Plan to fail MOP gold rush or fail to plan..

Simple statements often have a great power of carrying a much greater depth than the statement’s words alone convey.  Often they are repeated statements reused over and over from historical figures, or are just cliché statements...

"A box of rocks" Does that make you think of a container full of stones? Or a person who regularly, or at least recently, does/did something with little forethought or consideration (or just plain stupid)???  Probably the later if I do not miss my guess.

Fail to Plan is a Plan to fail.

Phat at Phatlootsgold talked about plans to capitalize on how to maximize profits with play time in the opening month of MOP, and referenced a different perspective from Farli from The Overcut on similar thoughts…  

My plan is #1 get raid ready, #2 get an enchanter going, #3 get a farmer going and re-evaluate from there…

Simply make a realistic plan… when doing that maybe consider some of the following:

-Do you plan to Raid/PVP in the first? Second? Third week? Of MOP?  What are your guildmaster’s plans or your raid lead plans or if you are in one of those lead roles have you advertised to the players what your expectations are?  If this is part of your plan, leveling that toon early and beginning the rep grinds, honor/JP grinds, valor/conquest grinds, dungeon/heroic dungeon grind, profession grind for profession perks as well as having enough gold and resources to fully gem/chant/enhance your gear to end game content ready?  Figure roughly the following… roughly 20+ hours played to power level a toon to 90, and figure roughly 20+ dungeons or BGs for gear figure this will be another 20 hours played.  Add in the time to do dailies for rep gear and enhancements etc… all this to be raid ready… roughly 10 days or so of 4+ hours questing up, running dailies and dungeons/BGs for a rough timeline… but to be legitimately raid ready, I suspect you will need about 30-60 hours played after release to be there… PVP will be a bit easier I think with the changes to PVP gear…

-Making gold… first things first… what markets are you familiar with? And have a level of personal experience in to use for gold profits to support others that are working to get end game content ready?  What professions work for you?  For me this is enchanting.

-Farming… if your farmer toon is your end game main and a crafting toon also, you really have the best setup for early dual path progress… farm between ques, while leveling, and grinding… IMO the best combo for this would be miner/enchanter or herber/chanter… quest rewards get DE’d, leveling gear gets DE’d and you gather ore/herbs while out there leveling etc… when you are done with dailies and questing you go farm between dungeon/BG ques when everything else is done, dailies for rep, quest for leveling and rep etc…

So look at the stable of alts… Who will be first to 90 and why? And can you support getting a second up quickly for other purposes?  Look at your own personal tolerance to activities?  Can you go farm for 3 hours straight? Just going node to node?  Does your tolerance and game play allow you 4 hours a day to play, everyday and 6+/day on the weekend? 

Professions analysis, Pros/Cons and food for thought:
Gathering profs:

Mining – By far, above most others, the #1 profession to level up in the early hours and go make gold with.  The only one close, being herbalism… Mining, can be done between dungeons or  PVP,  it with you always while leveling and questing, allows you to go intentionally farm with a single minded purpose, you can gather and CRAFT (so it almost goes into the next category), making ore into bars can be very profitable and can be done while AFK (create all).  It is a source material for THREE professions.  Blacksmiths and Engineers will need lots of bars, and JCs will need lots of Ore.

Herbalism – Possibly better than mining in the early weeks, and definitely a strong contender.  Herbalism shares many of the same values as Mining… Though it is a source material for only TWO profession, alchemy and inscription… both do use massive volumes of herbs… I suspect it could be better than mining early on depending a little on the Darkmoon fair schedule… If we get the trinkets again… the volume of herbs to craft the darkmoon cards/trinkets will be enormous…

For simple gold making purposes, an herber/miner will be the simplest and a very competitive choice for sheet gold making potential, or cost defraying on leveling your own professions.

Skinning is the weakest of gathering professions IMO, its slower gathering than the others since you have to kill stuff, but you can get rep, trash drops, greens and more while doing it, so it is still competitive… It is not just the skins you gather that keep this one competitive, but all the other drops you get while farming mobs…   I think it will likely lose steam as time goes on, faster than other gathering professions, since Monks are Leather wearing… It also has the advantage of being a source material for 2 types of armor, leather and chain mail even though that is only one profession.

Gathering/Crafting Profs: (sorta)

Enchanting – ITS #1 in this category… It is my favorite, so maybe I have a bias… (read back or recall my 4.3 patch 10 days to a million gross income)  Its long term high demand use by all classes, specs, armor types and 5-6 per toon/spec/PVE or PVP (chest, bracer, gloves, boots, weapon, off-hand).  As a gathering profession it’s great while leveling since almost all quest rewards are likely to DE for more than they would vendor for.  In that way it takes on a near passive nature.  Though it is also one of the more challenging professions to manage and has a very competitive market.  Long term options to DE BS, LW, Tailor, JC crafted items give it long term flexibility.

JC – A great profession with lots of options though it’s going to be competitive if trends continue with the gated paterns by daily quests for JC and tokens to purchase the cuts…  It will be strong if you get to the dailies early and start getting cuts early, but I think there will be a lot of completion.  I has great potential, but if you are not familiar with the market and how to manage inventory… well you can go the simple route… JC is a gathering profession… just prospect ore… and sell uncut gems… it is also a great profession because the demand will be steady and long term as well as you can really flex options, prospect, craft gear, cut gems and any combo there in… as well as craft to DE if you have played the shuffle before, and been successful with it, you know the value of JC.  Also, the market could grow here from traditional level with the changes to the PVP stats systems/mechanics… More players may PVP more… I think PVP will no longer require completely different specs and gear and glyphs etc… you will be able to do well with a lot less on this front… maybe a glyph or 2 to change… but your spec will be a lot less dependant than it currently is and though I am not sure, I think there may be mechanics that allow you to change specs w/ a reagent instead of having to go back to the trainer…


Pure crafting professions:

Each of these has the potential to be great if you run heroics and if the “Orbs” are implemented as BOP like they were in early Cata… also they can have a pretty high cost of entry to buy the patterns and the PVP paterns and the mats and the training etc… but that is what it is… each could see some massive growth with a lot more people getting into pvp… the changes to PVP will make it a lot more entry level friendly I think…  and PVP gear may become in high demand.

Tailor – weak all in all, though a great option for flexibility and depending on how the new “Orbs” are if they are going to be BOP or BOE… for leg enhancements…

BS – also overall a weak like tailoring, except for the Belt buckles… and “orb” crafted gear.

LW – same as above, except the leg armor enhancements and the comments on the orbs

AND Engineering… sorta its own category, and could be a monster w/ the pets and pet battles and the account wide pet changes…