Response to Maddy on stocking up for 5.0

Maddy left a question on my last post, the answer started to turn into a post so here it is.

Since I am still in the "PLAY" mode a bit more than the "PLAN" mode I have been pretty slow to make a finished product with the spreadsheet.  But here are the basics and based on MY SERVER info, some recommendations, though I expect many of them to be universal across all realms.

Some of the valuations are GOING TO BE gambles... though historically some things show a lot more promise.  There is more data for a more complete list or finish my spreadsheet, but for an answer now, there are basically 2 MAIN factors that are going into what I am sharing for some specifics. 
Factor #1: valuation of items based on quantity needed to level from wow-professions, recent historical prices from UMJ or AH-spy, amount on the AH at any time compared to amount needed to power level and gold value per bag slot or stack. 
Factor #2: personal experience in some markets...
For any of the items listed, first look up the items for your realm on UMJ or AH-spy. I just started w/ AH spy and like it better, it has a longer historical window for averaging.  Next pick a price threshold relative to average prices you will buy or buy mats to craft at.  I will vary this based on a few things, like how many expected, potential for market to be flooded by others, ease of farming it myself, and the time it would take to do so (more the times, since almost all farming I will suggest is easy, but mindless and boring)

Here are my picks and some notes...
Cloth:
Frostweave and Embersilk - They are both the ONLY cloth from the expansion and will take monster piles to level tailoring and first aid on new toons... like over 1500 frostweave to level first aid and tailoring on one toon.  Consider crafting a bunch of it into bolts to save space.   The idea here with bolts is to give up some flexibility in your market potential, but have much more potential gold value per stack AND cater to the lazy peeps that see it is the same cost or only slightly more expensive to buy bolts than cloth and have to craft all the bolts themselves.. guhhh time is money friend

Leather:
Heavy Hides, Thick/rugged/knothide/heavy borean leathers, Fel Scales - People finally level skinning to  a point where they can get to the next level, and gather very few thick and rugged leathers, ding 58, going to outlands...  Heavy hides are just sort of rare, and in high demand to level LW (personal experience here, 600% flips) though to save some space, craft the hides to Cured Heavy Hides (they stack to 20 cured and only 10 otherwise)  the rest are similar to explanations in tailoring...  Over all I expect LW to be VERY popular due to the Monk class being a leather class.

Ore/stone:
Bronze BAR, Mithril BAR, Thorium BAR, Fel Iron BAR, Adamantite BAR and ore, Cobalt Bar, Saronite BAR, Obsidium BAR - Not including elementium bars since the volume needed is yet unknown, the numbers I have are to get to 525, but if patterns are followed, you will only have to level your profession to 500 to get to the MOP recipes.  BARs...  its about lazy and crafting times, and often, it stacks for more money per stack (i.e. 2 ore to make one bar, etc)  Time is money here.  Adamantite Ore is likely to be very valuable, its rare and lots is required to get the murcurial adamantite needed to level a JC, keep the ore or prospect it to components if you think you can save space and maintain value.

Herbs:
Briarthorn, Stranglekelp, Liferoot, Wild Steelbloom, Goldthorn, Gromsblood, goldclover, icethorn, lichbloom, heartblossom - There may be some more winners, but the idea here is to cater to the leveling alchys, not the scribes, the barriers to entry for a scribe a annoying making it a non popular profession though, for a new toon Scribes may be popular, just to avoid having to get the shoulder chants...   As well as any scribe will just buy the cheapest herbs they can get for the pigments/inks they need and Alchys need specific herbs.... there was a comment on changing up scribe leveling too, so more to come on that.  The items listed are low in supply, high in value and needed in reasonable quantities to level alchy.  stack sizes to support wow-professions quantities less than full stack... good idea, cater to the lazy guys some more and take more of their money.

Gems:
Shadowgem, Moss Agate, Citrine, Star Ruby, Large Opal, Azerothian Diamond, Huge Emerald and ... (working more on spreadsheet here)  -  the recommendations here are driven by volume for leveling JC mainly..

Chant mats:
Vision Dust, Dream Dust, Illusion Dust, Greater Eternal, Large Brilliants, Arcane Dust, Infinte Dust, Greater Celestials,

Chanting rods, elementals, volatiles, eternals, primals and other stuff... Still working this part of the list but here are some unsupported guesses.  At least they are not supported by data on the spreadsheet.

Iridescent Pearls, Black Pearls, Arcane Crystals/Arcanite bars (xmute), eternal waters, volatile/fire/water earth... - Pearls, rare and always in low supply for chanting rods, use em to make your own chanting rods, or just sell em for others...  the others are volume for profession leveling driven...

Meat to level for cooking.. totally have not even started looking at this area...

Okay.. that’s annoying, the above long list and lots of items and thoughts... GRATS if you made it to the end, here is my top 25 items as of now:

 #1 Cured Heavy Hide
#2 Black Pearls
#3 Iridescent Pearls
#4 Fel Scales
#5 Heavy Borean Leather
#6 Netherbloom
#7 Adamantite Bar
#8 Moss Agate
#9 Infinite Dust
#10 Goldthorn
#11 Shadowgem
#12 Huge Emerald
#13 Embersilk cloth or bolts
#14 Obsidium Bar
#15 Rugged Leather
#16 Large Opal
#17 Titanium Bar
#18 Black Diamonds
#19 Cobalt Bar
#20 Frostweave cloth or bolts
#21 Fel Iron Bar
#22 Citrine
#23 Gromsblood
#24 Arcane Crystal/Arcanite
#25 Knothide Leather

Okay, don’t go nuts on this list, its just a list of the spreadsheet resorted to the valuation of material based on above listed criteria... and a few personal considerations... I have not completed the list and I have not gone to great extents to set priorities on my plans... though the list already does reflect much of them...

Later I will re-evaluate and add in more data to the spreadsheet, and then compete a manual review of the list with heavy weights given to LW mats, Chanting Mats, JC mats, and alchemy mats... in that order I think..

- LW - because I will gamble on a lot of monks leveling LW
- Chanting - Don’t you hate to buy expensive chants on the AH? And have dreams of leveling your own Chanter? How reasonable is it to think people will role a new monk and choose LW/enchanter?
- JC - Same as chanting...
-Alchy - flasks and elixirs are going to be expensive as heck out the gate making this a very attractive option...

Chanting, JC, and Alchy are the big consumables that will persist throughout the expansion, they are good moneymakers and will be throughout the expansion... I may rethink LW being first, but for now that is my stance...

More to come I hope on this and I hope it serves you well...

Stockpiles for 5.0 what to and not to pile

A few posts got me thinking of changing how I value some items for Stockpiles Going into MOP...

AOE Looting...

Go to an instance, pull the whole place (or in big batches) and AOE kill, AOE loot, and then have piles of cloth and dead bodies to skin as applicable, run out reset and do it again.. with all the greys and other thing people will be getting by doing this, Many player will devalue the cloth since they have so many other income sources when doing this,  If it is done w/ a chanter at least in group...  boom, chant mats, cloth, greys gold and other stuff.  it will be fun to watch how the economy changes and what limits on drop rates blizzrd put on this if any...  ... I see this having a big impact on some markets like the mid level cloths that are going to be easy to farm...

As of now, more money will be in MoP level herbs and ore... If time is money, mid level skins, ore, herbs and cloth will still be valuable since as of now.  It is my guess that there will be more money in the time it takes farm in MoP, than in the time it takes to post many of the old stuff...

My thoughts, If its not reasonably rare and not going to be in reasonable demand, stockpiling it may not be as profitable as I was hoping, though I will continue to do so... and just plan on 48 hour auctions, and see what happens... What will happen to quest rewards?  will they continue to scale w/ gold income per quest at cap, this is a bigger risk on the inflation/deflation question, and how you approach some things too...

Still more info from the beta that will shed more light on things... and time will tell, so far, it looks good...

Continuing to speculate 5.0

lots of idea are floating around out there on several blogs.

What am I doing to prepare for 5.0…  3 things...

#1 I am leveling a farming toon, a Tauren druid, miner Herber.  That toons level cap like will only be farming, though I may do some gearing just to make those moments when I have to kill something easier.  So far I am holding all the herbs and ore while leveling in storage... expecting that I will be able to sell it for more in the early months of the Panda Patch.

#2Still working on gathering up the motivation to level that warlock.. .the languishing lock, to be a tailor/engineer... That will give me every profession capped, except skinning..

#3 That spreadsheet... it is nearly complete, or at least well on its way to being a finished product for me and my realm.... Using UMJ, for everything so far, I may actually redo it with AHSpy data...  If you have never looked, and compared, the data is similar, but so far, AHSpy is looking to be a better source for my purposes.  It looks to be GEN II UMJ, much like Wowhead was IMO GEN II Thottbot.  I was really slow to change over from Thottbot to Wowhead, but I will not be this time.. a bit more review and looking at AHSpy and it will be a switch...

OOOOPS... #4  I was a Zero Auctions user before 4.3, I had enough manual data on spreadsheets to just offload my inventory clean and fast.. 1,000,000 gold gross sales in 10 days actually, and 1.4 in 14 days... Manually...  That said, I never got into TSM.  SO... learning that one before 5.0, would be one more thing to do...

When I have a finished product on the spreadsheet, I will share it if I can figure out how to post it for all to see.  The premise is listing ALL, mats for all professions. Then figuring out demand for each of the items based on what wow-professions says about quantity to level each profession, mining, cooking, first aid, tailoring, enchanting, BS, LW, JC, scribe... step two is evaluation of the demand, supply, stack size and prices as they currently stand.  A little math makes it easy in a spread sheet to give that valuation a baseline number... that will give me some indication of how valuable one storage spot in a Bank, guild bank or bags is.. Next is where the gambling begins... for example, I feel that Leather will be in HIGH demand.. Monks.. they are leather wearing toons... so go back and look at the valuation, add my own risk reward assessment to it and then begin snatching stuff...  and stockpiling... At present I am continuing to evaluate current materials in storage and eliminate many items that are valuable, now and will also be valuable after the Panda Patch, BUT, I don't think will have an appropriate increase in value for the storage space used.. things like light leather and peacebloom... likely not winners on the list....

Preparing now for 5.0... Are you?

How do you plan for 5.0 and/or 5.1

IMO, 2 things need to be done

First thing, Have a Plan.

Second thing, Have a System.

and I guess if there was a 3rd it would be some market experience.

Plans could be:

1. FARM Ore/Herbs/Skins
2. Cater to the leveling market
3. Cater to the returning market
4. Level and cater to the big spending end gamers market
5. Spend big to power level profs and be one of the first to get the gear out on the street
6. Or just go with a combo of these or something totally different
7. The new Monk glyphs?

A System, by this I am refereing to having your inventory set up to move it, with the posting toons the crafting toons and enough backup data so that if addons do not work you can, still post and make sales based on DATA, not a guess... In a way this is the biggest thing to work out.  Addons and posting ques, groups and categories... inventory managed and prepositioned to in a way for easy acess to do large volume posts, without large volumes of time.  This comes down to having roles set up for your toons, who stores and posts, who crafts and how you manage the inventory to readily and easily find what you are looking for to post...

The 3rd thing would be to do some dabling in the markets you would play with later, watching daily and weekly cycle prices, knowing volume and speed that people on your server may undercut you...

These things combined will give you a sense of how much time invested is profitable break point compared to your tolerance toward playing the AH game.

For instance, say you have all 9 slots on your account filled w/ toons you plan to keep (gotta have room to make a pana/monk), lets say you have no guild banker bank alt w/ lots more storage, and each of the toons gets played, so has gear and food and such for both specs, and a couple have some PVP gear etc...

So looking at one server, this would be the cards stacked heavily against you by my estimation... no dedicated level one bank alt, no guild bank for storage, inventory space is partially used for active playing...

Well to start,

1. Get rid of all  your fishing poles that are not uncommon (have stats).  They take up a space that hundreds of gold in a single flip could buy you hundreds more replacement fishing poles. 
2. Put stuff in void storage
3. Get profession bags for more storage space of items if you plan to flip in those markets otherwise get rid of all your mats now
4. If you dont have an army knife, get one if it will save you space
5. Old  food, get rid of it, or put it in storage for flipping later
6. If there is not a strong possiblility, really strong possibility that you will be using the gear again, vendor/DE it
7. What toon will hold what items for selling on the AH... how and where will you store them?
8. Have you ever used your mailbox for nearly 60 days worth of storage? (mail it to a toon, ignore it, and in 30 days it gets mailed back and sits in your box for 30 more days)  This is how I managed vendor pet sales

Basically it comes down to this, When the goblins come out of their counting houses when 5.0 hits, some will be prepared and some will not... The one that are prepared, are ones that have tried and failed, tried and succeeded, and in most cases learned.... and refined and perfected the systems... the will do it smarter, faster, more efficiently, and have more time still to start leveling a second toon and they will just ride one wave after the other as those who are not are always trying to catch up..

Cold did his blogging Carnival on lookin back, and as I read everyones articles on what they would do different, the same things came up sort of in the post, efficiency.  Practice, addons, market analysis were in there a lot too, but making lots of gold is all about cancel/post/craft with as little time invested as possible.

Still working on the spreadsheet I mentioned the other day.. its a little bit bigger and more labor intensive than I orriginally figured, sill working on it though... and I am taking a few extra steps to show how complete data review can give you a lot of insight...   not sure at all how to post an attachement in the blog so that will be the trick... any help there would be great.  I will likely have the final version in Open Office... thanks for stopping in

5.0 and 5.1 list, plans, thoughts

With the pending news on MoP, and the probable rush to act on it, I am considering some things...

This is a long post, sorry :-/

First the list is down there... Second if you don’t have massive gold stocks to just buy and flip, consider farming in your off time and look the final comment...

How to plan and what to stockpile for MoP...  This is largely my own thinking through how to best approach the X Pac for me to think through my plans and what I will be doing...

Banks are going to be getting emptied of lots of items at low, low prices in the weeks and months preceding MoP.. it’s the time to buy.. Maybe

When MoP kicks off, Lots of New toons will be getting leveled, Which means lots of Professions will soon follow, Time to sell, almost definitely..

One problem with any strategy on this is the "inflation vs. deflation" question w/ how MoP will be implemented...

And how to use what time and gold you have now and then... If your focus on MoP release will be to take a current lvl 85, Ding and get Raid/RBG/Arena ready to valor/conquest cap in the first week and max professions? Well, lots of others will be doing this or something similar too.  If you are of the mindset to grind a Monk from 1-90 in the first week for raiding in the same week or the second, well, you will not be alone.  And if you plan to level and rep grind to start raiding on week 3 with just one toon... well, there will be many with similar plans.  If you plan to level your main first and then a Monk/Panda, you will not be alone, there will be many others leveling their Pandas/Monks in the following weeks.  And the really casual players... which are not really worth prospecting IMO...

So you have 4 markets to profit from after release:

1. Week one and 2 end gamers going from 85-90 to end game content in the opening week(s)
2. Week one and 2 end gamers going from 1-90 and end game content in the opening week(s)
3. Slower leveling players going for "endgame ready" in week 3, 4 and beyond
4. And then the several months of trickling players getting the Pandas/Monks to Cap and max professions.

Of those, you have 2 markets to potentially prospect now.  The markets we can prospect now are those in #2 and #4... If you will be racing to cap and endgame, you may not want to prospect #2, since it will be a division of priorities on your play time, however #4 will still be a good and more durable group to profit from, evaluate the time you will spend on your own goals early on level capping old toons, leveling new toons, capping professions etc? What are those goals? gold, max professions, end game, a new toon? how much time will you honestly have to offload what you buy now to sell later, and are the 2 goals compatible.  And is the risk/time in line w/ the reward.  You may decide it will be time better spent to just play the new high volume market for the new content rather than manage the old and niche markets.  Or your plan is to relax and fish for feast for the new raid groups, or farm up mats and sell or craft…

Before, I get to the list and thoughts/arguments for the items, I put out the disclaimer of considerations on my hesitations and supporting thoughts that impact my own planning process...

1.  Blizz caters to casuals and new players.  I guess they have numbers that support their decision to do so based on who pays the monthly fees, and buys the game.  For them, its a tight balance of content and compatibility to maximize the profits... Their profits, nominally, come from 3 sources, Monthly subscriptions, game/xpac sales, and Micro transactions (Pets, mounts, guild, name, faction, server transfers/changes.)
2. Blizz encourages new players to "dead" low pop realms... or realms w/ population concerns that new players can help fix.  And they will get more $ from players that then server xfer those toons off... The economy on these realms can be a horrid experience to new players... You just cannot compare the original concept of collecting that first 100Gold for your mount/riding skill then to the ability of established players to now go make 100 gold in about 30 minutes of dailies, if that long... Inflation has made the game far less friendly to new players, and it is a monster threshold to cross if you are an unknowing player just starting out and looking to get some gold for gear and training etc... Then throw in the component of, "just farm for herbs/ore/skins, and sell on the AH" well, that only works if there are buyers, which can be scarce on low pop realms...
3. Look at the new talent trees… they are not going to allow new players to be like I was with my first toon.  It was  a rogue and I took the "more stealth" "OH, COOL!!!" talents instead of the "Improved Sinister Strike" "KILL FASTER" talents... It took me another couple years to pick up that rogue again... I picked it up the second time w/ knowledge, Slow main hand weapon, combat swords spec, Slice and dice is king, if the talent does not say "lower energy cost" "higher energy regeneration" or "more damage" "poison proc rates for more dmg”, Forget it!!! (like wound poison is higher DPS early on, lower dmg and higher proc rate make it that way, that is very new player unfriendly, since intuitively instant or deadly poison would seem the better choices, the tool tips indicate this with higher dmg numbers and “a chance on hit"...  It does not tell you what that chance is 20%? 50% or PPM mechanics)  The new design caters to that new player that I was... It makes only one piece of knowledge in that summary not automatic, fixed or marginal gains... That one piece of information, being the importance of slice and dice to a rogue...  Weapon speed and poison procs are changing in conjunction w/ talents in MoP that they will matter less...  All this is to bring forward an argument for the new player friendliness of MoP Design...
4. Inflation or Deflation??? I tend to think Deflation will be built in, or at least a different calculation of how players that are new can get gold... like, level 1-50 have increased gold per quest rewards... however I think in the end this would just amplify the inflation problem... The other though is to create some gold sinks... however this does not work for the new players either... they play without a Traveler's Tundra Mammoth, Sandstone Drake (vial of sands) or motorcycle... In some ways those things have just made the rich richer and those that don’t have piles of gold, stuck in a rut..
5. Bots... Bots are popular since they can do the tons of farming to feed the gold making goblin tycoons... and they mess with the economy by introducing lots more gold into the economy from drops and vendor items... The challenge would be to get more players into farming, making it more sensible/viable for players, and less so for farmers...
6. I have no crystal ball, but my guess is for deflation to hit the game in some way, the reality is that many economies have players with huge volumes of gold, so it will take a while to get that money distributed and to really feel it.  My guess is to reduce the amount of XP > gold conversion numbers for level 90... Though this idea still hurts new players some, it makes great options for them to make the gold… cut the gold from quests and dailies on the upper end and increase it on the lower end... Hmmm... It’s the best economics and new player friendly strategy I can come up with ATM...

ON TO THE LIST...

• Cloth, particularly wool, silk, and mageweave, possibly netherweave and frostweave and embersilk.

The first 3 are based on my own banks and piles of stocked mats, and where I have low supplies or have noticed higher prices on the AH to level First aid.  And my experiences leveling... the later 3 will feed the Bags Market...  Ember silk being something of a mystery to me... if you have not leveled across Northrend lately, it is so fast now with the xp nerf to leveling from 70-80... I did it last weekend and was shocked at how much faster it was.  This ultimately is going IMO to drive up prices for NR mats... Especially with the tendancies to power level toons often in instances, and the professions...

• Ore/Herbs/skins/special mats: Similar theories on best strategies here..

With a twist, Players will spend less times in zones w/ thorium/heavy and rugged Leather/ and similar level herbs, since you go to Outlands at 58... and then to NR at 68, these is a rough group of mats to buy for the cost to buy them oh the AH is often high due to the lack of time spent by leveling toon in zones where players would collect them... AND, often by this point, players have out-leveled their professions forcing them to either go back and farm it at higher levels, or buy it on the AH. Catering to the niche area can be pretty big, Like don’t worry about what Scribes will want, they don’t care, the cheapest is what they will get, look at the rare mats and catering to the leveling Alchys, they need specific herbs more than scribes...

1. Adamantite
2. Khorium
3. Thorium
4. Fel Iron
5. Titanium
6. Mithril
7. Rugged leather
8. Heavy Hides
9. Terrocones
10. Mana thistle
11. Many Primals (Primal Air comes to mind first)
12. Eternals (forgetting what’s good here)
13. Most all BC skinned items
14. Most all NR Skinned items
15. Many enchanting rods

• Mysterious Fortune Cards: 

Cata mat prices will go up in the months that follow MoP release, and with it the cost to produce these things, though their popularity will not go down... Just look at Vegas, when have they ever downsized?  Added competition for the mats will come from all the leveling Monks/Pandas who are leveling Inscription and Alchemy.

I have some more digging on wow-professions to do and some UMJ research to get a better idea on some of these things for more specifics.. but that’s where I am starting...

Other things, are pets, mounts, transmog items, will the truegold CD stay or be shared w/ the new Cata equivalent? will the quests for alchemy master change again? more and more thoughts and idea..

If you don’t have, access to mountains of gold, and massive storehouses, consider these things...

1. What can I tolerate farming?
2. What is the current gold value per stack or inventory slot used?
3. What is a modest expectation profit per flip.
4. What am I able to farm while leveling a toon I was planning on leveling anyway?
5. Buy the BIGGEST profession Bags you can get, You can put 7 additional bags in a toons bank and go from 140 storage slots (7 X 20 slot bags) to 252 storage slots (7 X 36 slot Profession bags).  Over 100 additional slots, yes please.  Ex. wool cloth, 20 gold per stack now and 40 gold after MoP, which would be 2000 more profit in this low number example/guess.

(don’t get hung up on 20 slot bags... it’s still a big difference even if I were to say 24 slot bags, 168 vs. 252, and no I did not count your first starter bank slots...)

More to follow on this whole thing, with some of my thoughts clearer now for myself, I have a better idea how to start executing plans... and I am drawing up some ideas on spreadsheets to document and track data, mainly what will be my current buy thresholds, and what will have the highest rarity and profit/stack.

Its about to get exciting.. I hope... Are you making plans for MoP

Fail to plan is a plan to fail... Begin organizing thoughts plans and ideas for your MoP game... Lots of data is still needed to get great detail, Like what zones to focus on for vendor gear rep grinds etc, but you can plan ahead now for a lot of other things... Like piles of cheap leveling mats for the flood of new Pandas coming out... Or buy them cheap now and store them for your own panda...  What toon to level first? and why...

The MoP press event is getting close, so you can expect a great many things to start popping up with that news in about 2 weeks... Its going to be nice to finally get some more info on the next Ex Pac.

When it comes to gold making the good news is that things that worked in the past still will, (except your addons).  Things that enhance gear or feed that process will still be good money makers after you get your profs leveled up... jems, chants, leg armor/threads belt buckles, and of course GEAR...

The bad news is addons will break... and some will no longer be maintained... You can expect many to be pretty good from the beta, but no guarantees they will work in the opening days of the Xpac..

Things to consider.... How would you function if your complete addon suite was broken... Do you have enough other documentation and data on other external sources to continue?  That is in part why I was able to make a killing on 4.3, addons broke, however, due to storage strategies, and manual spread sheets, I knew values and costs... Posting had to be manually done, yeah, and it was not as fast as the ZA cancel/post, but I was still able to quickly post at the right prices and a good volume based on spreadsheet data and how/where I had things stacked in the Gbank...  

It was about planning, and now I hope we will start to get some more info about MoP to start planning and do a little less guessing, where every thought has conditional statements attached that could completley default the theory... 

Get ready to start prospecting 5.0/5.1.   There is going to be new info, and there is going to be a new buzz in blogger world... Unless you dont want to be ready, you dont want to make gold and you want to be the second person to the dance...

My Plans for 5.0...
Level the Main raider first, feral tank... he is a JC/chanter... while leveling DEing quest rewards is one of the best almost passive income sources while leveling after a new Ex Pac IMO...  Farming mats takes a bit of time and distracts from the actual quests and such you are working on... but it not by much and farming will be massivly profitable in the begining.

Thats it.. the rest.. who knows how it will roll.. A Monk is definately in the cards somewhere..

Feral Tank: JC/enchanter, this is the raiding main and will likely be my main focus to level up, gear up and max profs, and start doing the JC dailies if they continue to exist in the next Xpac...

Disc Holy/Priest is currently Scribe/Alchy and will be Scribe/Tailor when the shamy gets finished leveling, beyond that, no idea where this toon will fit in...

Prot Warrior: Miner/BS, he is the only "farmer potential toon I currently have, or plan to have come MoP"

Hunter: LW/enchanter, this guy will just get a back seat and who knows how it will play out...

And the Enh/Resto Shaman: Enchanter/alchy, got this toon dusted off and leveled up to 82 this weekend, maxed enchanting out and next is power leveling alchy.  Once alchy is maxed out, I will drop alchy on the priest and go tailor...   No way that toon will drop inscription... Takes too much to learn all the glyphs, and he knows them all...

Then there is the Panda Monk.. What professions to go with? no Idea... But a Leveling kit is a good idea... Like a bank alt with Pile of goods for his profesions leveling... and gearing up on the path... cloth for First aid and ore/bars/leather etc. for the other profs... However, this is not yet known, I will likely go Engineer, JC...

For now planning ahead involves 2 things... cleaning out and stocking up... Clean out junk, and organize/stock up stuff for MoP... like cloth/herbs/ore/bars for all the leveling pandarens.. For this BC and NR mats will be the focus... Things stocked up like rods... for all the enchanters and other things like primal mights for them too... adamantite.. since there is, last check anyway, still a painful leveling spot in JC that requires a lot of it... Time to really start focusing on all this stuff...

Making gold durring the Patch cycle slumps...

I have said many things and I am not really saying anything new here, just a reminder to those that are grinding for gold in what many would consider a depressed economy...

Clearly, players are playing less, they are logging to raid and thats it.. The rep grinds are done, the dailies and vendors available in the Molten front are done if they are going to do it...  They are leveling alts and professions and, if players are even still in game, they chase some pursuit other than the grinds that traditionally follow a patch release, "gear my main for that new raid zone"

So, how to maximize the gold making now, in the later patch phase when lots of things are sorta in the slumps, like economies and markets…  Or even get into a profitable market... How to approach this without regard for your servers size or other variables...

Simple answer, with complex subtleties to take advantage of based on the specifics and particulars of your server economy... small servers that have an over all casual nature, you will really have a hard time with things, but ask yourself this: Why are people not spending gold??? IMO the answer is: Because they don’t have “enough.” Now ask why don’t they have enough? IMO because they spent it or plan to spend on SOMETHING… Now I ask myself what is/are those things… (excepting of course the completely lazy scrubs that have no ambition for anything that would require any “work” or “effort”)

However here is what I can suggest, take people's gold for being lazy (and often naive)...  Turn time into gold...  Here is a list of activities that take time, and you may find profit in... though, I recommend you start slow and make sure you have some idea of how much the market will bear before you commit large amounts of resources to the cause...  The list is just a group of suggestions, though are other things to do that are similar...

• Prospecting Ore
• Milling herbs
• Crafting ore to bars
• Crafting pigments to inks
• Gathering anything
• Flying around to various vendors for pets and other items...
• Crafting other intermediate materials
• Buying frozen orbs and converting them to trade good
• Crafting leather scraps to leather and heavy leather and turning in to pristine hides or arctic fur
• Disenchanting
• Niche markets, like twink gear and chants
• Flipping things like motes -> primals, Crystallized -> Eternals
• Buying out things that have scarcity on the AH when they are cheap and relisting at normal prices, like Heavy Hides, Spiders Silk are some low level ones...
• Catering your crafting to low level toons, like crafted gear for level 10-14, for the BG leveling toons, and 15-19 for the LFD leveling toons and the BG guys...
• Farming Transmog gear

Your experience will have a large factor into this, unfortunately, each server and faction has variables that affect which ones will work from week to week, however, I made a lot of gold based on the fact that I had the lowest priced item in the AH NOW!!! Not when their friend logs on, not after farming stuff or gathering mats for a friend to craft etc... NOW... their impatience made their gold, mine...

It boils down to two things...  Answer these questions correctly for your server and faction and you have a profitable business model in concept.

1. What are people too lazy to do (uninformed/naive can be substituted for lazy)
2. What on that list are few or no other players doing...

And I guess #3 would be: "Are you willing to do those tedious, boring, time consuming things?"

My reasoning why this is largely universal:

I cut gems and craft chants for all  the raiders in my group... it is frequent... like once a week that in my small circle I am telling someone to LOOK UP PROFESSIONS IN THE GUILD INTERFACE after they ask me to link my book... and that’s when I AM online with the toon... People often forget and over look this newer feature, and just go the AH for the final product...

Are people playing the glyph game and making gold at it?

It requires AH farming, Milling, crafting inks, stocking paper, and inks, inventory management, posting routines, posting alts, add-on management, add-on use, learning add-ons, market research, market analysis, massive inventory, buying routines, vicious under cutters, unprofitable market sectors, wildly fluctuating market prices, players that come and players that go, and the worst are the players that stay...

Yes, lots of people have figured out how to make gold at it with wildly varying strategies for the finite points of maximizing potential, but yes it can be profitable..

There are people that are making gold at the glyph market.. and by reviewing the list you can see why there are often few competitors... lazy and naive players are very intimidated or quickly bored with the management of a business in this market...

Ore Shuffle? Same question, similar demands and a similar answer about Ore shuffling and associated markets...

Enchanting scrolls?  about the same, though some unique challenges...

Leg armors and spell threads and belt buckles... Not all the same.. but just as effective potentially for a different set of reasons... The BSs, LWs, and Tailors feel that is all they have to make gold with and its too much work for too little profit to invest the time... Or its too monopolized by other players...

The entry cost to the big markets is a high threshold... For my enchanting business... I had an enchanter with a guild bank that had 5 tabs committed to his enterprise, and all seven of his bags in the personal bank were the 36 slot chanting materials bags... I maintained inventories of materials in the thousands... 2K+ in volatiles, 5K Dust, 1-2K essences, and even at my peak over 1K pre-crafted scrolls of enchant everything/anything... I had over 350 belt buckles, and around 100 pristine hides to make whatever leg armor I wanted, though I already had 40-80 of each crafted when 4.3 hit...  The belt buckles were managed on another toon and just shipped over to my posting toon, and the LW business was another guild bank tab dedicated to that part of the business...

I did it, and now have a few more gold pixels in my windows displaying a bigger number than most reflecting my current gold totals... it took me a over a year... and it was far more often than not.. anything but fun.... The fun moments were going to the mailbox, and pulling out 20-40... 100K in sales... Collecting the gold from sales took 2-3 minutes of the hours I committed daily to the gold works...

Take the last comments with a grain of salt, I ran a big business and made a lot of gold.  You can easily scale it down and run a smaller business with much less over head and make the gold you need for your in game pursuits.  And if you do it right, you will make more gold at the AH in a given time than you would by doing dailies... again! You’re just trading grinding dailies for grinding the AH...

Day 11 – Bad habits and flaws

Spellbound and the, 20 days blogging challenge

Day 11 – Bad habits and flaws

• I dont spell/grammar check or proof read many of my posts
• I play too much wow
• When doing home destruction projects, I take too long
• I bite my nails (the ones on the fingers)
• Lately, I forget to turn Warlord Zon to face the group
• I have a tendancy to be a bit OCD
• To quick to speak and too slow to listen frequently
• Quick to conclusions w/ out looking at the evidence closely prior to
• When I do look at evidence I start digging too deep...

Guess thats enough... now I hate myself... lol, not really

P.S. I wish blogger had a spell grammar checker built in...