Does Being Gold Capped Make You God? Part 2

This is part two. Part one can be found here.

Gold Step 3 - My response to Power Word: Gold episode 9 (2:09:42) and the discussion about being gold capped or not

Parts of this are used in my comment as well and i've chosen to keep the format similar because I like showing things "as is". 

My thought process during the writing process (This can be skipped since it's off topic):

For me, personally, I must say that it feels nice seeing the minor tweaks that differ the comment and this post. Need to find a fellow blogger with a similar drive so that I can analyze if it works or if it just is me amusing myself. Either way i'd still do it haha. Also, i'd enjoy reading such a blog myself and i'm not scared of doing things my way, that's why this is my blog. I love it! Let's Go!

After the jump...

Does Being Gold Capped Make You God? Part 1

This is two-part post is inspired by the very good discussion at the end of Power Word: Gold episode 009 (2:09:42). I wrote this post in order to keep my reply shorter in their podcast comments. Part two can be found here.

Gold Step 1 - Choosing Gevlon or Markco

I can tell you my own experience of reading gold blogs at the beginning of Wrath of the Lich King and later on listening to podcasts that covered gold making. Gevlon was the first I remember although I know for sure that I read a few others. Markco's blog was mentioned by a lot of gold makers and they loved his stuff. I didn't. The way he wrote was too linear. The tips factored in competition in a way that I just couldn't find useful nor did it factor in server variances. Gevlon's blog didn't either, but he had an angle on gold making that just baffled me and had me hooked instantly and more importantly, it felt as if I was reading posts written by the future me in a sense.

Who's your Golden daddy? Read my theories on the different philosophies of gold making after the jump...

The First Hunt For Poseidus Is Finally Over

Two addons that have helped me kill or tame various rare spawns are NPCscan and NPCscan overlay. Npcscan alerts you when a rare mob is nearby. This can be a mob anywhere, meaning that it can be a tamed pet, a dead corpse or the real live version of a rare NPC. You'll need to clear the cache in the WTF folder if you want to search for a mob after it has alerted you the first time. Once a mob is found it won't alert you again, until you reset the cache. If you know your way in the WoW directory you can delete the file named "creaturecache.wdb". I'm paranoid so I delete the "npccache.wdb" as well. I run Windows 7 so those are the file names that I know.

Enchanting mats & Cross Faction Trading - Reflections

When patch 4.1 was about to hit BDF I focused on making sure that I had all markets, plus some others covered. A few of my top sellers since then have been rare gems of all kinds, especially reds and blues, As well as the Cataclysm enchanting dusts, shards and essences. Meta gems have been sold in a large quantity too.

BDF is a slow realm progression wise and many players have joined The Alliance or transferred off the server altogether. 5x Maelstrom Crystals can be found for 350g on pretty regular basis. I have a stack of Crystals and I’ve mostly used them to create Enchanted Lanterns, but when the Heavenly shards are above 60g I sell them as raw mats. Turning them into enchanting scrolls might be a viable option, but I haven’t felt like digging into that market. One of my guild banks has plenty of scrolls collecting dust and they’ll stay there until I’m motivated enough to join in on the undercut wars.

Read on for Grayz's reflections about gold making...

Goals - Connecting WoW to real life part 2 of 2

This post continues were the first ended.

About setting goals and achieving them? (Continued)
Let's return to topic shall we?! My only problem when I did reach the gold cap at the end of LK was that Blizzard increased the gold cap one major patch before Cataclysm, so in my eyes my plan kind of failed, although I know it didn't. The reason i'd say it failed is that if I set a goal I want to achieve that goal with the current circumstances that were there when I made the goal. I don't set a goal in January and see it as accomplished after all of the unavoidable nerfs that Blizzard do. Same thing goes for raiding. Killing The Lich King wouldn't mean anything, after all of the nerfs and especially not if I pugged the kill. I wanted him dead with my guildies (Devotion) help, no one else. I had the same problem with Kael'Thas and Lady Vashj in BC. We (Unleashed) killed Vashj after a few nerfs, but since she still was hard, in my opinion, it was okay. Kael'Thas is still breathing and laughing at me though.

Now, what do I want to say with this? Nothing really. It's just a glimpse of my thought process and how I look at the goals I set for myself, both in-game and in real life. Another example which is directly connected to this blog is how I got here. I've been listening to podcasts actively for a year or so. I've been reading blogs since the end of BC. When I got bored of my regular JC shuffIe routine, which I did hour after hour, I decided to check some websites out to get some new ideas. I didn't only visit my favorites, but i also checked out JMTC, which had changed appearance. I didn't go there often previously cause the tips on the blog didn't appeal to me at all. That has changed now since I find the site alot more interesting. One of those interesting things are the JMTC meetings that are held on friday evenings and which are open for anyone to listen to live. I listened to one of the meetings and Fluxdada's appearance left a good impression cause he said a lot of good stuff and had an interesting angle on gold making. The kind of angle that Euripides brought to Call to Auction. That appearance made me a fan of good ol' Fluxxer.

Since then i've had short Twitter conversations with him and Jokinee, two shout outs in The Power Word: Gold podcast where the last one was a pretty long segment about swedes and meatballs haha. Flux actually mentioned that I eventually would start a blog and that he was anxious to read it, which I see as a nice compliment. So, why am I writing all this? Cause if I wouldn't have had the goal most of the past weeks events most likely wouldnt have happened or it would've taken anything from weeks to months. The other thing is that many of my WoW goals are directly related to my long term real life goals. Ie. blogging is directly connected to my future plans when it comes to writing books. It's all about practice.

My goal has been 1 million since I reached 300k, but after the shuffle I haven't felt that 1 million means as much and I was thinking of increasing it to 3 or even 10 million just to make it feel impossible. It isn't, it's still just a matter of time. I kind of feel like taking a break from the AH grind on BDF though. Another thing is that I am happy that they nerfed the uncommon gems in patch 4.1, but i've come to the conclusion that the shuffle lives on. It's just that I won't keep as much stock in my banks. Shuffling feels so much easier now when I don't feel compelled to prospect as much as humanly possible. I actually paid a JC to prospect for me. I was fully aware of the risks and I did factor in a big loss of most prospected gems, just to be on the safe side. But even so, it was still worth the time, cause all that time that I saved yielded even more gold in return! Now that is some very strange profit margins right there.

Do you have any special goals in-game or in real life that are connected to WoW?

Random screenshot

Saykotr from Infernal was happy since I was undercutting @ gems.

Goals - Connecting WoW to real life part 1 of 2

Goals and WoW

This post was divided in two or else it would be way too long, even in my  own opinion. I think. Part two can be found here. In this two part series I discuss ideas and weigh in the goods and the bads of various options when it comes to gold making and gaming in general. When I say gaming I mean doing the things that a newbie would think of when playing WoW, which is questing or killing bosses or even more oftenly, chase loot. I see "WoW or Gold" as a camera that shows my inner struggle between choosing the Auction House or focusing primarily on gaming. I claim that a max levelled toon is necessary to make gold, although I know for sure that I could spend time farming on my slacking Alliance hunter named Grayz on Agamaggan EU. Farming is very viable, and in my book necessary, when having a first toon that's making gold on a realm, but having a max levelled toon that can farm while doing dailies suits me alot better since I enjoy multi tasking.

Ever since I chose to go all in for gold at the expense of gaming (happened during the Lich King era cause of the lol-its-too-easy-mode) i've been wondering what my motivators are. The one obvious reason that I know for sure is that i'll become financially independent in real life, since it's my main economical goal.  People can say what they want with whichever arguments they have, but it's simple; I choose a goal, learn what I need to get there and do it. Every single time that I choose a goal and shoot for it, I reach it, without fail. It's all just a matter of how long it takes to reach the goal, if you do the same things that other succesful people do. You can't fail if you're on a successful path. And success is simply "the realization of a worthy ideal" -Earl Nightingale. Brian Tracy would argue that you can reach any goal, "within reason", which may hold true, but most of the time human beings hold themselves back more than they push forward, so I simplify it and say if you can imagine it, you can do it.

What a worthy goal is is up to the individual, but having one and moving towards it is the fastest way to feel better. Heck, when I was on a roll two weeks ago in-game the feelings I felt reflected back onto the real world. Now that can backfire when you get too emotionally involved in something in-game and have a hard time letting go, which is what i'm feeling this week. Sleep can't be neglected or it will hurt you. I'll most likely slow down on the BDF Auction House and become more active playing my Alliance hunter. Since she's level 76 I still have some levelling to do which should be a good way to focus on something else completely.

About setting goals and achieving them?

My first in-game goal was levelling so I could start raiding. And alongside that goal I knew that I wanted gold, but didn't have a set amount, but I did what I could to increase my earnings with the Auction House and various professions. When Wotlk came I had learned a bit and thought that I could get all JC designs from BC and make a killing once LK would drop. This was my first expansion as a max level toon, so I learned a lot from the mistakes I made during that period. My plan failed since Blizzard added uncommon gems that hade the same stats as the rare designs that I had bought. Plan failed.

During Wotlk the goal changed from 50k, 100k, 150k to the old gold cap which was 214k + some silvers and copper. I reached that goal at the 30th of October 2010 which was the date that I had set as a deadline, 1 week before Cataclysm release, just in case I wouldn't make it and would need to change my plans a bit in order to make the gold cap before the launch of Cata.

Random side note: In hindsight, the main reason I didn't reach the gold cap sooner was that I bought 5 Tundra's and a chopper. 3 of those Tundras were bought between December and March at the beginning of Wrath... What a waste! Never again haha. I learned my lesson, but I can feel how the Vials of the sand comes closer, simply cause I can buy it and my main has turned into a semi mount farmer, especially when i'm bored. At the end of LK I was either farming Stratholme or doing the Auction House dance. When I was done and got that mount I was chasing the damn egg in Sholazar Basin which had some very interesting RnG... against me.

Random screenshot - Mysterius Fortune Cards barked by Chorey 

Chorey was a nice player that I never, ever grouped with except for when I sold him the 5k Fortune Card. He had whispered me a few days earlier and wanted to buy it. I kindly told him no and the reasons behind it. When he told me that he was moving to another realm I got soft. Also he never showed any kind of attitude, that most players do when you say no to them, so I told him that i'd sell it to him after a few days. This is what Trade chat looked like a few days before I sold it too him.

JMTC Carnival Post #1: How a million gold will change my game plan?

This post is written with JMTC's Blogging Carnival in mind. The topic is "What would you do when you reach the gold cap? (1M)". There's alot of good information to be found there if you're into gold making. My blog is called "WoW or Gold".

Satisfied and ready for new goals
With 1 million (currently sitting at 800k+) gold at my disposal i'll be happy about having reached my goal. It will feel like a good accomplishment after all these years of auctioneering and learning about gold making. When i've reached my first million i'll pat myself on the back and say "job well done!". After that i'll set my aim on the next big WoW goal. That goal will either be a gold related goal, ie. accumulating 3 million gold or it could be a gaming related goal like levelling Alliance Grayz to 85, get active with PvP or even PvE on my main (level 85 Hunter). Another kind of goal that I could aim for is working on my blog to make it look better, learn how to do certain things and even get into how I could write posts in various ways depending on the topic that i'd write about. Either way i'd have a lot of choices and the one goal that would appeal to me the most is the on i'd choose. A good thing with goals is that you can add new ones, switch or scratch them depending on how motivated or demotivated you are to complete them.

Possible 3 Million markets
If I choose to aim for 3 million after reaching my first i'll be looking into different markets that could be profitable. Some of them are pets, faction trading in order to buy mats cheaper or to find goods and flip them for a nice profit Horde side. Trying out new methods will be interesting. Not sure i'll do it to be honest, but if I put my heart into it i'm sure that i'll come up with some ideas worth trying out. If not i'll just look around for other gold makers' ideas and go for the ones that seem most fun at the time.

When I go for 3 million gold i'll need to make sure that my addon usage is optimized alot better than it is now. I can't be slacking because 3 million requires more focus than the first million, although i'm sure it's the exact opposite simply because the first million is the hardest to reach. After that a certain mindset should be active and with such margins it's easier to flip high value items, if they sell.

Knowledge rather than speculation is an important factor, at least from my perspective. An example where my point of view differs with many gold makers is the patch 4.1 nerf to Jewelcrafting. Many lost all hope of making gold. It was The End with a big D! No, it wasn't, it just meant that if you were 'shuffling' by vendoring the gems, you were screwed for not having more ways to move product. I'm not saying people with one crafting profession are morons, but if you have one profession and feel stuck the fastest way out is reading blogs and listening to people that know more than you do. That's why Stokpile, Cold and Breja were my favorites when they wrote about that nerf. Their points of view were different and thought through. They didn't panic. Neither did I. My reaction was just to diversify even more and to not stock up too much. Right, let's end this with some questions that are on topic!

Questions that i'll use to reach 3 million faster (inspired by Brian Tracy)

1. How can you accumulate 3 million before the 1st of August 2011?
2. How much net profit can you make per week? Use the highest number and beat yourself every week, one way or the other. Aim to gain gold per session and with as little time as possible in-game used for auctioneering. My experience is that I, very often make most of my gold when i'm away from the Auction House. The profits depend alot on what I sell and what the items i'm selling are going for. Mysterious Fortune Cards can be worth barking when my undercutters are away, but as of late I have more fun doing other things than watching my undercutters. I have 4-6 active undercutters on my server with 2-3 being online when I am.
3.  Right, next question! How much profit will I need to make per day if I want to reach 3 million before my deadline?
4. Which markets are most likely to be consistent all the way to 3 million?
5. Which new markets can yield a good income?
6. Which new markets can I get into that might last a while as well?
7. How can I streamline my gold crafting when it comes to details like maintaing slots, mail transactions, toons to use for buying mats, toons with dedicated profession bags, make my post-time on the Auction House as effective as possible, decrease time spent on logins/logouts, download/activate/deactivate addons or simply put, become an even better gold maker?

The mind is a curious thing. Use it well and have fun while doing it! I did and that was the reason I survived Patch 4.1. I've spent less time online, spent 50k on speculation and fun to see if I could control a couple of markets on patch day. In certain markets the plan failed completely, but in other markets it was a success. Either way I went from 723k to 824k and Jewelcrafting was one of the successful professions that I made buck on.
Did you?