Hall of Fame: “Warcraft Econ”

The Warcraft Econ Hall of Fame is a column featuring the few elite players that have hit the World of Warcraft gold cap of 214,748 gold 36 silver 46 copper. We have with us, “Warcraft Econ”, who will be sharing their stories with us today.

Please tell us a little about yourself and your gaming experience.

World of Warcraft Experience

Hello, I am the founder of WarcraftEcon.net. May 2010 is when I achieved the gold cap. I have been playing WoW on and off after its’ release. My involvement with the game in original WoW as very little;  it was my first MMO. I had barely reach level 30 as an Alliance Gnome Rogue before I had become extremely bored with the game. Remember that leveling back then to significantly longer than it does now. About a year later I had started playing again due to some other friends. Decided to go on the Horde side this time and found it a bit easier to level and instance. Soon, Burning Crusade came out and I was barely level 50 yet. So rushing to level 70 after the expansion came out, I had discovered gold guides on eBay and bought one for $10. Yes, I had bought a gold guide and even gold before this website ever came to be. There was not much information in the guide, it was mostly about farming items that sell well. At this point I had no idea how to make any gold at all so farming items is how I got started. You need money to make money goes the saying. So I had chosen a few farming spots the guide recommended and started building my supply of gold slowly. In Burning Crusade, is when I really started to make a good amount of gold through the auction house, however it still involved farming motes and other items I needed for crafting. My professions were Leatherworking and Skinning, which I believe my success even today comes from the underdog profession, Leatherworking. My very first article for this site, back in October 2008, was actually about crafting leg armor kits with leatherworking. Jewelcrafting and Enchanting I believe seem to be very popular among the player-base, so why compete with others in a saturated market? Then came Wrath of the Lich King beta, which I had participate in and made speculations that turned out to be true. This was about the time that this blog came to be. I had documented my gold making methods from BC and speculations from Wotlk beta and its’ release. Very few free gold making resources existed at the time and I saw an opportunity to create one. Greedy Goblin was already up and running at the time and was a site I visited often for tips aside from a few other fourm threads about gold making.

Other Gaming Experience

As far as other gaming experience, well just the usual for 90′s gamer. Old school Mario on the Nintendo all the way to Halo on the original Xbox as well as all of Blizzard’s games. Currently I play WoW casually and a bit of Starcraft 2 beta.

Personal Life

For my personal life, I am a student trying to obtain a Network Admin and a Business Admin degree. In a previous life I was a mechanic, with a Automotive Science degree and a few Ford credentials. In and before that, I partied too much for my own good and ran a DJ business on the side for fun. I would say I am interested in owning my own business one day and consider myself an entrepreneur. Recently I have taken an interest in personal finance and investing. After reading a few books on the subject, I can see how some of the concepts translate into making gold in a virtual economy. Such as “spend less than you make” is similar to an article we wrote titled “Income vs. Spending“. I also have a small background in commission sales.

The Blog

Throughout WOTLK, we have seen many gold making blogs and resources pop up. It seemed like gold making had become mainstream, along with information on playing the game, at least to us it did. Eventually we started a Hall of Fame section, special thanks to “Zerohour” for the idea, which interviewed and documented gold capped players in the game. It seems now, the phrase “gold capped” is a common term in the WoW universe. Even WoW.com has started some gold related columns and recently one called “Gold Capped”.

Do you raid or PvP most? Both? How do you enjoy the game?

I used to PvP a lot back in original WoW since I was neither at level cap or raiding any end-game content. Remember the old honor system? It wasn’t until BC did I start raiding and really getting into the theorycrafting and spreadsheets. Raided content up to early Black Temple-25 with only gear obtained from badges and Karazhan. Gear level didn’t stop me from successfully, as in top three DPS, raiding content two tiers above me with players in full T5/6. If you really know how to play your class and understand the mechanics of it, gear you will find out is only secondary to that fact. That is why I don’t play with GearScore. In Wotlk, with raiding being so accessible by more players, I was more involved in the guild and raiding process. Although we were considered a casual guild, we earned achievements like OS3D on 25-man pre-Ulduar. We are working on Lich King-25 at the moment as well has heroic modes on 10-man. Gevlon’s raiding experiments I think really illustrates the fact that if you have good players, you don’t need the best epics in the game to clear end-game content.

Up untill this point I only have one level capped player with two max level professions. I rarely play alts, which could contribute to the fact that I have always had a lot of gold in the bank. But one might argue that having alts means more professions that could bring in more profits and diversify your inventory. I believe that not playing alts allowed me personally to hit the gold cap a lot easier than some players.

Why did you choose to collect this amount of gold?

Why so late in the game did I choose to hit the cap? Well there was really no reason for me to obtain that much gold. I could afford anything I could ever want. I made the announcement on our forums about my goal to hit the cap around the first week of March 2010:

As we near the end of Wotlk and with the announcement of Cataclysm this year, I want to hit the gold cap before it is released. Never had much need for all that gold, but with the new gold sinks and tons of new things to buy in Cataclysm, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to save up a lot of gold. Also I run a gold making blog and hitting the gold cap gives you credibility.

From an unofficial source, I heard that the 310% speed mount training will cost 35,000 gold, but don’t quote me on that. Whether that is true or not, 35k sounds reasonable since it is considered a luxury to fly a bit faster just like having vendors on your mammoth mount. The jump from 16k gold sink to 35k sounds in-line with the inflation of gold that comes with each expansion, but I digress. I had about 95,000g saved up already when I decided to go for the cap. So in about 2.5 months I had made 120,000g by just grinding out the auction house at a much faster and aggressive pace than usual.

How did you go about getting to the 214k? Did you use professions? Auction House arbitrage? Any creative ideas? 

Creating demand is hard. Filling demand is easier. Don’t create a product, then seek someone to sell it to. Find a market – define your customers – then find or develop a product for them.

-Timothy Ferriss

The List

I really liked how Srsbusiness.org used a list to show exactly what items he was selling on the way to gold cap. Instead of saying I used these professions, we can see what specific items and quantities he used. So we hope gold cap interviews from now on will include some sort of master list and a certain level of transparency to show us how you hit the cap. This list reflects what I sold and bought in the past 2 months up to the gold cap. Other methods I have used in the past are not included, but the articles are usually spread out through the blog such as ones about prospecting titanium and saronite. Of course before I list out my items, I must say that these master lists should be taken with a grain of salt. You will have to adapt to your own economy and other factors on your own server. Things that I make a huge profit on may cause you to lose money and this is an important thing to note.

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

-George Bernard Shaw

The ~ symbol means an estimated price and those without are firm prices that I have set for those items. This indicates that competition is almost non-existent in certain markets so therefore I can price them consistently, month after month. The BeanCounter data is for the past few months, some might go as far back as January of this year.

Leatherworking

ilevel 245 BOE Epics (Listed @ 1499g each / 600g profit per sale)

• 1x [Bracers of Swift Death] - BeanCounter Data: 37284g

Total: 37000 – 13000 (~materials cost) = 24,000

ilevel 226 BOE Epics (Listed @ 1499g each / 400-700g profit per sale)

• 1x [Belt of Arctic Life] 10770
• 1x [Belt of Dragons] 8525
• 1x [Blue Belt of Chaos] 4322
• 1x [Boots of Living Scale] 15527
• 1x [Boots of Wintry Endurance] 7500
• 1x [Death-warmed Belt] 10961
• 1x [Footpads of Silence] 26769
• 1x [Lightning Grounded Boots] 5652

Total: 90000 – 36000 (~materials cost) = 54,000

ilevel 200 BOE Epics (Listed @ 399g each / 250g profit per sale)

• 1x [Earthgiving Boots] 6876
• 1x [Earthgiving Legguards] 4207
• 1x [Giantmaim Bracers] 3290
• 1x [Giantmaim Legguards] 5521
• 1x [Revenant's Breastplate] 3921
• 1x [Revenant's Treads] 2600
• 1x [Trollwoven Girdle] 5069
• 1x [Trollwoven Spaulders] 11885
• 1x [Windripper Boots] 2630
• 1x [Windripper Leggings] 4847

Total: 50000 – 20500 (~materials cost) = 29,500

Leg Armor (Listed @ ~150g each / 50g profit per sale)

• 2x [Icescale Leg Armor] 15511
• 2x [Frosthide Leg Armor] 11475
• 2x [Earthen Leg Armor] 8772

*Too much pricing fluctuations to estimate this amount. Sometimes they sell for 140g and other times I can get away with listen them at 300g.

Quiver/Ammo Pouches (Listed @ 249g each / 175g profit per sale)

• 1x [Nerubian Reinforced Quiver] 3919
• 1x [Dragonscale Ammo Pouch] 2458

Total: 6377 - 1900 (~materials cost) = 4400

Tailoring

Spellthread (Listed @ ~150g each / ~75g profit per sale)

• 1x [Brilliant Spellthread] 13598
• 1x [Sapphire Spellthread] 19636
• Important to note that Wisp/Deathchill Cloak used to be a part of this however I lost access to a Tailor who had these patterns. Remember I only have Leatherworking/Jewelcrafting as my professions.

Jewelcrafting

Epic/Meta Gems of All Colors

I couldlist the most profitable and fastest selling cuts here, similar to what Kumiko did on our fourms however there is a better way to do this. Prices of raw and cut gems constantly fluctuate on the auction house. So what we want here is a list that fluctuates as well. A profitable cut today might be tomorrows worst cut, especially when you factor in the pricing strategies of all your competitors.

1. Download: LilSparkie’s Workshop
2. Run Auctioneer/Auctionator Scan (save time by only searching for the epic gems and changing pages)
3. Open up the Jewelcrafting window.
4. On the right of each gem cut will be a number.
5. This is what you will profit if you buy the raw gem and cut it.
6. Cut the ones with the highest profit; if done in large volumes you can diversify your cuts with the top few.

As you can see above, Fractured will result in the highest profit margin. At this point, if say I had 10 raw gems to cut, I would cut 6 Fractured and 4 Delicate. This helps me sell off inventory faster then if I just cut 10 Fractured because it has the highest profit margin. If you are planning on buying new recipes, you could figure out the highest profit ones by going to the auction house and seeing which cuts cost the most. However this is no guarantee that this cut is either profitable or popular; it could just be prices high at this point in time. WoWPopular.com is a good place to start to get an idea of which gem cuts you can expect to have a high volume of sales from. But you will have to watch your economy and to find out which cuts are highest profit ones.

BeanCounter Data for JC:

• Majestic Zircon: 6161
• Cardinal Ruby: 3873
• Eye of Zul: 13494
• King’s Amber: 13433
• Dreadstone: 16902
• Ametrine: 10970
• Earthsiege Diamond: 6036
• Skyflare Diamond: 7909
• Nightmare Tear: 7155

Total: 85,900

Other Income

Loot everything you can, it is unbelievable how much gold can be found on the ground! My Auditor says I have picked up thousands of gold from looting items. Gold can be earned while raiding as well from trash mobs and bosses. I save 20% gold by buying reagents and repairing with cities I am exalted with. An example would be buying and making repairs in Dalaran if you are exalted with the Kirin Tor instead of using a repair bot. If you are in an ICC raid, you can repair with the first NPC on the right as you walk in. You will receive a discount if you have reputation with The Ashen Verdict. Most of these little things I have discussed in a previous article. I’ m sure some of you out there are wondering why someone who has so much gold feels the need to loot every copper and go out of their way to receive reputation discounts. Well to put this in another perspective; when you see someone who is physically fit go jogging, you may wonder the same thing. Why does this person who is in good shape exercising? Well the answer to both questions is simple. What they are doing has contributed to their current state. So the countless occasions where I looted everything that on the ground and saving money by repairing at the full discount allowed me to retain more gold. It all adds up and you have to keep thinking long term.

Being Creative

Not thinking about the long term is why less experienced players get impatient at the auction house and eventually come to the conclusion that they can’t make any money. Take, for example, the crafted BOE market I participate in. It frequently takes days and even weeks to sell a single item. Most players just don’t have the patience for this on top of the fact that there is a large investment of 900g+ just to craft the item. The 500g profit is nice, but I think most players aren’t comfortable with putting this much gold and time on the line. In my scenario however, I am very comfortable with doing this as well as being prepared to lose money on the deal. When you have 100,000g or higher, you can take some risks that other players who only have a few thousand gold can’t. Just imagine how risky it is for a player who only has 1000g, to spend 900g to craft an epic that may or may not sell for more than what the materials cost. At this point, it’s more of a gamble rather than good gold making advice. As we said before, always adapt and mold all the gold making strategies that you hear into something that works for you. If it doesn’t look like it will work, then don’t follow their advice, but also don’t discredit them either because you couldn’t get their methods to work. There’s always more to making gold then buying low, selling high, which can be very risky. We are not a fan of buying things and reselling them unless we are 90% sure of a higher return and completely fine with losing they money if it doesn’t work out. I also like this method because there is a high gold per hour attached to it. There is very little work involved in crafting epics and you only spend a few seconds re-listing them when the auctions expire. Take a look at my BeanCounter below for one of my BOE epics:

How many of you are comfortable with selling only 14 items in four months? This is just one of the many reasons why have have success in this market. Other include the rarity of some of these recipes as well as other players who do have the recipe but don’t think ilevel 226 items will never sell. That is just one item, however I realised the potential of these items. Leatherworking has 8 recipes for ilevel 226 items, so now I can multiply these results with very little time invested. So what is my BeanCounter data show? About 54,000 gold in profit.  That is about halfway to the gold cap with only 8 different items? Now you can see why I love Leatherworking and these creative ways to profit with very little work. Now let’s expand the scope of this operation to ilevel 245 and 200 epics and just watch the income roll in.

What About The Reagents?

These searches are saved with an addon called AHsearch, which saves you time from manually typing out each item you want to find. 1-click searching makes things very easy. Notice that I don’t have some huge fancy list that I search with. The 15 items listed above cover everything leatherworking related in my master list. I just buy the materials when they are at a good price, usually one I have set in my head since I don’t use very many features in Auctioneer. I’m at the point where I know a good price when I see one in relation to what the final crafted item sells for. This works for Jewelcrafting as well, just a list of the epic flavors with a few meta ones thrown in. The only other type of searches I do is to sort by “Buyout Total”. This will list the most expensive auctions on the server. I can check for certain items I can burn my gold on and most of the ICC BOE drops will appear here. I have bought out and resold two of these items for about a 4000g profit total. This was months ago in the early days of ICC raiding and the Auctioneer data couldn’t help you. It was a calculated risk that I took to make a quick and easy profit on these two items. My intuition and auction house experience told me these items were underpriced and I could list them for higher.

How did you learn to do it?

There was a lot of trial and error, but mainly noticing price differences between materials and the final product. Staying up to date on patch notes and various gold making resources was also a key factor. Writing my own articles almost forced me to do my homework on all the topics. Reading forums is also a good way to get ideas as well as see other peoples success and failures with them.

What addons, if any, do you use to help you make gold?

Sometimes I think players rely on addons too much to make their gold. If I lost all my addons, I could still go about my daily routine easily; it would just take a bit longer. Here are the addon’s that I use:

Auctioneer: This addon is very popular with the gold making community, however I hardly use it for all of its’ features. I use it to sort by price per unit, ilevels, post auctions, see BeanCouner numbers, and to feed data to LilSparkie’s Workshop. I don’t run scans, use snatch, and a lot of the fancy features that it contains. In fact I only had this addon installed for about a year. Whenever you search for an item manually, that is like a mini scan, so when you don’t deal with a wide range of items, there is no need to waste time scanning the entire auction house.

BeanCounter: This is part of the Auctioneer Suite and records data for your successful and failed auctions. This is useful to see what items sell the best and which to cut loose when you notice that the items don’t sell very often even if they have high profit margins. The only downfall is that for most items it doesn’t take into account the cost of materials, however it works well with gems since you can search for the base name like “Cardinal Ruby”.

LilSparkie’s Workshop: I had just started to use this within the past few months. It mostly is just a replacement to the math I did on paper or in my head to figure out price discrepencies between materials and the final product.

AHSearch: A simple addon that lets you save your searches so you can perform 1-click searches. This is useful for looking up the materials I need to buy. If the finished product is in my bag, I can Shift+Right Click to perform the search. Then I use the 1-click buyout feature from Auctioneer to buy things I need.

Are you still going for more gold, like 1 million?  If so, do you have a new goal? Are you close?

No, I don’t have a new goal in mind yet. Right now I am only focusing on BOE epics and a few items from Leatherworking to keep the income rolling; Jewelcrafting has been cut out of my daily routine. When Cataclysm Beta comes out, I will have a better sense on how much gold is needed and can create a new goal based on it. However I don’t see needing more than 200,000+ gold unless you want to max out a lot of alts at level 85. It’s funny, because I keep trying to make gold even after the gold cap.

Do many people know you have this amount of gold?

A few close friends and guild members. Most know I have a lot of gold, due to things like the mammoth and motorcycle. When you hit gold cap, you just have to announce it to at least a few people.

Did you spend your gold on fun things? What have you bought? What things would you like to buy?

My Bank Alt page should sum this up. I kept track of a lot of my large purchases over the course of this expansion. If you add up the items listed, it totals to about a quarter of a million gold.

Do you have any special tips that you would like to share?

• Disable all unnecessary addons on your bank alts to make logging in faster.
• Do your research.
• Only take risks if ou can afford the losses.
• Start small, but think big.
• Spend less than you earn.
• Create macrosand UI/addon adjustments to make the process faster and easier.

Do you have any fun stories from when you were grinding?

Right before the big titanium being prospectable patch, I borrowed a friends hunter and farmed for ore in Sholazzar Basin. This was actually fun and a nice break from the auction house. Flying around and mining up highly valuable ore and items made it worth it.

What was the best deal you ever came across?

There wasn’t really a best deal, maybe if you include the two BOE epics I bought for a 4000g profit. To be successful, I think you need to come across lots of small deals when buying and selling. Always be on the lookout for low priced materials and opportunities to post auctions at a slightly higher price.

Another item I would consider a good deal was the Greatness trinket. This cost me 12,000g and I didn’t replace it till half way through Icecrown-25. Look for another trinket like this on in Cataclysm.

Do you remember any of your worst deals? 

I usually minimize risk when buying and selling, as in not buying high and selling low or even normal. However bad deals usually come from my attempts to stockpile certain materials and have it backfire. Usually the loss isn’t much since I do take a calculated risk whenever I do choose to stockpile. Other bad deals come from buying or bidding on things by accident.

What are your future plans with WoW? 

Possibly play in Cataclysm as well. For now, just a bit of casual raiding and hope to see Ruby Sanctum soon. Then the Cataclysm beta should be around the corner and we plan to do some coverage of it on the site.

Do you have any last words?

For those that are going for the cap, just hang in there and good luck! For those that are just starting out, have patience, it didn’t happen over night for us either.