Back when I started playing WoW getting the gold for your still training let alone your normal mount and let’s not even talk about your epic mount was something that sent shivers down peoples spines.

It was very common to get a loan from a slightly more affluent buddy and many guild banks were intended to help finance these big purchases.

Auctioneering wasn’t that common, it was some sort of arcane art. The gold limit was unknown, people just didn’t have enough gold to find out what arbitrary figure Blizzard had chosen.

These days (legal) gold making strategy sites are a dime a dozen and many such as Greedy Goblin have a huge following.

Gevlon hit the gold limit a long time ago and now uses his bottomless purse to buy his raid spot and fund his guilds needs.

Many people, Gevlon and myself included, have discussed the concept of “good enough” gear. That point where the gear is good enough, with the appropriate amount of skill (which doesn’t have to be that high) to perform well enough in any situation.

The same is the case with gold, yet it seems to have become the latest min/max grind.

1. Roll Inscription
2. Post Auctions
3. Profit

It’s Vegas folks, but not as we know it

People in this grind seem to be as caught in the game as if they were sitting at a table in Vegas.

Just one more roll

• They hit 60k… Why not 100k.
• They hit 100k, why not 150k.
• They hit 150k…

Now I have to admit I don’t mind one way or the other. I did OK in TBC with my Auctioneering efforts, but it was always a means to an end.

• I needed cash to support my Spellfire habit… AH
• I needed cash to support my Enchanting habit… AH
• I needed cash to support my recipe acquisition habit… AH

Needy or Greedy?

Prior to the WoLK release (and my 2 month absence from the game) I worked up about 20k gold, then stopped. I still have a pile of TBC enchanting mats, so I dare say it could have been significantly higher if necessary, but it wasn’t necessary.

6 months after my Northrend entrance I am still sitting on around 15k. There are a few things I could buy which would drain my bank balance pretty quickly, but they aren’t that special.

• I don’t need a Mechano Hog
• I don’t need the BiS tailored gear
• I don’t need for anything…

I guess if I ground the AH I could have it all, but I’m not that greedy.

Spend it like you got it!

Likewise, unlike Gevlon I don’t feel the need to hit gold cap, while watching every penny. I know if I did hit gold cap, I would just go and blow it.

Not because I am careless with gold, but rather what’s the point of a mountain of gold that serves no purpose.

If I hit gold cap, I would stop grinding the AH. I would set all my mates up, I would set the guild up, hell, I would be throwing gold from the windows in every capital city.

Opportunity Cost

Most gold making sites will tell you that when perusing you AH career, extra cash that isn’t invested in more stock is dead money. It’s not earning you another cent, something along the line of opportunity cost.

Yet it seems that it’s perfectly normal to grind out a mountain of money and not spend it.

WTF?!?

If your bank balance is full, but your mates and fellow raiders are struggling to get the gear, mats and consumables they need, then that is the real opportunity cost.

Personally I am not all that hung up on the whole M&S stuff.  I know what it’s like to be behind in the curve due to time constraints.  I have been in the position where my mates helped me gear up in TBC by grinding out the tailoring mats.

Who did this really help?

Well, obviously it helped me, but IMHO I am not much on my own…

I did help the group as a whole though.  They could have waited another few months for me to be geared enough for Kara, or they could help me and we all win… and win we all did!

Yes there will always be M&S.  There is a good chance that the highly motivated raid leader is an “unemployed bum, living at home, hasn’t worked an honest day in their life, Mum still does their laundry kind of person” – but if they turn up on time to your raid ready to go you think they are a hero?  Or maybe that person is a real life hero, that appears as a M&S in game because they wont sacrifice the real world just for the few pixels that will raise your opinion of them.

If you are ideologically opposed to just handing money out, then go make someone day… Actually, make the server’s day…

Buy out the AH!

It’s not the 1st time this has happened, but maybe you can do it just for the fun…

Level caps, Gold Caps, Golf Claps… Reroll poor!

After all, gold caps are like level caps… The only way to earn more experience or gold outside of an expansion is to reroll.

So reroll today… Boost everyone else’s economy.

Buy high and sell low!

What’s your corporate philosophy?

Do you chase gold in the same way as BiS gear? Is there ever enough?

Or are you Scrooge McDuck from Stormwind?

Gnomer and Out!

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

http://gnomeaggedon.net/2009/07/27/scrooge-mc-duck-of-stormwind/

Their answer, one I have heard many times before:

Because Blizzard wants people to continue to return to the Old World and it ensures life in quality but otherwise forgotten content.

But… But…

What about the Neutral Auction Houses.

I sort of consider the neutral auction houses to be a bit of a failure. Really only ever used for cross faction “smuggling”.

In fact, I think that’s all they have ever been used for.

The three current Neutral Auction Houses are in places that players are only ever in temporarily (Gadgetzan, Booty Bay & Everlook).  Sure back in Vanilla wow they were hub-ish, but not since TBC hit the shelves.

I think that now is the time to introduce Neutral Auction House in at least Dalaran, if not dropping one in Lower City as well.

The demand for their use is greater than ever. Achievements encourage the sale of faction only items, the problem is the market.

There aren’t enough buyers or sellers. Put the Auction House in Dalaran and suddenly people would be putting all sorts of stuff up for sale, and all sorts would be flocking to see what is up for offer.

This would also cut down on, or at least increase the risk of cross faction smuggling. If there are more buyers watching the Neutral Auction Houses, then is is going to be harder to slip the 50g item through for 50s.

Another thing it will do is help to vitalize lower population factions. It’s just a reality that most servers have some sort of a population imbalance.

The problem with this is that the high pop faction will have a vibrant economy, the low pop faction a stagnant economy. Introduce a high pop Neutral Auction House and some of the economy issue will be readdressed

Sure, the seller will face addition costs in selling via the Neutral Auction Houses (5% cut vs. 15% in neutral auction houses), which will (theoretically) increase the sell price on the items.  So players will be faced with a buy/sell at the Neutral Auction Houses and incur higher costs, or deal with the inconvenience of traveling back to a major friendly city.

Just a thought… What do you Greedy Goblins think?

Another Wanted meme

Gnomer and Out!

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

http://gnomeaggedon.net/2009/03/20/neutral-auction-houses/

So two months down the track in WoLK, I have just joined the game with bank and bags full of old world enchanting mats (and other misc rubbish).

So should I dump it all in a world economic crash style, or will the time come in the next couple of months where like linen and wool people are prepared to pay 4 times a sensible rate to power level their professions?

Ohhh and thanks dear readers for putting up with question posts for this 1st week… I do have some plans for something without questions, but it is nice to know that there are some many people out there prepared to help a slow Gnome!

Gnomer and Out!

Only got 40 silver to your name?

Want to convert that to a quick 10, 20, 30 gold?

Buy moths, cats, rabbits, snakes or any other faction specific non-combat pets, hit the neutral AH and help the war effort and your back pocket by gouging the enemies desire to get a pet skunk via the Shop Smart, Shop Pet…Smart achievement.

Don’t be greedy, don’t undercut your allies.

Now is the time to feast on critters!

Gnomer and Out!

Any hair left on your heads (and no I am not talking about the mandatory trip to the ingame Barber)?

As would be expected with any WoW “patch” this size, addons are continuing to break and evolve as those breakages are being reported to the Addon authors, so…

Stick with it, chin up and all that stuff

Report the errors you see so that things can get fixed

OK, now more specifically to Auctioneer.

Error Reporting

One of the nice things about Auctioneer is it’s error reporting frame, which nicely captures errors which may (or may not be) related to Auctioneer.

When they come up, don’t do the Human thing and dismiss them, do the Gnome thing and copy them (Ctrl-C), paste them into a text document for a moment, and then report them to the Addon authors at thier sites as soon as you get the chance.

In the case of Auctioneer, go to the Support forums and do you bit in the War against defects.  Remember to search the forums first so you aren’t just duplicating the same report as 100′s before you.. and you may find a work around or update to the problem.

Tips for error reporting are covered in the post Bug Report with Auctioneer? Read this thread before posting!

Frequent Updates

Next thing is, since I first reported that AA was available in it’s new version, there have been several patches to the download.  So if you are having problems, a quick return visit may solve your problems… no promises, but personally I think things ae working out quick well this patch.

Patch Day Blues FAQ

Finally, there is a Patch Day Blues – An Upgrade and New User FAQ wiki page up at Auctioneer, see if it answers your questions… I know it answered a few of mine.

Gnomer and Out!

No longer a prerelease, this is a fully fledged release: 5.1

Norganna says:

I am pleased to announce that we have the Auctioneer 5.1 release ready to go.

The 5.1 release is for WoW 3.0.2 (TOC version 30000), and while we still have the version 5.0 Auctioneer available for downloads on the download page, this version is for the European users who still have not patched yet.

As is always the case on patch days, there’s likely to be things that have gone awry. We’ve tried the best we can to predict all possible outcomes, but ultimately we have only been able to test on the PTR, the same as you guys, and there’s no guarantees that the live 3.0.2 will act exactly the same as the PTR, so if you find any bugs, please report them back as soon as possible, and please, please, please backup your WoW/WTF folder first thing, OK? We don’t want you to be telling us you forgot when we ask you if you made backups.

Ok, kids go get ‘em, and remember, there’s no “I” in “Team”!

Some bold and underlining by me for emphasis…!

Go get it!

Gnomer and Out!

I think to myself, why on earth would you put an enchant on an item where:

1. The enchant mats cost more than the item
2. Put it up for sale on the auction house
3. I will come to 3.

OK, answering my own questions.

1) The mats probably did. Hopefully the toon in question was leveling enchanting and their use for the item expired.

I hope so. I hope it wasn’t to make the item more profitable at the auction house.

2) You put crap bracers of the whale with a +1 spirit echant on the auction house?

• How much did it cost you to auction it (deposit and auction fees)?
• You might have saved money by throwing it in the Ironforge lava pit.
• You would have made money selling it to a vendor.
• You lost money putting it on the auction house.

3) I told you I would come to 3)
The one thing worse than putting random green with random enchant ok the auction house, is putting a green that will sell on the auction house at a silly low price.

Why did you spend money on an enchant and money auctioning it and only ask 2 gold?

Thank you…

Actually, at this point I stop to thank you, for all those 2 gold items I have bought off you and resold for 10-20 gold.

Anyway, the fact is enchanting an item doesn’t really positively influence the chance of a sale.

• If it was going to sell, it will sell.
• If it wasn’t, it wasn’t.

Maybe…

Maybe, just maybe, if you have competition in selling your crap green of uberness, you might get the sale over the next person, BUT it is unlikely you will sell it for more.

Gnomer and Out!

Nechckn says there have been over 130 updates and enhancements!

Including:

Some highlights include:

•One of the biggest areas of concentration for this revision is the Informant item database- thankfully taken up and enhanced by two of our team members.
•Some clean up of the AutoMagic sub-addon, including sales lists that will save across session and the help file.
•Configure buttons now on the Appraiser and Browse Frames- those open the respective sections of the configuration options.
•The size of the End of Scan report has been reduced.
•/AAdv clear <itemlink> now properly clears data from the Stat-Histogram in addition to the other stats that were already cleared by the command.
•Many other changes, all of them are listed below.

Where do you get it: Auctioneer Addon Download page

If you are upgrading, remember to

1. Backup your saved variables.
2. Delete your old Auctioneer mod before installing (reduces the likelihood of later errors)

Gnomer and Out!

RockSlice (Core Developer) for Auctioneer has some handy information on how to spot price poisoning (and what to do about it).

What is Price Poisoning?
Price Poisoning is probably the number 1 complaint I have heard about Auctioneer (OK, behind, the new version is so hard to use… which it isn’t I assure you, but anyway I digress).

The concept is that someone posts an (or a couple of hundred) Arcane Dust (or any other item) for 1,000g. Now when Auctioneer scans your Auction House and averages out the price on all the current auctions, the price it reports back is now wildly inflated. This can lead to a few things.

1. You buy an item off the AH thinking that you have a good price.
2. You try to resell the same item for the price Auctioneer tells you is the average
3. You discover that instead of the average price of an Arcane Dust being 5g, it is only 70s.. and you just bought a pile at 2g thinking you would make a killing…

Here are a couple of reasons that prices get poisoned.

1. Sneaky players are trying to raise the perceived value of an item so they can make 200% profit on their stock.
2. Gold sellers

Gold sellers you ask?
Yep, you see to try and pass cash off as “clean gold”, the Gold sellers will ask you to place an otherwise worthless item (piece of mouldy bread) up on the AH at 1,000 gold.
The the Gold sellers buy the Piece of Mouldy Bread, and you get your money.

Theoretically this will escape notice because money hasn’t gone through the normal player-to-player mail or trade system (don’t bet your account on it!).

The unfortunately side-effect is that prices get poisoned.

Anyway, have a read of the forum post How to spot price poisoning (and what to do about it) and be careful!

Ohh on a next to final note, I grabbed a screenshot of a perfect real WoW-life example:

But on a final note, what sort of person would intentionally poison prices?

I draw your attention to:

On the topic of the Auction House… does anyone else ever get the urge to take a common item, and keep putting it up on the AH at like 1300g Buyout, or 1274g, or some other ridiculous amount, day after day, every day, just to drive those people with Auctioneer that do frequent scans INSANE?

Just pick an item, like Giant Eggs or Heart of Fire, something that is a white quality Trade Good that newer players might not know what they’re for, and just jack that price over a long time to skew the scans?

Or is that just me?

Anyway, sorry… moving on *whistles*

Enough fun for one day….

Gnomer and Out

Sonny was saying in the comments of my post The floor writers are back in town:

Sunwell dailies are awesome!!! I used to grind the Auction too, and had other money-making tricks, but when I hit 70 I learned to ask “Is this faster than Sunwell dailies?” And the answer is always no.

And you don’t get rep from grinding the AH.

And Magister’s Terrace is a PAIN to group for times a million.

Zupa responded with a couple of bits I will grab:

re: AH vs dailies. my gold / hour from playing the AH is very hard to measure, but it is very easy, doesn’t require me to pay more than 10% attention to what I’m doing, and has proved to be a very reliable source of income.

and

Of course the daily’s are there when you need quick cash, but once a successful AH strategy is in place, you don’t need quick cash

It’s nice being able to afford the ridiculous amounts of food, flasks, potions, repairs and bloody respecs I seem to go through these days.

So I guess I can go a bit further into my reasons why I prefer the AH to Grinding (Dailies, Mobs, Gathering).

Time is an issue for me, I generally only get one block of real contiguous time per week (4-6 hours), which is on a Friday night, and when I log in my mates are waiting for me to start the raid. Therefore I need a time-flexible money gaining strategy. So on the basis of time-flexibility:

Time – As much or as little as I want

• 10 min – Mail check, GetAll Scan (/aadv getall) and Repost (Post All)
• 30 min – Mail check, GetAll Scan, Detailed Repost (reviewing past results and adjusting prices) and Partial Bottom Scan
• 60 min – Mail check, GetAll Scan, Detailed Repost (reviewing past results and adjusting prices) and Full Bottom Scan. mail Disenchanting Items to my Disenchanter, Disenchant & return for sale, Post.

Time – non-Contiguous
I can go and do things (I am often washing dishes, ironing, making lunches etc in the morning) while Bottom Scanner ticks over and alerts me to a bargain.

Zupa talks about a successful strategy:

once a successful AH strategy is in place, you don’t need quick cash

This is a big one for me. I have hit the AH sporadically over the years – when I needed something. Which meant that the AH became a grind the same as any other. What I have learnt now, is to do it regularly (but not obsessively or “panicky”) to build up a nice base to work from. When you have 10g left and you want 5,000 for an Epic Flyer right now, is not the time to start working over the Auction House.

So having a nice base to work from allows me to:

• If something comes up on the AH (recipe, turtle etc) – I can grab it.
• If I run out of Mats – I can buy them
• If a mate needs a loan – I can fund it
• If I want to build my cash levels higher, I can bid without dear of going bankrupt.
• If I want to play the game, without concern for bank balance, I can.
• If I want to do daily’s for Rep, then I can, without worrying about the cash element.

Reputation

they dont give rep when you hit exalted anyway

Another point by Zupa. They don’t give rep past exalted, they just become another form of gathering. To be honest I would rather put my energy into Old World reputation (I don’t know why), so it is nice knowing I can bunk off an do something “totally irrelevant” yet still have cash coming in.

Speaking of which, the other good thing about farming the AH, is I am fundamentally farming cash 24 hours per day. I don’t have to be in WoW, focusing on little dots on the minimap. The Auctioneer is handling all my selling needs.

Mailbox summaries like this:

Finally, a few screenshots of the summary of my sales over a 36 hour period.

2061 gold (gross) for maybe 1.5 hours playtime (more or less). I expect that is around 600g-1000g nett. All of which while I was AFK.

I think the best haul from the Mailbox I have had was

Auction successful

• 53 mails (So one whole mailbox opening + 1st 3 items of the mailbox refresh)

Gold in the Mail

• 3,500g (From memory, and it was probably more for the day, this would have just been the single mailbox opening)

Not for everyone

Of course I appreciate that the AH isn’t for everyone and even those that do work the AH do it by degrees, so I am not suggesting that people should go out and dump their existing gold into Greens and hope they turn a profit. (Just as I wouldn’t suggest you take your life savings, throw it on the stock market at stop work today). Do what works for you!

And Magister’s Terrace is a PAIN to group for times a million.

Finally as Sonny says

And Magister’s Terrace is a PAIN to group for times a million.

Gnomer and Out!