Quick returning report

In my on going effort to provide tips on how to make money, here's a short recap of what I've done with my stokpile of NR materials and other assorted goodies. I'm sure you have some semi-useless stuff hanging around so the main purpose of this post is to give you an idea of what can still be sold for a decent profit and to reinforce another tip that always holds true. If you're not using/selling something, it's not making you any gold. So get cracking and clean out them alts!

Fused wiring - Sold all at 8g each
Titansteel - Sold most at 20g each
NR common gems - Sold all reds/blues at 1g each, cut and vendored the rest
Arctic fur - Sold a few at 34g each

Epic leg armors - Sold all at 65g each
Frost lotus - Sold all at 4g each
Northern spices - Sold all at 22g per stack
True silver bars - Sold all at 6g each

Eternals - Sold a few stacks from 60-100g each
Titanium bars - Sold most for 5g each
Khorium bars - Sold all at 55g each
Saronite bars - Sold all at 55g per stack

True silver ore - Sold all at 50g/stack
Dragonfin Fillet - Sold all 30g/stack
Assorted epics - Sold all plate at 100-200 each

Grand total profit from cleaning out the bank: 3,368g


Not bad for a days work I think, certainly better than letting it sit there like a pack rat or drop/vendor it all. I'm just about done with my addOns and figuring out just WTF I need to stokpile as far as old world stuff is concerned. So far it's looking like mongoose and spell power scrolls are still important. Getting my enchanter situated with bag space is going to be a pain for sure. They're going to be my first toon to level up and I still don't know of a good way to keep track of sold scrolls aside from manually checking the mail.

In addition to that there's also the ever present problem of bag space. While questing you're going to get a ton of useless junk to vendor and quest items and all my AH materials and scrolls and drops... yuck! So I'm not out of the deep end of bothersome work just yet, but getting close.

Lastly, thanks to snakeoil for their comment on selling berserker scrolls. Sold one moments after I listed it for 100g profit. Yes profit as in 100g more than what the mats cost when it was current. Fun times.


Thanks for stopping by!

Taking Stok

NOTE: I'm not 100% totally back yet so this will be the last post until after new years, officially on January 3. I'm taking a short vacation to spend time with family and any time I spend on game between now and then will be playing my wolfy or leveling up. Lastly I've added a detailed about entry to the blog which I posted before this which you can find over yonder --->


I've officially gotten the game reinstalled and while sorting out addons, I'm taking a look at what stokpiles I have left over. Holy shit do I have a lot of junk that's nigh worthless now. Or at least worthless to me, teehee. I'm sure things like titansteel and such are basically vendor food but I'll try to AH them regardless. But I still have a ton of saronite bars, common gems and the sort that I'm certain that a leveling JC or BS will be in need of. There's also my old stokpiles or TBC mats for random markets that I mucking about with. So I listed my primals on the AH for a significant undercut and sold off all of them for 8-20g each. Not bad for a moment's work.

I also have a good amount of vanilla mats so I can get right into making twink enchant scrolls which is cool. Then there's the mass of NR mats that I have no idea what I'm going to do with, I'll most likely just sell them as is unless I find some NR level enchants that are still worthwhile. I've done some reading on EJ about enchants and so far the only one that's still viable that I've found is stamina to bracers. If you have any tips on that subject I'd be delighted if you'd share.

There is however an ass ton of excess tanking gear, possibly even a METRIC ass ton. Amazing right? Well my pally had a shit load of extra gear cuz I'm just hardcore like that and my warrior and DK had their fair share. There was also all of the pvp gear and WG crap. A good amount of it was DE'd but the bulk of it had to either be vendored or plain dropped.

After all of the winter cleaning was taken care of I wound up with a few stacks of abyss crystals and over 2,000g in vendor junk. Now THAT is amazing. Or pathetic. Ya know, however you wanna look at it.

Sadly there are still several stacks of epic uncut gems of assorted colors with the main man Stokpile having at least 30 cut. That and loads of abyss crystals which I doubt I can move at all. Now I'm not officially officially back into the AH game as I still have loads of cleaning and sorting to do and I still wanna take my time enjoying my DK again. BUT that doesn't mean that I won't be sharing good deals and ideas when I come across them.

Why do I mention that?

Well the moment I walked Stokpile to the auctioneer I found my first horde of morons that wanted to give away their money. While clearing out all of my epic gems I noticed the vendor value of them cut was 9g. While sorting through the pages on the AH I found almost a hundred raw epics selling for 5-7g each. Raw they vendor for 6. Ahem, please excuse me while I laugh myself silly. So right off the bat I made 1008g from the AH and I haven't been back for an hour. Oh this is going to be fun. The same thing went for rare gems as well, listed on the AH for below vendor price and WELL below the vendor price of cut gems.

Naturally I recommend you doing this on your server while the silliness is out there still. Look for any WotlK gems or just add them to your snatch list and vendor yourself mad. So there's your AH giggle of the day!


Thanks for stopping by!

About the AH pile: My story

This entry here is going to serve as an extended "About" page which I'll have linked over yonder. --->

The idea here is to give my background in warcraft and the auction house, mostly the AH. This should let you know just who I am, what I do, and what I've done.


WoW History.
I started playing just after patch 2.4 was released as a paladin who I had specced as protection from level 10 and on. I picked a pally because hey why not? The same thing goes for tanking, just felt like it. Nothing special. But I came to find out that I really enjoyed tanking and was quite good at it. After hitting the then level cap of 70 I started gearing up through regular dungeons, crafted gear and reputations.

My first raid experience was in Serpent Shrine Cavern as add tank for all the trash and bosses. Mind you my gear was barely acceptable for the entry level 10 man raid Karazan, let alone tier 5 content. But there I was. I did alright for my first time tanking anything serious, made a few mistakes but corrected them right away. Things went on like this for most of TBC with all my my income from daily quests and farming primal air in nagrand with engineering. Sure it was good money, but too much of my time was spent wanting to play rather than actually playing.

Enter wrath of the lich king.

Casually leveling to the new cap of 80 and making good money selling every little thing I picked off the ground from meat to cloth be it to a vendor or on the AH. This is where the gold making story really begins.


The AH baron begins.
I was curious about what this whole "inscription doo-boppy" was all about. So I made a post on Maintankadin asking how scribes can make money at all with such low prices and page after page of cheap glyphs. Obviously I had no idea what I was talking about or about to get into. I was then refered to the Greedy Goblin blog and read all about how Gevlon got gold capped with very little work using only inscription as a source of income. I read all of his posts and realized that I was doin' it wrong(tm).

So I decided to give it a shot and maxed the profession, stockpiled inks etc and started selling them. The cash started to flood my mailbox daily! I was truly amazed and the sheer profit I was making with such little time investment. I then started reading other gold blogs and explored other markets. My first was JC which was an immediate success. With the style of posting, timing, and undercut methods it was literally as easy as buying materials - cut gems - profit.

After about a month and a half of serious AH playing is when I decided to start up this blog and aim for the gold cap of 214k gold at the time. And of course at this time, people having max gold were almost entirely unheard of. In fact I'm sure most people weren't even aware that there WAS a cap.

I now had every profession minus alchemy maxed with oodles of rare recipes and high end patterns. I was pulling in around 50k a week at this point as I had entirely taken over the epic gem, enchanting, glyph, and BS markets. I decided to get into alchemy and selling flasks mostly for the purpose of curiosity and giving the readers a step by step guide of what to do when entering a new market that they have no experience with. It went alright, I made some profit but nothing staggering. Simply put I decided not to keep up with it due to the extra effort needed and tiny profit margins and stuck with xmute mastery.


From the ground up.
To hold my interest in the game when not up to my usual AH antics I started a side project. I started a level 1 alliance priest on my server where all of my empire was horde, and decided to see how much I could make from absolutely nothing with the only source of income being questing and the AH. The only support I gave myself from my mains was a set of heirloom gear and a wish for luck.

At the beginning things were, in a word, terrible. I couldn't afford skill training, shit I couldn't even afford water and that's not a joke at all! Thank god I had free self heals or I'd have been in real trouble. But being the observant person that I am, I know what sells so I took some clam meat that is used to level early cooking and sold 2 stacks on the AH that I got from questing. That's how my ass broke space goat made their start up capital. A while 20 gold coins. This stocked me up with water, maxed out my skills, and allowed me to buy parchment to level inscription.

I did my daily glyph research while leveling and just before outlands, I dropped herbalism and now had enchanting and inscription as my only professions. That means ONLY, as in no first aid or fishing even. I leveled enchanting slowly with cheap mats and went back and farmed a few rep recipes and started to sell agility and crusader enchants.

At level 40 I had dual spec, at 68 I had CWF and at 80 I had full epic gear that I purchased along with epic gems in every spot. 2 weeks after hitting 80 I had epic flying as well. After 2 whole months of this project I had 50k in hard cash along with a solid market share of enchanting and owned the glyph market.


A millionaire born.
Not long before TGU project was a success, I had reached the milestone of 1 million gold in cash. I spent this on the biggest gold sink I could find: a run through ICC 25. Since I had stopped bothering to guild hop with so many shit guilds out there I hadn't gotten to see all of the last raid and decided that I can buy anything. And I did. It was after this that I took a break from the game. I left with 500k in cash and a ton of spare materials to boot.

I am now back in the game and starting up my business empire on the AH. I am once again invading every single market under the sun and aiming to double my last achievement of a million gold.


Thanks for stopping by!

How do I make pewpew again?

Quick note of what you can get out of these posts detailing my return to the AH game. These steps that I'm taking (aside from learning how to play a dk/pally again) are the same steps one should take when entering new markets, joining a new server, or getting back into the game from a break like me.


I'm sure most of you have taken a break from the game at some point only to return and find that everything has changed so much. Well that's the spot that I'm in. Even though I love the AH game I know that's not all that I'll be doing so first thing's first; time to relearn how to death knight pewpew and pally tank again. The main purpose of this entry is to once more drive home the necessity of doing your homework and research the markets before diving into them. Granted I am quite well off, but that doesn't mean I can be reckless. 450k can bottom out rather quick with maxing out a ton of professions, buying epic gems and a large stokpile of new cata materials. Always be mindful of your spending!

Once again I'll be looking over at yonder links and start reading up on Maintankadin and EJ to get up to date on what's going on. Naturally all of my former addons are completely broken and, with all the changes to the AH interface, are probably going to stay broken. From what I can tell, totally automated auction posting is a thing of the past though it's not completely manual either. This means that a drastic change in my daily routine is in order. Of course I'll be giving a full write up on my daily "How to: Auction house" once it's mostly figured out.

After getting a good picture of what materials I have, toons and professions to level, I'll be on the hunt for addons to check out. First thing I'll be looking at is the new versions of auctioneer and QA. After that I'll be looking for a postal and mailOpener replacement to auto collect all of my mail.

However one thing that hasn't changed and never will is the people. Our lovely customers! Because of that, my standard MO isn't going to be altered at all. Undercut by 5g minimum no matter how cheap the items being sold are all the way up to 100g undercuts. Depending on how inflation goes this might increase of course.

The most I can gather from the glyph market is that the use of them all has changed in terms of which you SHOULD be using and which are just there for flavor or plain useless. AH wise they're basically the same as before just with higher material costs. Every new toon needs glyphs and needs a lot more now with there being 9 slots to fill and the ability to exchange all of them at any time. So more large class wide sales instead of just on a respec. In other words, you're still counting on quantity of sales and not quality. Roughly the same profit margins and same style of competition. one or two major sellers and the rest are casuals or leveling dumps.

Enchanting has more options than ever before with so much to craft and sell. From what I can tell some of the old vanilla enchants are popular as well. So my first step once everything gets turned on will be leveling my DK enchanter girl. I always say to never level without a gathering profession, but while questing enchanting counts because of the DE. That and I only have a single toon with a gathering profession (mining) which is my warrior who is just boring to play imo.

Suffice to say once I get all my addOn tech sorted out an account for all the raw materials i have to liquidate, I'll be doing market research. I'll first be looking over the4 general sale price of materials first and then seeing what I can currently make (if anything) to sell with them. Then I'll look into any market trends all while trying to identify my major competitors (if you're still there, I'm looking at you Mulegirl).

My main concern is about how much automation I can do as that was a large part of my success and laughs. There's nothing funnier than going afk for the day while smelting 500 saronite bars while your personal AH campers are waiting for you to log off. Ah those were some good times.

The first step when getting into the AH game is doing your research into everything you plan to deal with. And since I'm not one to do things half assed I'll be getting into every market I can find again so that means a lot of research and reading. But a little Yoda note though, nothing fulfilling ever comes easy.

As always any comments on recommended markets or addOns are completely welcome.


Thanks for stopping by!

Le grand retour

Short version first. Starting to play the AH and wow again so I'll be posting regularly after new years day.

Introductions.

Hello all, Stokpile here. Writing this post to let everyone know that I am soon to return to the wow scene and the AH. And with that comes my blogging about making the wow gold. I am going to continue my efforts to Yoda the poor and the misguided in ways of becoming well dressed and acquiring all things shiny. As the holiday season is here I decided to get myself the present of getting back into something I love to do: ruling the auction house.

Some of you may be old readers, some may just be looking for a few tips on how to weigh yourself down with gold. So please, allow me to introduce myself once again. If you remember who I am feel free to just skip ahead to The Plan.

My name is Stokpile, AH extraordinaire, the well dressed and lover of all things shiny. During the height of my AH playing there was not a single market, small or large, where I was not listing half of the supply. Be it cut gems, crafted gear, enchant scrolls, etc. I buy, craft, and sell everything. It took me less than 2 months from starting the AH game to reach the gold cap. Once i hit the first cap I blew about 50k on useless gear to pimp out my banker. Several months later I had broke the million gold marker and was still going strong.

After achieving every goal I had in the AH, cleared all of hard mode Ulduar and got my drake (only the third group on the server to get at 80) I decided to spend a ton of gold and retire. I hired one of the top guilds to take me and a friend through all of ICC 25 to the tune of 800,000 gold. Yes I spent that much to be carried when I CBA to find a decent raid guild anymore. I held my own at a solid 10k+ dps and when all was said and done, I still have just under a million gold left over.

Yes, I have almost a million gold AFTER dropping 800k on an ICC run.

Shortly before leaving the game, I started a project where I created a single toon of the opposite faction with the intent of proving that you can get rich all by yourself with zero help. I called this project "From the Ground Up" which you can read all about in the archives. In two months I had purchased epic gear, epic gems, and top level enchants, epic. In the span of two months I had bought all of that and still had 50k in hard currency along with a significant share of the glyph and enchanting markets. All by myself with no support from a single person and the only help I had from my main enterprise was a set of heirloom gear.

By doing this I have proved that you do not need good luck, awesome timing, support, or an already existing market share or large bank account. Be smart, be thorough, and be patient.

Suffice to say, I am good at what I do and (in my opinion at least) also good at sharing my knowledge in such a way that anybody can understand.



The Plan.

Since the game has changed so drastically and, so I've heard at least, CC is actually being used in dungeons again I am quite excited to be playing again. And of course a goblin like me cannot stay from the AH forever. I'll officially be writing about my exploits in a weeks time (once I have my account reactivated and sorted out) but until then I'll be going over the start up phases of business.

So the initial few posts will be about (re)starting up a business to encompass every market in the auction house. I may or may not be changing servers so watch out! For everyone that is looking to get back into the AH game but feels so far out of touch keep reading and I'll put you on the right path. I'll be covering all of the obvious essentials such as addons, methods, routines, and so forth.

So who are these initial few posts going to be for? Everyone of course. There's so many subtleties to the AH game that any info is useful to you no matter what level you're playing at. But more specifically, if you are doing well and want to really get into it head long, you'll be in for some good tips and "how to" info. If you're coming back from a break after WotLK like I am and want to start up making money again, you're in the same boat as I am.

Here's the short version of what to expect. Daily posts on starting up a full enterprise AH business, addon reviews of what works, how to use addons and a daily routine that I recommend, markets to get into/avoid, updated list of all that I sell, daily tidbits or full posts on gold making tips, and of course more business reports.

I'm looking forward to getting back into writing about the AH game and taking my DK chica through the new content in a more casual pace and hearing from all of you fine readers out there about your own AH exploits. So until then...


Thanks for stopping by!

You can do everything

One of the major things that makes GW 2 interesting to anybody that loves to play MMO's is that there is no tank/healer/dps roles in the game. At least not in the traditional sense. You will have control, damage, and support. This leads to a very "controlled chaos" feel that was great in the first. This also means that there's many more options for different types of gear to get and enhancements for them. And naturally, since I'm writing about it now, affords us more opportunities for making the moneys.

If you want to for example be a tank you'll change a few pieces of gear, weapons, and maybe skills, and that gives you more abilities to control the enemy. Things like snares, damage reduction, etc. This also means that different set bonuses will be good, different weapon upgrades will be wanted as well. So from that we can assume that almost everything will have a value. And not just a value, but a consistent rate of sales. Granted tanks are always hard to find, but with the ease of transition would make it more likely to find people that will help with the control aspect.

Think of this as a sort of triple spec for everybody. And we all know how much money that brought in for the responsible goblin. So that in mind, it seems that trying to diversify your markets early will be a good move since there will be so many niche markets. And with so many, it will be difficult to conqueror them all, especially all at once.

This also means that in addition to doing dungeons for challenge and fun, people will be wanting to get more gear sets for their different "specs" which will then reduce the price on a number of dungeon drops. So that's worth keeping in mind.

With so much to sell it'll be hard to keep track of what has value and who it sells to and so forth. Basically this once again goes back to doing your homework and trying to find your own way to keep track of everything that you have and how to go about selling it all off. For me I write this blog to organize my thoughts and kept an excel spreadsheet for the more complicated things like enchanting and ToC epics. It will be especially difficult at the beginning as there probably won't be an all encompassing database like wowhead to easily find out what comes from what and from where.


Thanks for stopping by!

Cashing in your tokens

So we just found out how the dungeon loot reward system is going to work. When you complete a dungeon it will reward you with a token similar to the class tokens in war craft. However there is no danger of getting 500 of the class that isn't in the group and you being SoL as they will always drop for the classes that are present. This means several things. If you can clear X dungeons to get a token for each slot, you can get geared up very fast thus negating (mostly) the need of crafted gear. However this does not mean that there will not be a market for it.

Different level ranges will have different balancing for all of the dungeons, which you will have access to a new one every 10th level with many more at 80. So there's the 10 level range that you'll have to go through before you can get new dungeon gear which means the market will still be present. And it also depends on just how practical it is to do dungeons. In war craft, almost nobody does instances while leveling. But when the game is new, people will flock to them and quickly figure out which are worth doing, if any. Once again, this specific market won't truly come into fruition until people get closer to the level cap and start to raise a family of alts.

Now let me make another wow analogy that should make you think to your yourself "Wooooo! Shiney!!!!"

Remember when each patch changed the emblems so that you could get previous tier level gear? And how each time this happened the demand for gear enhancements like gems and enchants sky rocketed for a week? Remember how you couldn't possible stokpile enough raw epic gems to sell for 200g a piece? Well with so many class specific tokens being given to you for each dungeon means that there's going to be a near constant gear supply with each passing 10 levels and for every single alt that gets made for some time.

Since the game is new many of the dungeons won't lose their appeal for some time, even the more annoying ones which are always present. That being said, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that gear enhancements are going to be the go to money maker for the first few months of the game and possibly even longer. It all depends on how many there are and how many you can make that are cost effective.

As usual, the best money makers are the ones that are in demand the most. And with a new set of gear just waiting for you every 10 levels all the way up to 80 (where you'll be getting even more gear) and the fact that certain items add set bonuses for each one you have equipped... damn! That means that each time you replace your gear you need another set of X items to get the set bonus back. Perhaps there will even be different Crests that give different set bonuses? That would mean even MOAR! It's very much like a different enchanting profession for each type of armor. And you all know the amazing profits I made with my enchanting racket...


Thanks for stopping by!

Straight to the customer

While playing the AH is great fun, somethings that are in demand sell very slowly there. Generally these are very specific niche markets such as consumables or special resistance gear that are needed for a particular dungeon. In these markets it may not be worth it to pay the AH fees to try and sell them or the effort of constantly relisting them. When you come across a situation such as this, it could help to go to a specific area to sell them. In warcraft it would be trade chat or going to a specific area where people gather that need it.

Is there a daily quest that needs you to find 8 of a certain world drop? Go to the zone with the quest NPC and sell them there. You'll usually get a very increased rate of sales that way than if you just put them on the AH. This is another tactic that is worth mentioning for guild wars. In an upcoming patch, they will be adding a sort of "staging area" for the original and are intending to do the same thing with the sequel. It's basically an outpost where people can gather for LFG instead of a chat channel that nobody is going to use.

So if there's a fire dungeon and having some resistance gear makes it a heck of a lot more practical to do, you can go to this staging area and sell your wares there instead of listing it on the AH hoping that somebody knows that it's there. This falls under the category of education that I mentioned a while ago. If you need res gear for a certain instance, you don't have to be a moron to not have it. You could be a good player that just didn't know that it was added in, that it's actually worthwhile, or that it even exists. So by simply saying that you're selling it, more people will take notice.

So they look into it and think to themselves "ya know I do have troubles with that place and this is probably why." Then they buy it and try it, they get done a lot faster and with less dying and burn marks and voila! They say to other friends that it works and they buy some more of your res gear.

So should they add in a staging area type of zone in GW 2 this would be highly recommended as there's always way to tweak out your gear and weapons to get better. In addition to that, going to mid range starter zones and selling gear that's great for that level is another alternative. And with the ease of map travel, you can easily go to several different zones to make a post or two in local chat and move on to another area as a sort of traveling salesmen. The AH isn't just a glorified vending machine for goblins, the money comes from other players and upon occasion going straight to the player and cutting out the middle man can work out quite well.

Especially if you sell in a town without an AH something that has a good demand but is severely undercut on the AH. This way you can still make some good profits and stealing a number of sales from your competition. Another example of doing this is selling flasks in WoW around raid time in trade chat instead of on the AH. You know that people are buying them around this time and are very likely to see you selling a bunch for a good price and decide to stock up. And since they don't have to go looking for them and they don't need to buy a bunch of them individually, they'll buy from you out of sheer convenience. Small tip, but still very worthwhile to be aware of. Even if you don't try this your competitors just might.


Thanks for stopping by!

Semi-AuctionMatic

My biggest worry with working the guild wars 2 AH is the lack of addons. There were none in the first nor were any macros and there hasn't been any word about adding them into the second. Considering what a huge thing this would be and the lack of announcements for it makes me believe there will not be any. The question here is one of efficiency. How fast will we be able to post how many auctions? Considering the fact that it won't be automated, it will have to be fairly easy to post a decent number without it turning into a different form of a grind.

As we all know, efficiency is key to a successful business and automation is your friend. But when automation fails, finding smarter and faster ways to do things becomes the order of the day. Time is money, friend. We once again have an important question that decides the fate of this AH baron. There will always be simply and small things that increase the rate of posted auctions by a lot, but when you have a thousand to list, not much is going to help that isn't plain automated.

But with every game there's always going to be a small amount of built in time saving. Something like hitting a "repair all" button to fix your gear instead of selecting each piece one at a time and repairing them individually. Or the new AH functions built into WoW. Things like right click to add it into the window, simple ways of pricing and splitting etc etc.

However if we assume that it isn't practical to list a ton of auctions by hand and that there isn't and noticeable form of automation present we'll have to drastically change our approach. Instead of trying to conquer every market you rest your eyes on, you'll gave to work smarter instead of spending all day just plain working. Instead of owning the entire gem market, you'll have to carve out your own niche markets.

For example, when I lessened my AH exploits after hitting a million gold, I focused on the easier niche markets that I liked. Things like spell threads and epic ToC gear. Good returns, good rate of sales, and can easily be done completely by hand. After all, it's not that difficult to list 20 auctions in around 2 minutes.

So should there be a lack of automation built into the game niche markets will be the go to tactic of an AH player in guild wars 2. But if there is an automation mechanism of some form it will be quite easy to do what we all strive to do: treat the entire auction house as our personal goblin bank.


Thanks for stopping by!

Let there be gear

In a recent interview, it was stated that the goal for black smithing, tailoring, and other gear crafting professions is that every item will have a use for somebody. In addition to that, all crafted gear will not be inferior to all gear that drops from dungeons and assorted bosses. This is quite different than in WoW where 90% of everything you craft is just fodder for skill ups then garbage. It's also different because once you have a piece of gear crafted, it's almost guaranteed to be replaced after your first useful drop in a proper dungeon run.

The idea is that the stats and look will be different, as in better for somethings and not so much for others. However they haven't said much in the way of what you'll be able to craft besides gear if anything else (only the Crests for tailoring have been announced). Think tank gear from wow where for certain encounters you'll want a specific stat or different effects from trinkets. Personally, I carried around two full bags of assorted gear so I don't limit my potential.

And now to turn this one tidbit of info into a potential cash cow.

Assuming that there will be a use for most crafted gear, this opens up a ton of niche markets. Now I'm no dreamer and I don't expect -everything- to be worthwhile to a number of people, I do expect there to be a use for a good amount of crafted gear. This means that you can cater to specific level ranges as your sole means of income. Buy the materials, hit craft all, and post them on the AH. Business as usual.

But there's one other thing that may effect this in a large way as far as profit and markets go. The side kick system. In a nutshell, a "side kick" is another player that is a much higher OR lower level than you. It's used to experience the whole game on any toon regardless of level.

Granted if you get boosted you're not going to be nearly as good as a max level toon, but you won't be a waste of space either. It also means that if you love your main you can go back and enjoy all of the starter areas on them as well. With low level crafted gear, you can sell this to people that level themselves down to check out the opening areas of all the other races in the game. That's another large market. Then there's the obvious max level stuff and other assorted leveling gear.

Naturally I'm not expecting there to be a large market for this at the beginning. People will be spending more time doing dungeons and experiencing the whole game which will get them decent gear. Also since there won't be much gold in the economy, most people will be farming the materials to have somebody craft something if they can't do it themselves. It won't be until later on when people have more spare change or start making alts that crafted gear will become thoroughly profitable. Sure you can make a bit of extra change here and there, but no serious returns on the investment just yet.

Looking forward to seeing just how "useful" the crafted items are going to be and in what ways they'll be different. If it's nothing more than a different look, it's going to be completely 100% worthless outside of very rare recipes. We shall see.


Thanks for stopping by!

Auction the planet!

The other day I received a comment about a very important detail that I have yet to write about just yet. It was something very small stated in an interview with one of the GW 2 developers. Server transfers will be free and only have a short cool down. The cool down most likely be only 3 days or once a week as to coincide with the "World vs. World" pvp matches that will be held. Here's a quote from the wiki:


"Eric Flannum : World vs. World PvP, or WvW as we call it, can be figured as a massive strategy game in which each player is a unit in the conflict. Each week, we'll take 3 worlds (what they call "servers" in other games) and make them fight in WvW. Each world will be in charge of castles, mercenary camps, mines, lumberjack camps and villages in the starting zone. Between those starting points there'll be a neutral zone, controlled by no clan, that will contain fortresses, mines and villages too. WvW is the battle between those 3 worlds for the control of strategic points. Players may decide to fight alone against a supply caravan, join a single group and capture a mine or create a large alliance to assault one of the numerous fortress that could give an advantage in the zone.
The battle may continue in any zone, including the starting territory of a world. Hold control points and control territories will grant bonuses to your world. At the end of the week, a world will be called victorious and 3 other worlds will be picked to fight in the next battle."


This one little detail means, quite literally, a world of difference in the auction game. Several worlds as a matter of fact (you see wut i did thar?). There might not be a lot one can say on it, but it's such an important thing that I feel I should discuss it. In warcraft you have numerous different servers to play on, each with their own economy, prices, markets, supplies, and demands. Different people farm different things, craft and sell different items and so forth. A successful market on one server may be very weak on another server. This is just the natural order of things.

This is essentially set in stone as the process to change servers may take anywhere from a day to a week, during which time you cannot access any character on your account. Not to mention it also costs $15 per character and may require a name change if it's in use on the target server. The likelihood of enough people going through this process to disrupt an entire game economy is essentially zero. But in GW 2 the process to change servers will be completely free and, I assume, that all names are reserved once you create them on any given server. The big question here is...

...will the auction houses be linked?

If so, that means a shortage of any material may be unheard of. All prices will eventually balance out to their own respective "values" with price spikes only coming and going as they naturally do. The only concern here is the amount of farmers which, I can assure you, will be many.

However! If they are not linked, that means the potential to find super cheap deals on raw materials and other items is almost limitless. Lets say that Level 1 crests are worth 300 gold on your server. However on MY server they may be worth 3,000 gold. Then it's as simple as spend all your cash on the cheap crests, transfer to my server and undercut me by 50% and make a mega profit. But that's just plain items.

If you check and find a certain server where, say, ore is usually cheap you can buy those, craft a bunch of items, sell the items for a primo undercut and the remaining ores to take hold of yet another market. Remember my constant yammering on about get into as many markets as possible? Never forget that you can sell the raw materials as well! This means that if there's a demand for something, it will ALWAYS have somewhere to be strong. Though depending on the transfer cool down and linked AH this might not be a practical idea.

The cool down between servers will mostly effect the amount of gold or items to sell that you should take with you to another server and how often you may find it feasible to do so. And one final bit of info that is unknown that will make a huge effect on this. Will you be able to transfer single characters like in warcraft or will it be an "entire account or nothing" transfer? Again, this is just a small detail but has a huge effect on the game.

Just like the addition of a jump button. Fuckin' cool!


Thanks for stopping by!

Big questions

Real quick, I stumbled on a great wow gold tip the other day that I feel obligated to share with you. Especially since I never mentioned it before, heh. Here it is, Courtesy of Cold's Gold Factory.


Since GW 2 is still in development, there are several big questions that need answers before much can be done in the planing of an empire. Of course not many of these things generally come to light in their completion until release or a moment before. So that leaves plenty of time to wonder and guess how one can go about amassing a digital fortune. So here are a few of the questions that I'm most concerned about in the mean time that I feel are the most important things an AH player should know when starting up. As always, it pays to do your homework.

1. What crafting professions will a character have access to? Will the total number be limited?

2. Will we have limited profession slots for gathering as well which restricts what we can gather? Or will it be what we'd expect and you can only gather specific nodes?

3. How easy will it be to learn each recipe for a crafting profession? Will there be rare drops? Will they start already known? Or will they be purchased with gold or other currency?

4. How much use will there be for them at all? Naturally there will be a few item upgrades such as crests, but will that be all? Will they mostly be cosmetic or will there be mid range or "starter" gear that can be made?

5. Pressence of consumables. We know that there will be mana potions, but will that be all? Will each profession be able to craft item upgrades? If so, will there be just the one per profession?

6. How will profession skill ups work? will there be any at all? Naturally there's a million ways that it can wind up, but if it's as simple as craft 50 items to get one skill up is also likely.


Once release day comes, these will be some of the first few questions I'll be looking for answers to. You cannot go far in the AH world unless you are aware of all the tools you and your competition have available. Always do your research into what's available to you and your homework on what's coming soon. It's also important to know so that you can start working on them sooner rather than later. If you start looking for materials that help you with your skill ups at level 1, you'll be much closer to max once you hit the level cap. Naturally once more answers come to light, I'll be writing up my thoughts on them.


Thanks for stopping by!

GW 2: The Gathering

The way gathering will work in GW 2 is rather different than that of WoW. The same general professions will be around such as mining and herbalism, but they will work a little different. Gathering nodes will spawn across the world and they will be gathered on a per player basis as opposed to the world. Meaning that once you mine a node empty, another player will be able to come and mine the same one. The main purpose of this is to prevent "node ninjas." When you mine a node, it will be "empty" for you and only you and will not dissapear.

So 5 seconds later another player may come and mine the same node in the same place at the same time and mine it for themselves in addition to you. This small change has numerous ramifications that may have a significant impact on how the economy works.

Here's an example. There's 5 people mining saronite in Sholozar basin or nagrand or -insert popular farming zone here- all at the same time. This would reduce the amount they can farm by a lot due to everybody chasing after the same nodes and hoping to catch the respawns as they fly over them. However in GW 2 they will each be able to mine the same nodes and only have to wait on their personal farming route. This leads to several very important and immediately noticeable effects.

1. A more available supply in raw materials.
This is due to the much less limited supply of materials that can be gathered in a set amount of time with a lack of competition for the same nodes.

2. More potential for botting.
While arena net is very opposed to botting, they're not perfect. But with nodes having the same locations and not having a random respawn timer, it would be much easier to program a bot to gather much more. In WoW when you mine a node it dissapears from the world for everyone and comes back in a random location, rarely the same as where it was last. This makes it a bit harder for mining bots to find them. But when they are in the same spot with only a random timer, bots will come and provide much more materials for cheap than in wow. That is of course, if they aren't hit with the b& hammer in a few days.

3. "Farmed for free!"
With the ease of farming it will lead to a great rise in "I farmed it for free" that is rampant in almost every game with gathering/crafting. Also with a lot of players being new to this system (as it was not present in the first guild wars) may lead many to fall into this mentality due to lack of experience. This could result in a lack of sales (or markets even) as people are unwilling to spend their hard farmed gold on something that can be gotten for free (after several hours of work).

This may take some time, but even in WoW there are still plenty of people that know the difference so this shouldn't be too much of a problem once people find more needs for gold and have less time to farm instead of enjoying a new game.

4. Natural rise of goblins will be slowed.
With farming being made so easy, people will be less likely to turn to the AH and learn to be a goblin. With a simple and mindless source of income there will be far less of a desire to find a more effective approach at making gold. Also people don't usually look at making gold as a goal and only amass money when they have a need for it. You can liken this to the daily quests in wow, easy money for little work. Hell even somebody on my server got gold capped by mostly doing dailys. When there are no truly effective means of making gold outside of farming people will look for an alternative, but when you have something as "thought free" as easy farming this necessity will not be sought out by many.


Like all up and coming AH players, your fortune has to start from something and that something is almost always gathering. It was for me of course. So naturally I'll be doing my best to gather what ever it is that I can find while steaming towards the level cap of 80.


Thanks for stopping by!

Speculations on Guild Wars 2 Economy: Part 3

Part 3

With the many huge changes from the original guild wars and the second there's obviously going to be different things that the player base will be getting us to, namely the auction house or market place. In the first, there was only a trading chat channel in the game message system so many may not have experience with it unless they played wow or similar games. This means that many may still stick to trying to sell things by spamming "WTS..." in chat channels making some things hard to buy or sell.

Also, in the first game the only way to make money was to farm for hours or to get very lucky drops in a high end dungeon which also takes a lot of time to complete. So the act of crafting and selling will be entirely new to most and some are even against the whole idea of making money by buying raw materials to craft a piece of armor to sell for a profit. That means that there will be potentially very low competition for quite some time. It also means that there may be very little market as well. But the ease of acquisition and immediate gratification will change that in no time I'm sure.

Another potential factor that could influence the economy greatly is that arena net (the company that runs guild wars) generally keeps a much closer eye on the game economy than others. By this I mean if it suddenly becomes very easy to solo farm the most expensive drops in the game, they'll nerf it. They do this because this is a large amount of the purpose of doing the higher end stuff so being able to solo it easier than going as a group trashed their value to nothing. This has happened many times in the original and I wouldn't be surprised if they keep it up. So because of that it's unlikely that a single thing will be 20 times from profitable than something else. At least not in the long term.

The biggest question of course, is just what will we be able to craft and sell? Will the gear from smithing be any good? will we be making consumables like belt buckles? The only thing we know for sure is that other professions have something akin to the crests from tailoring. The ones from tailoring will only effect light armor for casters and such. But what else will the professions be making?

It is unlikely that there will be addons as there were none in the original and there has been no word relating to any chance of it, so working the AH will require more work the more you wish to sell. This would lead most away from full on enterprises and have many people focus on their one or two niche markets. Where as somebody like me may choose to run several niche markets from every profession to keep my income high.

Lastly there are the bots. In wow they are the source of many cheap raw materials for many servers. However in GW they take a fast approach to baning any account that bots. Not too long ago in fact, they banned almost 4,000 accounts for bots. and you'd see them in certain farming locations all of the time. But since then not any more. I'm positive that this hard stance against botting will remain and this of course will make the goblins rely on the farmers to do their "honest day of work" to do our honest day of "take advantage of the idiots and the lazy" work.


Thanks for stopping by!

Speculations on Guild Wars 2 Economy: Part 2

Blank Slate

What drives the current GW economy can be summed up in one word: style. The more awesome something looks the more it's worth. The same goes for rarity, if it's hard to get it's expensive whether or not it's any good. So naturally this mentality will continue on into the next game. But at the start you're not that likely to find anything extra rare or that looks specifically amazing. Take that along with the pseudo-heirloom gear you can get from your accomplishments in the previous GW series, there won't be much of a market for any of this at all for some time. So with that there won't be any semblance of the original economy even though most of the player base will be used to it and likely still participating in the original one.

But since there's no money in the economy of any significance why bother thinking about this now?

Simple, there's a need for cash. Always is. Your skill ups won't be free, new leveling gear isn't free. Any upgrades you want for an exceptionally powerful piece for the level range aren't free either. And of course, raw materials for crafting won't be free either. So there's still plenty of opportunities to start your business empire early. You provide for people who have the same needs as you: get to max level in style and power. Granted since I've been looking forward to this game for a while I won't be spending all of my focus on the gold like I was before I stopped playing wow. But I'll always have my eye out.

Starting out in a completely even financial playing field doesn't make things as difficult as you may think. It's the same as starting with zero gold in wow. It all comes from somewhere just like the raw materials. You get drops here and there, some get vendored and others used from crafting. You use a gathering profession while leveling (which should be a no brainer for you all by now) and you begin to collect your seed money. That's my plan at least. Like I stated many time in my "From the ground up" entries, you have to have a good eye for what can be sold and what should be vendored.

So far the announced professions are mining, herbalism, and tailoring. It has also been stated that there will be an in-combat consumable similar to your basic wow mana potion. In GW players have a large 'energy' pool but slow regen to make you manage it. From that, we can safely assume that there will also be black smithing, alchemy of sorts, and a way to gather cloth for tailoring. Although the cloth is likely to be the same as wow and is just a standard world drop. With tailoring you will be able to create things called Crests which, in a nut shell, give the gear you're wearing a set bonus. That's so that if you love the set bonus of rogue T8 but hate the looks compared to t10 there's no problem, you keep the set bonus stats and the looks. Pretty nifty imo.

There will also be something called transmutation stones which allow you to combine the looks of different armor sets to make your own unique look. They will be available in the game store for real $ but will be found in game as well. These things will be near worthless at the beginning due to the rapidly changing gear, just like any gear modification usually is, but will be priceless later on.

That's all for today. Tomorrow I'll be going over a number of things that may or may not have a very profound effect on the economy and making money in general.


Thanks for stopping by!

Here there shall be goblins? Speculations on Guild Wars 2 Economy.

Part 1

Aloha all! Been a while since we last spoke I know. I've mentioned several times in the past that once Guild Wars 2 is released I'll begin blogging about my gold making exploits in that game just as I have in the WoW world of things. Naturally my standard M.O. will not change, but the environment and market will be completely different. The game is roughly slated for release in 2011 with a beta starting soon so there's still some time to wait before the fun begins, but with arena net releasing new tid bits each day it seems there's plenty of room for speculation. Since anybody that's reading this is likely an up and coming wow AH player you may be wondering something...

How does this effect me?

Technically, it doesn't. At least not directly anyway. Like I've always said, it's more important to understand the WHY of making money than the WHAT. Anybody can follow a step by step guide book and do ok, but they'll never do great unless they understand why certain things are necessary. That's part of the reason I started my "From the ground up" project where I took a level 1 toon and leveled and skilled them up to a fortune with zero support or help in any way. Just me and my wits and got up to 50k gold in 8 weeks. While you may not be starting with nothing, you can still learn a lot from the process of building an empire so that's what this series of posts will be about.

Ok so you want to make a lot of gold to do lots of things with. Great! But that gold has to come from somewhere doesn't it? Today you get all of your gold from other players who get it from other players and so forth. But GW2 is a brand new game with just as new players. Not a single one will have loose cash to toss around. No epic lewts to buy upgrades for. Everybody will start at the same spot: broke as shit.

That's where the challange comes in. How does a goblin get people to part with their cash when they barely have enough to train their new skills for the first time? Today you get money from a friend or an alt or your main to bank roll any toon you create. But now with a whole new game and player base there is zero gold to flow around in the economy, so all you can do is lay out the ground work.

That means there is technically no market to make money in because there is no money to be made. Not in the large enterprise sense at least. That's what these few entries will be about. You may or not gain some fine financial insight from it, but it will still be a very interesting situation to think about I promise you that. Tomorrow I'll be going over the basics of what drives the GW economy and how to profit form it along with my personal thoughts on how it will shape up from what we know about it now. But until then...


Thanks for stopping by!

Stokpile: The Index

Even though I've since retired from the game, I'm sure that a number of people will come around looking for gold advice. Since I have a large number of assorted posts on the subject of, well just about everything relating to gold, I decided to write this one last entry. This entry is nothing more than what I feel are the most important entries that I've made and the ones that contain the most pertinent information in the AH game for both new comers and experienced tycoons. Remember, one can only have as much preparation as one has foresight.


First of course are my credentials: proof of amassing over one million gold.

Proof of a million


Theory and methods:
The importance of Stokpiling.
The art of the undercut.
Addons
QA3 set up guide.
Have a system.
How the markets work.


Profession guides:
JC guide.
Leatherworking guide.
Enchanting guide.
Smithing and xmute alchemy
Inscription guide.


Miscellaneous tips:
Vendor goodies
What 1k gold can do.
Everything I sell.
Best selling items of each profession.
Importance of learning for yourself.



Thanks for stopping by!

Closed for business

I have reached a million gold. I have purchased a run through ICC 25m. I have gathered 50,000g with a single character without the aide of a any other player or any characters of my own. And now the time has come for me to take my leave of the AH game and warcraft. Unfortunately my writing in the blog is going with it for the most part, but I won't take it down. I'll be leaving the blog up for anybody who still has things they can learn and for others to stumble upon. Even though the economy will drastically change each expansion, the methods and theories will not.

So far I've made over 150 entries into this blog over the course of 6 months and It's been quite an interesting time writing. I must say that I've enjoyed writing this infinitely more than I ever anticipated doing so. Maybe someday I'll look into writing professionally. It's been great fun talking with you all and I even learned a thing or three from readers of this blog since starting this whole thing up. So here's the last few pieces of advice that I'll offer you. On Monday I'll be writing a formal index of my blog for any and all that come across it in the future. The whole point being to point out the more important entries that I've made over the last few months.

This is all I can think of so I hope I've helped out a few people here and there. Thanks to everybody for reading, but it's finally time that I took my leave of this game. Perhaps I'll see you around in Starwars, FF 14, or guild wars 2 when they finally release it. Who knows?

-Stokpile anything and everything you sell. There is always a material shortage or price war right around the corner.

-Be patient. No business ever grew to king kong proportions over night.

-Have a reason. If you're not having fun or aiming for a serious goal don't bother with the AH game. You'll get frustrated and lose a lot.

-Do your homework. Every market needs research done with it before getting into one or before expanding further. Do it.

-Always learn. There's a million and one gold blogs out there. By reading this you're already going in the right direction, but never stop. There's always new tricks to be found so go and find them.

-Undetcutting by gold and not silver is a sure fire way to get people pissed at you. It's also one of the only ways to remove a competitor. Always undercut by a few gold at least. Take your hate mail and angry tells from competitors as a sign that you're doing exactly what you should be and doing it well. I keep screen shots of what I lovingly refer to as "fan mail" around for inspiration. And for some good laughs of course =P

-Lastly and most importantly. When I was working the AH it was never about the money. Never. Don't let that be your sole driving force in the AH game, you'll only lead yourself into stress and frustration. I always say to have a reason, a driving force to play the AH game but this goes deeper than that. If you want to enjoy yourself you have to do something you want to do because you want to.

This is true in every aspect of daily life and everybody that has ever lived can attest to this. You'll never feel fulfilled working a job you hate to buy shit you don't need. Be yourself, do what makes you happy. Don't try to get something because it's expected of you to do so. If you don't want to settle down and start a family, don't do it because it's what is expected of you. Your life will be miserable. Don't work 200 hours a week at a desk job that's far too reminiscent of the movie office space. You'll hate your life.

Do what you can enjoy. Follow your heart and never ever give up. For me, my enjoyment came from playing the AH. Others enjoy achievements and would rather gargle broken glass than work the AH like I do. Are they Doin It Wrong(tm)? No they're doing what makes them happy. Find something you enjoy then pursue it and never let it out of your sight. So long as you're happy and aren't making anybody's day less enjoyable, how can anyone argue with you.


Thanks for stopping by.

Profession cliff notes

Here's another entry I had already written but haven't gotten to post just yet. Fun fact, I even show up on Google now. Type in my name you will see me right up top. Check it out!

This is a short series of entries rolled up together about the basic info that you need to know on working each profession out there. A while ago I made an on going series about how to work each of them in detail, but some people only need the basic info to get by. You can find it off to the side titled "Profession How To." Also If you start with the basics and learn as yo go, you'll be far better off as you'll learn things from experience that can't be taught in the traditional sense or be found in a guide book.Refer to The List for everything that I've been selling in a certain market.


Glyphs:
~ There is no such thing as too many Inks of the Sea. Trust me. If you're fully in the market and not just a few types of glyphs, fill up bank tabs with IotS and never stop buying more.

~ Make a stack of 5 of every glyph you know.

~ Post your auctions for 48 hours.

~ Craft more only when you have 2 or less of one type of glyph.

~ If you are sold out of a glyph, make 10.

~ Craft two of each off hand and list them one at a time

~ Sell armor vellum in stack sizes different that the most common on the AH. If there's a bunch of 20 stacks, list yours in stacks of 5 or 10.


Tailoring:
~ Craft a 10 stack of epic threads and list them 4 at a time as singles.

~ Post your auctions for 24 hours.

~ Make sure there's never any ice web spider silk on the AH for an acceptable price.

~ List as many as 60 netherweave bags at a time and -always- buy more cloth. It is completely impossible to stokpile enough materials for this market.

~ Be mindful of what you pay for eternals and frozen orbs

~ List your specialty cloth in stacks of 2 with 24 on AH at once. Also don't bother making any of the cloth if you're not specced for it.

~ Spellweave seems to sell the best out of the 3 specs.


Blacksmithing:
~ If you have access to an alchemist that's willing to xmute saronite into titanium, you can never EVER have enough saronite bars. If you can fill up a full guild bank with 6 bank tabs with nothing but saronite bars do it! Just like borean leather, you can go through so much of it so fast in so many different markets it's insane to not buy as much as you can at all times.

~ Craft ToC epic dps/tank gear 1 at a time and only make more when they sell.

~ Post your auctions for 24 hours.

~ Undercut on your epics by at least 10g and always have a bid option set to at least 95% of your buyout.

~ Make sure you have a mid range sale price cap on buckles so you won't attract too much competition with high prices.

~ List 4 buckles at a time during the day and up to as many as 10 after raids end, they sell fast.

~ Craft 2 of each enchanting from from TBC (eternium, fel iron, adamantite) and list them both. If the market for titanium rods looks good make a pair of them as well. Careful as a lot of people make a ton to skill up and list at dumping prices.


Leatherworking:
~ There's no such thing as too much borean leather.

~ Post your auctions for 48 hours.

~ List your heavy leather in the same method as I mentioned for armor vellum. The same goes for any epic gear.

~ Make 4 mining bags and 3 LW bags and list them in pairs.

~ List heavy armor kits in single stacks and 4 at once.


Enchanting:
~ Craft 4 of each profitable scroll and list 2 on the AH as singles.

~ Post your auctions for 48 hours.

~ List 4-5 scrolls for ones you notice constantly selling out. For my server it's Ex spell power to gloves and ice walker to boots.

~ Any old world enchants never list more than 2 of. This gives the impression to a potential buyer that you don't usually make them and that they're still rare since you only have one up.

~ When there's a large supply of mats on the AH buy everything.

~ Put out the extra effort (or gold) to get old world enchants.


Alchemy:
~ Be very mindful of what you pay for herbs.

~ Post your auctions for 12 hours.

~ If you're not elixir spec, don't bother making flasks to sell. Same goes for potions.

~ Do your daily xmute weather you're xmute spec or not.

~ Only list flasks when most raids are about to start, and list a ton of them.

~ If there's heavy competition or low prices, list yours as second or third lowest and you'll still get some sales after the cheap ones are bought up.

~ I still believe that xmute mastery is the best way to go.


Jewel Crafting:
~ Post your auctions for 12 hours.

~ Rare gems and metas: craft 3 total and only list 2 at a time.

~ Epic gems: craft two at a time. List a pair of the most popular ones and only a single cut of the less commonly bought ones. This helps to save a ton on lost deposit costs.

~ Craft leveling gear two at a time and list them both.


Engineering:
~ List the pets from Gnomer two at a time and don't be shy about listing them for 300g and higher. They'll sell.

~ Post your auctions for 24 hours.


Thanks for stopping by!

Report 6-22

Here's the business report that I was planing to post on Tuesday.


It's that time again, resets, crashes, bugs, and reports. Today is the day where I, Stokpile the well dressed and lover of all things shiny provide you with some nice reading material while angrily awaiting blizz to get servers back up. As usual, numbers and bottom lines come first.


Income per banker

Gems, LW, misc: 44,000

Smithing and enchanting: 23,000

Glyphs: 3,500

Total weekly sales: 70,500
Weekly profit: Negative 700k or something
Total gold: 447,000


Yes that's a big ass number in the negative right there. I'm including my run through icc 25 as part of my weekly earnings or lack there of.

Detailed Recap
--------------
Quickie update on the toc LW front first. I finally found the recipe for the leather melee DPS chest piece on AH. I got it for 1500g which isn't bad at all though that is my max price on such things usually. But out of sheer curiosity I would've paid a good deal more for it. Now I have every recipe from toc that I wanted and managed to craft a pair of every single one. That took at least 9000 crusader orbs to make, possibly even more.

So in a weeks worth of time the leather bracers have sold twice. The mail bracers twice as well, while the mail and leather chest pieces have not sold a single time. Meanwhile the plate tank/dps gear along with the non-spirit cloth gear has been selling too fast for me to keep in stock. Last time I tried to make some dps gear from LW it took ages to sell for a tiny profit. This time I managed to make about 2k profit with several new pieces left unsold. If I don't sell the chest pieces soon I'll be writing them off as a loss.

And yes those are some rather low numbers that you see up there. As such this will be a comparatively short business report, but still with lessons to be learned. Since I'm just about at my goal I've stopped taking the time to scan the AH regularly for more materials. I have stopped stokpiling. I've also mostly stopped working glyphs horde side again.

I have finished selling off my leather working products minus a few toc epics and armor kits. I have maybe 5 profession bags left to sell out of 20, no more plain leather or furs left in stock. Frozen orb based items are gone as well.

Eternal fire, life, and air are also completely used up. As is my stokpile of abyss crystals and dust and cosmics. I still have a good amount of old world materials, but no more goose scrolls for me. My bank tab dedicated to saronite bars and nothing else has dried up. In fact I've sold everything that wasn't epic or meta gems so far as I had an ass ton piled up for ruby sanctum. As is apparent from the sales numbers, the gem market is still thriving and will continue to do so for a bit of time.

What is it that you can learn from this? Me the warcraft millionaire pulling in so little sales when I can push as high as 60k -profit- in a single weeks time? My name. I am Stokpile. I stockpile. Last week was a good week for profits, and so was the one before it, so what happened? I stopped stokpiling materials and ran out leaving me with very little in the way of things to sell.

Take this as my final attempt to drill into your head how pivotal it is to stokpile as much as you can any time that you can. Especially if you're working in many different markets because the materials for one will cross over into several others. Example: I ran out of eternal fires so I ran out of crafted titansteel, no epic threads, no toc plate epics, no earthsiege meta gems, etc. I also used up my frozen orbs to turn them into crusaders so anything that used them is also out.

Take a lesson from this week's business report. The moment you stop to stokpile the materials that you need is the very moment your rate of sales will plummet.


Thanks for stopping by!

Why I plan to quit

EDIT: I began responding to a few comments in my typical long winded manner and it got so long that I decided to edit it on in to the OP. On the question of any other up coming projects that I might have, here is my response.

-------------------------------

Firstly, I want to say that reading all of you thinking that I have helped you more than Gevlon and Marcko definitely impresses me as they've been writing about gold for a damned long time and I've been around for only a few months. Also Gevlon helped me the most while Marcko mostly pointed me to smaller niche markets along and of course Tella who was also great for pointing me to a few markets I missed as well. Even a goblin is allowed a measure of pride and bragging rights now and again. Everything else I've learned on my own. Again, if I can do it so can you. Especially since you have so many resources to learn up front and not deal with as much trial and error as I did.

The game that I'm most excited for (and have been since the announcement) is Guild Wars 2. The only problem I had with the game was, ironically, the ability to make money. You had to farm to make any money, but it was generally very light and you never needed more than you got from leveling up in all reality.

Unfortunately the game is probably at least another 2 years off, but I'm still extremely excited for it just like I was when I first heard it was in development. In the mean time though, I'll likely pick up FF 14 or Star Wars and if there's an AH type of system in there, you bet your ass I'm going to make a point of dominating it! And of course, I'll be writing all about it.

Suffice to say, unless I somehow wind up with a job that requires me to actively be playing WoW (heh wouldn't that be the day!) I'll be I'm keeping my eyes out for other MMO's in the mean time. Unfortunately, there currently aren't many that are that well done imo.

However if I start up another blog for another game and/or project I'll be sure to update here. But it'll be just like this one, for my own purposes and no other advertising. If you want to learn about something, the first step is to seek it out. If you can't put out the effort to look, you don't deserve the knowledge.

-------------------------------

Even though I've completed all my goals in wow, I'm not done writing just yet. I still have a few posts written and one final experiment I'm doing over the course of the week so stick around. I'm not done yet!


I've been asked many times in comments, private messages, and in game tells why I plan to quit the game. So this entry will hopefully end that mostly (in before "why you quit wow" comments). If nothing else, I can just direct them to this post and they can read for themselves if so inclined.

TL;DR: I'm bored.

1. I have a million gold. I proved that you can get rich easily which zero support. My biggest entertainment in the game lately of playing the AH holds no remaining goals that are meaningful to me.

2. Raiding. I just don't have time to raid seriously anymore. And as much as I like it, I'm not going to spend 15 a month to casually raid toc as there's not a chance in hell that I'm going to pug ICC even with the 5000% damage buff. I can only deal with so many retards for so long before I bite off my tongue. I'm sure that if I applied to a solid guild and spent a goodly amount of time memorizing the fight mechanics which I've seen all of one times I could get into a proper raiding guild. Especially if I said 'pretty please' and slipped 200k across the proverbial bartering table. But alas, I'm just no longer that interested in it.

3. With the direction that Blizz is taking the game come Cata it's going to be only more of the same with free purples being crammed down your throat. Unless you're doing heroic ulduar or the top end of ICC all the boss encounters in this expansion have been extremely self explanatory. Also they have been very "casual" friendly. Unfortunately in this situation, casual wow player translates literally into power drooling mouth breathing inbred fuckwit.

Yes I know that casual players are not complete incompetent morons that couldn't tie their own shoes until they were 21. I'm a casual player. I don't stand in fire nor will I ever see a tank do more dps than me. However there are more failbots in this game than people who enjoy success for the sake of success. It's the journey that matters not the destination or reward. The people that just want to look awesome while AFK are the ones that blizz is catering to now and have been this whole expansion. Again, only so many retards at once people. You can call me an elitist if you want, but if you care about how you appear to others and social status more than anything else you can just get the hell out.

4. No AH playing, no raiding, what else is there for me to do? Grind out achievements? No thank you. Emphasis here on GRIND. 99% of all of them are boring as hell and involve zero challenge what so ever. The achievement system in Guild Wars (called titles) was all about challenge even though there were a few that were obvious fluff and gold sinks. That being the case I was all about going through the game on hardmode and going by myself with only the internal AI or a friend to accompany me through the world. Due to that I'm not going to spend several hours farming AQ to get rep. Not interested.

5. Even irl I'm completely against wasting money. In fact I generally don't like to waste anything haphazardly. So spending 15 a month on something that I rarely use is entirely out of the question. Would you spend 15 a month on wow if you only played by yourself for an hour or two a week? I hope not.


Those are my reasons for leaving a game and I'm sticking to them. Also I am not going to donate my gold to somebody for any reason at all. I believe something given has no meaning and does nothing to benefit in the long term as it is only a temporary fix. If you don't earn something, you'll never appreciate it and won't be able to fully take advantage of what you've gotten. Thus, wasting it.


Thanks for stopping by!

From the ground up: Success!

I interrupt your regularly scheduled business report to give you this breaking story of win. Post money sink gold total is still updated though.

I have reached my goal with my 'From the ground up' project yesterday afternoon. I must say it was a load of fun. So today's entry is just the highlights of the last two months of my trip from 0-50k and how I started yet another financial empire with glyphs and enchanted scrolls from the ground up. This may seem like a long entry, but keep in mind it's covering the last two months of this projects duration. If you want to see long, go read each individual entry I made for each week of the project.

I recommend every up and coming AH player give this a shot. The only real rule is that you receive no help from any other characters including your own. The only 'benefit' you're allowed is to use enchanted BoA gear. Make an alt on the opposite faction (or entirely different server) and mail off some BoA's to them and see how long it takes you to hit 80, get geared, get epic/CW Flying, and hit the 50k marker. First one to the mark with the lowest /played gets a cookie!

Screen 1 of my 50k alliance side.





Screen 2 of my 50k alliance side. Full sized screen shot.





Screen of my final horde-side gold total.





/Played for my priest.





/Played for their banker.




I was invited by the guild that I hired to take me through ICC for some Ulduar 25 hard modes and walked away with this. Later we managed to get Algalon to 1% before he ran away.





I started a priest named Allystokpile (after my main banker Stokpile) alliance side of my current server along with a banker for her named Lunchmuney (my horde banking guild name). My horde characters sent over a set of BoA gear then said fair thee well. I had zero assistance from my main bank account or friends on the alliance side, of which I have none. Out of all the problems I faced there's only really 3 that stand out as an honest to god annoyance.

- Starting out and not being able to afford water.
- Bag space.
- Losing track of sold enchant scrolls from having only 1 bank alt.

I couldn't afford water. I couldn't train all of my skills to max rank when I leveled up. I was completely broke without a main or a friend to help support me. I didn't even have bags.

After doing most of the starting area I managed to get water bought from selling mob trash drops and found a pair of bags. I picked up some clam meat which I sold soon after for 15g/stack. I used that money to train my professions up (herbalism and inscription) and bought a few basic flowers. I crafted a handful of glyphs here and there along with some armor velum. A few gold came in from glyphs which I used to purchase some Eternal Fires and resold them as crystallized fire which more than doubled my investment.

This managed to sustain me all the way up to level 20. It wasn't enough though to train fully every spell that I got as I got it. I didn't even train my res spell to max until much later on and barely trained any shadow spells what so ever.

Throughout the course of leveling I was able to identify certain greens, trade materials etc that would fetch me significantly more than a vendor price. I also never trained first aide up to max and there are several priest spells I don't even know rank 1 of. I never trained them as I'd never use them making the gold cost an utter waste.

Throughout my entire time /played I spent a total of maybe 2 hours total farming, 3 if I wanted to over estimate. All the rest was spent either in raids, heroics, leveling, face time with the AH, mass crafting, or just plain being AFK. I farmed shards in Strat to skill up enchanting as there were none on the AH. I farmed a pair of golden pearls in Feralas for a spellpower scroll (again none on the AH at all). And lastly I made 3 short farming trips to the old world to farm Essence of Air and water for agility/healing power scrolls. You guessed it, zero on the AH. Not even for 500g a piece.

At 20 I bought my first land mount and riding skill.

At 40 I bought my epic land mount and training.

At 42 I bought dual spec and fully trained all of my spells that would be used to max rank. Thanks Blue.

At 60 I bought basic flying training and the mount. I made sure I did a lot of stormwind rep quests while leveling in the old world to get the faction discount for being revered.

At 68 I learned cold weather flying.

At 70 I dropped herbalism in favor of enchanting and began to train that up. I had to farm stratholme a few times because there were ZERO shards or materials of that level on the AH for several days. I figured that this was normal at the time.

At 71 I bought every BoE epic I could find along with filling every other slot with a BoE blue item. This included gems AND enchants for all of them. Both toc and ulduar craftables, JC neck/ring, etc. I bought the gear first because while leveling I found that I really enjoyed healing and wanted to walk into heroics and raids ASAP instead of flying around at 280% speed doing nothing but waiting for money to come in.

If I wanted to continue to level with epic flying, I would have had to wait another week at 80 before fully stripping out of my greens. I didn't want to do that so I made the personal choice to fly slower while knowing the annoyance would be greatly compensated for by being able to raid immediately at 80.

At 78ish I finished skilling up enchanting and was able to start crafting NR level enchanting scrolls in addition to my twink scrolls.

7 days after hitting level 80 I bought epic flying and every glyph book I had left to read.

Here's a complete list of everything that I have bought and their estimated price in the short lifespan of this humble space goat priest. You should consider yourself blessed if you got a healer that was a fresh 80 with gear like mine =P

Merlin's robe - 2000
Bejeweled wizard's bracers - 1000
Wispcloak - 300
Titanium spellshock neck - 500
Titanium spellshock ring - 500
Runed mana band - 60
Titansteel spellblade - 650
Cord of the white dawn - 850
Spell slinger's slippers - 750
Spellweave gloves - 200
Faces of doom - 80
Healing power recipe - 60
Spellpower recipe - 3000
57x Book of Glyph Mastery - 1150

450 Inscription skill - 2000
450 enchanting skill - 3500
Other assorted blues - 100
Full gear enchants - 1300
Full set of rare gems - 300
Full set of epic gems - 2000
Riding skill and mounts from basic land to CWF - 6500
Dual spec - 1000
Old world reputation items - 800

Grand total spent on leveling, professions, gear, and enhancements
=
25,600g


As of now, it has been 59 days since this toon was first created and I have amassed 50,000 gold in addition to all of the purchases I've made. It took me 1 month to reach level 80 then buy everything and another month +/- a week to gather 50k gold. At that rate, in roughly 3 months I'd have another character gold capped. I say 3 and not 4 months because I have since learned many many more glyph recipes and would likely find the last enchanting recipe I'd like to have. I also am sitting on a large stokpile of inks and enchanting materials so I won't have to build up a supply from nothing again. In doing all of this, I took advantage of a few very poor AH players to fund my leveling and required purchases along with profession skill ups. Due to my experience in the AH game they were out played and helped me get rich far sooner that I had imagined.

This is my proof to you that anybody can get rich and afford themselves all the luxury that comes with it. I did not get any help. I didn't "get lucky" with finding a market that made me thousands in an hour. And I didn't farm my way into thousands of gold. I went from zero gold, zero silver, and zero copper to over Fifty Thousand gold all by myself. It was clever thinking, experience, knowledge of the game and knowing how your average wow player will (not) think when they're in front of an auctioneer. If I can get rich while still buying everything you'd expect to buy all by myself with a single 80 and banker you can too. Anybody can do well financially in this game if they set their mind to it.


No excuses.

Mail call!

EDIT:
In case you didn't notice (like me) it's the mid summer festival in azeroth this week. The thing that makes it worth mentioning is that you can use the LFG system to que up for the event boss. Also the gear he drops (purple cloaks and super cool looking staff) has all been upgraded to i232 gear. There's a cape for each spec and they're all damned good imo. Also the first time you do it each day you get a bag that contains 2 Emblems of Frost and has a chance at the seasonal mini pet.

Also worth mentioning is that you can que up and kill him as many times as you damned well please. So that means that you can farm the capes and staff to your heart's content. Or in my case, the enchanting recipe for Deathfrost. It basically makes your weapon proc an Icy Touch like the DK spell and has a damned cool looking effect. So enchanters get your butts in gear and farm the recipe and try to sell a few scrolls for it! Materials are 2 primal water and 2 primal shadow, totaling about 50g on my server. So I'm listing a scroll on horde and alliance side for 150g.

Since setting up the email for the blog I've already gotten a handful of emails, much to my genuine amazement tbh. So Taking the time today to answer them in this entry. I'm not replying via email because any questions that one person has there's likely others that have the same one in mind (or just haven't thought to ask yet). So if you're wondering why I haven't responded, that's why. Also of note I'll only be referring to people by first name or character name here. Depending on the influx of mails I may wind up giving shorter-ish answers to some and if the frequency goes up a bunch I think I'll just dedicate my Friday posts to this little bit.


Fred says...
I am a failure at making gold but I am optimistic for the future. I am currently leveling 5 alchemists simultaneously (they will all be transmute masters like my two warlocks). I am hoping that having 7 cool-downs per period will help me get the jump on the JC business in Cataclysm. I have all the gathering skills in the game maxed out as well as JC, Inscription and Tailoring. Working on LW and have abandoned BS because I just can't stand it. I know you are busy but I would like you opinion of my plan for Cat; Transmute gems, sell them (cut or not), mining ore and prospecting it for gems to do transmutes and further support JC.


That's a solid plan actually. Xmutes are easy guaranteed cash and you can use that to bank roll your primary markets or give you the backing you need to get into one. I did the same thing in my alliance project using glyphs which start making profit immediately and used that gold to level enchanting and stokpile the mats. So your basic plan for Cata is identical to one that I've been using for a while now and has been a great success for me. And with you having 7 xmute specs (holy shit yo!) that shouldn't take long at all to get your other businesses up and running. Good luck!


Trugrav says...
I've been reading your blog for a little bit after returning to wow from a long hiatus. The first thing I did after returning to the game was roll a shiny new paladin on a new server along with a DK bank toon. I got my DK up to 60 and will get him to 65 eventually and thanks to your blog have him enchanting low level scrolls (right now just crusader, fiery, icy, and lifestealing) and for a while was making a decent profit, I was able to purchase epic flying at 80 and still have about 10k gold left over working solely in this market, that's how good it was. Now though i'm in an undercut war with an AH camper though and am selling my scrolls for almost no profit (He has to be loosing money though cause i'm on my stockpile of mats I has saved up for just such an occasion) I figured this would be a quick thing but it's been going on for a couple weeks now and i'm almost out of reserve mats. what's your advice on the situation. So you know I also have a JC/transmute alchemist but almost no paterns for JC. With my alchemist I can sometimes make money on meta gems but this is a shrinking market too.


Determined competitors are a thing that you'll just have to learn to live with I'm afraid. Just ask the enchanters and jewlers how much they like me. Like I always say it's an issue of time and money. Is the money from it worth trying to stay in it? How long are you willing to put up with low profits? Though since you're only doing low scrolls atm, it's not likely that either of you will want to back out as it's an amazing niche market to be in. Once you skill up some and get access to NR enchants (or even mongoose) you'll have a much wider market open up to you. So the short version of my advice is to wait it out until you get more recipes available. Otherwise (if you're already at that point) try to get the meta cuts for chaotic, relentless, and insightful. They always have their ups and downs, but are definitely worth staying with.


Outlier says...
Just so I can be more exact: I'm sitting at about 15k gold (fluid)... with I don't even know how much in mats. I'm working on the JC (blue gems for now, have about 2 stacks of epics but I'm still learning the blue gem market so I figured I'd start and focus there). Also I'm focusing on Enchanting scrolls, which I'm killing right now. (I also have an alchemist to do all my transmutes/meta's)

So on to the questions...

1) I don't have a lot of the Gem Recipes. Especially the epic cuts (I have one of each epic cut, 2 of red). The blues/meta's I'm finally starting to get under my belt. But there's still quite a few cuts that I need.

In your recent posts if I get you correctly, you are saying that you are slowly moving out of the Gem market, selling off your supply as the demand slowly goes down.

So in my position what would you do? Would you just stick only to doing the daily and adding gem recipes really slowly? Would you invest quickly to get some more cuts before demand completely diminishes? I just don't know if the investment will pay itself off with raids finishing up.

2) Buying thresholds. Okay so I have been opening up my buying threshold quite a bit. Here's what my enchanting materials look like now (inside the spreadsheet you gave us).

Infinite Dust: 1.10g
Greater Cosmic Essence: 19g
Dream Shard: 3.50g
Abyss Crystal: 29.50g

In QA3 I add about .20-.30% profit onto the material cost. I can't keep up with demand. What do you do in this situation? Do you raise material thresholds. Do you try and find alternative ways to get the material? Any advice?

Enchanting has given me crazy profits so I want to push it to it's limits.

Personally I wouldn't get into the JC game at this point in the expansion. If you already have some worthwhile cuts go for it and keep the dailys up. But definitely don't go hog wild trying to break into it, act more as a casual seller in the market than a big supplier. I'm not totally out of the market though, I left rare gems behind and am now trying to stokpile epic gems for ruby sanctum. Taking a chance on their being a demand spike afterwords. But if you have access to an xmute spec alchemist or just cheap raw meta gems, those are always worth cutting.

As for keeping up with enchanting demand, it's tough as hell. Sometimes if I have the time I'll DE a bunch of JC rings for dust, but not that much anymore. Mostly what you can do is to scan the AH for greens and see if there's any that are cheap enough to buy or bid on for DE purposes.


Thanks for stopping by!