Hall of Fame – 500K Gold Club: Ssereniti of Korgath-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, Ssereniti of Korgath-US, who will be sharing their story with us today.

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

My main toon is named Ssereniti and I am a level 85 night elf hunter on US-Korgath.  I have been playing WoW since late 2005 and Sseren is my first and favorite character.  I started on Shattered Hand, but later moved to Korgath to join my husband.  I am currently an Officer of Grown Ups and am in charge of keeping our guild bank full and healthy.

Currently I don’t play any other games, but before WoW I was an avid fan of Star Wars: Galaxies and Diablo II.  I’m eagerly awaiting the release of Diablo III!

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

I do both in fairly equal measure.  Perhaps prompted by the same instinct that compels me to collect gold, I am also unashamedly obsessed with getting achievements.  At the time of this writing, Sseren has 12,585 achievement points, and collecting that many necessarily requires a significant commitment to both pve and pvp.  I’d be hard pressed to decide whether I’m more proud of my achievement score or my bank account.

Grown Ups is a semi-hardcore 25 man raiding guild (hardcore in the sense that our goal is to clear all available content in hard mode, but semi in the sense that we only raid three nights a week) and I am part of the core raid team.  I’ve been raiding with Grown Ups for just over two years now, having completed Naxx, Ulduar, ToC and ICC with them during Wrath.  We’re currently 3/13, having killed Halfus, Magmaw and Maloriak and we hope to get Chimaeron down this week or next.

However, I also spend quite a bit of my person free time pvp’ing.  I’m on a number of casual arena teams with friends from the guild and I have spent more than my fair share of time in battlegrounds.  I’m two achievements away from completing the “Battlemaster” achievement, which I think says all anyone needs to know about the amount of time I’ve spent in those.  The new rating BG system has not really appealed to me yet, but it may in the future.  We’ll see!

Why did you choose to collect this amount of gold?

I’m a collector.  Before I collected half a million gold, I collected mounts (139), pets (158) and, once they were implemented, achievements (12,585).  Consequently, gold started as a means to an end.  I quickly found that I could save time and energy farming for myself or trying to put together a pick up group if I could just pay other people to do the hard part and reap the benefits.  At some point along the way, probably after I’d bought everything there was to buy, collecting more gold became an end in and of itself.

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

I decided to start making gold in TBC when I made my rogue into a jewelcrafter.  It was kind of a risk, because I’d never really played the AH before and I had no prior experience with using a crafting profession to make money.  At the time, Sseren was a LW/skinner mostly for my own convenience and because I enjoyed skinning my kills.  Shortly after I started jewelcrafting, however, I noticed I would get a rush from the prospecting process.  The thrill of clicking on stacks of ore and seeing the occasional living ruby or star of elune was incredibly exciting.  And, since I couldn’t stop myself from buying ever more ore to prospect, I soon needed to find a way to make some money off of all the gems I was acquiring.  Soon I found myself equally excited by the prospect of opening up my mailbox, cranking up my computer’s volume and enjoying the “cha-ching” streaming in after I clicked “take all.”  This was my first foray into the AH.

I have never been a “monopolist” or power trader.  I make money on the markets I know and understand at a pace that fits with my play time and other priorities.  I gradually grew my jewelcrafting business as I had time and opportunity, but I have never tried to establish myself exclusively on the server or really tried very hard to muscle out the competition, unlike my friend Sovash, who you have interviewed previously.

During Wrath I continued to primarily make money with jewelcrafting, but I augmented my earning capacity by using the neutral auction house.  I made untold thousands of gold on the neutral AH using two primary goods: 1) faction specific cooking recipes and 2) faction pets.  It is amazing to me how many other collectors there are in the game who want every pet, every mount, or every recipe and in that way it was an easy market for me to enter.  Whether I was buying from the neutral AH to relist for higher on the alliance AH or buying from alliance vendors to relist for a profit on the neutral AH, I had a consistent income stream with little to no competition.

When Cataclysm hit, I made my main into an engineer.  I have enjoyed a lot of success in Cataclysm by selling leg armors, blue pvp gear and engineering pets while continuing to use and abuse my alt’s jewelcrafting abilities.  I have two alts who are master transmuters to help churn out metagems, volatiles and truegold who I use both to support my crafting and as a way to transform less valuable materials into more valuable materials I can repost for profit.  For whatever reason, Cata seems to have put a damper on the neutral AH trade, so I have since discontinued most of my non-pet neutral AH activity.

What is your master list?

I don’t have a huge list: blue quality gems and metas, rare and epic leatherworking leg armors, engineering pets, tournament pets (pets bought from the Argent Tournament) and enchanting materials.  I also do a pretty good business selling fortune cookies and relics.

What items are in your Snatch list?

My snatch list is not very big because (while I know this may cause many goblins out there to have a heart attack), I actually enjoy farming.  Consequently, I really only buy savage leather because I no longer have a skinner.  I recognize that this hurts my bottom line, but hey, I seem to be doing ok, and I have fun.  I’m not a hardcore raider, pvp’er or goblin.  I’m a hardcore collector, and this suits me just fine.

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

A lot of my early time through TBC and WotLK was self-taught trial by fire.  I don’t really read many blogs and I hardly even go to my own guild forum.  I use wowhead a lot to find materials to supply my business, but that doesn’t really teach me much.  Over the years, I’ve talked to a few guildies who know the gold-making game and have traded ideas with them, but I haven’t changed my ways very much even when I discover new methods which might lead to better results.  I’m stubborn and set in my ways.  I would like to note that I am good friends with Sovash, who directed me to this site, and he has done his absolute best to break my bad habits, with no success.  He’s very frustrated with me.

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

The serious answer to that question is OneBag, MoneyFu and Postal.  Unlike a lot of goblins, I have not moved towards an automated snatch/craft/post addon.  I don’t even have Auctioneer!  I keep track of prices either in my head or on a notepad I keep next to my computer.  I keep my markets niche enough that I’m able to keep track of prices on my own instead of needing an automated database.  Part of the benefit of not being a monopolist or power trader is that the lowered volume cuts down on the addon overhead.  I always laugh to myself on patch day when everyone is scrambling to get their addons working while I’m just cutting and making money.

The less serious answer is Livestock and NPCScan.  I’ve made a lot of profit from NPCScan from the generous loot drops that rares have in WotLK and Cata.  And Livestock is important because it keeps different pets and mounts constantly in front of me.  As I said, gold started as a means to an end.  Livestock reminds me of why I wanted more gold in the first place and encourages me to make more to pay for the next Vial of the Sands mount or TCG loot card.

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

I’m vaguely going for a million gold at this point, because why not, but having just hit 500k, it’s kind of a long way off.  I make gold at my own pace, so we’ll see how long it takes me to crack the big one m.

Do many people know you have this amount of gold?

No, not really.  I’m not really even sure most of my guild knows.  I brag much more about my pets, mounts and achievements than I do about my gold.  My husband, who is also my GM, of course knows, as does Sovash and maybe a few other people, but I think most people would be surprised by how much I have, especially given how much I’ve purchased, and how much I’ve paid out to people in the form of bounties for helping me with achievements.

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

Yes, yes I do.  I buy mounts, pets, random vanity items.  My alts all have whatever gear I find it entertain to give them.  I’ve put bounties on the heads of people who have ganked me (especially people who gank me while I’m trying to tame a rare spawn spirit beast).  I’m definitely of the opinion that gold is there to be spent as much as it is there to be counted.  So I haven’t let the stigma of increasing my bank account get in the way of buying things I want when I want them.  Sure there have been times where I know I can afford an item but I choose not to buy it, but eventually my wallet will get high enough and my willpower low enough that I feel I can afford it.

As for a new gold sink, I would love to see a closet of some sort that would let me clear my bags of all of the old gear and tabards I have lying around that I have collected in almost six years of playing this game.  I would pay a lot of gold for that.

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

The most basic aspect of gold making in my opinion is to know your buyer.  I don’t have every profession covered like every profession, but I make my fair share of money by appealing to people like myself and knowing what they want and how much they’re willing to spend on it.  I have two characters and, as part of my routine outside of the AH, I always go the Argent Tournament to do my dailies on these two characters every day.  For 10 minutes of work, I can buy a new pet about once a week (in addition to the money I get from doing the dailies) that I can sell for thousands of gold.  It’s perhaps less efficient than pulling and restocking, but it’s a lot more fun.

How about an advanced gold making class?

Perhaps obviously, step two from know your buyer is to know your competitor.  It’s important to be able to understand and distinguish between people like my husband who like to post a bunch of random crap for random prices because they want to clear out their bags and the automated, sophisticated practices of other goblins.  You start to see patterns of when people are online and ensure that if you can’t beat their prices, you simply don’t compete with them and make sure to post at other times when they’re less active.  I tend to be a weekday seller and a weekend buyer, because that nets me the best returns for my time.  As I’ve said before, I do a lot of other things in WoW besides play the AH, so knowing when my competitors play and how they play means I can make the most of the time I do spent on the AH.

Do you have good farming strategies or spots?

My current favorite farming is to use a Potion of Treasure Finding and head to Tol Barad when the Alliance controls it to farm the infinitely respawning horde npcs in the “base” areas.  I will also go to Uldum to farm air elementals at Orsis.  The key is to use the potion because then you get a chance to get tiny treasure chests from every mob.  This increases the yield of the farming session tremendously and more than pays for the cost of the potion itself.  I have gotten lucky with a few BoE epic drops during my farming sessions, which is just icing on the cake.

What was the best deal you ever came across?

Unfortunately, I don’t have any deals that were so good as to be worthy of mention.

Do you remember any of your worst deals?

Most of my worst deals are when I’ve been playing the AH while exhausted either missed adding a zero myself or misreading a price and thinking I was getting a good deal, only to realize either I’d been screwed or I just paid normal retail.  Important safety tip kids: drunk and tired is no way to make gold!

What are your future plans with WoW?

I’m very excited for the three new pets and pet achievements available in 4.2.  I hope the new higher goals will lead to increased demand for the pets that I sell which will raise my profits.  I plan to continue making gold and raiding, but we’ll see.  WoW has been around a long time and I have been playing it for most of that time, so who knows when something new and exciting and different might catch my eye.

What are you predictions for the future WoW economy?

I’m excited for the release of epic gems in Cata.  I’m assuming they’ll drop with whatever raid zone comes after Firelands, so I’ve been keeping a healthy stockpile of pyrite around instead of prospecting it now for what I have found to be limited returns compared to elementium.  Even if this doesn’t end up paying off as well as I hope, it’s still pyrite and valuable for a number of other uses.

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

One last tip: justice points, valor points and honor are all just another word for gold if you know how to use it.  There’s no reason to sit on these when you can cash out and make a nice profit for yourself with them.  At least on my server, the valor boots still sell very well and enchanting mats (essences and shards) are an excellent use of stocked up justice points.

Thank you for providing us moneymakers with a place where we can be proud of our achievements.  It’s not a niche the rest of the WoW community necessarily pays a lot of attention to, but boy would they miss us if we weren’t here, so it’s cool that this place exists for us to see and be seen.