On World of Warcraft's Elune server, two players recently bought out the entire contents of the Auction House in Ironforge, with the exception of premium-priced high-level weapons and armor (e.g., they bought all the trade goods) and then resold all of what they bought at a higher price. Which, for the most part, people were willing to pay. The same players have also been running an informal storage service designed to underprice the Ironforge bank, but with a bite to it: if you don't pay the storage fee on a weekly basis, they auction off all the goods you've stored with them.
The ensuing discussion interests me partly because it conforms to the picture I sketched out in my "Rubicite Breastplate" article of a sociocultural divide between players that manifests in contests over the purpose and nature of a MMOG economy. Some Elune players protest that this kind of profiteering is unfair, that it interferes with the "moral economy" of play; others admire the ways in which the entrepreneurs are maximizing their utility within the game economy in a particularly systematic and productive manner. One more data point to add to the overall picture.
But I'm also curious about what this says about World of Warcraft's economy, and whether the overall picture is now clear enough to begin giving a systematic account about the particular character of WoW in this respect. There are obvious entrepreneurial responses to the buying out of the auction house: hold onto trade goods, wait for the would-be monopolists to reprice trade goods and put them back up, and then marginally undersell that new price. This is pretty much already the dynamic for trade good sales on most WoW servers.
What does it say about trade skills themselves however that there is such enormous flexibility in the prices of trade goods, that they can take a huge leap in price without seeing any fall-off in demand? If you take leather, for example, it's not as if most leather items are actually commonly for sale at high profit margins on most Auction Houses. I've been able to consistently sell only a small margin of the high-end items available to me as a tribal leatherworker, never enough that it would justify paying for leather at typical Auction House prices. The only reason to buy leather is to skill up--but it's not clear why people want to skill up given the relatively thin pickings in terms of marketable goods. Yet it is easy to sell leather at relatively high prices on most Auction Houses--if I sell rugged leather at the lowest buyout price set by any other seller, I can move as much as I have to sell almost any time I have it available.
But the tradeskill economy is highly uneven. In other areas, there is continuous demand. Guilds that are raiding Molten Core or Onyxia's Lair have an enormous need for fire-resist potions; many other potions are also in regular demand. Enchanters do a fairly steady business. Blacksmiths have a few items that are in persistent demand, as do engineers.
So the Great Auction House Buyout of April 2005 on Elune is interesting in its own right--but maybe it's also a good occasion to begin to systematically describe or sketch World of Warcraft's economy as a whole. What works? What doesn't? What's surprising, if anything?
I think this full auction house buyout will fail. The reason for this is that the maximum length of time any item can be auctioned is only 24 hours. Many people can hold out from buying items for that long. It must take hours to setup all of those auctions and must cost a considerable amount in auction fees.
Also the players that did the buyout should have reposted the items on the weekend. People play more on the weekend. Smart auction house user know that the best time to put items up for auction is saturday morning.
I do applaud the radical idea and flawless execution, however, I would not be surprised to see Blizzard considering a cap on auctions. Many suggestions have been made to help control the auction house. The most promising in my mind is to only allow 10 auctions to be open at any one time for each player. Even if people create alternate charcters the amount of time needed to post so many auctions is insane.
Posted by: Seth Sivak | Apr 06, 2005 at 13:34
blizzard's new-character guides consistently say 'and once youre done choosing your race and class, decide which tradeskills to pursue. a priest, for example, should be an herbalist and alchemist...'
most players then seem to choose crafting professions and go through them as part of gameplay. but as you say, there's actually not much consistent high-end demand (I've heard - level 22 atm). look at it theoretically: the only consumables are potions and food/water, and the latter can be conjured by mages. between drops and the durability of items - what possible market can there be for anything but alchemy and enchanting? And enchanting is a service, meaning, the return there depends on sitting around in the AH.
Yet every one of my characters has had 20 gold by level 15, just by taking mining/skinning. And I cannot figure out why people pay so much for these materials. I guess they just want the joy of getting skill points.
I imagine that, eventually, fansites will have these character creation guides that say 'dont take anything but herb/alch or tailor/enchant, or engineering.' but the community takes awhile to update its understanding of how the game works. So for now, mining/skinning is far more lucrative than it ought to be.
Posted by: Edward Castronova | Apr 06, 2005 at 13:38
Although the game has only been out for a few months, I make an absolute killing on the auction house without even trying.
Forgive me if this is an unkind speculation, but I suspect part of this is because of the general youth of the game population (and/or the lack of exposure to basic economics, since that is a course rarely taught before college and even then, routinely skipped).
If you read the message boards (God help you, but that's another thread), you'll see a lot of angst and confusion over 'how to make money' using the auction house. Blizzard even tried to post a FAQ page to help people out.
I suspect it will all come to nothing. People who understand some basic economics will pound the ever-lovin' daylights out of the general population. I can't even imagine how much money could be made if you actually put effort into it.
Posted by: Jimpy | Apr 06, 2005 at 14:35
I think to say this is about "the joy of getting skill points" is actually pretty close to the mark. There's a quest late in the development of a character (Ted has got to stop futzing around with his alts!) where you have a chance to get a key for an instance called Scholomance--but forging the key costs 15 gold. Now keep in mind it's an instance--you'd never be going in by yourself, and you'd probably be going in with your guild. If you're a rogue, you'll be able to pick the door anyway at 300 lockpick. But if you poll people, you'll find a lot of them paid the gold. Why? Because you get experience for completing the key. Anything that gives you advancement, EVEN on a tradeskill, is desirable, and not just for "joy", but because levels (or skill points) are the central means of production in a MMOG economy. Being able to buy that advancement--whether by paying 15 gold for a key or 15 gold for 100 pieces of rugged leather--is simply a legitimatized, designer-approved form of the same transactions that go through eBay or other external markets: pay money, save labor time. Labor time is a cost, too.
Some of this is about trying to max out a skill which if not useful now might unexpectedly become useful someday, because somebody discovers some unexpected property of a hitherto-ignored item, or because Blizzard adds a new item in a patch, or because Blizzard builds in a new interdependency of some kind. MMOG players invest in potential returns--they play gimped classes, develop underutilized skills, all against the possibility of a change to the game economy or game systems later. Because if you're the only guy with 300 tribal leatherworking on a patch day when some unexpectedly uber tribal leatherworking item is introduced, you make a killing.
Not surprisingly, PvP kind of gets at these issues in a recent strip.
Posted by: Timothy Burke | Apr 06, 2005 at 14:35
I've made huge amounts of money in very short periods of time by playing the economy in other MMORPGs (particularly SWG). So far in WoW, I haven't been using the AH. In my mind, it's not worth it, to spend game time in a game such as WoW, that could be spent levelling your character and gaining gold off loot drops, putting up auctions on the AH. There are obvious exceptions, such as a really good loot drop item that you can't use, or maybe some high demand quest book pages that you just want to get rid of anyway. Meanwhile, I know of people who have made a killing on the AH. I guess it's down to whether you see the AH as a "fun" part of the game or would rather enjoy yourself playing a poorer but happier character. :)
Posted by: RedWolf | Apr 06, 2005 at 14:56
Most people who've played WoW know this instinctively, but anyways:
Making money isn't really the point with Production tradeskills. Rather, the whole point is to get the ability to make certain powerful items (usually for guildmembers). You have to waste a huge amount of money/time/items so you can level up. Crafting with Production skills is very fast, so the only problem is a supply of raw materials. Making money isn't really the idea. This is what Gathering tradeskills are for. They're basically the opposite of Production: they make money, but don't give any items and they take quite a while to get. However, one Gathering tradeskill doesn't usually make enough money to balance the loss from a Production tradeskill. The idea is that a guild will have two or three players who have only chosen Production and the rest of the guild (full Gatherers) will supply them with resources. In the Auction House, selling resources is how you get enough money to buy the super expensive items they have on sale there. A Producer who can make very profitable items would find considerable profit from buying raw materials and reselling them as finished goods. The system is pretty much balanced, I think, and somewhat realistic.
Posted by: Capt_Poco | Apr 06, 2005 at 15:13
"...look at it theoretically: the only consumables are potions and food/water, and the latter can be conjured by mages. between drops and the durability of items - what possible market can there be for anything but alchemy and enchanting? And enchanting is a service, meaning, the return there depends on sitting around in the AH."
Consumables isn't where the money's at anyway, and it likely never will be. The reason? Consumables are typically only seen as crucial in large-scale end-game content. Since most content of this kind is visited by established elite and reasonably non-casual guilds, the market serves itself by trade and gift inside social networks, obviating the AH. (This is less the case on pvp servers where consumables play a larger day-to-day role.)
The driving force behind much of the 'skilling up' is not the promise of future profits by producing for others, but the advantage to one's own character in having access to certain high-end equipment. The best of Dark Iron Plate, for example, can only be worn by Blacksmiths, since it's BoP. Engineering is far less of a 'seller's' profession. Almost everything they make requires Engineering skill to use. Nevertheless, the utility of having say a rogue or hunter with a set of Goblin Jumper Cables is huge - huge enough to justify on its own the cost of skilling up Engineering.
Posted by: monkeysan | Apr 06, 2005 at 15:17
"I think this full auction house buyout will fail."
Given the auction fees, etc that you mentioned you would think that this strategy would not work. But, I think there is at least one situation where this strategy might work, and that is when the rate of inflation is higher than the average player/seller is aware of.
My guess is that approx. 5% of characters are currently lvl 60, and are now doing one of two things; loot grinding or alt building. My gut feel is that either of these could be driving a fair amount of inflation in the auctions.
The limit of two skills and the interdependency between skills is a fairly strong motivator for high-end players to start alts with the sole purpose of skill grinding them up.
I think I would also go with the "be a miner/skinner" recommendation for the first 15-20 levels. At the top end, I switched to engineer/enchanter to add extra attacks (eng) and ‘on demand tweaks’ (ench), but both of these were very expensive professions.
All in all, I think they have classic mudflation, but I think we pretty much expected that with the current design they have.
-bruce
Posted by: Bruce Boston | Apr 06, 2005 at 15:17
As an Enchanter/Engineer (both primary and both drains to my pocketbook) I can easily say why I spend a premium price here and there for auction items. There are two primary reasons for me:
1) Stages of advancement (moving from Expert to Artisan) or even a good recipe that requires a certain skill often require having certain items in certain quantity to achieve my goal; especially enchanting where getting what you need is semi-unpredictable (even with Enchantrix..the mod that allows me to see what most items desconstruct into). So, as someone who isn't being completely fiscally responsible in my MMO expenditures, I often find myself willing to spend 3-5 gold for the instant gratification of being able to achieve my target skill gain goal, especially if I'm already holding the recipe I can scribe once I meet that skill goal.
2) I'm a primary provider of enchantments to a small circle of 5-8 friends. When they want an enchantment, they want it ASAP. They're more than willing to comp me a fair market price for the item, or buy the components for me. If we don't have the components, then, we buy them from auction, usually for whatever the lowest current price is, even if it's slightly more than what we'd usually expect.
So...
In my experience, I'm not paying for the sheer "joy of gaining skill points". I'm paying to be able to reach a specific objective (item-based in this case), much like the key example that Timothy mentions. Reaching that objective, though, does give me the carrot, as well as the perception that it's increased my potential to be productive and profitable in my craft. I have yet to make profit by enchanting, but I keep hearing those "rumors" that it can happen. That lure alone is enough to make me spend more than is necessary for rapid advancement.
Posted by: Jythri / Davyn | Apr 06, 2005 at 15:20
The importance of guilds to this economy cannot be overstated, and I think Bruce is right to speculate that it's the cash of quiescent level 60s in uber-guilds that makes it possible to resell the entire contents of the AH at high profit margins, precisely because people are skilling up their alts, sometimes with tradeskills that are aimed at making sure the guild has an adequate in-house production capacity for certain necessary endgame items. You have got to have your jumper cables, your fire-resist potions, your arcanite reapers and so on. Many of the dominant guilds have a dual economic profile: items of value absorbed into the interior of the guild as a kind of kin-based gift economy, and items of extremely high value sold to the rest of the server at a premium to fund the acquisition of elite mounts for the guild members. The players who are oriented centrally on making money for themselves are often outside of uberguilds (just as the two Elune members who bought the AH appear to be), not the least because they've probably gained a reputation for ninja looting in pickup groups. So there's an interesting symbiosis here: money-makers selling resources at a premium to guilds who don't really care that much about paying higher prices if it lets them keep their competitive advantage over other guilds.
Posted by: Timothy Burke | Apr 06, 2005 at 15:43
The only way I can see this paying off is if there is too much free money floating around at the higher levels. The primary buyers for trade goods are probably people who already have maxed characters supplying their alts with goods to reduce grind time. Sounds like WoW needs some bigger drains at the high end.
I think probably a more significant issue is how much of their activity was supported by interface customizations, and macros that enable them add meta-functionality to the game.
This portion of the article makes no-sense to me, as bank storage is a one time cost, I don't see how a recurring cost can compete in the long run.
Regardless they must have had access to a huge amount of storage to pull this off. I wouldn't look towards auction house changes as much as I would to in game mail changes. They probably used the game mail to float items between accounts for increased storage. One copper per day storage or so.. I wonder what proportion of database bloat and lag can be directly attributed to their activites.
Posted by: Thabor | Apr 06, 2005 at 16:38
Thabor:
Why do people in the real world buy goods with credit loaned at absurdly high interest rates? Because all they've got is a few bucks at any one time. Sure, they could afford a TV set with no interest at all if they'd only delay gratification for six months, but they want it now. So they get it and then ultimately pay much more in interest than they would have otherwise.
Why do people rent storage from these guys? They could just wait and save up 25 gold for that fourth or fifth bank slot. Or they could max out their alts and use the alts as banks, too. But maybe all they've got is 5 gold pieces and a character who is bulging at the seams with stuff they want to hoard. So they don't think clearly and rent storage.
The speculation above that some of the people playing WoW are too young (or stupid) to see the obvious economic rejoinders to such market activities is probably not that far off the mark.
Posted by: Timothy Burke | Apr 06, 2005 at 17:06
I think the bank savings come from the fact that you don't have to buy extra bag slots from the banker. That gets more expensive for each bag slot you purchase. I stopped when the next slot would cost 25g, and I don't know how expensive the last slot is. Instead of purchasing those extra slots, you just hand off a bag full of crafting goods to an "informal" banker.
Having figured that out, I now see the benefit to having two accounts - for an extra $15 a month, you can have a massive amount of free storage, and avoid the delay of mailing hard goods between characters on the same account.
Posted by: Emo | Apr 06, 2005 at 17:13
Well I can see the credit analogy.. However, I think the stupid theory get a monumental boost when you consider that these guys could potentially walk away with everything at the drop of a hat.. Or be banned, or etc... Its rather like handing a stranger yours keys, and some cash and asking them to watch your house for a weekend.
I admire their enterprise, but at the same time this is a huge nightware waiting to happen for Blizzard. If these guy are so monetarily inclined I can easily see them deciding to ebay some of the more attactive items if they haven't been used for a while.. Seems like a great way to farm both money and items without the mess of having to kill NPCs endlessly if people buy into it..
Posted by: Thabor | Apr 06, 2005 at 19:25
"I do applaud the radical idea and flawless execution, however, I would not be surprised to see Blizzard considering a cap on auctions. Many suggestions have been made to help control the auction house. The most promising in my mind is to only allow 10 auctions to be open at any one time for each player. Even if people create alternate charcters the amount of time needed to post so many auctions is insane."
Capping them that low would definately impede with normal auctioning. It's common for me to have as much as 20 or more things up. It's because I have all my chars send their auctionable items to one char who just sits in Ironforge auctioning and sending the gold to my chars when I need it. It's too much trouble to have to go to IF every time I have some random green item I know will sell. No one want to travel from Desolace to Ironforge to get some extra money. Thus, my auctioneer, and most of my chars only go to IF when passing through.
Posted by: Jerek | Apr 06, 2005 at 19:43
I buy rugged leather because, as a tailor, I need it for Runecloth Bags. Anyone making a twink will want these, because they're easily the best bag-for-your-buck at 3-4 gold per (I usually only sell when the average price is 3.5+).
Similarly, cloth will always sell well because it's needed for First Aid (skillups *and* bandages).
Per another poster:
"The only way I can see this paying off is if there is too much free money floating around at the higher levels. The primary buyers for trade goods are probably people who already have maxed characters supplying their alts with goods to reduce grind time. Sounds like WoW needs some bigger drains at the high end."
Wrong - WoW doesn't need bigger drains at the high end. It needs to figure out a solution to gold farmers - people who work (in poor conditions) in China to farm gold off of mobs on US servers and then sell it on ebay (sounds like a sick joke, but it's real). These folks, and anyone who ebays money, can skew the economy wildly depending on how prolific this sort of behavior is on a specific server.
In Beta people couldn't fathom saving up 1,000 gold for an epic mount. It seemed absurd. Now, on public servers with similar population bases, everyone has one.
There's a few reasons for this, but ultimately it's because Gold farmers sell the gold to players who have not worked to get it, these players drive up prices on goods, and eventually it trickles out to the public community. Unfortunately, the exchange rate between players may change, but the exchange rate between server-based goods does not. I just bought my epic mount a few days back, and the total time it took me to farm the money for it was probably about 2 weeks. I started collecting enchanting materials, and the next thing I know I'm making 5-6 gold off of a single rare (non-weapon) item from Dire Maul or Blackrock Spire. 2 or 3 uncommons can net me almost 15 gold.
So the problem is centered on gold farming and how it irreversibly bloats the economy. Adding more time sinks at the top end would only serve to further encourage gold farming, further bloat the economy, and leave the average player even further out of touch. The solutions at this point are to either put the economy entirely within control of gold farmers, such that they reach their own level of stability, and then modify the game accordingly, or to eliminate the gold farming as best as possible.
A single, well-placed account ban can wipe out weeks and months of work for a gold farming group, so I have a feeling that will continue to be what Blizzard aims for.
Posted by: Kao | Apr 06, 2005 at 19:57
I should clarify that 'farming' is often used interchangeably to specify Gold Farming as an independent source of income, and farming gold as a means to get enough gold to buy something expensive for your character.
When I say it took me two weeks to farm gold for my epic mount, I'm referring to going out and doing things to make money, interactively, and free from the artificial economic stimulation provided by using ebay and $$'s as a medium.
When I refer to gold farming as a general process, that is a reference to the gold farming that reaches its ultimate fruition on ebay.
Posted by: Kao | Apr 06, 2005 at 20:01
Another data point that comes to mind was the reagent speculation in Ultima Online.
Reagents, required to cast any spell, would be sold by various NPCs. However, they would often sell out and then relist at hight prices. Enterprising players would set up reagent vendors which would resell batches of 100 for considerable profit.
Because it was so painful to recall between all the mage shops to see if any were in stock, one would often take the gold hit and buy from a vendor. Of course, the people stocking the vendors would be the one's helping make it difficult to buy reagents "normally" by buying on the supply.
Posted by: Brask Mumei | Apr 06, 2005 at 20:14
Another related topic that may be a bit early to predict, but may also be happening is at the very top end, with "gold farmers".
Looking at the phrase, “with the exception of premium-priced high-level weapons”. I had to ask myself, 'why were they not able to corner that corner', to which my first thought was, 'because that corner was already cornered'.
Again, this may be a bit early, but I think there may be a new meta currency that is starting to form in wow, which is the 100G.
I have been noticing that an increasing number of epic weapons and armor are being priced at 100G increments. This by itself would be no big deal, especially in a game like WoW. But, I think it is also interesting that Gold on eBay is being sold in very similar 100G increments.
IGE has also started selling items, which if I look at my server, some items listed on IGE are items that are currently listed in my auction house for very similar prices to the US$ equivalent prices they are being sold at on IGE's site.
Again, I think its too early to draw any conclusions, but if we see that the trend continues and key price points in the auctions continue to trend with key price points on eBay, I think this would lend further credence to this observation.
I guess one point I should clarify is why I am suggesting that this could be a 'meta-currency' as opposed to a higher increment of the wow gold currency. Basically, two points. First, the 100G price point is pretty arbitrary in a quickly inflating economy. Yesterday 100G had a different value than a 100G will have in a week from now. Second, and more importantly, if in fact, it is the same person listing a series of epic items in a given auction house for say 100G-500G each, and then that same person is going to eBay and listing 100G-500G gold auctions that are intended for a specific side (A/H) of a particular server (ie a specific auction house), than for all intents and purposes, this is very close to selling a giftcard (another type of meta currency) for use at a specific shop.
Again, I think it is much to early to say much on this topic, and a bunch more analysis would need to be done before I was confident of a statistically probable link, but just making off the cuff observations, we may be seeing something close to what is described above.
To the defense of an eBayer, if in fact epic drops are ‘percentage drops’ for example, 1 epic weapon per 100,000 kills, farming has almost no effect on the availability of epic goods to non-eBayers in a market in WOW, because no matter how many things are killed in a day, there is still a 1 in 100k chance that a kill will result in an epic drop. (I guess we could monitor Thottbot drop rates and see if this is going down or not to be sure.) Even so, I guess we could get upset that eBayers are providing the ‘other side’ with better weapons. On the other hand, if epic drops were timed 'per day' obviously eBay farming would have a substantial impact.
-bruce
Posted by: bruce boston | Apr 06, 2005 at 21:51
"The driving force behind much of the 'skilling up' is not the promise of future profits by producing for others, but the advantage to one's own character in having access to certain high-end equipment. The best of Dark Iron Plate, for example, can only be worn by Blacksmiths, since it's BoP."
"So there's an interesting symbiosis here: money-makers selling resources at a premium to guilds who don't really care that much about paying higher prices if it lets them keep their competitive advantage over other guilds."
The above two quotes are almost exactly right. No one in our guild is raising their crafting skills to make money, they are doing it purely to have access to the necessary BoP crafted equipment which will take us into harder zones. I personally have never sold a single crafted item on the auction house despite making many of them in the process of skilling up. For me it is much quicker to sell the items in bulk to a merchant or simply destroy them. The time wasted for me to run to the auction house, list the items and then wait for them to sell is simply not worth it.
On the other hand I have often bought out tradeskill components at outrageous prices simply because I needed some _right now_ in order to gain a few skill points. I'm sure there are quite a few lower level characters running around wondering who on earth bought out their auctions for that price.
(incidentally if you don't give a buyout price for your auction, no matter how silly, you are likely to lose out on sales to players in a similar position to me of having much more money than time)
The money is not an issue. Most of our guild members simply cannot purchase any more upgrades - they must be looted directly off boss mobs. This means there is an extremely limited amount of things to spend cash on (crafting or twinking alts). Additionally our internal guild economy makes a terrific amount of money from selling high end drops we no longer need. The most recent drops I listed sold out in the time it took me to log the guild banker on and off again (and this was at 1am in the morning as well). While this does help make an extremely vibrant economy and also provide a distraction for many players in the form of "playing" the auction house I can't help but feel that it is going to lead to rampant inflation in the near future.
Posted by: Stephen Routledge | Apr 07, 2005 at 06:55
The issue here is the faucet of the economy. You can always make money going out and killing monsters. The monsters never stop dropping money. In addition, you make more money killing higher level monsters. This means that people at the high end are raking in a lot of money. People think nothing of sending a chunk of money to an alt. A friend of mine with a level 60 character just paid for half of his level 40 alt's mount. I imagine sending a few gold to your alt to buy items, even at "outrageous" prices is nothing. Buying Runecloth for 2 gold a stack seemed like a princely sum at 40th level, but at 60th it's nothing (and the prices have dropped since supply has increased with more people getting to higher levels).
It's like Bruce said, it's mudflation.
I also agree with whomever said above that the "right" professions are going to get limited soon. Taking two gathering professions means more money (even if you're just shoveling the goods to an NPC instead of the auction house). The big issue is one of consumables, I think. Leatherworking is nigh useless because the only consumable is leather kits, which aren't all that great; plus, enchantments or other addons like mithril spurs are generally more desirable. The most desirable production professions are those that are consumable: potions from alchemy, items from engineering, or even enchantments from enchanting. Quest rewards are generally better than items you can make, and the high end recipes require such outrageous items that you're usually better off just waiting for a good item to drop instead of the materials.
Some thoughts,
Posted by: Brian 'Psychochild' Green | Apr 07, 2005 at 07:09
There's some misconceptions here, I think, about the profitability of professions.
It is my feeling that each profession has its "money-making" items. What people tend to do, however, is to *just* make the items that appear yellow or orange to them in their profession. This is the least profitable way to make $$$ with your profession.
I've identified a number of items in Leather Working that make good money. They do not skill me up, but if I take a stack of 10 thick leather (about 65-90 silver on Stormrage these days) & make 2 thick armor kits, which sell for a gold a pop, I can make a profit.
Note - the key to these being money makers is that they do not require large amounts of leather. Other recipes (the Wild Leather items, for example), require lots of leather to make, expensive threads, & potentially over-priced reagents. Turtle Scale armor is nice for level 40 Shaman, but 20 turtle scale costs 2 gold @ auction, 4 gold @ buyout. 20 Turtle Scale is barely enough to make a pair of gloves.
So the idea is to focus on the "consummables" that your profession can make. The demand for new peices of profession-made armor isn't as high as the demand for enhancements for that armor. Only player-characters can make enhancements for armor. People that don't have 5 gold to spend on a + 5 stat enchance will spend 1 gold to add 32 armor points to their armor. Myself, I have rarely used a peice of armor made by another character because there is better armor available in the AH that came from a drop.
Additionally, I see all the time individuals who have flooded the AH with items they've made for skilling up. Very often I see 10 or 15 pairs of Nightscape pants - which should be a very profitable item, but players which put 15 up for auction flood the market, & devalue their own items. The smart thing to do is to make all your pieces, & then ration them out for prices comparable to your "competition" in the AH. The idea isn't to seriously under-cut your competitors, but to sell @ a price that gets you some profit, but doesn't empty the coffers of your market.
This is not to say that the mining/skinning isn't more profitable - it is. It will be as long as people continue to focus on just skilling up. But, I make more money with my armor kits on a stack of 10 leather than they do on the 10 leather, so on paper, I'm more profitable per leather.
I too, partake on the original post topic. Buying stuff that sells well when someone is selling it cheap can be VERY profitable. I do this on turtle scale, wildvine, & blue drops. I make it a point to look for blue items that are selling for 19, 20 g, buy them, then resell them so I make a decent profit, but no so much that I cannot sell the item for several days. But I also make it a point to mail the person that sold it cheap some extra $$ to share some of the profit. One poor guy was selling 40 Turtle Scale for about 1.2 g. I sent him an extra 2 gold, then resold the stacks @ 2g a pop for auction, 4 g for buyout. They were gone within 24 hours.
Also - I've noticed a lack of advertisement for items. If you're having trouble selling your Devilsaur Tribal items, you need to ADVERTISE them!! Have you noticed that dearth of items that are 50+ in the AH? Does anyone 50+ actually scan the AH for items? The Trade channel is for advertisement, USE it. I resold a Shatterer very fast that way, made about a 10g profit on it, while my competitor was selling high & not advertising. In fact, last I was on, they were still trying to sell it. If you have something hot to sell (anything Blue is hot, some Green's are, particularly Of The Eagle mail (Shaman 40+), leather (Druid/Shaman-40), cloth (Priest)), advertise it !
Sell it slightly cheaper than the competition!You know a common trick? If your competitor is selling an item @ 70 silver, sell yours for 69s, 99 copper. People see 69, think cheaper, & buy it, really only saving 1 copper. Try it - it works. Particularly on cloth items (mageweave,linen,silk, etc) & reagents (wildvine, spider silk, etc). We fall for this EVERYDAY @ gas-pumps, stores, etc. It's a common "exploit" of human thinking - 99s & 99 copper looks like a bigger saving than 1 copper over a 1 g item simply because that gold icon isn't there.
In any case, I think the reason why people find certain professions lacking in profit is because of a lack of understanding on how to use the profession's money-makers. Take the time to learn what sells well & what doesn't & DO NOT focus completely on skilling up. Take some time to farm some leather, make good-sellers, & make a gold or 2 profit on each of them.
(I haven't revealed all of my good-sellers in the LW profession, but there are certainly some. If I spent more time making them rather than leveling, I'd be rich)
Posted by: Fetor | Apr 07, 2005 at 10:18
Yes. I mean, look at the requirements for the arcanite reaper or Heartseeker, two high-level weapons. The materials needed are so extraordinarily difficult to gather (or expensive to buy from those who have gathered them) that the smart play is simply to farm instances over and over again to get weapons that are as good or better from drops. But Blizzard's over a barrel on such matters. If they make it easier to farm the materials for such weapons, then every level 60 who wants one will have one: it will become the new "normal".
Posted by: Timothy Burke | Apr 07, 2005 at 10:46
Unless I missed it, nobody mentioned that when these guys bought everything, they just gave all the hard-working crafters and hunters a ton of well-earned money. These types of activities don't really endanger the economy if retailers are selling everything they can list.
And if you still feel that something is amiss, don't blame the speculators, blame Blizzard who didn't put much thought into their economy.
Posted by: Eric | Apr 07, 2005 at 13:32
"they just gave all the hard-working crafters and hunters a ton of well-earned money."
agreed.
"But Blizzard's over a barrel on such matters."
Maybe, maybe not. I think it really has to do with what Blizzard's goals/design objectives are for their economy.
If they are trying to create something that's kinda fun, and simple enough for the casual player to understand, and on occasion help out a friend or two in their group of 5-8 friends, they are doing this pretty well.
If they are trying to create a system with 'rare' items, they have done this very well. Blue and Purple items evoke an emotional response in most players.
If they wanted to create a game where they have 8-10% of the top end players at the same or similar level when they open up battlegrounds, they are doing this pretty well.
If they want to keep players, who get to lvl 60 early, busy playing alts while the rest of the target 8-10% level up to 60, they have done this very well.
If they want to shift some of the money that lvl 60s make to new/lower level players willing to go out and mine and skin, they are doing this very well.
Etc, etc.
I think it's important that we keep in mind that there is yet to be discovered a 'perfect' economy, or 'perfect' game for that matter. As such, I think its important to make sure that developers know what they want to do first, and then work down their list of priorities in order from top to bottom.
Are there more things that they can do? Sure. I'll be discussing these things in my upcoming book. Oh, wait, *I* don't have an upcoming book addressing the topic of mudflation. Paging Dr. Castronova, any thoughts on what Blizzard could do with their classic mudflation problem? (sry, couldn't resist)
Personally, I think the key is to figure out what 'really' is a problem (that they can deal with). 'Too much gold' may or may not be a big problem in their eyes. Selling gold/items outside the game might be. Players buying up the whole auction house might be. Players getting bored with the economy might be, though there is little evidence of this.
I think before we start throwing answers at Blizzard, we may need to identify what they actually think are problems, at the same time I think we need to understand what core design traits they want to keep sacred, so we don't go tipping over any holy tauren.
For example, I think it would be easy enough to open up 10-20 more levels and make them very expensive, but this would kinda wreak the design behind the upcoming battlegrounds, imho.
Anyway, lots of fun stuff here.
-bruce
Posted by: bruce boston | Apr 07, 2005 at 14:29
I've seen this happen a number of times on the Uther server. Personally I think it creates an unfair advantage as far as tradeskills go, but there really is nothing I can do about it. I've used FGC http://www.freegamecam.com/users/viewuser.php/Kragg a few times to capture pics of the amazing reaction people have when they realize what just happened.
Posted by: Mike | Apr 07, 2005 at 18:18
By the way, the price of gold has begun to collapse on the external markets. Was 40 cents a gold a few months ago, has fallen to 17 cents. Could be reduced demand because of Blizzard enforcement, but yesterday's boards had a post claiming a bot program is allowing gold farmers to generate cash with level 1 characters and no labor input at all. The proggie apparently teleports the character from chest to chest (which have static spawn points), opening them and moving on.
Posted by: Edward Castronova | Apr 08, 2005 at 08:50
I would expect enforcment to decrease supply, but I don't believe it has significant impact on demand.
A friend of mine had actually left the game due to the scarcity of gold at the lower levels, and Blizzard's enforcment policies. He just recently renewed his subscription after I he found out that gold was still available on the secondary market in spite of blizzards policies.
I find the story about the bot program unlikely for a few reasons.
One: chests are in static locations, but are not frequent spawns.
Two: chests invariably spawn near camps of mobs, and except in the newbie areas the mobs are aggro, and will interrupt you while opening a chest.
Three: The drops from chests are rarely significantly better than what you would get from killing 3-4 mobs.
Four: Drops at low level chests are parallel to drops from low level mobs. They aren't worth jack.
Five: Teleport hacks historically even since EQ are one of the easiest to detect, and quickest to get you banned.
Six: Historically scripting programs have been created for other games which will run a character around a predetermined area, perform combat, loot, and even go sell the loot for you. With minimal supervison these scripts are easy to represent as normal play, and far less likely to get you banned than using actual exploits.
I mentioned earlier that I thought WoW needed more drains a the higher end. Its a bit ironic but no surprise the mudflation would cause a devaluation of WoW currency in the real market. Once a large proportion of people reach max levels in WoW the gold supply is significantly increased, with a large corresponding decrease in demand. That would magnify a drop in real world value.
Change in the market value of you game currency is probably a pretty fair indicator of the health of
your game economy.
Posted by: Thabor | Apr 08, 2005 at 11:56
Bruce,
If I understand correctly, what you're implying is that these players:
1) Bought all the items, thereby sending lots of currency out into the flow.
2) Put up for sale inside the game all the items they bough, but at higher prices that cannot be matched just with the currency they dished out.
3) Put currency on sale at external auction/broker sites, allowing for easier closure of the loop
4) Closed the loop between buying (#1) and selling (#2) these items by adding their reserves (#3) (and that of higher-level hoarders) into the economic flow
With possible outcome being:
5) A new market price-point for all items, higher than the last one. Potentially (or eventually) out of reach of the normal game mechanics -or making it more painstaking-. Thus accelerating the need for a supplemental influx to the economy; Which is readily supplied as in #3.
6) The creation of a feedback loop between 1 thru 5 resulting in faster acceleration/deeper dependence on the supplemental influx to the economy.
If this were me, I would have done a "#3 bis" and:
3 bis) Run a marketing campaign to significantly boost loop closure on (#4).
Am I on the mark here?
Posted by: Andres Ferraro | Apr 09, 2005 at 01:39
It's well known that people with high disposable income is willing to pay premiums.
So, Andres I see it more as:
5) Creating a higher-price point for these purchasers, who doesn’t really care about the price increase. Other folks will just go on with the game’s regular payout/drop rate.
6) Creating of a feedback loop
and
7) Major transfer of gold from the high disposable income group to the merchant bankers.
It’s seems that the positive loop can only be maintained up to the point of current mudflated gold in circulation. Thus, implying that perhaps that the current prices in the auction houses are not what the true mudflated price should be.
It'll be interesting to see where the new average price for items will be one month after the fact. Will prices settle back to previous level, stay at this new level, or something in-between?
Whatever is the case, it does appear that WoW needs more drains at the higher level. The next expansion may provide that, but right now there’s money to be made in draining people of their excess gold by providing "valuable" services.
Posted by: magicback | Apr 09, 2005 at 04:05
Timothy Burke>What does it say about trade skills themselves however that there is such enormous flexibility in the prices of trade goods, that they can take a huge leap in price without seeing any fall-off in demand? <
What I think this says about tradeskill prices is that transaction costs often swamp the buy/sell price in the Auction House. And by that I'd chiefly point to the "transaction costs" for the Player, rather than in game. I'm playing on a now low end machine, 1.6GHz, though with a good graphics card. Visiting Ironforge, and particularly the AH is a great pain. Since WoW has a more casual audience that has less than leading edge computers, I can't be the only one feeling this. In theory, my main should be making lots of money selling stuff on the Auction house, and buying good equipment with it. That's how it worked a few months back. But now the Auction House is packed even at off hours, so I mostly don't bother. Blizzard did have a plan to create Auction Houses in the other main cities, but that seems to have dropped off the radar. I think that would do something to bring price more in line with demand. Putting auction agents in every town would do even more, but I doubt if the database could take the volume. I suspect that the database is struggling even with the current volumes, so I doubt we will see more Auction Houses soon. And hence continue to see wild variations in prices.
Posted by: Hellinar | Apr 13, 2005 at 11:53
Buying low and selling high works because the large majority of players is not well informed enough. A typical example is very easy to see in every AH, by looking for recipes. Half of the recipes in a typical AH are books or "white" color-coded recipes, meaning they come from NPC vendors, not drops. And they are sold for twice or more what the NPC vendor takes for the same recipe.
2 minutes with your favorite WoW database site could easily save the buyer lots of money on these recipes. But many people obviously don't know about the color code, never searched a website for the recipe, and just pay what seems to be the "going rate" on the AH.
Posted by: Tobold | Apr 15, 2005 at 08:22
Excellent discussion. I play on Kel'Thuzad, and I took Engineering/Mining. I tend to sell piles of raw goods at a nice profit. What's much more profitable though is standing around in IF and buying things cheaply from impatient people, then selling at a profit on the AH.
Example: I bought ten stacks of heavy leather off a PC for 25s a stack. He had his cash immediately. I sold it all on the AH within 24 hours for 30s a stack. For minimal effort on my part, I pulled in 50s. 50s in and of itself is nothing, really, but multiply it by the number of times I do this, and it comes out nicely.
Also, to the poster near the top who keeps an alt parked at the AH and mails all their trade goods to it, excellent idea! I think I'm going to implement that one immediately. There is nothing I hate more than spending the extra half hour every night flying to IronForge, just to sell off the decent loot that I've collected.
Posted by: dave | Apr 15, 2005 at 11:31
dave wrote:
Example: I bought ten stacks of heavy leather off a PC for 25s a stack. He had his cash immediately. I sold it all on the AH within 24 hours for 30s a stack. For minimal effort on my part, I pulled in 50s. 50s in and of itself is nothing, really, but multiply it by the number of times I do this, and it comes out nicely.
Actually, no. If it happened as you wrote it, then you actually lost roughly the amount that you thought you gained! In WoW, auctions have a listing fee, and then you also forfeit 5% of the final sale price on all successful listings. Both serve as major gold sinks for the game.
Each stack of heavy leather listed as a 24-hour auction has a listing fee of 8.4 silver. A stack of heavy leather that sells for 30s gives you 28.5 silver in your email for the successful sale (30s - 5%). This yields 28.5 - 8.4 = 20.1 silver net proceeds.
You actually lost 4.9 silver for every stack that you bought-and-sold that way. Even if you had listed them with only 8 hour auctions, and every one of them sold within the 8 hours, you're still looking at a 4.3 silver cost per stack... you're only netting 0.7 silver each instead of 5 silver. If you have to relist about 25% of your listings because they didn't sell in 8 hours (and all of those then sell), you'll again be back in the circumstance of experiencing a net loss over time.
I see people getting clobbered by this all the time. Make sure you account for your fees before deciding to "buy low, sell slightly higher"!
Posted by: Barry Kearns | Apr 15, 2005 at 13:20
(sorry, I shouldn't try to do math after the cold medicine kicks in...)
My general point of having to account for fees stands, but in my haziness I didn't account for the fact that you get your listing fee back on successful sales.
That means that instead of 5 silver per stack, it was actually 3.5 silver per stack... so 35s instead of 50s.
Or as Emily Latella would say... "Oh. I'm sorry. Never mind."
Posted by: Barry Kearns | Apr 15, 2005 at 13:42
Hi Andres,
Sorry I didn't see your post until just now.
In response;
I think two different groups may be doing two different things with the current market.
1) The group that bought all the stuff in the AH, may be playing off the possible fact that the money supply may be increasing faster than most players realize. Whither this comes out as Alts skill grinding at inflated prices for tradeware, or whatever, I think the basic tactic is that they figured out (assuming they made money) that there was enough money in the money supply to purchase the items that where in the AH at a higher price point.
2) The second group, again, I don't have enough evidence to say anything definitive here, but I think there is a second group that is doing something very close to what you described with high-end items. Mainly, they are buying them, re-listing them for an arbitrarily high price point, then selling a similar amount of gold on an external website that intended to be used on the very AH where their arbitrarily high priced item is listed.
Again, I think it’s almost like a coupon system. If someone is buying 500G from an eBayer for a specific server's specific AH, the likelihood that they did so to make 100 thorium Rifles for their 100 gun toting buddy’s, is probably less than the probability that they did so to buy the Hurricane Bow listed for 500G. If so, than there may be little difference between the behavior behind selling coupons for a Hurricane Bow (if that were possible) and the economic hack of listing the Bow for 500G and then selling 500G on their site to be used in the very shop where they listed their goods, much like you described.
Hope that makes sense.
-bruce
Posted by: bruce boston | Apr 15, 2005 at 15:29
I think one thing that you're overlooking in this analysis of the WoW Economy is this:
Inflation is inevitable. In all "real world" economic situations, the amount of money printed relative to the amount of money destroy/lost/taxed (brought out of the economy in some way) is watched very closely as it relates to population, current economic conditions, and the rates of other nations' treasuries.
In WoW, however, most mobs have a set drop rate for silver and items; vendors have a static price, and so money is added directly into the economy without regard for it's effect by what is the only effective "government" for the game: NPCs and drops.
The reason for the inflation is that, relative to the amount of money gained from drops (of gold and of vendored items), the amount of money lost to AH and bank fees, to mail costs, and to purchasing from NPC vendors is insigificant.
Even when considering the number of epic mounts, high level recipies and skills, etc. that higher level players buy, the amount of grinding that they put into it just about balances it out; the expenses in the game are just slightly less than the profits for just about EVERYONE: when everyone's making money, inflated prices are the next step in unregulated economic conditions (AH).
Just thought you might want to consider an unregulated drop rate and static vendor prices for their effect on this inflation as well.
Posted by: Seth Baker | Jun 09, 2005 at 11:48
Other than mount costs (which you better start saving for early or you won't have enough cash at lvl 40), is the need for gold that high above lelvel 40?
Level 60 players would be giving hard earned gold to their alts while players in between are starting instances that are giving better gold and item drops. Assuming smart techniques are used, the latter of which are sold in the AH for some profit.
Is it just the lower level PC's that are buying gold trying to uber their main character? Who is the chief market for this?
Posted by: Robert Stewart | Jun 10, 2005 at 04:00
Easy way to make money TURN $6 INTO $42,000 EASILY!!!FOR REAL!!! THIS IS REALLY EASY MONEY!! TRUST ME IT WORKS!!! BUT YOU HAVE TO FOLLOW IT TO A LETTER FOR IT TO WORK!!!! A while back, I was browsing through newsgroup, and came across an article similar to this that said you could make thousands dollars within weeks with only an initial investment of $6.00! So I thought, Yeah, right, this must be a scam, but like most of us, I was curious, so I kept reading. Anyway, it said that you send $1.00 to each of the 6 names and address stated in the article. You then place your own name and address in the bottom of the list at #6,and post the article in at least 200 newsgroup. (There are thousands) No catch, that was it.
So after thinking it over, and talking to few people first, I thought about trying it. I figured what have I got to lose except 6 stamps and $6.00,right? Then I invested the measly $6.00. Well GUESS WHAT!? Within 7 days, I started getting money in the mail! I was shocked! I figured it would end soon, but the money just kept coming in.
In my first week, I made about $25.00. By the end second week I had made a total over $1,000.00! In the third week I had over $10,000.00 and it's still growing. This is now my fourth week and I have made a total of just over $42,000.00 and it's still coming in rapidly. Its Certainly worth $6.00,and 6 stamps, I have spent more than that on the lottery!! Let me tell you how this works and most importantly, why it works…….also, make sure you print a copy of this article NOW, so you can get the information off of it as you need it. I promise you that if you follow the directions exactly, that you will start making more money than you thought possible by doing something so easy!
Suggestion: Read this entire message carefully! Follow the simple directions and watch the money come in! It's easy. It's legal. This program remains successful because of the honesty and integrity of the participants. Please continue its success by carefully adhering to the instructions. You will now become part of the Mail Order business. In this business your product is not solid and tangible, it's a service. You are in the business of developing Mailing Lists. Many large corporations are happy to pay big bucks for quality lists. However, the money made from the mailing lists is secondary to the income which is made from people like you and me asking to be included in that list.
STEP 1: Get 6 separate pieces of paper and write the following on each piece of paper PLEASE PUT ME ON YOUR MAILING LIST. Now get 6 US $1.00 bills and place ONE inside EACH of the 6 pieces of paper so the bill will not be seen through the envelope to prevent thievery. Next, place one paper in each stating the above phrase, your name and address, and a $1.00 bill. What you are doing is creating a service by this. THIS IS ABSOLUTELY LEGAL! Mail the 6 envelopes to the following addresses:
#1) Brenda Willis, 3152 Vista View Blvd, Columbus, Ohio 43231
#2) Robbie Duncan, P.O Box 5363,Newcastle West, NSW 2302,Australia
#3) Naim Daoud, P.O.Box.176 , 24905 Abu-sinan , ISRAEL
#4) Shawnie King, 18455 Miramar Parkway,#159, Miramar, Florida 33029
#5) Cedric Palmer, 3225 W. 4th St. APT. E5, Hattiesburg,MS 39406
#6) maria berrio, 3100 south dixie hwy apt c43, boca raton, florida 33432
STEP 2: Now take the #1 name off the list that you see above, move the other names up(6 becomes 5,5 becomes 4,etc…….) and add YOUR Name as number 6 on the list.
STEP 3: Change anything you need to, but try to keep this article as close to original as possible. Now, post your amended article to at least 200 newsgroups, message board. (I think there are close to 60,000 groups) All you need is 200,but remember, the more you post, the more money you make!
DIRECTIONS: HOW TO POST TO NEWSGROUPS, MESSAGE BOARD
Step 1) You do not need to re-type this entire letter to do your own posting. Simply put your cursor at the beginning of this letter and drag your Cursor to the bottom of this document, and select 'copy' from the edit menu. This will copy the entire letter into the computer memory.
Step 2) Open a blank 'notepad' file and place your cursor at the top of the blank page. From the 'edit' menu select 'paste'. This will paste a copy of the letter into notepad so that you can add your name to the list.
Step 3) save your new notepad file as a .txt file. If you want to do your postings in different sittings, you'll always have this file to go back to.
Step 4) Use Netscape or Internet explorer and try searching for various newsgroups (on-line forums, message boards, chat sites, discussions.) Just go to any search engine like www.yahoo.com, www.google.com, www.altavista.com, www.excite.com, etc., then you A VERY SIMPLE WAY TO GET RICH:
Posted by: maria | Jul 01, 2005 at 13:03
Easy way to make money TURN $6 INTO $42,000 EASILY!!!FOR REAL!!! THIS IS REALLY EASY MONEY!! TRUST ME IT WORKS!!! BUT YOU HAVE TO FOLLOW IT TO A LETTER FOR IT TO WORK!!!! A while back, I was browsing through newsgroup, and came across an article similar to this that said you could make thousands dollars within weeks with only an initial investment of $6.00! So I thought, Yeah, right, this must be a scam, but like most of us, I was curious, so I kept reading. Anyway, it said that you send $1.00 to each of the 6 names and address stated in the article. You then place your own name and address in the bottom of the list at #6,and post the article in at least 200 newsgroup. (There are thousands) No catch, that was it.
So after thinking it over, and talking to few people first, I thought about trying it. I figured what have I got to lose except 6 stamps and $6.00,right? Then I invested the measly $6.00. Well GUESS WHAT!? Within 7 days, I started getting money in the mail! I was shocked! I figured it would end soon, but the money just kept coming in.
In my first week, I made about $25.00. By the end second week I had made a total over $1,000.00! In the third week I had over $10,000.00 and it's still growing. This is now my fourth week and I have made a total of just over $42,000.00 and it's still coming in rapidly. Its Certainly worth $6.00,and 6 stamps, I have spent more than that on the lottery!! Let me tell you how this works and most importantly, why it works…….also, make sure you print a copy of this article NOW, so you can get the information off of it as you need it. I promise you that if you follow the directions exactly, that you will start making more money than you thought possible by doing something so easy!
Suggestion: Read this entire message carefully! Follow the simple directions and watch the money come in! It's easy. It's legal. This program remains successful because of the honesty and integrity of the participants. Please continue its success by carefully adhering to the instructions. You will now become part of the Mail Order business. In this business your product is not solid and tangible, it's a service. You are in the business of developing Mailing Lists. Many large corporations are happy to pay big bucks for quality lists. However, the money made from the mailing lists is secondary to the income which is made from people like you and me asking to be included in that list.
STEP 1: Get 6 separate pieces of paper and write the following on each piece of paper PLEASE PUT ME ON YOUR MAILING LIST. Now get 6 US $1.00 bills and place ONE inside EACH of the 6 pieces of paper so the bill will not be seen through the envelope to prevent thievery. Next, place one paper in each stating the above phrase, your name and address, and a $1.00 bill. What you are doing is creating a service by this. THIS IS ABSOLUTELY LEGAL! Mail the 6 envelopes to the following addresses:
#1) Brenda Willis, 3152 Vista View Blvd, Columbus, Ohio 43231
#2) Robbie Duncan, P.O Box 5363,Newcastle West, NSW 2302,Australia
#3) Naim Daoud, P.O.Box.176 , 24905 Abu-sinan , ISRAEL
#4) Shawnie King, 18455 Miramar Parkway,#159, Miramar, Florida 33029
#5) Cedric Palmer, 3225 W. 4th St. APT. E5, Hattiesburg,MS 39406
#6) maria berrio, 3100 south dixie hwy apt c43, boca raton, florida 33432
STEP 2: Now take the #1 name off the list that you see above, move the other names up(6 becomes 5,5 becomes 4,etc…….) and add YOUR Name as number 6 on the list.
STEP 3: Change anything you need to, but try to keep this article as close to original as possible. Now, post your amended article to at least 200 newsgroups, message board. (I think there are close to 60,000 groups) All you need is 200,but remember, the more you post, the more money you make!
DIRECTIONS: HOW TO POST TO NEWSGROUPS, MESSAGE BOARD
Step 1) You do not need to re-type this entire letter to do your own posting. Simply put your cursor at the beginning of this letter and drag your Cursor to the bottom of this document, and select 'copy' from the edit menu. This will copy the entire letter into the computer memory.
Step 2) Open a blank 'notepad' file and place your cursor at the top of the blank page. From the 'edit' menu select 'paste'. This will paste a copy of the letter into notepad so that you can add your name to the list.
Step 3) save your new notepad file as a .txt file. If you want to do your postings in different sittings, you'll always have this file to go back to.
Step 4) Use Netscape or Internet explorer and try searching for various newsgroups (on-line forums, message boards, chat sites, discussions.) Just go to any search engine like www.yahoo.com, www.google.com, www.altavista.com, www.excite.com, etc., then you A VERY SIMPLE WAY TO GET RICH:
Posted by: maria | Jul 01, 2005 at 13:03
I hope maria's aware that chain schemes don't work mathematically, and moreover, that they're illegal.
Posted by: Seth Baker | Aug 19, 2005 at 09:34
How stupid is Maria anyway? Why pay the $6? Who is going to come collecting?
And why only put your name at the bottom? Put your mom #1, your brother #2, your girlfriend #3, your boyfriend #4 :), yourself #5.
Best case, someone you know gets money.
Worst case, everyone you know is busted.
Posted by: Rich Guy | Sep 15, 2005 at 20:51
I play on bonechewer, and i have bought gold online before, i thought at the time it was the easiest way to get my mount, which i got, after i paid the 20$ for 300 gold. I've been playing WOW for months and never had over 50g at a time, my highest charcther is a 48 druid, i have several alts all up to 30, and it takes a LOT of money to finance charcthers, you gotta buy 14 slot bags, equipment, and then there is skill fees, training fees, reagents and trade goods to skill up (and if you have multiple skills like First aid, cooking and 2 mains...) WOW i think is extremely expensive, with all that you have to buy, and i personally think its hard to make money on the AH, i try to sell cheaper and it doesnt sell, i make the perfect price, and it sells, but then doesnt sell the next time, it goes back and forth like this, and i never get anywhere..case in point, Linen sells for about 50s a stack, i sell for 40s (while everyone else's is 50s to 1g) and it hardly ever sells, but then i put for 30/40 and it sells ok, the AH is very unpredictable. And i agree with the fact that lvling your tradeskill to sell stuff isnt really the reason i do it, i lvl my skills to make stuff for my own personal use, because some of the tribal stuff would take days to farm for, and only sell for 15g or 30g (dependnig on item) and its not worth the time or effort. I buy tradgoods in bulk, just to twink out my alts tradeskills, so they can make stuff for other alts, my goal is to have 1 of every profession at 300, so i can make whatever for anyone. I am more of the poor guy, running and lvling, not concerned with sitting at AH when i could be lvling, sure its nice being rich, i would love to be, but at the moment i just havent found how to do it, you have to have a skill for it, some may argue its easy, but i havent been able to do it yet.
One more thing, i seen a guy in IF advertising he had 10,000 Dark Iron Ore, and he used 4k of them, and wanted to buy 6k more of Dark Iron Ore and he was offering 2,600g! i cant even begin to imangine seeing that much gold, thats just an insane amount, i really dont like the way WOW's economy is, the richest players have an insane amount of gold, while the aveage player barely scrapes enough for 40 mount, some of those rich people got there by doing it the hard way, but i am sure a handful did it with using real life money, which really is discouraging to me, as i know i can never have the gold or oppurtuinites like them.
So i guess all there is to WOW is having lvl 60 charchters, running with guild and friends and having a good time...being rich...thats just a fantasy
Posted by: Haywood | Sep 19, 2005 at 21:56
Haywood, just like any game, making money in WoW comes down to figuring out how to work the system.
I had a rogue that would just pick locks in IF in a side window while I was working. I could easily make 50 gold in a single day just from tips.
I also had a 300 skill enchanter with most of the high level recipes. I earned about 1000 gold per week just enchanting in a side window while working.
There are definitely ways to make enormous amounts of money in any game, WoW included.
I agree with you that the economy in WoW is horrendous, and the trade skills are an absolute abominable joke. But every system has nooks and crannies that a creative and enterprising individual can exploit.
Posted by: Michael Hartman | Sep 20, 2005 at 02:09
Surprisingly enough, people in October 2005 still believe that gold farming is the issue in the game. Gold farmers earn 20 gold per hour, in the best spots. That is it - this is stupid. I can personally grind Devilsaurs for a guaranteed 30 gold per hour, but that isn't worth my time. I can make much more in much less time simply by bidding on all the thick leathers in the AH at 45S per stack (the buyout ranges from 75S to 2.5G [okay, the 2.5G price was as a result of me buying all the leathers]), and then fashioning them into Nightscape Headbands, and selling them to a vendor for 88S per stack of leather input (requires 16S of thread, though) - net of 27S for a few seconds of work and some waiting. This is just a very simple manipulation which took me about 5 minutes to find using Thottbot. I could make much more if I were willing to spend the time working the actual player economy.
On the note of the 2.5G stacks of thick leather, I have this to say - you can't maintain it for very long, and you accumulate more and more leather and less and less money. As the value of the leather increases, the time efficiency of grinding the leather increases, and thus the supply increases, and the price tries to plummet. An artificial AH price increase works to a certain extent - there's a number of alts with a nearly infinite budget, and they'll pay whatever you charge. There's a number of people who will pay up to a certain price, where it's profitable for them, and then there are the people who can't afford a price increase whatsoever, and so they won't buy. Then there's the leather producers. There's a certain number that will grind leather simply because it's what they always do. They won't change at all with a price increase (a person was selling stacks of thick for 50S per stack AFTER the price was raised to 2.5G - I bought them all out, and sent them tells asking them to grind me more instead of auctioning, and they did.) There's a number of producers that will still not produce any because either they don't know of the increased price or just don't care. Then, too, there's a certain number that will produce more, because it's now very profitable, moreso than even rugged leather, and much faster too. These last guys are the danger, and there will become more of them.
The total AH buyout could not have been successful on a weekend, as producers are more active on weekends, but on a weekday morning where there was little material on the market may be able to sell fast enough, that evening, to avoid the inevitable influx of everything. A successful AH buyout, but not an impressive one.
Posted by: Steffen Adria | Oct 12, 2005 at 17:08
October 14, 2005. That's nearly 11 months since launch. Gold farmers... are still being blamed, scapegoated. Gold farmers suck, in my opinion. With a minor investment of time and money, I can easily make 30G an hour, or about twice that of a gold farmer. How? I've got an Epic mount (800G), contacts (few days, randomly found them), skinning at level 300 (few days) and a map of all the Devilsaur paths in Un'goro crater. Are these highly inefficient farmers really the threat to WoW's economy? No.
The threat is ambitious individuals with a little foresight who can clean up thousands of gold, and need real life cash more than WoW gold. With a lot more time investment, I could probably be making much more gold if I took up crafting and did it well. The way to do it is to get the rare recipes and such, and you'll dominate. Two people on Darkspear have the +30 spell damage enchant. They charge 25 gold with mats provided - they could easily charge more, but one didn't like gouging. Amount of work? Probably about 20 hours of Molten Core, and probably about 100G. So, what does this mean? Every caster with a brain collects stuff for a couple weeks and pays them, on the enchanters' time, to do literally three seconds of work, for 25G. Gold farmers can't touch that.
Now, on the issue of AH buyouts. I have done this before. Not a big one, but I held a monopoly on thick leather... For about 3 hours. There are three types of leather buyers: the twinks who will pay anything (these are your target), the logical leatherworkers who will only pay what will earn them profit (some of them may be your target, but you'll probably the miss the mark on most), and the profiteers who won't pay any more.
Then, there are the risks to the monopoly, the skinners, of which there are also three types. The first type will produce as much as they can all the time, these are the big risks IF they figure out that prices increased (one guy kept selling his at 50S, while the market was at 2.5G). Then there's the second type, who will produce if it is profitable, these are the people who will ramp up production in response to a price increase. The third type is not risky at all, and sells the stuff they happen to get in an instance run. Fortunately, the first group sells in bunches, maybe once per day, and usually in the evening. The second group who would go on a grinding run typically take 2-3 hours to get back, or it's not worth the trip. Third group, won't respond at all. Yay. This is a fairly short window before the market will be flooded.
The issue, then, is finding a time where the twinks are active, and before the trade skill farmers list their stuff, and ensuring that there's enough demand for the supply in the AH. This is nearly impossible, and could only work with a lot of random luck and planning, and I doubt the buyout in question was successful, and waiting for a weekend would kill the attempt. My best guess for a successful buyout would be a tuesday morning, in winter, and it would probably still fail unless they happened to find a time with no material farmers active and all the twinks active. Good luck. You'll need it.
Posted by: Steffen Adria | Oct 14, 2005 at 16:33
Oops, I thought the first one didn't get posted on Wednesday. Sorry.
Posted by: Steffen Adria | Oct 14, 2005 at 22:26
At first I became frustrated with my inability to get enough gold to keep my shaman with current gear and spells. Then I download the auctioneer add on. It is a very simple tool but it tells me a lot about the AH and market on Earthenring.
1) There is more demand for raw materials, particulalrly items such as copper ore, or earthroot...then there is for the demand for any blacksmithing alchemy product made through those products.
(assumption): People are working two product professions to level, but are not focused on the economics of the production professions.
2) There are too many leatherworkers out there. Leather sells for a very very low price.
(assumption) Because people are taking two gatherin professions, the easiest gatherin profession is skinning, causing a glut on the market.
3) The most useful products such as mana or healing potions are undervalued. Odd regents and some potions have high values. Only through the auctioneer add on did I learn where to focus.
4) mastering the AH was necessary for me when I realized I needed about 2,000 gold just for spells and mounts to get to level 60. If I wanted to stay in gear and remain competative in PVP BG's I needed to have the money to do it.
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Posted by: jeuxcenter | Jan 27, 2006 at 16:24
I find buying low and selling high really works if u do the below :
Buy for example 20 essence of undeaths for approx 1 gold each
send half to your alt
put ten up at a high price\
undercut your alt with a lower price
People buy your undercut priced items!
simple.
I have made over 5000 gold this way in 2 months
Posted by: WAVA | Mar 02, 2006 at 13:00
I've never been one to fall for those ridiculous "GET RICH QUICK" schemes,
but I read this in another forum and it actually seemed to potentially be legit.
Everything that is said actually makes sense for making money. This claims that
you can make "THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS" from only investing $6. Only $6 bucks? MANY
PEOPLE SPEND A LOT MORE ON GAMBLING AND THE LOTTERY – This however is NOT a gamble.
I figured I may as well try it out because there's not much of a capital loss.
**** WHAT IS IT? ****
So the thing is that there is a list of 6 e-mail addresses (you'll see it as you read further).
Each of those people have already taken part in this. The general gist is that when someone
new comes along, wanting to try it out, he/she just takes #1 off the list and puts their own
paypal e-mail address in #6, moving each other person up the list. It's really important to
follow all of the steps, though, because no one wants to be screwed out of their fair share.
The reason why this works so well is because of people's honesty. It's basically a business
of developing a mailing list. Many large corporations are happy to pay big bucks for quality lists.
However, the money made from the mailing lists is secondary to the income which is made from people
like you and me asking to be included in that list. So read this carefully and sit back as your
measly $6 grows.
**** INSTRUCTIONS ****
STEP 1:
Ok, the very first and most important thing you need to do is SAVE this page in 'text' fromat
in word/notepad on your computer, so you can come back to it if you lose it. Done that? Ok,
if you're not already a PayPal user, you need to go the PayPal website www.paypal.com and SIGN UP.
If you want to be able to receive credit card payments from other people then you will need to sign
up for a PREMIER or BUSINESS account (not just a PERSONAL account). In order to place the initial $6
into your account, you will have to verify your bank account with paypal (which may take a few days).
Paypal is 100% secure and is used by millions of people worldwide.
STEP 2:
Now, it is an undeniable law of the universe that we must first give in order to receive.
So the first thing to do when you have your PayPal account is to send a $1 payment to each
of the 6 people on the current list from your PayPal account. To do this successfully,
follow these simple steps:
1. Login to PayPal and click on the 'Send Money' tab;
2. In the 'Recipient's Email' field enter the email address;
3. In the 'Amount' field enter '1' (this is your $1 payment).
4. In the 'Type' field select 'Service' (though it doesn't really matter what you put here, this is for
PayPal's own records)
5. Make the 'Subject' field of the payment "EMAIL LIST', and in the 'Note' field enter
'PLEASE PUT ME ON YOUR EMAIL LIST'. What you are doing is creating a service.
THIS IS ABSOLUTELY LEGAL!!! You are requesting a legitimate service and you are paying for it!
6. Finally, click on the 'Continue' button to complete the payment. Repeat these steps for each
of the 6 email addresses. That's it! When you send your $1 payment to the 6 email addresses in
the list, do it with a great big smile on your face because "as you sow, so shall you reap!"
Here is the current e-mail list:
*************************************************
1. [email protected]
2. [email protected]
3. [email protected]
4. [email protected]
5. [email protected]
6. [email protected]
************************************************
STEP 2: Now take the #1 email off the list that you see above, move the other addresses up
(6 becomes 5, 5 becomes 4 etc,) and add YOUR email address (the one used on the paypal account
as number 6 on the list). This is the only part of the document that should be changed.
***JUST MAKE SURE THE EMAIL ADDRESS YOU SUPPLY IS EXACTLY AS IT APPEARS ON PAYPAL***
STEP 3: Now, post your amended article to at least 200 newsgroups or message boards.
I think there are close to 32,000 groups. All you need is 200, but remember, the more you post,
the more money you make - as well as everyone else on the list! Use Netscape or Internet Explorer
and try searching for various news groups, on-line forums, message boards, bulletin boards,
chat sites, discussions, discussion groups, on-line communities, etc. For example: you log on
to any search engine like yahoo.com, google.com, altavista.com, excite.com and then you search
with a subject like: 'MILLIONAIRE MESSAGE BOARD', 'MONEY MAKING DISCUSSIONS', or 'MONEY MAKING FORUMS',
or 'BUSINESS MESSAGE BOARD', etc. You will find thousands and thousands of message boards.
Click them one by one then you will find the option to post a new message. Fill in the subject,
this will be the header that everyone sees as they scroll through the list of postings in a
particular group, click the post message button. You're done with your first one! Congratulations!
THAT'S IT!!! All you have to do is jump to different newsgroups and post away. After you get the
hang of it, it will take about 30 seconds for each newsgroup.!
**** HOW IT WORKS ****
When you post 200 messages all over the internet, it is estimated that at least 15 people
will respond and send you a $1.00 ($15.00). Those 15 will Post 200 Posts each and 225
people send you $1.00 ($225.00) Those 225 people Post 200 Posts each and 3,375 people
send you $1.00 ($3,375.00) Those 3,375 post 200 posts each and 759,375 people send you
$1.00 ($759,375.00) At this point your name drops off the list, but so far you have
received $813,615.00. Note: I'm not saying this is going to make everyone 800 grand,
but lets say even 1 person out of 200 tries this program, you are still going to make
50,000 dollars in anywhere from 1 month to 6 months max!!!!! Keep in mind, the original
investment was only $6.00!
$$ REMEMBER, THE MORE NEWSGROUPS AND/OR MESSAGE BOARDS YOU POST IN, THE MORE MONEY YOU WILL MAKE!!
BUT YOU HAVE TO POST A MINIMUM OF 200**
You will be receiving money within days!$$ A-M-A-Z-I-N-G-$$
$$When your name is no longer on the list, you just take the latest posting in the newsgroups,
and send out another $6.00 to names on the list, putting your name at number 6 again.
You can now start posting all over again.
**** PLAY HONESTLY AND FAIRLY ****
REMEMBER, play HONESTLY and FAIRLY and this will work. Seriously, most people think this is a scam,
but you actually do get thousands of dollars out of it. It is NOT another crazy stupid scam.
If people would follow through with sending out $6, it works!!! There's no use trying to cheat
for only $6.00!!
The thing to remember is that thousands of people all over the world are joining the internet
and reading these articles everyday, JUST LIKE YOU are now!! So can you afford $6?? And see if
it really works?? I think so? People have said, what if the plan is played out and no one sends
you the money? So what are the chances of that happening when there are tons of new honest users
and new honest people who are joining the internet and newsgroups everyday. Estimates are at
20,000 to 50,000 new users, every day, with thousands of those joining the actual internet.
Are you willing to give it a try?
$$Have Fun and Good Luck!$$
PS: I DONT BELIVE THIS, IT IS REALLY WORKING OUT GUYS!!!!!!!!!
I WAS VERY SCEPTICAL FIRST NOW, I AM A BELIEVER!!!
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Posted by: Smith | May 20, 2006 at 03:49
There's a lot of doomsaying above, but I believe the economy in WoW has stabilized into an equilibrium, with a slow trend to inflation, much like the real world economy. This is a testament to the forethought and continuing attention to detail of Blizzard with their carefully balanced and maintained game design.
Not to say that there aren't a myriad of ways to exploit the economy. There are. And not to say that gold farming doesn't continue to impact the economy, it does, heavily. But despite these factors, your average player can still participate in the auction process and get a "good deal" for whatever they are trying to accomplish.
The reasons for this include the huge variety of goods, and the many relationships and interdependencies of these goods with the production and gathering skills. The system is simply far too complex for any problem to overcome it. If a character can't get the goods they need because they are too expensive, or can't sell the goods they want to because of a surplus, they switch gears and buy some different goods to supply a different need they have, or harvest something else that is selling better.
The efficiency factor in gathering vs. inflation was mentioned and it is also a strong reason the economy stays vibrant. As prices increase for a gatherable material, more players will decide to harvest that material, driving the price back down. The steeper the price increase, the bigger the reaction by the gathering community, resulting sometimes in a massive surplus and price drop of the material in question.
Any items that can be created from that material will then fall in price. Next, items in competition with the item will have to fall in price to compete. Then the prices will start to bounce back up as investors swallow up the surplus at the collapsed price. There's an ebb and flow here. Anyone know any sites that track the prices in a similar way to the stock market?
Finally I'll say I didn't mean to disrepect the very good discussion above, although I missed the meat of it by a year. But I still think there was a lot of doomsaying.
Posted by: Zob | May 26, 2006 at 21:57
I should add that the "slow trend to inflation" that I mentioned does not affect all markets. I think it only affects the very rare items, actually. As more money pours into a server by gold farming, there are more people willing to buy the luxury items at higher prices. Trade good prices stay stable because they are rooted by other factors, even as the luxury market inflates. But perhaps inflation in that sector is not a bad thing? Don't know. Some say that luxury items were one of the reasons for the collapse of the Roman Empire. Hopefully someone else will comment in 2006 with some further insight...
Posted by: Zob | May 26, 2006 at 22:05
Market view for coming days.
Hi Everyone
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This is the time for stock Trading / investing , Make as much
money as you can.
We assure youSENSEX will touch 14000 Mark by the end of this year.
There will be minor corrections at regular intervals , however they are good for investors as gaps are filled.
Nothing to worry just jump in and take maximum advantage
Regards
sharetipsinfo
Posted by: sharetipsinfo | Nov 24, 2006 at 00:30