The parent affect...

...a couple of days ago my parents arrived in New Zealand for a six week holiday over the Christmas and New Years period. This has had me distracted somewhat (why do I still feel it necessary to tidy my room when my mum comes to visit?) to ensure my house is sparkling, my lawn mown, weeds pulled etc!

This has eaten into my leisure time somewhat, so unfortunatly this blog has taken a back seat for the last week. However fear not (or get really scared - which is more appropriate) I'll be back later in the week at full volume.

Today is maintainence day - and undoubtably 3.3 patch night. Winter veil will be in full swing in a weeks time, so its got to be tonight that we finally get to see ice-crown.

Enjoy your last daily heroic before the cross server PUG comes into action, top up those stores of borean leather and saronite and sharpen your blades in preparation for the final push to spank Arthas.

Results of Poll Three

The latest poll asked the simple question:

Which is the best new gold making opportunity for Patch 3.3?

We had 30 votes, and the results are as follows:

New Glyphs 5 (16%)

Heavy Borean Leather/Arctic Fur 7 (23%)

Titanium/Saronite Bar Transmute 12 (40%)

Other 6 (20%)

So it seems there is no clear cut winner here - although Saronite came out ahead of the other possibilities. I've hedged by bets and covered all three of the named opportunities plus I have a few ideas up my sleeve which I talk about following the release (if they work out).

New Poll shortly.

Patches - a wee note of caution

Obviously there are big events on the horizon - 3.3 being the next big opportunity for mass gold acquisition.

However I do feel its worth just sounding a note of caution for Goblins everywhere...

Patches bring change. To quote the Ferengi Rules of Acquistion

Number Nine - Opportunity plus instinct equals profit.

When things change in WoW - there is always a reaction in the market. It may be minimal but there will be changes due to changes in demand and supply.

Sometimes these changes are predictable and sometimes they arent. Reviewing two fairly small changes Blizzard made in recent patches:

The Change in Infinite Dust Rates when DEing Northrend Items - this has caused massive changes on my server. ID has dropped from 3g to 1g20s in a matter of weeks.

Buying Northrend gear for DEing is a less viable market, the saronite shuffle is borderline at best (especially if you take into account time), the AH is flooded with UD and the rate it gets purchased has slowed to a crawl..

Such a small change had such a big impact. Although it was mentioned frequently on blogs I don't feel anyone really foresaw the outcome to the extent that has happened.

Shattering Abyss Crystals - well that turned out to be a damp squib after huge noise on the blogsphere. Shattering abyss crystals has turned out to be a waste of time and effort - shattering a crystal worth 45g to get mats worth 20g - not good! I know a couple of people that got stung investing in this.

So that brings us to 3.3 ....

There are a LOT of people setting themselves up for 3.3 - stockpiles of saronite and borean leather are bound to be numerous. I expect a short term immediate return, but then clearing the rest of your stores will be a waiting game over the following few weeks. Saying that, I have every confidence the end result will be substantial gain, you will just need a bit of patience.

I've been planning for 3.3 for a month - This has allowed me to invest heavily in Saronite and Borean Leather whilst allowing me to err on the side of caution. For example - if I just vendored all the saronite I have, I would lose around 5-10% of my investment gold. I've also invested evenly in ore/bars, and borean leather/heavyborean leather. This allows my me greater flexibility if I need an exit strategy.

The one major change in 3.3 which I honestly cant see a definitive outcome is the Need/Greed/DE change. The obvious outcome is that there will be an increase in Mats on the AH - especially Dream Shards - but this is the long term effect. There will be a buffer at the start of 3.3 - with everyone getting numerous enchants on their new gear etc.

Making predictions is easy - getting them right is the tricky part. Multiple factors will affect each and every market - and working everything out is the key to maximising your profit.

Saying something about nothing

This week I've come across a number of posts on various gold related forums that have all had a similar theme:

"Sorry not got much to say - making gold and nothing much has changed"

With the range of Wow Economic blogs - with all of us utilising most of the same tricks and techniques to create income - there can be a monotomy to what we all have to say. The posts on this blog last week made little (if any) reference to making gold at all - not just because of the other drama's affecting me - but because I too haven't had anything new to report.

Thinking about this, I decided that I would buck the trend - and just take a chance to review how I continue to create income even in the uneventful times.

Making gold in WoW is reliant on a great number of things.

Firstly, we have the day to day/week to week variations which come from the natural ebb and flow of our own server's economy. As supply of a certain item increases, prices drop and vice versa. Anyone who know's their markets can make large amounts of gold just riding these waves, buying when cheap and selling when the market recovers.

Personally I still enjoy playing the pre-Northrend enchating mats. Over recent weeks large brilliant shards have reached the dizzy heights of 15g each, which has meant creation of scrolls with 'Greater Stats - Chest', and 'Crusader' has been limited.But with the shards I brought weeks ago when they were 5g (during Brewfest) - I've been able to meet the market for these and profit has been great.

Prices of Greater Nether and Eternal Essences have also been high, over 12g for both. Then overnight the prices of both Essences crashed to under 7g.

The cause of the crash brings me to my second point about events that affect the wow economy - the random seller.

What happened was that a single seller has dumped huge amounts of mats into the market. They are selling in full stacks - and people being sheep they just click 'post' on Auctioneer and suddenly the undercuts forces the market downwards very quickly.

I took the opportunity to pick up some real bargains this morning. Stacks of abyss crystals for 600g. Stacks of Large Brilliant shards for 100g etc. Some of this I will store up for future ventures, whilst other items will immediately get flicked.

I expect to make several thousand gold out of this single seller over the next week - sure its taken an investment of 5k+ but you have to speculate to accumulate.

Thirdly - there are small events from blizzard which can have huge impacts to the economy. For instance, World Events - the Pilgrim event of the past week caused the prices of netherweave cloth, arcane dust, cosmic essence and prismatic shards to fall - due to an enforced visited to Setthek Halls. The cloth will be turned into bags to continue feeding that market over the coming weeks, whilst the rest are three of the four ingredients in the Mongoose enchant. I have decent supplies of the fourth component (void crystals) so I've now resupplied my Mongoose Scrolls which I'll release over the next couple of weeks. I'm not going to mention the opportunities of selling spiced bread etc - I just don't believe the stories from Gevlon are all legitimate. No one will pay 89g for the stuff... its just average photoshop work imho.

This covers just three of the multitude the factors that can be utilised by the savvy goblin to make money during the slow times.There are many others - national holidays (Thanksgiving on Thursday, many people take the long weekend), day of the week (flasks sell on Wednesdays!) and so on.

A good goblin - as I have said over and over - knows the market extremely well. Taking advantage of the opportunities laid out before you will maintain your income even during the quiet times

After a week of madness, normality finally returns...ish.

Been a odd week. Authenticator was removed on Wednesday, boardband returned on Thursday and the new computer was installed yesterday as well. So we are all back up and running!

Bringing this blog back to the economic focus for a while, being away from the game, even for a short time, is quite an eye opener.

I was, in reality, only away for 3 days. However it appears that a lot has changed during this time.

The glyph market has quietened down - perhaps my lack of presence at a holding level of 3g50s has done something - I just can't fathom what. I sold more than 50 glyphs overnight - so the majority of my competition appear to have taken a break (or perhaps they have cat urine issues as well!). Thanksgiving perhaps? But there aren't many Americans on my server so I just don't know.

Other markets have drifted upwards as well. For example, I generally sell Scroll of Enchant Chest - Greater Stats for around 100g. There is one other guy in this market. In my absence, he's forced the price up to 200g. I sold three last night for 150g ;)

Netherweave prices have dropped, as have arcane dust prices. This is just the Pilgrim event forcing people into Setthek Halls but its nice to stock up whilst I can.

Prices of Saronite Ore/Bars and Borean Leather still havent moved. Still at or near vendor prices - I have now invested over 40,000g into these two 3.3 speculations - and I am rather impatient for 3.3 to arrive. We all know the patch has downloaded to it has to either the next maintainance or the one that follows that. It'll be nice to have storage space back and to be able to clear all those mails in my inboxes!

Sorry I've nothing too exciting to report - been a long week and I did was raiding until 4am. I'm out for a Christmas do all day today - so a few beers in the sun will hopefully cap off a rather interesting, if intense, week

Someone reminded me of a great bottle of Sav Blanc I drank a few years ago which I kept the bottle because it amused me :)