making gold on a dying server

It’s true – my server is dying.

Raids have not been run for a long time and last night although a small and merry band (yay the 10 of us!) held WG this is indeed a very rare event. Usually we play spawn camp bingo with our horde compadres – it surely can’t be any fun for them either. It’s taken about six months but with the departure of the last of a string of big Alliance raiding guilds (swapped to Horde last week – others went off server entirely) the last nail was tap.. tap.. tapped into the coffin.

Still, there is a pride on server. Alli know how vastly we’re outnumbered and many of us revel in it. Where though does this leave a mogul with a vault full of gold and a rapidly drying well of mats?

Nowhere good – that’s where. : ( I could sit on the gold and use it to quietly progress through Cata without needing to make gold again – but making gold is a part of the game I love. >.< and making gold without a mats base (or a consumer base) is going to get increasingly difficult.

Mats are hard: Herbs are non-existent and when they do turn up are going for 30-60g a stack (five whole stacks posted this morning); rare components such as golden pearls turn up about two a week; cloths and metals are also sufficiently rare as to make crafted items expensive to make and expensive to buy – I’m selling eternal belt buckles now for over 100g and the few I can get mats for are snapped up.

So what am I doing then? How does the economy of a dying server faction play out?

Glyphs: Making a bunch of gold still – 30-40 sales per day at 20-60g a pop. Most are selling in the 60g gold range. I’m still making good money here. Mats though are insane; I’d pay very high prices indeed for mats but simply cannot get the herbs.

BS: Buckles, weapon chains and the occasional cobalt or saronite armour sale. Rods sell here and there.

Tailoring: Am I the only one making bags on server? Almost – my large stock of netherweave (bought for 6g max a stack) is selling for around 20g a bag. Frostweave bags are going for 65g and sell.

JC: Out of it – the odd epic. Transmuting still but nothing much in this area.

Alchemy: As above, transmute only.

Enchanting: Gold here – I’m converting my huge stock (and buying for 2g an eternal in the AH) of eternal earths and shadows into chant mats and crafting five of each chant in game. When trade chat has people begging for enchanters you know it’s time to capitalise on the market.

So I’m simplifying, I’m buying cheap mats where I find em for levelling Alch, I’m clearing out the rest of the crap from my three guild banks… I’m lamenting that in order to continue to enjoy playing this game I’m going to have to move off-server.

Now as to the “how” of that process – I’ve got some ideas but it won’t be simple. I can see a second account for a period being essential due to there being nothing within my faction to fill my bags with for resale when I go. I’ll post on this as soon as I’ve firmed my program up but “staying liquid” is unlikely to be something I’ll be doing in the future.

Have fun out there guys,

Mogul.