Overwatch: New Blizzard Game Announced!

     At Blizzcon 2014, they just announced the first new Blizzard universe in 17 years! The game, called Overwatch, looks amazing, and will be set to launch its beta in 2015.

     From what we see so far, from Game Developer Jeff Kaplan, it looks like a team-based first-person multiplayer shooter, allowing Blizzard to compete with fellow ActiVision games Call of Duty, as well as Team Fortress, Modern Warfare, or Far Cry. In true Blizzard fashion, they're redefining the genre and showing that you don't have to have military heroes to have an amazing multiplayer shooter. In the video there are objective captures (capture the flag). They've already shown us a huge range of Heroes.

Who would you play?

     And don't worry, they didn't just show us the heroes and some CGI. We got some amazing gameplay. Each player can do basic shoot-and-kill, but they also have unique abilities that help the team. Symmetra can create portals that teleport teammates. Pharah can fly, like ya do. Mercy, if you couldn't guess, is the healer. Reinhardt has a pinning/stun ability and an AoE shield. Torbjorn builds turret and can pass out armor. Overwatch has buffers, portal builders, and a monkey wearing glasses!

      The Overwatch scenery is one of my favorite parts of the video from Blizzcon. It looks beautiful and I hope that as much of it as possible make it into the actual gameplay. Here's a preview.

 

As we get more information, I'll either update this post or add more, depending on how much we information it is. Until then, remember to follow me on YouTube for all the latest goldmaking tips and Blizz info!

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Do You Know What "Gold Per Hour" Really Means?

      As many of you know, one of the goals of my blog and YouTube channel is to raise the bar on the quality and ethical standards of gold guides available to World of Warcraft players. Recently, a few people have pointed something out to me. On my Zul'Farrak guide, promising 5800 gold in 23 minutes, Alexander Moor commented with the following.

     Now, it's easy to write this off, as "oh, he just doesn't understand the transmog market." But then you have the surprisingly negative response my good friend Manthieus received with his fantastic 20,000 gold in 30 minutes video. It was the same concept but showed you how to farm up Battered Hilts really effectively. Even Asmondgold, an actual goldmaker and youtuber said "There's no way you're going to be able to get anywhere near 20k an hour here, much less in 30 minutes. Nice job on the clickbait title though, apparently it worked." If you close your eyes, I'm sure you can think of a ridiculous video thumbnail promising a bajillion gold you've seen in the past week or two. We've all come to expect some degree of skepticism from thumbnails and titles even though they're otherwise fantastic gold guides, right?

     I put some thought into this and I don't think there's any "clickbaiting" going on. Rather, there's an understanding among the goldmaking community. When a thumbnail says "Make XYZ Gold Per Hour" what it infers is "increase your potential net worth (liquid gold, inventory, auctionables) by XYZ per hour invested."

    Unfortunately, this doesn't fit on most thumbnails. :P There usually isn't a problem with interpretation either. If you're mining, making gems, or farming cloth, those items will sell pretty quickly and no one has a problem with assuming GPH. When you move on to slower sale items though, like transmog, battered hilts, or battle pets, suddenly you have a sale cycle that can be weeks or months long. As Alexander said at the start, "you have no gold, just some items." Viewers may feel cheated if they don't get immediate gold or at least have auctioning time accounted for in the calculations. This may seem like a silly thing to write a while post over, but if we can manage to resolve this issue over time in the goldmaking community, we can get rid of that nagging feeling of "is this video just trying to scam me?" you have every time you click on a guide or a blog post.

     So, what's our fix?
Do we introduce the new acronym GPHF: Gold Per Hour Farmed in our titles?
Do we stick to the GPH system, for ease of use, but make sure to fully explain in the video or guide the process of selling that particular item for each type of the 120 different Auction Houses?
Do we do nothing and let the haters hate, cause YOLO?

If you have any ideas, let me know. Let's keep making the goldmaking community a better place.

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< Prev: Is Your Toon in WoD?

Is Your Toon a Warlords of Draenor NPC?

     One of the things I've been really impressed with the Blizzard staff and World of Warcraft over the past couple expansions has been how they make high-profile raiders, podcasters, bloggers, youtubers, and streamers feel loved by naming an NPC or piece of gear after them. With WoD it looks like they're extending that honor to a whole lot more people! When you first enter the Dark portal, you're greeted by the Alliance and Horde Vanguard, but it turns out, all of these random non-playable characters are actual toons.

Camera positioning ftw! Also, A+ transmog, Barbery.  :)

You have Gorehowl and I don't. I'm sorry, but I hate you and we can't be warrior friends anymore.

It's warm on Draenor? Yah, i don't know...

     From the looks of it so far, it may be that the Warlords staff and anyone who made the Tanaan Jungle intro just picked their favorite transmog set they'd seen so far. Or maybe I just don't know who these wonderful people are. If it's the latter, I'm sorry! And now, to save on loading time for this page it's time to UNLEASH THE GNOMES!

Left to Right: Johnny Oshimo - puntable but brutal, Lupas - One tiny dagger for each enemy,
Salty Futz...wait, like Foots? I don't get it. Cause your a foot tall? 

     The Alliance Vanguard and Horde Vanguard is also composed of a few famous names. One of them that I did recognize is Starcaller Astrylian, the creator of Rawr. We've seen this impatient bear before in the firelands quests and in the raid gear of ICC. Pretty much, any programs or websites that calculate gear optimization originated because of this druid.

Other matches I found were:
Challe Tebrilinde - picture
Rainiara the Kingslayer - picture
Yoori - (No photo available but it looks like Yoori has created 100 alts, and the only class not created has been druid, so either they stopped playing or its a little joke?)
Malothas - picture
Corselle - picture
Bonesaw - picture


      So if you've got a Beta key go out and explore! These aren't the only Vanguard NPCs and I'd bet my guild vault that they aren't they only named NPC easter egg in the new expansion. There's a whole herd of other NPCs out there! Let me know if any of y'all know these guys, or heck, if any of you are readers. :)

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<Prev: A Mount That Costs 1.5 Million Gold

A Mount That Costs 1.5 Million Gold

     Throughout Mists of Pandaria,  any server has seen an occasional mount sold in trade chat or on the Black Market for gold cap- 999,999g. After all, that's all you can give someone...right?

All the badass mounts and the stupid chicken is the most expensive.../sigh

      The development team behind Warlords of Draenor is making strides to reduce the incoming inflation caused by people earning gold questing all their characters to 100, gathering resources, and then turning each of those into enchants and gear worth thousands. They've increased the material cost of crafts. They've done away with Justice points and Valor, and made it so non-raiders (read: goldmakers) will be able to spend gold on non current items and gear, and they've added plenty of new gold sinks. But with an average inflation rate in WoW that has always been on the cusp of hyperinflation, I'm not the only one who doubts prices won't rise in Warlords of Draenor. So, what?

      So, prices rise. The value of gold decreases. 999,999g only buys you a mount that would have previously sold for 500k to 700k. We've got a gold cap and we might start seeing some creative moguls in trade chat start requesting a toon and a half worth of gold for those almighty mounts, especially as the supply of TCG mounts dwindles over the next year or two. Granted, I'm making two or three assumptions in this post, but if anyone sees this happen, or happens to ever see a SST sell for gold cap, let me know so I can know I wasn't entirely speculating.

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Is Your Toon a Warlords NPC?  Next>

Why You'll Pay 2,000 Gold For Gems in Warlords of Draenor

     I hate to be a doomsayer for anyone used to buying gems for under 300g, but it looks like we have some changes coming in WoD. At the same time, I'm not sure if this is good news or bad news for those who decided to keep Jewelcrafting as a profession or not. But it looks like we're going to see 2,000 gold gems in Warlords of Draenor.

Get shocked now, so you can prepare later, and share in the wealth. :)

     Did a little talking about this on the YourWoWMoney podcast, but I just ran some numbers. The rare gems for WoD cost 50 Taladite Crystals, 10 Sorcerous Air, and 5 Warlord of Draenor Herbs. Taladite Crystals at max level are crafted from 20 Blackrock ore and 10 True Iron, yielding 10 crystals. So, essentially you'll get 1 crystal for 3 ore. Sorcerous Air is a byproduct of crafting, so it's worthless and it's price will be entirely dictated by demand, competition, and server size. Expect prices to be pretty high initially, and settle in somewhere in the 10g-200g range depending on your server. Ore routes from my testing give 600-900 ore per hour, so we'll see about the same prices at the start of the xpac, in the 2g-5g range, maybe leveling out back to 1g or maybe not (we don't know enough about long-term demand yet to figure out that equilibrium but we can assume what people will put the ore up for at release).

50 Crystals = 150 ore = @2g, 300g  @5g, 750g
10 Sorcerous = @10g, 100g  @200g, 2000g
5 Herbs = 10g
Total ~ 410g-2760g

Currently, with the prospecting mechanic we all know and love are used to, you can generally get 1 rare gem from 20 ore. In MoP, we're seeing gems at 100g to 300g with a mat cost of 20g for a stack of Ghost Iron. When Lore first announced that Jewelcrafting and Gem prices would be higher because Blizzard was reducing the number of slots in gear, who would have thought they were going to do it by increasing the mat cost  x10? Share this with any JC friends and let me know in a comment what you think.

Long story short, on a high pop server, we're looking at gems that cost a minimum to craft of 400g, and a maximum of almost 3000g.  And depending on where sorcerous prices stabilize at (I'd expect 25-40g personally), you should be expecting gem prices in the 1,000g to 2000g range FOR THE ENTIRE EXPANSION. Start saving.

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World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor Release Date

I'll just leave this right here

What You Should Know About the Alliance and Horde AH Merger

We have a bombshell, ladies and gentlemen. That's right, come 6.0, the neutral AH is being abolished and the Alliance and Horde Auction Houses are going to merge. I'll give you a minute to freak out, run around the room with your arms flailing, and then come on back and we'll figure out what this faction AH merger means.

     Ok ok, this breaking news is a couple weeks old aleady, but I did want to do a full blog post on it, and I'm sure some of y'all may not know. First, yes, it means you will be able to buy and sell things to the horde if you're Alliance, and vice versa. What it DOESN'T mean is that the world is ending, WoW is exploding, or the Auction Housing are going to be destroyed. So, what have we got here?
     On every realm, we'll essentially be going through a realm merger, where population increases and competition increases, pushing down prices of most markets slightly. Raise your hand if you've been through a realm merger. Wasn't as bad as you thought, was it? If you haven't, essentially, the few days beforehand, everyone gets nervous, the auction house starts to go a little crazy, and then the merger happens. The three days after the merger, everyone yells at each other to "GET OFF MY REALM," makes awkward one-word combinations of the two realms' names, while the AH is adjusting to the increased competition. Eventually AHers get tired if bidding wars and buying each other out to prove who is top dog (aka. someone runs out of money). After four days...everything is fine.

Will prices fall?
     Yes, but not necessarily on everything, it won't be anything to worry about because you might actually be making more profit in the long run. So, if you're a miner or herbalist, chances are you already have a lot of competition. Even on a low-med pop, 6-10 farmers are out and about. So, a merger doubling 8 miners to 16 won't affect the market as much as Blacksmithing, where the number would double from say 3 major competitors to 6. Of course you'd have the smattering of 10 or 20 half-hearted posters, but I'm talking about the people who run their professions like they own it. (People like you, the kind are prepared and read blogs)

But Why Would I Be More Profitable?
     So, prices generally fall according to the inverse log of the number of people on the server. Blah blah blah, math, what this means is that if you double the number of people, the price won't be cut in half, but less than that. If you triple the people, prices will be less than a third of what they were. Taking Sky Golems as an example, on the day they were released, on low pop realms, they were selling for 300-400k gold, and on high pop realms like Stormrage, they were at 60-80k within a few hours.

Left:  Graph showing inverse log function.
Right: Google related image search. Nailed it, Google. Nailed it.   -_-

So, let's say you've been selling 10 gems a day for 150g each. 1500g in revenue. Well, when the population doubles, if you stay on your game, you can expect 20 gems a day, but prices won't be cut in half. So, 20 gems a day at (for instance, but realistically) 100g each, which would total to 2,000g in revenue.

But That's Just Revenue. What About Profit?
     Yah, this eats into low-profit-margin crafted professions a lot more that it does other trade professions,  true. Miners could essentially mine forever, since small servers are now medium pop and mediums are now large. However, with WoD, they're changing the structure of professions to be higher priced on average. Fewer gem sockets, by itself, raises the price of each individual gem. With items like Sorcerous Earth, and the Alchemical Catalyst, there seems to be incentives to deplete materials by selling goods to other profession users rather than using them yourself (or building up your Garrison or course). Either way, this expansion should not be a "dump all raw materials from Halfhill on the AH." The professions you know and love now are being altered to sell for a higher price in the future. Still, it's early. It's Beta.

     So, am I worried about this? A little bit, but not really. There will be a pretty significant adjustment, especially for people on servers who have 15% Horde and 85% Alliance where the Horde prices would plummet, but in reality, most of those server have been merged already and won't be drastically affected. Furthermore, if you've already been through a server merge, pat yourself on the back, because you know what this is going to be like, except this time, you don't have to deal with all the BS in Trade chat. :P

Thanks for reading my little WoW blog! You can follow me on Twitter here and Google+ Here. Visit my YouTube channel or just subscribe.  I recommend that all goldmakers download the TSM Suite and the UndermineJournalGE addon and you can read my setup guide for that if you'd like. And remember that the key to making gold in WoW is just to

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<Prev: Alliance Zone and Profession Guides                                      2,000 Gold Gems in Warlords: Next>

Warlords of Draenor Alpha: Alliance Zone and Profession Guides

     The Alpha is two weeks in and is in full swing. So far we've been confined to testing Frostfire Ridge, the level 90-92 Horde starting zone, a sprawling snow-drift-filled expanse filled with towering bone castles and hidden ice caves. After the reset, we'll be able to head down south and begin testing the Alliance area and bring you the Alliance area, Shadowmoon Valley, where the main base of operations is the Temple of Karabor. For the lorehounds out there, this is the same base that will eventually become Illidan's Black Temple.

     My plan for this phase is to explore the questline first. I'm a huge fan of the Alliance and am grateful to be in the Alpha so I want to bring you guys everything you need for professions, but want to do a little due diligence first on the testing front. After that, I'll continue on my Alpha testing professions spree. So far, I've got full guides out on all the Alpha changes with Herbalism and a first look at the Alchemy changes. But the main thing I'd like to let everyone know about is the WTBGold Profession Hub, since any guide I put out will be linked from there for easy reference. It's an easy central location where all video guides can link back: a homepage for Profession Guides on YouTube.

     Alpha Mining Guides and Fishing Guides will be released as soon as possible, and then whichever craftable profession gets the most /cheer's will get leveled next. (Of course if you're looking to make gold right now you can read this or this). I'd like to open this question up to you guys though. What would y'all like to see for the crafted professions? I can either level them 1-600 in order to craft the 4 or 5 items they let you craft when you learn the profession, which takes quite a while since I have to farm the mats (there's no Auction House on the Alpha), or I can just walk you through the profession spellbook like I did with the Alchemy guide after learning 1-700 and put out more guides more quickly. One guide a week or one guide every day or so?

Thanks for reading my little WoW blog! You can follow me on Twitter here and Google+ Here. Visit my YouTube channel or just subscribe.  I recommend that all goldmakers download the TSM Suite and the UndermineJournalGE addon and you can read my setup guide for that if you'd like. And remember that the key to making gold in WoW is just to

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<Prev: WoD Mining and Herbalism Node Changes                              Alliance and Horde AH Merger: Next>

Warlords of Draenor Alpha: Mining and Herbalism Node Changes

     Noticed an interesting change today while testing on the Warlords of Draenor Alpha, so I thought I'd do a quick post before I go back to grinding out the rest of my profession guides.

     After 10 years, it seems like Blizzard has finally decided to update and upgrade the looks of their node spawns! This is not altogether true, actually. I remember at one point there being an option for more sparkles, and then sometime around the release of Mists of Pandaria the extra sparkles became a standard feature, but up until now, it was sparkles or sparkles. Now, we have a new look entirely!

      If you have the gathering profession learned, all nodes have a soft outline around them the color of that herbalism node or mining vein. The glow will turn on and off depending on whether you have "Find Herbs" or "Find Minerals" selected. From far away while the plant is smaller, the outline remains the same pixel size. This has an interesting effect. It's easy to spot initially from a distance because of the "glow," and then you focus more on the graphic of the plant as you get closer because the glow disappears, and as you can see below, the artists have really stepped up their game on the artwork of the herbalism and mining nodes. I've tried to capture it in the pictures, but they look different from far away than they do up close. To keep the load time of this page down, I put the full-size and full-resolution image of that up on one of my new Pinterest boards (I'm trying it out, it's actually kinda fun, lol).
      So, what do y'all think of the new changes? Is this something that you farmers have secretly been begging for? Do you think that it brings World of Warcraft up to the times? Are you going to scream on the forums that it changes the face of the game (herbing does actually have a different feel to it, oddly)? Do you not care about herbs and ore and just want to kill things?  Let me know!

     And as an added bonus, here are the two new herbs from the horde starting zone: Frostweed and Fireweed.

Left to Right: Frostweed and Fireweed...in case you needed the help

P.S. Added bonus, I didn't put this up on YouTube, but I had a spare second so I put it up as unlisted. Here's my reaction to getting the alpha invite

Thanks for reading my little WoW blog! You can follow me on Twitter here and Google+ Here. Visit my YouTube channel or just subscribe.  I recommend that all goldmakers download the TSM Suite and the UndermineJournalGE addon and you can read my setup guide for that if you'd like. And remember that the key to making gold in WoW is just to

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<Prev: 12,500 Gold Per Hour with Bastion of Twilight                     WoD Alliance Zone and Profession Guides: Next>

12,500 GOLD WITH BASTION OF TWILIGHT

     Do you have a level 90, decent gear, and know how to play your class? Good! Then read on and let's make over TEN THOUSAND gold per hour in Bastion of Twilight, the level 85 Cataclysm raid.

     This method has actually been around for a while, and is known as BoE farming, but with the new change where you can run 10 instances in an hour, this run is particularly profitable. While most dungeons take more about 10 minutes to clear once you run back to the entrance, this one is just one room and is a very quick in-an-out so you can kill everything and reset it all to get the full 10 runs. As far as strategy goes, we're going to go to Twilight Highlands, enter the raid, and just clear the first room of mobs and hope that we get some good epic drops (and a boatload of Embersilk Cloth). The cheaper items like the trinkets sell for around 500 and more expensive transmog items sell for 2500g on most servers because they're amazing and no one really goes out here much anymore. Oh, and sometimes level 85s use these for their stats.

     For my test I ran the dungeon for a full hour. The room consists of 48 total mobs: 4 stationary up front, two lines of 5 patrolling mobs, and four rings of 8 rogue-caster...things. They all have between 400k and 1.5 million health and melee for about 15-30k so they're not too bad but if you pull the whole room, just be ready. I recommend killing one group at a time. Even slow and steady, a pack at a time, one run is over in 4 minutes. Oh, and there are two mobs in the hallway that have a double chance of dropping epics. Kill those before you leave.

Dat Second Wind

     Over the course of one hour I was able to clear the room 8 times. Since I was testing several different pulling strategies and died (embarrassingly) about 20 times in the process, I see no reason why you couldn't make 10 runs. Still, a test is a test so we'll stick with my results and I won't extrapolate. I gathered 5 epics and 30 stacks of Embersilk Cloth. You can expect more if you're a tailor and have Northern Cloth Scavaging.

Possible Loot
   499 g - Bracers of the Dark Pool
   733 g - Unheeded Warning
   866 g - Phase-Twister Leggings
1,597 g - Carbine Crossfire
1,975 g - Tsanga's Helm

2,264 g - Chelly's Staff of Dark Mending 

2,897 g - Soul Blade
9379 g - Heaving Plates of Protection
2526 g average (1722 excluding high/low)

Loot from Test
   733 g - Unheeded Warning
1,597 g - Carbine Crossfire
2,264 g - Chelly's Staff of Dark Mending
2,897 g - Soul Blade
2,897 g - Soul Blade
1,380 g - 30 Stacks Embersilk Cloth @46g/stack
1,000 g - Greens/DEs/Gold drops
Total
12,768 g

That's all for this run. Although we won't get a good measure of an average drop rate until we get ~30 epics, we've gotten enough to start getting an idea. If 5 drops/400 kills holds true, you should get 1 more Epic if you do 2 more clears to get your 10/hour. Although, why stop at just 1 hour? This would add an additional (est) 2,500 g to your total, bringing the value of this dungeon per hour up to 15,000g. SO GET TO IT! Farm your heart out. :D

Thanks for reading my little WoW blog! You can follow me on Twitter here and Google+ Here. Visit my YouTube channel or just subscribe.  I recommend that all goldmakers download the TSM Suite and the UndermineJournalGE addon for all goldmakers. You can read my setup guide if you'd like. And remember that the key to making gold in WoW is just to 

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<Prev: How to Make Gold in Patch 5.4.8                                        Node Changes in Warlords of Draenor Alpha: Next>

What's New in 5.4.8 and How to Make Gold

     Welcome to Patch 5.4.8, everybody! So, what's new? Honestly, there aren't a whole lot of changes as you can tell by the number of decimal points, but there are enough to influence us for a little bit and to talk about them. So let's do that, shall we?

Intro

     If any of you played back in Lich King, or have run Icecrown Citadel in a while, you'll notice a huge buff when you enter that instance: Strength of Wrynn if you're Alliance or Hellscream's Warsong if you're Horde. ICC was released on December 8th, 2009, and by patch Patch 3.3.2 when the entire instance was open a majority of the players were still banging their heads against it ("[2] DKillerz - "LFM Gearscore 8000+ required!" ...shoot me now), so Blizzard decided to buff it. They did something similar, yet opposite, in Dragon Soul with a raidwide nerf, the Power of the Aspects.

5.4.8: Get buffed enough to solo Xuen...maybe...probably not...unless you're a Blood DK

News

     Now, one of the goals of the Blizzard is to get everyone playing regardless of whether they raid or not, so they're trying something new this time. Instead of nerfing raid bosses or buffing raiders, they're instead allowing all players to double upgrade their gear again. So, rather than being able to upgrade an epic 2/2, you'll be able to upgrade it 4/4. Also, Heirloom BoA Gear from Garrosh is buffed 8 ilvls higher. In short, everyone will be able to be quite a bit stronger if you farm up some valor and do your daily quests or heroic scenarios. If you don't like doing dailies how can you get all that valor though?
     

     To see the second big change, take a trip on out to the Timeless Isle. Chances are, it's more packed with PVP-killing action and rare farming than you've seen it in the past couple months. (If you haven't read my article on Sha-crystal farming on the Timeless Isle, go do that now, it'll be important in a second) You can now trade in 3000 Timeless Coins for 100 Valor at Mistweaver Ai by purchasing Deeds of Valor. These stack with the Valor of the Ancients buff, although the Heart of the Valorous buff didn't seem to make it to live.

     So, we've got people back out in the Timeless Isle farming their hearts out for Deeds of Valor, and we've got buffed up raiders killing and disenchanting more gear than ever before. What does that mean for you and your goldmaking opportunities right now and in the future? Well...

Maelstrom Crystal History

     1. Sha Crystals are at the highest they're ever going to be...ever again. People are going to be farming up Sha Crystals on the Timeless Isle, and with better gear more people are going to be disenchanting gear in from Siege of Orgrimmar. Since, the demand for Sha Crystals has gone down, we can expect that prices will fall. (Note: gearing and enchanting insta-90s may initially offset/stabilize this drop in demand, but I personally wouldn't bet on it). So absolutely sell any Sha Crystals you have right now before prices plummet uncontrollably. Or you could convert them into Mysterious Essences, except

Greater Celestial Essence History

     2. Mysterious Essences are also the highest they're ever going to be...ever again. With a new expansion comes a dramatic fall in demand for the secondary resources for last xpac's enchants. Greater Celestial Essences dropped from 60g to 20g, and not only that but they hardly ever sell. Unload your Mysterious Essences.

Hypnotic Dust History

     3. Spirit Dust will boom. Blizzard has designed Patch 5.4.8 so that the entire player base is buffed up, out and about, and killing things. With that comes greens to disenchant. As a major leveling component, Spirit Dust, which currently sells for under 1g each, is likely to be pushed a smidge lower. However, if Cataclysm, and MoP are any examples, then we can expect that once people stop farming dust, but people still need it to level professions and get a few basic Enchants here and there, that the price of Spirit Dust will go from it's current price to somewhere in the range of 5g-15g each and the supply falls lower than demand.

BUT

Here's the monkey wrench, and hopefully some of you Enchanters spotted it already. If Sha Crystals Drop to 15 gold in the first week or two of the expansion, and Spirit Dust jumps up to 15 gold in the same time frame, what's the obvious answer? Well, there's two that pop up immediately.

Next Expansion's Annoying Enchanting Requirements:
MoP Full Breakdown
     So, Spirit Dust is trying to be as expensive as Sha Crystals and will sell the fastest on almost every realm (highest relative demand out of the enchanting mats).  Then, if you're farming old Pandaria dungeons, rather than just disenchanting your BoP boss drops and BoE Blues, you will "have to" completely shatter them down into dust. While this seems silly it adds that extra "ugh" hassle to farming old content. However, it may not be necessary at all because of the future-

MoP Shatter Check
      This expansion is the first we've had with a full conversion, and right now, Enchanting mat prices are kept in line with the Shatter, where you destroy a Crystal or Ethereal Shard to break it down and sell it into the occasionally more valuable and definitely more in-demand Mysterious Essence. In WoD though, we should keep our eyes out for huge discrepancies between Crystals, Shards, Essences, and the then more valuable Spirit Dust, especially in the first couple months before and after WoD is released. The Invisible Hand should drive Sha Crystal prices up to the point where they match the value of Spirit Dust, whevever it ends up at. So, if Spirit Dust gets to 15g each like Hypnotic is, then someone would be willing to pay 270 gold per Sha Crystal, since each crystal yields 18 dust. A more reasonable 5g value would give you 90 gold crystals, 45 gold shards, and 15 gold essences: about what we're at now. Depending on your stock, and how things go, Sha Crystals may rise in value and it could be very smart to invest heavily in Sha Crystals.

Conclusion
      Ok, so it may have sounded like I went back and forth or lied to you here. There was a method, I promise. I started with the premise "There will be a small permanent increase in the supply of Sha Crystals from Patch 5.4.8" and then used a few different available models to try and figure out what will happen now and into the next expansion, Warlords of Draenor. Funny thing is, that some models say sell all your Sha Crystals now, because they'll all be worthless, while others say that since Spirit Dust will go up in value 500%, so will Sha Crystals.  As we approach the next expansion, this is the type of thing you'll be reading on forums from people trying their best to make sense out of everything going on with the coming expansion. It was an in-depth look at a very simple example showing how varied your answers can be. Essentially, the point of this article is "there are lots of correct and contradicting right answers when it comes to WoD speculation. Make money now how you know you can, and learn about WoD, but don't stress about any one blogger's method." We'll give you our best insights but only gameday will know for sure.
     So, how am I going to profit from this? What are my actual personal recommendations? I think Crystal, Shard, and Essence prices will fall, Essences less so, but I can still profit by selling my current stock right now, since I don't have a huge supply, and then just stay out of the enchanting material market until it bottoms out and enter again around patch day. On WoD release, I think everything will plummet like we've seen before, but since we have the first full conversion/arbitrage system in place for enchanting, there will be a demand for goods. I'll buy anything above dust right after launch and hide it away somewhere for a month. After a month, when everything evens out and those are worth double or triple I sell and make some cash. Alternatively, I might be off the mark and Mysterious Essences will be the old world mat of choice, and be the driving force, but luckily the same basic rules apply since it's a full conversion. But that's just me and my speculation.
     Either way, I'm betting 100g that they remove one of the Shatters from the game.

Thanks for reading my little WoW blog! You can follow me on Twitter here and Google+ Here. Visit my YouTube channel or just I recommend that all goldmakers download the TSM Suite and the UndermineJournalGE addon for all goldmakers. You can read my setup guide if you'd like. And remember that the key to making gold in WoW is just to 

Search. Craft. Post.

Every Day.

<Prev: Should We Sell Glyps in Warlords of Draenor?

The World of Warcraft 2014 Q1 Subscription Numbers Are In!

     I was on the conference call with the Activision Blizzard gang yesterday and things are looking great. I don't invest with them but I like to stay up to date on the business side of things. New games are coming out, profits are up, even Kevin Spacey is on board as the villain in Call of Duty Advanced Warfare. But no one reading this cares about First Person Shooters, amiright?! So lets get to the meat and potatoes and get talking about some Blizzard products.

Diablo 3
     Mike Morhaime got on the mike (get it?) and started off with Diablo 3. It's broken records as the top selling game of 2014 so far and had 2.7 million purchases in its first week alone. Mr. Morhaime said "We attribute a lot of the game's success to a focused effort on listening to player feedback and making improvements to the game based on that feedback." While that may sound like a pretty obvious course of action, it can be an expensive one, and was seemingly ignored for a majority of Diablo 3's release until recently. Thank goodness this has changed because things are gamers are getting involved again. Players can look forward to content updates that include Tiered Rifts, which will be Rifts that increase in difficulty and give greater rewards based on that difficulty, as well as "The Ultimate Evil Edition," a console edition of Reaper of Souls.

Hearthstone
     As far as numbers go (which y'all know I'm big on) 10 million people downloaded and played the game even before the official launch of the game, which is phenomenal. With the launch of the IPad version, even more people have joined and Blizzard has earned a top rating on Metacritic. However, they claimed it was too early to talk specific numbers of the IPad launch, which I kindof don't buy, but whatever. The big news is the upcoming expansion of the Curse of Naxxramas "The Naxxramas content will be released over several weeks. To celebrate the launch, the first set of content will be free for a limited time, while the subsequent ones will be unlockable through in-game gold or real money." This is great news because it gives alternatives to Arenas for those who don't like that content, and it gives players another option to spend gold, since once you have all the cards you need, gold is essentially worthless.
     Personally, I've always had a problem with companies that say "we released this product on 'so-and-so date' when they had an massively marketed open beta months or years prior. Other than that sneaky little bit of finagling, Hearthstone is going great, and is a fantastic game that I love playing. I can get lost in it when I feel like it, or can spend 10 minutes if I'm in a rush and just want to knock out a daily quest. Great job, Blizz.

Heroes of the Storm
      Again no numbers were released on this product but they're super excited about the combination of MOBA/Team Brawler and the iconic blizzard characters. It's in Technical Alpha right now but will be opening up to larger audiences soon, but no word on whether or not this will be an open beta. At the PAX East event though, people stood in line for 2 hours just to play. Pretty phenomenal. Blizzard, if you're reading, I wanna invite! Let me innnnn!

World of Warcraft
     Alright, so things dropped off a smidge from 7.8 million subscribers to 7.6. With no new content released, this slight falloff was to be expected, and in the call, he said that before Warlords of Draenor is released, things will probably fall off a little more. From my perspective, while games like Wildstar may nibble away at the MMO market share, any doomsayers out there that think a 200k sub drop is worth prophesying the end of the world, should just relax and join a Flex raid. We all lived through one Cataclysm. This is the end of expansion blues. As Mr. Morhaime relates "Overall, we're pleased with the ongoing stability in the player base but look ahead cautiously given seasonality and the late expansion cycle dynamics." They know what they're doing and have done this five times before. They're prepared.
     On the other hand, even though WoD is still 7 months away from it's 12/20/2014 scheduled release date, it already has 1 million presales. These come with an automatic lvl 90 boost, which I used to level my Pacifist toon to 90 (yes, I gave up on the goal to level it through mining and herbalism alone, although I still haven't killed anything after several hours of farming ore and herbs in Valley of the Four Winds). You can also purchase level 90 boost for $60, and those seem to be going better than expected, and I really wish they would have released some numbers on how people purchased these 90 boosts, but no luck. That was the call though, hope my wrap up was informative!

Thanks for reading my little WoW blog! You can follow me on Twitter here and Google+ Here. My YouTube channel is growing and has lots of great guides over here. I recommend that all goldmakers download the TSM Suite and the UndermineJournalGE addon for all goldmakers. You can read my setup guide if you'd like. And remember that the key to making gold in WoW is just to 

Search. Craft. Post.

Every Day.

<Prev: Should We Sell Glyps in Warlords of Draenor?

Should We Sell Glyphs in Warlords of Draenor?

     The world is ending! Warlords of Draenor will officially be removing all glyphs from the game, and inscription is going to be completely useless! ...That's if you believe what everyone is saying in guild chat. What is actually happening is a little more realistic. Blizzard announced a week or so ago in the Alpha Patch Notes that 86 glyphs would be removed from inscription crafting, and will be learned automatically when you reach a certain level. This will speed up the ease of learning WoW professions like inscription, give scribes fewer recipes to manage, and make it easier for new players to get up and going without requiring them to shell out 900 gold just after they bought their first mount. I have two main problems with this new system though: 1) Blizzard is removing even more glyphs than the list of those learned automatically, and 2) It's a massive decrease to demand.
     First, if you search through WoWHead, you'll see 444 Mist of Pandaria glyphs currently available to craft whereas if you head over to the WoD.WoWHead, there are 311 active Warlords of Draenor glyphs in the list. Luckily, Blizz gave us exactly what items they were changing so you can go through, compare the two with the announcement, and find the ones that they took out. Of the 86 announced autolearned glyphs, 3 are still craftable in the Alpha: Glyph of the Harsh Word, Glyph of Totemic Recall, and Glyph of Demon Training. An additional 47 have been removed (or will also be automatically learned) and are listed below

Glyph of Festering Blood
Glyph of Loud Horn
Glyph of Outbreak
Glyph of Unholy Frenzy
Glyph of the Long Winter
Glyph of Efflorescence
Glyph of Frenzied Regeneration
Glyph of Innervate
Glyph of Prowl
Glyph of Shred
Glyph of Aimed Shot
Glyph of Animal Bond
(replaced with Glyph of Burden of Guilt)
Glyph of Distracting Shot
Glyph of Scatter Shot

Glyph of Snake Trap
Glyph of Direction
Glyph of Marking
Glyph of Armors
Glyph of Evocation
Glyph of Mana Gem
Glyph of Loose Mana
Glyph of Mirror Image
Glyph of Divine Plea
Glyph of Hammer of the Righteous
Glyph of Holy Shock
Glyph of Inquisition
Glyph of Turn Evil
Glyph of Holy Nova
Glyph of Inner Fire
Glyph of Shifted Appearances

Glyph of Clash
Glyph of Expose Armor
Glyph of Redirect
Glyph of Sharp Knives
Glyph of Tricks of the Trade
Glyph of Hex
Glyph of Telluric Currents
Glyph of Curse of the Elements
Glyph of Soul Consumption
Glyph of Carrion Swarm
Glyph of Hamstring
Glyph of Heavy Repercussions
Glyph of Hoarse Voice
Glyph of Hold the Line
Glyph of Impaling Throws
Glyph of Incite

     This is just Alpha though and everything is subject to change. For instance, there are two Lightwell Glyphs, rather than having Lightwell (385) and Lightspring (255)...not gonna work. On the other hand, rather than having two glyph of Stampedes like we currently have (1 hunter and 1 druid) along with 1 Stampeding Roar, they're consolidating the Hunter one into a single better named Glyph of Stampeding Roar. While this type of consolidation is user friendly, it does mean fewer glyph sales for scribes.

     But really, take this list with a grain of salt because it could be further removals or just that WoWHead couldn't grab everything from the official database. It's Alpha. Everything is just a preview. What I'm really curious about though was their choice of glyphs for removal.

     It seems like Blizzard was going with the idea of removing the least essential glyphs, but it was worth checking to see if this was actually the case, so I did a test. I went through Icy-Veins and compiled a list of what glyphs each class requires and then cross-referenced that with the Alpha patch note announcement list to see what kind of an impact this would have on sales. Of the 86 announced, 31 were considered recommended or required for progression raiding; these are the ones people search for and buy. After the additional 47 listed above were added in, 28% of the glyphs recommended by top-tier raiders are either free or removed from the game. If any developers are reading, one problem that might need some immediate attention is Druid glyphs, as all four specs are currently only left with Grace, Stampeding Roar and Survival Instincts as viable choices for raiding.

...well, that and Glyph of the Orca.

So, we'll probably see a 30% initial drop in prices. Kathroman said it best on the Consortium Forums

Stage 1: DOOM! Scribes abandon the glyph market because it is sufficiently "ruined".
Stage 2: Plunder! Remaining scribes reap the rewards of an abandoned, but not "ruined" market.
Stage 3: Scramble! Scribes come flocking back to inscription when they see prices aren't in the toilet.
Stage 4: DOOM! Market is saturated with supply and prices DO fall. Fairweather scribes, believing their worst fears have been confirmed, leave the market again.
Stage 5: Normalization - Supply and demand stabilize, and the glyph market once again proves to be a reliable source of regular income.

     Whether you go with the flow or maintain your market is up to you, your competition, and your realm size. Although I'd like to point out that while supply and demand will stabilize, goldmakers will still leave the market whenever the opportunity cost is too high, so with so many fewer glyphs, and a set amount of gold per hour that we're expecting to make, we'll either be selling glyphs more rapidly in WoD or selling them at a much higher price. Otherwise, everyone would be a miner.

Conclusion
     So that's my gloom, doom, and rebound. With fewer glyphs, we will spend less time posting on the Auction House. Also, remember that in Warlords of Draenor every account on your server gets to level any of their lowbie alts to 90 and that those alts need a full set of glyphs. Additionally, think of all the scrub players who would have never opened their glyph tab before who will now have the pleasant reminder of "new glyph earned" and the joy/practice of switching out glyphs, so that they are now primed to buy where they otherwise would have just had blank glyph tabs. Yes, Blizzard is removing almost 50 more glyphs than they said they were and it will severely impact your raiding and goldmaking. However, as "dead" as inscription may be according to your guildmates, it might also be one of the most profitiable professions come WoD.

Thanks for reading my little WoW blog! You can follow me on Twitter here and Twitch here. My YouTube channel is growing and has lots of great guides over here. I recommend that all goldmakers download the TSM Suite and the UndermineJournalGE addon for all goldmakers. You can read my setup guide if you'd like. And remember that the key to making gold in WoW is just to 

Search. Craft. Post.

Every Day.

<Prev: Happy Birthday, WTBGold!                                                         2014 Q1 Subscription Numbers: Next>

Happy Birthday WTBGold! / Cold is Going Down

Have two quick announcements for everyone today.

SHOWDOWN
     First, Cold from Cold's Gold Factory was talking trash earlier on Twitter about how much better he is than me at Hearthstone

Less logic. Moar one shot.

     In his defense, he was totally right, BUT it gives us an opportunity to create a grudge out of nothing and give you guys a show! :-D So, we're going to stream a best-of-5 Hearthstone showdown between his Shaman deck and my Hunter deck on Saturday shortly after 7PM. You can follow us on Twitter (Cold - Reckles) to make sure you make it or just go Subscribe to me on Twitch.tv/WTBGold. Clearly the best class in Hearthstone against a few totems...I wish him luck.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!
     Secondly, it's WTBGold's birthday today! A little over a year ago, I wanted to start sharing my ideas on WoW goldmaking so I asked Jim over at PowerWord:Gold if he had any tips. Turns out he's written a whole post on how to start a blog. When I started my first big post was Standard Deviation and You and I was absolutely thrilled (like, mind blown) when it got retweeted and got 7 views. Since then WTBGold has spread out into YouTube, gained 2000 followers there, and is just about to break the half a million view mark. More importantly, I'm having a blast sharing things with you guys because that's why I'm writing. Also, I've had the opportunity to meet and raid with some of the people I looked up to like Faid, Stede, Matticus, and PhatLewts with the first annual Gold Raid. It's been a whirlwind and I'm grateful for everyone who's reading, whether you've been with us from the start or just started following. :) Got a lot in the pipeline, so you should be expecting a lot in the coming month. If you have an RSS feed, go ahead and click our button for that. Otherwise, see y'all on Saturday for some Epic Hearthstone action,  and you should see an awesome skinning guide coming out in the next couple days.

Thanks for reading my little WoW blog! You can follow me on Twitter here and Twitch here. My YouTube channel is growing and has lots of great guides over here. I recommend that all goldmakers download the TSM Suite and the UndermineJournalGE addon for all goldmakers. You can read my setup guide if you'd like. And remember that the key to making gold in WoW is just to 

Search. Craft. Post.

Every Day.

<Prev: Vendor Trash Gold Guide                                                           Selling Glyphs in Warlords of Draenor: Next>

The Vendor Trash Gold Guide (20,000g/week from Grays)

     Hey there, gold makers! Today I'm going to be sharing a little secret with you that I've had in my goldmaking routine for a while now, and have been using to bring in an extra 20,000g to 30,000g per week. I've had fun, but it's time to share the magic. Turns out, you can make gold, and a ton of it, just by selling vendor grays for ridiculous prices on the Auction House.

Farewell, Gnimo! We won't be needing you anymore.

      Initially, I just put everything into a 1,000 gold group, and things sold. But then, either on a whim or out of curiosity, I started testing and came up with the price discrimination setup you see below. Price discrimination is where charge more for the same thing, but if someone can pay more and is willing to, you might as well let them, right? (Think Airplane tickets, some people pay $400 while some pay $199. Same flight).  I'm sure the specific numbers would vary depending on the server size, but the whole point of this is capitalizing on curiosity and accidental purchases.

     Open world farming is awful for grays, so head to dungeons. If you're farming just for grays, then I only recommend doing 1 run of each of the following six instances, but if you're also going for cloth, mats, and transmog, then go ahead and do 3-5 of each of these, although be warned that multiple runs of six dungeons will take a while. Otherwise, it's pretty quick. The goal of this route is a shotgun approach; you're not going to get all of one kind, but you're going to get a few from each expansion's vendor list. (i.e. Most of the vendor greys from the Wrath of the Lich King have a "Frozen/Frigid/Frost XXX" theme)

Also, the Crochet Hat looks amazing if you're a fisherman.

     Each of the following dungeons will require at least 40 free bag slots, so have room. To start head off to Deadmines located in Southern Westfall, then run Uldaman in northern Badlands, and then head over to Zul'Farrak which you can get to easiest from the Uldum portal. After you mail your ZF stuff in Gadgetzan, MAKE SURE to do the Ruins of Ahn'Qiraj located in Silithus. One run through there will usually net about 20 unique vendor greys! Follow that up with Tempest Keep: Botanica out in eastern Netherstorm (it's the northern ship) and Halls of Lighning in Storm peaks.

      I avoid Mist of Pandaria and Cata content just because the vendor loot there are things that people see or remember, and therefore recognize as trash, whereas some of this is less recognizable, and when you post it for 3,000g, has the same effect as things like the Ruby Shades, which sell regularly for 17,000g, despite being white items. It makes people wonder, "Is this something being taken out of the game? What the heck, I have 300k gold."

     One last thought before I share my TradeSkillMaster Import lists. If you're a terrible person, you can set the Codex of Greater Heal and similar items at the same prices as the corresponding glyphs on your realm and unfortunate newbies will buy them. [Go to the Crafting tab of TSM, the nuts and bolts icon, click on materials, scroll down until you find Codex of Greater Heal, and then right click and enter in dbmarket(item:21284) ] made a decent chunk off this until my conscience got the better of me. Better to just post them for 1,000g as "Memories of Yesteryear's Patches." People still buy. (meh, probably still newbie mistakes)

TSM 2.0 Import Group Items
1. Vendor 1000 gold
     This group is your run of the mill items. Wicked Claw, Troll Sweat, and Protective Pavise. Fun or good looking items, but nothing you would write home for. For all of these, keep a post cap of 1, a high minimum price 50% of each groups normal price, and have a maximum of about 50% over. So, for this group my setup is 595g min, 995g normal, 1595g max. It's still somewhat arbitrary, play around on your server's economy.

11384,11385,11391,11392,11394,11395,13824,1504,1506,1507,1520,18222,18223,18224,18512,19938,21222,21224,21225,21281,21284,21285,21287,21289,21297,21299,21302,21307,22525,25374,25375,25376,25377,25397,25399,25418,25421,25426,25428,33424,33426,36801,3779,3780,3784,3785,3793,3794,3800,3802,3804,3806,3950,39513,3962,3964,3966,3967,3968,3986,4017,4021,4022,4023,4093,4582,4784,4787,4867,5114,6293,7073,8146,8747,90792

2. Vendor 2000 gold
     Here, you have the same general level of mediocrity as group 1, but these are either a little bit cooler looking, a little bit cooler sounding, or they're rarer/harder to get.

11404,13819,21226,2215,25380,25403,25404,3300,33368,33370,33379,33382,33383,33398,33400,33401,33402,33414,33415,33417,33422,33423,33425,33428,33429,33434,33436,3809,3811,39209,39210,39512,4025,43852

3. Vendor 3000 gold
     I reserve this group for the best pieces - the quality junk that people will really go for, and even though the 2000 gold group is my largest, I get a higher percentage of sales from this group. This is mainly composed of items that would be great transmog gear if you could transmog grays. As such, they're mainly RP items. Things like the Red Defias Mask are fabulous sellers and I'll consistantly sell at least one of those a week. You can find it in Deadmines.

11386,11393,1495,1498,1513,1514,21223,25341,25345,25347,25348,25357,25360,25363,25391,25393,25400,25402,3782,3786,3787,3936,3938,3940,3941,4018,56035,67407,7997,8151,8749,8751,9242

     That's all, good luck in your farming and let me know how you do!

Thanks for reading my little WoW blog! You can follow me on Twitter here and Twitch here. My YouTube channel is growing and has lots of great guides over here. I recommend that all goldmakers download the TSM Suite and the UndermineJournalGE addon for all goldmakers. You can read my setup guide if you'd like. And remember that the key to making gold in WoW is just to 

Search. Craft. Post.

Every Day.

Yep, this was the best April Fools Day trick I could muster. Funny thing is, you'll still make 20,000g-50,000g from transmog, rare items, and battle pets if you do this run that I "made up" for this April Fools day gag, because it's actually what I use for farming a large of diverse gear from multiple ranges. (I try and take care of my readers even when I play a joke on em) Thanks for reading and good luck! 4-2

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