Hall of Fame – 500K Gold Club: Mighty of Aggramar-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, “Mighty” of Aggramar-US, who will be sharing their story with us today.

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

I started playing WoW back in November of 2007. I always enjoyed RPGs, and this was my first MMORPG, and I fell in love with the game. I loved PvP, and I enjoyed interacting with guildies and finding new things to do in the game. I was a level 49 twink Warrior at some point, which was an interesting time, but I’ll get into that a bit later.

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

Well, when I first started out with WoW, I hated raiding, and had no interest in it at all. My main was a Warrior, and when I got to my 40’s I realized I had enough gold to twink him out. I spent at least 2 moths at level 49, absolutely destroying alliance in BGs. It was a very fun time for me. Two-shotting mages… yum. Then when BC came out, all my guildies told me to stop wasting my time at level 49, and I leveled to 70, and started raiding (also while PvPing). I then got into a Kara group, and had an absolute blast. Some of the best time I’ve ever had in WoW was my late night Kara group, which included a real life friend (shout-out to Kara group 0). I still LOVED PvP, but Aggramar is probably the worst server for PvP, so it was hard to find people to run with. My real enjoyment came from conquering the auction house, and ripping people off to amass insane amounts of gold J

Why did you choose to collect this amount of gold?          

Well, as a level 35 noob with no good friends in WoW, you can be quite poor. I found auctioneer, and I started buying and selling things. My first item I remember making a lot of gold on was Skullflame Shield. I bought it for 140g, which was most of my gold at the time. I then flipped it for 350g. I was ecstatic (funny I cough and I can make 350g nowadays). From then on, I made it my priority to continue to make gold through the AH. I hated farming and dailies. I would much rather sit at the AH. I was able to afford pretty much anything I wanted, and it always gave me an edge. Best gems, best enchants, epic mount, etc. I fell in love with that feeling, so I continued to grow my stock. Having more gold than anyone you know is a great feeling, and so is noticeably causing prices to rise because of your bulk buying.

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

-Experimentation. Trial and error. Some ideas I picked off the web, some were obvious to me, and some were just damn right crazy. A basic principle I used to make gold was to watch an item for a few weeks. Really get to know the bottom price, and how much people would be willing to pay for it. I would then wait for the right moment, when the price was at the lowest, and buy it all out (I’m talking about trade goods like eternals). I would then patiently (key word here) sell the trade goods in stacks of 3 and 10 over a period of a few weeks. The end result would be around 40% profit. I would do this with many trade goods, and I would have a steady flow income. If I had too many of a trade good, I would find an item I could craft, and use the excess trade goods to craft them. Usually a guildie would help me out. Guildies were always a big help- they would craft items for me for free. But not only that, I could mail them the items, and trust they will return them to me. I think a big void that people have in making gold is that they do not use professions they do not have. I like to call this the “But I’m not a Blacksmith” syndrome. I can tell you, throughout WoW, I have never had a max level Blacksmith. But what I can tell you is that I always found guildies or anyone to make me BoE armor and belt buckles, and it added a substantial amount to my gold total. Being able to see what I was lacking in my sales and actively pursuing them made a big difference. There is only so much gold you can make with two professions.

-Next is patch notes. These are big. Right now people are playing guessing games with Pyrite Ore. That’s not what I’m talking about. What I am talking about, is seeing enough patches to be able to understand what items will go up in price, and what will go down. For example, with 4.1, prices of gems have gone up at least 30% on every server. I made sure to have stacks of cut and uncut gems ready. I did not dump my Inferno Rubys for 70g. I waited. And I won. Same thing with meta gems. I also knew that dust and essences would go up, so I stocked up on those too. Sometimes you have to look past the obvious in the patch notes, and understand what effect new dungeons or additions will have on the overall economy. I can tell you that I salivate on big patch days (do you remember Glyph Mass?), especially expansions.

-One of my favorite ways to make gold is to exploit the population discrepancy between Horde and Alliance. On Aggramar, there are 2-3x more Alliance than horde, and there are also more guilds that progress further and quicker in raids. So what does this mean? This means that generally trade goods were significantly cheaper on the Alliance (due to more farmers and more competition). However, high end raiding items were in higher demand, and therefore more expensive. So how would I take advantage of this? Well, I would craft or buy high-end epic BoEs on the Horde, then transfer it to Alliance. I would then sell it on Alliance for an extra large profit since it sells even better on Alliance compared to horde. I would then take the gold I have on Alliance, and spend it on really cheap trade goods, and send those trade goods back to the horde. I would then use those trade goods to craft items, to sell on horde, and I would end result with profit close to 100%. I constantly continued this cycle, and most recently I did this by selling Darkmoon Card trinkets on Alliance, where there was a higher demand for the trinkets. Simply a fantastic way to make gold, although without two accounts, can prove to be difficult- but it can be done. I would also transfer random items to and from factions when price would tank, or spike. For example- if for some reason Volatile Fires were going for 30g on Alliance- I would transfer them over there and sell them very quickly while the price was high. This was also great to find items that did not exist on the Horde- for example, most recently, there were no soul blades on Horde for a little while (or they were significantly more expensive than Alliance) so I quickly bought 2x Soul Blades from Alliance, transferred them to horde, and made 18k in a matter of 3 days, and less than 1 hour of work. You can’t beat it.

-Picking on the desperate seller. Simple and easy. Here is how it goes-

“WTS Volatile Fire x100 1500g”. 1 minute later, “WTS Volatile Fire x100 1400g”. You know where this is going. I wait, and then I lowball the guy with a price way under the market price. Since they are obviously desperate, they’ll sell it to me (notice that low patience = losing gold?). I go straight from the moment of trade to the AH, and post some up. Quick easy gold. Desperate sellers can make you loads of gold.

-The last way I make gold (it’s a small percentage, but it’s still good), is to buy and sell what I like to define as “low-demand, low-supply” items. What exactly does that mean? These are items where very few people farm the item, and very few people actually need it. A good example is Greater Eternal Essence. You don’t have tons of people supplying this, since it’s from Vanilla WoW. However, not a lot of people need it. It is used for a few enchants, so some people will use it to level enchanting, and to make enchants for lower level toons. So what is so damn good about these types of items? Well I’ll tell you. Many times, there are none in the AH, and people list them for crazy low prices (how many of you know the market price of Greater Eternal Essence off the top of your head? That’s what I thought). I snag these. I then list for 3x more than the market price, say 35g each. Guess what: people buy them. They buy them for a few reasons. 1) They really need it at the time, and no one else is selling them. 2) They don’t know the market price, so they don’t even know they are being ripped off. 3) Even though they know they could spend time and find it somewhere else, and they know they are getting ripped off, its only 210g (for 6x lets say). That’s really not that much. Not worth the time to run around to save 100g. So they will buy it anyway. And when the market bottoms out, you know that if you buy them all out, there won’t be much competition when you relist. Greater Eternals, Primals, Eternals, other old world enchant mats all belong in this category. Low-supply, low-demand items are high profit. But more importantly, you get to fix the price to your liking.

-On a side note, without going into depth, Jewelcrafting and Inscription have been gold mines for me. Selling cut gems, glyphs, and darkmoon cards have all easily accounted for at least half of my overall income.

What is your master list?

I don’t have a ‘master list’. Maybe I should, but I do things by memory for the most part. What do I consistently sell? Every type of cut gem I can get my hands on. If I can’t cut it, I’ll outsource it to a guildie for 5g a cut or to others on the server. Easy income and a must-do. Glyphs- every glyph, period. I have 3 toons for selling glyphs so that I never have to go to the bank. I go to mailbox, unload, go to AH, cancel and post. 15 minutes 2-3x a day, gets me an easy 3-8k per day. Great. Next would be all the boe crafted epics I can get my hands on. I always have volatiles, pristine hides, truegold and hardened elementium so I can have people craft boe epics for me. Great profit. Then I would say that everything else is up in the air. I get Elementium belts made for me when I can, I sell random things like Mercurial Adamantite, Cobalt ore, Fel Iron ore, BC and Vanilla enchants, trade goods from Wotlk and BC, a few pets, darkmoon cards (these were BIG), pvp gear, volatiles when I have too many. I am a little scatter-brained when it comes to organization. I was for a long time really lazy with organization, and my goods would be scattered throughout all of my toons. The only other items I feel I may have left out- Frostweave and Abyssal bags, Eternals from Wotlk, Primal Might, BC/Wotlk dust and essences, wotlk epic gems (surprise? They sell great, and tourney pets.

What items are in your Snatch list?

Pretty much every Cata trade good with only a few exceptions (some herbs since I don’t make flasks or potions). I never made a snatch list with auctioneer, I was always too lazy and intimidated. I think it has hurt me in the long run. However, aside from cata items, I always look for good deals on low supply, low demand items that I mentioned above.

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

I initially learned to do it all on my own. However, recently I have sites like Warcraft Econ and Justmytwocopper to thank for a plethora of knowledge. They have helped me tremendously. Gold blogging sites have really accelerated knowledge in the gold-making community.

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

Tradeskillmaster, Tradeskillmaster, Tradeskillmaster. It’s for everything. Can’t say enough, this mod is the shiznit. Nuff said. GET IT.

-Auctioneer- Used for price info, better AH layout, and quick posting here and there, search for deals as well.

-Altoholic- if you have your items on more than one toon (I think we all do) this is a must to keep track of where your stuff is.

-Postal- Unloading mail

-MySales- keeps track of all your sales. Pretty cool to see what’s been selling, and what hasn’t.

-Bankstack- great for organizing items.

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

Yes, I always want more gold. You can never have too much, that’s for sure. My new goal I guess would be 1 Million. I have 600k+ and 400k in inventory, so I don’t think I’m too far away.

Do many people know you have this amount of gold?

I think most people in my guild know. At least 15-20 people on my server. To be honest when I hit 500k (or at least got all the gold on one toon) I ran around Orgrimmar opening trade with random people, and throwing 500,000 gold in the trade window. Yea, I’m a showoff.

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

I don’t normally waste gold. Even when I had 500k, I find it hard to justify spending 40k on a mount (I did not buy Vial of the Sands for myself, but I did buy it for friend). I do spend gold on BoE epics for my main. I probably spent close to 75k in the past month on BoEs (weapons, rings, chest etc). I also dropped about 50k on getting Server First Illustrious Scribe. That was a great achievement, especially because every server first was going to Alliance, and I think I may have gotten the only one for Horde. My only server first. Expensive, but totally worth it.

What would I like to spend my gold on? REAL ESTATE. I would KILL for a piece of land in Orgrimmar. I Don’t care if it is 500k for a 50 sq yard hut. I would love if I could have a little shop, or even a home in Org. That would just make my day.

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

Patience and Diversity. Patience because many people buy an item, and try to flip it. After two days of posting, they get mad and sell it for less than they paid for it. This is a big no-no. People who have patience, and can sit on an investment for a week, or even a month, and win big in the end. It’s all about waiting out the lows.

Diversity- This is mainly because there is an effective ‘market cap’ on your sales. For example- Bold Inferno Ruby. A fantastic item to sell- Transmute with an Alchemist with Heartblossom and Carnelian, cut it (even if you have to pay 5g), and sell it for double the price. Great. However, let us just say that the demand for these are 10/day- meaning, only 10 people buy this gem a day. This means it is not possible to sell more than 10 per day. In fact, because of competition, you will sell much less than 10. Be happy if you can sell 3. So someone who goes and dumps 50% of his gold on Bold Inferno Rubys is- an idiot. You have to diversify your sales. A little here, a little there. Don’t dump all your eggs into one basket. If you do that, you’ll end up sitting on an investment for months, where you could have used that gold to make gold a lot quicker in other areas. Diversify.

How about an advanced gold making class?

What about it? JMTC has a gold-coaching class, I don’t know how well it’s doing but I think it’s a great idea. Some people just raid all day and don’t spend time figuring out how the WoW economy works. Some people really need to be educated. I do feel there are ample resources that do exist such as JMTC and other gold blogs such as Wowecon, but some people need ‘special’ attention, as the blogs can be overwhelming at first.

Do you have good farming strategies or spots?

No. No no no. I don’t farm. I hate farming. I hate dailies. I did dailies twice in my WoW career. The first to get Netherwing mount (I despised those dailies), and the second to get SSO rep for JC patterns. But I know nothing about farming, I have no gathering toons. I simply DO NOT FARM. Never worth my time in terms of gold/hour. Even if it was, I hate farming. Next question.

What was the best deal you ever came across?

Actually this was very recent on some Pauldrons on Edward the Odd. I bought them for 29k, and sold them for 40k within 24 hours. 11k profit for 3 minutes of work. Although I have made much more than that on single items in the past, and also much higher margins of profit (darkmoon trinket for 40k when it cost me 20k), being able to spend less than 5 minutes to make 11k gold cannot be beaten.

Do you remember any of your worst deals?

Oh yes. Vividly. I remember I once tried to buy out all the arcane dust and price gouge the market. It didn’t work. Too much supply, bad idea (this was during BC). Lost a few thousand. I also once lost 13k because of greed. I had made a BoE Wotlk belt (I believe with chaos orbs). Someone wanted to buy it for 25k- I said no, I wanted 28k+. The next day blizzard had a surprise early patch to allow chaos orbs to be purchased with emblems. The price for my belt went down dramatically. In the end, I sold it for 12k. That really hurt. I deserved it though for being so greedy.

What are your future plans with WoW?

Not sure. I do feel it is coming to a point in my life where it is hard for me to keep up, as my RL is getting busier and busier. At the moment I play less than 2 hours a day, and have no time to raid.

What are you predictions for the future WoW economy?

I am very interested for 4.2 and 4.3, and as well as the next expansions. Quick prediction- stock up on Volatiles/Truegold/Pristine Hide/Dreamcloth/Leather while you can. Those new BoE epics and PvP items are HOT. Patches are always exciting for me. I can’t wait to find out where epic gems will come from. That will be exciting. I got 3000 Pyrite ore just in case. I think that inflation will continue, as 1000g is not what it used to be. I feel towards the end of the expansion pretty much every noob will be able to afford an epic flying mount, and pretty much everyone will have 10k. I think the next expansion will be even the more interesting if they add a new class (think glyphs and leveling professions). Big gold making opportunity there. I really would like to see something more interesting to be done with gold besides raiding items and mounts. I would like really cool non-combat items. Like maybe a rocket you can attach an unknowing guildmate to, and send them to a random place in Azeroth. Maybe that’s a little extreme, but I want cooler stuff with my gold. Not just mounts and gems. And real estate would be awesome.

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

Yes- read patch notes. Go read some gold blogs. If this is one of your first times reading a gold blog- go read more. Find out what you can do with your profession. Making gold in WoW is SOOO easy. Stop mindless farming and use your inner goblin to rip off lazy people and noobs. Remember, if you can’t point on the sucker at the table: it’s probably you.