Tella reaches 1 million gold!

So I haven't been around too much over the weekend and spending more of my time in game just having fun and grinding rep / leveling alts / what not so I'm a little behind on this but on Friday Tella announced she finally reached 1 million gold!

A very huge grats to her on her achievement. I remember when she was a wheeeeee little banker starting out lol so it's always great to watch someone progress to that level.

Again, A huge grats Tella! You can read the blog post here: http://hitthecap.blogspot.com/2010/06/one-million.html

My new "project" - Gold capping my Brother

So my brother came to me today asking about how to make money. He knows I have a decent stash of gold but never really bothered to ask how I do it until today. It came to a shock for him that I have zero gathering professions and rarely leave the city to make money.

So I have a new "project". I want to teach my brother how to play the AH and teach him to dominate the AH. Now this is going to be a slight challenge because he is on a full population server and I have never played on the server, let alone looked at the AH.

Currently he's starting out with mining and herbalism; just running around being your typical farmer. Let's face it, most of us were a farmer at one point and it's the easiest way to acquire initial capital. He's starting off with 300g to his name and zero assets. He has 1 80 and 2 chars in the low to mid 70s and eventually will work up a JC and scribe.

I probably won't talk too much about him but I figured I'd keep you all updated periodically on his progress. Let's see if my low pop backwater server knowledge can be applied to a full server that's one of the original release servers (5+? years).

Pardon The Dust

Slowly updating the design on the blog. Added in a new header and still trying to get it centered. Blogger claims it's all aligned properly and centered but as you can see it's not, so yea excuse the slight mess (I'm horrid at web design :P) and it'll be fixed asap.

Slowly I plan on fully customizing the template to my liking as I get comfortable with messing around with the coding.

Midsummer Festival - Taking Advantage

Title says it all. 10% exp buff + boa account items = now is the time to get your alts leveled for added professions. I'll be slowing down on the AH playing during the festival so I can level up my rogue. Already got about 3 levels and in my mid 30s. Just trying to get to 65 so I have a tailor and miner lol.

Brief update as well - I'm sitting at 34k and 400 stacks of saronite and 200-230 stacks of herbs to be processed. I started to drain the 72 stacks of lichbloom back on to the market for 40g a stack (paid 21g). I've sold prob 15 or so stacks so it's been nice.

Also tricked auctioneer users over the past week with new moon books. Made about 20 of them and posted starting from 175g and scaling down by 5-15g down to 75g. Sold everything up to 110g (4 or so books) when normal price is 60-70g each on them. And people wonder why I don't use auctioneer? ;)

Busy weekend

Been busy having literally no life and camping the AH with gems (and glyphs in between) while I try to intentionally crash the market over the weekend. So far so good. I have been able to clear out about 1/2 a tab of gems and pulled in about 6-7k or so in just gem sales since Friday morning.

It looks like I am right on track for my goal of 50k by the end of the month. I have been flirting with the 30k mark since Friday morning and I am down to 26k after picking up 17 stacks of titanium and a few hundred stacks of saronite (and eternals .. and gems.. and anything else the guy threw up in trade ;p)

Also managed to pick up about 150 or so stacks of icethorn pretty cheap @ about 13g a stack. Currently sitting on a little over 3k ink and 2 tabs of herbs yet to be milled. I have recently found another auctioneer on my server. We play different markets and he is actually buying all the snowfall ink I can send him at 150g a stack (ah price is 200g) but I can send him 10+ stacks and he will buy it so I can handle the discount. With the new snowfall buyer my glyph cost is around 1.5g per IoS and I have my threshold set to 4g so its a tidy little profit.

Hope everyone else is having a great weekend as well in the AH :)

Future of Inscription? The eraser?

In a recent gameplanet interview Ghostcrawler talks about how exactly the new glyph system will work in theory.

Gameplanet: What does that mean for the inscription profession?

Street: We’re going to focus inscription on more of the non-glyph aspect of the trade skill. So, Darkmoon Faire cards, trinkets, offhand items, things like that. We also want to tie the ability to change glyphs into inscription. We’re not sure of the name yet but the idea is that scribes would basically sell a kind of eraser and the eraser is what allows you to blank out your glyphs and write in new ones.

What does this mean for scribes? I honestly think Inscription will be the new big money maker. Not that it is not currently but I think the potential will be greater then that of gems and raid consumables.

We will get new glyphs called "medium" glyphs at the moment. These glyphs are not meant to be the power house skill / spell changers that major glyphs are but they will increase your overall performance somehow, just not directly.

So on top of everybody filling out their glyph books for their characters, we will have new glyphs to craft on top of it. Add in a consumable to change the glyphs and viola we now have a secure raiding requirement. I think that with this change a lot more people will be changing their glyphs depending on the fight and every time they do, they consume an eraser in which we create and sell.

I'm probably the only scribe that is actually excited for cata. I truly am looking forward to the new expansion because I really think we will be pulling in the buku bucks since all the mmo-champ bandwagon scribes are already jumping ship. Go take a look around the web at sites such as wowhead and the sort. People are already writing off inscription as a dead profession and beta hasn't even been released. lol.

For more information on the interview with Ghostcrawler and gameplanet check it out at http://www.gameplanet.co.nz/pc/games/159702.World-of-Warcraft-Cataclysm/features/135036.20100613.Blizzards-Greg-Street-on-new-systems-in-Cataclysm/page2/

How to fix QA tabbing out problem

As many of you know one of the new changes that has been around with QA3 is you can no longer minimize wow and have QA posting. It will basically freeze is place until you go back into wow and then continue. I have found a way to go around this problem and it is pretty obvious but figured I would toss it out here for those who don't know :)

First off have wow in windowed mode (not a problem with me cause I've always played in window mode).

Instead of minimizing wow and bringing up firefox just simply open firefox (or IE if you for some odd reason still use it :P) while having wow still up and running. So if you minimize your browser you will see the wow screen. It works and I just finished posting 200 glyphs while typing this up.

To verify that it is still posting and you've done it right just simply listen for the change sound from posting. :)

Brief post today but found it pretty cool that I can still write up blogs / surf the JMTC forums while posting :)

Brief update!

Forgot since I've been back I have yet to post an update. :)

When I left I gave away tens of thousands of gold, bought my travel tundra mammoth, dropped crazy dumb prices on TOC crafting gear, etc.

All in all I had about 5k liquid and 5k or so in assets. Tonight I broke 12k liquid casually playing the AH (I'm full time raiding so I'm not getting those sales from camping the ah -_-)

But all in all I'm happy with my progress with the little bit of effort I've put in. Another update is I dropped LW last night and power leveled a transmute alch to 450. Spent 2.5k on that and back to 9500 w/ about 5k or so still in assets.

Goal is to be back to 50k by the end of the month. My AH addict patch is slowly wearing off and I'm slowly gettin the hunger back for gold and lots of it :)

Why did I drop LW? I had it mostly to d/e greens w/ the leather and now that market has tanked I can better use the profession slot doing xmutes for my JC. Plus c'mon - a raiding dk LWer? Yea the bracer enchant is alright but I simply wasnt making money with LW (nor was I really interested in it :P).

Cooking - The long lost profession?

So I'll be the first to admit that since I have started playing the economy on my server I kind of forgot about cooking. No, it isn't a lost profession but I think a lot of people have forgotten about it.

Why do I say this? A lot of people don't really use stat food anymore individually on my server and typically we have people dropping fish feasts left and right. When fish feasts first became non bop they weren't really all that hot of a seller on my server and I couldn't even sell them for 10g each even if I announced it in trade. They just would not sell.

Fast forward 8-10 months and I remember about fish feasts and decide to check the market and they are at 10-15g each with numerous sellers which leads me to believe people are buying them.

If you've forgotten about cooking; take a second look! You could be missing out on an entire market you thought was dead.

Look before you buy and about yesterday's post

So today's post is going to be more of a reminder and to not follow my errors.

The AH on my server has been somewhat dry of high end herbs and when there was an abundance of herbs they were all more then I wanted to pay. I assume from the fair but who knows.

Well this morning I'm going down my auctionator list of items I normally buy or at least keep an eye on and noticed 90 some odd stacks of adder's tongue for 14g a stack. A little on the high side for me (my preferred price is 12g or less) but I jumped on it as I was under 500 inks and haven't made glyphs in about a week. I was happy that I finally had a nice surplus of ink once again until I check icethorn prices and noticed there was 2x the amount for only 10g a stack -_-.

Yea, I bought them up as well (I couldn't pass it up) but I wouldn't have splurged on the adder's tongue had I looked at the other herbs first. I blame it on it bein 7:30 am and I've yet to sleep.

While on the subject of inscription I figured I'd write up a blog post for yesterday since I simply cut and paste and linked. I was too tired to spend time to write up a quality post but I wanted to at least pass on the news while it was still news.

My thoughts on it? I'll still be a scribe and I'll gladly watch everybody jump off the ship. Why? I feel that it is not a lost cause quite yet and it could still be VERY profitable in quick short bursts.

Think of it like cooking recipes. You learn the recipe and you are done but yet I can still get away selling recipes for 10-20g a pop when they cost me 2s off the vendor. Raiders are typically completion freaks and will most likely snatch up all the glyphs for their class just so they don't have to buy them in the future. If they add in an achievement for having all the glyphs for your class learned then I can see this being an even more boost the income as you will get all the achievement freaks out there gobbling them up too for achievement points.

So what happens when the initial rush of cata is all said and done with and all the raiders now have every glyph? Things resume to normal; people still level alts and will continue to do so. Those new chars will need glyphs and not every single person is going to buy every single glyph. You will still get the casuals buying their glyphs as they need them.

The same sort of freak out happened when dual spec was put in and everyone screamed the sky was falling when it really wasn't. Sure instead of pulling in 5k a day in glyphs you're pulling in 2k a day but that is still pretty good money. (for my server it's damn good money for glyphs :P)

So my final thoughts on it are:

If you are a scribe; don't drop inscription (yet).

Should you level up inscription and get into the glyph market? That's up to you. Do you feel like you'll be active enough in the glyph game to pull in the money you invested before cata? If so then why not? If you invest 2k to level inscription and make back that 2k in a week then it paid off and you have a source of income.

Sometimes looking to far into the future can make you blind to the profits now. People are probably already dropping inscription and leveling up JC or some other bandwagon profession. If it's still making money then do it ;)

Inscription in Cataclysm

Think most of ya probably read this on the forums but figured I'd toss it out here for those who didn't.

"At BlizzCon 2009, we learned of the Path of the Titans, a new alternate advancement system that would see PCs allying with various titan cults in order to gain various character bonuses apart from simply leveling up. At the recent Cataclysm press event, Blizzard announced that they'll be completely scrapping the system.

To offset this, they've chosen instead to work on an overhaul of the glyph system, as they noted they didn't quite get it to where they wanted with Wrath. Here are the basics:

* There will be a new tier of glyphs, currently called "Medium" glyphs, that will provide "fun alterations" to abilities. Major and minor glyphs will act much as they currently do. You'll have 3 of each glyph type at level 85.
* You will no longer have to re-buy glyphs when you respec or rearrange them. Rather, you will will learn each glyph like a skill and be able to swap them at will from a list.
* This list will show all glyphs available to your class, but will only allow you to use the ones you've purchased."

http://www.wow.com/2010/06/13/cataclysm-press-event-path-of-titans-scrapped-inscription-over/#continued

When did raiding become about loot?

Title says it all. This is more of a venting post about raiding than anything but you all are players and most of you raid so maybe you can help me understand this.

The guild I am in is 7/12 heroic10 for icc. I know we aren't the greatest and I have plenty of experience raiding in the top end guilds on my server and would rather raid with my good friends who I've been raiding with since back in kara. It's not the same downing a progression boss with a bunch of people you only tolerate to see content when compared to raiding with good friends and finally accomplishing something.

The incident is tonight we were planning on running heroic10 again and to work on the few remaining bosses we have left in heroic. We all agreed that we would put a 3 wipe limit on any heroic boss that has previously been downed so we would not spend all night wiping on the first half and actually get something accomplished. Everybody agreed and we start clearing the trash.

Now laugh if you want, we wiped three times on the first boss and swapped it over to normal just to move on (we only had 2 healers). We down him with ease, distribute loot and move on. No problems arise and nobody says a word. We get to the 2nd boss (couldn't care bout the names atm, me venting :P) and it was the weekly raid so we proceed to do the weekly on normal mode just to make it easy and not spend all night doin the weekly. 1 person hinted that they wanted to do it on heroic and forget the daily but the other 9 people just wanted to keep moving deeper so we complete it on normal and move on.

Again, no problems arise. Nobody said shit and we go up to the ship for our free loots (that we did complete on heroic). Loot is handed out and the MT says she has to go and walks out on the raid (I was OT as she better gears me). So I whisper her to make sure everything was fine and dandy and that her grandma wasn't on fire running around the kitchen (or something). And that's when shit hit the fan.

She leaves the raid because we did not do the first 2 bosses on heroic and she only needed loot from those bosses (from the heroic version). Now while I was gone on my break I was replaced as one of the MT's for the guild and I'm fine with that. I gquit and left (ended up goin to the top alliance guild for when I would start raiding again but was just a social unless you count the 1 raid I attended). So when I came back I had a talk with the new tank who pretty much replaced me and we were on good terms and I had a lot of respect for this person and we had pretty much the same outlook on raiding (til this incident). Progression.

She claims there has been drama and that she won't tolerate it and would rather not play. Fair enough, I understand from being the recruiting officer for the 2nd top alliance guild and would rather not deal with drama myself. But why didn't she speak up before we start and downed the bosses on normal? She basically threw a tantrum and walked out and the raid fell apart; three bosses into the run. Tomorrow we are going to be working on LK on 25 normal and monday is never a good day for trying to resume raids in my experience.

With the background to this whole post in mind it brings me to the title of this post. When did raiding become about loot?

As a die hard raider I feel that loot is a reward for the time being spent and that overall progression > loot. Plain and simple. You should raid not for the loot but because you enjoy progression raiding (given your in a progression raiding guild, which we are, or try to be. Still in the top 10 guilds on the server ;p). I'm the kind of sick person that enjoyed wiping on KT back in bc for months where we spent 30+ hours a week trying to get him down (pre nerf). Yea I was sick of the fight but the reward of finally getting him down (we were 3rd or 4th on our server overall to down him) was greater than any possible loot that could have dropped (actually passed on everything out of sheer happiness the asshat was dead).

Ok, so I got slightly off subject but the point remains. When did progression raiding become about loot? What happened to the fights that you couldn't down because they were hard as hell and the joy of finally downing the boss was your only motivation?

I believe wotlk seriously ruined a lot of the raiding qualities in the people that call themselves raiders as a whole. People are so used to loot pinata bosses that raiding has become nothing more than loot *cough* voa *cough*.

Sure blizzard tried to fix the problem by adding in hardmodes and achievements for glory of the raider / etc to give some incentive. But why buy the cow when the milk is free?

Anyone else miss actual progression raiding with die hard raiders? Is it just my server? Are there still servers out there where players like this exist?

/steps off his gnomish yellow pages book.

Preparing for Cataclysm

Figured I would start talking about how to save for the next expansion and what to invest in. For many (not all), the auction houses are slowing down as less people are raiding and overall most of the general population in wow is preparing for Cataclysm (leveling alts, suspending accounts, etc).

I'm still somewhat playing the auction house; nowhere near the amount I was previously doing but I am still tossing up glyphs once or twice a day and same goes with gems and other assorted goods (considering I was posting 1-2 times an hour, 1-2 times a day is nothing). I am also not buying nearly the quantity of goods that I previously was and slowly dwindling my assets in one area down and reinvesting them for items to sell off in Cataclysm.

I know this is an old speculation but I still feel strongly about it when it comes to speculation and that is netherweave cloth.

On top of all the new Worgen and Goblins running around cata you will see the following new race / class combos:

* Human Hunter
* Orc Mage
* Night Elf Mage
* Blood Elf Warrior
* Dwarf Shaman
* Dwarf Mage
* Undead Hunter
* Tauren Paladin
* Tauren Priest
* Gnome Priest
* Troll Druid

Now, how many of these new characters are going to need bags? All of them right? Unlike the rush in wotlk where we had tons of dks running through outlands we wont have nearly the amount of players in Outlands and more will be level 1 for the initial rush.

Now think about how much netherweave is on your server and what would happen if tomorrow we got 2 new races that have 6? classes and 11 new race / class combos that previously were unavailable.

People won't be out farming netherweave on the initial days of the expansion. Everybody will be racing to 85 or playing on their newly created characters and prices on netherweave bags (frostweave is even a possibility as well) are going to sky rocket simply because the demand is going trump any remote supply of cloth on the servers. (Remember when inscription was launched? We all knew that they would require milling herbs and at least on my server prices jumped as high as 100g+ a stack of peacebloom. Friends reported pulling in thousands of gold in under the first hour)

Currently on my server netherweave prices are hovering at 5g a stack and I'll gladly accept any bet that you will be hard pressed to find any cloth in the first week of cata for under 50g a stack. Actual bags are going to be even higher so if you have a tailor you should definitely start investing in the cloth now. Bags on my server are 9-15g each currently and some days guildies have reported selling bags for 75g.

So how much cloth have you stockpiled? I'm working on my 2nd tab atm and been slowly buying it when it drops in price to prevent artificial inflation. Plus I just dont have the room to hold as much cloth as I can buy. The best method for storing it is in bolts simply because it takes less space then the actual cloth.

Keep checking back for more Cataclysm speculation tips. I am hoping to get into the beta simply to get a heads up, I even submitted my account info to this guy named Blizzadrian who said he'd get me in. /sarcasm

Get a damn Authenticator already

Seriously if you do not have an authenticator yet, why don't you? Do you play the AH to get your account hacked and hand over the thousands of gold to the sellers? It's 5 bucks including shipping and yet my guildies still for the most part have not bought one even after seeing 3 guildies get hacked in the past week alone. None of them had an authenticator and one even had one but had not taken the time to activate it.

I really don't feel bad for them. It's their effing fault but it affects my ability to raid because they were 3 of our core raiders.

If you have yet to get an authenticator than quit being stupid. If my unemployed stoner ass can afford one by scrounging up change then I really do not see any excuse (you're already paying 15 bucks a month to play, whats a one time 5 dollar fee in addition for added security?).

Quit supporting the gold sellers and hackers. Yes, I blame the people without authenticators for supporting them.

/soapbox

Oiling the machine

Well I started to process most of the back logged crap in my bank tabs. Since enchanting mats absolutely blow on my server I just converted rings and vendored them. I ended up making about 3k from just that and slowly shifting through the pile of crap trying to remember what exactly my intention was for it all.

My goal for the weekend is to get the machine oiled up and everything organized for this Tuesday which is when I plan to strike my AH from out of nowhere. I have about 600 of every rare gem sitting in back stock ready to be cut and auctioned and at a time when saronite prices are almost 2x higher then I paid; I'm pretty sure I can have lots of fun wrecking havoc ;)

The only area I am really, really dreading is glyphs because I broke KTQ when I updated my addons. I knew there was a reason why I had not updated altoholic / skillet in the past -_-

Terrorizing my server once again?

So now that the 'shiny new toy' aspect of eve is all worn off, I've been getting back into Wow a little bit and will probably resume picking up playing the AH once again. Within minutes of logging on I have random whispers from friends / guildies and even people I dont (think I) know whispering me telling me to stay out of their markets. This brings me to wonder if I really had that large of an impact on my server when I left? In the 8 months (give or take) that I have been gone the prices on everything have actually gone up.

Previous price of saronite - 10-12g a stack (in bulk 500+ stacks at a time)
Current price of saronite - 18g a stack

Random epic gems - 80-90g each uncut
Current price - 150g

The only area that has gone down is enchanting mats but before I had left I made a post about printing gold where I would sell the rings straight to the vendor instead of disenchanting.

So now I sit here thinking what markets can I play again and I'm really not sure other then your typical raiding mats and needs. Will take a little bit of digging around to see whats still good and what new markets have opened up but of course you all will be the first to know.

Good to be back and hopefully I can regain the interest of my previous readers once again ;)