Hall of Fame – 500K Gold Club: Borgthor of Dath’Remar-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 and250k. We have with us, Borgthor of Dath’Remar-US, who will be sharing their story with us today.

“Nothing is worse than the opportunity cost of doing something in game that you just don’t enjoy doing.”

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

My main is Borgthor, US-Dath’Remar, a warrior tank who from the moment I rolled him was the absolute right character for me. In gaming, I started out in the usual way, with one of my best friends showing me Wolfenstein 3D. I was immediately hooked on FPS, and devoured the ID stable of games as well as many others from the genre. I developed a love for RTS games (including the Warcraft series) as well, with the resource development, tech development and the statistics after every battle appealing to my love of numbers. Console games have always been more of a social outlet, and I remember vividly the laughter and screams (of both victory and defeat) playing Mario Kart with friends.

In World of Warcraft, I play with my wife who picked up the game initially because she could no longer grasp my vocabulary. She plays a restoration Druid, who was immediately the right choice for her, since she started out with the object of being a pacifist in a game with the word WAR in it. We have very different interests in game, and different ways of appreciating Azeroth, but we come together for raiding, guild activities and just hanging out with all our friends in game.

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

I am the guild master of <Fidelity>, a small raiding focused guild I created with friends for Cataclysm. We are progressing though heroic mode content and having a blast, raiding three nights per week in a 10 man team. We’re very pleased to have completed 6/7H in Firelands and earned our corrupted firehawks before 4.3 comes out.

I am an altoholic, and have seven level 85 characters, five of them with the Defender of the Shattered World title (and three now 7/7 Firelands). As with all altoholics, my major frustration is that I couldn’t possibly have time to get through all the content on all my toons at the same time as my main. However, I really enjoy the process of hitting the level cap and gearing up a new character to hit the raiding scene.

Why did you choose to collect this amount of gold?

While raiding is my favourite activity in game, that always depends on other people. Much of my time is spent organising a guild, and pugging content can get a little exhausting. Gold making for me, is my favourite solo pursuit which started from my immediate love for the profession system, and a love of numbers.

The choice to aim for 500k gold came well into Cataclysm, after the coin started rolling in from the heavy investment into the Darkmoon Card market. Initially I wanted enough to afford a Vial of the Sands, then I declared that at the 250k milestone I didn’t need any more coin… but just couldn’t shake the bug.

Anyone or resource you would like to thank?

I’d like to thank an old friend of mine, Barrath, a stout dwarf hunter if there ever was one. He introduced me to World of Warcraft, and more specifically to the sniper scope market. When I thought back on my time in warcraft for this interview, looking for cheap Star Rubies, Thorium and Mithril is how I caught the gold making bug.

Addon authors too numerous to mention. Without the myriad of addons I’ve used over the years, I wouldn’t have considered starting on the road to 500k.

The Undermine Journal is just phenomenal. It had me at graphs. Add to that the notification system, and ability to monitor your competitors’ activities and I have everything I need outside the game to learn about the markets in game at my leisure.

Thanks to my friends and guildies that have helped me with crafting while I leveled my other professions (particularly to Jondy for the endless transmutes, alchemy and leather working). Thanks to Kal, since his lovely shaman is still creating all my potions while I get my third alchemist levelled.

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

My gold making has centered around the glyph market for a long time. My answer to the following question about my master list has some specific detail on where my revenue has come from recently, but everything is still built around the glyph market.

Glyphs

Ever since I started leveling Inscription (purely because I couldn’t stand to face the Sons of Hodir grind again) I was delighted with the gold making potential. Even though I was leveling Inscription while the profession was reasonably new (so a lot of competition for the common glyphs used to level) the gold started to flow in. So much so that leveling inscribing was an even greater incentive to level Twitchie than his sparkling personality and quick wit.

Twitchie became my go to gold making character, and when I discovered Quick Auctions 3 the challenge was on to streamline my glyph selling process to rake in the coin. After setting up automated posting, I started to play with inventory management. I kept upgrading my bags, until now I have 4 inscribing bags (and 4 large bags to replace them for milling) alongside my backpack and 6 inscribing bags in the bank, and 3 guild bank tabs (only one of which I actively use for storing glyphs). I made a conscious decision to only post from one character, which meant managing inventory (both on hand, in raw material form and on the AH) much easier but with a large storage requirement. A true goblin can’t afford to be sentimental about old gear, so everything outside of Twitchie’s hat collection and heroic DFO was moved aside to make room for glyphs.

I also decided that I wouldn’t ever cancel and repost glyphs, which seems to be an uncommon choice in the gold making community. I figured that the materials are so plentiful, and the markup so generous, if I wanted to have the cheapest glyph on the AH, I’d just make another one, and repost the undercut glyphs after they expire. For most of my time in the glyph market, I’ve only posted two of each glyph per session. I believe that the chances of selling more than two of a glyph before I’m undercut is quite small, and since I don’t cancel and repost, my undercut glyphs are still on the AH for an extended period giving me some depth if demand increases. I really enjoy experimenting with different durations of auctions, price ceilings and taking advantage of higher demand (and competition) on weekends. I could talk glyphs all day, and do so at least once a month on my blog, chart of glyph sales included.

Profession Empire

As an altoholic and a lover of professions, it was only a matter of time before I had everything covered. As I leveled up each profession, I would add another tab to a master spreadsheet of profitability, and experiment with different markets. I maintain a master list of prices for materials, both to set up my snatch list and calculate my floor and ceiling prices for each item. Even in a post-Undermine Journal world (which is great for quickly exploring new potential markets), I find it valuable to keep a record of what I consider the maximum reasonable price to pay for materials, and as that changes I can make sure that my sell price changes accordingly.

Once I had every profession covered, every new alt picks up Alchemy and when my little shaman gets to max level (probably in Mists of Pandaria) I’ll have all the specialisations covered. My gold making routine includes a couple of transmutes, JC daily and dreamcloth (when it’s off CD).

Automated Posting

Everything aside from glyphs that I make to sell on the auction house ends up on one character (who is also my jewelcrafter) for posting. Absolutely everything on my master list is in a Trade Skill Master auctioning group. My philosophy is that if it’s not worth taking the time to set up a group for items in a new market, it’s not worth selling. The basic mechanics of gold making can be quite tedious, but exploring new markets and experimenting with automation processes and pricing is great fun; automating my selling affords me more time to have fun with gold making.

The major advantage in automating sales is taking advantage of how I spend time in World of Warcraft. When I have extra time, I can afford to craft in batches and manage bulk inventory. I can also spend time writing about gold making and my other projects in game. When I have little time, I can log in, hit post, go shopping and be done in 5 minutes without missing a days trading.

Cross Faction

I have really enjoyed trading cross faction, and the bulk of my volatile life has been supplied by hard working hordies. In cataclysm I started moving Darkmoon Cards across to the horde side to fund my pillaging of their supply, and never looked back. There is just something so satisfying about grabbing cheap materials from the enemy and selling it back to them at an as extortionate markup as possible.

What is your master list?

While I haven’t got my database up and running with my nine months of data, I did run the data through a google docs spreadsheet and got some interesting statistics. Firstly since google docs couldn’t handle that much data in a single spreadsheet, I separated out glyph sales from everything else to find that 78% of my sales by volume are glyphs. While glyphs by their nature are a high volume market, I didn’t realise it was just that high a proportion of my sales.

In the last nine months my major sources of revenue have been:

• Glyphs: 583k
• Ebonsteel Belt Buckles: 259k
• Darkmoon Cards and Decks: 333k (511k since the beginning of Cataclysm)
• Leg Armor (all epic versions and rare): 181k
• Flasks: 102k
• Enchant Scrolls: 90k
• Potion of Treasure Finding: 21k
• Other Potions: 14.6k
• Cut Rubies: 15.7k
• Other Cut Gems: 10.9k
• Shadowspirit Diamond cuts: 8.5k
• Fortune Cards and Cookies: 9.3k
• Engineering Pets (Destroyer and Companion): 17.1k
• Enchanting Pets (Lamp and Lantern): 22.6k

Please note that the data there is purely sales data, so doesn’t have any direct information about the profit gained or time spent in any of those markets. The glyph market is my favourite, purely due to the scale of the market, and the efficiencies that can be introduced with tuned processes and addons. The nice surprise is just how much profit I made from the Darkmoon Cards, since aside from Exalted reputation with the Darkmoon Faire, I consider inferno inks a bi product and one of my more risky ventures.

Ebonsteel Belt Buckles have just been a solid performer right throughout this expansion, and a market I aggressively sell in.

Flasks are a horrible market, and my sales are usually just taking advantage of fluctuations in price when I have too large a stockpile from resupplying my guild with flasks. The margins are quite thin most of the time, and having my own Elixir Master is essential. The profitability of potions surprised me, particularly since I set my threshold and forget them, only posting when the market rises sufficiently. Treasure Finding Potions are just awesome profit for effort.

From this data you can tell that I’m not really a gem guy. I have an extreme prejudice against the market because I’m paranoid about losing too much coin to deposit fees. I’ve thought about approaching my fellow gold bloggers for some therapy about this issue, but haven’t yet reached out for help. Deposit fees are one of the reasons I enjoy the glyph market so much.

My hunter hitting 85 and entering the Leatherworking market in a big way just before 4.1 was absolutely fantastic. When everyone got T11 tier legs from justice points for their army of alts, it was like Glyphmas, but for legs. I used to swamp my wife’s Leatherworker with raw materials during Wrath, but since Cataclysm, her second druid hasn’t seen the light of day.

I have dabbled in PvP gear, bags, uncut JC daily gems, flipping raw material and spell threads but just as side projects or experiments alongside my staples.

What items are in your Snatch list?

Almost everything. If a raw material is used to make anything on my master list, it’s in my neatly organised TSM Dealfinder list. In addition to purely raw materials (enchanting mats, ore, herbs, cloth, leather, scales, volatiles), I have metal bars, inks, fish for feasts and Mighty Rage potions for Borg. Automating the purchasing of cheap materials is key to my gold making strategy.

For specific items (like particular Epic BoEs) I will usually set up an Undermine Journal notice.

How did you learn to do it?

I was introduced to the Auction House and AH addons by friends in game, as well as the Sniper Scope market. From there, I started using wowhead, my professions and a spreadsheet to calculate the potential markup on crafted goods.

I spent a lot of time in Wrath managing the guild bank for my large social guild. Epics that couldn’t be used for main spec would be sold at a discount to alts in the guild (or on the Auction House), and in return we provided subsidised flasks and belt buckles (and some enchants) for raiding. I was spending guild funds, so I used to keep immaculate track of my expenses. That process throughout an entire expansion taught me a lot about price fluctuations, particularly as Blizzard messed with the drop rate of Frost Lotus so much. It also taught me the value of stockpiling and buying in bulk, since the greater the stockpile, the more patience you can have for purchasing at the lowest possible price.

It wasn’t until I got in to the glyph market on Twitchie the Gnome Warlock that I started do a little outside research into gold making. At that point, I was reading great things about Quick Auctions 3 and really enjoyed setting it up.

More recently I’ve been listening to the Power Word: Gold podcast, and while I haven’t learned anything revolutionary, I really enjoy hearing about other experiences in gold making and the guest hosts have been great. Some of the smaller tips from the show have been the most helpful. I hadn’t considered making plate shoulders to generate Heavenly Shards, which immediately saved coin on enchanting materials, and helped burn through a stockpile of cheap ore.

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

Auctionator. There is no better auction house addon for quickly finding, sorting and buying items. Grouping items both by price and stack size was a giant step forward for auction house searching and I can’t imagine going back from this point.

Trade Skill Master. Standing on the shoulders of the profession and automation addons that came before it, TSM is the big kahuna of production addons. There is not a single item in my master list or snatch list that is not represented in TSMs Auctioning Groups or Dealfinding lists. Automating my purchasing, crafting and auctioning is the cornerstone of my gold making, allowing me to spend more time on the fun side of gold making, the analysis, number crunching and counting coin.

MySales. The last vestige of Auctioneer that I remained faithful to was BeanCounter, so I could keep a track of my sales, but I made the switch when I read a blog that recommended MySales. I archive my MySales data once a month, primarily so I can produce my monthly glyph sales chart for my blog, and occasionally I’ll run the numbers for other markets as well. A side project that I would love to develop is a relational database and web application front end to dynamically query all my sales data (which now dates back to January 2011).

BankStack. BankStack is crucial to my glyph strategy, since I only post glyphs from a single character, Twitchie the Gnome Warlock. I have four glyph bags next to my backpack, six in the bank and guild bank tab dedicated to glyph storage (plus two more bank tabs for related inscribing materials). BankStack allows me to quickly moves glyphs from bag to bank and back again for quick storage or reposting.

Postal is essential for clearing my mailbox.

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

When I hit 250k I mentioned that I couldn’t possibly have a use for more gold than that, but even spending generously on my alts, my daily routine and my goal of 25,000 glyphs created in a year since Cataclysm saw the gold keep piling up. As I started reading gold making blogs and listening to a podcast or two, I got the itch to make the 500k milestone.

I’m sure the one million gold milestone will occur naturally, but I won’t be aiming for it any time soon. Aside from my daily routine in purchasing, crafting and auctioning, I would like to try my hand at more speculative and risky markets to spice things up.

Do many people know you have this amount of gold?

My guildies and friends know, and I write about it on my blog that announces I’m Borgthor on Dath’Remar. Is that many people? Not really, since my readership right now consists of a subset of my guildies and friends. I do enjoy gold making and talk about it freely with anyone that is interested. One of my guildies who makes his coin on the horde side of our server has over one million gold, but I haven’t managed to convince him to write his interview for Warcraft Econ yet.

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

Some of my early purchases I felt were extravagant are some of my favourites. Bag space is important to gold making, but it was still a thrill visit Harris Pilton and pick up one of her sacks. I was disappointed that there was no achievement for purchasing her portable hole, but I bought that as soon as it came out.

Patch 4.3 will bring some great gold sinks in Transmogrification and Void Storage. Regardless of the cost, I can’t wait to free up as much space in my banks on all my characters as possible. I’ve thrown away gear on Borgthor that I wished I had room to keep, and even though I try not to be sentimental on my alts, I just can’t help keeping those key pieces that bring back my favourite memories from in game.

While my wife has her Salty title, randomness has not been kind to her in regard to the alchemy mount. The delay has only made the mount cheaper, having access to Sands of Time with the guild discount for vendor goods… so I’m looking forward to splurging on that.

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

Why make gold at all? A discussion on the gold requirements for various types of players, as well as a quick rundown of the most fun gold sinks in the game. Setting a budget, and how to avoid turning gold making into a chore.

A decent definition of opportunity cost, and a discussion on the ways of generating income: questing, farming, crafting and flipping.

How to build a bankroll.

How to utilise resources outside of the game, including wowhead, wow news sites and the gold blogging community.

How to calculate the profit margin on crafted goods.

How to use addons to better interact with the AH in game. This would cover the basics of searching, buying and selling.

A quick course on the professions and the synergy and dependencies between professions.

How about an advanced gold making class?

A major topic would be automation, most likely looking at a case study of a complex market (like glyphs) and how to set up an addon like TSM to deal with crafting, posting (including setting floor and ceiling prices and duration) and a cancel / repost cycle. How to apply these lessons to all your other markets, no matter how small.

The art of purchasing, including snatch lists and developing relationships with raw material farmers.

Cross faction arbitrage.

Maximising your AFK time, including bulk crafting and options for milling / prospecting while you are doing something else.

Inventory management and stockpiling (including preparing for a new patch).

Some classes I would add with more experience (Hint: I’m suggesting post topics for gold bloggers out there)

1. Strategies for participating in the gold making community.

2. Deposit fees: When to be cautious with volume, and when to recognise you are making less coin because you are a cheap bastard.

Do you have any good farming strategies or spots?

I farm for relaxation and fun rather than profit, although I do like to track my productivity so I can compare it against my other gold making activities. I find it disturbing how much prejudice against farming there is in the gold making community, since farming always has its place.

My Boomkin recently hit level 85, and I have to say that herbing as a druid in flight from is just fantastic fun. Swooping in and quickly gathering herbs with your talons only to soar away to the next herb is great. I find that farming up Heartblossom in Deepholm (for transmuting Inferno Rubies) a great way to relax while waiting for a dungeon queue to pop.

In Wrath of the Lich King I was a skinner on Twitchie the Gnome Warlock, which gave me an immediate excuse to have a Demonology offspec. I would drop out of the sky into a herd of Mammoths, pop Metamorphosis and literally melt them. Since I now have a leatherworking, skinning hunter at 85, and leather bound mobs aren’t organised is such neatly roaming packs. So as soon as I hit 500k, Twitchie power levelled enchanting for a nice change of pace. I highly recommend skinning for a hunter that doesn’t need better profession buffs, as you can let your pet do most of the work, and chat to you friends while doing laps of the Molten Front spider fields.

Borgthor rarely stops for mining nodes.

If you find farming enjoyable, go nuts! If you do the math and find a niche that nets you a reasonable return on your time, don’t let anyone dissuade you. Nothing is worse than the opportunity cost of doing something in game that you just don’t enjoy doing.

What was the best deal you ever came across?

Buying Pauldrons of Edward the Odd (359 tanking shoulders) at the start of Cataclysm before we had everyone at 85 and into raiding for 15k is one of my favourite purchases. Not only do they look awesome, but I only recently upgraded them in Firelands (for the love of Elune, please drop something other than rogue / DK / Druid / Mage shoulder tokens, Domo).

While my wife was working on her Insane title, back when Shen’dralar exalted reputation was still required, she found a stack of ten Pristine Black Diamonds for a tenth of the usual price! To illustrate our different attitudes towards the game, she almost had purchasers guilt over the bargain… and still wonders if the seller had made a mistake to this day.

Do you remember any of your worst deals?

While I haven’t been burned badly or often, I don’t enjoy flipping epics for profit. My most recent flash in this pan was the Lava Bolt Crossbow. As my hunter got to 85, I started getting the itch to buy the bow for him, so I set a watch at 25k. The first one available landed on the horde side, and I snapped it up for around 22k. I thought rather than transfer it to the alliance side, I’d flip it (since the price for these things generally decays over time) and make some quick coin. In the next 48 hours, prices were slashed to the point where one poster had 3 (yes THREE) crossbows on the AH for 14k each. Had I had the extra coin on Horde, I might just have snapped them up… So I just sat on it, and eventually managed to sell it for a tiny profit, glad to be rid of the thing. I did manage to get one on Alliance side a little cheaper, so the story ends well.

So now that I have the bankroll, I might see if I can develop the patience to try some higher risk, potentially higher return ventures.

What are your future plans with WoW?

I’m currently looking forward to patch 4.3 and Mists of Pandaria… and some compelling new gold sinks.

What are you predictions for the future WoW economy?

I’m looking forward to 4.3 and unbound chaos orbs… I have a heap. Unfortunately I think the market for chaos orb based blacksmithing goods will plummet, but at least I’ll be able to boost our numbers towards the Master Crafter guild achievement.

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

Thanks for the opportunity to tell my story. I had a great time thinking back over my time playing World of Warcraft, and it was a great excuse to look closely at my sales figures over the last 9 months. If readers want to read more, they can find me at borgthor.blogspot.com and @twitchiegtw on Twitter.