Hall of Fame: Kumiko of Malygos-EU (1 Million Gold Achieved)

Posted by Warcraftecon | January 31, 2010 .

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, Kumiko of Malygos-EU, who will be sharing their stories with us today. He has reached 1,000,000 gold, well above the gold cap.

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

Hello. My name is Boris. I play my feral kitty Kumíko in the raiding guild on the german EU server Malygos. I started WoW right at release day and experienced vanilla wow with my human priestress Nem, who is still well known on Antonidas EU. With her I managed to save 48k gold till the end of vanilla just with buying and selling epics and rare twink items. In fact I made much more, but I blew out the money for any upgrade I could find for my rogue toon. I didn’t use any profession so far for making gold. When BC came out, I rerolled and played my actual main char Kumíko (healer at first, when black temple started I switched to feral). I bought every level 70 beginners epic I could find to stuff her out and joined my raid guild. After that all my gold was gone and I had to kill mobs and farm greens and greys to get the daily money for raiding (repairs, flasks and food). It was a pain in the arse, because I hate farming gold by killing mobs. Then I saw a guildmate making enormous amounts of gold with his jewelry profession. So I learned JC and from that day on I invested all farmed gold for rare JC recipes and soon was the first and only player on Malygos, who could cut every gem ingame. At the end of BC I had nearly 500k cash and, believe it or not, I guzzled all for my brother’s toons, guildmates, friends and every luxury available. I thought I would quit WoW, but that didn’t happen, because I’m addicted to it. When wotlk started, I bought every damaged necklace I could find. Only few people read patch notes and look for quest items i.e. on wowhead.com. So I already knew, what to look for, weeks before the latest expansion came out. The first 100 necklaces I got for a median price of 50G. Later i payed up to 100G. And when the prices finally reached 200G+, I already had every rare gem cut in my book. Even the useless ones.

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

I don’t like PvP. Neither arena nor battlegrounds. I only like raiding PvE bosses. Ok, i do my daily dungeon quest for the two frost emblems until i have my T10 set and the emblems cloak, but that’s it.

Why did you choose to collect this amount of gold?

My worst nightmare, my greatest fear is, that i have to kill mobs for cash to continue raiding. Thank all gods of Azeroth, this won’t ever happen again. And that’s the only reason why i play the AH.

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

I used my JC profession. Once I had all recipes in BC, it was very easy to get the gold cap. It’s much easier, when you can spread your auctions and offer five gems of every kind instead of auctioning hundreds of runed rubies. Scan the AH every time you can. Look for cheap offers. Buy low and sell higher, but not too high. Let’s take eternals for example. Just buy all cheap eternal airs you see in the morning. Then send 20 to 40 of them to an anonymous toon and offer them way overpriced in the AH. The other sellers enter the market right below your prices, they just undercut but are still way too high. The other 80%, the main charge of your eternals, put into the AH some hours later or when you get home from work. best time is half an hour before the competitors (and you) start raiding. Undercut them by far, but still stay high enough for a good profit. Your offer looks cheap in comparison and you’ll see, you get bought out.

How did you learn to do it?

Before I played WoW, I already had played Everquest for five years. In fact, there I really learned to play the AH, buy cheap, sell high. Everquest had a lot of “twink items”. Items with many and good stats on them. Hitpoints regeneration, haste, large amounts of stamina and so on. Some of them were as good as endgame gear. And they all were and remained tradable, even after equipping. And even a level one char could equip them. So i.e. a fresh created level one toon with cloak of flames (haste), fungi tunic (hp regen) and two scepters of destruction (imba dps and insane procs) could kill a group of level 10 mobs, level very fast, own every place and flex its epeen to the max. That were the days, when trading was much more fun and time killing than the rest of the game was.

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

I only use Auctioneer for mass acutioning and Postal to empty my mail box. Time is money. I don’t care about suggestions and data from auctioneer. All prices and clues have been storaged in my brains.

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

Of course I do. It’s my way to play the game. The last 1000 gold isn’t worth less than the first. It’s funny, when you realize, how many hours you spent to make one million gold, you don’t ever want to break it again. So I only use my surplus for new stuff. Bought four portable holes to self reward me for the effort. There is no new goal. The second million doesn’t look very appealing to me. If it comes, I’ll take it. If not, I don’t care.

Do many people know you have this amount of gold?

Yes, my server knows. And there are players from other servers, who log on to malygos with a level one to get some hints from me.

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

Got the first chopper on my server. And I bought the new totc craftings right after 3.2. The knightbane carapace was 40k and the bracers of swift death were 20k. I am not Scrooge-like. I hope, Blizzard is bringing out some really nice gold sinks with cataclysm. I mean, very pricey and very exclusive things. An exclusive flying mount for 250k gold would be nice. Not stuff for 20k everybody will be able to afford. It must feel epic to buy it.

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

In fact, no. There is no master plan. No secret. Just use common sense and read patch notes carefully. A good profession can help. JC is very good, as long as you are one of the first to get all recipes. The joke is, you can get much more gold with farming than with playing the AH. But you have to like farming several hours every day.

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

Nope. I hate grinding. That’s why I always make one of the first three max level chars on my server after each expansion. I want to get through it asap. Once in BC, I grinded through the mana ghosts for primal manas at Kirinvar Village in Netherstorm. The ground is an inclined plane, which made me feel so giddy, that I puked. Is that a fun story?

What was the best deal you ever came across?

Twelve “damaged necklaces” in the auction house, in a row. Three days after wotlk came out. For 10G buy price each one. Took me the longest eight seconds in my life to buy them. But the best deal were the 1700 stacks titanium ore I bought pre patch for 100G-120G each. Invested 180k for all. On Patch day, titanium stacks rised up to 300G per stack. Nevertheless I started prospecting them at 3.00pm in the afternoon just when I logged in and finished the last stack at 2.15am in the night. Ported to Dalaran and got every epic JC recipe in the game, sold the rest of the powder for a good price and had enough raw gems to dominate the market for weeks. After all I had approx. 80k profit in cash + whatever you would say, all epic gem recipes are worth.

Do you remember any of your worst deals?

I remember them all. But they didn’t matter. Every new patch I have some very big deals with very good profit. Then some, which just repay and some, which are a loss. As long as the big deals have the majority, everything is fine. The losses merge into the crowd, because I do wide spread mixed calculations.

What are your future plans with WoW?

To stay the strongest kitty on my server like I have always been. In 2010 I want to get out of home more often and do things that really matter *laugh*

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

Get an authenticator ASAP!

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2 Comments so far

NKwish February 2, 2010 5:03 PM

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I’m jealous
Mogul February 9, 2010 10:52 PM

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Huge grats Boris! I had a lot of success with market coverage in BC for gems. I had (have) all the blue recipes and simply posted three of each on a 24-hour cycle, restocking as required. Good gold from this strat : )