Thursday, November 25, 2010

A new life awaits you in the Off-world colonies!

A chance to begin again in a golden land of opportunity and adventure!

New Shattrath!

New Shattrath is a master-planned community that has been designed to capture the essence of the vibrant Outlands region. With streetscapes reflecting the mystery that is space goats on elephants you can now enjoy the rustic and technologically-challenging aesthetic of crashed spaceship while basking in a powerful sense of civic pride: streets are lined with a variety of interesting refugees whist the city itself is sited amongst winding walk trails which link the beautifully landscaped parks of Terokkar Forest. It all combines to offer you the ultimate in relaxed sanctuary living.

Did I say sanctuary? That’s right people, in beautiful Shattrath that pesky other faction won’t be crashing your auction house cause A’dal won’t let em! Gone are the days of post post post “Awww c’moonnnn”. Plus the Shattrathians have gone all out to provide a higher and better standard of trading than their Azarothian rivals. Sure the décor is a little rustic but the Shattrathians have provided a one-stop-shop of auction house, bank, guild bank and post box. It’s all under one roof people! With potentially the shortest AH to bank run in game and a non-lethal auctioneer environment the only cutting you’ll receive in this fine city will be “under”cutting!

So call 555-Sanctuary now and one of our friendly mages will be on your doorstep and before you can say “recombined DNA” will port you away to New Shattrath!

Saturday, November 13, 2010

taking stock

I’ve been firing along on wowmogul since 11 December 2009 – that’s about 11 months. I love to go big picture on gold making and I hope that folks like hearing about what I personally am doing as much as I like reading that sort of content (Hit the Cap and Stokpile still remain my favourite blogs).

After hitting the ½ mill recently and getting my interview up on Warcraft Econ I stopped to take stock of where I've got to. Initially this blog was a vehicle to chart my progress towards, and hopeful achievement of, gold cap. It’s the first blog I’ve kept and it’s been a great ride full of discovery and fun.

I’m taking things in a different direction now and I’m letting you guys know as I believe that within blogging is the unwritten social contract that the author will provide content in keeping with his or her stated interest. As I’ve blogged I’ve been conscious of making sure that I stuck to my initial premise which was the charting of my gold journey. Other posts have been put aside if they did not fit the general meme of the blog. I'm changing direction now and as a courtesy am letting my readers know. I'm hoping you'll stick around though as writing for you guys is fun. : )

So where will I be going in the future? Well for a start there will still be plenty of posts about making gold – I would always want to write on this front, it’s simply too much fun not to. Cata looks amazing and I can't wait to start crafting the new gear and working out the best path from raw mats to gold in the bank. I'll be giving myself the leeway though to write about anything WoW that takes my fancy. Even a little philosophy might creep in - but is most likely to be connected back to WoW in one form or another. ; )


So thanks for being along this far guys and I hope you stay for what's to come.

Cheers,

Mogul.

Sunday, November 7, 2010

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.

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

argent tournament pets = sweeping profits

Find them – buy them – store them – add a zero.

This is a “keep for later” acquisition but one that should pay off quite nicely. I recently swooped on an Enchanted Broom and a Mulgore Hatchling going for 500g each. I won’t be trying to sell these pets until about six months into Cata but when I do I’ll be adding that zero.


Argent tournament isn’t going anywhere but it’s unlikely that people will spend their time grinding here when far shinier things will be beckoning them at level cap. These pets are likely to become quite rare and serious collectors will definitely want them.

Play the long game folks and grab these pets for future resale.

M.