The Circle is Now Complete

(Rorik at Light's Trust in Dragonblight)

I have to admit it, I’m a sucker for Star Wars quotes. I love using them when I can. Not the new prequel movies mind you. I only quote from Episode IV, V and VI. I’d much prefer if the new movies were never made. Anyway, the circle in this case is me going back to Protection.

Long ago, when the Burning Crusade first came out, my wife and I decided to try out this Warcraft game. I decided that once I could, I’d level as a Protection Paladin. I liked tanking monsters while my wife’s hunter Tamaril did the pewpew and killed stuff. It’s in my nature to be the meat shield while she stands at a safe distance. Leveling to 70 as a tank was fun. Even without Tamaril there to kill stuff for me, I’d go around Hellfire and gather up as many vultures as I could and tank them all without dying. To me, it really embodied what a Paladin was. Sword and shield, against the odds, bashing skulls in. It just felt like what an old school D&D Paladin should be. Once I hit 70, I realized that tanks were only for raiding and PvE and I really hated PvE. So, I went Holy and hated that even more. That left me with Retribution. So, when Ret got its first major facelift in Burning Crusade, I respeced and stayed Ret until I started Arena Season 5 after I hit 80. I’d go back and forth between Ret and Holy - Ret for questing and raiding (which I don’t mind in Lich King) and Holy for Arena with Krys, my Survival Hunter partner in 2’s.

Last week I read on Arena Junkies a thread talking about “Deep prot healing spec for 2’s” and was really intrigued. I read up as much as possible on it and saw the advantages. Protection got some major buffs recently that have great utility for PvP.

Avengers Shield silencing for 3 seconds? 20 second cool down on Hammer of Justice? I’ll take it! The other great thing is that spell power scales off of stamina! So, I came home, respeced my typical Holy spec and went deep protection with some Holy talents for increased healing. I had come home to the spec I was using to level to 70. It feels more natural to me than Holy ever did and it’s a blast to play. I use my Holy gear to do Arena matches. My Flash of Light crits can hit for 7300 health, take 2% of my mana pool and I don’t have my Glyph of Seal of Light yet. With more PvP gear and the glyph, I may be able to hit 8k Flash of Light crits. I have to make a few minor tweaks to the talent build, like a few points in Redoubt so I can tank melee better. The crowd control is beyond belief and I feel it really helps give Krys the ability to get a killing blow. What’s really great is that I’m dual spec and change to Ret for questing because I hit like a wet noodle.

It feels good to be a tank again.

Hot or Not?

Today we at the WoW Street Journal bring you this week's Hot or Not by staff reporter Cathy C.

WHAT’S HOT & WHAT’S NOT

I have another category called "cooled" items since some items are still popular but the price has dropped somewhat.

Frost Lotus

Hot – The price of the Frost Lotus did not increase until the second week after the patch. I attribute this to raiding schedules. Most people in the first week after the patch were busy with their duel spec, the Argent Tournament or making goldJ


Glyphs

Cooled - Initially, my husband was making $1,600-$1,800 per day making and selling glyphs and is now making $600 per day. It was much more work than Chris anticipated with keeping up on the herbs and he had spent a ton of gold on the Book of Glyph Mastery.


Book of Glyph Mastery

Cooled – Prices on the books have dropped to about $400 on our server from a whopping 1-2k. Although they are popular as all Scribes want them, there’s something like 61 new Glyphs to get. Unless you are fortunate to get them in a Naxx run or have a guildie pass one your way, it gets very expensive to collect them. Hubby was fortunate enough to get 3 from Naxx. He has purchased about 15 of them and so to avoid replication of glyphs within the guild, they allow him to loot this item. So, try for some Naxx runs.


Flasks

Hot – With more people raiding I am selling tons of flasks but only make Endless Rage since it appears to selling the best. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday seem to be the best nights and I generally sell about 30 flasks per night if I’m available to continually place my flasks up in the AH.


Herbs

Cooled - It appears herbs, other than Lichbloom, are beginning to cool as inscribers perhaps are selling less glyphs. Icethorn has dropped in price and is a good one to purchase as a Northrend Herb to mill and exchange the Ink of the Sea for other inks you may need.

Gems

NOT – I know Mille mentioned in a previous post that she is making gold from gems, but for me I was having too many gems returned. I absolutely agree about strength gems that they are the top seller for sure. My expectations were probably too high. Prices didn’t pop up and there is a lot of undercutting. So I’m sticking with making the new PVP neck and ring pieces which I’m selling periodically. This at least frees up on my bags of some of the less valuable blue and green gems.

The new storm gems are bringing in a pretty penny for about 500g each.

Leatherworking (General)

NOT – Upon speaking with an experienced Leatherworker, I was advised there was little gold coming in from this profession. The price of heavy leathers has dropped and really not worth farming. Perhaps as new patterns from Ulduar appear there may be mats that will take a hike in price and need. He advised me that Runed Orbs were not in circulation as yet and a requirement I believe for most the Ulduar patterns.


Blacksmithing

NOT - From what I can gather again this profession is not a big money maker and is in the same position as Leatherworking that perhaps sales will increase as mats become in higher demand.

The WoW Index

After a few weeks of collecting data in the Market Watcher addon, I finally have some decent charts for the WoW Index. The great thing about taking a look at this kind of data is to see when it's best to buy, sell and farm. Looking at Saronite ore, we can see that weekends are definitely the best time to either farm if you can, or buy and prospect for gems. Another thing the graphs show is that since the patch and Arena season 6, the demand for Infinite dust and Dragonfin has gone up at a steady and moderate rate.

If you're having trouble figuring out what day is best to sell or buy or what to focus on during the weekend, install Market Watcher and scan every day until you get a good 2 weeks worth of data. Being able to visualize what's happening with a market can be a great way to figure out what to do.

Enchanted with Enchanting (and Jumping for Gems)

Today we have an article by guest reporter Millie. (Sorry I forgot to post it sooner!)

With the release of Patch 3.1 my hopes were high (thanks to my husband, Rorik) for enchanting and jewel crafting to bring in great sums of gold. Much to my chagrin things were looking a wee bit grim on the Auction House immediately after the patch. Enchanting supplies and gems were both in the gutter. But the WoW Gods were smiling down on me because Arena Season 6 was just around the corner. Thanks to Rorik’s advice I made 400 gold last night, mainly from enchanting supplies. Gems also brought in some cash, including “lowbie” gems such as +12 strength. The key? Patience!

Now that season 6 has started and guilds are also starting to get through Ulduar, more and more gear is being replaced. And what good is sweet new gear without some sparkly new gems and ritzy enchants? That’s where you come in. If you’re an enchanter and/or jewel crafter, NOW is the time to make good on your professions. Below are some tips and tricks to help move your supplies along and get you rolling in dough.

Tip #1 – The prime time for selling gems and enchants is after 10:00. This is usually when guilds call it a night for raiding and people finish up arenas and battlegrounds. But before you go to bed, what is the first thing your potential customers do? They run to the AH to purchase your goods and buff up their sweet new gear. So, if you have enchanting supplies or gems put them up before you go to bed! In the morning you’ll have a mailbox full of gold. It’s just like putting your tooth under your pillow and waiting for the tooth fairy to come, only it’s way better!

Tip #2 – Scrolls sell! If you can find someone to make you Armor Vellum the return you get on scroll sales is through the roof. However, you will still make a pretty penny if you purchase Vellum. Last night I got a stack of 5 Armor Vellum III for 36 gold. I made 5 Scroll of Enchant Chest – Superior Stats and sold each for an average of 38 gold. That means I made 154 gold, roughly a 230% profit. WEWT! The best part is, there is no deposit required for scrolls or any other enchanting supplies.

Tip #3 – Infinite Dust means infinite riches! The stuff goes so fast you’ll have to keep posting more every hour just to keep up. Again, no deposit required.

Tip #4 – If you have Greater Cosmic Essences, break them down into Lesser ones and sell them for a higher price. I was selling single units of Lesser Cosmic Essence last night for 7G 50S. For whatever reason, Greater Cosmic Essence sells for a lower price. I guess people don’t realize you can break one Greater Essence down into 3 Lesser Essences. Take advantage of stupid people.

Tip #5 – Gems are going up in value. If you see some jerk post any gem for 50% lower than the next highest post, BUY THEM and re-post at a higher price, just slightly under the next highest seller. People don’t realize the value of gems is going up. Take advantage while you can.

Tip #6 – Strength is where it’s at. According to Rorik’s research last night Strength gems are going for an extremely high price. My guess is that there are lots of DK’s out there getting new arena gear and they want to make themselves even more OP than they already are.

Tip #7 – The most important tip of all. BE PATIENT! If you knew me you would probably laugh at me for saying that. I have the least patience of any person I know. But if something isn’t selling right away, hang in there. Demand will eventually go up. Keep checking auction prices. Don’t undercut by too much and as Cathy has said before, if someone undercuts you by a little, re-list at a lower price…just don’t go too crazy.

Hopefully you’ll find these tips useful. I know I was pleasantly surprised this morning when I woke up and saw all those auction sales in my mailbox. Of course, I have to give credit where credit is due. If it weren’t for Rorik convincing me to become a JC/Enchanter I’d probably still be very poor. After all, I don’t think I can compete with Cathy’s herbing and flask business!

The WoW Index

I've been working on a project for this site which is to display an index of the top auction house consumables. It hasn't been going as planned. I originally wanted to mimic what the Dow Jones Industrial Average does, but coming up with a way to determine each items sale price is a bit troublesome.

The problem starts with the fact that the auction house isn't really like the stock market. If you want to buy a share of Walmart stock, you look up the price online and that's what you pay. There isn't 50 different prices for Walmart stock. But that's how the auction house works. This means that the auction house in WoW is more like a commodities exchange like the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, which sells stuff like corn, lumber and gold. Even that comparison is a bit of a stretch.

So, the WoW Jones Industrial Average will be more of a collection of graphs that I compile using the addon Market Watcher. I'll have my first graphs up soon showing how the price of things like saronite, buff food and flasks have gone up and down over the past weeks.

In non-economy news, I've started doing Arena matches for season 6. Starting from 0 points is kinda cool. A loss doesn't mean much other than a way to learn from our mistakes and a win is about 45 points or so. For 2v2, I've been playing with Krys, the hunter I've PvP'ed with for a while now. For 3's, it's me, Krys and my wife's death knight. The DK has some pretty low grade crafted gear right now, but we're still managing to win some. Things seem more "bursty" now compared to last season, even though Krys and I have more resilience. Maybe it has something to do with how Holy was changed around from last season. I'm definitely having issues keeping up with damage, even in 2's, compared to last season. Warriors are absolutely sick now. I have to keep far enough away from them so that if I need to bubble, the warrior won't just immediately smash the bubble and kill me. I guess I'll have to spend more time on Arena Junkies trying to figure out what I'm doing wrong.

On customer anger and stealth nerfs

A few quick items today. First, one of the guys we run Naxx 25 with on occasion got an in-game mail last night from an upset customer. What would a customer have to gripe about if all items in game are of equal quality (e.g. all flasks of endless rage are exactly the same)? Well the price of course! With flasks and glyphs going like hotcakes, herbs are also going up in price. Our PUG friend was selling frost lotus at about 18 gold each, where pre 3.1, they were around 8 gold each according to Cathy. This angry consumer basically told our friend that he was a jerk and shouldn’t rip people off. I say, good for you, PUG friend! Keep it up!



On another note, paladins got nerfed…again. This time it was a stealth nerf. No patch notes, no nothing. Exorcism before Tuesday was doing damage to enemy players, now it only does damage to monsters. I understand why Ghostcrawler and his coworkers at Blizzard did it, but not announcing it or including it in the patch notes is pretty crappy customer service. Remember, we pay for this game and are customers. I’ve quit WoW for another MMO before and I can certainly do it again. I was really excited to start doing Arenas with my paladin as Ret again too. Now it’s back to Holy.

And I heal and I heal and I heal and I heal and I heal and I heal. /yawn

I wonder how Warhammer is coming along…


*PS - I think Tom over at Blessing of Might said it best: http://blessingofmight.blogspot.com/2009/04/exorcism-can-no-longer-be-used-on.html

The 2-Hour Crazy Lady

By staff reporter Cathy C.

Yes that’s me!! For two hours, a couple of nights per week, I stand in the Auction House with my multitude of flasks (my HOT item). You should start heading to the AH around 6:00 pm. Presently, Endless Rage is just that ..endless. None of the other flasks are doing nearly as well in price and sales.

Where to Start:

Firstly I will do an item search for my flasks. What’s the price? How many sellers? Are there any flask spammers with 50 flasks up? With all these questions answered, my first decision will be whether the price I’m using to maintain the lowest bid is profitable enough for me. If it isn’t and the prices are too low and too many flasks listed, I’ll either check back later or hold off until another night.

For tonight, lets say it was a prime selling situation (since it actually was). The price point was perfect, not an over abundance of sellers or flasks. Since I am in competition with my husband, he takes the 5 stack approach and I take the singles.

Next Step:

I will take my first 2 flasks and undercut by about 10-25 silver. While I wait for the first couple to sell I give shout outs for other items in my bags that I’ve crafted from Jewel Crafting. Within a few minutes the first 2 are gone and I replace them immediately with 2 more. Now, if one of the other sellers is checking periodically on the Endless Rage situation, he will just see the same 2 flasks I’ve had up with the same price point. Later, he may undercut thinking he is safe, but immediately go just a few silver lower with two more flasks and remove the other two you had listed at the higher cost. This happened to me 2 or 3 times this evening but I just keep slightly undercutting. As long as I was still comfortable with the price point, I was in the game and kept my sales moving. Most of the 2 hours I would simply replace the 2 flasks without issue. With Ulduar raiding starting to rise, I was selling them probably every couple of minutes at times. Shortly after 8 pm things will die off. I sold about 40 flasks this evening in about 2 hour period with little variation in my price.

Final Step

I certainly realize this particular strategy would make many people cringe. It takes tons of patience and is not for everyone but I like the excitement of seeing my stuff moving so quickly and staying on top of the sales for that night. Most important thing to remember is to call it a night if someone undercuts by a ton. The time you spent in farming the mats has value so don’t sell yourself short.

Additional Tip: Always have an Elixir Master make your flasks so you can enjoy the procs.

My Broker

I don't have a banker. I have a broker. I can't tell you the name of my broker. Why? Well first, I'll tell you why I call this character a broker and not a banker.

To me a banker is just a pack mule - a character used to store your junk. You park him at the bank and he runs from there to the mailbox and that's it. Sure, your banker can post stuff on the auction house for you, but the vast majority of his time is spent moving goods to the bank or his bags.

A broker is a character that is used to play the auction house. My broker has a section of a bag dedicated to keeping 1 of a few types of goods just so that I don't have to type in the name when I search for them. For example, a stack of saronite, 1 infinite dust and 1 buff food. The reason I only use a stack of one is that it makes it easy to see what the market price is when I mouse over it. It makes determining prices for items I post easier to compute if I feel that Auctioneer isn't pricing well due to the quantity on sale at the time. My broker is also the character I use to scan the auction house every morning and holds the vast majority of my cash.

So, why don't I reveal my broker's identity? Because sometimes I undercut and sometimes I buy low and relist and some of the people I undercut and relist from are guildmates or players I know in game. I don't do it maliciously. Most of the time I don't even realize I've undercut them until I do another scan of that item and see their name listed. If someone I know undercuts me I definitely don't take it personally, quite the contrary, I expect them to in order to be competitive and make money. I just don't want to deal with the possibility that one of them would take it personally. The Greedy Goblin would probably scold me for this but sometimes when I see a guildmate has something posted, I'll even post at the same price even though he/she has no idea who my broker is.

Hot or Not?

Today's post comes to you from a fellow guildmate of mine, Cathy. Cathy has a lot of experience at working the auction house as a power farmer/crafter. She farms extensively on her and her family's characters and then converts it all to consumables to sell for quite a bit of profit.

And now...

What’s Hot & What’s Not? Patch 3.1
By guest reporter Cathy

As an avid farmer, I had my plan in place a couple of months before the patch as to how I would make my fortune from Patch 3.1. Having 3 players in my home certainly helps as I can farm for herbs on my daughter’s toon, make flasks on my husband’s toon, sell gems on my main, fish to cook buffed food, and make titansteel on my main and my alt.

Did I make projections that bit me in the ass? Absolutely, but for the most part it’s been quite a windfall. Now, I’ll tell you what’s hot and what’s not in 3.1 from my professions prospective and sales. Unfortunately, I’m sure there are other views that can be filled in by Blacksmiths and Leatherworkers as we don’t have any in our household :)


Titansteel
NOT – I didn’t take into consideration that the drops for the BS patterns would rarely come up as people slowly make their way through Ulduar. Therefore, prices dropped to 70g as oppose to 90g before the patch. My hope was for 120g per titansteel. I have been selling them regularly at that price and should have all 40 sold by the end of today.


Buffed Food
HOT – The buffed food I had stored is certainly selling, but not at prices that were higher before the patch. Sometimes I need to re-list, but most are selling. Blackened Dragonfin is a great one with a +40 agility buff, but takes 2 fish instead of 1 to make. It seems to always sell without re-listing. Attack power food does well, followed by crit and spell power food. My biggest disappointment was the +spirit buffed food (Cuttlefish). I thought with the nerf to mana regen it would sell really well, but ..no luck. It’s the most difficult to sell. I’ve been joking with my guildies about making my fortune from their misfortune, so I better hand out some free cuttlefish (blush). Increased runs of Ulduar should help keep the buffed food market moving forward.

Gems
NOT – I say “not” for the gems because the price only rose for a day then seemed to fall. I think after a day or so the prices came down to where they were before the patch. The Scarlet Rubies may pop in price from time to time, but overall I was disappointed with the sales. As Rorik suggested to me, perhaps when the new PVP season starts prices will take a hike. Overall gems sales for me were disappointing.


Glyphs
HOT – Glyphs are one of the biggest sellers with duel spec. Since my hubby is a Scribe he has been making a small fortune since the patch. The Books of Glyph Mastery that contain the new recipes are in high demand with high prices of 1000-2000. Everyone wants those 50 world drop glyphs. Hubby has gotten 6 Books and makes from 50-100g each new glyph. He is always hoping for a glyph that has not been discovered yet on the server. Keeping up on the mats is the challenge.

Herbs
HOT – Herbs are selling well but the price has not increased much and now with the mats changing for Endless Rage, Goldclover has increased in price, but fireleaf has decreased. Soooo I made a big mistake with 3 stacks of fireleaf in the bank that I didn’t turn into flasks before the patch, so I took a hit on those.

Flasks
HOT – This is my bread winner for this patch. With tons of herbs stored I’ve been selling tons of Endless Rage. I haven’t bothered with any others because the sales are steady with this flask. With more people beginning Ulduar more flasks will be required. I’ve only just run out of mats this morning and had to do some farming. I’ve sold probably 80 flasks.

Eternal Belt Buckles
HOT – For me, this was a hot commodity the first day or two, selling for about 60g each. The price has been up and down so keep an eye on your auctions for this one. Price may pop up again for the next season of arena.

Enchanting
HOT – Although we don’t have any enchanters in the house, I do know this profession is doing well. The only complaints I hear from guildies in this profession is that keeping up with the mats can be a pain. This is another hot item that should continue to do well through the new pvp season.

To make gold in the game it just takes time. Dedicate some time each day or every other day to farm items that will bring gold your way. If your professions are not making money at this time, see what rep items like the Relics of Ulduar are bringing in. They were very hot for a while. Farm specific mats that are in high demand. OH… and of course there are lots of dailies, which may not make you rich, but keep you on top of repairs food/pots etc.

If you don’t have fishing and cooking on at least one toon…SHAME ON YOU!!. These are free professions that have been making me a nice sum. Even if you just did the cooking daily, the 10 spices you get from the quest will get you roughly 25g per day.

With all the mats I had stored up, my goal was to make 10k from this patch and thus far since Tuesday hit I’m at 9068g and should hit my target by tonight. Not too shabby at all. I look forward to hearing from others about their “Hot” sales from this patch.

Daily Quests

Daily quests are important for the economy. They are essentially the virtual form of "work" that the vast number of us do every day. It injects new money into the economy which is needed to keep the economic engine going and prices from falling too far. Imagine if you no longer received gold from completing quests or selling items to a vendor. With a stagnant money supply and continual production of consumables, eventually the people who purchased those consumables would start running out of money to buy things with. Our supply and demand curves would say that high supply and low demand means low prices. So, to keep rapid deflation under check, do your dailies! I do have an ulterior motive for wanting people to do dailies. It gives them money to buy my stuff. :)

The best kind of daily quest is one that gives something in addition to a monetary reward, like reputation with a faction. Doing dailies just for gold really gets tedious and I've pretty much given up on it except for 2 fast and easy Ebon Hold quests that I can do while mining. The new Argent Tournament dailies are great in that they aren't "grindy". They've got me interested in playing the game again and the gold is an added bonus. Hopefully in a month or so I'll be proudly wearing the Crusader title, even though I'll miss my current title of "The Argent Champion".

Bull market on Glyphs

In case you are a Scribe and missed the boat on this one, two WoW Economy bloggers are reporting that glyphs are selling so fast that they are running out of supplies to make them. In other words, start selling glyphs NOW. I don't know if they will continue to sell throughout the weekend, but given the server stability on Bleeding Hollow, I'd say yes.

Click the links to hear the detailed glyph reports from:

The Greedy Goblin

and

Just My Two Copper

One more side note on this. The Goblin is saying that his ink supplies are running out. This means that the market for herbs may be affected by the glyph market. If you're an herbalist, check prices and supply and if things look good, start farming. I'll be investigating this further when I get home tonight.

The WoW Jones Industrial Average

The New York Stock Exchange has a stock index used to gauge performance of the market called the Dow Jones Industrial Average. I've been thinking that Warcraft needs something similar, so I'm going to try to create an index of the Alliance auction house on Bleeding Hollow. It will be called the The WoW Jones Industrial Average or "The WoW" for short. The Dow is an index of 30 companies on the NYSE and was originally a simple average of their stock prices. The formula is a bit more complex now but for my needs I think a simple average will do.

So, over the next few weeks I'll be gathering data and showing how I calculate my WoW index. I'll also be compiling a list of high traffic items on the auction house to use as the "stocks" in my calculations. I'll probably use Saronite Ore, heavy borean leather, a few popular flasks used by regular raiders, popular cut gems, buff food and Infinite dust.

Is there anything else that you think should be included in The WoW?

The Tax Man Cometh

I was going to post a wall of text today, dealing with my concerns over the economic direction of this country. Rather than beat people over the head with my fiscally conservative philosophy, I’d rather just say that taxing the rich and expanding the nanny state isn’t a good idea.

Consider these numbers:

This year my wife and I paid 15% of our income (adjusted after deductions) in federal income tax. A family making an adjusted $150,000/year would pay 20% of their income in federal tax and a family making an adjusted $250,000/year would pay 25% of their income in federal tax. Finally, a family making an adjusted $500,000/year pays twice what I pay as a percentage which is 30% in federal tax. That equates to $150,000 in taxes.

And those are the 2008 tax figures. Taxes are going to become much more punitive over the next few years. Sure, they can afford it, but does it make it right?

235 years ago if this kind of taxation was going on, we’d be dressing up like Native Americans and throwing tea into Boston Harbor.

I think the picture above sums up my opinions on the subject pretty well.

(Picture courtesy of the Tax Day Tea Party website http://taxdayteaparty.com/ )

*Edit

Here's a link to the proposed tax increases in the Obama budget:

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/02/obamas-budget-a.html

This is the last I'll say about real life economics for a little while. Now that 3.1 is out, it's back to the Auction House and more WoW related material.

3.1 incoming!

It looks like patch 3.1 is being release today. Gentlemen, start your economic engines! I don't expect hyper inflation like past patches, but I do think things will start to move faster and prices of raw materials and consumables will increase by 10-20%.

Tomorrow is Tax Day here in the U.S. so prepare for incoming non-WoW related wall of text.

My business

I'll give Gevlon the Greedy Goblin credit for coming up with this idea, but I wanted to say it again here so people have a clear understanding of what a business in WoW is. I've also elaborated on it a bit.

Most players in WoW are running a business and they don't even know it. Businesses can be categorized 4 ways:

Farmer
Entrepreneur
Factory Owner
Commodities trader

The Farmer is just that, someone who has a gathering skill and gathers good to sell in their raw form on the auction house. The backbone of the economy, they provide goods to the other three businesses.

The Entrepreneur is a tradesman who makes and sells his/her own goods. Characters with the gathering/crafting synergy professions like Herbalism/Alchemy fall into this category. See, you're a businessman and don't even know it! Hopefully this blog will get you to start acting like one. Marxists call you people the "petite bourgeoisie".

The Factory Owner is much more rare. A factory owner hires skilled laborers to assemble a product using materials that the owner provides. To a Marxist, this person is the evil Bourgeoise. In WoW terms, a factory owner is someone who buys materials in mass quantities and pays a player to create an item that the factory owner will sell on the auction house.

The Commodities traders to me are people who work the auction house like the stock market. These are the people who use Auctioneer and scour the AH for underpriced goods that they know will move, buy the item and relist it for a decent profit.

I've tried all 4 and for a while was almost exclusively a farmer. I got tired of seeing the price of ore fall lower and lower so I got smart and started to investigate the other three. The one I've done the least with is the Factory Owner. For the most part, I'd rather not deal with the hassle of finding someone willing to make a bunch of stuff for me and I always assume they'll get wise and start making the stuff themselves, thus becoming my competition.

I think the art of the Auction House is the art of becoming a really good Commodities trader, either by just doing the traditional buy low/sell high, or by purchasing raw materials for a super low price and using it to craft something that sells well and for a decent profit. My most successful attempt at "working" the auction house as a commodities trader was when for a few weeks, buff food was selling for about 60 gold per stack of 20. I bought it all up and sat on it until it became rare again and started selling for 100-120/stack. I sold everything that I bought and then some for a nice profit.

Market trends

One thing I want to do here is post some weekly price trends in graph form. I downloaded an addon called Market Watcher that is supposed to generate graphs to do just that. I'm having some issues with it, so it may take a little while before I have it figured out. Once I get the technical details worked out, I plan on scanning a few key items every morning before I leave for work and then post a graph on Monday evening.

Common sense would say that farmed materials and consumables would go down in price over the weekend and hit rock bottom on Monday evening, then shoot back up from Tuesday through Thursday. I'm curious to see if there is anything that does the opposite.

From memory, I know that the price of Saronite ore drops like a stone on Sunday evening. If you're a Jewelcrafter, this is a great time to scoop up some cheap ore to prospect.

What weekly price trends have you noticed?

Depress-recess-flation

There have been quite a few posts recently about the depression/recession/deflation of the WoW economy and it seems that every one has a different explanation as to why it's happening. The one I tend to believe most is the simplest, which is supply and demand. Demand is low because just about everyone has maxed out on gear (whether it be PvE or PvP) and supply is high because players have nothing better to do than farm.

Well, that theory applies to Northrend quality goods. Another observation I had was that those same bored players are leveling alts which are now very close to level 80, or already there. As I have seen when on my "broker" (he's not a banker) my old world materials are selling fast and at very nice prices.

So, over the next week while we wait for patch 3.1, I'll be farming in Azeroth and the Outlands hoping to supply tradeskill leveling materials to the masses.

Once 3.1 hits, we may see better than expected price inflation for crafting supplies as players start running their alts through raids in addition to higher end guilds getting gear and patterns from Ulduar.

Leading a horse to water...

Or in this case, leading a tailor to profit. A little while ago when I was reading a bunch of old Greedy Goblin posts looking for some hidden bit of wisdom on making money via the Auction House, I came across one of his (Gevlon’s) businesses of making bags. He doesn’t make the really expensive bags that sell for 700 gold each. Gevlon doesn’t want to sell Ferraris or Lamborghinis. He’d rather sell Corollas. In this case the Corolla is a 16 slot Netherweave Bag. Yea, they’re old school and smallish, but there’s a demand for them from players who want bags for alts and bankers.

Here’s the business plan. It takes a stack of 20 netherweave cloth plus a Rune Thread to make a bag. Stacks of netherweave can go from 3 to 6 gold on my server and the thread is 50 silver from a vendor. The bags usually list from between 8 and 10 gold. So, the Tailor simply buys mass quantities of Rune Thread and cheap stacks of Netherweave cloth and makes bags – lots of them – for around 3 gold cost each. Then the bags can be sold for an undercut price that will keep them moving and bring in a small profit. The key here is volume and the fact that it would take no more than 5 minutes to make more bags than could fit in your inventory.

I don’t have a tailor and the markup isn’t really large enough to justify paying a tailor to make them for me, so I decided to be a nice friend and told one of my real life best friends about the possible Netherweave Bag market. He has a lvl 70 tailor mage who is gathering dust as he slowly levels his warrior. I told him about the bag business and was hoping he'd find a nice niche business for himself that would help pay for his epic flying skill. Unfortunately, he didn't do a thing with it. After a week of him doing nothing, I told a guild mate tailor who was trying to sell Ferraris (Glacial Bags) about the potential Netherweave Bag market. After a few minutes of going back and forth about the virtues of this potential untapped market, he told me that a few gold per bag just wasn’t worth it to him.

I know there’s a chance that the bag market on my server isn’t anywhere near as good as on Gevlon’s server, but given the cost of finding out, I just don’t understand why someone wouldn’t try. Maybe it’s time for me to risk the cost of paying someone to make bags and start a Netherweave Bag Factory.

Welcome

Welcome to the WoW Street Journal. I'll be posting my commentary and analysis of the great WoW economy sites listed to the right as well as commentary on other great blogs and news sites. And just because sometimes I need a place to vent, I'll be posting about life on the server Bleeding Hollow as a human Paladin in the guild Aculeus Upon Ordeum.