It's going to be pretty unpopular, but I agree with you 100%. The thing is, I have to wonder why people who go to these lengths even play WoW. It seems to me like EVE, where this type of insanity is actively encouraged by the game's actual setup, would be much more their speed. Where's the challenge in stocking up metric assloads of money in a game like WoW? But then, maybe it's because they'd actually have much more cutthroat competition, for higher stakes? Hmm.

This old argument reminds me of the old flame wars over twinks in the BGs. Average players quickly learned to stay away in droves once twinks took over, because it was no fun to get stomped by someone who methodically went to batshit lengths to trick out gear, when all you wanted was to have a bit of diversionary fun to break up the monotony of questing. Any time someone pointed out how obnoxious this was, they either got told to L2P or were greeted with grandiose romantic notions of how twinks didn't do it because of some perverse love of roflstomping average players, no! The real meaning of it was in the challenge of twinking their toons, fighting other similarly tricked out twinks! Hell, that argument played out in the comments of this very blog more than a few times. And then Blizzard gave twinks what they always wanted (at least, what the disingenuous ones *said* they always wanted), in the form of xp toggles...only they would be forced to only fight other twinks. And we all know what happened to twinking after that.

I hardly think it's likely that casual players will ever be completely run out of the AH--after all, PvP is totally optional, but *everyone* needs money to play. But I can't get excited about this kind of thing. It kind of depresses me, tbh, as does the majority of this column's content. Bean counting to this kind of insane degree just seems like a spectacularly joyless way to play a video game. (And, for the record, the Gordon Gekkos out there would probably LOL at my comparatively paltry WoW "bank account", but I've never wanted for anything I needed or wanted, including the various gold sinks and vanity things. Of course, as a raider that works hard to get things, people who buy their way to things like Tabards of the Lightbringer make me want to hurl. And I see no fun at all in that, but hey whatever floats your boat, Veruca.)

A few points.

One, it's not actually that complex. Two, the point is that TSM makes it very easy. It may seem that your AH opponents are there 24h a day, but in reality it takes me 30mins a day to do four or five craft/post/cancel/relist runs. I have guildies who spend more time than that doing dailies or grinding herbs so that they can make as much gold as I make from two glyphs.

And third, for me at least, I'm not making gold for the sake of it. I bought a Darkmoon Trinket (far easier to sell glyphs to make 20k gold than to sit there making Darkmoon cards.) If Magmaw doesn't drop a weapon for me soon, I'll buy a BoE 359 and stick power torrent on it. I give away glyphs and enchants to my guildmates.

As far as casual players not being able to get into the glyph market if they're not prepared to use something like TSM - yes, you're right. Many things reward effort, and WoW is no different. Investing a few hours into learning TSM will reward itself many times over in gold. And if you don't want to do it, go farm mats or do dailies instead, and work much harder than you need to.

I don't understand what you're complaint is. It sounds as if you're upset because there are smarter and more determined people out there that are willing to learn new tools in order to out perform those who aren't as smart, determined, or willing to learn those tools.

Is that what you're complaint is? If so, then I suggest that you take a good look at the world around you, and you'll notice that's how things work. I understand that WoW is a game, but you cannot force other people to have the same mindset as you. There will always be someone who is willing to put in time and effort to beat other people, whether it's in WoW or in the working world.

I get it, you're pissed because your prices are getting undercut by someone who spends more time on the AH than you do. I'm sorry, but that's how the system is designed to work, and IMO it's a good system. Reward those that understand the process and put in the time/effort.