Saturday, June 25, 2011

The Over-Looked 4.2 Goldmine

4.2 is rapidly approaching, and I'm sure most of you are well on your way in stockpiling everything you'll need to get rich. Nearly every gold-blog out there has touched on what you should be stockpiling, and for the most part it's all solid advice. However, in my cursory glances at everyones' suggestions, I'm seeing something missing that I assumed would be a quite obvious money-maker. In fact, this market is the one I'm sinking a good 90% of my stockpiling recourses in to, and I believe it will pay off handsomely.

What is this mysterious market that a good majority of bloggers seem to be neglecting? Why, PvP gear, of course! Come 4.2, all current PvP gear recipes will automatically be upgraded in our spell books. No new recipes to get, just a free upgrade! Even better, the mats will stay the exact same. And in case you have forgotten what those costs are, WoWHead has made a very convinient page summarizing the mats for all the new craftable gear in 4.2.   Just find the set, and it'll tell you what you need total to buy the recipes and what a full set will take to make. Makes stockpiling a sinch. I'm hoping to make five to ten full sets of each to sell throughout the week.

Of course, blind stockpiling is rarely a good idea, so here's why I think this will be a solid investment. First, iLvl cheaters. New PvP gear has an iLvl of 358, more than enough to get you in to H ZG/ZA. It ought to even be decent enough to let you run through normal Heroics without being a drain on your team too. Mainly though, it'll be great for new people looking to get in to PvP without being stomped by those who have already played through last season. This gear is better than current honor gear (sans sockets and with a bit less resil, however), so people who never got around to doing arenas or rated bgs will likely want to upgrade. The majority of consumers will likely be people new to PvP, however. And if they're even remotely serious about trying it out, they'll want to get on this gear in order to stay competitive.

So there you have it. My scheme to get even more gold in 4.2. I haven't even mentioned the new PvP relics / rings / cloaks, mainly because those are bits of PvP gear others have already covered. Of course you should be stockpiling for those as well, as they'll sell well for the same reason the regular gear will: new players, or casual PvPers, looking to stay competitive in the new season.

Saturday, June 18, 2011

Musings Post-Cap: Gold-Making Universal Truths

So it's been over a month since I hit 1mil, and just about a month since I wrote for my blog. You may have been wondering where the hell I went. Well, aside from exams, journal write-on, and starting an internship, I've just really had nothing to write about.

I more or less stopped the gold making grind after the cap. There wasn't much point to it. After basking in the glow from that huge mount of gold, I went to work spending it. Bought all the vendor mounts for my main, and a Traveler's Tundra for my lvl 40 druid. Started working on the pet achieves too, which cost a fair amount of gold to do. Almost have all the Argent Tourney pets, on both sides, as well as the rather rare Hyacinth Macaw, Disgusting Oozeling, and Firefly pets. Still keeping an eye out for the whelplings, but haven't seen many. Gave away a ton of the shiny stuff too, to various people for various reasons.

On the gold making aspect, I've done little else than glyphs, which I now love for their relative ease. I have a huge stockpile of glyphs and inks that I'm working through. Also selling off some some random items on my main bank alt that I got either pre-cata, or through snatch lists. I am, however, gearing up for 4.2, which I'll likely write about in a few days. I've been largely silent because, as you can see, I haven't been doing much gold making myself. I like to write about what I do, and my thoughts on such, so if I'm not really doing anything, there's not anything to write about.

I have, however, been thinking a lot about making somewhat of a meta gold making post. Just a few observations on making gold that I've come across on my way to the cap. So here they are, the universal truths about gold making:

Making Gold is Really Easy
Some may argue with me on this, but they're wrong. Making gold is easy, making tons of it is a little harder (and will segue in to the next universal truth). When people ask how I do it, I always condense my answer in to this little sentence: "I buy stuff, do something to it, then sell it for more." That's all we do. That's the very essence of gold-making. We take stuff from the AH (or vendors, or players, or from farming, but  that's less likely), run it through our professions, and then sell the completed product for more than the sum of its parts. Nowhere is this principle more easily illustrated than with Jewelcrafting. JC was the reason I got in to gold making, and it's still my favorite. The easiest way to make gold from JC is to buy a raw gem, cut it, and sell it for more. Doing that is how I got my start. None of the silly "shuffle," just going in to the AH with auctionator, checking the prices of raw gems, checking the prices of cut gems, buying the raw gems, and making profitable cuts to sell. It was absurdly easy gold. And it still can be. JC is the perfect example because it's so obvious how it works. Barely takes any math at all, just a simple understanding of which of two numbers is higher. Any other profession is really just a slightly more complicated version of this with a few extra steps. What they all come down to is taking something, making something new, and selling the new thing for more. Easy as that. If you can sell the finished product for more than the sum of its parts, you've made gold. It's as simple as that.

Now, you can make it more complicated by trying to squeeze out extra coppers. Buying from suppliers instead of the AH. Watching trends to buy when supply is abundant and sell when it's low. Selling on raid nights, buying on the weekends. Dealing with competitors. Etc. But again, in the end it's all about selling for more than you paid. If you can do that, you can make gold and reach the gold cap.

It Takes Money to Make Money
I think this is the most important thing to realize. Like I noted earlier, making gold is easy, but making tons of gold is a little harder. A week or so ago, a guy on the Consortium Forums made a post lamenting his inability to rake in thousands of gold a day like some of us could. He was doing everything right (aka, selling for more than he paid, see supra), so why wasn't he fabulously wealthy? Well, because he only had about 20k to work with. The thing is, the only reason some of us can pull thousands from our mail each day is because we're spending thousands in the first place. I could make thousands a day from JC, but I'd likely have to first spend many thousands on ore or raw gems. If you don't have that kind of gold to invest, you're not going to see that kind of return. Rather than focus on the raw numbers, you should be looking at your percent return of investment (ROI). Myself and our friend could have a 50% ROI, but he might not make the same as I can simply because he's not spending as much as I can. For example, we can buy widgets at 100g each and sell them as gidgets for 150g each. He can only buy ten of them (spending 1k), but I can buy a hundred (spending 10k). He'll make 500g, I'll make 5000g. But we both made the exact same 50% ROI. The sole reason I made more was because I spent more. Not because I'm "better" not because he's doing something wrong, but because I had more I was willing to spend. And hey, now I can buy more, and make even more! But so can he!

So how do you get to the point where you can make thousands in a day? By starting out making a few hundred a day. Again, it takes money to make money. That could easily be amended to say, it takes more money to make more money. You're not likely to make thousands daily if you're just starting out. You have to build your way up. Focus on one market, start a steady income, then start expanding. As long as you're getting decent ROI, you'll start to see more and more gold come in each week. The more you have, the more you can spend, and the more you can get back. Simple as that, which leads to the last universal truth.

Gold Making Takes Time
It's very very unlikely that you'll become a millionaire overnight. But it's not an impossible dream by any measure. It'll largely depend on how much time you're willing to put in. Not just in having enough toons to have a huge crafting army, or time spend leveling those skills, but in how much time you want to spend playing the AH. Things like milling and prospecting are time consuming, but the more time you spend on them the more you'll make. This is tied in to "it takes money to make money." If 10 stacks of ore nets you 500g, 100 stacks should net you 5000g. But you have to do the rather tedious shuffle to get through it in the most cost effective manner. There's also dealing with the AH itself. If you're able to spend tons of time babying your auctions and almost always being the cheapest seller, always replenishing your stock, you'll likely make a lot more than those who set and forget. But you'll also spend a lot more time to do so.

The time factor isn't just about the day-to-day AH activities, it's also about how long you've been at it. Back to "it takes money to make money," if you start out small, you can only make so much in a day. But as the days go by, you'll be able to make more and more as you keep reinvesting your profits. Eventually, you'll find a nice nexus between time spent earning, and gold earned. After that, you can basically calculate exactly when you'll hit the gold cap, barring unforeseen circumstances.

In Conclusion...
That's pretty much it. All gold making is is selling for more than you paid, but it takes time (and gold) to start raking in the big bucks. Just find something profitable, start small and work big, keep doing it, don't get frustrated, and eventually you'll start pulling in thousands and hit the cap.

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Millionaire!



Last Sunday, at approximately 5:30 PM EST, I collected the last bit of gold from my mailbox to hit the elusive one million gold!

Here are some screens from my MS stats to show you more or less how I did it. I haven't cleared MS since I installed it mid-January, so this is basically all of what I've sold.

Sorted by Number Sold:

Sorted by Money Made:

Sorted by Money per Sale


So yeah! That's kinda it. I think what pushed me past the cap was a few days of really great glyph sales. The market had more or less reset after my little experiment, and the insane amount of cheap herbs meant my profits were huge. And having my main competitor who seemed to pretty much camp the AH go MIA meant I basically controlled glyphs for a few days. I kinda slowed down on gems, mostly because I had prospecting (but milling's alright for some reason...). But I've been getting more and more in to the twink scroll market. Charging about 1k per scroll for the BiS weapon chants, and they sell. Cheap Maelstrom Crystals means cheaper to produce Landslide enchants, so I've been messing with that a bit too. Other than what you see on these screen caps, I can't think of anything particularly important. 

Where do I go from here? Not really sure right now. I'm kinda done with the whole gold making stuff for now. I've more than I really know what to do with, and it's been getting more and more tedious to keep up with things. I'm thinking of slowly going through my stock, not buying anything more, just using what I have, and then retiring to a fancy island off of Azshara. Though I'm sure the goblin in me will bounce back around 4.2 to capitalize on new PvP gear.

The dilemma I'm facing now though, is whether or not to actually start spending all this gold! On the one hand, I'd like to get all the vendor mounts now, but on the other, I don't really want to go back below one million. Doesn't make much sense, that's for sure. What's the point in having all this gold if you don't spend it? I'm assuming once the initial novelty of being a WoW millionaire wears off I'll start dropping gold left and right. But for now I think I'll just revel in it.




Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Flipping Rare Weapons

Hiya friends! I'm using this study break to bring y'all a random tip that you might find useful. Something I've recently taken up on my odds'n'ends bank alt is flipping rare weapons. Pretty simple tactic to do, and tends to bring in a semi-decent amount of gold. A nice supplement for established goblins, and a great way to earn some extra coin if you're just starting out.

So what to do? Just go to your local AH, go to the default search UI, limit the search to "rare" quality weapons level 70 and below, hit search, and sort by lowest bid amount! I'll usually buy any weapon that's listed at 20g or below, and bid on anything with a 10g bid or lower (if it's not within my buying threshold, of course). I've set up a little TSM group for all the weapons I snatch too. 48hr post, 100g fallback, ~30g or something threshold (not sure on that, rarely matters anyway). As vendor prices on most sub-60 weapons are pretty low, you're not losing much in deposit costs. The 100g default is a pretty fair price too, as that's a pittance for most players right now, and you're mainly catering to people leveling alts who want some nice blue gear.

I was a bit skeptical that this would work when I first started it. After all, doesn't everyone have BoA weapons now? Well, apparently not! I'd say I sell ~5 weapons a week. Not a huge amount, but certainly worth the negligible time and effort it takes to do this! You'd be surprised at how many people sell world drop rares for next to nothing, or even better, don't understand how to price the bid (I often find weapons with a 50g+ buyout, and a 4g bid). You can also do this for epic weapons (I'll buy almost anything for 100g, post for 500g minimum), though they move a lot slower and the deposit costs are higher.

Thursday, May 5, 2011

All Sorts of Goodies Datamined on Wowhead!

Short, but sweet, update for today. Exams start next week, no time for lengthy posts!

If you don't obsessively check Wowhead for the latest news, you might not have noticed nearly a thousand new additions to their PTR database. Mostly just a bunch of new armor sets, but there are some spectacular gold making opportunities buried within.

Most notable are the new entry level PvP armor sets. I'd expect great sales from these at the start of next season as new players try to catch up their gear. A very interesting new addition is the availability of crafted PvP rings, cloaks, necks, and relics. Oddly enough, these accessories are listed as BoP. I don't see the logic in this, so hopefully they'll become BoE by the time the patch rolls around (not like Scribes and JCs need MORE ways to make gold). Material costs for the new garb don't seem any different than the current gear, so plan accordingly. The costs for the new accessories are fairly low too (a few rare gems and some volatiles for the jewelry, for example).

There are also new BoE epics, though for the casual auctioneer they're likely to be out of reach. Each take eight Living Embers which presumably drop off 4.2 raid bosses and might be purchasable by VP (note that current VP are likely to become JP next patch, so hoarding them won't help). Though that doesn't seem too bad (just buy them off the AH or other players!), each piece requires 3 Chaos Orbs or 8 Dream Cloth for tailors, which still seem to be BoP.

And finally, we have new bags! Best of all, there's a 36 slot JC bag! Less exciting, a 36 slot Inscription bag and a 36 slot Mining bag. Tailors can make the JC and Scribe back for 3 Dreamcloth, so stockpiling a few will probably be worth it. The mining bag costs two Pristine Hides and twenty Volatile Earth. Personally, I don't think the mining bag will get much love, but I'd expect the JC bags to sell like crazy and the Scribe bags to be up there too.

Suspiciously absent is any indication of Epic Gems.

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Warcraft Econ Hall of Fame!

My interview with WacraftEcon went up today, go check it out!

Nothing else really new and exciting going on as far as gold making is concerned. With exams coming up, I haven't been on as much lately, so I haven't been making as much as usual. Still up over 750k as of now, and hopefully I can rake in a lot of gold tonight. I will, of course, update as I find interesting things to write about.

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Messing with Glyphs

About a week ago I finally followed through on my threats to crash the glyph market. It was something I had wanted to do for quite some time, but never really got around to doing. So after a few weeks of stockpiling cheap inks, I sat down to craft a boatload of glyphs.

I will admit, I got cold feet at first and started posting at normal undercuts for a few days. Interestingly enough, it was actually profitable. I stalked my competition through The Undermine Journal, saw that most of them didn't post early in the morning when I woke up for classes, and took advantage of that window of opportunity. I made a decent amount of sales for a few days, but quickly grew tired of it all. So I crashed the market.

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

My First Piece of Hatemail!

As some of you may know, I've always wanted my own in-game hatemail from an upset competitor. As the old goblin saying goes, "if you're pissing someone off, you're doing something right." Well by that logic, I've been doing everything wrong! Until this morning, apparently, when I got this great gem:


(Please excuse his french)

Now there's a bit of a funny back story to this. Yesterday, while going about my glyphing, I decided to throw up a couple of Inferno Inks just to see if people were buying. I have a decent amount (though not quite enough for cards) stocked up that I'm not sure what to do with just yet, but if I can sell them off at decent prices I'd be happy. After tossing up two of them, I get a whisper from some guy asking me if Inferno Inks actually sold. I reply that I'm not sure, but I have a bunch if he wants to buy. He says that he was curious since I had just undercut him, and he wanted to know if the market was active. I simply say, sorry, no idea, I'm testing out the market myself. Five minutes later I see "A buyer has been found for your auction of Inferno Ink" x2. So I immediately run and throw twenty up in singles. And as I do from time to time, I go to the auction window to see who bought my Inks. It's the guy who moments ago had asked me if people were buying. And this morning, I get the aforementioned lovely message from him for undercutting him more. (Funny thing is, fairly certain I did only undercut by a few silver...)

Moral of this story? Isn't one really, just felt like sharing an amusing anecdote!

Sunday, April 10, 2011

Why I'm Not Worried About the Shuffle Change

Just about every blogger has wrote about the datamined change to cut uncommon Cata gems (going from 9g to 75s). And most of them seem to take a doomsday-the-sky-is-falling approach to this new. I'm not convinced that this change heralds the end of the shuffle. Will it affect the economy? Certainly. Will it crash the economy? Probably not. Shuffling will still be useful and profitable, it's just going to take more thought than the current lolshuffle. 

First off, I've never seen the 9g vendor value as anything more than a safety-net; If all goes wrong, you could always cut and vendor. But shuffling specifically to cut and vendor has never been a part of my plan. It's also a handy way to figure out what's profitable. With such a high vendor value, all our calculations have been based on whether or not it's more profitable to shuffle, or to cut and vendor. Even if it's more profitable to cut and vendor, that wasn't always the default option. Sometimes you could just wait it out. And rarely have I been put in a position where cutting and vendoring was my only option. Basically, that 54g floor price for Obsidium was just a comfort in the back of my mind. I knew that I could buy below that, and be guaranteed profit one way or another.

Well, if this change makes it live, that safety net will be abruptly removed. Think of it this way: you're a tightrope walker and that 54g floor is the net. You know that if you mess up, that net is there to catch you. Now, without that net, you're just going to have to be extra careful not to mess up. Now, we're going to need to do a little more market research before we go wantonly throwing gold after cheap ore. But I don't think the markets are going to come crashing down around us.

I think two scenarios are likely to occur if this change hits live servers. First, scared by the lack of a safety net, JCs stop snatching up cheap ore. Bots/people continue to farm, supply overwhelms demand and Ore prices crash. Meanwhile, because people aren't shuffling as much, mats that come from it start to dwindle. Less rare gems/dusts/essences are on the market, driving those prices back up. Suddenly, shuffling becomes profitable again! All that cheap ore can easily be shuffled in to profits. Demand for ore and supply reach a happy medium, dictated by the profits gained from the other markets. Scenario two pretty much ends up the same way. Bots get scared off, ore prices rise. Put off by high ore prices, JCs don't buy ore. No shuffling decreases mat supply, prices rise, they continue to rise until shuffling is profitable again. 

Think back to the beginning of Cata. Back then, the floor price seemed merely conceptual. Prices of ore were at around 100g a stack, and still we were profiting. Cutting to vendor seemed like a total waste in light of what else could be done. I know I never expected the floor price to be reached, or at the very least for JCs to snatch up anything below, keeping the prices constantly just above the floor. I also remember when people started reporting ore dropping below the floor, and how luck we thought those people were. And then it happened to everyone. And keeping up with that supply became impossible. And prices dropped further. With that influx of super cheap ore, we saw all the other markets crashing. All that elementium prospecting in to all those rares crated huge supply, further dropping the prices on cut and uncut rares. Dusts and essences dropped past the point where crafting jewelry to DE was profitable, and we would rather just cut and vendor. Huge supplies of gems even made selling on the dailys tricky, as so many people were posting that the prices quickly dropped to the vendor value anyway.

Right now, when buying ore our options are shuffle for profit, or cut and vendor for profit. Once cutting and vendoring for profit go out the window, our option is simply shuffle for profit. If shuffling isn't profitable, we don't do anything and just wait for it to be profitable. The thing is, enchanting mats and gems (the rare ones at least) will always be needed and there will always be a demand for them. Dropping the vendor price for uncommon gems will have absolutely zero effect on the demand for things like enchants and cut gems. How could it? Are people going to think, hey, uncommon gems vendor for less, so I should totally (not) gem/chant my gear now? No. When people get new gear, they're going to need new enchants and new gems. Demand for those is dictated by the rate at which people acquire gear, not at what price uncommon gems vendor for. As long as we can sell chants/cut gems for more than the mat prices, those markets will be profitable.

One of the reasons shuffling ore was so profitable and so alluring was because it allowed us to acquire mats for less than their AH prices, and thus increase our profit margins on things like scrolls and cut gems (or simply selling the raw mats back at profit). Again, I don't think people were drawn to prospecting simply to cut and vendor (though this may certainly have been the case for some). The reason we do it is because all the other markets were still profitable. As long as those other markets are profitable, I see no reason to stop shuffling.

I also don't see how this change in vendor value will make the related markets less profitable. Just because the "base" cost to craft a Jasper Ring becomes 1g95s (with exalted discount for the setting) does not mean the dust market will decrease accordingly. Why on earth should it? That market's prices depend on supply and demand, just like every other market. The only way prices would drop that low is if there is an overwhelming supply. But, from what I've been gathering, shuffling is something we should probably shy away from, meaning we'll see a decrease in the supply of related mats! If we stop shuffling, prices on the mats that come from it aren't going to magically decrease to reflect the changes to the vendor values. They will still be affected by supply and demand just like everything else.

The one way I could see this change dropping prices across the board would be from lack of other alternatives (i.e. vendoring). So now, if you get stacks of Obsidium at 40g each, you're almost forced to craft to DE in order to get profits. And if everyone's doing that, supply could very well overwhelm demand and drop prices on dusts/essences quite low. Alternatively, transmuting could be your only outlet, again dropping prices.

But I still don't think it will come to such drastic measures. The simplest way to put what the changes will do is this. Before, we thought, "is it more profitable to shuffle or to vendor?" Now, we'll think, "is it profitable to shuffle?" 

Monday, April 4, 2011

Point of Diminishing Returns

The point of Diminishing Returns is an economic concept that, like opportunity cost, has facinated me for quite some time. The simplest explanation I can give for it is that at some point, additional input won't really change the output in any meaningful way. To illustrate, think of workers making widgets (I still have no idea what a "widget" is, so good luck actually visualizing this). Say it takes one worker 30 minutes to make one widget, two workers 15 minutes, three workers 10 minutes, four 7.5 minutes, and so on. At some point, adding one more worker doesn't substantially change how quickly widgets are made. Certainly the difference between one worker and two is huge (30min compared to 15min), but the difference between ten and eleven is quite small (3min compared to 2.73min). And of course, there's no guarantee that this model will hold true for each worker you add. There's probably some point where the widget just can't be made any faster, and adding workers will do absolutely nothing. The actual "point" where the returns start diminishing is going to be somewhat subjective. Shaving .27 min off the time it takes to make a widget will add up if you're making thousands of them and certainly be worth the cost of the extra worker, but there's going to be a point where the cost of that extra worker just won't justify what little time you'll save.

So what on earth does this have to do with gold making?

Saturday, April 2, 2011

You'll Feel Right as Rain!

I was poking around on WoWhead looking at the latest additions to the PTR, and found an interesting little gem that could provide a nice income boost. "You'll Feel Right as Rain" is a new achievement that requires you to eat 91 Chocolate Cookies. Chocolate Cookies are made by cooks and it takes one Simple Flour (buyable from vendors for a negligible amount) and one Cocoa Beans (also buyable from vendors for next to nothing). So how is one to make money off of this? Simply by making a mess of cookies, throwing them on the AH, and barking in trade! Anyone remember Second That Emotion? People were paying pretty good money to complete this achievement when it was released. Though there are some discrepancies (Second That Emotion was required for the cooking meta, and took a bit more effort to make), I can imagine that the novelty factor of a new achievement should push a few sales. I'll probably try to make a few sets to sell for ~200g each. Expect to get a lot of competition if sales are decent and people start learning how easy they are to make, so this'll probably only make you gold during a very short window.

Thoughts on this?

EDIT: Apparently Cocoa Beans aren't buyable from vendors in the normal sense (despite what WoWhead lead me to believe), but they are contained in Imported Supplies. Imported Supplies will cost you one daily token, and has about 40 Cocoa Beans. So while this does limit the amount you can get to some degree, as any toon with the cooking skill can do the daily you can get about 2 stacks of Cocoa Beans per toon per day. So if trying to make gold off of this is appealing to you, start stockpiling some tokens!

Saturday, March 26, 2011

Why You Can't Afford NOT to Stockpile Pyrite

So I feel like I may be stepping on Alto's toes, or just being unoriginal, posting about the "Pyrite Stockpile" right after he did a rather excellent write up (see, Epic Gems in Cataclysm), but I believe I have a unique view on the whole debate that I would like to share in the hope I can bring people over to the stockpiling side.

The gold making community is divided between those of us who think epics will come from Pyrite ore, and those who think Blizz will take a unique route. There are excellent points on both sides of the debate; some argue Blizz will go with the tried and true method of prospecting for epics, as that ensures JCs will be able to get them, others say that there's no real precedence for prospecting as you couldn't do so in BC, so Blizz might decide to go with a third, wholly unique option on how to get the gems. Honestly, I think these arguments are irrelevant.

Monday, March 14, 2011

500k!



So just a few minutes ago I broke the half-million barrier!

Here are a few follow up screens of my MySales stats if anyone's curious as to what I've been selling. Note that this is overall data since I installed MS probably around two months ago, because I can't get the "weekly / daily" feature to work for some reason, despite setting it to that constantly...

Most Sales

Most Gold per Sale


Biggest Earners




And just for fun, here's how much gold I've actually earned since installing MS:


Almost 1mill! But I only have 500k?! So where'd it all go? Well, aside from the very true saying, "you have to spend gold to earn gold," I have splurged on mounts and gear for my toons and my friends, so that definitely took out a large chunk of my capital. But still, pretty sweet to know I've actually "made" that much, even if I don't "have" that much.

Since I just finished writing a 16 page appellate brief, that's going to be all for now. Look for a much more lengthy post on the WoW Econ Hall of Fame in the next few days, once I muster the brain power to write again.

Sunday, March 13, 2011

Is the Obsidium Shuffle Still Worth It?

Fluxdada has a great post up over at his blog, PowerWord:Gold, on the classic Obsidium Shuffle and whether it's "Heating up, or Winding Down?" First off, if you my read blog, but not his, shame on you. Go read it now, he's got some really great stuff up there.

His post on the shuffle really got me thinking, so I wanted to do a bit of an "extended commentary" with my thoughts on the matter. On most servers, bots are back in full force and are driving the prices down on ore like never before. It used to be that seeing a stack of Obsidium below the 54g "floor price" was cause for celebration, and I'd snatch it up without hesitating. Now, it's getting hard to find Obsidium above the floor price! You'd think this would be even better, but as Fluxdada points out, the regular shuffle isn't as profitable as it once was. Dust prices are dropping like a rock too, meaning disenchanting Jasper Rings or Alicite Pendants will actually lose you money compared to what you'd get just vendoring the cuts. Transmuting isn't always worth it either, as many Rare quality gems can be bought on the AH for less than 27g (what you'd make cutting and vendoring three of the Green quality gems, and that's not including the varying price of herbs). Even the daily doesn't seem to bring solace (for me at least), as so many people have caught on to this strategy and there's so many of the gems that the competition is absurd. I used to be able to go through stacks on the dailies for absurd mark-ups, but now I'm lucky to sell ten at seemingly normal posts. Just for a quick comparison, go read my post I linked above (the Obsidium Shuffle one) that I wrote when the shuffle was at it's heyday, and compare that to what's going on on your server right now. If you're lucky, that post is still relevant. But I'm willing to bet that it's completely off the mark now.

So what option do we have now, if shuffling just isn't worth it? Well, there's always the fall-back of vendoring! But, is that really such a great option? To quote Fluxdada, "while this may bring in SOME profit it is an incredibly laborious process and I may have to start evaluating if the time spent is worth the profit gained." And he's quite right. Last night, I saw about 240 stacks of obsidium ore at 40g a stack. Some quick math puts me at about 3, 360g profit if I just prospect, cut and vendor (54g "floor" - 40g/stack = 14g profit/stack X 240 stacks, ignoring Rare quality gems). 3k profit is nothing to shrug off, but will the time commitment really be worth it? Prospecting has a 2 second cast time, so adding in an extra second for "looting" and reaction time I'd say it takes about 3s to do one full prospect. Since you can prospect four times per stack, that comes out to 12s to prospect an entire stack. That doesn't seem too bad, but let's do that for 240 stacks. Now that's going to take 2,880 seconds, or FOURTY-EIGHT MINUTES! Ok, well, 48min for over 3k gold doesn't seem too bad, does it? Well, we still haven't cut or vendored anything! Cutting a gem takes 3s and you can AFK this, only returning when your bags are full. But, after all that prospecting you now have 6 X 240 gems, for a grand total of 1,440 gems that still need to be cut and vendored. How long is this going to take? 1,440 gems X 3s per cut / 60s in a minute, or an additional 72 minutes! Though a decent amount of this can be done AFK, you still have to baby it and come back when your bags are full. And this doesn't include the time it takes to actually vendor everything! I use an auto-vendor addon for this, and even then it can take it a few seconds to vendor a bag full of cut gems. So right now we're looking at 112 minutes purely devoted to prospecting and cutting. I'd say adding an extra 8min for miscellaneous time-sinks (retrieving the ore, storing the gems, actually selling them, etc.) is reasonable, so we're now looking at 2 whole hours devoted to this process.

Although that still comes out to a respectable 1,680g / hr, at this point what we're doing isn't that much different from farming! The whole point of playing the AH game (at least to me), is that we can make this much gold with just a fraction of the time and effort invested! Just as it is with farming, the problem is if you're doing this one thing, you're not doing something else! The harshness is somewhat mitigated by the semi-AFK factor (I'll usually blindly mash my prospecting macro while reading cases for class), but this is still a rather substantial amount of time sunk in to the shuffle.

So is it worth it? For me, not so much in all honestly. Even if I can read while doing this, or listen to podcasts or whatnot, it's beginning to seem a little too much like farming for my comfort.

Saturday, March 12, 2011

Blacksmithing!

Last weekend, partially in anticipation of the Darkmoon Faire Dense Stone turn in (see Mageshadow's and Cold's posts for more details, and be sure to check out the awesome Consortium Forums thread on the subject), and partially because I wanted to get in to the Ebonsteel Belt Buckle market, I power-leveled blacksmithing on my rogue. Thankfully I had almost all of the mats required to get to about 425 stockpiled from when I leveled mining on my pally in anticipation of Cata, so it only ended up costing me a few thousand to level. But I highly doubt anyone came here to read about the grueling process of power-levling a profession from scratch. Rather, I'd like to share a few little insights on how to make gold with blacksmithing!

Thursday, March 3, 2011

From Rags to Riches: My Adventures In Auctioneering

Today's post is an entry for Cold's Gold Factory Blogging Carnival. This month's prompt is, when and what was that "light bulb" moment that made you into the greedy goblin you are today?

First off, I'd like to say how awesome I think this topic is. Sometimes, amid our piles and piles of gold, it's easy to forget our humble beginnings, when scraping together enough gold for riding training, a mount, or even the repair bill was a grueling process. Though I shudder to think of those days, reflecting on your roots can be quite enlightening. I hope that this carnival will inspire any would-be goblins that may be discouraged by seemingly futile efforts to earn gold when compared to those of us who blog about it. I have heard many times that some think we're just preaching to the choir, that our advice only works if you're already established, have capital to work with, and an army of alts at your service. Well, we were there too at one point, struggling with gold, and hopefully insight into our journeys will prove useful to anyone in a similar position.

Without further ado, I present to the tale of Slyvaliss, the undead female rogue, who started with naught but some tattered rags and a lone dagger...

Sunday, February 27, 2011

Specialize or Diversify?

This is my entry for the Just My Two Copper Blogging Carnival. The topic this month is whether it is better to focus on one market, controlling it completely, or to spread yourself over multiple markets, always ensuring you have your hand in something. The obvious and easy answer is, of course, "both!" But obvious and easy answers are rarely much fun. So instead, I'll try to break them down, and figure out which choice is best under what circumstances.

 For me, specializing in a market (your "niche" market) means complete and utter domination of that market. You not only control how many items are up and at what price, you also control the markets that supply your niche. Diversification, on the other hand, is a lot less about dominating and a lot more about ensuring you always have something profitable going on. You have so many options available to you, that if one market becomes unprofitable, you can simply ignore it and move on to the next. So at first glance, niche markets seem to be a lot more work, however, successful diversity does mean you need access to a lot of different professions, which in itself can be quite a investment in money and time.

Friday, February 25, 2011

Patch 4.1 Enchanting Speculation

Alright! So, on the off chance you haven't heard by now, patch 4.1 is now on the PTR! Check out Wowhead for a list of everything going on in this new patch. I will just be discussing my thoughts on Enchanting and how it will be affected by 4.1.

There's really not much in the notes that directly lends itself to gold making. Nothing about Pyrite prospecting in to Epic gems, no new glyphs, no new crafted BoEs, nothing particularly obvious. However, what will definitely have an effect on the market is the new 5-man dungeons, which will be dropping Epic level gear! As Faids pointed out yesterday Maelstorm Crystal prices will drop as a direct result of people being able to disenchant the epics that will be obtained through the new dungeons. She wisely suggests that now would be a good time to start moving any stockpiles you might have left. But I want to go a bit more in-depth on exactly how much the prices will drop, and how that will affect the enchanting market at large.

Monday, February 21, 2011

Leatherworking!

So over the weekend I added a new profession to my repertoire! I am now the proud owner of max leatherworking, and already it's been making me some good money. Hopefully this will give me something else to blog about that's not jewelcrafting updates.

So first things first, I'd like to mention a few triumphs and hitches I ran in to while leveling LW. Unless you really want to power level your way up to max, it's not a bad idea to make stuff that actually sells or that you can profit off of. When I first started leveling LW, DEing the greens I made wasn't really viable, but depending on the cost of savage leather on your server, that is certainly something to look in to. Also, making Savage Leather from Savage Leather Scraps will work all the way to 450. This is probably the most cost effective way to get from 425 - 450, as you will be using that Savage Leather for other things. Other items you should make until green or even grey are the Blue quality Leg Armors. You can start making Scorched Leg Armor at 475, and Twilight Leg Armor at 480. Obviously this will be server dependent, but I can generally sell Twilight Leg Armor for well above the cost of mats. SLA turns green at  490, grey at 495, TLA turns green at 495, grey at 500. You can also make Heavy Savage Leather from 485 to 490 if you want to cut costs down a bit. At 500 skill, you hit a snag where all you can really make are the two cloaks, Cloak of Beasts and Cloak of War. Of course, this could be awesome if your server actually shells out money for these, but from what I've seen, they rarely sell for more than the cost of mats. You could do your Draconic Embossment from 500 - 505, but it does start out green. On the plus side, it only costs two Volatiles to do, so while you won't make any gold, you might loose a lot less than if you just made cloaks.

At 510 is when the fun starts, and you can start buying PvP gear (if you've unlocked the vendors in Twilight Higlands). Simply buy whichever piece sells best, and make them up to 525! And with that, I'll explain a bit about what pieces I've found sell well, even in the short time I've been in the PvP gear market.

Thursday, February 17, 2011

How to Put a Little Extra Gold in Your Pocket

Just a forewarning, this is a Horde-only tip, though there may be something similar for the Alliance.

So quite a few blogs have talked about the wonders of flipping vendor recipes. People are either lazy, or don't know better, and will often buy recipes worth a few silver for a fair bit of gold. This is an excellent way to add some passive income, though it's something I don't often do. For much the same reason people will buy them from the AH, I don't bother getting them from the vendors to flip on the AH: a lot of them are just too out of the way. Except for one.

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

A Quick Post-4.0.6 Update

As some of you undoubtedly noticed (or rather, didn't notice), I haven't updated for quite some time. RL coupled with writer's block has prevented me from taking the time to make a genuine post. As it seems to be the trend (though I'm a little late on it), I thought I would take a few minutes to go over my thoughts on the post-4.0.6 gold market, as well as a quick update on what I'm currently doing to make gold.

The most notable changes influencing gold making that occurred in 4.0.6 were the addition of new Meta gems and bracer enchants, the fixing of Meta gem requirements, changes to the material costs of Flasks, and the addition of new sockets to crafted gear. There were a few other changes, such as the new glyph and the addition of an ink trader in Org, but those didn't affect me quite as much as the others.

Friday, February 4, 2011

Right Place, Right Time

This post is mostly random anecdote, but I do believe it is illustrative of a part of gold making that can have a significant impact: Luck.

So I'm at the AH, going through my regular routine, when I see in trade chat that someone has just posted 66 stacks of Obsidium Ore for 50g a stack. Now I don't know about anyone else's server, but mine is experiencing a dearth of cheap Obsidium. For whatever reason - bots being banned, Ore Crusher alerting JCs to the awesomeness of prospecting, lazy farmers, etc. - it has been quite rare for the past few weeks for Obsidium Ore to be posted below 70g, and often there's a huge shortage, with some stacks even up to around 100g. Try as I might, I've yet to snag a dependable farmer (the one I had seems to have stopped farming...), and unlike some people I didn't buy up G-Bank tabs full of Ore (a lack of foresight on my part, I guess), so 66 stacks at 50g seemed like a godsend. Sure enough, there they were, and I managed to buy up every single one. I sent the seller a tell too, and it turns out that someone had hacked his account and used it for botting, and when it was recovered he was left with an extraordinary amount of ore and wanted to syphon some of it off. He's currently keeping some to level his engineering back up, but he has agreed to send me any leftovers he has.

So what's the point of all this? Simply that being lucky can pay off big time. To elaborate, this is why we have things like snatch lists. (Or at least, we probably should. That's an area I really need to work on) Being able to spot good deals is a key skill all goblins should have, but it's something that really only comes through experience. 50g per stack of ore may seem to be an obvious deal, but that's only because we know of the 54g "floor price." Other examples from my past include things like a 2k Parrot Cage (Hyacinth Macaw), or Hurricane Decks for 10k. So be sure to keep up with gold blogs and patch notes, and keep an eye on your server's prices, because you never know when someone will be selling something for cheap, and you won't know that it's cheap unless you know what it's really worth!

And to make this post a bit more interactive, please share what the best deal you've snagged or are currently snatching!

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

JMTC Blogging Carnival: Making Gold With Limited Time

This post is for the JMTC Blogging Carnival.

I already "make gold with limited time" as it is, but if I had to cease the majority of my operations and limit my AH endeavors to thirty minutes or less a day, this is what I would do. Jewelcrafting! No, not that horrendously time consuming goldmine that is the Obsidium Shuffle, just good old fashion cutting and reselling gems. This is the origin of my gold making back at the end of Wrath, and for someone with limited time, this is one of the easiest ways to make a decent amount of gold. I went from less than 2k to over 10k liquid (and probably in the realm of 20-30k net worth) simply by doing my JC daily, and buying and reselling cut gems on the AH.

But this was before the days of TSM. I absolutely love this addon now, and with its help, it can streamline this process and help you make even more gold with even less effort. So let's go through it, shall we?

Sunday, January 30, 2011

Old Gold Cap!



It has finally happened! Earlier this morning, at around 10am EST, I retrieved the last copper that pushed me past the old gold cap of 214,748 gold, 36 silver, and 48 copper.

So what to do next? Reach the current gold cap, of course! Short term, however, I'll probably sink more gold into the current speculation that Volatile Life will boom in price (bought 3 stacks of 200 Friday night at around 6g a piece). My personal speculation is that I can leech gold off of the next DMF by getting cheap Blackfallow Ink and trading it forInferno Ink. I'm still trying to get more and more Shadowspirit Diamonds (three stacks is not nearly enough!), and I might buy a few more DMC to flip (got a Hurricane Deck for 12k, hopefully can get a couple more around that price). Vanity items wise, I'm finally getting 310% flying! I feel like such a scrub on my Sandstone Drake, still going at 280%, but seeing how little I fly around, I just couldn't justify the 4k or whatever for ~30% extra speed. But now I really have no excuse. I might pick up one or both of the Hodir mammoths, as I've always liked them and I get bored of the ground mounts I do have (still noRaven Lord). I'm also eyeing a few more BoE epics, even though I keep telling myself not to buy more (I've easily spent close to 200k on BoE epics for my main and offspec). I don't get to raid much (or ever), so on one hand, getting that geared it pointless if I can't do anything with it, but on the other, this ensures I'll be capable when I can raid, and ready for the next major patch when it hits. Plus, purples are awesome.

And that's pretty much it for now! I'll leave everyone with a screenshot of My Sales from the past 2 or 3 weeks (not sure when I installed it, and I can't seem to do the cool "weekly" or "daily" sales things). I'm sure that most of you have somewhat similar sales, but if anything catches your eye and you'd like me to elaborate, please let me know!

Thanks for reading!

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Guest Video on Trading With Zoxy + Response to Kammler's Questions!

So if you haven't seen it already, head over to Trading With Zoxy, where I have a guest video post giving a rundown of how I use Trade Skill Master to create and sell Gylphs! Zoxy has been doing a fantastic job spreading the news about TSM and how it works, so I'm quite thankful I was able to contribute. Keep checking his blog for further guides, as I believe he will be going through most every profession and how to use TSM for it.

On a related note, in the comments of the post Kammler raised some very good questions regarding my video. I would like to take this opportunity to address them, because I believe they are questions a few of you will probably have.

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Remote AH + Neutral AH: A Potential Goldmine

A few weeks ago, I was under the impression that 4.0.6 was to be released on a day that I would be indisposed for most of the evening. Not wanting to miss out on Metamas, I bought the Remote AH service in a bit of a panic. My fears were for naught, as 4.0.6 still has not been released, but I'm going to hang on to the service until it does. So in the meantime, I've been trying to find the best use for it that I can.

With TUJ out of commission, the old "set a TUJ snatch list, receive email, buy out with RAH" trick is no longer viable. So I just amused myself with checking on ore prices between classes, occasionally reposting auctions that had expired, or restocking my gem auctions during the daily. Nice, but nothing really revolutionary, and certainly not worth the extra $3 a month.

Saturday, January 22, 2011

A Quick Tip

I apologize for the lack of recent updates. But I do have a quick tip to share with you all!

I recently started leveling my rogue again, partially for fun and partially because I want to expand into the leatherworking market. So while dusting her off and cleaning out the bags and banks, I found a couple of Mammoth Mining Bags that I had tried to sell at the beginning of Cata without much luck. So I tossed them in the AH, undercutting some guy who was posting at about 300g. And they sold. So I made a couple more and put them up. Those sold too. I started back on my rogue a little less than a week ago, and so far I have sold a total of 12 bags for an average of ~320g each, and they cost me probably less than 80g to make!

So how do you start making your own? Well, if you don't have the pattern already, you'll need to be honored with the Son's of Hodir first. Fair warning, the initial quest chain is a bit long, but you should be honored fairly quickly after the initial stages. The bags cost eight Heavy Borean Leather, which you can make with 48 Borean Leather or just buy off the AH. And that's all there is to it!

Monday, January 17, 2011

The Alicite Experiment

I was perusing the AH the other night, as I do when I'm bored, and while going through my regular checks of uncommon gems, I saw that someone had posted ten stacks of Alicite for 180g each. Since that's 9g per gem (the vendor price if I cut them), I figured this would be the perfect time to try to get some statistics as it's quite unlikely that I'll be able to get that many for that cheap. So I cleared out my bags and created 100 Alicite Pendants. And here are the results!

Saturday, January 15, 2011

What's Going on With Rare Gems?

If your server is anything like mine (and from what I've been hearing, it probably is), rare gems are going for next to nothing, as are the rare gem cuts. While some still hold decent value (Delicate Inferno Ruby), others (Solid Ocean Sapphire) are selling for laughably small amounts. Thankfully, profit can be made because plenty of the cuts still sell for more than the raw mats, but profit margins can be quite slim at times, even to the point where it really doesn't seem worth it.

So what's going on? Given that the stats on these are significantly better than even epic LK gems, one would expect them to sell for a lot more too. But that doesn't seem to be the case, as prices just keep dropping and dropping. The funny thing is, I don't think the prices have anything to do with what players are willing to pay for the gems. My guess is that a combination of over-prospecting and the "I farmed it, so it's free" mentality are causing sellers to severely undervalue what these gems are worth.

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

WoW Popular Has Been Updated for Cata!

WoWPopular.com is an absolutely fantastic resource for us goblins, especially now that The Undermine Journal has gone under (may it rest in peace). Though not intended as a gold-making resource, it can easily be adapted to the needs of enchanters and jewelcrafters in particular.

For those of you who have never heard of the site, it displays the most popular gear, gems, enchants, talents, glyphs, and now reforges, sortable by class and spec. It is designed to help players pick their talents, gear, chants, etc. by showing them what is popular for their class. However, us goblins can use it to help us figure out what's most profitable!

Monday, January 10, 2011

Some Sad News

So with classes starting back up for me on Wednesday, I'm going to have to drastically cut down on the amount of time I spend on WoW. And with that, I'll also be posting less frequently. I've had a few different ideas for posts floating around in my head the past few days, and I wanted to get one done tonight, but unfortunately, I just found out about close to 100 pages of reading I have to do for Wednesday. And I'll be spending most of my time tomorrow in interviewing and networking workshops. The life of a 1L is quite fun.

But I won't be abandoning WoW and blogging altogether, as I'll definitely need a bit of escapism here and there. Hopefully I can stick to a weekly or bi-weekly posting schedule. I've got some good ideas brewing, I just need to find the time to form them into a coherent post.

Sunday, January 9, 2011

Scroll of Stealth: A Disappointing Tale

So this weekend was not the cash cow I had been expecting. As I mentioned a few days ago, and as Kreaton of Not So Secret Society discussed today, this weekend was when guilds who had been diligently capping their exp would reach level ten. With level ten comes BoA cloaks, provided you're honored with the guild. And with BoAs comes enchants! At least, that's what I thought.

The current best enchant for the BoAs is Enchant Cloak - Stealth, which was changed to give +8 agi and +8 dodge. Though obviously amazing for agi dps classes, even casters should find this appealing for the added survivability.

Saturday, January 8, 2011

Patch 4.0.6 Changes to Jewelcrafting

Jewelcrafting
  • Meta gems with the Chaotic and Relentless prefixes now have a requirement of 3 red gems.
  • New meta gems have been added: Agile Shadowspirit Diamond (Agility/3% critical damage), Reverberating Shadowspirit Diamond (Strength/3% critical damage), and Burning Shadowspirit Diamond (Intellect/3% critical damage). These new recipes are unbound and can drop from any Cataclysm creature. The new meta gems have a requirement of 3 red gems equipped.


These are the upcoming changes to Jewelcrafting, and any JC should definitely take note, because there is plenty of profit to be had.

Most obviously, the changes to Chaotic ought to make this gem much more popular, so expect to move a bunch of these when the patch goes live. If you don't already have the cut, or even if you're not a JC, you should consider stocking up on a few of these from off the AH.

The prices of red gems should also see a huge increase, as people re-gem their gear to replace the sub-optimal green/yellow/blue gems they had. So be sure to stock up on Inferno Ruby before hand, or even grab the cut gems off the AH. You can even try cutting Carnelian, or getting cut Carnelian gems. If the price of red gems goes up as much as I think it will, there will be plenty of people unwilling to pay those prices, so sell them cut Carnelians instead.

And lastly, there are the new metas. I have no idea if you can buy the cut from the JC vendor, or if they are exclusively BoE recipes. In case you can trade tokens for them, start saving now. Though it's not guaranteed that the patch will hit this Tuesday, if it does there's still time to save up four tokens (Sat, Sun, Mon, Tue). If they are exclusively drops, hop on your skinner and farm up some leather while you grind for these. If you don't have a skinner, I'm sure it won't take long for someone to find a good place to farm these. A dungeon, perhaps. I'll personally be hitting up the leather farming spot I discussed in my previous post. These metas will likely be BiS for most classes, so do what you can to get them early and make a fortune!

Thursday, January 6, 2011

My Favorite Place to Farm Savage Leather


This post is for Cold's Gold Blogging Carnival.

Normally, I'm not a huge fan of farming. It certainly has it's uses and it's advantages, but I generally find it repetitive and tedious, and just not for me. But there is one type of farming I tend to enjoy, and that's leather farming. Why? Because you get to kill stuff. Who doesn't enjoy slaughtering hundreds of helpless little creatures and then adding insult to injury by tearing the skin off their backs? (Ok, that got a bit sadistic, I apologize.) Back when I started playing WoW, my main was a rogue with Leatherworking and Skinning, and I made most of my money through skinning. Before I leveled my shaman and learned the joys of Jewelcrafting, I made a modest amount of money farming the Shoveltusks outside of New Agamand in Howling Fjord. Except for the occasional bull, they were all passive and traveled in groups of 4-5, so I would stealth into a pack, and AoE them down with Fan of Knives. Although they mostly dropped scraps, I found farming there to be preferable to places like Stormpeaks for a few reasons. One, like I mentioned, was that they and the majority of the mobs in the area were passive, so I didn't have to worry about drawing unwanted aggro. Two, they had low health and traveled in packs, so it was very easy for me to AoE a bunch of them at a time. And three, they dropped good vendor trash, the occasional green, and Rhino Meat and Chilled Meat which I could sell on the AH, or cook and sell. Like I said before, I usually don't farm anymore, but Cold's blog is wonderful and I wanted to contribute to the carnival. So I decided to bite the bullet and give farming another shot, and hopefully find a place with qualities similat to my LK farming spots.

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Profit Margins: "Go Big or Go Home" or "Slow and Steady"

I have chosen this post for Kreaton's Best of the Month Blogging Carnival over at Not So Secret Society. Check it out!

This is an issue that troubled me quite a bit when I first started getting into serious jewel crafting for profit toward the end of LK. Since I was buying the uncut gems and not prospecting for them (I'm not sure it was profitable to prospect Titanium Ore for epics) I often ran into problems when the cut gem was selling for maybe 10-15g more than the uncut. I would usually just ignore that gem completely and focus on the ones that sold for a wider profit margin. However, it would sometimes be the case where none, or very few, of my cuts had good margins. So the conundrum was, do I buy and cut these, knowing I won't be making a whole lot from them, or just not bother with it and hope the market bounces back up soon?

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Opportunity Cost

Opportunity cost is a subject that has fascinated me for quite some time. Basil over at Gold Capped  perked my ears to the concept in his Time is Money post, and my Torts professor helped me really grasp the concept. Simply put, opportunity cost is the money you're not making by doing something else. The best, and for me the most relevant, illustration is the opportunity cost of going to a graduate school like law school. I graduated from college and instead of getting a job and making money, I am now going to spend three more years shelling out obscene amounts of cash to another institution. The opportunity cost of going to law school is the money I could have made during these three years if I had got a job instead.

In WoW, opportunity cost comes up most frequently in the context of farmed materials. As Basil pointed out, farming isn't free. Farming in particular has two opportunity costs to watch out for. First, there is what you can earn from the different uses of those gathered mats. Second, there's the opportunity cost of farming itself.

Monday, January 3, 2011

Enchant Cloak - Stealth

The Gnomish Coin did a post on this enchant about a month ago, and seeing how guilds will soon be able to get heirloom cloaks I thought I'd revisit the topic.

Enchant Cloak - Stealth was changed not too long ago to now give +8 Agi and +8 Dodge, making it the best enchant for the new heirloom cloaks. Unfortunately, when this change occurred the cloaks were not even close to being released so they did not sell well, if at all, for me. However, now that guilds who have been capping their exp every day are five days away from reaching level ten and unlocking the heirloom cloaks, I expect this enchant to become very popular very soon.