Money Sinks of Wrath of the Litch King

The new Darkmooon Cards would be a fabulous money sink if they were sold by NPCs. Instead they are sold by Inscribers to players. I don't play enough to tell if the word is out about these cards among casual players, but I'm sure the raiding crowd has already snapped up these gems. Casual players are in luck though, as:

Berserker!
Death
Greatness (comes in 4 flavors: Agi, Str, Spr, Int)
Illusion

are BoE and are obtained by collecting the Ace, 2,3,4,5,6,7,8 of the requisite decks from the AH or from a friendly scribe and handing them in to the Darkmoon Faire. Did I mention the requisite cards that compose the decks are made by inscribers? Oh, and they are expensive- appropriately so. The Ace sells for 3-5k on my server with the others going between 300-700g and more.

Why would I spend 5,000g on a multi-player, vendoring mount? Band of the Kirin Tor for 8,500g? Other frills abound, but none of them really have that must-have glow of the the Darkmoon Trinkets. In fact, I don't really see a large money sink in WOTLK. Perhaps some of these lesser frills are the new money sinks? Many impulsive 200-500g purchases may very well be a more sustainable sink than large, single 5000-20,000g purchases?

In addition to these large and medium-priced items, I would also note that the price of taxis have gone up, high-end buff food isn't cheap due to the Northern Spices effect and cloth for frostweave bags isn't cheap right now. Except for taxis, the last two items represent player exchanges in currency and can't really be considered a money sink. In fact, with the majority of nice blue equipment being BoE, there is a much more robust between-player economy in Wrath.

In conclusion, I believe that crafted armor and Darkmoon Cards may create a much more vibrant player-level economy and offer much interesting effect on game play than transportation upgrades. In addition, without compelling reasons to buy into new mounts, perhaps more affordable mounts, toys and taxis are the new gold sinks of WoW.

The Currencies of Wrath: Good ole Gold

Gold. Easy to obtain in small quantities, harder to obtain in large quantities and likely to be used in the purchase of a gold sink item to minimize inflation.

The Burning Crusade saw the introduction of Badges of Justice, which markedly diminished the value of gold. Gold no longer had the ability to buy high-end items. One had to brave the heroics and halls of Kara to gear-advance. However, at the end of Burning Crusade, Primal Nether became salable on the open market, restoring some of the value gold had initially lost. Still, the high-quality items made with P. Nether often required an armor or weapon crafting profession, which again put some restraint upon the ability of people to buy gold for gold sellers or grind gold to arrive at a nice purple set of gear.

Still, it is my impression that gold was very useful for picking up gems and enchant materials. Toward the end of TBC, I power leveled engineering, which cost a small fortune in gold. Gold still certainly is the currency for gaining access to the raw mats made by other professions.

In addition to gear for combat, gold also found its way into a big sink….Artisan Riding Skill- 5, 000g for those of you who may have forgotten. That 5kg got you into a flying mount that was 3.6x as fast as walking and allowed one to bypass “ground” content and for those with gathering skills, to gather up more mats to sell quicker.

In Wrath, is gold going to be as valuable? I can tell you that I may not pick up any additional riding skill unless it allows for a really cool mount. I’m thinking a quartz dragon with fire-breathing capability and a stewardess that does damage to other players (give it a long cooldown for balance). I really don’t see the need to carry other players around in a side-car or, for a druid, on my back. Why I would need to fly faster than I already do is also debatable. I already barely catch some of the nodes spawning on my herb radar due to the speed of Swift Flight Form. Perhaps Blizz will implement something in PvP or PvE that will require the fastest form of flight, and passengers, but until I see the need for that, I don’t plan on sinking my gold into a new riding skill.

That being said, if I have no sink, what will I do with all that extra gold? I am confident that I’ll be able to buy the things I need with gold made from questing, fishing, herbing and cooking. Now that inscription will require herbs and less pots will be required from alchemists due to potion sickness, I think herbs will remain a viable gathering profession. For a casual Druid- herbing remains the best profession due to the ability to gather while remaining in Flight Form.

As for inscriptions, enchants and gems, these items will likely still be in high demand and available on the AH for Good Ole Gold as will the new Frozen Orbs.

In conclusion, I don’t see gold leaving the game as a viable currency. Even without a riding skill gold sink, which I have faith Blizz will create somehow, gold will continue to have some value. Compared to TBC and Old World, I would expect that value to be slightly less.

The Currencies of Wrath: Frozen Orbs and Emblems of Heroism

It's all Beta. It's all speculation, but....

The new equivalent to Primal Nether, which were like trying to acquire water from a stone for casual players, is the the Frozen Orb. Currently, these tickets to purple gear (read: heroics, nice PvP stuff and high-level 10-man raids) are not BoP. If they remain non-BoP, this will create a nice market for upper level players, new opportunities for casual players to gear-up for raid content and more fun for everyone. Currently, these are also purchasable for the BoJ Wrath equivalent- Emblem of Heroism, available from heroics and such. Emblems can also be used to buy the new bind to account items.

The significance of a non-BoP Primal Nether equivalent is enormous for casual players. This will open up access to excellent craftable gear. Some of this gear may only be available to those that have the profession. So, if heroics are easier to enter for the casual player, Frozen Orbs are easier to obtain excellent gear is profession-only, it may well be worth leveling a profession to get in on these goodies for end-game use. Previously, the cost of Primal Nethers was largely prohibitive to casual players and most of the Primal Nether seemed to remain within guilds- as it probably should. If you do decide to change professions, remember that one should keep at least one gathering profession with which to make money (gold)- that is if gold remains important in Wrath.

For a druid, leatherworking + herbalism may be a potent combination now that Nether-like crafting substances are growing on trees (an overstatement). I have recently picked up Engineering and plan to keep it. Herbalism- my other profession- is going to be under the microscope as I enter Wrath. If gold seems less necessary in WotLK, which could be the case if the price of mounts and advanced riding is minimized), I may be switching my primary professions to Leatherworking and Engineering, while keeping fishing and cooking as gold-generating skills.

The Currencies of Wrath: Badge-like rewards

Grinding for 5k gold- 60 days.

Honored Faction with Cen. Expedition- 5 mos.

Having generous friends mailing you blue and purple items- priceless.

In lieu of that- choose your friends well- you may have to spend some of your own money and time to progress in WoW. By progress, I mean tricking out your toon for whatever it is that floats you boat or making dead those annoying end game fiends.

Currenlty, the main problem with WoW, from the casual perspective, is that there is only one set of tracks toward progression. These tracks begin on flat ground and slowly begin to climb. Each level of faction, PvP, arena rating and dungeon/raid the tracks get exponentially steeper. The result is that the engines that can't make it up the tracks are stuck without tangible goals, while those that can get to the top with effort asymptotically approaching- well a lot of time are rewarded with sweet gear, lore and bragging rights.

Disclaimer: casual players should not receive the high level of gear that more dedicated players receive, but they shouldn't be left with professions and guild chat either.

Fortunately, Wrath is shaping up to be much more casual-friendly. Blizzard seems to be laying out two newvsets of tracks, one of which has a steeper slope at the end than the other (25 vs 10-man instances). To examine the effects of this trend, I'd like to look at the 'currencies' in Wrath and how a casual player might go about earning them.

First, let's try to define what a casual player is and isn't. None of this is scientific, but I think there are at least 2 types of players out there.

Casual players are likely to participate in few activities that require more than 1.5 hrs of time in one sitting for approximately 2-3x per week. This means that casuals will do the occasional 5-man regular or heroic dungeon, quests, PvP in BGs, world PvP and low-rated arena play. A player in a generous guild of hardcore players or those in a well organized guild may even get the occasional shot at Kara or a 25-man. However, casual players are unlikely to be prominent figures in the bigger commitment 25-mans, , frequent heroics, frequent runs of 10-mans or highly-rated arena play- they simply don't spend enough time in-game to upgrade beyond good blue equipment to have an effect in the 25-man setting.

With that said, let's look into some of the currencies of Wrath:

Raid 'til your glabella hits the keyboard at a medium velocity? You will be rewarded with Badges of Justice.

The Past: Heroic Instances provided ~4 BoJ, while a full clear of Kara gave about 22 of these little buggers. From the perspective of a casual player, a full clear of Kara is rare and having the gear to run a heroic even more rare. Unfortunately, the number of badges needed for gear upgrades followed the same exponential increase in cost that turns away players unable to get ~30 or more badges per month. BoJ rewards were nice, but became the privilege of the dedicated raider.

The Future: With 10-mans, 25-mans, heroics and dailies, I will hope that the BoJ system offers those willing to do daily quests and regular instances a path to 10-mans, which will offer a path to heroics and, finally, a path to some end-game 10-mans. The full system hasn't been described yet, but hopefully badge acquisition will allow some line of gear progression at a rate obtainable by casual players for gear upgrades consistent with the 10-man end-game raids. The dropping of attunements and increases in faction rep acquisition will help lead to better gear and a higher success with upper level content.

While this is all speculation, if Blizz makes a change, I think this will be it: easier or two-tiered (10 vs 25) badge acquistion with rewards allowing progression into the 10-man line of end-game raids.

Next Edition: Repuations/Faction.
Future Editions: honor, arena points, spirit shard like systems, gold, professions.

Inflation?

One of my gold earning mainstays is the daily transmute of P. Earth to P. Water. Since 2.4, the price of P. Water has shot up about 10-14g- an increase of about 90% compared to pre-2.4 values. This appears to be the case on my server as well as Alliance-wide. There are concerns that the increased allowance for the number of daily quests will cause inflation. I think this is true and is contributing to inflation. Certainly, the availability of primals has remained stable, though many players seem to be holed -up in the Isle of Quel kill-stealing until their dailies are done, leaving little time for pesky gathering.

Additionally, never count out the power of the casual player. The casual player, once level 70, always has the option of gathering and grinding, which will add gold to the economy.

What does this mean for all of players? Stuff costs more now and stuff in WotLK is going to cost ALOT.


(end post)

Auc Advanced: Pitfalls

Using Auctioneer is not as simple as it may seem. Great caution must be taken in examining the prices of items. More caution must be taken the greater the rarity of the item. This is because Auctioneer Advanced (AA) lists most of its valuations based on the listed buyout prices. These are not the actual prices the item sold for, but the listing prices. This choice of pricing metric can lead to very misleading information.

Example 1: Insufficient Data- I recently had the Enchant Chest +12 Resilience plan drop. This is a rare world drop. My AA listing for this thing is 2000g. Rare world drop= 2000g, seems almost reasonable. This was based off of 1 data point. I /2'd this item for mnay days, and eventually sold it for 350g, which I believe is a more reasonable price. The AA valuation is clearly false, given the 1 data point of the listed price (not a purchased price).

Example 2: Manipulated Data- The other end of the rarity spectrum would be an item such as Felweed or Small Glimmering Shards. Very common items for which many sales occur on the AH every day. However, daily changes in the market can make the AA valuation very inaccurate. For example, my current AA tooltip for Small Glimmering Shards looks like this:




While AA tells me the worth of Small Glim Shards is 20g, I know that it is impossible. Here, you can clearly see that two players have either intentionally manipulated the market or having some fun. One could set these ridiculously high prices in order to pull most people using AA or other auction addon above the market value that the seller has set, allowing them to control the market (at least vs those mindlessly using AA appraisor pricing).

Here we also see an example of the Std Dev valuation model failing miserably. Standard deviations are sensitive to outliers, and in this case you can clearly see the effect. I would love to see an AH addon that uses a 5-number summary, which is very resistant to outlying values.

Example 3: The Market is what it is. No matter how much AA states as the mean listed buyout value, you should not sell your item if your preferred price is underbid by many others. For example, if the absolute minimum I will accept for Terocones x20 is 15g, and there are 3 other auctions below 15g, I will list only if I think the likelihood of more auctions being created below 15g is low AND the likelihood of my auction being the lowest buyout in the next 24 hours is high. I know that the market for Terocones is fairly high-volume on any given day. Therefore, I will list now, expecting that the 3 low auctions will disappear, leaving my auction the highest. If there were 20 auctions, I would not bother to list my auction, as it is unlikely that all 20 auctions below my price point would be bought and it is likely that in the time it takes to sell those 20 auctions, that someone with a lower price point will come along and underbid or match the auctions below my price point. All scenarios which would lead to wasted money listing the auction.

Lastly, luck can play a role.....

10g Auction House Challenge: Update 1

First, I'd like to thank everyone who reads this blog. We have gone over 1000 page views, which is excellent. I hope to continue to keep bringing all of you readers interesting content and would appreciate any comments or questions you have about the Blog.

....Now picking up where we started a few weeks ago....

In the beginning of this challenge, I found Auctioneer and Auctioneer Advanced (Auc Adv) to be somewhat daunting. Like many mods made for WoW, the Auctioneer family are very powerful tools that take some quality time truly appreciate. I created a new post about Auc Adv from what I learned in the first few weeks of using it. With your input, we can make this site a great resource for Auc Adv when it is released in its final version.

Well, back to the Challenge- I started with 10gold. At last count I had 53g on my Challenge Alt (Neuro, a human warlock). Slow going to start, but keep in mind that I only spent a maximum of 15 minutes on this alt each day. I even skipped a few days between today (1/23/07) and the start date (1/8/08). The time I did spend included a preponderance of time trying to decipher Auc Adv and learning some new markets that I have never been a part of in the past (mainly the enchanting mats market). For about 150 minutes of total play time, I consider a 400% return worthwhile and plan to continue using this mod.

A short gold tip: The more gold you have the easier it is to make money in the buy/sell plan. If you are saving up for a big purchase, make sure to hang on to some of that gold until you have enough to finance future AH investments after you plunk down the G for Mongoose or a riding skill.

That's all for now. I'm headed to Jackson, WY for some nice skiing. I'll be back in two weeks or so.

Thanks again for reading Cenarion Labs.

Making Money: Guide to Auctioneer Advanced Part 1

Are you a casual player looking to make some money in WoW?

Casual players not looking to make money in WoW should stop reading at this point. Maybe you have a few gold making strategies and know the prices and likelihood of sales for a few items at the AH very well. Perhaps you do not(more on strategies in an upcoming post). Regardless, an addon will likely help you make money in WoW.

I started using the addon Auctioneer Advanced a few weeeks ago and would like to offer it as a very powerful tool to the casual WoW player looking to make money.

Auctioneer Advanced (AucAdv) can be downloaded from many sites. WoW Matrix offers many mods, including AucAdv and the older Auctioneer. The alternatives for downloading are either the Curse addon site. Similar AH mods can also be found on the WoW Ace platform. Read and follow the installation instructions carefully and installation should be no problem. Note that AucAdv is currently in Beta testing. The final version should have a feature to allow searches (Auc Classic had this feature).

Before you delete your Classic Auctioneer, note that all of your previous data will be lost and that not all the functions of Classic Auctioneer are present in AucAdv. AucAdv runs on an entirely new database.


DAY ONE: Configure General User Preferences, Appraiser and Bottom Scanner

Bottom Scanner (BtmScn) activates when you are at the AH and have an AH window open. Btm Scn is an AH search that looks for items that you can profit from by vendoring, disenchanting to resell the results, prospecting for gems or reselling as purchased above the price offered in the AH. Just sit in the AH and wait for the doorbell to ding, which is your notification that BtmScn has found a deal for your consideration. Btm Scn can look through the AH much faster than you can for deals, but is not infallible or a 100% improvement upon your own intuition and market knowledge.

Configuring BtmScan sets up parameters that controls the incoming AH sales. For example, AH finds a Braxxis Staff of Slumber priced at 25g. You need to tell BtmScn whether or not this item at this price fits your intended profit model.

Appraiser is used within Btm Scan to find the correct items to purchase and alone in the Appraiser tab to help price and list your auctions.

Having Appraiser set up correctly and having all of the competing modules turned off is the key to using Auc Adv.

Before you get started on changing settings start by reading this for a guide to interpreting the tooltip in Auc Adv.

Here is a synopsis of Auc Adv:


Bottom Scanner-

Core Options:
General-
Display Settings- Activate this option so that you can see the information when you mouse over an item.
Reserve Amount is simply how much money you will allow AucAdv to spend on deals in the AH. This is completely up to you, but I would recommend reserving less of your wealth when you have little money and reserve more when you have large nest egg. As you make more money you will get a better idea of how much return you will get and which items have more risk than others.
Example: Level 1 with 15g- set reserve to 5g (33% of wealth);
Level 70 with 2000g- set reserve to 1800g (90% of wealth)

Maximum Price is a measure of how much risk you are willing to take on any single item. I keep this low at most times, because there are some AH scams that can trick BtmScn into thinking that Ruined Pelt is a great deal at 100g. Again, the amount you set here will depend on your wealth.
Example: Level 1 with 15g- set Maximum to 1g
Level 70 with 2000g- set Maximum to 10g

Allow Bid or Buyout allows setting of the potential.....it's really quite obvious I suppose. Only one point here: Bid will tie up your money from being used in buyout. There are scenarios for using bids, but they are few. Choose buyout to start and consider adding bid later when you are more comfortable with the mod.

Profiles- make a name for your account.


Evaluators:
Appraiser- This is the workhorse of AucAdv. It both tells BtmScn which items are deals and helps set the price for those items in the AH.

Minimum profit- Base this value on your wealth- setting the minimum percent profit lower when you have less money and higher when you have more. This is a measure of how much you want each gold spent to return in AH sales. It will somewhat depend on your maximum price per item, because a min profit of 10% on a 100g item is still 10g, while min profit of 10% on a 1g item is only 10 silver profit. If your are a level 70, 10s doesn't help much. If you are level 1, that is a good profit. There is also a minimum discount, which allows you to set risk again- this time as a percent.
Example: Level 1 with 15g- set minimum profit to 10%
Level 70 with 2000g- set to 25-50%

Level 1 with 15g- set minimum profit amount to 50s
Level 70 with 2000g- set minimum profit to 3g

Q-check simply allows items of a certain quality to be considered. Set this to common, unless you want to speculated on greens or better gear. I will need to confirm if setting quality above white will filter out herbs and materials.

Seen allows filtering of items that show up only rarely in the AH. I have this set to 10 currently. There are other descriptors that allow you to determine the accuracy of price, but this is probably worth setting to avoid the need to evaluate every purchase for its accuracy.

Fees Adjustment allows you to account for fees in the AH. I would reccomend subtracting this for high level weapons and armor and ignoring the AH fees for most other auctions.

Comparable I believe this function looks for gear of the same kind you have. It can be used for gear replacement. I don't use this much, so no other comments.

Disenchant Configure and enable this if you are an enchanter and plan to buy items for the sole purpose of disenchanting and selling the products.

Enchant Mats comments welcome.

Prospect Allows parameters for obtaining gems from ores. Config and enable if you are a miner looking to prospect from ores as a strategy.

Resale This is where you set the parameters for reselling your items. BtmScn will pick them up for you based on these parameters. Disable this if you want to use your Appraiser settings (I would recommend this).

Snatch Disabled in AucAdv, but may be present in a final version of AucAdv.

Vendor Set parameters for buying items from the AH to sell to vendors for profit. This is a great way to make money when you have very little money to spend. Set the margins low- these sales are guaranteed profit. Even 5s will net a lot of money if you repeat the process 10 times in one day.

Filters: This section of options is somewhat confusing, in that it is unclear whether you are filtering against purchasing or for purchasing. When an option says "activate", it is likely blocking items that do not fit the specified criteria (you will not see these items in Bottom Scan).

IgnoreItemPrice-
Enable Price- I believe this enables maximum cost per item and minimum profit settings to take effect. This setting may be redundant with resale and appraiser. I have this option disabled, to allow Appraiser to do the work.

Resale- disabled for the same reason as above.

Appraiser- allows Appraiser settings to be used when listing items in the AH. This is the easiest way to set up and understand both buying and selling on the AH. Enable this option!

Vendor enables the vendor settings, as above.

IgnoreItemQuality- Setting this to ignore poor and common armor, weapons and recipes will probably prevent some savings, as these items may be less likely to sell than their green or higher counterparts.

IgnoreItemType- Filters items by the level at which you can use them. This is most useful when searching for gear for your own personal use.



Appraiser-

Stat Modules:
Classic- this model using a somewhat complex algorithm to arrive at a market price. This involves a moving average of prices over the number of days that you specify.

Purchased- gives value to items base on what your AH scan believes are items purchased for the buyout price. This means the item disappeared from the AH before its listing time had expired.

Simple- averages of the listing prices (not sales) for the last 3, 7, or 14 days.

Std Dev- mean price (as in Simple) and the normalized mean, which is the mean within 1 standard deviation of the simple mean. This is the mean of 67% of the values around the mean and excludes the other 33% of data- basically stating that they are outliers and not important i the analysis. This attempts to minimize the effect of outliers, but can still be fooled if many outliers are present.

Purchased- probably the most useful stat, as the actual sales (not listings) of the auctions are reported.

Filter Modules:
Basic Filters
Quality- select a trash (0), common (1) or better quality for items. This function overlaps somewhat with the ignore filters.

Outlier- disallows very high and very low values from entering your data stream. It is unclear if this effects the Std Dev valuator (or does it make these exclusions on its own). If the Outlier filter is addititve to Std Dev, then Std Dev valuation would be much more accurate than using the Std Dev of all values alone.

Match- is a function for listing your auctions. Simply set the following:
-under market price %
-max over market price %
-undercut- If the value of the item is at market this will undercut the market value. Otherwise, other filters will be used to determine the value. I don't use this function.


Utility Modules:
Appraiser-allows a model to use for pricing your auctions when listing in the AH. I choose Purchased and the alternate is Std Dev, which will be used if model if data is not available for your first choice model.

AskPrice allows other players to send a tell with keywords What Worth [item]?


Well....that being described, there are many things to be learned about the interaction of these various modules and models in Auc Adv. I would appreciate your experience and suggestions to make this guide as accurate as possible.

10 gold Auction House Challenge

As stated previously, I am a casual WoW player. I estimate my play time to be about 6 hours per week. Occasionally more, if I actually get a 5-man together to run an instance.

Acquiring large sums of gold for big ticket items is difficult for casual players. Currently, I am saving up 5,000 gold for my artisan riding skill. This will allow me to get my Swift Flight Form, which is quite the stylin flyin mount.

I am interested to see how much gold I can make by working the AH. I don't like to grind. However, once I have my epic flyer, I think that the combination of gathering herbs, fishing and transmutes is going to net copious amounts of gold.

As a project, I'm going to create an AH alt and send it 10 gold from my main character. Over the next 3 months I plan to use 15-20 minutes of my limited playtime to see how much gold I can generate. I plan to use Auctioneer or a similar addon to assist in this venture. I have never used Auctioneer, so I will also post on my experience with this addon.

If you would like to join me, leave a comment at any time. The rules I follow are below. If I alter any of these rules as the experiment progresses, I will post them here. If you can make more gold than me, I'll post a photo of your toon on my site and ask you to write a guest post with your strategies.

10g Bankh Projhect Rhules:
1) Level 1 Alt
2) 10 Gold from a main character
3) Auctioneer or other AH Addon
4) 20 minutes maximum time per day for playing the AH
5) Main character may pay any amount for AH Alt transportion to a neutral auction house
6) Main character may supply Alt with unlimited number of bags for storage only (not for sales)

Let the Games Begin, void where prohibited.

The Economics of Flying Mounts and Gold Sinks: Druid Edition

I think the idea of money sinks is very interesting. The biggest money sinks are commonly thought to be mounts and, more so, the training required to ride them.

In theory, money sinks are to prevent inflation from occurring. Inflation is the devaluation of currency. For example, in Zimbawbe a roll of Toilet Paper costs $417. Imagine if a Super Healing Potion cost 40g! (please note that the situation in Zimbabwe is very serious and not equitable to a virtual game in any way).

Why do mounts constitute a sink?
1) everyone wants one
2) the gold spent on mounts leaves the player economy (more later)

1 and 2 can be insidious, like AH fees or prominent like mount fees. In fact the other likely sink in WoW is the AH fee.

Items such as the Mongoose Enchant, are expensive, however only select players have a demand for such damaging enchants and the money for the enchant remains with the player performing the enchant. The demand for mounts is greater, as players can easily see how much faster players with mounts can move. While a glowing enchant is cool, its power is only really apparent when you are on the receiving end of it in a PvP setting.

Other items are popular, but must remain inexpensive in order to maintain reasonable game play. Common items could be made into money sinks, but if a Super Healing Potion cost 40g, MANY players would have to spend huge sums of money just to successfully quest or step outside of a city, which would not be fun.

Soulbound items superficially appear to be a sink. Soulbound items create large pseudo-sinks of money, because the items are sold from player-to-player for high prices and then must be vendored for much lower prices. However, the high purchase price is transferred to another player, so the gold never leaves the economy. In fact, this is likely a source of inflation in the WoW enconomy. If high-value items were sold more commonly from vendors, then this would represent a sink (most high-quality items in WoW that are from vendors are relatively inexpensive- time (rep, badges....) is the currency of these vendors).

Are riding skills and mounts really money sinks?

There is no question that the cost of mounts represents a significant sink for currency in the WoW market. These items remove money from the economy, most players will obtain them and they are among the highest priced single ticket items in the game.

Is it possible that mounts cause inflation by decreasing the amount of time it takes to gather highly profitable materials such as herbs and ores? Well, herbs and mining represent the only two gathering professions that don't involve significant amounts of time (fishing and skinning being the other two which do require significant time). Enchanting could be included in this list, but requires gathering from the AH and is not dependent upon a mount. So, it is hard to imagine significant amount of inflation occurring from rapid gathering. Swift mounts are 5x as fast as walking.

The big question is: Do Druids need Swift Flight Form?

More than any other class, druids need their Swift Flight Form. As per the discussion regarding druid profession choices, every druid should have herbalism or at least mining. The addition of Swift Flight should allows droods to acquire gathered items at a bit less than 4x the speed of a swift ground mount. The instant cast ability allows for a reduced mount time and for quick getaways from mobs. It is hard to imagine that in Wrath of the Litch King that the increases in mount speed will exceed the gap currently seen in the Burning Crusade (hard to imagine mount speed 9x faster than a ground mount). I suppose anything is possible though. Regardless of the time between now and the expansion, every druid should be working on getting Swift Flight, if they arent already.

Lament of the Fel Lotus

I am still searching for a great money making plan that (hopefully) doesn't involve a huge amount of farming or grinding, though some of this non-recreational time is necessary to make such sums of money.

Briefly, my history of making gold in WoW involved the following:
Level 10-40: stacks of Firefin Snapper, Oily Blackmouth and level appropriate Elixirs of Agility and Defense.

Level 40-60: Arcanite and Ghost Mushrooms.

Level 60-70: Quests and Primal Earth to Primal Water Transmutes.

I thought that Fel Lotus would be a great item to gather and/or work the margins in the AH for profit. However, my server has had a median price that is about 50-66% lower than game-wide pricing (median 12g, realm-wide 18g). I think one large factor contributed to this devaluation of Fel Lotuses and hope to learn a lesson of market patterns from this endeavor:

Fel Lotus is almost exclusively for raiders and as such is a very sensitive to raid volume. From watching the Nordrassil forums, it is clear that raiding guilds are the thoroughbreds of Warcraft- awesome, powerful beasts capable of spooking at the sight of their own shadow. When guild break-ups on the server started to occur (probably 3 top raiding guilds in the last 2 months) I should have known that prices on Fel Lotus would be reduced. If guilds start coming back and our server raid volume goes up, Fel Lotus may again arrive back at its true value.

In addition, it was also apparent from the AH listings that:

1) Many players don't list things for what they are worth or even close to what they are worth. Despite Fel Lotus being rare (only from herbalism and a random pick from other common and "mapable" herbs) and many AH prices with shorter remaining AH duration (very long>short) being much higher, about half of the players were setting buyouts more than 2g below the next highest auction.

2) Low volume markets are difficult to control. On at least 3 occasions, I bought out ALL of the Fel Lotus stock (at around 10g each) and listed my own Fel Lotus for about 15-18g. NONE of my auctions resulted in buyouts or even had bids. Instead, a few auctions listed at less than 12g as a buyout ruled the market (as they should). I think players bought a small amount of the Fel Lotus stock at low price, while a significant amount of low price stock remained on the market for 48-hours, further perpetuating days of low pricing. This maybe another effect of the 48-hour auction?

3) Guild Banks may be creating a repository for raid consumables that causes demand to be less in the AH. Whereas previously raid items may have been lost on guild-bank alts or just simply not donated to raid guilds (less likely, raiding guilds are highly organized), with the advent of guild bank, I think it is likely that more flasks, cauldrons and their respective materials are being put into guild banks by raiding and non-raiding segments of guilds. Arguments against this theory would include the continued high price of Fel Lotus game-wide.

Lessons Learned:
-Don't try to "industrialize" sales of an item that is required by a small, niche population that has highly variable demand for that item.
-Don't try to monopolize the pricing on an item that is vastly and consistently underpriced, because you can never underestimate other players' ability to ruin pricing on the AH.

I'm going back to herb picking and Primal farming.

Auction House: 48 Hour Auctions

Will 48-hour auctions create the illusion of increased supply, which will decrease demand and prices?

Points to consider:

1) Is supply constant with a 48-hour auction time? This should be true as players will not change their play-time based on AH changes to generate more supply from drops, mobs, etc in the realms. However, if everyone chooses a 48 hour auction time, this would, at first glance create the appearance of twice as many Auctions at any given time. A net increase for all players of twice as many auctions would assume players are currently not re-listing their auctions when they expire. This is likely a false assumption, as even moderately casual players and advanced players will list items when their auctions expire. The amount of supply on the AH will increase by half of the lag-time (seen in patch 2.2) between the expiration of auctions and the re-listing of those auctions. For example:

Idahoe has 2 Primal Might and auctions them for 100g each for 24 hours. He creates the auction at 6:00pm. The auction does not sell and the products are sent back to him. Ida has to cook dinner for his friends the next day at 6:00pm, and cannot log on until 11:00pm, when he re-lists the auctions. In this scenario, the amount of time that Ida's P. Might didn't contribute to the perceived realm supply of P. Might was 5 hours/24 hours.

Ida now tries to sell his two P. Might in patch 2.3 using a 48-hour auction at 6:00pm. The auctions don't sell in 48 hours and he has to cook dinner two days after the auction was created (again!). He again logs in and adds his two P. Might for a 48-hour auction at 11:00. In patch 2.3 the time Ida isn't contributing to the world supply is only 2.5 hours/24 hours.

So, supply is artificially and mildly increased due to 48 hour AH times.


2) Demand also remains the same. Players are limited by their respective play-time/gold and will not be able to buy more goods because of the AH changes auction duration.


3) Most people buy things using buyout. I don't see how a 48-hour auction would change that culture. However, products that currently were not listed in the "lag-time," will now be there for an extra few hours, which may increase visibility and the likelihood of bids instead of buyouts, which may lead to more sales more items sold by bid, which would mean lower prices.

The effect on Buyout and Bids will likely increase the number of sales mildly and increase the number of items sold from Bids, which will mildly decrease prices.


OVERALL: the new 48-hour auctions will reduce prices on very casual servers, while having little effect on more hard-core servers (older servers?). The amount total sales will likely increase by a small amount.