw material becomes available. Prices are still very high, but competition starts.
Multi player co-operative
Multi player competitive
Every player competitive. Think vendor taught levelling recipees.

At some stage most patterns decend into 'Every player competitive'; Whether that is literally every player with the vendor compulsory levelling recipee; or whether it is an optional recipee that 20 or 30 end up getting; there is still no gold to be made here. After an expansion when content becomes non-current; unless it is literally vendor taught and required, even these patterns go back up the value chain.

Multi player competitive: These patterns are gained by enough active players to compete against each other, and they do so. The harder any individual competes, the greater % of the total sales they get, but the smaller the total value of those sales. This is great for consumers.

Multi player co-operative. These patterns are gained by a few players, but there is no-one dominating the market. Players voluntarily choose a smaller % of total sales, but in turn, the total value of those sales can be mainated much higher.

Duopoly : A couple of players have the pattern; The original player bemoans the entry of the newer player, but has no real choice. Prices still remain high, but an amount of under cutting almost always happens. Neither player will particularly want to entirely crash the market as there are still huge profits to be made of a relativly small number of sales.

Monopoly : The only issues you have here are how many can you make; and how to maximise your profits before your monopoly is broken into a Duopoly or worse. You are considering your demand at different prices (lower prices gets more customers).

Glyphs with no effort

2011-11-23T21:40:00.001+11:00

At what price would you really consider the glyph market isn't worth it?

When not stirring up trouble, Critical Goblin has been playing 'hard' with glyphs. As the current champion of the deep undercut method, he is posting 25g glyphs.

Now we all 'know' that the manufacturing cost of a glyph is way less than that. Lets say we use whiptail at 35g / stack (I only work in stacks, but that's 1g75 each for those working with individual prices). Anything less than this, and you are selling your whiptail below average market price. (Yes I know that I could probably get cheaper whiptail - but then I could sell it as is, without transformation for the average price)

(pricing taken from theunderminejournal.com - 23 Nov 2011)

Lets price the resulting inks based on that whiptail, and call it 4.33g per Blackfallow, 9g per Inferno (probably overpricing inferno ink - but CG thinks that trinkets work best), so the most a glyph will cost is 4.33g *3 + 0.55 for parchment, or 13.54g.

So, if CG's costs are 13.54g, why isn't he (or his competition) selling all glyphs at 15g? Because glyph making is time consuming and boring as watching paint dry. Even CG thinks that his bottom wall should be 25g.

I am also time poor. I should be working on first life instead of collecting mail and writing this post.

For me - my preferred glyph market is horde side and my crafter is alliance side. While this is not insurmountable problem, it is an additional 'cost' in terms of time and effort.

However, let me shake up the mix. Imagine you had effortless glyphs that you could sell at 21g - or even 16g (well below CG's floor of 25g). I still need to post glyphs and collect mail - remaining a non trivial exercise but at least i get the 'ca-ching' of sold glyphs as a reward.

How do I remove the boring, time consuming part, and the effort of transferring stock across a sometimes hostile 'neutral' AH? By getting someone else to make the glyphs. Now, they will need payment (in gold or kind)- no one voluntarily does that much work for free. I have an idea of what I think those processes are worth.

Now regardless of whether I wish to participate in a 21g very deep undercut war, or picking up the occasional glyph sale at 200-400g, I can have a stock of glyphs that is no effort, removing 2 of the 4 headaches of glyph selling (milling, crafting; with posting and collecting mail remaining)

So, to answer Brent's question from my last post on this topic. Yes, given today's herb prices, I will pay 20g per glyph horde side, 15g alliance side.

Glyph buyout - again

2011-11-16T20:44:00.001+11:00

There is a player that reads my blog who I have been in negotiations with to buy out his glyph stockpile, and possibly to have him re-craft my horde glyphs. I have been trying to catch him online, but he hasn't been on as much lately - at least not when I am looking.

I originally had 20 of each glyph; and am currently occasionally re crafting back to 15 of each glyph. If I have more than 15, they are not a great seller. If I have 0 glyphs, then they sell well.

I don't like crafting glyphs. I am not sure I even like selling them. I do like the gold from them.

As an offer, for the first pass of buying your bulk glyphs:

shimmering ink glyphs I need horde side : 7g each
For all other glyphs I need horde side : 20g each

'Need' means to take my horde side stockpiles up to 20 (I have been re crafting glyphs up to 15)

However, I 'want' glyphs to get my alliance side toon up to 20 as well. For glyphs that I want alliance side; I will pay 4g (shimmering ink); 15g the rest.

You don't tend to have a large stockpile, but if you happened to have a few too many of a glyph that takes me past 40 of that glyph, I still am interested in paying 'want' prices.

For the glyphs that I already have a stockpile of 40; they are less valuable to me at this point. I don't want the glyphs that are on the glyph hall of shame (will just vendor them); for the rest; 3g each.

When it comes to future re crafting of glyphs - I am willing to negotiate; I can provide shimmering inks, or can get you to mill other inks. As a basis for future crafting prices, the prices for the bulk glyphs above seem a starting point for negotiation.

I am happy to accept counter offers. I am also happy to work in conjunction with any scribe on Caelestrasz - horde or alliance. Prices that I offer or accept can vary.

Why do I price shimmering ink glyphs so cheap? I still have well over 1000 of these inks that I bought at 1g each. What is the basis of the other pricing? Blackfallow ink is currently selling for 5g.

A note to the unbelievers. I have previously been asked if I really consider that it costs me 15-20g to craft a glyph. I am putting my gold where my mouth is - yes I do place this value on them.

I see four distinct points in the value chain in glyphs, each point has their own challenges:

Gathering herbs
Milling herbs into ink
Creating glyphs
Selling glyphs

You can use this approach to make the gold from glyphs regardless of whether you have inscription or not. There is no need to have your own scribe; providing you can find one who works fee for service.

Resources for newbies that I can recommend

2011-11-15T23:19:00.001+11:00

As it is a 'hot' topic, this post will list a few resources that I do refer to on a regular basis. I also will list a few that I don't use, but do recommend to newbies.

Please note: The information below is to make you better than Joe Pug. It will not magically turn you into a 7/7 heroic hard mode player, nor will it give you your gold cap tomorrow.

Professions

What professions to take (from this blog)
Power Word: Gold (free guide)
Pricing items (the undermine journal)

PVE

Cataclysm Dungeons (Sword & Board)
Cataclysm Zandalari and Hour of Twilight Dungeons (Icy veins)
Cataclysm raids (Icy veins)
Videos of boss fights (Youtube)
Gearing, Gemming and reforging your toon (Ask Mr Robot)
What talents your toon should take (Ask Mr Robot)
Talents and basic rotations (Noxxic)

PVP Battlegrounds

Rated BG strategies (Greedy Goblin)

Role specific stuff

Healing information (Plusheal)
DK tanking (Pwnwear)

Addons

Further reading

Any blog on my blogroll - mostly gold making
Forums at the consortium
WoWPedia (wow 'encyclopedia')
ElitistJerks

(Glyphs)

My glyph making process (this blog)
Casual glyphs (Critical Goblin)
Glyph war (Critical Gobli)

I haven't added much (non AH) PVP stuff; I have no idea. I have tanked; I heal; I play the auction house. I get into arguments that I shouldn't get into.

If you have a site, series or post that you recommend to newer players (gold making or otherwise), please leave a comment.

Adding fuel when I should be adding water

2011-11-15T17:07:00.001+11:00

There is controversy about a paid gold guide and the player involved. I am not going to mention names; if you care, have a look at the links on the right hand side of this blog.

TL; DR. Don't copy other peoples stuff and claim it as yours. Don't expect a guide to be original.

For the record; I would not be where I am today without one of the actors in question. The pageviews I got from his links were invaluable in establishing this blog.

I have not read the guide in question. I have previously seen paid guides for a variety of games; professionally produced; and been unhappy with every one of them. I wouldn't buy one, but then exploring the game is part of my enjoyment. On my first toon I read the text of every quest; and refused to install "quest helper" (an addon that did just that) just so I could see the game with fresh eyes.

My understanding of the complaints are :

the guide is paid for;
it isn't original;
it isn't complete;
it isn't 'best',
it may have been pushed aggressively.

My blog doesn't run paid adverts. I like to write (hopefully) original material. I am happy to point to other writers, and steal their ideas but not their text (unless I have permission). In turn; I have explicitly allowed people to use content from my blog (even for financial gain) with an attribution and share alike requirement (see the footer of this page for licence details)

I have no real issues with a gaming guide costing approximately a month's WoW subscription. I feel the same way about charging for a guide as I do about ad suppported sites; I want it all, and I want it free; but acknowldege that real life gold can help with motivation.

There are plenty of players I know that could use a comprehensive guide. As a reader of this blog - you know players that could use one too. There are some players that I would love to hit over the head with any cluestick - and they are still broke. Consolidating material provided by others is valuable. Wowpedia, MMO Champion and even Google all provide information provided by others and charge (via ad sponsorship) for this service. If there was permission to include other sources, then I have no problem here. If there wasn't permission, then my problem is in claiming rights the guide didn't have.

It isn't original? No? So what? Not many good ideas are. However, if you are going to use other's material verbatim, you are required to quote your sources. You also need permission. Many (but not most) items on websites can be deemed to have permission. As I said above, permission is conditionally granted for my material. I am unsure about some of the guide's sources. Having not read it, I am unaware if his sources are linked or quoted. It is generally considered wrong (and even illegal) to claim authorship for someone else's work. As a community we write great material, but are horrible at providing a consolidated reference for a newbie.

It isn't complete? I don't think there is such a beast in WoW; You can specialise or generalise. From what I saw of the largely negative review (not having read the original guide), it seemed to cover a broad cross section of WoW. I know marketing material says it can do it all. If you think that you can get it all and get it quick; well I've a bridge (or even guide) to sell you.

Is it best? Best is subjective. I can't even get Critical Goblin to agree that I'm right and he's wrong about glyphs (yet). However, there is better and worse. I use raiding guides, it doesn't mean that I expect to be a server first heroic raider because of them. I like 'why' more than I like 'what'. Apparently the guide in question contained some of the why, but could have provided more. It also contradicted itself in a few places (i.e. mistakes in editing).

It has aggressive marketing. Well, I've read some of the suggested methods of getting our goods sold. Some of those methods are not nice. Walls, deep undercutting, camping, locking someone out of a market, fake trade wars, real trade wars, fake bidding and worse. I am now hard to surprise for 'in game' gold making. How can I be surprised at real life gold making? I don't like some of the things I have read about obtaining third party endorsements. And that can also be said of endorsements for gaming guides too.

In summary:

Verbatim copying of other peoples material without permission or attribution is wrong (both legally and morally). I encourage getting permission and then re-using good material.
A gaming guide, (paid, ad supported, or gratis) can start you off, but won't complete your journey. Some players are ... not capable of their own research or reading. A guide is good for these players. If you get need a guide you will be able to pay for repairs, but are unlikely to ever reach a gold cap.

I would read a gaming guide (gratis, ad supported, or borrow a paid one), but I am unlikely to recommend a guide that is paid for.

Coming soon; real pixel gold stuff and less controversy.

Be civil

2011-11-14T16:29:00.001+11:00

This is a post to the gold blogging community

Sometimes we don't agree on what is the best way to run our blogs; Some prefer to invovle real life gold; others prefer their gold in pixel form.

I don't always agree with methods; use of material; or a myriad of other things. I have also had my (sometimes strong) disagreements with various personalities.

However, I keep to the objective facts; Where I don't like something; I provide the facts as if I was trying to convince a panel of adjudicators. Some emotionadds colour. Stating "I don't think x works because of some reason" is valuable and useful.

Again with defenses, stating that you believe that something is permissable/useful/novel because of some reason is also valuable and useful.

However name calling makes you look bad. Calling someone a crook or a scammer is a good way to take yourself off readers lists.

Do your readership a favour; If you feel very pasionately about throwing mud; that is the time to be very careful that you need to tone down the rhetoric and stick to the facts.

Patch 4.3 sooner than I thought?

2011-11-10T11:45:00.001+11:00

Facts;

I have recently had a large download for patch content.
PVP season 10's end has been announce as 15 Nov here.
I have not saved enough JC tokens
I still don't have Ragnaros or Domo down

If I recall correctly; PVP season ends traditionally equate to new PVE patches. I also don't recall enough information about the 4.3 raids (though I've had real life distractions recently).

New patch upcoming; notes here. It is possible that we will have patch 4.3 after the shutdown of 15 Nov.

Profits go to those best prepared.

Cooperative AH - no tradeskill required

2011-11-08T22:54:00.000+11:00

There are real advantages to using multiple accounts to post auctions, especially when you are time poor. Things that become easier are:

Easier access to shift items accross the neutral AH;
You can gather (including AH shopping), craft, post and/or collect mail at the same time.

However, there are no rules that state that both accounts need to be owned by the same player. Personally, at the moment, I see no need to spend extra real life gold to make more than enough pixel gold.

Today's post is about the addon's I use; and how I (previously had, and will again) post with multiple accounts. It is written for fellow players that have expressed an interest in posting my glyphs for me. Later posts will include details as to how I share inventory management, crafing queues, posting methods, and profit share/wages. There is also no real reason that this approach would not work for other professions. That said, for me, glyphs have the hardest time with inventory management.

There are two sides to this; posting toons and crafting toons. Some addons are required by the posting toon, others are needed by the crafting one.

I have included versions and sources that I use as of this post; if this is 'future you' reading this, you will probably want the current versions.

Posting toon addons:

Altoholic (4.2.002) : Used for inventory management
TradeSkillMaster (0.2.5.1Beta) : Base for Auctioning
TradeSkillMaster_Auctioning (0.3.4Beta) : Used to post auctions
TradeSkillMater_Mailing (0.2.4Beta) : For bulk collecting mail. (MailOpener is another alternative)
Genie (4.2a): For sorting banks (Bankstack is another alternative)

The other things to consider about posting toons is inventory management. Some players prefer two (or more) toons to post glyphs. I use one toon, a lot of inscription bags and a guild bank tab for overflow.

Crafting toon addons:

Altoholic (as above) : Still used for inventory management
Kevs Toolkit Queue/KTQ (KTQ 4.0.0): a craft queueing addon that understands multiple accounts
Gnomeworks (r156): a crafting window that understands queues created by Kev's Toolkit Queue

I don't use tradeskill master for crafting. I believe it doesn't support multiple account inventories. I would love to be proved wrong. However, in the meantime I am satisfied with the addon's above.

Process 1/2 way for fun and profit

2011-11-07T17:47:00.000+11:00

You may have heard of the obsidian/saronite shuffle; Prospect stacks of ore; turn it into jewelery; disenchant and sell off essences and dusts? Skills used Mining; Jewelcrafting; Enchanting. (http://consortium.stormspire.net/content/183-shuffling-spreadsheet-killed-them-all.html)

Or how about smelt stacks of obsidian and elementium ore; Create stormforged shoulders; disenchant and sell off the Heavenly shards? Skills used Mining; Blacksmith; Enchanting (http://wow.joystiq.com/2011/05/25/how-to-turn-ore-into-heavenly-shards/)

Generally these are profitable activities in their own right. (And no - I don't even have a tool capable of mining saronite ore; let alone obsidium; AH is where I farm). I have a problem with the default process; most authors encourage you to crush the majority of crafted items regardless of their relative value (with the possible exception of blue jewelery from the obsidian shuffle).

For the record; I am not doing a lot of ore shuffling, (I'm stretched to collect auction house mail some days), but somone I ran with wanted me to dump a bit of ore recently.

The stormforged shoulders disenchant to a single heavenly shard (~90g); a nice enough markup from the price I would have sold the underlying ore for. However, according to my auctioneer, the shoulders had a sale price about 250g. There were none on the auction house.

I crushed the majority of the shoulders, but kept a one for sale. It sold on the first post cycle. In the past, I have done the same thing with the various green quality jewelry from the ore shuffles; keep one or two; post the rest. They are not always quick sellers. If an item only has a slightly higher (theoretical) sale price I will crush it.

I keep one bank alt aside for selling trash. If I don't know what I want to do with something; off to my trash seller it goes. I also only infrequently log on to him. When I do; I sell stuff using auctioneer with add-hoc pricing. No camping; just set and forget.

Doing extra work to sell at 90g; when you could do less effort and sell for 250g; it just feels wrong.

A change in your usage pattern

2011-11-03T10:13:00.002+11:00

I have used an authenticator for about 6 months now. I use PC's at two different addresses to access WoW; albeit on the same ISP.

I recently got my hands on a netbook powerful enough to run WoW (specifically - I can post auctions on it). I broke down and purhcased the Curse premium client to make it easier to sync addons and settings. I finally set up my mobile phone and netbook so that I can use the phone as an internet access point.

This morning I attempted to log in for the first time using the phone as a wireless modem.

Our login system had dectected a change in you access pattern. In order to protect the account
we require you to verify your identity and change your password via our website For more information plase visit (link provided)

I suppose I understand the test. It would provide a barrier to an account hacker. However, in terms of account security; I already had a authenticator. I thought this was meant to assist in positive identification. Blizzard's decision to insist on an email address as a login code is terrible from a security point of view; I was asked 4 security questions; If you know my login code you already know 3 of the answers.

The fourth question was a choice of cd key from the install CD's (original and expansions), or a previously set up security question. I was on the road so didn't have any hope of a cd-key. I am pleased that I remembered my security question that I set up years ago.

Blizzard got me to spend $20

2011-11-01T15:42:00.001+11:00

While I have many (bank) guilds, I have actually only made one; and either inherited or bought the rest. This means that there is an assortment of names that I would not have personally chosen.

I generally form multi guild raids; many regulars but no particular requirement to be in guild. That said, I wanted a guild name to reflect my raiding experience; 5/7 once per week; mostly with extended raids. Once I am competant enough to down a boss; time to head off to the next one.

So $20 later; I have a renamed guild 'Friday night wipes'. Descriptive.

Gated gems will lead to (more) ungemmed toons

2011-10-25T12:25:00.000+11:00

Have you ever heard someone say - "I don't want to gem it or enchant it - I will replace it soon!!" ?

Many players want to be 'the best' or will try to tell you it doesn't matter. Most toons - seeking red slot gems; use inferno rubies or nothing.
(new cut stats taken from db.mmo-champion.com)
A cut JC chimera eye will give + 77 stat
A cut JC Chimera eye currently gives +67 stat.
A cut Queens garnet will give you +50 stat : costing???
A cut inferno ruby gives you +40 stat : costing 100-140g
A cut carnelian gives you +30 stat : costing 30g.
Even a cut hessonite gives you +15 stat plus something usefull : costing 8g; half a quest reward.

Now, epic gems in Cata won't be like Wrath; being gated they will be very expensive at first while toons are replacing gear.

Bleeding edge raiders may drop a profession and take up JC'ing now; and will get (I think) +30 stat on day one.

I will be gemming everything I get with what I think is worth gold/point. I expect that is likely to be inferno rubies for the first month of 4.3. My (non raiding) JC will love the extra bonus but doesn't have the gear to really benefit from it

Joe average will get a lot of gear from the new raid finder. However, I expect John Pug to decide they can't afford the best so will leave the slot empty. Because of this, I expect the gating to be unlocked 1/2 way between 4.3 and 5.0. (WAG : I'll predict in March 2012 you can prospect Epic gems from Pyrite Ore.)

There are toons that won't wear blue stuff. I do expect to sell more Northrend epic gems. 'Cheap Epicnezz lol' to keep you purple.

300 Today

2011-10-24T13:00:00.000+11:00

I first started this blog back in Dec 2009. Some experienced players had seen what WoW had to offer, and decided to move on. (Yes the end of WoW was predicted way back then - still yet to see it).

I appear to somehow or another become one of the core of the WoW gold blog community. Those sites that have blogrolls mostly link here; many posts refer to me as well. While flattering it, when I realised it, I was somewhat surprised. I can be boring & long winded. Today I will continue in that tradition (especially if you are not a blogger or thinking of becoming one).

At the moment I am looking to provide visibility to less read sites. I know what exposure on the undermine journal can for a website. I have in the past, and will continue to post longer comments as stand alone posts on this site, so that:

I know that my comments are read (yes - I'm vain enough to care whether my articles are read or not); and
To provide additional visibility to the site I am commenting on.

If you are an existing or aspiring WoW blogger; not already on my blog roll; with articles you think should be read, please leave a comment on my blog; this page, any page.

My early readership was exactly what you could expect. Very low. I don't entirely trust Blogger stats, as it gives me readers before I started my blog; but my guess of a small handful of guildies equals blogger's guestimates (10 pageviews) per post.

My early emphasis was gold for beginners. I was still a relative beginner, though easily becoming wealthier than guildies. I still think that is an important topic. However, beginners don't often read gold blogs; those with some experience do.
Some things that worked very well for me were commenting on other blogs. Sometimes writing up an article in response to someone else's blog post, and leaving a link in their comment. This attracted initial readers.

I already had an established blog with a few months of posts, when WoW Economic Review (since closed - a review somewhat similar to network.phase3profit.net; or the blog review from theunderminejournal.com) asked for new blogs to submit; I did so, and my numbers took off. JTMC also had a linked list of blogs that worked very well for me; but he has since closed that list down.

My best individual post was a work around for Auctioneer when patch 4.1 hit. , with over 5000 page views (as tracked by Google analytics and blogspot's counter). I nearly didn't publish this because I wasn't sure it would be interesting. The majority of these page views came via Google, and for a while, when you searched for auctioneer I outranked auctioneer's own website .

Other posts that worked very well were when Breevok and I 'bantered'. This drove a huge amount of traffic my way, and even today I get a lot of referrals via his website.

'Good' controversy also works, especially when I recovered Critical Goblin's deleted comment. I still disagree with the technicalities; he sells glyphs to provide trinket mats; I sell trinket mats to get rid of less than useful glyph by-products, I think the community has done well in getting someone less dry than me to post a different viewpoint.

Surprisingly enough, posts that don't work well for me are my real life political commentary posts that have nothing to do with WoW. (yes that was sarcasm.) However, I don't do them often, and they are my form of advertising; I occasionally subject you to my real life views in exchange for providing you with interesting (and I am sure at least occasionally boring) WoW commentary.

I know that my blog has inspired goblins out there; My glyph making process series took someone who was already OK at gold making and turned lose a dominating scribe on another server. While I have every reason to believe he would have done well regardless of my posts, he had the benefit of experience crystallised in just a few posts. The same applies for my reading other blogs: I am sure I could work it out; but it is faster/cheaper/easier to read other blogs to see what worked or didn't work.

In terms of numbers; my best post had over 5000 page views; a very good post will pull over 1000, many will pull 600-900, and even when I pull out an entirely uninspiring post, I still get 100-200 page views. In contrast Tobold apparently pulls 2000 views per day (down from his peak of 3000). There are also 240 google based RSS feeds readers to my site; and are likely to be more not using google reader.

Many readers use RSS feeds to read the first part of a post to determine if they will open the full post. Personally, I read most blogs via these feeds; making it easy to catch up with my reading lists whether on my work pc; home pc or phone. Readers who don't open an article, and don't use google reader won't show up in any of my stats; nor will readers who block javascript (I tend to do that too).

In terms of sources of readers; 9% is direct traffic; 14% from search engines (often searching for 'fow wow' or other similar terms) and 77% is referrals.

Of the referral sources; in order; the following sites send traffic my way:

theunderminejournal.com / eu.theunderminejournal.com By far the biggest driver of traffic
Google (This seems to be in addition to the search traffic. I assume from google reader but I am not sure.)
criticalgoblin.blogspot.com
nerffaids.blogspot.com
kujasgoldmine.blogspot.com
csahf.blogspot.com

There are plenty of other blogs that send traffic my way. I do keep an eye on where traffic comes from, and go exploring when I see a new name. You also don't need to be in the top 5 for me to see you either.

One day I will most likely stop playing WoW. That will come when I stop improving. When that happens, this blog will most likely stop as well. That day is not today. I subscribed to the annual pass; I'm a sucker for the guaranteed beta invite.

While WoW still has challenges I want to solve (I'm 4/7 normal not 7/7 hard), I will still be playing. I will most likely be posting (sometimes in a rush; other times sporadically) my commentary on WoW, with what grabs my interest.

Old Posts


New Posts

AH abuse - a response

2011-10-22T15:09:00.001+11:00

MoxNix from The Gold Mint has a post about how botting campers are ruining our markets, and his proposal to change the deposit mechanism to fix it.

I'm not so sure; either with the root of the problem or his proposed solution.

Markets work brilliantly when you can buy dirt cheap, and sell with a large profit. Markets work badly when you buy very expensive and sell at a loss.

I agree that there are campers that 1c undercut. Some of these campers are bots.

The real problem is this:

It costs you 15g to make a glyph.
You are willing to sell that glyph for 20g
The market is willing to pay 300g
The market buys based on cheapest price

There is a huge markup on any particular (non-levelling/vendor taught) glyph. It encourages you to try

What could Blizzard do?

MoxNix's solution : 10% additional deposit based on buyout price; refunded on sale or expiration of auction. Campers increase their stock to at least 1 full stack of glyphs and post 12 hourly auctions; recrafting as necessary, but don't cancel auctions. We still end up with undercuts, and the market doesnt get a chance to reset. This also leaves in place glyph walls - what CG has been advocating to discourage competition.
Make every glyph vendor taught. With a flood of new scribes, it would kill the 1c camper model immediately. The number of sellers exceeds the number of buyers and the prices crash.
Put a 'per auction' click required on the posting of auctions - Blizzard already tried that.
Limit the number of auctions someone can post. It would certainly cause prices to rise;

What can I do as a player vs bots?

Know my costs; know my minimum margins and list auctions at my minimum price.

Campers hate it. If their minimum profit is less than yours they will still sell; but at a 10% (or less) of their previous GPH. You may even find bots selling at losses. If their minimum profit is more than yours they leave the market.

Of course the prices have still crashed, and you might not be better off, but at least you have some control.

Gold Standard in WoW

2011-10-17T23:46:00.000+11:00

Someone is wrong on the internet. (courtesy of xkcd)

Sometimes in WoW, we play for fun. During such times I am happy to spend gold; buckets of it.
Sometimes we are making gold. For the sake of this post this is not 'fun' : I am playing to 'win'. I want to make gold; lots of it; as efficiently as possible.

Most regular readers already have a clue about risk vs reward : Knowing that as you go down the chain you potentially gain more gold but also get more risk of losing it all:

Dailies
Farming
Crafting
Flipping

Most regular readers also know about supply and demand curves. As price goes down suppliers stop bothering and partially interested customers come knocking. As price goes up, the opposite happens. We also know that in WoW, there are instances where supply (from levelling professions) strips any possible (player driven) demand: Glyph of Voidwalker - I'm looking at you, but there are others.

We might talk about what price to pay for ore for the obsidium/elementium shuffle; the cost of making a glyph; whether it is worth making darkmoon trinkets; and whether or not you should resell vendor pets. These are all important conversations and would be gold makers should understand these concepts. But it is not the most important question.

We have time to make gold with. All the theory on whether to participate in a particular market takes secondary priority to the fundamental gold making question: Given the amount of time I have to make gold; what is the best way for me to do so?

For those that run out of time before running out of profitable things to do; We need to keep in mind gold per hour. For those that run out of profitable things to do before running out of time (who are you anyway?); you need new profitable opportunities.

I attempt to use a gold per hour standard.

I farmed it so it's free, and other curious opinions

2011-10-12T23:36:00.000+11:00

I get my glyphs for free because I farmed all the mats myself; or so the argument goes.

Well, I suppose if you do not value your time at all, you might consider them free.

Me; well I place a value on my time. It's valuable. I don't really have that much time. Even when I do have time to spare, I want to be doing 'stuff' with it. I don't remember the last time I was stuck for 'something' to do. (Doctor's waiting rooms not withstanding; but even there I read blog posts).

When I go to work in real life each day, I don't earn a salary for free; I earn it with my time; skills and effort.

When I am levelling another alt, I am doing it to satisfy the collector on me. The collector in me had 2 hours of satisfaction in the last month. While he was levelling he was also gathering; performing (low level) valuable tasks. By gathering I increased my wealth. It did not mean those mats I got were free, merely a compensation for my time.

The same goes for herbalist/scribes. You are making value with herbalism. You could easily stop at the herbing and sell the mats. This sets a floor for the value of your herbs.

By milling your are also creating value. Your inks can be sold easily; lets call it 4g per ink for a quick sale of blackfallow, and 12g for a quick sale of inferno (and prices are still falling).

Now, you can decide to cross subsidize. If you manage to get better prices for your infernos (either by crafting cards yourself or simply from a higher sale price), then you have profit to be made. You could also cross subsidise your cards by doing dailies and using the profit from it to sell your cards 'cheap'. There is no difference. If you don't value your time, then it doesn't matter: Give your cards away - you have plenty of free time to make more.

As for me, my time has value. So do my herbs, glyphs, cards and inks.

New pets are not a threat to gold sellers

2011-10-11T21:21:00.003+11:00

Tobold, among others, are talking about how Blizzard is introducing gold purchasing with real money. Me? I'm not worried about the gold seller's business model just yet - or at least not more than I already was.

How does Blizzard's model work?

You buy a pet with US$
The pet is BOE, redeemable on one toon.
You can post it on the AH.
Someone (presumably a collector) buys the pet, and ding, cash into gold, legitimately.

Now, I am not too worried about this. I don't see anyone hitting gold cap with these pets. I have an engineer, and I have tried selling unusual pets before. They just don't sell that well. That is not to say that they don't sell at all; they do. But it is slow.

Now, if you have the ability to prepare ahead of time, you can make gold in WoW very easily. Most players quest; some players gather; and even fewer play the Auction house. If you are reading this blog, you are more likely to play the AH than most, and not even all of my readers play it.

The distracted, the broke in WoW are not going to sell a pet on the AH. They also can't afford one with their gold, but might be able to pay cash using parent's credit cards.

If you are not a pet collector, you won't buy it.

The rich collectors will pay gold. There really are not many in this category.

Lets say you can sell one of these pets for 7000 gold. On day one. Regular players know what happens when there is an oversupply of an item; the price tanks. By day 14, I would be surprised if you got 1000 gold for a pet.

This is an additional wedge into the real money WoW, but not a big one.

By making the pet BOE, Blizzard are bound to sell a few more of them. The sellers will be clueless at making gold, and rich in real life. The buyers will be rich collectors.

The total impact? One gold in a gold cap.

Gold Secrets with Darkmoon Faire Cards

2011-10-04T16:00:00.000+11:00

Hi loyal Foo fans, Critical Goblin here as promised with his secret Darkmoon card/trinkets sales data.

Background info: Critical's lives on Tichondrius (Horde).

Around January this year I took a punt and started selling DM cards for fun. At that time I was converting all BF and IF inks into cards. Later at around Faire 5 (May) I started keeping all my cards and sold trinkets instead. I also started glyphs around that time.

Every time Critical reads a comment or forum post where the author complains DM cards/trinkets dont sell he laughs. They are either lying so that readers are discouraged from entering this lucrative market, or they are greedy and are still trying to sell at ridiculous last Faire's prices. Tsunami is still very high on a healer's trinket wish list and the other trinkets are fantastic 359 trinkets for alts, which rich mains have no issues splurging on.

Anyway Critical is not here to persuade you to make DM trinkets. I am only here to show you how well this market has been selling on my server for the past 9 months.

Faires 1 to 4 (January to April)

First up have a look at these 2 graphs where in the first 4 months I made and sold cards only. Focus on the bright green bars which indicate TOTALS.

In the first month (I believe this was also the very first Faire for Cata) I had sales of 500k (keeping in mind these are all after tax (less AH success fee) figures). My main customers would have been raiders wanting these new phat trinkets and were willing to spend up to 5k on their last card. Also remember these are only Sales figures not Profit. At that time I did not keep track of my Expenses and how much I was paying for herbs and lifes (well actually even now I still dont keep Expense records).

NB: the second graph just shows actual quantity of cards sold, in case anyone was interested in that. Again the bright green bars show TOTAL cards sold in that month. If you look at April you will notice I sold a total of around 275 cards but my Total Sales only accounted for around 190k. So I was selling alot of cards but Sales totals were down, which lead to ...

Faires 5 to 9 (May to September)

This is the point where I took another punt and went all in and gave trinket-only selling a try. As you can see from these two graphs, trinkets sell well to raiders that need my sparkly sparklies.

Conclusion

Darkmoon trinkets, even this late in the expansion as recent as last month, still account for a few 100k worth of sales. Don't sell cards, don't sell infernos. Make love (and trinkets) not war. Well actually do make war, with the other scummy glyphers.

I release these dataz because as part of my gold purge/reset experiment I gave away all my infernos, cards, decks and lifes. Critical wont be selling trinkets this Faire. So go nuts ya'll.

Phew, extracting 9 months worth of raw mysales data aint as fun as it sounds. Thanks for making it to the end of this post.

Disclaimer: Critical opinion is his own and does not represent Foo management.

Safety Dance

2011-10-03T15:11:00.000+11:00

We can dance if we want to
We can leave your friends behind
'Cause your friends don't dance, and if they don't dance
Well they're no friends of mine

I am a Wrath baby. My first raiding was Nax (back when everyone else was starting trial of the crusader). I have only ever raided in 10 man.

My first recollection of a safety dance was Heigan. No enrage timer; the only important thing was dancing. Admitidly a single tank and healer could duo the run, so it didn't matter if 80% of the raid failed.

Tobold had a article back in 2009 talking about 3 types of raids:

Type A : Challenge the strongest;
Type B : Challenge the average;
Type C : Challenge the weakest. ... As the debuff is random, the raid group cannot afford to bring anyone not likely to react fast enough, as that would cause a wipe for everyone. ... AKA dancing.

Note that players generally consider that the overall challenge of a raid encounter goes up from type A to type B to type C. But in fact the difference is mainly affecting the weakest players in the raid group. For the strongest players there is no inherent difference in the degree of individual challenge in the three types.

A certain goblin (and others) is tired of dancing; claiming that it is something new for firelands raids.

Umm. No.

Any fight (or part thereof) that is a simple gear/ability to hit best buttons check is nerfed into triviality by new gear (maths test in Gevlon's article)
Any part of a fight that is a 'dance' is not trivialised by the same degree (though gear can change insta fail into a healable problem).

Any boss that is simply a dps/hps/mitigation fight is only Challenge the average at first and easily become nerfed into Challenge the strongest.

Any boss that incorporates dancing provides challenges according to the number of dancers required.

Previous dancing bosses?

4 Horseman in Nax, requiring 4 dancers
Heigan (though it could be completed by the strongest)
Thaddius
Hodir
Freya
Vezax
Yogg Saron (Definitely Type C)
Sindragosa
Lich King

Even many bosses not mentioned had a lot of dancing for someone; less for DPS.

What has changed is that previous raids had more type 'A' encounters, and less Type 'C'. ICC had a lot of Type A bosses; at least by the time I got to them. Cataclysm initally had Magmaw challenging the adds kiter or tank (generally a hunter or frost DK) and those that applied chains (dancing by the strongest). Naxx had Patchwerk (least geared tank had to be 'main' tank). Also the Firelands dances appear to be a little harder, with an extra 'step' in the dance.

Firelands is currently missing a 'Challenge the strongest' boss.

Shannox is at most a challenge the average raid; and with further nerfs will become a challenge the strongest. It was not particularly challenging DPS-wise, even pre-nerf.
Ryolith appears again to be a challenge the average raid; challenging a tank; the healers and the drivers. Our DPS appear to have forgotten how to AOE.

There are no bosses here where we can carry. To make things even more difficult for Gevlon; even Shannox and Ryolith seem to work better with communication.

Our casuals don't mind the challenge of tier 12. Organisation is a nightmare for us; I can see the advantage of a fixed roster, but meh; I'm not always available either. We don't mind wiping (at least not in public). A fortnight ago we got Shannox down (pre nerf woo hoo). Since then we have spent two nights wiping (approx 10 attempts on Beth; 25-30 attempts on Ryolith). There is no question that Ryolith is a dance boss; The difficulty is that DPS have to conduct it. We are putting one of our tanks into DPS gear; which should help a lot.

So, we took time out from firelands and had a training/gearing run in Tier 11 raids. If your looking for an easy kill with forgiving dancing; do Tier 11; where the nerfs have made many dancing failures healable. However even in these raids, in Tier 11; when we wiped, it was due to dancing failures.

We will get Ryolith down; either next week or the week after (I'm the last of the progression players - the line that says no progression is just behind me).

A challenge to the non-raiding gold bloggers out there; Take one evening off a week from gold making and get Defender of a Shattered Realm; followed by the Firelands bosses. You have the gold for gear and the patients to pick it up.

We can dance if we want to
We've got all your life and mine
As long as we abuse it, never going to lose it
Everything will work out right

Its a Safety dance
Oh well its safe to dance
Yes it safe to dance

Dragon's Eye anomoly

2011-10-01T12:00:00.000+10:00

Dragon's eyes are used for a Northrend JC +10 all stats gem (nightmare tear). Nightmare tears sell moderately well. Not a great many, but more than I had been able to aquire mats for.

The eyes are obtainable via

the daily northend JC quest; purchasing a dragon's eye with the token
A damaged necklace quest
and sometimes contained in an icy prism;
and finally turning 10 titanium powder (drop from prospecting titanium ore)

All in all, not particularly easy to get. Or so I thought.

A couple of days ago, I purchased 200 of them off the AH for 60% of their going rate (I couldn't keep up with stock before, so this was a good deal).

The seller whispered me and offered to sell more. I bought another 1010 at a cheaper price. I chatted, and was under the impression that was all he had.

Another toon - with 1 character difference in the name has just posted another nearly 700 dragon's eyes. If I knew that that was it for him, then I might be interested. However, he is able to either:

grind out 700 dragon's eyes in a day, or
misled me as to how many he has.

Either way, the price is heading south for both Dragon's eyes and nightmare tears on my server. I do not intend to prop it up any further. Too much supply, and not enough demand.

The strange thing is that this guy has a supply that no one else knows about yet. I was looking at the undermine journal for this item, and Alliance Caelestrasz seems to be the only oversupplied AH (at least according to a straw poll of the other markets chart).

So, anyone on Caelestrasz want to buy Nightmare tears? going cheap.

Sovereign Risk

2011-09-30T12:00:00.000+10:00

Sovereign Risk is where a government does not pay it's debts in the previously agreed upon manner.

In WoW, we have a high degree of something very similar Sovereign risk, especially around patches.

The current batch of gold bloggers are actually a fairly quietly spoken group. Players on Blizzard forums are slightly louder. WTF no EPIC gem in ore; JC tokens FFS; /prof quit; /gquit; /game quit

Or in other words:
Dear Blizzard
I have been dutifully stockpiling pyrite ore and jewelcrafter daily tokens on the expectation that you will give us Epic gems and Epic gem cuts from these, as part of patch 4.2; or at the latest, patch 4.3.

I am most disappointed that you have not followed your previous behaviour. With all due respect this has cost me a large amount of gold, and I will be now unable to reach the gold cap.

Please find attached a demand for profit owing to me that you have unjustifiably denied me as part of this change. If you do not comply, I will launch procedings in the appropriate and inappropriate forums.

Yours sincerely
One annoyed JC.

Blizzard's response : I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further.

Sovereign risk; or the risk that blizzard will change the rules; or will not follow precedent is a fact of WoW. This risk is real, and needs to be taken into account when stockpiling for future changes.

To make matters even worse; Blizzard never promised JC's a gold mine; only our sense of entitlement. Ghostcrawler sometimes promises a pony, but even then it is a forward looking statement subject to change.

As much as WoLK had epic gems handed to JC's; we were also warned. Blizzard wants advanced toons to be responsible for advanced profits:

Soulbound Chaos orbs
(Originally) needed to do 1/2 of twilight highlands (i.e. be lvl 84.5) to get best crafting recipees, including the ability to level tradeskills to 525.
Raiders as the source of updated recipees and BOEs.

Once upon a time; leading raiders were a broke bunch. Heaven forbid; these days Raiders (the elite that Blizzard want's us to aspire to) will be the source of gems, and possibly even recipees.

As a gold maker; concentrate on the easy gold. I am still making a bundle on northrend gem cuts (rare and epic). When 4.3 drops; if you want to sell the newest cuts; go and raid.

Make sure your alchemists are lined up with mats for transmutes (there are new recipees). Also consider getting them raid ready (at least troll dungeon) in case the tranmute recipees turn out to be raid drops (unlikely but still possible). Organise this with not only your own toons, but also guildy toons. Make your networks now.

Me? I will continue reaping the profits of Northrend gems.

And finally, if you want to be up on the latest recipees : Go raid. I organise friday night only raids; I am going bald with the stress of putting them together; keeping everyone happy and moving, but we are raiding.

Blizzcon has it in for me - I tell you.

2011-09-29T12:28:00.000+10:00

They have me targetted. THIS IS NOT JUST A CONSIPIRACY. I HAVE PROOF.

An official Blizzard post. Foo fighters at BLIZZCON® 2011

“Everyone attending BlizzCon and watching from home can look ... when Foo Fighters bring the house down.”

Oh well. For those are going, have fun.

Exploiting Abandoned Production

2011-09-27T18:10:00.000+10:00

For a change, I have been playing with glyphs. This is different from before because .... ummm...

OK, well it's different because ~~there was yet another glyph trade war, and~~ I bought out Breevok's stockpile of glyphs.

There was a glyph trade war horde side. Toward the end of last month, I had competition from a camper, with multiple accounts. He then started posting just after my morning login, reducing my daily sales to about 100g per day. About 85g profit for a full post/collect mail cycle is a pain.

In response, I crashed the market, first to 30g, then down to 25g and 20g, bodychecking them. I still had room to move. I only reduced the prices when I thought that my opposition would be in a position to undercut me soon. As a side effect of doing so, my sales returned to 500-800g per day, with a lower profit margin but higher overall profit. Still not going to get me to the gold cap anytime soon.

Even though I was trying to crash the market without selling anything, re-stocking was becoming an issue. Glyphs can take a long time to mill and re-craft glyphs; especially with a crafter on the opposite faction. I really did not want to craft 1000 glyphs, only to sell at cost. I fully expected my competition to have similar feelings. (No one enjoys crafting bulk glyphs). However, camping 1 copper undercutters have always annoyed me, more than re crafting glyphs.

It was at this time I needed a couple of pugs for a Shannox attempt. I pugged Breevok, who used to be a big glyph player, but has become casual in his gold making efforts. I also knew he had previously contemplated selling his stake in the glyph market.

I have never been afraid to 'exploit' others products and services (in a purely ethical way). Breevok's glyphs were horde side (bonus), was prepared to take gold alliance side (also a bonus), and affordable (trifecta - woo hoo). A stack of each glyph is roughly 6500 glyphs. These glyphs at roughly cost price is ... a significant amount. I only purchased his glyphs, not to have him drop a profession. That's OK. I know how long it takes to re craft 6,500 glyphs (I had roughly 13,000 when Cata hit).

I have gold; more than most; less than some. I still wince at single transactions of this size. It'll be alright in the long run.

The sad thing is that I didn't even have time to unload my new glyphs onto the market horde side, when my competition disappeared. We have some new aggressive competition alliance side with a new name, which might (or might not) be my old horde 'friend', but his heart is not in it as much.

The good thing about the recovery after a price crash is the reduced competition. There are still two solid competitors that followed the prices down, and a couple of re-entrants that bailed earlier, but still easy pickings (this week at least).

With glyphs, I find that 12 hour auctions allow prices to recover quickly. I will be undercut within 12 hours anyway, and the cancel/under cutters will reset. I am currently making more gold per day I post glyphs horde side than I made posting glyphs horde + alliance a month ago.

What inflation? There would be without goblins

2011-09-21T01:07:00.003+10:00

WoW Insider has an article about WoW needing gold sinks. Fox's complaint is that the genuine newbie can't afford glyphs, enchants or gems while levelling.

TLDR (too long didnt read version): Skip to the bottom of the page for the ultimate gold sink.

You can't always get what you want. But if you try sometimes, well you just might find, you get what you need. (apologies to Mr Jagger).

There is a gold sink - the biggest one there can be. If your reading this site, the chances are you already know about it. This gold sink already keeps inflation in check. It's not perfect, but still does a pretty good job of it.

Economics 101.

Inflation is where prices of bought goods rise.
Deflation is where prices of bought goods fall.
Your expenses are someone else's income. (This can be player or NPC).
If the total gold spent increases but the total goods bought stays the same then you have inflation
Similarly if the total gold spent stays the same, but total goods bought decreases you also have inflation.
If the total gold spent decreases but the total goods bought stays the same then you have deflation.
Similarly if the total gold spent stays the same, but total goods bought increases you also have deflation.

Fox's complaint on behalf of newbies
Newbies can't afford what they want.

My view is that they can afford what they need.

First of all, a naked toon could level 1 to 60. It would not necessarily be fast, and you might die a lot. When I levelled first I didn't have addons, had very little clue as to what I was doing, and could barely keep my current level spell on my toolbar. I was slow, died a lot, always broke and had a lot of fun. Quest/dungeon bind on pickup gear can keep you well enough clothed.
There is always cheap basic gear, gems, glyphs and enchants, even for a levelling toon. There are always players levelling professions selling items well under cost. They are not 'best' items, but an improvement on naked. (Glyph of Voidwalker - I am looking at you specifically)
A first time levelling toon can make a comparitive fortune by taking two gathering (mining, herbalism or skinning) skills, and keeping them in step with their current level. They even get additional XP for mining or herbalism; worth 4 mob kills per node. More than enough to cover those additional expenses.

A newbie might not be able to afford the best possible potions, elixirs, bag, glyph, gem, enchant, gear and mount. They can afford basic training, bags, glyphs and mounts.

Fox's complaint that there is too much inflation
But where is the evidence? Taking the pre cata numbers from Oct 10 to Sept 2011 from WoWMidas - WoWflation (Sep 2011) (Thanks to WoWMidas for the update)

Classic WoW mats have increased 40%
BC mats have increased 120%
Wrath Mats have increased 260%
Cata Mats have fallen 40% since Feb 2011 (early days); with 10% of this last month.

From a mats perspective, the inflation is real, and ... kinda what you expect when the 'government' prints money. The exception of Cata Mats, which have fallen, and continue to do so, and to be honest - is where the majority of the player base is at. But it's not out of control inflation (well not by many definitions anyway).

But what does this mean to the first levelling toon, with the traditional advice to level two gathering skills? More gold for them. A stack of copper ore sells for 13g, stacks of light leather for 20g, and silverleaf for 9g. These are all items a level 5 can gather. With a minimum of effort, they can be swimming in gold (compared to their costs).
Ok, but surely there is inflation in crafted mats
As a Scribe/JC, I will readily admit that top end glyphs and gems are selling well (the odd 'bodycheck' aside), with my highest cost items well outside the reach of a newbie. But for every Epic Northrend gem sale at a huge profit, there is an uncommon gem sale at a huge loss. For every expensive glyph, there are three cheap ones. On my primary AH, glyphs range from 85 silver for an imp glyph (surely someone has to buy these at some price point), up to 300g for a glyph of aquatic form.

50 glyphs, (average 5/class) are at or below 10g, and roughly double that below 20g.
Basic 'bold' cuts for a levelling toon go for 10g, and a bold carnelian (+30 strength) is also available for 10g (while uncut carnelians cost 30g).

These prices are well within the price range of any gathering toon, regardless of level or quest rewards.

There is a shortage of 'best', but no shortage of 'second best' giving 80% of the bonus of best.

But there is a huge injection of gold into WoW, surely there is huge inflation.
Every quest you do, every item you vendor, every mob you kill 'creates' gold, (silver or copper at lower levels). Lets say 16g per quest reward.

Every repair you make, everything you buy from a vendor 'destroys' gold. The AH cut (5%/15%) also 'destroys' gold. Lets say 1g destroyed per quest reward.

Everthing else you spend goes from one player to another. Buy something of the AH - the majority goes
to another player. Sell something via trade chat - you get all the gold from that other player. Gold is neither created or destroyed by these transactions.

So yes, we are definitely earning more than we spend on repairs, training or AH cuts. If there were no huge goldsink, there would be huge inflation, until the cost of what we consume equals the cost of what we earn as rewards.

So what is this gold sink? The gold cap.
Saving up for the next big expansion, or simply because you can. It's a mini game all of itself.

The one time players with deep pockets bring out their purses is when a new set of gear or recipees drops. Who buys that 80k gear? Goblins. Who pushes the new prices up at the start of a major expansion - also Goblins. It's when we pay.

Take any player from the Warcraft Econ Hall of Fame. They are the gold sinks. 2 Million gold, at 16g per quest, is the reward from 125,000 quests. At 3 minutes per quest, these players are soaking 260 days of quest rewards each. Even a 'lowly' 50,000 is still soaking up 6.5 days of questing rewards at max level.

As a side effect of such a huge gold sink, goblins are removing from the economy, preventing otherwise huge inflation.

Without the players seeking the gold cap, we really would need that gold sink that Fox was talking about.

4.3 Epic gems as raid drop confirmed, Insane and Raid Finder

2011-09-19T18:18:00.000+10:00

Source MMO Champion : Patch 4.3 Interview with Greg Street (Ghostcrawler)

Ghostcrawler: We are doing epic gems this time around as a drop in the raid and we may not have those drop in the Looking for Raid tier.

Now watch the price of Fools gold (Pyrite Ore) drop. This will most likely cause some rather large ripples throughout the economy, with everthing from volatile earth, to the ore shuffles, and blacksmithing about to take an expected price dive from a lot of stockpiled pyrite ore being dumped on the AH.

Will the new Darkmoon Faire update change anything to Insane in the Membrane?
Ghostcrawler: No, I don’t believe so

Increased rate of levelling 80-85
Ghostcrawler: In 4.3, we’re actually increasing the leveling rate of Northrend pretty dramatically.

More alts and casuals will get more gear (good news for JC's and Enchanters)
Ghostcrawler: We have a Raid Finder system that will work a lot like Dungeon Finder to allow more casual raiders to get into the content. ... (gear) should be slightly above the 5-player dungeon gear but not as powerful as the normal raid.

Shannox is dead

2011-09-19T11:59:00.000+10:00

A bunch of casual noobs get the Shannox dance down pretty pat, and down the blessed boss. The DPS took so little damage, they made my healing numbers look bad. I can cope.

Many players that run gold blogs are not what you call hard core raiders.

I raid once per week. While I have regulars, they are spread across 4 guilds, some small, but occasionally with an alt of a real progression guild. Friday nights are my raid night. The term 'regulars' is used loosely. We are strictly casual. If you have a prior commitment, no worries.

What I am strict on is flasks, enchants, gems, and experience at the previous level. For example I expect a player doing Tier 12 (Firelands) raids to have some Tier 11 (Bot/BWD/To4W) experience. If you need Tier 11 gear, you should buy it, run dungeons or Tier 11 raids. If you need Tier 12 gear, you are very welcome.

Next Friday, off to another boss. I think Beth'tilac. New players welcome (guild invite avaiable but by no means necessary). Gold bid runs. Rules here.

D'oH Brewfest very bad for Darkmoon Faire Cards

2011-09-16T19:44:00.000+10:00

Over the last few months, I have been playing (more) in the darkmoon faire market.

I still have to give the profit numbers, when I get to it, but it's been OK. Until now.

I forgot about the trinket market killer - otherwise known as brewfest, starting next Tuesday. Apparently this year it has reasonable ilvl 365 trinkets. This should kill the market for trinkets for a month at least.

Oh well. At least volatile life should have a chance to come down.

This weekend I am selling trinkets at a discount.

Preparation for 4.3

2011-09-15T16:47:00.000+10:00

First of all, I'll be honest. I won't do as much as I could.

A new tier of gear means a new raft of gems to be sold, and gear to be enchanted. What ever is 'hot' now, will become hotter. So, the usual suspects - Inferno rubies; cut and uncut, celestial essence, and heavanly shards will be popular. For me - this means I need to put away more inferno rubies and their transmute mats : carnelians and heartblossom.

There is also a bit of talking about transmogrification. Now, I do not pretend to know what will sell and what won't. I will leave that up to Kaliope and the like. However, some of it is likely to be old world crafted gear, needing 2 things : recipees and mats. Personally, I probably won't purchase much old world, but what I do have for crafting vanilla, BC I will now sit on until 4.3. I have some very rare patterns. Come transmogrification, some players will have to catch them all. I want to sell these to rich bored players.

Two glyphs new scribes may be missing

2011-09-14T16:37:00.002+10:00

If you have only taken up inscription since Cataclysm, you may be missing two glyph 'techniques' : Mana Sheild and Lash of Pain.

They are purchased as a BOE 'technique' from Larana Drome in Dalaran. They are not quite what I would call 'must have' glyphs from a sales perspective, but they are at least profitable.

These glyphs are sold in "limited quantities", if you call 4+ technique's on a 15 minute respawn timer limited.

If you are a scribe, you should probably get these. Even if you are not a scribe, and are passing through Dalaran, it would be worth stopping in at the scribe's satchel - facing away from the magus commerce exchange in dalaran, to purchase a few techniques to put on the AH.

Blue post coy on Epic Gems 4.3

2011-09-12T12:54:00.003+10:00

I'm harping on a theme - but I've just seen a Blizzard post coy on epic gems in 4.3 here .

My theory has been that the purpose of Epic gems is to nerf older content. There is a possibility that a very slow release of Epic gems may be used to gate access to deeper 4.3 raid content. Note: Having JC's with thousands of tokens, stockpiled pyrite ore, capped Justice/Valor/Honor points ready to pounce does not count as a slow release.

Player 1 : If they don't release epic gems in 4.3 i will be mad
Player 2 : Protip: they won't. Sometime mid 4.3, maybe, as an indirect nerf to the content. But not at the start.
Player 1 : i mad

Blizzard : A more useful reply would contain details of why, in your opinion, epic gems should be added sooner, how it would benefit the game as a whole, the knock-on effect to progression, something like that. You being mad wouldn't be a solid reason I can pass on to the devs :(

As JC's we are salivating at the possibility of gemmas (myself included). My advice is to be rational instead of emotional. Just because you want it, does not mean you get it.

LFM 2Tank+3Heal BWD Must know fight WTF

2011-09-10T12:00:00.000+10:00

I really don't understand DPS organisers of raids - not when they advertise for the hardest to fill roles, and put this kind of barrier up.

Sure, if you get 2 experienced tanks, 3 healers that know the fights, chances are you will get a full clear. That's a pretty big if. No tanks, no healers mean no raids. However, I complain if I have to wait 3 minutes for DPS to respond.

I do prefer a certain level of experience in firelands raiding, and would certainly prefer any toon I took to have some raiding experience, but for Tier 11? If you are so short of tanks or healers that you are pugging, it's time to recruit new tanks and healers - at whatever level of skill or gear.

I want to pug exactly those players that want to run as tank or healer - those looking for a new challange, or simply are prepared to take on the responsibility.

Glyph predictions 4.3

2011-09-09T14:44:00.000+10:00

I've been looking at my crystal ball, and I think I see a few things.

I expect that there will be new tanking glyphs. New glyphs give players additional choice, and will 'allow' tanks some options for mitigation. These 'choices' are in reality likely to be mandatory.
Scribes will be able to learn all research major and prime glyphs from either Books of glyph mastery (no cooldown), or via "northrend" research (or a similarly named skill). While this has already been flagged as something that will happen, I expect it to occur in patch 4.3.

If the combinations of the above two items are true, then there should be a short term increase in demand for Books of glyph mastery, followed by a sustained and significant fall in demand.

I think there is a possibility that "northrend" research will be renamed, and will require inferno ink instead of snowfall ink. If this occurs, the price of snowfall ink will plumet, and inferno ink will rise temporarily. This in turn will lead to a shortage of 'cheap' crafted trinkets, and possibly a fall in the value of volatile life.

Crystal balls are interesting things, and are generally subject to interpretation. This community has only middling luck with predicting future pricing; and even when we do guess things correctly - we tend to over stockpile, causing the opposite effect of what was forseen.

Caveat Emptor

OT: In praise of Steam's customer service

2011-09-08T13:58:00.000+10:00

My previous experience with internet ordering has been cheap prices but shocking customer service.

The story starts out with a young boy, a credit card tied to a steam account, and a 'free to play co-op game' . Free to play games sometimes have expensive addons. Buying with someone else's money was so much fun, he thought he would buy gifts for other friends too. And look at all these other games to buy.

This happened over a month. Think of a dollar amount you would hit the roof with. Add a zero.

Sob Sob.

Yes, as a parent I am responsible - if for nothing else than allowing the credit card to be linked to the account. However, talk to other teenagers, or their parents, and my story is not at all uncommon (though many of these stories involve phone bills). Let the parent beware.

Steam have an established procedure to handle unauthorised purchases. They also let you know that while they might be able to help, they will terminate the account involved, and block any further access to that particular credit card.

Not a problem. We had already cancelled the credit card, and gave them the full history; including that it was our son, and the details of the unauthorised transactions, and would be very happy for the account to be terminated.

Steam reset my hopes of customer service - in a very good way.

As requested, we have processed the refunds and enabled account.

Your bank or credit card issuer will return the funds to your account - please allow 3-5 business days for the funds to be posted.

Please note in the future that Steam purchases, per the Steam Subscriber Agreement, are not refundable - this refund was issued as a one-time customer service gesture.
Today the funds were returned to my bank account. As a bonus - if only for the child involved, they allowed him to keep his account as well - which I was not expecting.

Now my only 'problem' is working out which month or year my son is allowed near a computer again.

Glyph demand - this is as bad as it gets

2011-09-07T13:55:00.000+10:00

Today I'm talking about demand instead of supply.

Back in the final days of Northrend, (other) bloggers were worried that the end was comming. Way back then, players would need 6 glyphs (if I recall correctly) per spec - so a total of 12 glyphs. Your average players changed glyphs ... less often than a 8 year old voluntary showers.

Long time scribes remember glyphmas, where we got to have 9 glyphs per spec, and could permanently learn all glyphs (roughly 30 per class). This followed by a boom while everone was getting to 85. We know that generally demand has fallen from those wonderful days. Established, fully glyphed lvl 85 toons simply have no reason to buy new glyphs. But all is not lost.

This graph from MMO champion shows a steady stream of new level 85 characters, that has essentially been stable for 4 months now. Spikes over the weekend, and troughs on Mondays (no one likes Monday). While the graph only shows level 85, to get this level of consistency means that you must have a consistent stream of levelling toons. They also mention a brief dip when 4.2 came out.

Seriously - from a demand perspective, this is as bad as it will get.

JC's daily - the other one

2011-09-06T22:39:00.001+10:00

I assume that most JC's still doing their Stormwind/Ogrimar JC dailies : to pick up their gem cuts that they don't already have, get a chimera eye, or stockpiling JC tokens in case 4.3 drops trainable epic cuts. Assuming we get trainable epic cuts, and assuming they use the existing Cata JC tokens, we will want hundreds of tokens.

However, there are another set of profitable dailies to do in Dalaran providing Northrend JC tokens. Just like the Cata dailies, these provide either recipes or an eye (in this case Dragon's eye). The Daily takes 15 minutes, and usually requires 2 green quality northrend gems - prospectable, usually available cheap on the AH.

1 daily token can be traded for a Dragon's eye, selling uncut for an average US market price of Alliance 160g & Horde 185g, even more cut into a nightmare tear.
5 4 daily tokens can be traded for an epic northrend gem cut. I buy uncut northrend epic gems for up to 100g, selling 21 in the last week for 6.5k sales. Won't make me a WoW millionaire overnight, but I already have a JC, and it is easy gold.

On the note of Epic cuts, most other bloggers I read are sure that 4.3 will drop epic cuts; just like we had epics from northrend - with prospectable gems - most likely from pyrite ore. There is nothing so dangerous as 'knowing' something. Neither BC or Northrend epic gems were first released in this manner at first. There is every chance this will occur, but you will get little sympathy from me if it doesn't happen. I will be eagerly following patch notes from the PTR.

There are a couple of options for self powered transport to Dalaran. First of all you can set your hearth there & portal back to Stormwind/Origmar (yes they put those portals back). Many guild's now have 'cooperation' cloaks giving you a personal portal ever 4 or 8 hours. Finally, there is a ring of the Kirin Torr, purchasable for 7k (less rep discount?) that allows you to port back to Dalaran.

Gold sellers now leaving breadcrumb comments on our blogs

2011-09-05T15:04:00.004+10:00

Gold sellers are becoming creative.

There is a site out there that copies my posts onto their site so it looks interesting, changing just enough to remove all references to my site.
I have now seen a relevant, on topic response on two blogs; mine and and another, where the link was to a gold selling site.

I have not been interested in making the very very few dollars from general advertising or selling gold guides, though I can accept that others are.

~~Apparently buying a game time card with in-game gold is officially a grey line~~ (citation needed but I did see a blue post on this recently. Edit: Went looking for the citation and did not find it; but found plenty contradicting it). Outright buying or selling gold for real life cash is not permitted. Botting is not permitted. These are the rules of the game.

I will not knowingly link to gold sellers. This includes removing comments where either the name or the post links to gold selling websites.

I read the RSS feed on the comments to this blog, and not just for vanity. Sometimes I get an interesting question (I love those), other times I catch a dodgy post.

Blogger and wordpress (the software that most of the wow goldmaking bloggers use) both allow you to track comments. This is worth doing.

WoW Midas's top 10 lessons learned

2011-09-03T09:48:00.000+10:00

I like the WoW Midas site. He offers an objective measure of WoW inflation/deflation on Vanilla, BC, Northrend and Cata Mats, great reasearch.

He also has a post for the bloggers (and those thinking about blogging) out there : Gold Blogging Top 10 lessons learned

Finally theunderminejournal.com is looking for new blogs to syndicate. It is the largest driver of traffic to my site. Please drop them a line via their contact form with the address for your blog suggestion. The blog must:

Discuss the WoW economy in most articles
Use correct spelling, capitalization, punctuation and grammar
Show an effort to provide new ideas
Provide an RSS or Atom feed with at least the first 5 paragraphs or 1,200 characters

(As a side note: they seem to be content with nearly correct spelling and grammar - I can't pretend that I always succeed on these two items.)

Mix Master again

2011-09-01T14:02:00.000+10:00

I am Guild Master of a micro guild - Dark Prophecy, with 7 or 8 casual players. Sometimes we actually have players online and on friday nights will even have 4 or so players raiding. Considering our size and activty, being lvl a 12 guild isn't too bad.

We recently picked up a couple of alchemists, so it was worth getting the Cauldron of Battle (my non-raiding alchemist already had it from a stint in another guild). For this we needed Mix Master (1000 flasks made). We already had 250 flasks made from ad-hoc crafting, but needed to make another 750.

If you are serious about making a large number of flasks, you want to use an elixir specialist to do so. Over time, this provides a 15% bonus to the number of flasks or elixirs you make. I am also very happy to confirm that at the moment the proc's from this do count toward mix master. And even though I know that the law of averages says I will get 15% bonus, getting a 5x proc still gives a nice buzz.

We made roughly an equal amount of flasks with an eye towards the cauldron: strength, stamina, intellect and agility. This wasn't so much because I intend to use 185 cauldrons any time soon, but because there will be a consistent demand for these flasks - either directly or as mats for other guild's cauldrons.

I purchased both the herbs and the volatile life over six weeks, and over both auction houses. To make our 750 flasks (we already had 250), you need 12,000 cinderbloom, Azshara's veil, Twilight Jasmine and Whiptail, and 6,000 volatile life. That is a lot of mat's to strip off an auction house, with an inevitable price rise associated. My guestimate of the alliance price rise is about 2g50/life and about 50s/herb. It didnt help that on the Alliance AH, there was at least one other player also vacuuming all the volatile life of the AH. Life was the hardest thing to find enough to buy.

I staggered purchases. I bought off both auction houses. Horde side volatile life was regularly 3-4g cheaper per volatile than alliance. I made sure I had something to sell Horde side (glyphs) so I didn't have spend a 15% neutral AH hit just to convert cash.

I staggered my purchases over a month, once every day or so buying any needed 'below average' mats off the auction houses. Towards the end I had to pick only the best horde sales as I was running out of horde gold. However just horde glyph sales let me buy almost all the horde volatile life I wanted.

The darkmoon faire is just around the corner, so I expect that volatile life will reman in demand for another week.

I expect to make a profit on the flasks. I am not convinced that this profit would have been more than simply averaging out the AH prices buying mats when cheap, selling mats when expensive.

PS. If you are looking for a place to park a toon or two on Alliance Caelestrasz, send an in game mail to Foofixit. If you are willing to provide guild xp (even from doing the odd quest or daily), I am happy to provide guild repairs. I am also paying 2g/point towards the fishing achievement Thats a lot of bait.

Sometimes Addons interfere with goldmaking

2011-08-31T14:19:00.000+10:00

I love my addons. Inventory management, keyboard binding, threat monitoring, encounter warnings, buff management, heads up displays, friends syncing, non-friend ignoring, crafting management, AH management, healing trackers, dps trackers. I even have an addon to manage my addons.

For some things however, they just slow things up. Too much lag can be a sign that your addons are interfering. The other night I had a full set of inscription bags with pigments to turn into ink. Even though this part of inscription is an AFK, it was taking forever. The crafting bar would 'stutter'; Appear, pause for a long time, and immediately jump to 'finished'. Rinse and repeat.

Log out, disable all addons, log back in again, and craft inks with an unmodified UI. Much faster and smoother, saving in the order of 0.75 seconds per ink made. Not a deal breaker but certainly worth considering.

Question for the day: I know that the chef's hat changes time for cooking. I know that haste changes your global cooldown and combat 'cast time'. Does haste change your crafting 'cast time'?

What if you can't prospect Cata Epic gems?

2011-08-30T12:54:00.001+10:00

Anyone remember Stormjewels?

From the WoWPedia page :
Stormjewel is an epic gem that can be found by fishermen when doing Dalaran daily fishing quests. They can either be found in a Bag of Fishing Treasures, or the treasure bag can contain a Tiny Titanium Lockbox which in turn can contain a stormjewel.

Prior to patch 3.2, they were the only Northrend epic gems availabe to non-Jewelcrafters. They provide identical bonuses to the "ordinary" epic gems added in that patch.

Toward the end of ~~Cataclysm~~ Lich King I was buying uncut gems almost entirely sourced from either Honor Points or the equivalent of Justice points. I almost never sourced them from prospecting.

Blizzard have also done nothing but nerf the gold to be made from mining+prospecting since Cata was released.

As a gold community, we overhype some things. Remember that there was going to be unlimited demand for Dream Emerald for all those hunter scopes? I'm still sitting on a large stockpile, with nowhere to sell them.

Back before 4.2, I (correctly) predicted that I thought that 4.2 would not introduce Epic gems. For the reasons outlined (i.e. it is a stealth nerf to older content), I now think that at some stage in 4.3, we will see new epic gems. It may not be during the initial release, as leading PVE guild's don't need them initially, but middle of the road guilds will.

It is just as likely that alternate methods of getting Epic gems (Honor, Justice or Valor points; fishing) will limit the initial windfall of prospecting Epic gems.

I will still do my JC dailies. I will stockpile a relatively small amount of pyrite ore.

I am uncomfortable gambling my fortune on fools gold.

Kaliope on transmogrification

2011-08-29T13:45:00.001+10:00

I love Kaliope's blog (kaliope.crafterstome.com). She doesn't write much, but when she does, it's worth reading. She not only consistently is in the lead of researching upcoming tradeskill changes, and appears to understand 'cool'.

Please note: I don't do cool (or DPS either). Many AH goblins can't or won't do it either. This should not stop you from having a theoretical knowledge of an upcoming market.

She has written up a post Transmogrification and Leatherworking, well worth the read. She is not on all of the 'main' blogrolls running around, but worth the read, especially if you have leatherworking. She has said that tailoring is next on her todo list.

Darkmoon faire next week

2011-08-27T22:24:00.000+10:00

I know that some readers have been following my darkmoon faire series, and probably are trying their own hand at card making.

We are about to start the week before the faire. This means that volatile life and inferno ink's will go up in price (if they have not already done so) as crafters start to gear up for their next set of trinkets.

Also, this is the week that you get best prices for your any remaining unsold trinkets. I have deliberately not sold some trinkets until this week - just to get these prices. (Caveat venditor : If everyone else is doing it, then the prices will instead crash).

Anyway, while I did not keep as good a notes as I wanted to, they are good enough to give a comparison of what the theory suggested I might have made vs what I did make.

Bodycheck the AH botter.

2011-08-26T15:42:00.000+10:00

First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win. (Gahndi)

I had a comment on yesterday's post mentioning that while the techniques work on human players, they work less on bots. It is true that bots are more persistant, if only because they need less human intervention.

Bots are very good at performing the same task over and over, and very bad at reacting to unexpected changes. As a typical human player, you can be good at unexpected changes, and very bad at performing the same task over and over. You do have the option of looking at new markets. There is no guarantee that new markets will be any less competitive.

As an observer, it is difficult to tell the difference between:

Prohibited

automated bot.
semi automated bot that only automates the 'keypress/click now' requrement.
Account sharing campers being on 24/7

Permitted

A streamlined account using addons, but with a player using a scroll wheel mouse performing clicking while they are watching TV, eating dinner
A streamlined account using addons, but with a player using a second account, having the keystrokes from their first account send keypresses to the second account
A very dedicated camper with basic addons spending all day on the AH. Or even 2 dedicated campers on two accounts operating in shifts.

I am not a lawyer, and the above rules match my understanding of what is allowed/not allowed - if you feel that the above criterea is misleading, please comment below, giving sources (terms of use, blizzard forum posts etc).

A player using prohibited methods (especially if they are acutally on 24/7) should be reported to Blizzard. You will not get any instant gratification in return, but they may look at your complaint at some stage. Blizzard do ban botters in waves. With the exception of getting the (passing) 'feel good' of reporting a botter, is no significant difference between any of the above.

They are all good at repeating a simple task, and are all bad at reacting. So, make them react.

In yesterday's post, I talked about learning all the skills, 48 hour posts and cutting off their profit.

Today, we look at body checking the opposition. Your aim is to get them to post at cost (or less), keep them grinding and posting. You will need patience, all the profitable recipees of that market segment, and a stockpile to start. This is not yet about profit. You are already making none - because a persistant undercutter is already preventing your sales.

You will need your own spreadsheet, calculator or pen & paper.

Guestimate the amount of demand at low prices. Stockpile enough mats to satisfy that demand. (You can always sell surplus mats later)
Over a cycle, determine what are your costs, including AH fees, based on the minimum market price of material. theunderminejournal.com gives you a fortnight's history of supply. Remember the darkmoon faire when looking at herbs and volatile life.
Use trade chat, other crafters to see if your intermediate costs can be reduced (e.g. JC's should find a transmute alchemist to make your inferno rubies).
Use a deep undercut - aiming each time to post at halfway between your cost and market prices. Post for 48 hours, in singles at this point.
Wait for their response:

Do they buy? Then Sell. Lots. Until they give up you have a guaranteed buyer for 1/2 the potential profit. Offer to sell COD. (even botters keep an eye on their accounts).
Do they undercut? Then do another deep undercut - again halfway between your cost and market price.
Do they sell below your cost? Buy untill you have your desired stockpile.
Reached your stockpile limits? Post singles, in 48 hour auctions at your cost price. This caps their income (remember - they have already capped yours).

This is boring and not particularly profitable - for both you and your competitor. If you have done your research better than they have, then they may be losing gold. There will be other crafters; levelling toons, others getting out of the market, players farming for themselves. These competitors will unkowningly help you in making your botting competitor's life hell.

At the moment, my time is better spent working around other players. However, it's not that hard to run off both botting and camping competitors. It comes down to endurance. You can devote an hour every 48 hours, they are spending one or more account's full time 'owning' a now worthless market.

What to do with that camper?

2011-08-25T18:30:00.000+10:00

On the Auction house, there are dominant names in some fields, often a 'camping' player. That is, someone who does nothing but sit on the auction house, and undercut's you by a copper or two within moments of you posting something. You could camp in responce. I don't.

In response to a recent comment. I will illustrate my methods to combat this.

First of all, learn everything for your chosen profession. The harder the recipee is to get, the greater the chances it will be profitable. Your camper may not have the time to learn these recipees.

For jewelcrafters, this includes dalaran JC dailies as well as Stormwind/Origmar dailies.
For scribes, do your research (minor and major), and pick up books of glyph mastery (though they may become somewhat redundant later - with research also being able to do this too).
Bored enchanter's should organise older content to pickup patterns - either for maxing out low level pvp toons, BOA enchants, or just cater to the low level rich player.
Bored leather workers, tailors and blacksmiths should also consider farming older content for the patterns that look 'cool' for transmogrification. Caveat Emptor : I have no idea what 'cool' would look like.
Engineers should get pet recipees.

Second, do your market research as to what is profitable to make. There are addon's like Lil Sparky's workshop, spreadsheets (both on the web and one's you do yourself), and even TradeSkillMaster has a tool. You will sometimes craft stuff no-one ever needs, and sometimes will find genuine niche markets. Your camper may avoid these recipees.

Post when your camper is AFK. My Horde glyph camper has this posting activity (from http://theunderminejournal.com/seller.php?realm=H-Caelestrasz&seller=Massterbank)

I respond with this posting activity (from http://theunderminejournal.com/seller.php?realm=H-Caelestrasz&seller=Foostrait)

I suspect that Massterbank's overall earnings are higher than mine. However, I have a much greater gold/hour than he does. There is absolutly zero value in 1c undercutting Massterbank when he is online. He is prepared to outwait you.

If all the above don't work or are undesireable, look at cost based options option of dealing with campers.

Learn exactly how much it costs you to make something (gems, glyphs, belt buckles, pets - whatever). Work out how little you are prepared to sell something for above costs. This is your threshold.

Will your camper buy out your auctions if you post at your threshold? Then sell away. He may build a stockpile, but you are making gold (i.e. you are above your cost). Easy sales. I have several times had competition buy out my glyphs. I then sent a note thanking them for their support, posted more on the AH, and asked them how many more they wanted COD? Apparently this is demoralising for a wannabe monopolist.

Will your camper undercut you anyway? Then sell a 48 hour 'wall'. You are not making any sales as he continues to undercut you. However, you are making his life hell. There are still levelling toons posting things below cost - taking away his sales. You are not allowing him to make a huge profit. Your time commitment is picking up mail every 2 days and reposting (i.e. blessed all). His is crafting, posting, ah fees, and doing this for less than questing gold/hour with a huge time commitment. All it requires is patience, and the willingness to 'destroy the market' (buyers still think its great).

It may take a month or two to drive off a particularly determined camper. That's OK. I am developing other markets while he is grinding for no reward.

AFK, still making gold

2011-08-25T09:01:00.000+10:00

First life interferes. Mostly good, but I have spent a fair amount of time /afk.

My routine still involves posting 12 hour glyphs many mornings, on each AH, collecting the sales and unsold glyphs in the evening. I am way way behind in my crafting, but as I have not had time to solve that, still making 1.5k (profit) per AH per morning I can get to the PC is worth it.

Gem sales are also pleasantly reliable.

Log onto sales alt, collect mail, pick up 2-3k in sales, and yesterday's crafted gems. Post 48 hour auctions.
log onto JC, do the stormwind daily, and re-craft gems, and mail gems.

Two of my recent interests require significant amounts of volatile life, (One interest is the darkmoon faire series I have recently been blogging about). Volatile life is stubbornly high alliance side (10-30g each) with limited supply, and significantly cheaper horde side (8g) with larger supply. On a seemingly unrelated note , my horde toon is richer in assets and poorer in cash.

For me, there is no question that 'time is money'. However even small amounts of time can be significant amounts of gold.

Transmogrification again instead of real news

2011-08-19T15:32:00.000+10:00

I'm not great at 'cool'. Too old, too results driven, and I normally don't care.

Transmogrification is about 'cool'. The blue trackers are still going ape. It has caused more excitement than, ... well the real id changes, but this time for 'good'.

Blizzard are confirming that to change your own gear's look, you need to have that gear. Some gear that is unobtainable on your toon (eg Death Knight starter gear).

Many readers of gold blogs won't care about it. Many players that wish to be parted from their gold will care a lot. I'm surprised I haven't read a rant from Gevlon about the type of player who will care.

Regardless, old raids will become popular once this is released, with associate changes. Players making or buying old gear. Players incidentally farming those raids, selling what they farmed on the AH. I also expect to see a reduced supply of high end disenchanted items as players start dumping them old gear store.

In terms of research, as a follow up on my recent darkmoon card series, I am writing a follow up on what cards, decks and trinkets I bought and sold or continued to hold. However, you won't get it untill the next darkmoon faire. Some readers expect me to make a fortune. Others expect me to lose one. The reality should be somewhere in the middle.

Transmogrification an opportunity for profit.

2011-08-18T18:05:00.000+10:00

Transmogrification is all the rage on the blue forum trackers (sites that track posts of official blizzard representatives)

I'm a packrat. I like the idea of somewhere to store that armor that I'm likely to never use (eg PVP, DPS).
I won't be changing the look of my gear (maybe with the exception of rediculous plate shoulders), but many others will be.

This means a market for unusual (i.e. old) armour and weapons, as cosmetically oriented players 'gotta catch em all', both in terms of crafted goods as well as paterns. Tailors, Leatherworkers and Blacksmiths with old rare patterns - rejoice. Gather your mats of the AH now while the are cheap. When this goes live, make your goods, and maybe even get your social guildy to dance around in Stormwind/Origmar with the 'retro' look.

What to make when you have made everything?

2011-08-17T16:30:00.000+10:00

Wes over at capped by cata had the following question
What do I do to make gold when I have nothing to do to make gold? When I run out of things to mill/prospect/DE etc. When I'm waiting for things to sell on the AH when there is nothing else. Do you have any ideas? BS/JC/enchanting/alchemy/herb/mining. Running into this problem more and more as I run out of 4.2 stock, and its not efficient to buy raw mats off the AH.

I find the question useful, but Wes's advice - especially about holding your current prices ... curious.

There are a few forces at play :

Firelands dailies:

Massive cash injection causing inflation : Blizzard have inspired the masses to do dailies. Lets say 17g * 15 dailies * 7 days/week = approx 1800g/week/toon. Thats a lot of gold to be bringing into the economy as a whole. It will take a lot to soak that up. Soaking up surplus gold is what goblins do.
Less levelling of alts. Questing and heroic running alts supply green and blue quality armor and weapons, which in turn are disenchanted into enchanting mats.

Bot farming : Regardless of what your take on bot farming is, it is naive to think that 'that toon' that always lists thousands of herbs on the AH isn't a bot farmer. It's also naive to think that your competitors are not buying those same herbs. Bots create a fixed base supply of herbs and to a lesser degree ore and leather, regardless of demand. Over time, there is downward pressure on the price of herbs, ore and leather.
Fireland trash runs. Uggg. Why deliberately clear trash and not fight bosses? Oh well. These supply nice BOE epic drops, that are then bought by wealthier toons - redirecting gold from goblins to less capable 'raiders'.

~~Keeping your same listing prices~~.(Wes's advice.). Mine : Follow the market. While you have a stockpile to sell down at higher prices, do so. If mats + value of time is more than the price of finished goods on AH, then buy mats, craft then sell finished products. Stockpile bargains that you think will go up in value; sell stock you think is overvalued, and take advantage of the higher prices.

Level 80+ toons without skills? Get those tradeskills up. For lower risk, higher profit options, I suggest:

Jewelcrafting : Prospecting, northrend epics and rares, and potentially even the northrend daily (~100g per dragon's eye from the token)
Inscription : Milling, and research based glyphs. Some scribes (me) prefer to buy inks rather than grind their own.
Enchanting : Disenchanting
Alchemy : transmute master for northrend epic gems

Of course each tradeskill has cata sellable items (some before cata too), but JC and Inscription have the greatest choices in things to make, in turn making the greatest potential profit.

Farming? Maybe. If you can stomach it. If all else fails, take up fishing. Volatile fire sell for 10g/pop and can be fished from pools. Also, you don't need a high fishing skill to fish from a pool either.

Of course, there is always first life.

You know it's a slow news day when bloggers are talking about other bloggers.

Competition for glyph sales on the Horde AH

2011-08-13T09:56:00.000+10:00

My early morning horde AH glyph sales are now being camped.

This morning at 9:30 AM server, I was camped within minutes of posting glyphs. Normally I dont have time in the mornings to take notice. However, over the last week, my horde AH daily sales have dropped from around 2.5 k in sales/posting cycle down to 800g/posting cycle, and then a mere 100g.

This morning, being Saturday, I checked.

My historical defence against camping was deep undercut. At the suggestion of Breevok, I moved to a early morning posting cycle instead, using time to protect my auctions.

I don't camp. First life requirements prevent me from being able to do this. With being camped immediately using time to protect sales is no longer an option. This leaves me with my previous defense - the deep undercut.

I am trying to make sales. A 100g - 48hour undercut will encourage people to buy from me instead.

I know that their fallbacks are lower than mine. For most glyphs I post at a minimum of 20g. Others are posting at a minimum lower than that. I am content for my competition to have the low value glyph sales.

I will still make more profit at these levels than I would by not making any sales at all.

Darkmoon depreciation

2011-08-08T17:39:00.000+10:00

Yet another post in a series about darkmoon trinkets.

I like far too much the sight of my own walls of text. The last post was too ... long? dry? Must write shorter.

All 359 gear prices are heading south, trinkets included. I have some hope for volcano trinkets (apparently still BIS for many caster DPS specs), and Tsunami for healers has surprisingly strong prices. The tanking trinket (Earthquake) is no-ones friend even before 4.2 and will only get worse. Finally Hurricane (in either strength or agility) is ordinary.

As a rule this month's trinket peak price is less than last months. This month's bottom price is less than last month's bottom price. I try to sell out of trinkets during the week before the next faire. I would rather get less and sell out than be stuck with trinkets left over. I would love to present you with proof, but could not find trinket prices over several months.

PS. I'm having a .. less than perfect experience setting up scheduled posts. Anyone else currently using blogger scheduled posts? Are you having success, or do they just end back up as 'draft' posts?

Pugs get defender of a shattered realm

2011-08-06T10:10:00.000+10:00

Friday night was a good night, though it started very slowly.

I ran my gold bid run to complete Chogall, starting off short by 1 Healer, and 1 Tank (and a couple of DPS).

I had an interesting pair offer to Tank and DPS. Gemmed but unenchanted. Didn't have Vent (which I use). Reforged PVP gear. "Why do I need to download another program? How much does it cost? Are you sure this isn't a scam?" Umm. Thanks for signing up, but I think you need to start at an earlier boss. /kick

I picked up another tank and dps toon. Unlike last week, we hit Chogall's phase 2 with only 30 corruption accross all toons - so much eaiser to heal than the previous week starting phase 2 with 350+ corruption, and one shot him. Swapped a couple of toons out that needed to go, and one shot both of Throne of the Four winds. I had never downed Al'Akir before, but the Conclave of Winds was so much more forgiving than I remember (including forgiving a mistake of mine that would have guaranteed a wipe when I first went there).

Last night my healer foofixied achieved Defender of a Shattered World.

Very happy. I have no doubt that the nerf bat helped us down the raid. I also have no doubt that offering a minimum gold pot gold bid run meant we got a few higher callibre players than we otherwise would have.

Then we swapped both players and roles, including me swapping my healer for my tank, and we went to BWD and didn't down Magmaw. Oh well.

So, I'm off to firelands. I've been happy with the results of the gold bid runs with guaranteed pots, so will continue with that method for the time being.

If you are interested, invites will go out slightly earlier at 8:15 pm (though confirmed players have untill 8:30) As always, either in game mail foofixit on Alliance Caelestrasz, or leave a comment here.

Timing the trinket market

2011-08-05T15:27:00.001+10:00

This is the 4th post in a series on Darkmoon Trinkets.
All markets have price variations. Raid nights need flasks and potions before the raid starts, and gems and enchants after the raid finishes; creating periods of peak demand and higher prices. Casual farmers and crafters work on nights that are not raid nights, creating peak supply and lower prices.

As I explored with yesterday's post, for darkmoon trinkets, the faire dominates the pricing cycle. It's not enough to buy mats and expect to sell trinkets at profit. Timing the trinket market is more important than time in the market.

The basic process again is :

Gather herbs and volatile life
Mill herbs -> Inks (Blackfallow & Inferno)
Combine Inferno inks and Volatile life to create an individual card (Ace to Eight of one of the 4 standard card suites)
Combine 8 different cards of the same suite to create a deck.
Turn the deck into a trinket during the Darkmoon Faire.

You can use the AH at any point (or even multiple points) in this cycle. I only get mats from other farmers (sometimes direct ; usually off the AH). Sometimes I mill herbs, other times I buy or even sell Inks. I make, buy and sell cards. I make, buy and sell decks. I create trinkets during the faire and sell them later.

Each 'line' in the above process has it's peaks and troughs : related to each other but lagging. Eg. Peak ink prices occur during the time that Trinkets go from most expensive to cheapest.

Raw Mats	Alliance Mean	Min (Alliance Cael)	Max (Alliance Cael)
Volatile Life	9.21	7.5	13.33
Whiptail	2.19	1.7	2.31
Inferno Ink	40.7	23	52.5
Blackfallow Ink	11.9	4.28	7
Milling value
Inferno Gold	2.04	1.15	2.63
Blackfallow Gold	3.57	1.28	2.1
Total Gold	5.61	2.43	4.73
Value increase	256%	143%	205%
Trinkets
Volcano	10,742	6,300	15,000
Tsunami	15,153	10,986	20,000
Earthquake	5,125	3,531	15,000
Hurricane	9,680	6,318	15,250
Average	10,175	6,784	16,313
Cost - no waste	5,471	3,644	7,404
	186%	186%	220%
Cost 10% waste	6,018	4,009	8,144
	169%	169%	200%
Cost 50% waste	8,206	5,467	11,105
	124%	124%	147%

Pricing was established @30 June 2011, taken from theunderminejournal.com. The Alliance mean is the undermine journals 'US Alliance Mean pricing', and the minimum and maximum are taken from eyeballing the 14 day rolling window for Alliance Caelestrasz. I make no warranties that trinkets were sold at any price, let alone 15,000 for the earthquake, but these are the listed prices my AH - and without any manipulation on my behalf.

First of all I am listing pricing for both the basic mats (Volatile life and Whiptail as a representative herb); as well as the pricing for Inferno & Blackfallow inks.

For my own reference, I have listed the notional value of milling a single whiptail, and it's markup; assuming you sold it as ink.

At the bottom I have included trinket prices - both individual and average; followed by costs and markups (from volatile life and ink prices) based on 3 scenarios : No waste; 10% allowance for wasted cards, and 50% allowance for wasted cards.

The first thing to note, is that if you look at only average pricing; OR only minimal pricing; OR only maximum prices; even allowing for 50% you can make a profit.

The next thing to note is that if you buy all your mats at the 'top' of the cycle (7400g no waste), and sell your trinkets at the bottom of the cycle (6800), then you will make a loss. No brainer huh? But look at the implications.

(Please note : the profit's mentioned below are theoretical only. I doubt even the most rabid card maker would expect them on a regular basis. However, it is still valid for illustration purposes).

Take the 10% allowance for waste cycle in 2 scenarios:
Scenario 1

Buy inks and volatile life at the bottom of the market for 1 trinket : 4000g.
Craft cards
Sell completed trinket at the top of the market : 16,300 g
Profit 12,300g

Scenario 2

Buy inks and volatile life at the bottom of the market for 1 trinket : 4,000g
Sell inks and volatile life at the top of the market for 1 trinket : 8,100g
Buy completed trinket at the bottom of the market : 6,800g
Sell Completed Trinket at the top of the market 16,300g
Profit = 4100g + 9500g = 13,600g

By hanging onto your cards for the entire cycle, selling at the top of the cycle; you loose 1,600g per card : or 10%. If you miss the (hard to pick)

I have also skipped all the 'fun' that can be had by selling individual cards and decks. Any trinket maker is already playing with risk, at points in every cycle having crafted goods worth less than unprocessed mats.

In scenario 2, you do not need to be a scribe; Making greater just by buying low and selling high.

Monthly trinket time

2011-08-04T12:01:00.003+10:00

This post is the third in a series on crafting Darkmoon Trinkets.

Tailoring has a weekly cooldown, Blacksmiths and Leatherworkers need chaos orb's, Alchemy transmutes have a daily cooldown. Scribes have the faire.

You can gather your mats, do your crafting, buy and sell cards and even finished decks of the AH, and do this any time. A finished deck gives you a quest that can only be turned in during one week per month, during the darkmoon faire. It is this handing in this quest that creates your trinket (and for hurricane - determine if you will have a strength or agility trinket). For those players who don't attend the faire, its location moves between horde, allilance and neutral venues, and is listed in the in-game calendar. I live on a PVE server, and it's easy enough to avoid the opposite faction's guards, but it may be worth careful timing or organising a group when the faire is near your opposite faction's cities.

There is a definite timeline to trinket crafting

Faire week

crafters are trying to complete the last of their decks and turning in completed trinkets.
There are generally no decks on the AH, and
cheap trinkets start to flood the AH.
Lots of card trading occurs this week.

Week after faire

Crafters are trying to offload their trinkets and some are desperately trying to cash in.
Noone is bothering to do much new card creation.
Herb, Inferno ink and volatile life start to drop and I start looking for bargains.

Second week after faire :

Desparados have offloaded their trinkets, and what trinkets are left rise in prices.
Some crafting occurs, and Decks start to appear.
People in trade offer (currently useless) decks for usable trinkets.
There are still cheap mats, but will likely disappear toward the end of the week.

Third week after faire, week before next one.

Those that have priced their trinkets properly will sell out for the highest prices in this week. Priced too high and you will be left with too many trinkets. Priced too low and you will sell out before this.
Some trinkets will be sold out.
You may also be able to pick up cheap finished decks.
Card trading starts.

Sometimes there is a 5 week month, meaning more mats on the AH, but more trinkets sold out.

Darkmoon trinket creation randomness.

2011-08-03T14:14:00.002+10:00

This post is part 2 of a series. In my last post, I talked about how trinket making had 90% profits, with some large caveats.

This post is looking at the randomness of how many cards it takes to make a trinket. The preious post assumed cards would come in order and you would be left with no wasted cards. Umm, that was optomistic. I would allow for 4%-8% wasted cards.

The basic process again is :

Gather herbs and volatile life
Mill herbs -> Inks (Blackfallow & Inferno)
Combine Inferno inks and Volatile life to create an individual card (Ace to Eight of one of the 4 standard card suites)
Combine 8 different cards of the same suite to create a deck.
Turn the deck into a trinket during the Darkmoon Faire.

One idea bandied about is that you need to craft 32 cards on average to make your first trinket; assuming you don't buy individual cards from the AH. I think the number is closer to 50, based on this google docs simulator. Even after making 10,000 cards, my simluator suggests that I will have about 1150 trinkets and about 800 (8%) unused cards. Some readers may make 1150 trinkets. I doubt I will.

The individual cards can be bought and sold on the AH. Conventional wisdom says that if you have a surplus of one card (eg 8 of the winds), but need a different card (say 3 of the winds), you will sell your surplus card on the AH, and try to purchase the card you need.

In my 50 card scenario, trading 6 cards allows me to create another 3 trinkets (using 24 cards); up from 1 trinket using 8 cards.
In my 10,000 card scenario, trading 30 cards allows me to make 30 more trinkets, using up 240 of the 800 surplus cards.
However, you have also potentially allowed your competitors to do the same, meaning increased competition for completed trinket sales.

If I only have one (or possibly two depending on my mood) extra card, I will sit on it.

I will sell surplus cards where :

I have a few extra cards, and they are listed above 1/8 of the completed trinket sale price; or
I have a lot of extra cards.

I will purchase cards where :

I need them to complete a deck, and they are at or below market prices
I need a lot of one card to complete multiple decks.
The are significantly below completed trinket price and I only have a few of that card

To the peanut gallery, for this post, I am specifically looking for debate on:

your observations on the randomness of cards, and/or
selling/purchasing surplus/shortfall cards.

In answer to yesterday's comment : Cold has been trying to get out of darkmoon trinkets, and has some cards he can not shift. According to my simulation, there will always be cards that are surplus to a servers requirements. If you want out, liquidate, but try both faction's AH.

Postscript in response to Zamboni
(It's a bother to put tables in comments, so I have added a postscript.).
Random chance is enough to explain the shortage in cards. Statistics are funny like that.

You say you have made hundreds of trinkets, lets call it 400, and see what my simlator suggests.
I ran it about 20 times making 3660 cards ~ 1/2 gave more than 400, ~ 1/2 than 400 and one gave exactly 400.

NumDecks	110								Total
NumCards	130	131	110	112	110	147	114	121	975
Suite 1	A	2	3	4	5	6	7	8

NumDecks	95
NumCards	102	95	129	125	99	123	104	116	893
Suite 2	A	2	3	4	5	6	7	8

NumDecks	96
NumCards	117	120	96	122	128	105	99	100	887
Suite 3	A	2	3	4	5	6	7	8

NumDecks	99
NumCards	107	99	140	116	119	102	106	116	905
Suite 4	A	2	3	4	5	6	7	8

									3660

Total decks	400
Consumed cards	3200
Surplus cards	460

As you can see, I am short (by a lot) fo the following cards
Suite 1 : 3, 4 & 5
Suite 2 : 2 & 5
Suite 3 : 3 & 7
Suite 4 : 2 & 6.

The most of any given card was 147 (Suite 1 card 6). The fewest of any given card was 95 (Suite 2 card 2).

The most of any deck was Suite 1 with 110 decks, and the fewest was suite 2 with 95 decks.

To show a bias in the RNG over 400 decks you need to show a difference significantly more than 52 cards. Until then, it's just random noise.

Creating Darkmoon Cards Part 1 of X

2011-08-03T00:30:00.002+10:00

Darkmoon card trinket sellers generally come in one of two groups:

Glyph makers selling cards as a use for surplus inferno inks, and
Dedicated card sellers, producing surplus blackfallow inks.

I am firmly in the first group. There will be other players out there that love darkmoon card sales. However as I read a lot of blogs, and can't point to a recent set of posts, I will write this up.

First, I create inferno inks out of my glyph making process. When I originally wrote that I was posting glyphs in the evening with a deep undercut method on a single faction's AH. Today, I am playing less, and posting glyphs in the morning on two factions AH.

This post is covering the very basics of making Cataclysm darkmoon trinkets. Future posts will be covering more details. (Peanut gallery - you will be invited to argue about optimising costs & sale prices in later posts).

While card creation can be profitable, it does take an ability to run a large stockpile.

All prices below are taken from theunderminejournal.com - average mean price of both horde and alliance servers at 30 June 2011.

An individual card takes 10 inferno inks @ 38g + 30 Volatile life @ 9g (disregarding 1 Parchment @55s) = 650g.
Each Cataclysm deck takes 8 cards to make @ 650g = 5440g.

There are 32 possible cards - Ace to Eight:

Of Stones. This makes a tanking trinket - seems to be generally unloved, and mean price 5090g
Of Waves. This makes a healing trinket - apparently Best In Slot for Holy priests (even in 4.2) and OK for other healers, mean price 14,890g
Of Embers. This makes a caster DPS trinket - apparently Best in Slot for many casters (even in 4.2), mean price 10,720g
Of the Winds. This makes either a Strength DPS trinket or an Agility DPS trinket. Mean prices about the same at 9,226g

This means that the mean price of all Cata darkmoon trinkets is 9990g or about 90% profit on top of costs

However, there are other issues with these cards that I will explore in later posts.

You don't get to chose which card you will make. You might have 50 individual cards yet still not be able to make a trinket.
You can only make them 1 week every month
They have huge price variations (sometimes it's better to sell mats).
Like other 359 epics, they will suffer depreciation.

Postscript : In response to a comment below, I have added this image (can't add an image in a comment). This is a snapshot from my server's Allaince AH taken today for the volcano trinket. In all the pricing above I used the average of 'US Alliance Mean' and 'US Horde Mean' from two days ago.

GDKP night 3, and upcoming darkmoon fair mini-series

2011-08-01T16:08:00.000+10:00

Revenge of Cho'gall.
Just a 'tweet' to say that my GDKP night 3 .... went well for Cho'gall. I paid (via game mail) the tanks and healers (I hope I got everyone) , but had no pretty loot to bid for.

As such, minimum pot of 6K this week for Chogal, with pot to be divided up immediately on him being downed. Given time and energy, I may then then move onto Throne of the 4 winds.

For the first time ever, I am asking for either a minimum DPS requirement of 10K or for a significant contribution to the guaranteed pot. I will also be organising DPS around the Blood of the old gods. I also need players not to gain too much corruption before phase 2. I.e. if you have more corruption than me - you get growled at. If I'm the top of the list, I get growled at.

If this sounds like fun, you have a suitable toon on Alliance Caelestrasz available from 8:30pm server, please leave a comment here, or in game mail Foofixit.

Upcoming Darkmoon faire min-series.

I have been researching stuff for a darkmoon trinket manufacturing series, similar to my glyph making process series. What I would like is historical pricing for darkmoon fair trinkets covering months rather than just the fortnight provided by the undermine journal. Any server or faction, any sufficiently long time period (covering at least 4 consecutive faires, and at weekly or better pricing for at least one month). If you have this please leave a comment here (or roll a lvl 1 toon on Alliance Caelestrasz & mail foofixit).

Some DMF trinkets still best in slot

2011-07-26T13:13:00.000+10:00

There was some doom and gloom written about Darkmoon Faire trinkets shortly before patch 4.2. This made me sit up and pay attention. Markets move en-mass, and often over react to new changes.

I mentioned a couple of posts ago, that I used Ask Mr Robot to determine what gem cuts players will be moving to. However, gems were not the only thing I noticed.

Hurricane and Stones are poor cousins and not recommended as best for anyone, to be sold for whatever I can get. All our trinket slots have become easier to fill, even for a player like me who has not had the valor points to purchase a single item at any point in Cata, (and I've only purchased a few Justice points items). The average value of Hurricane and especially Stones are on a downward trend, to be bought by newly levelled toons who cant be bothered sorting out something better.

Darkmoon Card:Tsunami is still recommended as a Best in Slot trinket for Holy Priests (one of 5 healing specs). This should be some demand, but probably not enough to soak up possible supply

Darkmoon Card:Volcano is still recommended as a Best in Slot trinket for most Caster DPS specs.
The average value of Darkmoon Card : Volcano should be on an upward trend, being the payoff for this phase of WoW. The average player wealth pool has increased a lot with the firelands dailies. Players have been to seeing big $$ spent on gear, and there is no reason not to charge it for Best in Slot. And selling to DPS: How can it possibly go wrong?

I will talk about crafting cards and sourcing mats in a later post. (I have an excitable commenter. Don't worry, I'll also address his previous ... comments in that later post)

Contemplating leaving Blogger over Google+ account suspensions

2011-07-25T14:09:00.000+10:00

From my post last night, you may guess that I am unhappy with Google+. In essence - if you use an google profile that is an alias, and then use Google+, you lose all blogs, google docs, paid advertising, gmail attached to that profile, with little hope for recovery.

I am uncomfortable with the risk of hosting my blog on a platform that capriciously removes access.

I have put a lot of time into this blog, and some of you appreciate reading it. However I am seriously contemplating moving away from Blogger. While the risk was theoretical, I didn't care. Now it has become for some (including one of Faid's profiles) real, it is time to re-evaluate the alternatives.

I recommend using an alias when writing blogs. I don't recommend using Google under alias. I therefore recommend that anyone starting a new blog should consider platforms other than Blogger.

This google hosted forum has reports for others with issues.

Moving has the following costs :

New domain name. I will lose readers by the shift.
The time taken to do the shift.
Time taken learning a new platform.

I am publicly considering options. This is my equivalent of a dummy-spit. It does not mean that I will follow up - I think the 'costs' are significant, but I am contemplating it.

However, for those that have moved platforms (Annalias?); either WoW related or otherwise, how did you find the move?

What other blogging solutions would you, as either a reader or author, recommend?

Gold bloggers should NOT use google+

2011-07-24T22:42:00.000+10:00

Imagine your blogger account being deleted just because your profile is an alias?

Lose your email?
Lose your google docs - all those spreadsheats?

There are reports of Google deleting blogger and gmail accounts due to people using aliases on google+
I use an alias on this blog. Most gold bloggers do.

I refer you to Google+ AUP
13. Display Name
To help fight spam and prevent fake profiles, use the name your friends, family or co-workers usually call you. For example, if your full legal name is Charles Jones Jr. but you normally use Chuck Jones or Junior Jones, either of those would be acceptable.

zdnet.com : google plus deleting accounts en masse no clear answers

Slashdot : Google Account Suspensions Over ToS Drawing Fire

I quit WoW over their linking real name to their forums before they reversed it. I still won't use Real ID. I will not use Google+.

GDKP night 2

2011-07-23T17:10:00.001+10:00

Summary
BWD (extended) : Nefarian down with Healthy bidding.
BoT (fresh) :

Halfus down one shot, sharded loot
Twilight Enclave one shot, OK bidding + BOE drop healthy bidding
Sanctum of the ascended down, OK bidding.
Cho'gall wipefest

A total pot of 15k for the evening.

In detail

Given required raid compositions (and I am more flexible than many), I will then prefer to take toons that have accepted ahead of time. I also make an effort to organise healers and tanks ahead of time.

We had other toons that were tentative accept at the last moment - No probs. Tentatives means you are interested but won't commit. Thats OK, I'm interested in you coming (hence the invite) but I didn't commit by sending an invite.

We had other toons that previously accepted the calendar invite but didn't turn up; and had to be chased up. Grrr. If you accept, show up (or send apologies). While I don't have real id, I do read in game mail, and I do have this blog.
We had a couple of newbies to raiding on very undergeared toons. That's actually OK - we had a few overgeared ones too. The undergeared bid on loot - possibly assisted by one of their guild's officers (not me). I'm hapy with that.

At one point we wiped on Nefarian with less than 1% health. To be honest I love attempts like that (both the 1% win and the 1% loss). However during the recovery I scanned gear. Even some of the boosters had a missing enchant. Some of the undergeared had way too much missing. I don't mind you being 'cheap' and not getting the best enchants, gems or reforges, or occasionally forgetting the odd item. Not making an effort makes for a grumpy Foo. Battlenet provides you with a view that shows you what you are missing (http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/caelestrasz/Foofixit/advanced), as does Ask Mr Robot (http://www.askmrrobot.com/wow/gear/usa/caelestrasz/foofixit#v1 - and yes I could do a little more reforging as of writing this post.) Making an attempt at gemming, enchanting and reforging turns a 1% wipe into a 1% win.

As for BoT, I just healed. Failed at some of my assignments, and it only really mattered on Chogall. While I like putting together the strategy on some fights, I find I am just as happy running with others leading.

No matter; starting at Chogall next week.

If you are looking for an invite, rules, including what/where/who are on this page.

Enchanting mats & ore shuffles

2011-07-21T23:30:00.001+10:00

I don't normally do much with my enchanting. I've been 'slack'.

However, after picking up a set of 378 bracers to replace my 333 ones for my healer; at the 'bargain' price of 20k (meh - it's what I get gold for), I went to purchase a wrist enchant of the AH; for the bargain price of 1.7k.

Umm. Mats prices are less than that; I'm sure of it. Nope : they have gone through the roof.

Ok; get something to disenchant. Someone beat me to it. I have never seen the AH have so few greens.

Ok. I'm a JC, surely I can do something with that. Yup. Uncut common gems in the bank. Elementium ore is through the roof, but Pyrite ore and Obsidium ore are OK (not cheap but OK).

I could have done better at this preparation. I read enough blogs. Breevok told us to (and is now gloating - with justification).

I also should look at enchanting as my next profession to properly set up. But Later.

There looks to be gold in the ore shuffle and enchanting scrolls to be made. I'll tinker in the enchanting market but won't make waves. At least not just yet anyway.

PS. LFM Gold bid run Friday 8:30 pm server. Currently short 1 tank and a few DPS.

Ask Mr Robot about gems

2011-07-20T19:35:00.000+10:00

When it comes to gemming, enchanting and reforging; I can barely work out what is OK for my own spec, let alone anyone else. So when in doubt, I ask Mr Robot. On top of that I am trying to work out what gem cuts to buy next for my JC.

Today, I looked up the PVE recommended gems for various specs with (apparently) best in slot gear.

I won't pass much judgement about the theory crafting behind some of the decisions, though I am sometimes confused (Pally tanks value dodge & parry more than mastery - yet are recommended pure mastery gems? Diminishing returns?)

I was specifically looking for recommended Dream Emerald cuts. There is 1 (Puissant - Mastery/Stamina); There is also only 1 recommended Amberjewel (Fractured - Mastery).

I have not looked at any PVP gem cuts, unsure where PVP players get their recomendations.

Players wear all sorts of gems, and get their advice (or lack thereof) from lots of different places.
Some even think any epic gems must be better than any rare gems (they are not - the epics are northrend and carry less bonus than a cata rare), so don't restrict your sales to this list.

However, being aware of what some knowledgeable players will be picking up is still a good idea. My consolidated list of gems as recommended by Ask Mr Robot for BIS Tier 12 is here on google docs.

(Not) owning that market

2011-07-19T15:06:00.000+10:00

There was a comment outlining a method of owning the glyph market. This is my deconstruction of it.

For the record; I have played the deep undercut game. I have been both the dominant seller, and the quiet mouse. I have played with glyphs - owning all the recipees since Mid 2010. I have posted with 3 toons, and posted with one.

A few weeks 1 competitor will give up. After a few more weeks the second one will give up. And so on and so on. When they leave u gain market share. increase the ceiling to 40g, then 50g then 60g. Dont be greedy or else they will come back. - Critical Goblin

My understanding of the deep undercut method is that you drive other players out of the market with a very low margin sustained campaign. After a while they will give up; and loose interest; change proffesion, or server change. Once your competition has given up, you can then raise prices and have large profit.

There are a couple of problems with this strategy.

What if you are running deep undercutting for months and they still have not given up?
What if you are up against a farming goblin; who is willing to farm his own herbs and sell glyphs below a herb price sustained by alchemists?
What if your competitors have a range of alts with different crafting professions?
What if you can make more gold by being greedy and allowing the competition to come back?

If you are prepared to play hard; accept that there might be others prepared to play harder.

Back in the dying days of lich king, I sustained a very deep undercut pricing of glyphs. I knew what herbs I could buy, and what glyphs needed what parchments. I bought all types of herbs and inks; buying whatever was cheapest (including old world herbs as well as northrend ones). The profit margin on glyphs was 50s to 2g per glyph over careful purchasing of herbs. This was done for two months.

My stated goal was to discourage scribes. It did discourage the younger kids seeking a quick bit of gold, it ran out the gold sellers. I know of scribes that left the market because of our deep undercutting. However, there were stubborn toons that matched me - Breevok and Bankzoors, and a few others. Even in this market a new player joined; you may have heard about him - Moonvengence; starting out with only vendor taught skills, but picked up his daily research and glyph books.

Since Cataclysm dropped, we had months (not weeks) of glyphs being at (or under) herb costs; driven by Moonvengence. I am happy to work for minimal profits; I am not happy to work for a loss. I lost a lot of gold buying guild banks (not tabs - banks) of cheap herbs of the AH; sitting on them watching deflation erode my wealth). I dropped out of the Alliance market and moved over to the Horde market (via the neutral AH), and raised my profile in other tradeskills (a notional win for Moonvengence). However, herb prices started to fall, and glyph prices were being chased down to follow them. That is Moonvengence was 'allowed' to own the market at a loss, but not at a profit. Wherever there were small profits (as little as 2g/glyph); there was competition. It was during this period that a new competitor - Neoriv entered the glyph market.

You can play with the cost of milled herbs such that inferno inks are allocated the majority of the cost; but even then, 1 blackfallow has a minimum value of 1/10 of inferno ink; and with the introduciton of trinkets; blackfallow vs inferno is more like 3:1 instead of 10:1. Regardless, spending your time milling unloading inks can be profitable if you drive the price of glyphs down far enough; if only for levelling scribes that dont want to grind Therazane rep.

Don't get me wrong - I still will deep undercut; where it suits me. I just have an expectation that I will reduce a market to a handfull of players instead of driving them permanently away.

Where my sales expectations are not met, I will do what it takes to drive sales. For me; this has meant : getting out of bed earlier and posting glyphs before work; finding new markets (horde ah); deep undercut; followed by a very very distant AH camping.

I can not currently sell a glyph in the evening at my current prices. Within 1/2 hour, I get consistently undercut. Getting up 1/2 hour earler and posting 12 hour auctions before work; and I won't be undercut for 8 hours (but Breevok will - he still goes to work hours before me). To make things interesting - there are some mornings I won't (or even can't) post in the morning.

By previous rounds of undercutting, we weeded out many less committed scribes. We still have several determined scribes.

At the end of the day I am left with the following choice:

2 months of 200 glyphs per day at 2g profit each = 24k gold profit
2 months of 40 glyphs per day at 5g profit each = 12k gold profit
2 months of 20 glyphs per day at 100g profit each = 120k gold profit

By not undercutting, over the space of 2 months, I will earn an additional 96k gold. The higher prices will encourage new competition.

As circumstances and competitors change, I will change my strategy.

Gold Blog Networks

2011-07-18T13:50:00.000+10:00

I have a pet project at network.phase3profit.net. This is a list of gold blog post for those that don't have (or can't be bothered updating) a feed reader.

It's current incarnation is signficantly influenced by the blog list at PW: Gold

It gathers the recent posts from (currently) 38 different blogs; in essence a glorified blog. It is a good place to send wannabee goblins.

GDKP thoughts

2011-07-17T10:31:00.005+10:00

My primary aim was to put together a pug and go and down some bosses that I had not seen yet. In this aim, it was an unrivaled success.

I am used to crawling along; wiping on a new boss for nights before moving to the next boss. As for me - one night of raiding generally is all I do for the week, getting boss kills takes a while. Friday night, we downed 5 bosses; in 3 hours; 4 of which I had never downed before. Yes, the bosses have been nerfed by 30%, but the evening is far closer to what I hoped than what I feared (pity we didn't get that last boss down). I normally extend raids looking for the next thing I can't do yet. The last time I downed 5 in an evening was Trial of the Crusader.

The bidding was ... lackluster, and my guarantees (2k/boss) were called on. This still meant a 10k pot. No worries, I still ended up with new hat for cheaper than I would have paid to get crafted (if there was a suitable hat). Most of us downed bosses. The run was worth it. The run was enjoyable in it's own right.

Several other players also seemed very happy with the run; some with the bosses and achievements, and others with the gold.

I ended up running with a mix of old friends and new associates, including a 'hired' raid leader. It was not my best night for healing; and it's a sad thing when you can look at the healing meters and say "Hmmm, I want to do better.". (I didnt heal as well as Breevok did on his horde GDKP run Friday night). We had enough healing, and more than enough DPS. One of the best things for me was that our tank and acting raid leader also has a Holy Priest , and was able to provide tips.

Things I will do different next time:

I know I want raids completed rather than re-running content. Acknowledging that the last boss is usually harder than the earlier ones; I am doubling the minimum guaranteed pot for the last boss of a raid to 4k.
I am paying 'bonus' gold to tanks; healers and raid leaders. I intended this to be paid from the pot, but did not make this clear.

Next Friday I am extending the raid, starting at the only remaining boss : Nefarian. Please read up on this boss. I will split the pot immediately after him; We will then move onto another raid - most likely BoT. I now have a permanent page for GDKP runs.

If you are interested in a spot, please in game mail foofixit, or leave a comment.

Only rich alts get Northrend epic gems

2011-07-16T18:13:00.000+10:00

I have been selling Northrend Epic gems, for very large markups. I am going to have to find additional sources of raw gems, because the AH is not keeping up.

I had convinced myself that only rich alts were buying these gems, as the cata rare gems essentially require cata gear, in turn (mostly) requiring level 80.

I looked at beancounter to determine who was using my gems

A level 70 toon that has my epic gems equipped. Fantastic choice.
A level 85 toon that had cata rares equipped. Let's assume he sent the gems to an alt - fair enough.
A level 84 toon with a mix of blue and green cata gear. Umm. Maybe a newbie. I may have to in-game mail this toon.
A level 85, wearing 365 and even 384 gear; mostly PVP. Equipping Northrend Epic gems. Don't be this guy. Just don't.

For the record, the stats are (mostly)

+40 for Cata rare gems
+30 for Cata uncommon gems
+20 for Northrend epic gems
+16 for Northrend rare gems

As of this post, our most expensive Cata gem (110g) is selling for less than the cheapest Northrend Epic gem (120g). If you can wear a Cata gem, there is no reason to wear a Northrend one.

However it looks like some players see purple and think it must be great. It is impolite to use the word for these players on a public blog.

Names have been withheld to protect the guilty

OT: Etymology of Foo

2011-07-16T00:01:00.000+10:00

This is not a real post.

I had been a regular user of 'Foo', and had read this document well before I played WoW. My first toon name was foobarfoo (foobar being unavailable); a glorious level 20 mage on another account.

Definition and Etymology

bar /bar/ n. [JARGON]

1. The second metasyntactic variable, after foo and before baz.
"Suppose we have two functions: FOO and BAR. FOO calls BAR...."

2. Often appended to foo to produce foobar.

foo /foo/

1. interj. Term of disgust.

2. Used very generally as a sample name for absolutely anything, esp.
programs and files (esp. scratch files).

3. First on the standard list of metasyntactic variables used in
syntax examples (bar, baz, qux, quux, corge, grault, garply,
waldo, fred, plugh, xyzzy, thud). [JARGON]

When used in connection with `bar' it is generally traced to the
WW II era Army slang acronym FUBAR (`Fucked Up Beyond All
Repair'), later modified to foobar. Early versions of the Jargon
File [JARGON] interpreted this change as a post-war
bowdlerization, but it now seems more likely that FUBAR was itself
a derivative of `foo' perhaps influenced by German `furchtbar'
(terrible) - `foobar' may actually have been the original form.

For, it seems, the word `foo' itself had an immediate prewar
history in comic strips and cartoons. In the 1938 Warner Brothers
cartoon directed by Robert Clampett, "The Daffy Doc", a very early
version of Daffy Duck holds up a sign saying "SILENCE IS FOO!"
`FOO' and `BAR' also occurred in Walt Kelly's "Pogo" strips. The
earliest documented uses were in the surrealist "Smokey Stover"
comic strip by Bill Holman about a fireman. This comic strip
appeared in various American comics including "Everybody's"
between about 1930 and 1952. It frequently included the word
"FOO" on license plates of cars, in nonsense sayings in the
background of some frames such as "He who foos last foos best" or
"Many smoke but foo men chew", and had Smokey say "Where there's
foo, there's fire". Bill Holman, the author of the strip, filled
it with odd jokes and personal contrivances, including other
nonsense phrases such as "Notary Sojac" and "1506 nix nix".
According to the Warner Brothers Cartoon Companion [WBCC] Holman
claimed to have found the word "foo" on the bottom of a Chinese
figurine. This is plausible; Chinese statuettes often have
apotropaic inscriptions, and this may have been the Chinese word
`fu' (sometimes transliterated `foo'), which can mean "happiness"
when spoken with the proper tone (the lion-dog guardians flanking
the steps of many Chinese restaurants are properly called "fu
dogs") [PERS]. English speakers' reception of Holman's `foo'
nonsense word was undoubtedly influenced by Yiddish `feh' and
English `fooey' and `fool'. [JARGON, FOLDOC]

Holman's strip featured a firetruck called the Foomobile that rode
on two wheels. The comic strip was tremendously popular in the
late 1930s, and legend has it that a manufacturer in Indiana even
produced an operable version of Holman's Foomobile. According to
the Encyclopedia of American Comics [EAC], `Foo' fever swept the
U.S., finding its way into popular songs and generating over 500
`Foo Clubs.' The fad left `foo' references embedded in popular
culture (including the couple of appearances in Warner Brothers
cartoons of 1938-39) but with their origins rapidly forgotten.
[JARGON]

One place they are known to have remained live is in the U.S.
military during the WWII years. In 1944-45, the term `foo
fighters' [FF] was in use by radar operators for the kind of
mysterious or spurious trace that would later be called a UFO (the
older term resurfaced in popular American usage in 1995 via the
name of one of the better grunge-rock bands [BFF]). Informants
connected the term to the Smokey Stover strip [PERS].

The U.S. and British militaries frequently swapped slang terms
during the war. Period sources reported that `FOO' became a
semi-legendary subject of WWII British-army graffiti more or less
equivalent to the American Kilroy [WORDS]. Where British troops
went, the graffito "FOO was here" or something similar showed up.
Several slang dictionaries aver that FOO probably came from
Forward Observation Officer, but this (like the contemporaneous
"FUBAR") was probably a backronym [JARGON]. Forty years later,
Paul Dickson's excellent book "Words" [WORDS] traced "Foo" to an
unspecified British naval magazine in 1946, quoting as follows:

"Mr. Foo is a mysterious Second World War product, gifted with
bitter omniscience and sarcasm."

Earlier versions of the Jargon File suggested the possibility that
hacker usage actually sprang from "FOO, Lampoons and Parody", the
title of a comic book first issued in September 1958, a joint
project of Charles and Robert Crumb. Though Robert Crumb (then in
his mid-teens) later became one of the most important and
influential artists in underground comics, this venture was hardly
a success; indeed, the brothers later burned most of the existing
copies in disgust. The title FOO was featured in large letters on
the front cover. However, very few copies of this comic actually
circulated, and students of Crumb's `oeuvre' have established that
this title was a reference to the earlier Smokey Stover comics.
The Crumbs may also have been influenced by a short-lived Canadian
parody magazine named `Foo' published in 1951-52. [JARGON]

An old-time member reports that in the 1959 "Dictionary of the
TMRC Language", compiled at TMRC (the Tech Model Railroad Club at
MIT) there was an entry for Foo. The current on-line version, in
which "Foo" is the only word coded to appear red, has the
following [TMRC]:

Foo: The sacred syllable (FOO MANI PADME HUM); to be spoken
only when under obligation to commune with the Deity. Our first
obligation is to keep the Foo Counters turning.

This definition used Bill Holman's nonsense word, then only two
decades old and demonstrably still live in popular culture and
slang, to make a "ha ha only serious" analogy with esoteric
Tibetan Buddhism. Today's hackers would find it difficult to
resist elaborating a joke like that, and it is not likely 1959's
were any less susceptible. [JARGON]

4. [EF] Prince Foo was the last ruler of Pheebor and owner of the
Phee Helm, about 400 years before the reign of Entharion. When
Foo was beheaded by someone he called an "eastern fop" from
Borphee, the glorious age of Pheebor ended, and Borphee rose to
the prominence it now enjoys.

5. [OED] A 13th-16th century usage for the devil or any other enemy.
The earliest citation it gives is from the year 1366, Chaucer A B
C (84): "Lat not our alder foo [devil] make his bobance [boast]".
Chaucer's "Foo" is probably related to modern English "foe".

6. Rare species of dog.

A spitz-type dog discovered to exist after having long been
considered extinct, the Chinese Foo Dog, or Sacred Dog of
Sinkiang, may have originated through a crossing of Northern
European hunting dogs and the ancient Chow Chow from Mongolia or
be the missing link between the Chinese Wolf and the Chow Chow.
It probably derives its name from foochow, of the kind or style
prevalent in Foochow, of or from the city of Foochow (now Minhow)
in southeast China. [DOG]

foobar n.

[JARGON] A widely used metasyntactic variable; see foo for
etymology. Probably originally propagated through DECsystem
manuals by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in 1960s and early
1970s; confirmed sightings there go back to 1972. Hackers do not
generally use this to mean FUBAR in either the slang or jargon
sense. It has been plausibly suggested that "foobar" spread among
early computer engineers partly because of FUBAR and partly
because "foo bar" parses in electronics techspeak as an inverted
foo signal.

foo-fighter n.

World War II term for Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs) noted by
both German and British military. See [FF] and entry above for
"foo".

3. Acronyms

The following information is derived primarily from the compilations
at University Cork College and Acronym
Finder generally filtered for computer
usage.

.bar:

Generic file extension which is not meant to imply anything about
the file type.

BAR:

Base Address Register

Buffer Address Register

FOO:

Forward Observation Observer.

FOO Of Oberlin. An organization whose name is a recursive
acronym. Motto: The FOO, the Proud, the FOO. See
.

File Open for Output. An NFILE error code [RFC1037].

FOOBAR:

FTP Operation Over Big Address Records [RFC1639]. (Particularly
appropriate given that the first RFC to use "foo", [RFC269], was
also about file transfer.)

FUBAR:

Failed UniBus Address Register - in a VAX, from Digital Equipment
Corporation Engineering.

Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition/Repair - From US Military in
World War II. Sometimes sanitized to "Fouled Up ...".

FUBARD - Past tense of FUBAR.

Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2001). All Rights Reserved.

This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published
and distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any
kind, provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
included on all such copies and derivative works. However, this
document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of
developing Internet standards in which case the procedures for
copyrights defined in the Internet Standards process must be
followed, or as required to translate it into languages other than
English.

The above is taken from The Internet Engineering Task Force Request for comment : 3092

Self Censorship

2011-07-15T11:44:00.000+10:00

Recently, a comment was withdrawn from this blog (by it's author), and a post to another blog that was going explain why the another author disagreed was not written. Both viewpoints are valid. Both viewpoints make gold. All that was at issue was which way makes more gold.

Passions arose, and people thought that their opinions would be unwelcome - at least by some.

It is a tragedy when bloggers withhold useful information, due to fear of a subset of their audience's reaction.

Readers have confirmation bias. If we read something that we agree with, a post is 'obviously' correct, and the author is a 'nice person'. If we read something that we disagree with, the post is 'obviously wrong', and the author is a jerk. This has a place in social blogs, but should have little relevance to gold making blogs.

I have sufficient hubris to be confident in my own gold making skills, but know that there are always other options, things that I can do different. Sometimes I don't get it as right as I could. While it strokes my ego to have people agree with me, I sometimes get valuable information when people disagree with me.

The gold blogosphere has seen the worst of personalities attacking personalities. This serves no useful purpose, and certainly does not give me new ideas.

We have also seen the 'best' (in my opinion) of personality wars. Sometimes two bloggers will - by prior arangement - and with prior permission - needle each other. This adds colour and makes for a more interesting read.

So what is the difference?
As a reader:

Listen to the arguments, not the personalities. If all you are reading is about personalities, you can file it for use as a filter of bias, but otherwise, the comment or post is of little use.
Look for the value of posts and comments; especially where they disagree. You have a confirmation bias that inhibits you from learning new things.

As an author/commenter, leave the message you want readers to have, in a format they will accept:

Engage the argument in preference to the personality.
Engage personalities in a method that assists the message.
Accept that readers that disagree may feel attacked. If you think that they are defensive, take the extra step to highlight you are engaging the argument.

I want your ideas. Risk being wrong. Risk being right.

PS. Shameless plug for my GDPK BWD Fri 15 July Alliance Caelestrasz 8:30 pm server 10man

What does blizzard have against crafting alts?

2011-07-13T13:42:00.000+10:00

Cold was bemoaning his ability to get all of his crafting alts through his firelands dailies, with claim that Blizzard hates us altaholics.

Breevok has abandoned some alts to concentrate on just a couple.

As for me? Since when do I have time for dailies? I barely even have time to post auctions.

We have a set of professions that have newly gated recipes. Blacksmithing, Leatherworking, Engineering, Tailoring. The 4 professions that between them have 8 crafted items that players want to buy. And as an aside, 4 profesions that traditionally have not already required some form of gating.

If there was no gold reward; on what toon do you most need to do the fireland dailies anyway? Go do the daily on that toon. It does have two maxed tradeskill professions?

Now, we know there is a gold reward for crafters who get their patterns/recipes first. If you are time constrained; concentrate on the toon(s) that you think will give you the most gold for the time you are prepared to invest.

Blizzard are giving us an entry cost to the peak levels of some professions. The correct question may be instead "Why would Blizzard do anything else?"

Also, consider that the glyphs that I have that sell for the most are the glyps that have the highest entry costs.

This is the market, we have stability and a reasonably accessible known framework. This is all a gold-maker needs.

PS. Still calling on toons for this Friday's GDKP run

GDPK BWD Fri 15 July Alliance Caelestrasz 8:30 pm server 10man

2011-07-12T13:15:00.001+10:00

With the exception of AH activities, I appear to be considered a very casual raider. (What's wrong with raiding nearly once per week anyway?).

Historically, I have run with a rotating cast of casuals. We had downed the first boss of every raid, but didn't progress much further.

I want to see more bosses. I care less than most about purple shinies. I have gold. I am too casual for a raiding guild. I talk about gold too much for a social guild.

Gold bid runs are a solution. (i.e. instead of /roll or arbitrary prioritisation system, you bid on loot). It is good for wealthy casuals - we see bosses and possibly loot. It is good for the rest - they get gold (and possibly bosses

As a pot:

2000 g guaranteed pool per boss downed.
Loot can be claimed at first breaks after 10pm & 11:30pm server.
200g guaranteed to each tank or healer active @ 10pm server.
300g guaranteed to each tank or healer active @ 11:30pm server.
No minimum bid. (That said, if I am providing a guaranteed pot, I will likely do so via a bid even if I end up vendoring something.)

Requirements:

You have the gear to queue for heroics.
You are gemmed and enchanted. (I will use Bimbo to check)
I have a published raid ettiquette. You don't need to read it, but you will be bound by it.
You have vent and will at least listen in.

If this interests you, please in-game mail Foofixit on Alliance Caelestrasz, or leave a comment.

PS. As my preffered writer has declined, I will address two items in upcoming articles

Self censorship
'that deep undercut comment'.

PPS. G'day to Weatbicks (hopfully I spelled it correctly) on Horde Caelestrasz. Great to receive your in game mail. Yes, Foostrait (Foo's traitor) is my toon.

Critical Goblin's deep undercut comment recovered

2011-07-12T00:39:00.000+10:00

There has been controversy over a comment made by Critical Goblin, and responses that both Breevok and I made. The original post was deleted by it's author, but I have recovered it with permission (please see below)

Just had a quick look at your server. Definitely excellent potential to own the glyph market 1) cheap herbs, 2)high glyph fallback 3)good DM trinket prices.

I want to help u own the market.

1. create 3 groups of glyphs
Group a - druid, war, dk, pal
Group b - rog, priest, hunter, lock
Group c - mage, sham
2. create 3 chars for posting eg Foosella, Foosellb, Foosellc and give them 4 endless pockets each
3. set TSM automail group a to Foosella etc
4. craft a full stack of every glyph ie 20x every glyph in game
5. manually or using TSM get the correct glyphs to the correct char
6. set all fallbacks to 30g
7. set all thresholds to 12g
8. set duration 48hrs
9. set per auction to 1
10. set post cap to 4
11. for Reset method set Do Not Post
12. set ignore <2hr auctions
13. set ignore stacks over 1
14. set undercut by 9g
15. after posting join Trade and advertise "ALL GLYPHS 10-30G!!!! SUPPORT FOOSELLERS!!!! SEE YOUR LOCAL AH TODAY!!!!"

A few rules:
- u must be able to craft all glyphs
- u must maintain recraft sold glyphs back up to a full stack of 20

Explanations:
- by making and posting all glyphs with a fallback of 30g and a quantity of 4 u are creating a 30g ceiling on sell price. Now u control the max price. Yes someone can buy out your 4 and sell 1 at 200g, but within half a day u will be back and bam another ceiling.
- advertising in trade gets people used to low cost glyphs, and after a few weeks no one will pay 200g or 300g. they will just wait.
- the 9g undercut is basically 30g - 12g then divide that by 2. this is so that if a competitor undercuts your 30g auction and u undercut him, within 2 rounds the price for that 1 glyph is crashed to 12g. You let your competitor control this, ie fine if u want to crash the glyph's price to 12g go ahead undercut me. Soon he learns it is painful to undercut u.
- you need 20 of each glyph so that everytime u Post u have stock on u without having to cancel and unload the mailbox and then come back (remember each time u post u will throw 4 up per glyph). straight away u have an advantage over the cancel-getmail-relist dummy. make him mad by undercutting him, watch him cancel and undercut u and then immediately cut him with another wall of 4 haw haw.
- setting 12g threshold is similar to the 30g ceiling. u are now setting the second ceiling ie u are telling the competitors fine u can sell but u have to sell below 12g dont worry i wont undercut u but u have to sell for 11g.

This is what will happen:
1. Glyph A is on AH for 250g
2. u come along and list 4 x 30g
3. somebody either buys u out (which is good because @30g is a profitable sell price, right?) or they undercut u by 1cp
4. u come back half a day or 1 day later and list up 4 x 21g
5. undercut again
6. u relist again 4 x 12g
7. they buy u out
8. u list again 4 x 12g
9. they buy u out
10. u dont care because u just keep crafting more

At the start they will buy yours because they think they can get the market back up to 200g. When u keep creating a ceiling of 4x30g they realise:
What am i going to do with these 12g glyphs because i cant get to 200g price unless i also buy out the 4x21g wall and the 4x30g wall. And even if i buy out all 3 walls and can list my glyph for 200g, only if im lucky i will sell 1 for 200g.

Thats where u come along and set those 3 walls up again and they go fk this glyph, and try looking at other glyphs. but because u have crafted 20x all glyphs and u set the fallback ceiling u control the entire market.

A few weeks 1 competitor will give up. After a few more weeks the second one will give up. And so on and so on. When they leave u gain market share. increase the ceiling to 40g, then 50g then 60g. Dont be greedy or else they will come back.

The most important things are:
- hold stock of all glyphs
- hold 20 of each glyph
- set top ceiling
- set bottom ceiling

With those 4 things in place u now control the market. Thanks to your local Critical.

Please disagree

2011-07-11T11:07:00.000+10:00

This is an extension to my last two posts.

Critical Goblin posted a very detailed method that he thinks would own our glyph market: part camping, part very deep undercut. I wrote my rebuttal, and Breevok issued a summary of his.

I no longer have the original comment, as it was deleted by Critical Goblin. This is a pity.

Productive controversy on gold blogs is good. This is productive controversy at it's best:

What worked? What failed?
Why did it work/fail?
What were the consequences?
What are the strengths of a strategy? What are it's weaknesses?

This is all very usefull information, for both novice and experienced player alike.

To be blunt - my Gold blogging has (at least) the following goals:

It is cathartic
It encourages us to formalise our thoughts, thinking rather than just feeling our way through the AH.
It provides information to others.
It is occasionally part of our AH war.

Breevok and I blog about the same AH. Our competitors read it. Neither of us have intentionally misrepresented facts. Both of us have on occasions, ... selectivly interpreted them.
This type of controversy on websites is good. It is good for our readership numbers. It allows readers to not only see the 'what', but also the 'why'. And readers love a good fight.

If you want more posts out of either Breevok or I, give us something to disagree with. Both of us are uncomfortable sleeping when someone on the internet is wrong.

Regardless of whether you were right or wrong for this market, the method you outlined is a valid method of playing the AH. Players should both know it, and the consequences of it - good and bad. The AH does not have an I-WIN button.

So, I call on Critical Goblin to repost his comment. I am very happy to put it here as a guest post. I notice that Critical Goblin has his own blogspot site - with one post. You could even put it on your own website, and I will link it.

I then call on other bloggers and commenters to respond; either on this website or on their own. Comments linking to responses are very welcome.

PS. Nerf Faids has recently been busy on his opposite faction's AH with glyphs, with him declaring war, then offering terms for a resolution.

I'm not interested in owning our glyph market

2011-07-09T23:54:00.000+10:00

Critical goblin thinks that it is possible to own the Cael glyph market, and drive the competitors away. Now his comments are worth reading; and are a valid strategy for many servers.

With all due respect, for our server. Sorry : Nope : Not going to happen.

How do I know this?

We have been there.
There are 5-6 scribes with a full set of recipees, with sufficient alts having maxed tradeskills (I have all 8 tradeskills @ 525, as do many others)
We know how the other toons responds to campers, deep undercuts, walls of glyphs, below cost glyphs.

For a history of glyphs on our server, if you have the time, read glyphs on this site, and Breevok's glyph experiment

The deep undercut, wall of glyphs have been played on our server. A very long time ago we had gold robots selling glyphs. We drove them out. I have maintained a wall: here, here, here and here. I outsourced the posting of glyphs here and here, Moonvengence (a competitor) maintained a glyph wall here and camping 1c undercut here.

We have had intense competition for the majority of my time in the glyph market, since May 2010. With the exception of Moonvengence's time, when he started his wall of glyphs below herb costs (he did his own farming), I have historically been a (and possibly even the) dominant seller in terms of setting the market prices. We have sold glyphs at less than 1g profit over the cost of herbs and parchments for extended periods.

At the moment, with me following the market; given the current pricing and competition, I am pleased to say that I have never made more gold for as little effort as in our current glyph market. This post will introduce additional competition, but Critical Goblin's comments already have stirred the pot.

The glyph sellers appear to be deliberately working around other toons without demanding 100% of sales, and I at least am making much more gold because of it. My posting is restricted to a few days per week, before I go to work, deliberately only having 12 hour posts, but posting on both auction houses. This returns on average 1500g per ah, per post cycle (3k per day that I post), roughly 80% profit.

This is not to say that we are 'kind' to each other. I can not successfully sell glyphs in the evening without crashing prices, but it is easier if I post in the morning. I also post on both Horde and Alliance AH's, as does Breevok.

To own our AH glyph, I would need to start posting a wall at 30g, with a threshhold of 18g, eventually moving my threshold down to 25g (or even lower following whiptail pricing), and hold it there for months. Within days of the margins being increased - even by a small amount, competition would return.

So my choices are :

Share the market, and accomodate other sellers, and make 3k per day, or
Own the market for months, for paper thin profits, and when I attempt to raise prices a little, be undercut.

While I am in an position to make my gold the easy way, I will. At the moment, this does not involve paper thin profits.

P.S. Breevok - As the leading advocate of not maintaining a deep undercut wall, any comments?

Inferno Ink - Pure speculation

2011-07-08T00:27:00.000+10:00

With the new trinkets, the floor has fallen out of inferno ink. Admitidly on Alliance/Caelestrasz, it is cheaper than most, but at 26g per ink - in the middle of the darkmoon faire, it's price is heading south.

It's price is only going to get cheaper with the faire ending soon, as well as with the new trinkets from firelands. I see a few more runescrolls of fortitude II being made, and very cheap 359 trinkets heading our way.

On a somewhat related note, Blizzard are on record as saying "Yes. We will be changing the discovery spells so they can teach all possible glyphs, and the books will simply provide a no-cooldown method to do the same thing. "

At the moment, northrend inscription research is the 'major' discovery spell, requiring snowfall ink. If they leave the discovery spell using snowfall ink, once this gets implemented (patch 4.3? sooner? later?), Snowfall will become approximately equal to 10 Blackfallow ink in value, while Inferno becomes cheaper and cheaper, or possibly even drive some herbalists back to northrend.

I think that rather than encourage players back to northrend for grinding herbs, when Blizzard change the research spell to learn all glyphs, it will also change the ingredient to use Inferno ink; or possibly add a new research spell for Cata research.

Even with this possibility, I see dark days ahead for inferno ink

Selling Alabaster Pigment

2011-07-06T00:48:00.000+10:00

This is one for newbie scribes to consider (and some levelling scribes can be unwise). I don't usually sell pigments, only scribes can use them, and ink making scribes generally grind their own herbs, however ...

Alabaster pigment is made by milling starter level herbs (silverleaf, earthroot and peacebloom) which can generally be picked up for 2g/stack (or less); and at 2-3 pigments / 5 herbs, costs very roughly 3g /stack

This pigment can be used to make Moonglow ink (with some value for minor inscirption research), and Ivory ink. In either instance, only levelling scribes creating vendor trash and those missing minor glyphs are really interested in these inks/pigment.

In a previous fit of 'must mill herbs', I milled multiple stacks into Alabaster pigment, got grumpy at milling 'uselessly' and dumped it all into bank storage.

Recently, after staring at junk in storage (including these pigments), I put everthing I could onto a spare bank alt and walked upto the auctioneer and posted everyting for Auctioneer's market value.

After looking at this screen, the Silverleaf went for the value I expected. The Alabaster Pigment blew me away.

Why did I even think of posting at this price? (I didn't - just used the market price).
Why did someone buy it? (They didn't care what it cost? They didn't know to buy herbs? Ummm? They need a cluestick?)

I am not moving into the pigment market, too few sell on an ongoing basis. For levelling scribes, it is often cheaper to buy blackfallow inks and trade down than mill your own levelling herbs.

A level 10 toon could do this milling. My first level 10 toon certainly did not have 16g to his name.

If you (or your guildies) find that you are milling herbs, try posting a few pigments on the way.

Gems - followup

2011-07-02T21:26:00.002+10:00

Several bloggers have been posting about the joy of Northrend gems lately, and even this post is a followup.

I have many Cata recipees, but not all. I post all cata rare & northrend epic recipees that I have, and tinker with northrend rares, providing I am satisfied with the thresholds.

At the moment - I generally only post once / day. I am currently very easy to undercut. Historically I have used exceptionally deep undercuts to protect my markets. At the moment I am either choosing my market, or choosing the time of day that I post, and making reasonable profits.

Breevok probably finds my irregular just before work glyph postings a little annoying. He would find it a whole lot more annoying if I could reliably get out of bed earlier. As a consolation prize, at least I am not deep undercutting the market with very cheap 48 hour glyphs.

However today is about gems. I really expected that the new firelands raids would be creating a ton of gear needing gems and people would leave off their alts and the cata market would fall off.

Speculation aside, I made sure I still had all my gems up on the AH, but did increase my stockpiles of cata gems and let my stockpile of Northrend gems run low. It appears that for my playstyle this was the wrong call.

My effort for JC currently consists of, up to once per day.

Log on to gem posting toon, collect mail, log off
Log onto JC, do daily, craft gems, mail gems to posting toon
Log back onto gem posting toon, collect mail, post gems
Consider logging onto alchemist and transmuting something.

Another player in the Northrend JC market (who sometimes reads my blog, and I raid with - at least as often as I raid) thanked me for resetting the market back to 300g (was much lower). It was not deliberate, I just could not be bothered trying hard to find gems, so raised my margins instead. For the effort I put into this market, I am happy with the northrend market - and am mildly concerned for the cata market.

PS. Northend epics are stacking when I craft them, but Cata (edit) rares are not. Bizzare

Stacking gems - but not during crafting

2011-06-29T23:43:00.000+10:00

Woo Hoo - Cut gems now stack. With this I will be holding more per cut of each gem.

But not during crafting. Bother. During crafting, you still use one slot per gem. My guess is that this will be fixed by Blizzard "soon"; for an arbitrary definition of soon.

There is an addon I use to help with stacking and sorting - genie, and it works well with crafting bags.

/genie bag work (to sort & stack your bag)
/genie bank work (to sort & stack your bank)

and for GM's, you can sort & stack a guild bank tab by clicking on the genie icon on your minimap.

I am not naturally the 'tidiest' crafter, but genie allows me to fake it.

Fortune Cookie as preferred stat food

2011-06-27T14:41:00.000+10:00

Personally I don't like making fortune cards for sales to suckers. I will make them to order, and sell them. I will use them as bribes. I just have difficulty recommending that someone tries to get rich on them (because they won't).

However, they do make a good +90 stat food. My objections are smaller here.

On our server, you can make a fortune card for 7.5g just from AH bought inks (cheaper if you mill your own). Turning these into fortune cookies costs an additional copper and a global cooldown (or even less if you have a chef's hat).

In comparison, a raw deapsea sagefish tail costs 18g, which can then be turned into +90 int food; being the preferred buff food of many casters. Same buff as the fortune card, but 10g more expensive.

I know that many guilds now put down feasts, but by no means all. I know that some players have been using fortune cookies hoping to get 'that card', but consoling themselves with buff food.

During raid startup times, we should bring it to the attention of new raid leaders and caster toons alike : You have a choice of best stat foods; and on many realms the cheapest food is a fortune cookie. Buff raiders get lucky. (groan : I am not sure I could say it, but many of you could)

Gem Cutting

2011-06-24T15:22:00.000+10:00

I am tinkering in the JC market for gems. What I have noticed is that for the majority of my gem cuts, I sell more Northrend cut gems, and at a higher margin. I have even re-specialised my under utilized Alchemist to transmuter to make Epic Northrend gems.

As an example : Blue gems : Cata rares vs Northrend Epics

http://theunderminejournal.com/?realm=A-Caelestrasz&search=ocean+sapphire

Item

Avail

Price

Chg

% Chg

Mean

Std Dev

95% CI

Seen

Ocean Sapphire

16.74

-33.16

-66.45%

17.27

10.80

< 1h

Rigid Ocean Sapphire

9.95

-2.90

-22.57%

18.81

9.68

< 1h

Solid Ocean Sapphire

16.32

-3.58

-17.99%

22.49

11.62

< 1h

Sparkling Ocean Sapphire

19.95

10.10

102.54%

28.52

36.91

< 1h

Stormy Ocean Sapphire

23.99

-6.67

-21.75%

50.24

23.55

< 1h

The competition for sales is large, and profit margins over selling raw gems thin to non-existant. Undercutting is as bad as for glyphs (which probably means that you might get some purchase with an early morning posting).

http://theunderminejournal.com/?realm=A-Caelestrasz&search=majestic+zircon

Item

Avail

Price

Chg

% Chg

Mean

Std Dev

95% CI

Seen

Majestic Zircon

83.60

14.75

21.42%

76.07

10.76

< 1h

Rigid Majestic Zircon

300.00

0.00

318.00

57.18

1d, 2h

Solid Majestic Zircon

162.00

-1.00

-0.61%

182.27

59.71

< 1h

Sparkling Majestic Zircon

300.00

0.00

288.02

34.10

< 1h

Sparkling Majestic Zircon

50.00

Infinity

0.00

2m, 5d

Stormy Majestic Zircon

300.00

0.00

300.00

0.00

< 1h

The competition for sales is very small, and profit margins over selling raw gems very large. Sure there are not many buyers (twinks and levelling toons), but even fewer sellers. There is also a shortage of raw gems on the AH, which I supplement with my transmuting Alchemist, and occasionally with a lucky icy prism.

The same type of comparison occurs for other gem colours, with Red coloured gems being a possible exception.

There will be a spike in demand for Cata Rares as raiders refresh their armor with the new raids. Apart from that, I could care less (but not by much) for the Cata Rare market, but as the majority of the effort for crafting and posting Cata gems is already covered by my Northrend Epics, I am selling all the gems above thresholds (with different thresholds based on what raw gem is involved).

Gems are not a huge market for me; too much competition and both of my glyph selling toons (horde and alliance) have a higher average daily profit. That said, they still are a nice market to be in.

I would tell you to update your addons but ...

2011-06-23T22:34:00.002+10:00

There is a patch day coming real soon now. I have no idea how badly (if at all) this patch will affect existing addons. However, it is time to think about how you are going to update your addons, or how you might live without them. We have had issues in the past.

It appears that Wowstead, wowpedia, Arena Junkies and Curse, Curseforge, MMO champion are all down, as well as many other websites.

Historically I have used curse, as a convenient way to update the majority of my addons. However, there is another repository of addons at www.wowinterface.com. (Yes to Johny up the back - I know you write your own addons, or at least ring up the authors and get them via carrier pidgeon - I like a central repository that makes it easy - and anyway curseforge is down too.)

The most usefull page I have found for a status update is at www.curseforge.com, at the time of this (updated) post contains

Emergency Maintenance
CurseForge is down for emergency maintenance, we apologize for the inconvenience.
Update 18:30 UTC / 1:30 pm CST: Faulty hardware has been replaced, we are in the process of verifying data and expect to be back online in the next 60 minutes.
Update 19:40 UTC / 2:30 pm CST: The data verification is taking longer than expected. We have no new ETA at this time. Update 23:45 UTC / 6:45 pm CST: Unfortunately, the data verification and restoration process is taking much longer than initially expected. Our current estimate is 6 hours to complete the process.
Update 06:30 UTC / 1:30 am CST: Data verification is 55% complete. As we cannot accurately estimate the time it will take to complete, we cannot give any further time estimates until this process is complete.
Update 20:45 UTC / 3:45 pm CDT: Data verification is still underway, but progressing very slowly. We will post another update once we get close to the end of this step of the process.

Snowfall inks

2011-06-22T23:17:00.000+10:00

Back in the dying days of cataclysm - snowfall inks were ... considered vendor trash by most (other) bloggers. I had decided to stockpile them - being slightly contrarian in nature. It has stood me in good stead - at least where snowfall inks were concerned.

However, I didn't pick the real value in snowfall inks - northrend inscription research. At the moment, snowfall are still needed.

JTMC covers some details of glyphs changes, but this almost irrelevant to me. There will be changes to glyphs, so some glyphs will sell better for a time. I will learn the lot, and post any above my threshold, as usual. (Though I will have to make 1/2 an effort to send new glyphs to my horde toon).

However, assuming that the new glyph is northrend research based (it is on the PTR), there should be a run on snowfall ink and/or northrend herbs (capped by the cost of 10 blackfallow -> 1 snowfall). It won't be a huge run as only dedicated scribes will bother learning it.

If the glyph is 'book' based, then the availablility will be much lower (i.e. higher prices); trainier based and the glyph will be junk value. However, I don't see any reason why it would change from it's PTR research basis.

Tonight, I checked on my snowfall stocks.

Separating your sales

2011-06-20T22:54:00.000+10:00

How do you know which professions are profitable - preferably at a glance.

I have every tradeskill @ 525, some I use regularly, some I barely use at all. That's OK, I am a collector of recipes (even recipes that I have no intention of ever using - BOP low level gear anyone?). One of these days I will level another couple of toons and get 3 gathering skills.

I am no Breevok with the ability or inclination to closely track sales. I find it difficult to know what actually sells well. Yes, I have Beancounter, but it still doesn't do it for me.

A very simple method that works for me is to have a stable of alts - each selling a niche. My selling alts are low level, ususally not the toon that does the original crafting.

When a selling toon wants something made (or mats stockpiled) - it is responsible for the gold for that transaction, to the nearest 'round' number.

When I follow this process, I can see at a glance which professions (or parts of professions) sell well, and which perform poorly - for my playstyle. If it does well - it has gold. If it does poorly - it runs out of gold.

The one period I didn’t do this - I got into trouble. I kept buying herbs and inks- taking gold from profitable markets, and ploughing them into glyphs (after all - this blog is 80% glyphs - I could not possibly lose money - ... oh well - maybe I could). I never became 'poor', but did manage to carry too much inventory , and to send good money after bad.

I was already well on the roads to recovery before my significant competition moved on, simply by concentrating on what was selling well, and finding alternatives to what was selling poorly. The fact that a very deep undercutter has since moved on helps.

If you only have your finger in one AH pile, it doesn't matter so much. If you play with multiple markets, or even sections within a market, it is worth segregating it with selling alts and keeping your gold separate.

Updated blogroll - slow news day

2011-06-15T00:11:00.000+10:00

The servers are down - so much for a 1 hour rolling restart.

While I am working on a new 'shiny tool' for another profession (heaven forbid - It's not inscription), it's still in the "I'm gonna do this" rather than an actually usefull "I've done this". Oh well, one day.

I am however tired of reading my old bloglist with Avion/Rift/Star Wars/Lord of the Rings/Some other game I don't have, so I did a great purge and bloglist recreation. The chances are good that I have offended someone unintentionally (or otherwise). The last time I did this, I left of a few blogs that I really wanted to read.

If you think I would be interested in reading your (or someone else's) blog on an ongoing basis, please leave a comment.

To make it to this bloglist, I am after the some of the following things:

3 months of blogging;
Most posts about WoW;
Gold making posts, with an emphasis on the how;
WoW stuff that I didn't know and wanted to.
WoW stuff that I want other people to know.
I like places that teach/encourage good healing & tanking.

For those newer to blogging, please persevere. Every WoW blog started with a post. Feel free to mention your WoW related website, and I will look at it again in a little while.

A good pug group?

2011-06-12T23:01:00.000+10:00

On Friday night, and again on Sunday night, I pugged a group as healer for ZA. I had read up on the fights, but otherwise didn't have a clue. I had heard that the fights were tough.

On Friday night we didnt get the third boss down.
Got the first boss down, then the tank immediately quit. Second tank joined, complained about low DPS during second boss (failed attempt) and quit. We got another tank that immediately went AFK. Booted him got a second group.
Struggled our way though the second boss, and ended up with only one other DPS and myself remaining in group.
Finally got another group together and we tried the third boss (with whelps) twice. There was soo much damage being thrown around, most toons on very low health, and me with no mana. One of the DPS took 25% of the total group damage, only just below the tank. His DPS may have been the best of the group, but I could not keep him up as well as the tank. I apparently didn't have the mana management to the satisfaction of the group. To be honest - with that group, I agreed, and left. Feeling somewhat downhearted, and swearing off PUGs.

However, Sunday night, I thought I would try again, fail again. There is something to be said for the banging your head against a brick wall method of progression. Got up to the whelp boss and wiped once. Wiped again on a bad trash pull. There were a few indvidual deaths in the rest of the run, no one left party, and it went well. Total run time : 90 minutes. I was astounded and very pleased.

Oh, and as an aside, apparently I don't pug many 5 man dungeons.

Kaye Toogie

2011-06-09T00:03:00.000+10:00

Kaye Toogie is a vendor for difficult to get engineering pet recipees - 3 different dragonlings - 2 pets and a level 50 trinket. These are limited supply options. According to the undermine journal the pet recipes are sufficiently available, but the trinket recipe is in very rare supply; with prices across servers ranging from a few hundred to 10,000g. The servers with undermine journal recipe prices at a few hundred do not have any supply.

You get to her via the Engineer Wormhole generator, but it is very rare. Apparently you can't camp her either - as she is only active for the first hour after your teleport.

Admittidly, I don't use my generator every cooldown, but tonight is the first time I have managed to get the Underground option. Woo Hoo.

She was sold out. Sob sob.