relevance deprivation syndrome

Okay – I’m saying not this Sunday. It’s looking to be a slower week and I’m doubtful I’ll get the 50K or so I need to cap. I may get quite close though. Big ‘reveal’ post coming at cap guys! : )

Now onto matters at hand:

As things stand on our server on any given day there are usually about 5000 auctions (yes, we’re ‘that’ small). Of course horde-side there are about 37,000 auctions but let’s not dwell on that… So 5000 auctions – guess how many of those are mine?

… about 1250.

Yep, I’m responsible for about a quarter of the faction’s AH traffic. Were you to go to The Undermine Journal (and know which server was mine :P ) you’d find four of the top 13 posters are my alts.

As I move closer to cap I’m pondering taking time off to reflect on the process and take a break from the discipline that gathering this amount of gold together in one place takes… and I find myself wondering What will happen to the AH without me?!?

O.O

Have I fallen victim to the myth of the great benefactor? Do I think the faction can’t make it without me?? I’ve noticed it before in the Hall of Fame posts: some auctioneers who’ve controlled AHs for long periods of time come to believe that they are providing product for the common good rather than for their own profit. As though they’re a feudal lord guarding their vassals’ plots.

It’s easy to see how this belief might form over time. As auctioneers we do influence the way the system works, we snatch the cheap mats and make the opposition pay through the nose to craft their goods; we often do sell goods cheaply, providing utility to our faction. When the weather is good we raid the opposition’s fiefdom, when the snows set in we hunker down and chew quietly on the grain from our cellars. It’s all part of the fun!

And in this instance – maybe, just maybe there’s the smallest kernel of truth to my concerns. I’m currently providing a lot of reasonably useful product to the AH. That is, I’m making things people will want to buy. A portion of the items on any auction house are not things people really want or need – many are left over memes whose time has long past, selling for under the price of a gold. So proportionally my own contribution becomes greater and I start to wonder were I to go off server would there be anyone pumping this type of product onto the AH. Would there be a new Mogul? And would he or she have the crafting capacities I have? Would they bother to craft every single glyph? Given the fact that I am often the only poster of the less popular glyphs it doesn’t seem likely.

As far as auctioneers go we do provide some form of service, even if it’s a relatively self-serving service ; ) It’s not our system but we still mould it into something that reflects us – our values, moods, whether we act aggressively or cooperatively, whether we plunge the AH into war or form cabals… Using our crafters and our equity it’s likely do we in fact provide something useful to the faction at large.

So it seems that the myth of the great benefactor, like all myths, has ‘some’ basis in truth. And when we leave a server it’s likely we will be remembered…


… briefly.



Stay liquid folks,


M.

week 4 - 950000G

That's right - 950K +

What a week! 62830G net! This is officially the biggest earning week I've ever had - I had two 15000+ days. No huge sales, just a steady stream of mid-range product. If it's priced between 50g and 1000g chances are I've been moving it this week.

You all might remember a while back I was talking about cobalt sets - here's an example of how they move, someone dings and bang!

I also finally took the time this week to dive into my saronite and frostweave stores and get some bags up and running again. The netherweave bags are a staple but I'd run out of the frostweave and the effort it takes to shuffle and then craft had slowed me down. Back at it now:
I started buying mats for these items about three months out from Cata - netherweave I bought at a max price of 6g/stack, frostweave at a max price of 8g/stack. So everytime I sell netherweave bags as per above I'm making about 23g profit. I make about 100 bags a week atm.

Will I hit cap by next Sunday? I hope so - it would almost need another 50k week though and I'm not certain they're that common. ; ) If not by Sunday it's certainly going to be soon!

Now as to what this little fellah got up to this week I can report that I now remember why I enjoy world PVP so much compared to the standard BGs... Alli don't usually cover themselves in glory in BGs. : / It's been a week of firsts on the BG front - through the random BG tool I've been through most of em. It's still enjoyable but more reheated pizza rather than fresh from the delivery guy. TL;DR - Alli loses a lot.

The Call to Arms for AV on the weekend was the saving grace making the process enjoyable again - AV is one of my faves plus Alli tend to win.

I've been working my keybinds, uncoupling a bunch of standard functions and shifting them to the F9 to F12 keys. I've been playing with Gladius for when I make it to the arenas and found this guide which is pretty good.

There are plenty of cooldowns I'd like to start monitoring but am having trouble getting Power Auras to play nice. If anyone knows something that can monitor things like the Nitro Boosts tinker on my belt I'm all ears. : )

The guild I've joined seems good. I'm still neutral and so am completing quests in the Twilight Highlands to build rep. We're now level 19 and the sooner I can access the honour bonus the better. Or am I getting it now? - I'm finding being part of such a mammoth guild more than a little confusing and am still getting my head around the new system - fun though! There are some great perks to come at level 20 such as heirloom cloaks and the like and all I have to do is keep questing and doing dailies which I enjoy anyway.

Before I sign off I thought it a good idea to put up a screenie of glyph sales. I'm making less and less from this profession as my other proffs take off + I have a camper who logs on before you finish posting. On the weekends though the AH is mostly mine as I carry out single glyph overpostings at irregular intervals:
That's it from me this update guys.

Stay liquid,


M.

week 3 and warlockery

Hiya guys -it's week number three and I gotta say I'm liking the numbers. After slacking off in the middle of the week I tried to come home to a strong finish over the weekend:
So that puts this week's take at 29801G. Those numbers aren't bad - they might have been better but I spent a reasonable amount of gold this week on the lock fellah as he hit 85!!!!!! Here's a pic and my lock and his new best friend. : )

At the moment it's all standard BGs but I've got myself into a level 18 PVP guild which runs rated BGs every night of the week so even with my two little blokes I reckon I'll get a few runs in.

So before we get onto the gold here's some great warlock links that I've assembled to help me with my guy - bear in mind many of them have a PVP bias.

For a start Cynwise is a great site about PVP in general with an excellent sugary coating of warlockery goodness. Amongst other things follow the link here explaining how your dots work in Cata. It's astonishing how often you'll find locks who are unaware of their thresholds. Don't be one of these locks!!!

This thread from Arena Junkies was invaluable I got a bunch of info on crafted gear from here and some more great PVP macros from here in particular the Fel Flame mouseover is great.

Finally here's a great all round site, The Warlocks Den which will keep you up to date on what's happening in the world of warlockery in general in addition to PTR info and a good forums page.

Now this week on the gold making front there have been no great stand-outs. I spent a fair amount of coin levelling my inscription up so that I could make the PVP off-hand and again levelling up tailoring so that I could make the PVP gear... which I'm now selling : )

Here's a snapshot of some of the non-glyph items:

As you can see much the same as last week - the older items still sell people. I also levelled enchanting to near cap this week and can report good sales. All in all I'm selling a bit of everything with an almost even split between crafted items, gems and patches. Of course all these items still come second to glyphs which are still pulling in large coin. You can see the Nerubian Leg Armour above - it's definitely worth a mention. I noticed when going through my screenies in prep for this post that, somewhere in the 80-100g range, this item is a constant seller for me - servers differ of course but it might be worth your time to give it a look if you're not doing so already.

Just a short update this week guys. Hope the lock links were helpful : )

Stay liquid,

Mogul.

week 2 update

Olla folks - another week in the big city, another 20K closer to the target, more levels on the clock for my warlock.

This week my guy and his winged friend there passed through Deepholm, then Uldum and finally are now in the Twilight Highlands. I enjoyed these zones: Deepholm for its caverns and 'dungeoneering' feel (yes, I used to play AD&D - with dice!); Uldum for the wonderful birds eye movies with your toon front and centre; and now (at 84) I'm loving the Highlands as it again has that Northrend feel to it. I was afforded plenty of PVP as per usual and would like to give a special shoutout to the ret pally who landed next to me while I was at a questgiver in Uldum and squared off against me indicating he was ready for a match. While I'm not particularly into RP I thought this was an excellent way for a pally to behave and /bow(ed) at the completion of the festivities.

"Use the force, Luke." ... c'mon, I can't be the only one who thought that!

Now how about the gold making? Well, as alluded to I pulled in just under 21K this week:What you can't see is the 7K I spent on herbs but even so I had a surge in non-glyph sales. Here's a screeny to show you roughly what's moving and for how much: I should have but didn't take a shot of the huge run I had midweek on crafted BS and tailoring greens and blues. Thanks be to you O' levellers. : ) You can also see from the above that pets are going nicely, 70-80 BS gear still sells around the 100g mark and gems are still kicking goals. I've read on other gold blogs that cata blue gems are slowing - not on my server, we were slow to get going Alli side due to the large faction imbalance so these markets are still playing themselves out.Finally, I mentioned a while ago about Hyacinth Macaws and even further back about Argent Tournament pets. I bought most of these guys for around the 500g mark (the macaws closer to 5K of course) and am now busting them out.
The macaw I've got listed for the server 100% - I haven't seen any of these for ages now and still have one more in the bank. On the Argent Tournament pets I'm flying the kite at the 4500g mark hoping that the rarity will see them move - should be interesting to see what happens.
Stay liquid guys.

: )


Mogul.

week 1 update

Week 1?!?

Hi folks - this all seems familiar but strange. The last time I was doing weekly updates was at the beginning of this journey, so what's going on now? Well, have a look below:

This week I pulled in about 29000g so am probably about 6 to 8 weeks away from capping the 1 million. Keeping a weekly update as I head for the new cap seems like fun.

This week about 75% of sales came from glyphs - blacksmithing midlevel blues continue to do well (81-83 crafted weapons in particular) and I think the faction is finally mature enough for me to get into alchemy properly again.

Got back into enchanting this week and will begin posting scrolls following spreadsheeting to determine my minimum sales position.

Best flip this week was finding four powerful spellthreads for 200g each. 800g later I had them all listed for 650g each - two have already sold.

Lotsa fun levelling this week - my lock is almost 83. I've levelled engineering on him to 450+ and am loving it. Little of fiscal value, my fellow engineers are pricing our few saleable items into the ground but fun, oh it's there. I have to go back and grind rep for my chopper but you get that. I've made my Roflcopter though and can report it's a hoot! : )

Lots of PVP, I've like to thank my grossly unbalanced server population for that. My kill ratio is still right up there - I'm pretty sure this is what locks were made for. ; ) Interestingly I've crafted pretty much everything I'm wearing, full deathsilk, trinks weapon, offhand, rings neck - my wand is the only thing I didn't create. No proper chants as yet, just a bunch of heavy savage stam patches. See below for a shot of my guy doing what he can for horde/alliance relations:

That's it for this update guys - looking forward to the coming week.

Stay liquid,

Mogul.

undermine journal

Hi folks – big and excellent news – the Undermine Journal is back up and running again.

For those of you who are not familiar with this site – get familiar! It’s going to show you who your competition is, how they post, what they’re posting and even give advice (based on mat pricing) on what price you should be selling your crafted gear for.

This is a GREAT site!

A side note – on the alliance faction on our server there are 13 top selling toons, four of which are mine ; )

Stay liquid,


M.

JMTC Blogging Carnival - How would you make gold if you had limited play time?

It’s almost the 2nd of the month and that means JMTC is hosting another gold making blogging carnival! This month’s topic is: How would you make gold if you had limited play time? I couldn’t resist this as it perfectly describes where I’m at with regards to my gold making.

I started playing WoW back just after BC came out – at that time I had a girlfriend. That girlfriend is now my wife and I’ve got two kiddies into the bargain, one at 7 months the other just gone 2 and a half years. I usually get some playtime once everyone has gone to bed for the evening – sometimes it’s a couple of hours, sometimes less.

I should say at the outset that for me a gaming session where I only play the AH and/or craft items is a good one. I really enjoy the mini-game that is making gold – hence the blog :P That said, I also like levelling, so…

Let me answer the question of how I make gold with limited play in one word: Handling!

Handling : definition
1. the manner of treating or dealing with something; management; treatment.

There are other definitions of course but this is the one that I think applies to making gold quickly and efficiently. You need to be mindful of the efficiency of your operation and try to do things with limited handling. If you’re spending all your time flicking between alts on a crafted item by item basis then you’re doing it wrong. You need to group your tasks so that you have as few links in the chain of your daily AH activities as you can.

For example, you have an alt who is your JC crafter and your glyph crafter. Before you swap to that alt to restock make sure your have done your mat buying first on your bankalt. And while you’re at it make sure you do all your buying for the evening at once and then send mats to your crafters, don’t flick.

People will tell you not to double handle but the opposite of that, single handling, is potentially more wasteful of your time. Imagine if you wanted to make a complex BS item which required a cloth element, a gem and a metal element. Under single handling you’d need to go to each one of your suppliers for each component before crafting and then do that all again for the next item.

So here’s my process:

Daily
Log on to bank alt
Collect sales
Repost
Make trade good purchases
Distribute goods to crafters

Log onto individual crafters
Use cooldowns
Carry out dailies
Create items to restock
Send items to bankalt

Log on to bankalt
Post

Every 48 Hours
Log onto each of my three glyph alts
Gather sales
Gather glyphs
Repost

Every week
Log on to glyph crafter
Gather mats
Mill
Create glyphs
Distribute to glyph alts
Post

That’s it in a nutshell people. There’s a couple more few things I should add though on the ‘handling’ front.

Post for 48 hours unless it’s going to make a difference
I post glyphs every 48 hours as I pretty much own that industry on server but gems, patches, potions are all posted daily due to competition. Metals are posted daily due to high listing costs but other areas such as rods and BS items where competition is low are posted every 48 hours. The upshot of all this is that your competition in each area should be your guide to frequency of posting.

Use your addons intelligently
I use Zero Auctions to post and keep my posting lists. Every single item I craft is automated by this program (well, such as the automation is in this post 4.0.1 world) from the bags of my bankalt. Simply, I craft something new I send it to my bankalt and after the posting is done I check what’s left in my bags and create new categories for the items or add to an old category. The exception to the rule is the netherweave bag market where margins can be quite small – I still like to do that manually. ; )

So that’s it folks – I’d like to thank the good folks over at JMTC for organising these carnivals and remember to check out the rest of the articles at the Wow Gold Blog Carnival! . This is my first run through and I’ve had a bunch of fun.

Stay liquid guys,


Mogul.