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Gold Capped: Things that still sell at the end of an expansion
by
Basil Berntsen
on May 18th 2012 (7 days ago)
The end of an expansion is a tough time to make gold. There's a lot more competition for a lot less demand. Many people see gold-making as a nice casual way to play while they wait for the next content dump, and fewer people are playing seriously (which is the root of demand for a lot of popular and profitable markets). To top it all off, we know that inflation is going to take a huge chunk out of our net worth when Mists launches, and there are a bunch of new things to save money up for. What kind of things can you still sell to make a profit?
Filed under: Economy, Cataclysm, Gold Capped, Mists of Pandaria
Gold Capped: Unlimited long-term storage
by
Basil Berntsen
on May 4th 2012 (21 days ago)
Ever see anyone trying to buy or sell a guild with bank tabs? There are people who will stop at nothing to store more stuff, especially those of us who play the gold-making game. One of the biggest challenges of making gold is, in fact, storing stuff. Bags are expensive, guild tabs are even more expensive, and there is a hard limit of 10 (for now) characters per realm. Each character has four bag slots and eight bank slots, as well as some built-in backpack and bank slots. This may seem like a lot, but what if you wanted to, for example, stockpile 10,000g worth of Hypnotic Dust, expecting it to sell for 70,000g in Mists of Pandaria? That could be over 700 stacks.
Luckily, there's a simple and virtually free way to store unlimited amounts of stuff and save all your expensive inventory slots.
Filed under: Gold Capped
Raiding: Weighing the benefits of 25-man raids vs. 10-man raids
by
Basil Berntsen
on Apr 20th 2012 (1 month ago)
Blizzard Community Manager Zarhym recently posted this on a forum thread about the subject:
Zarhym
We'll continue making adjustments as necessary to keep 10- and 25-player raids within a relative alignment, in terms of time investment, difficulty and rewards. It may never be perfect, but we still see interest in both raid sizes for different reasons. And ultimately we'll continue designing 25-player raids as long as there are a decent number of guilds interested in the format. We've seen no evidence as of yet that such interest is waning to any degree that should cause us great concern.
We tend to begin raid design around 25 players anyway before tuning for the various sizes and difficulties. That, when combined with our intent to carry on with 25-player Raid Finder group sizes, makes it very much worth our time to continue designing 25-player raids.
Regardless of what players' personal preferences or opinions are regarding the varied raid formats in World of Warcraft, we don't see removing options as a smart choice in the foreseeable future.
We tend to begin raid design around 25 players anyway before tuning for the various sizes and difficulties. That, when combined with our intent to carry on with 25-player Raid Finder group sizes, makes it very much worth our time to continue designing 25-player raids.
Regardless of what players' personal preferences or opinions are regarding the varied raid formats in World of Warcraft, we don't see removing options as a smart choice in the foreseeable future.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Guilds, Raiding
Taking charge of your gold in the first days of Mists of Pandaria
by
Basil Berntsen
on Apr 6th 2012 (1 month ago)
The first few days of an expansion are a little like the wild west. This week, Gold Capped received an email about these first days:
The first few days of every new expansion, including Cataclysm, were a little crazy. The first thing you need to prepare for is the hyperinflation. Everyone will have more money, and they will all be spending it. Nothing gets people spending their savings like a new expansion. Pets will be battleable, new glyphs will be available, and everyone will be leveling professions. All this new demand is going to overwhelm the farmers, and for a while at least, the only cheap way to get materials will be to farm them yourself.I love your column on WoW Insider. It's been an eye opener for me on just how easy it can be to make some serious gold. That said, I didn't discover it until well after Cataclysm had launched, and so my question to you is; what were the first few days of the Cataclysm launch like economically, and what do you think I can expect from Mists of Pandaria? I had a blacksmith at the time of the Cata launch, and I remember spending exorbitant amounts of gold on ore/bars (he wasn't a miner). Is it a situation where, for the first few days, farming actually is worth doing, or are goods still worth making then? I have a bunch of 85s, all with worthwhile trade skills, and I'm just wondering what the best way will be to capitalize on the newness of the expansion.
Filed under: Economy, Gold Capped, Mists of Pandaria
3 things that will become more expensive in Mists of Pandaria
by
Basil Berntsen
on Mar 30th 2012 (1 month ago)
If you save every gold you have right now until the next expansion, you won't actually be any poorer than you currently are, but you sure will feel like you are. Assuming there are no new gold sinks, the amount of gold entering your characters' pockets is going to skyrocket, and they will all buy stuff you want, raising prices across the board. Farmers will make more from crafters, who will charge more for crafted goods.
World of Inflationcraft
Inflation is one of those universal truths like taxes and hunter envy. Unlike hunter envy, though, it can't be avoided by simply upgrading your main from a support class to a hunter. The best way to deal with it is to plan ahead and tie up as much of your money on things that will go up in price. You want to aim for things that will rise at least as much as inflation will erode the value of your savings.
Filed under: Economy
3 things that need to change about WoW's auction house
by
Basil Berntsen
on Mar 16th 2012 (2 months ago)
Of all the many things that could be done to make the Auction House a less frustrating and intimidating experience for players, three stand out to me. First, Blizzard needs to fix the insane inflation in the economy. Second, it needs to fix what people see when they click on an auctioneer, and lastly, it needs to allow farmers to fill buy orders instead of posting stock for sale. These three changes, if made, would greatly equalize the economy and serve to reduce the drudgery that the vast majority of players have to deal with.
What the heck are buy orders?
I'll start with buy orders because it's the least obvious issue. Right now, when a farmer wants to make some gold for a BoE or a mount or whatever, they go and farm and then come back to a city and dump everything they've made onto the AH. Nobody likes waiting for their money, and most farmers have been burned by a huge batch of goods coming back, minus the auctioneers' listing cut, unsold due to too much competition. In order to have to wait to lose money for all the hard work they did, they'll list their goods more cheaply than they're perhaps worth.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Economy, Gold Capped, Mists of Pandaria
2 crafting professions that won't make you rich
by
Basil Berntsen
on Mar 4th 2012 (2 months ago)
If you're trying to decide which professions to put on your character and you are considering their gold making potential, you'll want to avoid engineering and inscription. While they're not terrible if you consider their stat bonuses, they're not ideal for gold making on many realms.
Of course, every realm has its own ecosystem, and as with all advice you'll read from this column, you should check that the assumptions hold for your realm and faction. That said, by far the most common problems I have trouble helping people with are related to these two professions.
Inscription
I'll start with the one that's going to get me the angry comments first. Inscription has long been touted as a cornerstone of the money making meta game -- heck, it earned my esteemed colleague, Fox, his first million gold on Darkmoon Cards. Before that, we had "glyphsmas" when 4.0 hit and a steady level of demand for glyphs before that. We still have the stupidly profitable fortune card market that lets anyone open a tiny, Blizzard-sanctioned casino. So what's not to like?
Filed under: Economy, Gold Capped
Six gold-making macros that will save you hours
by
Basil Berntsen
on Feb 24th 2012 (3 months ago)
As you start spending more time making money, you start to realize how much time you waste. Have you ever had to mail every single item in your bag to another of your characters? It's a lot of right-clicking. There are a bunch of tasks like this, including selling to vendors, buying from vendors, prospecting, posting for sale, and crafting.
First, know that only some things can be really automated. If there's a cast time, for example, the best you can do with a macro is shorten multiple clicks into a single macro that can be clicked or hotkeyed. Luckily, there's no cast time on vendor and mailbox interactions!
Filed under: Gold Capped
How to make gold when your competition is camping the AH
by
Basil Berntsen
on Feb 13th 2012 (3 months ago)
Making gold with heavy competition is hard. I get comments on my articles all the time about how my ideas don't work on some high-population, high-competition realm. There's an implicit (and sometimes outright stated) disclaimer that any advice you'll find here is general and may not apply to your realm.
It's time to talk about what to do when you're always being redirected back to these weasel words. If your server really is so competitive that you can't make any normal strategies work, what can you do?
Filed under: Gold Capped
Five myths about making gold
by
Basil Berntsen
on Feb 3rd 2012 (3 months ago)
Gold making is one of those games you can play without much cooperative interaction with other players. If I hadn't been set straight about how to raid by cooperative guildies when I started, I'd still be as bad as I was when I started, minus any progress I'd have made myself. This type of environment is a breeding ground for less-than-optimal gold making strategies, so here are five myths about gold making that continue to require banishment.
1. Mats are free if you don't pay gold for them. It doesn't matter whether you picked up a gem from a Satchel of Exotic Mystery, farmed a stack of herbs, procced a bonus somehow, or mugged someone. If you figure your cost on the mats for whatever you're selling as what you actually paid for it, you're doing it wrong. The value of crafting mats is what you could sell them for.
Filed under: Economy, Gold Capped
