How are you guys becoming filthy rich?

[LavCat]

Last night while doing the Stormwind fishing daily, the Mechanical Squirrel Box schematic dropped for my druid. I plan to give it to my DK to level her engineering with. We shall corner the Mechanical Squirrel market.

That and the market for used frogs, since Flik shows no signs of despawning.

If it wasn't for this thread, that returned mechanical squirrel schematic would have been totally lost in my druid's mailbox. I can't even keep track of how many characters I have, let alone how to play them or to find their stuff.

The schematic is finally safely learned and we are on our way to economic domination.

[--Pete]

Hi,

I can't even keep track of how many characters I have, let alone how to play them or to find their stuff.

Funny how a casual remark will sometimes get the synapses firing.

A game can be simple or complex in many manners. For instance, chess is a pretty simple game in terms of number of pieces, their properties, their movements, and overall rules. The rule book for (non-tournament) chess is about two pages long. Compared to Monopoly, chess is a very simple game to learn. And yet, compared to Monopoly, chess is a very hard game to master.

Now, there are people who like simplicity overall. There are people who enjoy simplicity in rules that results in a complex structure (mathematicians, physicists, chess, go, backgammon players fall into this category). And there are people who take great pleasure in mastering complexity (chemist, biologists, D&D players, lawyers and most medical doctors).

It is a matter of preference, and no one profession, system, game is better than any other on this basis.

My preference is for simple systems that have the potential for great complexity. Physics. Mathematics. Go (at which I suck). And D1. As the rule book gets bigger, I find I enjoy it less. I feel that more and more depends on memorizing what is given and less on figuring out how to do from just a handful of rules or moves (one of the reasons I love fencing -- there are only about a dozen basic "things" that give rise to a huge number of possibilities).

As WoW gets (from what I read) more complex in what it contains, my desire to return to it decreases. And at the same time, I await D3 with great expectation, though I suspect I'll be disappointed.

Funny how a simple, throw away comment can lead to a better understanding of what we like and why we like it.

--Pete

[dotonir]

Hello all ; ) I'm new

[LavCat]

Hello all ; ) I'm new

Welcome.

[LavCat]

Hi,

I can't even keep track of how many characters I have, let alone how to play them or to find their stuff.

Funny how a casual remark will sometimes get the synapses firing.

A game can be simple or complex in many manners. For instance, chess is a pretty simple game in terms of number of pieces, their properties, their movements, and overall rules. The rule book for (non-tournament) chess is about two pages long. Compared to Monopoly, chess is a very simple game to learn. And yet, compared to Monopoly, chess is a very hard game to master.

Now, there are people who like simplicity overall. There are people who enjoy simplicity in rules that results in a complex structure (mathematicians, physicists, chess, go, backgammon players fall into this category). And there are people who take great pleasure in mastering complexity (chemist, biologists, D&D players, lawyers and most medical doctors).

It is a matter of preference, and no one profession, system, game is better than any other on this basis.

My preference is for simple systems that have the potential for great complexity. Physics. Mathematics. Go (at which I suck). And D1. As the rule book gets bigger, I find I enjoy it less. I feel that more and more depends on memorizing what is given and less on figuring out how to do from just a handful of rules or moves (one of the reasons I love fencing -- there are only about a dozen basic "things" that give rise to a huge number of possibilities).

As WoW gets (from what I read) more complex in what it contains, my desire to return to it decreases. And at the same time, I await D3 with great expectation, though I suspect I'll be disappointed.

Funny how a simple, throw away comment can lead to a better understanding of what we like and why we like it.

--Pete

I was taken up in the backgammon craze of the late 1970's. I stopped playing when I decided backgammon was too violent. Quite seriously. (I must say backgammon provides similar epinephrine release to good PvP.)

By training, at least, I am a biological chemist. Maybe that's why I like WoW? Not that I don't like D2 or D1 (though I did come to dislike Wirt in particular). I stopped playing those games when my friends and loved ones went on to something else. Or just stopped playing. I don't see D1 or D2 as being fundamentally different from WoW, the way chess is from Monopoly. I still get attatched to the personalities of my characters, and in D2 I had over 110 accounts to keep track of. Or try to keep track of. I still have about twenty D2 accounts that I revisit, though I would have to learn how to play again in order to do anything with them.

To me WoW (and to a lesser extent Diablo) seem more like playing with dolls than with toy soldiers.

I am not holding a lot of hope for D3. I don't have plans to buy it. Though I have been known to eat my words before.

[DeeBye]

I have expanded my ability to make massive gold in this internet game! Jewelcrafting is a very solid base to make tons of gold, but I decided to diversify. I leveled an alt to 85 and made him a transmute-specced Alchemist. Truegold with extra procs is pretty awesome. I then realized that I didn't really need to have herbalism on my transmute alchemist. I could just shove mats from my BS/JC main to him. Besides, picking flowers is very unbecoming as a rogue. The other rogues were starting to make fun.

So my rogue dropped Herbalism and took up Enchanting.

Have you ever leveled Enchanting without Tailoring? It's like smashing your groin with a hammer over and over again. Or it's really expensive. I did a little of both.

So now I have a JC, transmute Alchemist, and a (dis)Enchanter. These profs all synergize very well with each other. I think I am ready to make some gold.

[Ruvanal]

Have you ever leveled Enchanting without Tailoring? It's like smashing your groin with a hammer over and over again. Or it's really expensive. I did a little of both.

During WoLK I leveled a character doing Inscription/Enchanting. There was only a little item input from Magi's JC character for the items to DE. The AH was were a vast majority of the materials came from and the enchanting side had fueled the finances to power the inscription up to the point that it could also turn a profit at which point both could return a healthy rate of return on investment. It did require a another toon to act as an AH agent handle the bulk of sales.

Then there was Pete's AH toon that got many of the poor selling items to liquidate for our guild. But those funds were going to the guild bank coffers.

[shoju]

Have you ever leveled Enchanting without Tailoring? It's like smashing your groin with a hammer over and over again. Or it's really expensive. I did a little of both.

My Death Knight actually started its life 2 server transfers ago, as a fem NE DK with Mining / Enchanting, and never found it to be a problem. Though, I did solo my way to Classic Dungeonmaster for mats along the way, and stay in Outland until 72 so that I could do quests for d/e-ables for mats, and sold all my ore for mats.

I didn't find it to be that bad actually. It was funny, until level..... 84? I hadn't actually trained any smelting except for titansteel and titanium. I had just bought mining, and went.

[ryan4nayr]

Besides, picking flowers is very unbecoming as a rogue. The other rogues were starting to make fun.

Rogues in the vanilla days needed to be really good friends with herbalists, or become 1 themselves. A college friend of mine who PVPed with his rogue too much asked for my supply of Fadeleaf and Swiftthistle
(and probably others I can't recall anymore) on a weekly basis. I didn't get rich off him, but I could've if I AH'ed these stacks instead.

I liked selling engineering pets as my AH niche. Completist that I am, I have all of the pet schematics with the exception of the Lifelike Mechanical Toad. I will get you someday... or not.

[--Pete]

Hi,

Then there was Pete's AH toon that got many of the poor selling items to liquidate for our guild. But those funds were going to the guild bank coffers.

I actually had 4 such bankers. One each on our main guild realms (Terenas horde and Stormwind Alliance), and two more elsewhere. I tracked what was selling in the AH and for how much, then looked for bargains, bought them and flipped them.

I actually started a banker on an unrelated alliance realm (alliance seems to be more profitable than horde -- no good idea why -- just to see how fast I could build her up. Starting just with the stuff given to a level 1, with no outside help, and doing nothing but AH (no kills, no skills, nothing else), I was able to build her to about 100,000 gold in three to four months.

Mostly I used Auctioneer with a fair bit of parameter tweaking. I no longer have the files, so I can't share. Besides, the info would probably be bad due to both game and add on changes. In addition, I used Excel for some of the data processing and analysis.

Of course, some studying of the materials was necessary to avoid the more common cons as well as to evaluate the less common items. But, overall, it was not too demanding. It was taking me about half an hour to forty-five minutes a day per banker to generate the funds.

--Pete

[DeeBye]

I actually started a banker on an unrelated alliance realm (alliance seems to be more profitable than horde -- no good idea why -- just to see how fast I could build her up. Starting just with the stuff given to a level 1, with no outside help, and doing nothing but AH (no kills, no skills, nothing else), I was able to build her to about 100,000 gold in three to four months.

That's incredible. I love it.

I'm having a lot more fun with the financial side of WoW right now than the "real game". Instead of my combat statistic numbers go up, I'm watching my gold number rise.

I started completely fresh back just before Cataclysm launched and I've made a few hundred thousand gold since then. I've spent a lot of it on dumb fun stuff, but I still love watching that gold number grow higher.

I mostly post fast-moving raw tradeskill items in bulk. I almost never post finished products. I usually post 150-300 items per day, and it's rare that an item is priced above 100g (10-20g is average). My mailbox gets a huge workout. I've flipped a few items, but I don't actively scan for items to flip.

Here's a screenshot of my main's Wealth statistics page. I have other characters that make me a lot of money, but I'd say most of my money is funneled through this guy.



That "Most gold ever owned" line is telling. When I get to certain thresholds, I go out and buy myself something expensive.

[--Pete]

Hi,

That's incredible. I love it.

It was fun, starting with the few copper that the initial character could get from selling bound gear and auctioning the rest. It took a while (and careful micromanagement) to get started, then it took off. Finally, when she was buying nearly all the bargains available each day, the rate of growth dropped to zero and she was getting about the same income per day. At that point, I started experimenting with the parameters in Auctioneer. Going after "riskier" investments, going after safe but low return investments, etc. I found no statistically significant improvements, and a few really clever ways to make a small fortune from a big one. At that point, the experiment was done and became boring. I cashed out, went out into the wilderness, and gave it all to the first character that honestly offered to team with me -- talk about surprise

I'm having a lot more fun with the financial side of WoW right now than the "real game".

My "new" machine still isn't together -- and it will consist of 6 year old components (at least) when I finish it. The laptop I'm posting from was so-so for playing the game at first, and became less capable with each patch. It got to the point that I could not do anything that required rapid response (e.g., fight) and about all that was left was going around talking to NPCs, BSing on the chat channels, and banking (oh, yeah, and watching for white kittens to spawn).

With the release of the latest expansion, I can't even install WoW. My interest in playing is relatively low, not nearly enough to drive me to go downstairs (and the major effort -- really -- of coming back up) to finish my computer.

I usually post 150-300 items per day, and it's rare that an item is priced above 100g (10-20g is average). My mailbox gets a huge workout.

Yeah. The most important thing for a banker is the biggest bags she (for some reason, all my bankers have been female) can get. The addition of mailboxes near the AH as the game kept getting patched made it easier to play the AH. I posted about 1,000 items a day for each of 4 to 6 bankers. It's amazing how little things really add up at those volumes. That was about 50 trips from the AH to the mailbox and back.

Here's a screenshot of my main's Wealth statistics page.

Is that now part of the game or is it an add on? Good info, but what's the deal with the "-" on a couple of lines? Does WoW let you run a credit line now? Or is that just another endearing Blizzard feature ("We intentionally broke this interface just to let you know you've done yet another thing we never considered.")

--Pete

EDIT: It looks like that is a combination of two mistakes.

The first, perhaps understandable, is using a 32 bit quantity to track wealth in copper (really, the whole copper, silver, gold thing is stupid without interesting ratios -- say 12 pence copper to a shilling silver and 21 silver to a guinea gold. Just some random ratios I made up on the spur of the moment.)

The second, less understandable, is using a signed variable for what is always going to be a positive quantity. Yet another example of the MadddSkilz of Blizzard's programmers.

[DeeBye]

Is that now part of the game or is it an add on? Good info, but what's the deal with the "-" on a couple of lines? Does WoW let you run a credit line now? Or is that just another endearing Blizzard feature ("We intentionally broke this interface just to let you know you've done yet another thing we never considered.")

It's a part of the game now, and was added along with Achievements (it's a separate tab called "Statistics". The negatives mean that Blizzard hasn't updated the way they display the info since Burning Crusade - when earning 5,000 gold was a huge accomplishment. It's a rollover thing. I'm not a computerologist but I think it has to do with signed integers or alien warfare or something like that.

As for bigger bags, I went out and made myself a "bank guild" on an alt. I paid people to sign a guild charter and when I got the guild made, I kicked them all out (with compensation, and they knew what they were in for). I bought a few guild bank tabs and now I have tons of storage space. I like to keep them packed full of prospectable ores that I buy when they are cheap, because most of my earnings really come from ores.

As I type this I am checking on my auctions. It's not looking good. I've only made about 400g and I have over 300 items listed. I think that 4.2 being around the corner is freezing the markets on raw crafting items. This sort of sucks because I spent a lot of gold on listing fees.

[--Pete]

Hi,

I'm not a computerologist but I think it has to do with signed integers or alien warfare or something like that.

It has to do with code monkeys at keyboards -- see my edit to the above post.

As for bigger bags, I went out and made myself a "bank guild" on an alt.

Storage space is nice, but doesn't help much in straight banking where everything you own is either in the mailbox, in the AH, or being transported from the mailbox to the AH (i.e., in your bags). The bigger the bags, the fewer the trips (although the difference from all 20 slot to all 22 slot would seldom save as much as one trip, so the expense was not really justified).

As I type this I am checking on my auctions. It's not looking good. I've only made about 400g and I have over 300 items listed. I think that 4.2 being around the corner is freezing the markets on raw crafting items. This sort of sucks because I spent a lot of gold on listing fees.

Yeah, that's usually the way things went. I'd cut back on purchases and offer things at better prices just before a major patch. That way I'd reduce inventory which might be a loss after the patch. When the patch came out, I'd be real cautious on purchases till I had about a ten day to two week data set on the new information situation. (EDIT: data is information. )

--Pete

[DeeBye]

Storage space is nice, but doesn't help much in straight banking where everything you own is either in the mailbox, in the AH, or being transported from the mailbox to the AH (i.e., in your bags). The bigger the bags, the fewer the trips (although the difference from all 20 slot to all 22 slot would seldom save as much as one trip, so the expense was not really justified).

As I've said before, most of my money is made from prospecting ore. I don't mine the ores myself, because that's for suckers. I buy ore in bulk. When ore is cheap, I buy lots and lots of it. I really do need a massive amount of storage for all of that ore until I can find time to prospect it all. I also don't want to prospect and post too many gems at once, because that just saturates the market too much and many of them just won't sell and I'd waste listing fees.

[--Pete]

Hi,

As I've said before, most of my money is made from prospecting ore. I don't mine the ores myself, because that's for suckers. I buy ore in bulk. When ore is cheap, I buy lots and lots of it. I really do need a massive amount of storage for all of that ore until I can find time to prospect it all. I also don't want to prospect and post too many gems at once, because that just saturates the market too much and many of them just won't sell and I'd waste listing fees.

Right. And I agree -- I was just pointing out why bank/guild storage isn't too much in demand the way *I* work the AH. Different strokes, etc.

I did try various things, but found that plain flipping of bargains gave the best return on my *time*. That might no longer be true with all the changes in the game. However, when you factor in the effort and time it takes to skill up, I still think that may still be true.

Of course, if someone is playing the game in the "normal" manner and just doing banking as a sideline, then there are other considerations.

--Pete

[DeeBye]

I did try various things, but found that plain flipping of bargains gave the best return on my *time*. That might no longer be true with all the changes in the game. However, when you factor in the effort and time it takes to skill up, I still think that may still be true.

I originally tried going the Auctioneer-flip-bargains route and I just couldn't get into it. I was always annoyed when I got stuck with a bad deal and had to eat a loss in profit. That turned me off of flipping.

Your method is probably better for people that study market trends and likely turns a far greater profit from investment, but my method doesn't require any micromanagement and is a nice, steady stream of incoming wealth. I guess it's like stacking AP vs. crit. Your crits get bigger numbers, but my AP gets smaller numbers way more often.

With my current JC/Alch/Enchanting strategy, everything is profit. There is a market for almost all of the uncut gems I post, and whatever doesn't sell I turn into rings/necks and mail them off to my Disenchanter. The Alchemist just does daily Transmutes (stockpiling Truegolds right now in anticipation of the new crafting recipes in 4.2).

As for time invested, I had to level 2 characters to 85 (and the required tradeskills) for it to really work. Once I got there, the time I spend making money isn't a whole lot. Prospecting ores takes the longest amount of time, but I set aside that job for when I am watching something on TV. I'd say I spend less than 15 minutes per day solely doing money-making stuff. The biggest chunk of that time is prospecting, and the second biggest chunk of that time is sifting through my mailbox. If I don't have to prospect, I can do my auctioning in no time at all.

[--Pete]

Hi,

I originally tried going the Auctioneer-flip-bargains route and I just couldn't get into it. I was always annoyed when I got stuck with a bad deal and had to eat a loss in profit. That turned me off of flipping.

We lose 5 gold on each item, but we make up for it in volume.

It bugged me at first. You have to watch out for Chinese Auction items that will lose you money through too many postings. but with a little practice, I got fair at cutting my losses and keeping my eye on overall profits rather than profits or losses on individual items.

Your method is probably better for people that study market trends and likely turns a far greater profit from investment, but my method doesn't require any micromanagement and is a nice, steady stream of incoming wealth.

Keep in mind that when I was doing that, there was little else I could do. My mental and physical condition, not to mention my computer, pretty much eliminated most things. Eating (a small matter at the time), sleeping (14 to 16 hours a day), and watching TV were about my only other activities. So AH banking gave me something that scratched my itch for something to analyze.

As for time invested, I had to level 2 characters to 85 (and the required tradeskills) for it to really work. Once I got there, the time I spend making money isn't a whole lot.

I don't know how I could level characters without fighting, which I could not do. My bankers ranged in level from 1 to 7 (IIRC) and that only because some of them turned banker after having started as something else.

Prospecting ores takes the longest amount of time, but I set aside that job for when I am watching something on TV.

I'd say I did all my banking while watching TV. I only watch things recorded on TiVo or streamed. So, if more than cursory attention was required, I could always pause the TV. Between an auto-mail program and Auctioneer, many of the routine tasks were greatly automated -- a good thing since, with about 4 to 6,000 items cycling through the AH every two days, every second added to the process per item added about an hour per day to banking.

I'd say I spend less than 15 minutes per day solely doing money-making stuff. The biggest chunk of that time is prospecting, and the second biggest chunk of that time is sifting through my mailbox. If I don't have to prospect, I can do my auctioning in no time at all.

I started out banking almost by accident. Sue and I had avatars we played together. I felt we were getting ripped off by selling a lot of our stuff "in the field" as it were, but traveling to a main city to the AH was just too much of a hassle. Since there were mailboxes most everywhere, I got the idea of sticking one of my rarely played characters near an AH. Then I started flipping things, since I was there anyway. Back then, it was about ten to fifteen minutes a day. No matter how you do it, banking can be a minor item or a major time sink.

--Pete

[DeeBye]

Well I made 3k gold today, but then someone went and dumped almost 200 stacks of Obsidium Ore on the AH for 25g each. I bought them all out and sent them to my bank alt for future prospecting. Today I'm in the hole for about 2k gold, but my bank alt is brimming with money-making ores!

[--Pete]

Hi,

Well I made 3k gold today, but then someone went and dumped almost 200 stacks of Obsidium Ore on the AH for 25g each. I bought them all out and sent them to my bank alt for future prospecting. Today I'm in the hole for about 2k gold, but my bank alt is brimming with money-making ores!

Well played. Literally.

--Pete