a few of my favourite things...

Mogul steps out of the Stormwind auction house and leans nonchalantly against the doorframe. He wears a top hat, tux and spats and squints expertly though a ruby monacle, his hand rests upon the enormous diamond topping his cane. He smiles a mogulish smile and waves a mogulish wave then winks to an assistant - somewhere the opening strains of a familiar tune are heard over a tinny gnomish boombox. Mogul bursts into song!


Elementium Ore and Portable Holes
Bright Shadowspirit diamonds and True Bars of Gold
Full sets of Emberfire, Glyphs tied with strings
These are a few of my favorite things

Backsmithing blues that sell despite the knockers
Personal guild banks overflowing their coffers
Beer-Basted Crocolisk the new food of kings
These are a few of my favorite things

Mogul dances down the steps patting a dwarven hunter's bald head as he passes - the hunter scowls at him.

Cata JC rings for 350 gold
Stockpiles of Wrath chants that sell though they're old
Gold-filigree toolboxes wobbling on springs
These are a few of my favourite things

When the patch bites
When low sales sting
When I'm feeling sad
I simply remember my favourite things
And then I don't feel so bad

Shuffling his spats Mogul jumps to the lowest tier of the fountain, splashing water at those checking mail with his cane

Cheap stacks of pyrite and gems almost epic
Discussing the breakpoints of financial ethics
Grinding out Jeeves for bank accessing
These are a few of my favorite things

Rare Savage Leather and bars of all types
Boycotting fortune cards for all of their hype
Flipping purples on-mass for the profit this brings
These are a few of my favorite things

The tuxedo-wearing Auctioneer skitters up the bank steps through the teller area to arrive at the guild bank vault. He spots Banker Kristin Cazarez and makes the well-known "like a tiger" gesture to her. Catching her up he twirls her impulsively and kisses her on the cheek. She laughs.

Cruisin for lowballs and buying them out
Undercutting glyphers they cry and they shout
Breaking the opposition and stealing their blingz
These are a few of my favorite things

When the patch bites
When low sales sting
When I'm feeling sad
I simply remember my favourite things
And then I don't feel so bad

A single golden rose is thrown to Mogul from off-stage left which he catches without looking then presents to Kristin Cazarez - they laugh again. There is an audible "click" as a boombox is turned off. The vault door swings quietly closed.




: )



Stay liquid folks,

Mogul.

perks of the vendor pets

I was going to write a reminder post on the vanity pet market and found this great site called Perks N Peeves whilst I was looking for links.  It's a GREAT site run by Quintessence with good information on those hard-to-find pets delivered in a very readable style.  As a pet collector from way back I'm now motivated to get on my old main and go looking for the elusive Baradin Fox Kit.

So here's my WoW pet procedure and pricings for Alliance:

1. Onto my mage and hearth to Stormspire to visit Dealer Rashaad.  Altoholic provides my numbers of pets held in stock, I purchase until I have 5 of each pet
2. Rinse and repeat after porting to SW at the crazy cat lady
3. Port to IF and take a flight to Amberstil Ranch to buy bunnies from Yarlyn Amberstill
4. Then off to Darnassus to buy owls
5. And Exodar for moths
6. Lastly a quick port to Dalaran to pick up the big guns from none other than the rgeat Breanni for albino snakes, calico cats and obsidium hatchlings

Add to the above once in a blue moon I'll head all the way out to Plucky Johnson and buy about 50 Ancona Chickens and also watch for Darkmoon Faire to stock up on frogs from Flik - it's wise to camp her here for the Wood Frogs which are in limited supply.

So I post five of each pet except the 50g pets which I only post two of each in order to give the impression of rarity.  As to how I price I have three Zeroauctions categories:

1. Pets less than 2g which I sell for 35g
2. Pets at around 9g which I sell for 59g and,
3. Pets for around 50g which I sell for 199g

Now it's important to realise how these pets sell - in general you'll see only a few bites here and there but occasionally you'll sell one of everything to a new collector and I'm including the 199g pets here of which I think there are four.  On a big sale day you could make over 1000g which more than balances out the relatively minor cost of holding all these pets in stock.  With a little planning this market really is easy money!  ; )

Well there it is folks - happy vendor petting and once again congrats to Quintessence on a very enjoyable site!

Stay liquid,

M.

Tokens, and BOAs, and Jeeves! Oh my!

What’s been going on?

Stockpiling: saving my tokens for epic gems – it certainly “feels” like this is coming soon, especially with the downgrading of vendor returns on cut greens which is rumoured for 4.1. My advice is stop buying those blue recipes now until you have sufficient jewelcrafting tokens in place to grab about 6 recipes – I’m thinking that’s going to be somewhere between 18 and 24 tokens. Personally I’ve got a gbank tab of pyrite ore ready to go so well see how it pans out.

BOA gear: I’ve hit honoured with the guild and have purchased ALL of the BOA gear on offer. Cost me about 13K and was well worth it. I’m looking at taking my druid, hunter and DK through to 85 over the next few months and these puppies really up the XP return from quest turn-ins. I recently hit 82 on my druid simply from repetitively doing the JC daily. : )

DK: First cab off the rank I picked up my DK Chrøme at level 75 after a long hiatus and am enjoying questing on him. I’ve played with all three specs and am finding frost to be the most fun. I’ve done a fair amount of reading on PVP specs and know I need to learn unholy but my first run in with it wasn’t pretty. This guide though is excellent for the aspiring DKs amongst us.

Rep grinding: Still on it with my lock – specifically for the BOA enchants but the rep item rewards are also very good.

Eng grinding: Got my Jeeves! Woohoo! This was heaps of fun and I recommend it to all Jeeves-capable engineers. The process reminded me of when I got epic flight on my druid (and I don’t mean when it fell into my lap at the trainer – I’m talking old school!). I loved that I had to grind for three separate engineering recipes and craft a bunch of bots before I could pick up my shiny purple. There’s whinging and bitching on the forums about the lack of Cata engineering items but this Wrath item still provided me with a great experience to procure. Plus of course I now have bank and gear fix at call. : )

Gold: Still well over the mill but spending it only a little slower than I’m making it currently. Glyphs have really dropped off as the server population post-Cata stabilises but BS gear is taking off. Savage leather can’t be purchased at all. Levelling is over for the moment and without botters taking this up the server has been dry on this commodity for weeks now.

Signing off with a big shout-out to Smallperson (horde goblin shad priest) who handed my fledgling Cata DK ass to me three times in a row. The first time she /hugged my corpse, as I charged in the second time (now in frost lol) she /greeted me warmly and after the third kill she /patted my corpse gently. My helm is off to you madam – not for winning necessarily as I doubt I offered much resistance – but for the excellent way you comported yourself. Made me smile.

Til next time compadres,


M.

daily guy

Well hi there folks!

It’s all been a bit interesting since cap. I’ve made good coin but I’ve also invested a lot back into mats. I did try to spend some gold on shiny BOEs for Shortcut – pants and a belt was all I could find in the shiny purples range but that'll do for now.

I’ve crafted my goggles – a) cause they kickass; b) cause they look fantastic.

My first heroic was fun and due to reforging for hit my PVP gear was perfectly viable for PVE. So in terms of gold going out I bought up big on the following:

Cheap Twilight Jasmine to add to the stockpile;
Big Embersilk buyout as I’m due for another crafting run;

Cheap Obsidium to be folded for BSing;

Well-priced Elementium which I split between bars for crafting and ore which I prospected to bulk up my flaqging gem stocks.

I also gave 5K to a mate who came back on server. He’s apparently already made a few K on top of his start-up funds : )

4 portable holes for Shortcut

BOE purple belt and pants for Shortcut

Gems were big sellers early as was BS crafted gear (I again crafted up two of everything that uses Elementium on my BS this week). On Sunday I cleared the mailbox from the Saturday-morning post and found about 10K worth of sales. I didn’t BS during Wrath so have no comparison but I have to say that the Cata greens and blues are really worth crafting. I’m doing an extremely good trade in BS crafteds each week.

Onto gems – although I’m supposed to be saving my tokens for epic recipes I just can’t stop buying the blue recipes. That said, the gem market is getting fierce and less reliable, especially as I’m now on a longer posting cycle…

Yes yes, I’m starting to take it easier. I’ll be fierce myself on the weekends but with the 1mill under my belt and any further milestones in that area a way off I’m turning my attentions to other things.

What other things?

Well – levelling guild rep for a start. I’ve exhausted all the quests in Twilight Highlands and so started on other areas but here’s the thing… because guild rep is calculated on the XP a quest returns I’ve noticed I’m getting less as I finish off questing in Deepholm then when I do dailies. It still varies between dailies but in general these are calculated to return XP relevant to current level. So I’ve become a daily guy. Cooking and fishing in SW, 5 dailies in TH and now I’ve added the dailies in Tol’Barad. Other ways to get gulid rep are boss kills and rated BGs.


A heads up – Tol’Barad quests are tricky but I find them very rewarding. You’re back on a ground mount and the mobs are virulent and everywhere. You need to keep your focus doing these dailies. There’s an interesting vibe with the horde here too – because it is a riskier place to quest horde and alli tend to give each-other room. I accidently violated the code yesterday when I had targeted a rogue to check his hits and accidently dotted him (hey – I’m a lock, we don’t always watch where we throw those things :P). He waded in and realising my mistake I apologised and backed off… so did he.  Nice.

Stay liquid,

M.

guild relocation service

A quick note - should you wish to move your level 25 guild to a new server Blizz is working on it.

This post relates back to Anaalius' examination of passive income.

Now potentially you can build your guild on a high-pop server and for an in-game gold price relocate it to a low-pop server where such a guild would be very difficult to grow.

1. Work up guild
2. Pay RL dollars for relocation
3. Recieve in-game gold

A fully-perked guild that toons would flock to on some of the broken servers might sell for between 100-250K I'm thinking.

It certainly feels like this stratergy would be against the EULA but I can't see how yet.

: )

M.

one million gold

Well folks I’ve done it – capped the 1 million. Here’s a pic of my lock looking a great deal more excited then my druid did last time. : )

It’s been a great journey with a lot of fun and gold on the way.

This week's take was 56,687G making this the second biggest week I've had. : ) Again this week it's been the crafted BS, tailoring and LW gear that's brought in the big Gs. I've certainly had a few big glyph days but mostly it's been the crafted greens and blues.

Now onto the interesting stuff...

Hi folks, I’m Stormbear of Thaurissan server aka Mogul of wowmogul.blogspot.com. Back when I was raiding my main was a feral druid. We ran exclusively 10-man content and I loved tanking and DPSing through first Ulduar and then ICC. It was a great guild, well led and run (Hi Syltaryn and Dudeman!). Since those times I’ve been active on server levelling trade skills and in general playing this game less time-intensively then one has to as a raider but with an equal amount of vigor on the gold-making front. More recently I've taken to playing my lock Shortcut as main - he's a bunch of fun! : )

History buffs will know that Thaurissan was the first server to receive a free PVE to PVP transfer. My home server was Aman'thul and when a transfer was offered almost overnight the main raiding guilds from Aman’thul, Nagrand and Khaz’goroth ‘appeared’ on Thaurissan – instantly these guilds got access to the much larger PVP player base. I was soon hard at work in the AH making good coin as I’d come with a well-stocked vault of enchanting goods and the server was resource dry and the incoming guilds cash rich. I remember my own trepidation at the transfer - retrospectively… it was the best move I ever made. Of course these days those guilds are gone and Thaurissan is a very unbalanced server with an Alli to Horde ratio of about 1:10. Even so I find myself, oddly, to quite enjoy playing on this server - the world PVP is great and the AH markets are chaotic and fluctuate wildly.

I'd like to give a big shout out to the great folk I've been learning from in the blogosphere, special mention to Anaalius and Stokpile: Stok for his great work and attention to detail, Anaalius (who’s gold pile has oft times been a similar height to mine) for showing the extents of where you can go with this minigame when you’re happy to risk it all. Also Tella from Hit the Cap definitely inspired me and provided a lot of my early direction in gold making; and of course Warcraft Econ with their rogues’ gallery of goblins (and moguls ; ) are right up there. Finally I’d like to thank my wife who’s tolerated with good humour my strange obsession with this MMO and digital gold in particular.

Where to now?

In a wow sense I’m going to keep on doing just what I’ve been doing – why would I stop? I’ll likely rein back my glyph empire but I’ll certainly keep it functional. I’ll definitely be working to expand my other areas of trade just to see what’s out there that’s interesting to sell and I’ll be levelling toons to cap so that I can start to finally make use of those new recipes. The discipline will continue but the intensity will be scaled back.

I'll be posting here regularly of course and maintaining a presence in the blogosphere - like making gold this is simply too much fun to give up.

I'm sure longer posts about the process of capping and something a bit more in-depth on what I'm going to get up to will follow but for now I'd like to say thanks for reading and stay liquid.

: )

Mogul.

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.