Hall of Fame – 500K Gold Club: Azuriel of Auchindoun-US

The Warcraft Econ Hall of Fame interviews the few elite players that have hit the World of Warcraft gold cap of 999,999 gold 99 silver 99 copper as well as ones who have obtain 500k and 250k. We have with us, Azuriel of Auchindoun-US, who will be sharing their story with us today.

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

I am Azuriel of Auchindoun-US, writer of Player Vs Auction House, and I have been playing WoW since just after the 2.1 patch in TBC. I would have gotten into WoW sooner, but I kept getting hung up on the concept of paying $15/month to play a game you already owned… up until I realized I was playing Magic: the Gathering Online and spending $15 in tournaments that could be over in 8 minutes. After that, a monthly subscription seemed like a steal for the amount of amusement generated.

My prior gaming background includes heavy play in M:tG, D&D (v3.5 or bust), Battlefield 2, and hundreds of console RPGs stretching back to the Nintendo days. Battlefield 2 may seem odd amongst the others, but aside from a FPS itch that periodically needs scratched, I have to say that a lot more MMO companies should be taking notes about how BF2′s game design facilitated teamwork and focused everyone on objectives as opposed to fighting in the road, zerging flags, and so on.

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

I am the GM of a former 10m raiding guild that got hit by a few cataclysms of its own this expansion – the body count is in the neighborhood of 15 members quiting/unsubbing since the end of Wrath. People come and go, but when that special core chips away it is hard to maintain the excitement necessary to wipe with other people who stand in fire for hours at a time. We did Kara and half of ZA back in TBC, all 10m Wrath content as it was released, and was 6/12 in Cataclysm before things became completely unglued back in March. PvP-wise, I very much enjoy Arenas and BGs both. Nothing fancy, but my highest rating was ~2100 in 3v3 as a Resto shaman back in Season 8. I would be sporting the Rival title today had my account not been hacked in the final days of Wrath.

Why did you choose to collect this amount of gold?

My ultimate goal was to hit this level of gold without relying on selling Glyphs, to demonstrate that the worst piece of game design Blizzard has ever released was not necessary to generate wealth. Fundamentally, turning herbs into Glyphs should not be any different than turning herbs into flasks, but I abhor the way Glyphs ended up playing out. Instead of accessibility, here is a profession that discourages competition, encourages collusion, and has a ridiculous add-on requirements before you can even hope to get started. When the “right way” to run a profession is to have three guild banks and process thousands of canceled mail a day, you know it should be time to go back to the white board.

How did you go about getting to this gold amount? Any creative or original ideas?

The fundamental rule is to make more gold than you spend. As long as you follow that, everything else is simply a matter of speeding up the time between how much you have currently and your end-goal. That aside, the best way of speeding up your gold gain is this:

Vertical Integration

What vertical integration means is controlling every step in the production process, from raw material to finished good. In game terms, an example would be Prospecting ore with JC, transmuting the uncommon gems into Inferno Rubies via Alchemy, and then cutting the Inferno Rubies into Bold Inferno Rubies to sell on the AH. A “complete” vertical integration would be to also farm the ore and herbs yourself, but botting is so widespread this expansion that I doubt it will ever be worth it to farm them.

Vertical Integration speeds up gold gain because you can “bake in” profits at every step of the process. With JC, you can buy uncut Inferno Rubies off the AH, cut them, and probably resell for ~40g profit depending on competition. Transmuting Inferno Rubies from Carnelians and Heartblossom bought off the AH is rarely cost-effective without being a Transmute master, but if you gather the Carnelians from 29g per stack Obsidium Ore, it is possible to bring the “cost” of Inferno Rubies down another 30-40g, capturing more profits in the final sale of the cut gem. People who read gold-blogs already understand this concept as the (Obsidium) Shuffle, but vertical integration is what is actually going on.

Part of being vertically integrated is diversifying your professions, and thus your markets. Having access to every profession allows me to do some truly goofy things occasionally, like go from selling cut gems/flasks (my bread and butter sales) to suddenly flooding the Leg Armor market with 80% cost goods because I happened to pick up some cheap Savage Leather Scraps stacks the day before, or jump into selling scrolls depending on how the various markets are moving.

What is your master list?

Since the release of Cataclysm (I did not have MySales loaded before then), Darkmoon Faire trinkets have accounted for ~169k of my sales by themselves, or about 1/3^rd of my total wealth. Once you remove the BoE epics I flip when the opportunity presents itself, the next portion have been Flasks of Draconic Mind at 33,799g; Volatile Air at 28,360g (make sure you do your transmute every day); Inferno Ink at 21,573g; and Flasks of Steelskin at 17,973g total. From there, it is a pretty wide spread between the various cut and uncut gems, scrolls, and assorted miscellany.

What items are in your Snatch list?

I have not used Auctioneer since 3.4, instead opting for the much more streamlined Auctionator. As far as my Buy lists are concerned, the standard fare of herbs, ore, enchanting materials, etc, are represented. I do not maintain any Snatch lists for rare patterns or pets or anything like that.

How did you learn to do it? Anyone or resource you would like to thank?

I was more or less self-taught by experimentation, back in the TBC days when it seemed like no one really knew what they were doing. I would like to thank the members of my guild, Invictus, for putting up with all the unsolicited, in-game financial advice over the years. Also a shout out to all the gold bloggers selling gold guides for giving me the incentive to try and undermine their business by running a free blog without any advertisements of any kind. It may not be working out that way, but it is the thought that counts.

What addons, if any, do you use to help you make gold and why are they needed?

Auctionator for just about every step in the selling process, and Auditor to get some idea about whether what you are doing is actually paying off. You can get fancy by loading yourself down with more tools, but you will still get beat by someone able to do a manual scan using just their eyeballs.

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

I am not expressly going for more, but if what I normally do for fun ends up increasing those gold numbers, I will not be complaining.

Do many people know you have this amount of gold?

People in my guild know that I am particularly wealthy in-game, but only a few of the top brass know about the fairly ridiculous degree to which that is true.

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

Part of the sad thing is how little I actually do spend all the gold I end up getting. There have been times when I thought things like the Traveling Tundra Mount or Motorcycle would be cool to have, but I do not buy things just for the sake of having them. I might make the Vial of the Sands mount, for example, but it would be to experiment with its profitability rather than to use it myself.

One thing that is underrepresented in the gold-sink market, is in-game debris or items that change your character model. My bags are filled with stuff like Elixir of Giant Growth, Deviate Fish, Romantic Picnic Baskets, Stormwind Flag, Bones of Transformation, Brewfest Pony Keg, Firework Launchers, and so on. You can only have one mount and one pet out on display at a time, but I can turn any space in the game world into the interior of a Freshman dorm room during Finals week, at will. I would love to be able to spend gold getting more debris rather than having to farm it via Archeology or TCG codes or holidays.

If you were the professor of a gold making 101 college class, what would be some things you would talk about?

The simple principal of earning more gold than you spend. It is just as applicable in-game as it is in real life.

How about an advanced gold making class?

Vertical Integration, the Shuffle, Buy-Low Sell-Normal, business cycles, and a section on why it is bad to treat the AH as a PvP scenario instead of Player Vs Auction House scenario (hence the name of my blog).

Do you have good farming strategies or spots?

Farming is out, botters are in. Not that I am encouraging anyone to bot, but simply acknowledging the reality that the only reason to have a gathering profession anymore is if you find the action of gathering relaxing, or you are leveling an alt. Every now and then you have the Whiptail debacle, but generally speaking you can profit off of the profit of others just as well.

What was the best deal you ever came across?

Should epic gems come from prospecting Pyrite Ore, snagging somewhere in the neighborhood of 150 stacks of the stuff for 40g/stack. Other than that, haggling someone on Trade Chat down to 8k for the BoE epic tanking shoulders and immediately reselling it on the AH for 28k.

Do you remember any of your worst deals?

I insulate myself from most bad deals by only trading in items that I could see myself using for my main or alts should things go south. Most of the worst deals I had were when I started to buy a lot of BoE gear for an alt that I ended up hating to play a week later.

What are your future plans with WoW?

Keep doing what I am doing until something better comes along. I was a fan of Diablo 2 and I would be extremely interested in Titan if it turns out to be a Halo-esque MMO. And hey, if Battlefield 3 ends up being Battlefield 2 with tighter gameplay and more servers, I may disappear from the MMO scene altogether.

What are you predictions for the future WoW economy?

I think the overall economy is in a good place. Going forward though, if professions were in the stock market, I would be buying up a lot of shares of Blacksmithing prior to 4.2. At the end of weeks of questing will be 365 BoE epic weapons of every type and flavor, which was my biggest profession gripe from Wrath insofar as there were no follow-ups to the Titansteel weapons. Until Chaos Orbs go BoE themselves (and probably even after), Blacksmiths will essentially be minting gold.

Thank you for taking the time to do this interview for Warcraft Econ. Do you have any last words?

Start small, go slow, and focus on having more gold today than you did yesterday.