What to do when you have more time...

Recently I have posted that I changed some things in the way I play, or at least the amount of time I spend in Dragon Soul...

As of Late I have also steped out of the consistent, persistent grind of gold making in the AH...

I am now playing with alts, twinks and farming some things I have wanted... I did on my recent clear in ruins of AQ get 2 chant paterns, Firepower to gloves and healing power to gloves (which is realy spellpower). 

Still looking for several others, Agi to gloves and the one with agi to cape...

Its different and amusing... and somewhat profitable..

I still raid DS on my main and lead the raid.. it was a good run last night, we pulled a couple times on HM Warlord and HM Hagara after dropping HM Morchok.  The other 3 toons can go to DS, and keep up reasonably, but mehh... it makes the main less fun for me...

So how to find new ways to make money...  different and less profitable, but more amusing and more fun...

Farm Foreman Thistlenettle
Farm AQ ruins, I may go mess w/ temple some more, but its a big time sink to solo... its not exactly easy...
Clean out guild banks...
I think I am going to mess around with the raiding guild that is level 25 and the alt guilds... I am going to play around with buying the 7th and 8th tab vouchers in my level 25 guild and then leave the guild to apply them to the level 1 and level 2 bank alt guilds.. It will amuse me and give me a lot more room to amass a lot more STUFF... like the piles of cloth from farming SFK for the Mindthrust Bracers and Shadowfang on the twinks and other junk really... just deciding in part to sell it off, or to hold it for the demand that will almost certainly arise in the early MoP releas...

At this point it's more about doing something amusing and different... I hope I find some more things that keep it fresh and maybe even something new that will take you all by storm... not likely, there are a lot of smart people.. but one can hope...

Day 10 – Blog/Website favourites

Spellbound and the, 20 days blogging challenge

Day 10 – Blog/Website favorites

Well, my favorite have either moved on or quit posting...

Its an easy answer...
Blogs:
Stokpile  and Greedy goblin ...

Websites:
WoWhead, WOWWiki, MMO-Champion, at one time Elitist Jerks, and several other class sites...


Stokpile  is not posting for now...

The old Gevlon  at Greedy goblin when he posted screenies of chat and AH sales... the idiot buying vendor items for 10 times the cost... like Ice cold milk for the Christmas holiday... rawr...

Another favorite... More from when I was learning the game and many other things is WoW Insider  it was for me simple easy to read, clear information on a lot of subject, certain topics I knew I wanted to skip and others I knew I wanted to read, and others could be optional...

Making gold on the "Cycles"

Vile over at Viles Auctions and I seem to be on the same page...  His post on Cheating yourself out of Profit and my post Dont Undercut Yourself a day later we not on my part planned now was my post inspired by his.  I saw his post moments after publishing mine... Ironic? or something?

Anyway... his recent post Flipping the Leather seems to parallel again to my thoughts and posts... and actually brought me to write this one...

Patience is partly being able to predict and profit from some cycles... Not be the first one in second place saying you could have or any other excuse... you do or you dont, you risk and win or lose, but either way you should be learning... "Wax on... Wax off..." though Mr. Miyagi is not there to point out the lesson... its much more up to you to feel the pain analyze and learn...

Vile over at Viles Auctions and I seem to be on the same page...  His post on Cheating yourself out of Profit and my post Dont Undercut Yourself a day later we not on my part planned now was my post inspired by his.  I saw his post moments after publishing mine... Ironic? or something?

Anyway... his recent post Flipping the Leather seems to parallel again to my thoughts and posts... and actually brought me to write this one...

Patience is partly being able to predict and profit from some cycles... Not be the first one in second place saying you could have or any other excuse... you do or you dont, you risk and win or lose, but either way you should be learning... "Wax on... Wax off..." though Mr. Miyagi is not there to point out the lesson... its much more up to you to feel the pain analyze and learn...

Cycles in this game can be detected and profited from... some favorites...

1. The holiday achievements.. they come and go...
2. Major content patches, patch notes will tell you where the money is...
3. Expansions...
4. Daily cycles, somewhere around 5-12 p.m. server things change dynamically its when more people are on either A. buying stuff or B. trying to sell stuff... early morning are the leftovers and lots of good deals to be found... sometimes and some markets... 20-30% price fluctuations can be found in a day...
5. Weekly cycles, start on tues and fri IMO.. there is the raiding PVP, gearing, grinding valor and conquest points, and the casual weekenders and farmer that are not not raiding, instead are getting more gold for then next raid cycle etc... Those will impact volume of sales, and and volume of listings... both will change prices by 30% or more on the weekly cycle
6. The supply and demand cycles and the FOTM (Flavor Of The Month) cycles.. these are what good goblins profit off of, and bad goblins are always late to the dance and the good goblins let the FOTM player have the market and shit to something new... or they are so fixed in the market and can take the lower profits and then prices rebound... its about the "apparant profitability" or one market or another, and then its flooded, and prices crash... but FOTM finds too little profit and moves out and profits rebound..
7. Anual cycles, these thing revolve around player bases... School times, when school is in there has always seemed to be a larger population of players in wow... this will flex markets...
8. Speciall events Cycles... In the U.S.  AHing on Super Bowl Sunday... your almost all alone in the market... I imagine it would be very similar for the World Cup in Europe...
9. Seasonal Cycles, based on weather and people interest in "getting out of the house" after the winter, and others have impact...
10. Hollidays... Christmas and Easter come to mind imediately, traditional Family gathering days.. I dont imagine many people take the lap top to the in-laws for a christmas/thanksgiving/independence day/easter holliday... etc...

AND FINALLY...

   11.  Mid Patch slumps... I am definitely in this cycle personally... I was raiding DS 8 times a week.. 4 85s, LFR and a normal run weekly for each.. DS was getting old and boring... So... I quit.. I still raid my main and lead the group in DS, however, The other 3.. maybe.. w/e... if I do, I do, if I don’t I don’t...

I have moved on to farming AQ for chant patterns (ruins, not temple) and I am playing with the twinks.. I am counting the ~300 gold from one clear in AQ, 150 from bosses and 150 from trash drops, and another 300G in mats from DEing stuff... I am gearing out twinks for BGs... at level 19 and dragging a crowd of guildees along with me.. sorta... Sometimes making twinks is far more fun than actually playing them... time will tell...

Vile tagged this too.. Now is a time to relax and change some of your routines... learn something new, do something you have wanted to and not done for a while... Explorer Title? Loremaster Title? Insane Title?  or any other option.. Work on  and Xmog set???

The game is in the mid patch slumps... lot of others are bored of DS and now it seems more and more left to more and more scrubby players making far more time and trouble than its worth... Many would say that one month (or less) into this expansion, it was over since many had already killed the final boss in LFR, and I tend to agree in many ways...

So ways to profit...

Talk to your friends.. what are they doing, and their friends... and what could you be doing.. they are leveling alt to get new professions? how many more are doing this... like Vile's Rugged leather post... You could very likely pick up a large volume of mats to flip into MoP for all the leveling Monks and Pandarens and all the profession leveling Monks and Pandarens...

things to think on...

1. Bags.. leveling toons want bags... can you get cheap mats now as raiding and PVP diminish and leveling and farming old zones picks up?
2. Mats, leveling toons want mats to level professions... (or leveled toons, there are, to me, a surprising number of players that have not leveled professions when they hit 85...
3. Gear and with it leveling speed and power and such for those leveling toons in PVP and LFD... or even just questing...
4. Leveling toons want to in almost all cases go fast... how can you speed up their enterprise?
5. How can you prepare now with the lower prices of mats for the MoP release?
6. Is any of this worth it... again Vile posted Inflation or Deflation in MoP?

The last is not something I have really considered...

Sit on my egg or invest it for MoP?  what to do?

What are your plans? got any?

2nd account gold making edit... No second account required really

Handera poasted a comment on yesterdays post, and I got to say it kinda brought me back to earth on how I used to play...
\
I used to have a crappy computer, and a 15 inch monitor.  My graphis would fall to 1-2 FPS in 25 mans and it was fine, thats all I ever knew...

It still would be since just playing, on a less than optimal system would be far better than what I have right now... That old 15 inch monitor is now on the kids PC, and some where I ended up with a 17" that is small for a desktop, but great for so many things... I keep vent on it, pull up web pages, wowhead etc while in game... Not necessary, but very nice if you spend some time in game... However I was reminded how I used to have always tab out and back to the game when going to various sites for info...

How do you apply yesterdays post if you dont have a second account or second monitor?

The same point still applys, of a shield wielder w/ a spike, ret aura pally, and I think a shamy with a  glyphed lightning shield actually might work too...

However the second account is not neccessary, and the second monitor is not either... My thoughts on this would be to log that toon when going afk for more than a quick break... like making dinner or paying more attention to the TV or looking up info for your toon a raid or otherwise surfing the web or something... you could pretty much check the screen once every 10 minutes or so, and collect your loot.  Though I can not say with great certainty... I think a body w/ loot on it will persist for around 5-10 minutes for you to collect.  I base that on the ~8 minute timer of Foremand Thistlenettle.... I looted him from the last time he fell over falling on the shield spke after killing him a second time...

Thanks Handera appreciate the feedback.

Gold making w/ a second account... Not Neutral AH

So, the current set of circumstances is one we all face w/ the cycle of the game and players and guild and raid group and raiding member of those groups etc...

I was running 4 85s in DS 10, and LFR every week, and when it came time to reset on Tues and lead a raid for my current "Main", I was not enjoying it... I made a massive change, and started pouring my energy into a new venture, I even managed to drag some of my fellow raider into it and get a few more guildees on the lvl 19 twink game... Unlike max level pvp, once you have a toon twinked and geared, you are done... for the most part, there is no season, no next level tier, conquest caping or anything else, only an occasion massive shift in the game like heirlooms, and well the remaking of the world.. Cataclysm happened....

ANYWAY... the golf making point of this post is a discovery of how to make a bit of gold in a fairly passive way....

At first I placed a toon on target and and would log and farm "Foreman Thistlenettle" then log out and go on about my business... log in log out and such was a distraction to other efforts... well, in the end this is what I did...

The second account has a level 40 warrior.. I rode/ran/swam up the coast from STV to Westfall, down into "The Deadmines" the undead area specifically just outside the portal to the instance... down there you can find "Foreman Thistlenettle" and he has 2 rare drops that are BOE... "Formans Gloves" for my rogue and some chainmail pants...

I went AFK to see a ghost and started thinking about how to live and be afk, You will not auto log when you are attacked... Pally w/ ret aura would work well too, but in my case, I just put a shield spike on that little prot warrior... I get credit for the kill, go afk for 10 minutes and come back to a corpse on the ground for looting... its on my second monitor, and game sound is on, so I can hear him getting attacked and deal with it, or just wait and let the shield spike kill the mobs attacking me...

I can go afk and not auto log, the mobs attack, clear my auto afk status and then die... at level 40 the toon has enough helth to live and the spike just kills them... I do it while raiding, I do it while PVPing or fishing or w/e I am doing on another toon on my main account...

Anyway, long story short, it took me 3 days to get my first pair of gloves.  They are BIS for a 19 leather melee DPS Enh/Shammy, Rogue and Feral... and they are about a 1% drop rate from a mob w/ an 8 minute respawn timer... according to data and comments on Wowhead.  Well, I had finally parked the 2nd account warrior in there, and I had also set them up w/ a shield spike for the automation, minimal time, so I left the warrior there, ran/flew and 85 in to trade the contents of the bags... I managed to collect 3 more pairs of those gloves... I have seen many players go down there to farm, but, they see me, and no foreman... what would your conclusion to be... I am going to try to sell the gloves for 10K... we will have to see...  There are other locations this could be use full..

The only ones that comes to mind are the??? black tabby cat?? that is up in silverpine forest I believe...
Also there have been post on a rare spawn in Blackrock Mtn. forget his name or location... but the idea tickles my brain w/ posibilities...

What would be some other locations? and what do you need besides a second account...

1. A static spawn point for a mob that drops something rare and valuable...
2. A Prot Pally would be best w/ a shield spike and ret aura, but a warrior works well too w/ just the shield spike, mostly because in Deadmines I can keep my back close to the wall, and not have to worry about strays walking up behind me..
3. Be leveled well past the level of the mob(s) that may agro you... You have to be able to survive the dmg, and you have to be able to spirit regen the health back
4. Of course you have to have a market and buyers... and you could crash your own market.. if the item is more and more valuable, people will notice and try to get in, or they will pay less and less, and then you have to lower your prices... if it is rare, remember to never post more than one at a time and keep the appearance of rare w/ allowing the market to have none available...
5. Your patience will win you more gold...

Also w/ twinking another market has become... well something... I and my friends are twinking... one found something I did not know about.. 8 agi and 8 dodge rating to cloak... now thats pretty sexy considering what i thought were the best options, 5 resistance to all, 3 agility or increased stealth... it certainly KILLS 3 agility to cloak and the others... YMMV... I knew about 15 agi to gloves and was going to grind keepers of time rep, but found it in guild... Got to looking around and found that... 15 Spellpower to gloves (healing power), the cloak chant and 15 agi to gloves are all rare drops in AQ... so off I went.. first time to ever cross to the other side of that portal.. I knew there were 2, and luckily went to ruins and solo that place in short order knowing nothing about nothing inside... lost, map referance, fall death, and still cleared easily... on to the temple.. that is another story... I ended up getting a friend to help me out... then it went pretty smooth... In the end, some greens for DE, and some other nearly useless stuff.. and no chant paterns, but knowlege of the place and which is which and what I can and can not do... first off kill "Vem" first not the princess.. I died to fall damage many times for that mistake.. I was on my well geared hunter and it did not seem to matter if I went BM or survival, tank pet or cat... though survival in BM was a little higher.. mehh... Just Glyph MD... make your pet tank...

I did all this AQ stuff while my warrior was "passivly" farming "Foreman Thistlenetle"...

What mobs can you think of that have a static spawn location and a drops that would be rare and valuable?

Its easy and quick enough to make a pally and level em up to a level needed... unless I had to go all the way to level 77-79... Hmmm... interesting idea there... make a twink 79 Pally, and load em up w/ the Cata greens/blues and que some BGs from that spawn location... ahh, ideas.. they just come to me sometimes.. and sometimes, I even follow through with them...

Day 09 – Your first blog post

Spellbound and the, 20 days blogging challenge

Day 09 – Your first blog post

I was at the time jaded on a few things and again had failed to be a part of something I wanted to roll myself into.  A guild w/ solid consistent leadership, a raiding group that had more positives than negatives... or the weight of one over the other puts you firmly on one side of the fence or the other...   Sorta like pugs and puggers... Give em a chance and it works out, and sometimes you have to call a spade a spade and walk away from something when it has ceased to be fun...

The goals and aspiration I was pondering at the time were put there in that first post and as the blog still is, its a place to put thoughts where I could think thing over and organize them for largely my own benefit, and in a blog to possibly share the perspective with others, for their benefit or feedback...

I have shifted from that project guild, and I have gone back to raiding... I made the million, and I leveled more toons...  All in all the project guild taught me some things, or help focus my attention to thing I already knew, but denied the real impact of since they were distant from my own personal situation, the guild brough some realitys to front and center attention in ways that I had to pay attention to, as well as many other things.. overall its been a great year... I has been just over a year since I started blogging...

It was all fallout from a situation where I was forced into a change, as everything my game time was focused on evaporated... and I had an oportunity to reset... Looking back the big change was a good thing and a great break from a grind...

Dont undercut yourself

Or sell yourself short or many other things you could do to cut your profits short...

There is some guess work and considerations to AH deposit fees as well as market saturation and the other factors that play in...  But, IMO, always start your list price high and work it down to the happy balance for volume and net profit per sale... These things are just a way I do everything, or a logic applied to most decisions I make when I go to the AH to sell STUFF...

What I am getting at is NOT your glyphs, gems, chants markets, or any other saturated market for Cata goods.   Things that are current for me as I am build a couple twink 19s, including a lot of farm runs in SFK for Shadowfang and Mindthrust Bracers specifically... So far what I have gotten is piles of cloth, linen, wool, a bit of silk and a lot of greens... these are not really things people go in the market to sell... they are more a transitional offload the inventory while leveling thing for players... However, a friend doing the same thing with me said, "I sell the greens for 1-2 gold each... GAHHHH... that’s what I am talking about...  I sell for 5 and more...

Greens for the 10ish to 19 levels are much like the 77-79 Cata greens, there is a large market for many of them to gear up toons for dungeons, and BGs and just simply speed up the leveling process...
Of the owl, of the monkey, of the bear and others are good sellers, and though a little slower at 5-75 gold each, I never sell them for such low prices as my friend... I never sell greens for anything close to the DE values.... I will DE them myself after attempts to sell them for profit and then w/e... People will pay 10-75 gold and more for these things... of the whale is one that just gets listed relatively cheap... stam spirit, and of the gorilla is another, strength/spirit.. bahhh.. Garbage... non heirloom slots also will command a lot higher value, boots, bracers, gloves and belts...

In these realms of low level gear, the things that matter most are stam and Str/Agi/Int... Int/spirit is okay too... but most spirit gear at this level is not worth a lot... 5 gold, 10 gold etc is pretty cheap to a player on an alt w/ and 85... and any decently knowledgeable player will sell the meats, cloth, ore, skins, herbs, from a leveling toon, and it’s pretty easy to sell 'em at these prices, since a stack of cloth can go for 10G or more...

Another thing, cloth... in almost all cases, you will lose some profits if you just undercut the lowest guy... this is where auctionator comes in and does so well.... If you don’t use it, well, maybe you could find some great utility for it... rather than one line for every auction it will group them per line like this:
3 stacks of 20 at 23S each 4g60s/stack
26 stacks of 1 at 24S each 24S/stack
4 stacks of 3 at 24S75C each   73s25c stack
26 stacks of 20 at 65s each 13g/stack
Etc etc with all the rising prices....
what you do is just "alt" click the cloth in your bags, and then click bottom entry guy in the example... because he has a large volume or a wall that listing above reduces your chance to sell.. the other guys are just small amounts and listing just to unload it FAST... be patient, use a 48 hour auction... it sets your price to undercut that guy at 64S each and 12g80s/stack  that’s a lot better than just blindly undercutting the guy at 4g60s/stack its triple the gold income, and it’s so easy to do...

In my case, it’s not like I will go set up TSM posting or anything to automate this, I am going to do it manually.  I should take the couple extra seconds to look at the stats on the gear and sell it at 5 gold or 50 gold based on what it is... what level to equip, and what stats it has... Playing at some low level PVP helps me to know what is good... for instance, I know that some mages, a lot of rogues and many hunter tear some faces of in bgs, Kittys often too...  for healers, Priests are amazing w/ thier bubble... but most BGs have a couple clothies/healers maybe a warrior/pally, and 6 of the 10 in WSG on average (estimated) are rogues and hunters... selling the gear at the right price to the right crowd and knowing a bit about that... you can easily tripple what you make...

Happy hunting... All the little things you do add up cumulatively to make and maintain the pile of gold.

Day 08 – 10 things we don’t know about you

Spellbound and the, 20 days blogging challenge

Day 08 – 10 things we don’t know about you

Continuing this is discouraging, but I will... I guess the readers dont care about the blogger, only how to make gold, and honestly, thats the way I was when I started in blogs and largely still am.  However I never cared about how big the audience was, and still dont, but looking at the numbers it can be a bit distracting at least...

Anyway... things you dont know about me... well there is a reason there are items on that list and I dont think there are many I don't want to take off the list... however there are a few...

1. I like to go fishing, preferably with a buddy and an adult beverage
2. I prefer a gas guzzling 4x4 truck, lifted gets extra points, bigger is better
3. TV shows, a short list... Survivor, Burn Notice, and.. ummm...
4. My kids think I can fix anything
5. Home destruction projects amuse me, I am really good at making sawdust...
6. Most memorable place in the world, Jerusalem
7. Favorite of the most memorable life events: geting married, SCUBA diving w/ humpback whales in Hawaii, a downhill ski trip w/ dad, the births of my kids (new babys are so tiny), little family traditions, like pizza/calzones and movie night with the wife and kids...

Gold in the sands of an hourglass

Time... Patience... Steel nerves... Educated decisions... Market analysis...

The harder things to commit yourself to, IMO, are large, long term investments, that are more of gambling than anything that is really assured a high return for your investment...

The downsides:

1. Your gold is ties up for a long time (months)
2. It is hard to be sure your investment will pay off
3. It is a nervous challenge and could result in a net loss

The Upsides:

1. Very low time investment
2. Its gambling, so can be lots of fun
3. It can be very profitable....

What I am talking about is investing now in the pets and mount from the Lunar Festival, and Love is in the Air.   and then wait for 6 months to sell...  

Or, there is one definite and one possible payday in 5.0... Pets and profession leveling mats from Pre-MOP zones...

Both will have narrow windows to unload.  With pets it will be a short window and its only if you catch the brief window when people are buying lots of pets with the new BOA pet system... On crafting mats, it will be a window only during the massive rush of new monks and panda's leveling.   My guess is the pets will have a 2-4 week surge in price following the implementation of the new system on which we really don’t have many details, and the professions mats will have a 1-4 month window for sales... YMMV, server size, the economy, the nature of server population and many factors will play into either strategy, however both have great possibilities... IMO.. for crafting mats, Ore has among the highest possibilities for returns... Ore since it can be prospected, smelted or left raw, for engineering, Mining, JC, and BS... where there is only First aid and tailoring for cloth, and alchy/inscription for herbs... Though I will not likely be doing it, frozen orbs may be a good investment too, they are part of recipes for +5 levels to skills, and can be used to buy other mats like eternals from wrath for leveling... One of the best resources to do your research would IMO be look to wow-professions and look at the mats for leveling to 500... not all the way to 525 since it is reasonable to assume that there will be MoP patterns that can be learned at 500... or go for the 500-525 mats since many of those will give +5 levels instead of +1...

Keep thinking of ways to make money on the occasion of MoP release...

Day 07 – The reason behind your blog’s name

Spellbound and the, 20 days blogging challenge

Day 07 – The reason behind your blog’s name

We all have our reasons for playing, and we all have a diverse set of interest toward the game.  If most people share one thing in common, it is the normal cycles of gaming, the boredom, excitement, the highs and lows of our various ventures... For many that is the gold making game, for others it is raids or PVP or both, achieves, collections and other things... And there are many other pursuits we play at frequently...

For me, I have always come back to raiding, I have been involved as a Guild lead and raid lead because I imagine I like it... It keeps me busy... I do pretty well with some aspects of it, and frankly, Other people seem in my mind to fail at it for many reasons, consistency, fairness, the required extra time and work... Unreasonable expectations or other points that contribute to a successful run with a group of people...

The blog was born when I caught one of those cycles... I had for a long time worked up a utopia of guilds... at least in my own wildest imagination, and eventually, it may have been great, but the investment was going to be to high... That guild prompted this blog and much of what followed.  It was early Cata and about 5 of the 9 players that were going to be a HC/HM raiding group were ready in about a week or 2 of release for raids, but getting pugs was a challenge, and when 4 or more expect a carry, or can not decide on the toon to play, and start leveling and gearing up all over... Add in a little personal drama of the worst kinds, and people deciding to take a break, and then one day you log on to raid, and the guild MOTD is to the affect of: "There will be no more raiding here, stay if you like or leave."   That left me jaded more than any other failure of the groups I had been in... at that point raiding sucked and people were so non committal and inconsistent with their enterprises, always chasing a dream and following some one else’s empty words and inflated promises of the future, when they had little to back up any of the claims...

I rolled a new level on toon, "Achieve" and then made a guild "commitment" the only rules were pretty much you could not join if you were over level 15... period, leave, you were not coming back... it was built on random invites, and had a lot of toons that were short term distractions of players... they would be active for a couple weeks and then gone... Guild leveling was really slow with the low level toons, they make almost NO contributions to a guild gaining xp... Anyway, I was paying gold for various levels achieved by the players, and that kept some leveling, but it was a dismal few, and months later, I abandon the project, kept the guild for the bank space, and got back into raiding, a couple raid leads quit the game or left the guild, and events found me later in pretty dismal group, with poor performance, poor progression and generally just not fun... I began my own group, contributed to the guild and then I was leading raids, and some how, I was promoted to Co-GM... why... don't know, there was no offter, there was no discussion, just logged one day and noticed I was...

These days, Gold is a tool in raiding, I take care of gems and chants for any gear players will use in the raid... Main spec and off spec if they reasonably will be contributing to the guild success with the gear, I take care of flasks and cauldrons for the raid, and generally, the raiders have very little financial worries to maintain their raiding...

Anyway, that’s how the guild began, It evolved, and now hold almost nothing but the name, and old posts to connect it to its beginning...  However the name still applies.  IMO, you must achieve commitment to make it in the gold enterprises, it will not happen in a day, a week or even a month... it will take MONTHS to learn and position yourself for markets, and it will take consistency to really hit the big numbers...

A little gold post, a way to make a break into the big game

With four DS capable and ready characters, it is easy to get burned out and bored with the instance, trying too hard to run all 4 in LFR and a regular raid every week just gets, well, it takes away the appeal of doing it in my main raid group...  With Valentine’s day this week, we had several missing people on Tue and decided to only raid on Thur.  We did last night and ran a full clear, one shotting almost everything... But those of us that were there on Tues. came up with a new distraction plan... Twink alts... No schedule, no expectations and no demands, just something to do with one or more other people, when you don't want to run DS, LFR, LFD, troll trade, do dailies, chase achievements or any number of other things...  And DS is reasonably fast these days... Last night's one night clear would have been about 2 hours, but was closer to 3 with breaks and allowing people to go get tier pieces and reforge... In my case 45 expertise is not optimal...

The twink plan... So with great vigor, I rolled up a monster little rogue to lay down the waste in the lvl 19 bracket... fast and easy to get to leveling, plenty of competition, no huge investment of time or gold, and lots of fun in doses.. like anything, variety is the spice of the game... I doubt I am the only one in this mindset... making now a better time to play at the twink market than it was when DS first came out.

Well, shopping around for some gear on the AH I was again surprised at the market...

On to the gold making part:
Low level leather gear... 45 gold... Probably about 3 gold in mats to make it... same with rings, chants, cloth and mail for any crafting profession.  Stamina is king in low level BGs... the next thing is STR/AGI/INT... If you can make crafted gear roughly in the level 8-19 range and it has both, you may really have a little gold mine... and something different to do... a second point, is that pants, boots, bracers, gloves and jewelry are the non heirloom pieces people need the most...  Check your markets, DS is getting boring for many players, especially the good ones that would know how to twink and have a enough gold to share with you...

2 factors may play into this...
1st is leveling/twinking players... bored players are looking to do something different than DS with their play time, achieves, alt raids, and making alts are some of the many options... Players are looking for the low level gear for 2 reasons, leveling in  BGs or dungeons... or twinking... At the lowest levels it represents IMO some of the greatest improvements your toon can obtain, and its fairly inexpensive...
2nd, These are largely overlooked markets... everyone is trying to sell epic gems cuts and epic raiding gear or... something for the end game, but the low level markets... though small and niche by comparison, can be very profitable with minimal time investment since the competition is less likely to be interested or stay interested if they find stiff competition...

How I would do it if I wanted to press into the market... first a bank alt would be needed to make my time investment minimal... big bags... armor pieces do not stack so it would take some room... play with the level 7-19 crafted gear, and find what actually sells.  Post one or 2 of each item and if it sells begin stocking 5-10 each of that item... if it does not sell, lower the price and take it out of the crafting queue... At the end of a market trial, if you watch you numbers you will find what sells and what volume it sells at roughly.  Next is develop the posting plan, 1/day, 2/day, 3/day... that determines in part how many you post... some things you may post 5 per posting daily, others only one or two, and others may be 7+...   With these details worked out, you do a mass crafting session and send 5-20+ of the items you will be selling to the bank alt... Store them in the mailbox... cancel/post on your schedule, and collect your gold... only once every couple days do you have to craft... and mats are almost always cheap and available, but some regular scanning will get you mats a bit cheaper...

Effectively this is what I did for 3+ months leading up to Cata... it is also how I have repeatedly developed many sales plans... with that kind of information and volume data, I knew which enchant scrolls could sell 5-7 between postings and 50+/week, and which would sell, sometimes 1/posting and maybe 3/week... it’s a great low risk way to practice for the big game... I had over 1000 scrolls pre crafted when 4.3 hit... some I missed the mark on by a bit, but for the most part, I had enough to get me through the first 5 days.. Some were only a stack of 10-20, some were 5 stacks of 20... In addition to that I had “liquid” chant mats to be able to react to what sold faster than I was prepared for... Again, I went from 10K to 1Mill in 10 days with this strategy and was at 1.4 million in 15 days...  I practiced the strategy and learned how to do market analysis with low level crafting on several classes with several profession.  I learned to increase efficiency with posting and crafting times... It was vendor pet sales that I came up with the inventory management I would use…

Example: I would take one toon out and buy 12 or 24 each of the vendor pets across the world... I would mail them to the posting bank alt… 12 per mail... I would cancel post the pets on the bank alt, and then just a quick run to the mail box to restock on sold items... and post again... this allowed me to make one weekly, roughly one hour farm run per week to buy vendor pets, and then post them for the next several days with stocks from the mail box... With the low level twink gear, you could do similarly. 

Get some more gold… Thanks for stopping in

Day 06 – Your workplace/desk (photo and/or description)

Spellbound and the, 20 days blogging challenge

Day 06 – Your workplace/desk (photo and/or description)

On her dark grey steel decks and  the American flag always flying from the mast of the haze grey destroyer of the fleet... Inside, on the grates and the plates that make up the decks of the Engine rooms and engineering spaces of Navy destroyers.  In the offices or command and control spaces, where operational oversight of the equipment and the personel that maintained and operated ships. 

Sailing by the coast of Hawaii, the big island, the active lava flows at night from Kiluea glowing as we sailed by and the sunset glowing on the horizon when you looked to the west...

Pulling into Cayman Brac, in the Carribean, looking down in 100 feet of water and seeing the rocks and vegetation scattered across the sandy bottom of crystal blue water...

Sailing in open water, with the ocean as the horizon in every direction... Watching a sunrise at sea, or the sunset. 

The sounds of machinery as it, whined, buzzed, hummed and ocasionally made horrible noises that promped quick intervention to make it stop... The excitement as the sounds of engines starting and the new destination to be found, and the elation of those engines whinding down as we returned to shore and would either get some time off to see new places, new cultures and well.. to be honest DRINK... OR even greater those quieting sounds as engines were stoped, equipment shut down and you were HOME and would soon be with family.

The sounds of a Commanding Officers voice as anouncements were made over the general announcing system, or the sounds of alarms as we drilled and practiced.  The sounds of water gently lapping against the side of the ship while patrolling slowly on station, or the crashing sound of water when time was more critical and we made haste to a new destination with rumbling and roaring equipment that performed as was my primary job to ensure and oversee.

The smell of fresh bread while at sea, as the night baker is busy at 2 a.m. preparing for the crew and the upcoming day's meals.  The tangy smell of the salt air, or the distinct smell of fuel and oil in the engine rooms.  The smells of charcoal as we take a small window of time in the busy schedules to have a "Steel Beach Picnic" on the decks of the ship, the BBQs and charcoal come out, and the meal is had on the decks of the ship under the sun...

In the 110 deg. F enginerooms, while sailing in the Arabian gulf, watching over the air compressors, lubricating oil pumps, the fuel systems, hydraulics, a generator and 2, ~25,000 horse power engines for the propulsion via one of 2 shafts...   watching meters, gages and indicators for things to go wrong, or just make sure they are going right, as nearly 1.5 million pounds of torque go down that shaft to turn the propeller. 

Leaving the flourescent lit spaces on the internal of the ship and seeing dolphins surfing in the large wake created by the fast moving ship, or a slow cruis and seeing dozens of whale sharks, spotted, slow and HUGE in the water near by.

Hawaii, Florida, California, Washington, Virginia... Japan, Hong Kong, Philipines, Malaysia, Australia, Singapore, Thailand, India, Oman, Djibouti, UAE, Bahrain, Saechelles, Isreal, Greece, Turkey, Italy, France, Spain, Netherlands, Scottland, Canada, Mexico, Brazil...


The Atlantic, the Pacific, the Indian, the mediteranean...

My office has not been defined for most of my career, its boundries are broad and inclined to be changed and redefined repeatedly... But it has been memorable...

Finally, Patience pays off (a gold post)

Tremendous tankard of terror  I ammassed around 150 of them starting back in September and just sat on them... I picked them up for under 500...  average cost was probably closer to 400 and I am now starting actually move them as the volume on the AH no longer exists...   The supply is nearly gone, except mine, and I have been slowly selling one here and there w/ pretty stiff competition for 700-100... nice flips, but now... it seems I am selling a lot more a lot faster and there is less competition and that competition is less active at undercutting me... I am now selling for around 12-1700+... 5 months later... its payday... as I start to sell them with greater regularity and at greater profits...

Patience is one of the greatest tools in your gold making endeavors, but it can also be your failure in some high risk investments.  I have had it go both ways... In this case, it seems the tankards of terror is going to pay off, however, I still remember 400K worth of DMC trinkets diminish in value to about 100K, and those have never seen a comeback... I thought I could wait out a month, so stopped selling and listing, but there were on my server multiple others playing in the market who just kept selling, and never ran out between fairs...

Day 05 – Favourite item(s) in game

Spellbound and the, 20 days blogging challenge

Day 05 – Favourite item(s) in game

I can not say I really have any single favorite... there are very few that strike me as awesome or could make a favorites list bases on imagery or visual appeal... Thought the most striking and the reasons are below

- Enchant Weapon Mongoose
IMO one of the most visual enchants in the game... and at the time it was current, I could never justify it...

- Twin Blades of Azzinoth
IMO the most visual and recognizable weapons in the game... again something that was in dreams out of my leage and out of my reach when they were current

- the D3 Beast lord hunter set (I think I have the name right)  it was a set I worked extensivly for, I ran more dungeons to get that set than I care to remember, especially SteamVaults since 2 of my pieces might drop in there... I think I eventually got a 4 Piece set, but it was a long hard road, on the order of months as I was a newly graduated player form total noob class, to scrub nub... Not your worst player to have around, but not terribly memorable for good or bad... I worked so hard for that gear to get into raiding...

- Zapthrottle Mote Extractor - It was my ticket to my first gold stakes... I my first cash cow... it began the changes to the way I could play and always get enhancements for my gear... and after a year of playing it was my ticket to my first toons epic flight...

Keeping the list short and the big tickets, that would be it...

Day 04 – Your best WoW memory

Spellbound and the, 20 days blogging challenge

Day 04 – Your best WoW memory

This one is supper easy... If you played in BC, or even since, and payed any attention to the world PVP in Hellfire Penninsula, maybe even done the daily  for the colliseum, the stadium and the other of the 3 control points for the zone buff... you may be aware of the difficulties with gaining control of the 3 control points... I was still noobin it up for the most part, and had some sense of reason that I wanted to take it back, I guess I wanted the tokens to buy some gear from the vendor...  Back then it was pretty active on a low scale basis on that server, almost constant skirmishes with small groups distracting themselves from the questing or othe game pursuits.  Often friends would come to the zone and the battles were decided by the number of friends one group could get to respond and if that number was more than the other. 


Flags were blue (alliance) then grey (neutral) then red (horde) back and forth flapping in the wind.  The numbers were close, but they were not close enough, and favored the other other faction...  I was pitted to keep fighting... I wanted to get the zone and the daily completed to get more tokens for the vendor gear...

The heated skirmish involved me and about 3-4other guys defending or attacking, against consistently 5-6 from the other faction... The numbers just seemed to favor them by one or 2 always... We just could not and did not get the upper hand for what seems now like it was 45 minutes.  It was turning into a frustrating last stand that resulted in each of us getting to make another corpse run... and another.... and another...

I have always played w/ game sound on... to me its just part of the game, there is so much richness and indicators about things around you that can que you into various events, procs and enemy abilities.  At the time, there was a noise I ignored repeatedly, since it seemed to be of little or no importance to me, or have any effect on the small PVP encounter I was in and the zone wide yell was just cluttere in my chatbox that I did not read.  And directly It did not have impact in my little world.  But the sounds were KJ, the zone's world boss in combat doing zone wide yells about the devastation he was attempting on the raid group that was taking him out.  I had barely a concept of who or what KJ was, but, I knew it was someone I wanted to kill, but replacing the greens and crappy blues I had was first on the list...

It turns out a good RL friend from work was in that raid, my barber actually, and he was taking KJ down... I happened to notice he was online and in the zone... I asked for his help and about 5 minutes later, I got a lot more than I asked for... I imagine the sequence of events were something like this: -Finish off the boss -> Hand out loots -> My buddy making a petition to the group to help me out... About 25 guys from that KJ raid descended down upon that PVP area. Chaos and confusion from the enemy as they clearly seemed unsure of their best course of action, the flight or fight instict ensued as from their flying mounts the remnants of that raid dismounted midair tossing out instant cast spells as they fell from the sky.  The flying mounts alone were enough to impress me since I had yet to get one... They hit the ground running and in organized chaos, overwhelmed the enemy then proceded to run clean up, and, well, simply put they just oblitered the other side... They hung around briefly as the flight or fight decision was not universal from the enemy and discouraged any imediate attempts to retake anything with a the just rewards of another corpse run,  I barely engaged the enemy, I just watched in awe, and smiled and laughed about what had just happened.. The victory was absolutely monumentat at the time for me... It felt like that token from the dialy quest was such big step to getting myself into a position to be killin KJ myself in the future... It was just an absolute high that lasted for.. well untill now.. years later...

For 45 minutes I guess, I had been frustrated with the situation, and died about 15 times to the slightly imbalanced fight that was going on... In the brief closin 5 minutes of the battle, in that moment, I watched the power of one friend and one request for one persons help, turn into so much more.  The victory was enough to make the top of the list...

Most memorable moment in WOW, BTW, TY John, You were that friend.  : D

Spelling answer

If you know them, picture, Bill Engvall, Larry the cable guy, and/or Jeff Foxworthy.

Its works better with if you can hear the answer with the accent of some gracious country folk (A.K.A. Hillbillies, rednecks, country, etc) who would rather go fishing in the dark with some home-made moonshine and a friend, or milk a cow, by hand, at 5 a.m. in a dark barn, than go to the store to buy it,or  text, tweet and otherwise interface with many aspects of the modern world.  They can hunt and fish, and live off the land, and have little need for things others may think they could not live with out. (cell phones, TV, Cable, a vehicle, designer clothes, computer, running water, and electricity to name a few)

Somehere in the country, after the pavement ends, this conversation may have occured.  In a place where time seems to have stood still. Sometimes, for a few, way out past where the blacktop ends, there might be some people who's education has has no conventionally recongnized academic awards, but they could have had the following conversation...

Jed: A C M?
Hey, (you) see them?
Bubba: C M?
See them?

Jed: C M? M R Ducks!
(You) see them? Them are Ducks!

Bubba: M R Not Ducks!
Them are not ducks!

Jed: O S A R! C D E D B D Wangs?
Oh yes they are! (You) see the Eedee Beedee Wings?

Bubba: L I B! M R Ducks.
Well I'll be! Them are ducks.

Jed: C, M R Ducks.
See, them are ducks...

Day 03 – Your first day playing WoW

Spellbound and the, 20 days blogging challenge

Day 03 – Your first day playing WoW
Though not really, it is long and full of nostalgia… Much less a first day account, and more of a first months/year account...


First off thanks to all the real people that told me to, “read elitist jerks”, “level just one toon first”, “Use Grid and Clique”, “get DBM”, “Don’t be a screen (c)licker”, “level your tank, not your hunter”, and the multitude of other tips tricks and secrets of the game that were unlocked only because someone else told me where to look or what to do… Thanks for all the real people that make the game and community what it is…


THE FIRST TOON

Well, it was so long ago that I really don’t remember.  I had finally fallen to friend’s suggestions that I start to play.  I was scared of the MMO trap, that there is no pause button, but I finally started up, and since have come close to finding a balance in WOW vs. family and RL.

I think the first toon was a rogue, but not knowing anything about anything, he was hard to play... I took the "cool" talents and specs, instead of the "useful" ones, on what I thought was going to be a cool toon, stealthy, sneaky, havoc maker… but the game flipped the coin on me since I was BAD and a total NOOB.. and I had no idea about dungeons, or gear or anything.  I also thought I would level concurrently a toon with every profession, that way I would be able to make all the gear for all my toons.  Gosh I was a NOOOOB…

What I did not know, is that instance gear was OP, and that crafted gear, was only occasionally better than quest gear.  I stayed in low level zones and wanted to clear every quest. I did not know better gear from other zones quests... I actually read the quests... Somewhere along the way, I started a druid and a hunter and others I don’t remember... I found WOWHEAD and alakazham, wowwiki and thotbot....

 I guess at some point I decided I hated the druid and deleted it, then forgot I had ever played one until I went to level another one years later and remembered doing the aquatic form quest... that stupid quest... took hours to get all over the world... what a pain in the tail... and that was the only way to even get aquatic form back then… One item off the coast of Westfall, one off the coast of Swamp of sorrows and one more off the coast of Darkshore (I think)... It’s all gone now after the sundering, and it was not learned at the trainer back then...  So lots of running, you did not have a mount till level 40 then, you had no 2 passenger mounts to get around, and that fed ex portion of the quest was several hours… I was alliance then, and remember running so many toons through Dun Algaz tunnel to get the FP to IF… What a different game it was then.

Eventually, I saw my friends leveling just one toon faster than me and the little utopian army of crafting alts I thought I was so smart with… I settled on the hunter for some terrible reason... When, I got to cap in BC, I remember the patch that released the Black Temple had recently hit the servers, I did not even know what a raid zone was at the time… I remember spending 7 hours in the old Sunken Temple, and the group fell apart at the last boss… some green dragon… That was when that place had like 4 levels, and silly stuff to get all the bosses to spawn and lots of stairs and running in circles… easy to get lost… I also remember the first time clearing BRD.. that place is still about the same, but imagine doing it with about 1/3 the DPS that players go in there now with… there was no heirloom gear, and tanks were all about “let me get 3 sunders before you start to DPS… “ what an epic accomplishment that was back then.

I never got into any raid zone really other than Kara, a few runs in Mag’s lair and Gruul’s lair, One partial run in SSC and BT… Never saw the inside of TK, or She Sunwell… I was off grinding dungeon gear sets to be able to raid in Kara, and doing the attunement quest line to be able to walk through the door... I really miss attunements... There was a real sense of accomplishment when you finally got it done, and when you had the gear to actually be able to raid... I miss the big efforts and the massive work that went into the marginal gains... I did not raid anything current, But I found a lot of people like me that needed the attunements to get to the next raid tier like me so Kara was still a lot of fun and even when it was not current, it was still current for a large community of new players and new alts…

EPIC… Like, I did all those quests and dungeons for what… “to get a key, to a door, to be able to raid, or event to run heroics back then…...  Kara was and still is a very cool zone.”

I  was stupid about rep, and purchasable items with rep, and so had really found myself behind the curve on that front too, and somewhere between grinding rep and trying to raid, and gearing in dungeons... I found out that there were a lot of really bad hunters and I was one of them... I clipped my auto shots, pushed buttons for abilities because it was fun, and did like 3-400 DPS... I was at the time a screen clicker, and fixated on my bars, then I met some benevolent people that told me just how bad I was and introduced me to "Elitist Jerks".  Almost overnight I started doing 900+ DPS…  BM hunter rotation was simple, Steady Shot, Auto Shot, Kill command… Most ran a one button macro… The light bulb went off, and I went from barely beating the tank on DPS (back when they did no DPS really) to double my DPS... or more... That is when I started the guild leading thing and raid leading thing... and then I leveled up a Pally tank, and found a new way to play the game, It became my main... I really like tanking, it was easier to lead raids, from that role I thought, and so... I began with a new resolve of "play to raid" gaming that I still play...  Wrath released and I began again the leveling gearing, grinding for raid readiness.. Tanking Nax, this time I did it smart and right… or certainly a lot better, paying attention to rep and rewards with factions…

The gold making evolution began… I finally decided to get epic flight… I have a level 80, Prot Pally that is a BS engineer and has no gold to speak of… How to make gold… I found the value of my engineering farming in Sholozar basin… Zap throttle mote extractor… that was when eternal fires would sell for 45 – 75 gold each… I just sold them, but I was starting to get a glimps of markets and price fluctuation, but really, I was farming for gold, the gold I needed to be able to learn how to use that “turbo charged” flight machine thing in my bags…  I got the epic flight learned and started having gold all the time for anything and everything I NEEDED to raid…

Next thing that came along when Nax was still current, I saw an opportunity to play a priest, you really almost had to have 2 in the raid to clear Nax 25 (enter Instructor Rasuvius)... so, you could be a completely terrible shadow priest or healer, and bring your mind control and to get a raid spot, and if you were good, get added to several peeps friends lists... I did the Mind Control thing, and I was not terrible, it was easy since I knew all about how to do it having done it as a tank on 10 man, I had a set of hit gear just for that fight… as a Disco healer for just the Mind Contol... I was actually finding I was decent at healing and disco priest in raids, was at the time, fun, still is actually, but more so then since it was new and different in the raid world. Disc had previously been the PVP spec only and had no place in PVE… Playing that priest was a new evolution to my playing… I then learned, in a whole new light the value of macros and addons, I installed and still use the Grid/Clique composition for healing (again smarter people telling me that was the way to go)… For the first time I was not a button bar clicker… that was fun, but more raiding meant another toon needed to be leveled, since you were locked to a single raid ID back then…

At the time bloodlust/heroism buff would get you a raid spot, so Shammy became the next toon to roll up... Ele/Resto was the plan… and what lot of fun that was… and BL got me a lot of raid spots… the hunter was still only level 73 now, as the 3 level 80s I had were the Pally, Priest and the Shammy… This was evolution of phase of playing DPS with key bindings instead of playing as a screen clicker... No looking back on that, and again it was someone that pointed me in that direction and told me I was bad to be a screen licker (or screen clicker)…


I had fun writing it, I hope you had fun reading it... though if you have been playing less than 2 years... a lot of it will be lost to you...

Attunments
Heroic Keys
Fed Ex quest lines across 4 continents
Questing for abilities instead of going to the trainer
7 hours in a five man dungeon, (old sunkent temple)
5 hours in BRD...
getting your first 5k for epic flight
getting keyed to Kara
and so much more... ...

Day 02 – Why you decided to start a blog

Spellbound and the, 20 days blogging challenge

Day 02 – Why you decided to start a blog.

Well, I guess the single largest influence to starting my own was Stokpile.  He did his own thing for his own reasons and publish his own analysis of his goblin business, largely as I interpreted his comments as a way of organizing his own thoughts, and running checks and balances on what he was doing... It was for himself as I saw it, but others got to benefit from it in their own ways, and he seemed to enjoy it and the comments and feedback etc...

That was the single largest influence, however going back on Gevlon, I found a lot of funny things, hate mail, and screenies of funny stuff from chat... He quit doing the "Idiots" or "M&S" posts a while back, but that was something I wanted a piece of.

The last thing that influenced the blog, was I did a hard reset to a new server.  Old buddies were looking toward Cata, and knew I could prolly keep up, they had a spot they needed to fill.  Boom, opening, but it meant a fresh server, having made 2 paid transfers to 2 other servers with 4-6 toons, I did not want to server pay for that again.  From the beginning, I played to make gold.  Level one plans to make it on my own and make it big.  Since I was starting over, I had no rut, or patterns to fall into, I was starting completely over...  No assistance, no loan, no gifts, no heirlooms, that first toon hit 400K in about 4 months from nothing... I rode the cash cow of the DMC trinkets and a few other inscription games, not much w/ glyphs, though that was some starter cash, as well as later xmuting Primal mights after dropping herbalism for alchy.  I played at vendor pets also along with a lot of other small markets... Then next toon started getting leveled on the fun factor of doing as well as the main was raid guilded and I wanted a guild bank for storage... so I needed the mule. 

All in all there were lots of little things that got me blogging.  The last thing, was a project guild. Probably the single largest thing that got me going in the blog... A silly experimental idea on a guild that was going to be far more work than it was worth, and I lost the drive to make something so far out of the box work... writing about that project and the goblineering was the biggest influence... Achieve is the toon, commitment is the guild that started that project.. hence the name of the blog...

Spelling matters... Can you read this?

Had to do something funny, since I got called on my lack of effort to polish befor I publish.

CAN YOU READ THIS?  Comment if you can

Part 1:

A C M?
C M?
C M? M R Ducks!
M R Not Ducks!
O S A R! C D E D B D Wangs?
L I B! M R Ducks.
C, M R Ducks.

Part 2, and you might actually be able to read this.

Hukt ohn fonix wurkt four me. It kan wurk four ewe two.

Day 01 – Introduce yourself

Spellbound and the, 20 days blogging challenge

Day 01 – Introduce yourself

Well, I like to be annonymous and maintain that to some degree... so now I have the goal of answering the question in a way that is mysterious and/or exciting, with out seeming a pude...

I have nealy completed a military career, durring that carrer I have traveled the world and given a great deal for my country, The United States of America.  Though I frequently do not agree with our policies or practices, I do support them since I chose the military over a career in politics.

I am closer to 40 than I am to 30, married, only once, and still 12 years later, with 2 girls that are well... little girls, and to them I am daddy.... that's pretty cool most of the time, but then they are not dating teenagers yet.

I will do almost anything around the house, rebuild a kitchen.. done, bathroom, done albeit 4 years to do it... I imagine I have a pretty active lifestyle, but then I realize I play way too much WoW to really stake that claim... WoW is a hobby and an addiction, and rather than watch TV, 9 out of 10 times I will game on... However movie night with pizza or calzones is a common practice, scratch made pizza dough with the mixer and yeast, let it rise and stuff... MMMm good... I do all that and most of the cooking around the house...

I was born and raised in Alaska through most of High School, and since with the Navy, I have called many many more place from coast to coast and even Hawaii home for a time..  With the military, not only have I traveled the world, I have made it all the way around the world... loop de loop... took several months, but, yeah, I can say I did... like anyone cares but me...

I always liked video games... There was an ADD side of me and an OCD side that were both sated and calmed w/ games... EQ was the big one in my mind as far as MMOs looking back, though I never played at it... I never played MMOs before I got into WOW really, and have not played others.  Before wow, I played console games since I knew the OCD would likely ruin me if I went MMO, I would get sucked in and not make it out, I knew I would likely play too much, and on console games the "P" button made it all stop and wait for me to come back, however buddies at work got me started, and in the middle of my playing history, I was nearly ruined, relationships and stuff, I was playing too much and doing it for the wrong reasons... I changed a lot of things about how and when I play, after a break and the division of time for my wife and girls became reasonable and tenable...

I am now approaching the twilight of my first carrer with the Navy, and am excited in many ways about the prospects of begining a second... thought that is scary in many ways too.. first, I really dont know much other than what I have done in the military... the Civilian life... its new and exciting for the new factor and also the potentially higher income... Its scary since, I have not called anywhere home for more than a couple years in my entire adult life... settling down... WHOAh... living in one place for 10 years?  having the same job and co-workers for 10 years... interesting... not traveling the world? most of that I am ready to be done with and be home for holidays and birthdays... I missed so many that in some ways the meaning and significance was diminished, I want to find that again...

20 days from Spellbound, hrmmm!?!?

Bored a bit and content is well, not so exciting as it was when the game itself was more Exciting, I went in search of stuff... 3 new blogs of following other and cruising I find this...   GONNA DO IT!

Spellbound was found along with, 20 days blogging challenge... As I have left the masses to collect gold in piles like I did, I also left the markets and just started a more casual game... its a cycle... most go through it...

This is inspiration for posting

Day 01 – Introduce yourself
Day 02 – Why you decided to start a blog
Day 03 – Your first day playing WoW
Day 04 – Your best WoW memory
Day 05 – Favourite item(s) in game
Day 06 – Your workplace/desk (photo and/or description)
Day 07 – The reason behind your blog’s name
Day 08 – 10 things we don’t know about you
Day 09 – Your first blog post
Day 10 – Blog/Website favourites
Day 11 – Bad habits and flaws
Day 12 – A usual day in your life/online time
Day 13 – People (players/bloggers) that you admire
Day 14 – This upsets you
Day 15 – Your desktop background (on your computer) and why you chose it
Day 16 – Things you miss (post Cataclysm)
Day 17 – Your favourite spot (in game or outside it)
Day 18 – Your favourite outfit
Day 19 – In your bags/bank
Day 20 – If this was your last day playing WoW, what would you do?

5.0, start your planning and prospecting NOW!!!

What things have value and will retain that value into 5.0...  

Mounts,  I think Poseidus is one that will go up in value as the zone clears and have less chance of getting found... people are camping it now (I imagine), but will move on to new things and it will be forgotten by many or all but a few...  those few will be 2 types of people, those that want it for themselves (we like these guys) and those that want to sell it (we dont like these guys) the first will increase the rarity, the second is competition... There may be others...

Pets, a big prospect here, potentially there could be a huge spike in demand as they change in how they are bound... to account.. but how that works is still forthcomming... take your risk with caution.. elementium geode.. best bet here IMO... as well as the enchanter ones.. those though... who knows... may likely go down... I suppose the ally one will be worth more if my memory serves since it is the one that takes GCEs to make... Its value will surround the mats to craft it...

Of course while the events are active, getting and saving pets from lunar festival, and love is in the air (mount too) will continue to be popular, and potentially the DMF pets... if timing is in your favor when the patch goes active that makes the pet binding changes complete... I am not always right, in fact frequently not, but I dont think vendor pet will be a great prospect, if the changes to the pet system work the way I suspect, I think a lot of people will try to go to all the vendors one time, and many will buy extras... and crash the market...  Over all this will only be a narrow window IMO for higher profits... It will continue to be a market, but its likely going to die... If all the companion pets you already know on your account, accross servers and such are shared to all your toons... it will be low, if it is only new aquisistion, it will be worth it for many to get them once and the prices and demand could generate profits... the pet battle system and the BOE pet thing has monster potential to be huge... IMO...

People will frequently not even wait a couple hours or a day for their friends to log on to craft their gems or chants.. thats why we make money (I mean take their gold), pets and other markets have the potential to put a lot of gold in the bank...

Farmers... herbers, miners and skinner will be able to make bank... again impatience pays here, have your farmers ready and planned for 5.0... the gold you can make is no risk, guaranteed almost... there are no numbers to play, no calculations to figure, no fluctuation in the market to throw off your cost valuations... I was worth nearly 2500/hour just herbing at the beginning of cata... if I had a miner/herber... whoa... prolly coulda been making 3500-4500/hour... that is good, for GPH standards and will be good into MoP... Druid, highly recomended... instant flight for mining and dont go out of form to herb... piss off a lot of people, OR a DK (unholy, "On A Pale Horse" I think) (BM hunters have a mounted speed buff too, I think 10% vs pally DK at 20%) with the mounted speed buff, or a pally w/ crusader... Make sure your farmer is in a guild with perks for mounted speed and bountiful bags...

Cooking and crafing things... not much info to go off of now.. what will be the new fish feast?  do you have a fishing ready toon to go make gold with?  How many cheap recipies do you have in your bags that will give you skill points still, like 5 at a time... ... I plan to figure that out... chaos orbs are cheap... and having mats stock up for a really quick skill up to 550 crafting or better... like right out the gate.. since later lots of  people will realize this, mats will skyrocket for a couple days or weeks as professions are leveled... look for the cheap mats and figure out what you can skill up on w/ low cost now compared to later, or at least quickly and imediatly when you train the new stuff...  Save mats now for that window of oportunity.. when 5.0 comes out, many people will quickly realize that crafting epix from cata for 5 points is cheaper per point than crafting the greenies from MoP.... though, who knows... YMMV... its a prospecting ideas thing...

Do you have any more thoughts on what to prospect for 5.0, cause lets face it... Cata gold making is still good, but, its not so much fun as it once was...

Stay consistent... Or???

Or what?  I guess I hit the million mark and fell of the milk truck, I still have the goal to grow it up, but atm, RL and lack of interest in continuing is just not there atm.  To me it was a learning process like the blog, and like falling of the milk truck with the gold making I have fallen off the turnip truck on the blogging.  Both were largely personal and processes I set out to achieve.  I did both, currently the markets are largely unchanging in the big games IMO... the big games being the 4.3 patch that took me from 10K liquid to 1Million in 10 days.  (that was with about 350K invested and flipped into materials in preparation for it)  however the point remains that I could not likely make the same returns on time like I did in that 10 days... I am playing with several markets as I can and it amuses me.. I still have a ton of tankard of terrors to offload, and they are slowly at a nice profit... like about 300%... bought em for 500 and under, or maybe it was less and I sell a few weekly at 1K-1500 each... I still play at crafing maelstroms and heavenly shards w/ DEing the capes from FL... it amuses me but is hardly worth the time... I am also grinding out for a couple pets and mounts w/ the valentines day event, also it amuses me to get em, hold em and sell em in a few months... Otherwise, I consistenly raid, and consistently buy anything I want... I dont want mounts or pets, or other (IMO) crap that does not feed my raid habbits, or the raiders in the group I lead.. they get UGs, I take the raiding main and cut gems and enchats stuff on the spot... That tarded Bear is a JC chanter... I also buy piles and pile of fish feast mats for my own use, again with the raid group...  I however usually steal the flasks for the cauldrons from the Gbank... I made a 50K deposit and have repeatedly passed on other mats and gold to cover what I take for our group...

Now, I am rambling...

Consistency... I have always come back to raiding, having a million (1.1+ really) alows me to ensure I never have to worry about raiding consumables... for gear enhancements, feasts or cauldrons... Having more... sorta pointless... other than to brag more about it...

Consistency... It was a ONE YEAR JOURNEY... to 1 million, or close too.  It was engineered with the first toon at level 1, the first one I rolled on the server.  I had abandoned all 6 level 80s on the other server... Though when I started, I was not looking for the million marker, I was looking for more than I previously had...

Consistency... With reasonable consistency, I continued to post and work through  various thoughts in the blog, many post were me musing and discovering for myself various aspects of the goblin empire.

Consistency... Read other blogs, and follow and contribute to the community... Some of the greatest things that I did to make gold, the ideas came from directly or were brought back to my imediate attention by reading blogs... like crushing BS crafted gear for heavenly shards... and also the trick of making maelstroms from DEing the vendor epics at Firelands... all from consistent reading in the blogs of the community... many toy projects were played up by information gleaned from blogs, it was the blogs that really got me to make the jump and start some cross faction work, it was profitable, but more work or time than I wanted to consistently expend...

Consistency.. in data sources, the ones you use must be current and updated regularly with current market conditions... This was a big time investment a couple times, as I built from scratch, a couple spreadsheets in Open Office to calculate numbers for one reason or another... It can also be simply regularly (daily or more often) scanning the AH w/ auctioneer....

The Or???  part
Take your pick, It was one year of pretty steady consistency, to make the numbers... there were some slows and some consistently lower activity cycles, but planning for a big content patch.. thats some money...

Prospecting 5.0

The blogosphere is quite.. relatively...

Most tips, though all of them are great, I have seen and heard before... rehash the same old same... IMO, since there is no new info, recycle the old, because a) it still works b) you may have left a market and so did everyone else c) it may be more lucrative than other activities d) it is likely something different to do than your normal gold grind... Okay, will stop there...

There is little of the valuable nature, and imediate use  like the BS Stormforged to HSs... or tips on the Ore shuffle that are new and fresh.. well nothing in the game is really new and fresh really.. its been out in its current form for a while now... IMO the only real markets are consumables for raiding and PVP... Like enchants, JC gems, leg armor/thread...   Some niche markets... but ehhh...

On that note: something I have not closely looked at, but may be worth while, is as more alts get going and geared up, there will be time for leveling toons

One of my speculations for 5.0 is surrounding the new vanity pet systems... they say pets will be BOA??? How that will work? unknown... will it be newly aquired pets or will they be like pets and mounts that are waiting for your fresh new toon the first time you log in?  across servers? and such... I think this has some oportunity to make some bank... Since they will be collectible on a larger scale, and the new pet battles... I can see some oportunities for a lot more sales of some pets... the rare and hard to get ones... Mostly...  Also will it share pets across servers... or only new aquisitions...

Any farmed pets from drops... are the most likely to see some long term investment flips... since you may be able to buy it once and get it on all your toons... the is very likely to be a spike in prices from those that have piles of gold save up from 4.x... However the window will be narrow I believe... as that group that will does spend the gold, and players see the "quick flip" profits of just farming for the pets... I can see a lot of pets that are in the 100-500 gold jumping in price jumping briefly into the thousands.. unless everyone trys to do this...

On that note a better time to sell them will be in the closing weeks of the Cata expansion and people are refreshed on the process of the new pets and systems to be released.. many will collect prior to 5.0, in expectations that when 5.0 releases there will be new things to do...