Filed under: Economy

Gold Capped: The Undermine Journal

by Basil Berntsen Jul 14th 2010 at 9:00PM

So you want to make gold in WoW? Basil "Euripides" Berntsen is here to help! Auction house PvP is the only true PvP: There are no relevant racials, all classes are equally balanced, and the only differentiators are knowledge and guts. Gold Capped can help with the first one, and if you can make it through a whole article's worth of my typos, bad puns and feral druid jokes every Wednesday, you're guaranteed to have the second one.

There's a new tool in my kit. The Undermine Journal, whose alpha was just recently launched, is a site that lets you see data from your auction house live from the internet. My realm was recently added, and when I searched for Eternal Belt Buckles, it showed me a convenient Google Finance-style graph of the price and availability, as well as the mats needed for it, and a list of my competition!

Words fail me, so hop past the break for a screengrab.

Filed under: Economy, Gold Capped

Auctioneering in Cataclysm

by Basil Berntsen Jul 1st 2010 at 6:00PM

We've all been soaking up all the newly released Cataclysm info from this morning. I was so busy drooling (and hammering) on my keyboard about the hunter changes that I only got around to thinking about the profession and guild changes after my fourth coffee.

Here's what we know:

All professions seem to have a new cap of 525.
You will be able to learn the next level of crafting skills at level 75. Well, alchemy works that way, and I assume that at least the other crafting skills will be the same level. No word on gathering skills yet.
Guild perks are programmed into the client and have been data-mined; however, the more complex leveling system has been abandoned. No precise writeup about how guilds gain perks, but I hear they still work for experience.

Filed under: News items, Economy, Cataclysm

Gold Capped: GDKP raiding for fun and profit

by Basil Berntsen Jun 14th 2010 at 7:00PM

Want to get Gold Capped? Every week, Basil "Euripides" Berntsen takes a short break from building a raiding guild on Drenden (US-A) to write up a guide that will help you make or spend gold. Check out the Call to Auction podcast, and feel free to email Basil any comments, questions or hate mail!

A very interesting form of raiding has been gaining popularity. GDKP stands, literally, for "gold dragon kill points." It's a badly named system, but essentially, it means that instead of some effort-based DKP system, people participating in the raid use real currency: gold.

So what is this GDKP thing, anyway?

In a GDKP raid, all items of value, whether they're BoP gear, Primordial Saronite, BoE drops, Precious's Ribbon or quest items, are auctioned off in an open bidding system to all participants. The person willing to pay the most for it will get the item in exchange for gold, and at the end of the night, all the gold that was collected is divided out among the raiders.

Filed under: Economy, Gold Capped

Remote Auction House beta testing ends

by Alex Ziebart Jun 7th 2010 at 10:00PM

The Remote Auction House's beta testing has come to a close this evening and is now officially a live, paid-only service. For $2.99 every 30 days, you can buy, sell and trade from anywhere in the world via browser or iPhone. Well, anywhere that you have an internet connection. While non-paying users can still view the auction house, only subscribers can actually do business via the Remote Auction House. Check the official Remote Auction House page for a breakdown of the differences between free and paid users.

Do note that this subscription fee is only for the Remote Auction House. Every player can still use the auction house in-game as a part of their usual $15/month. If you're interested in ponying up the $2.99/month but didn't get a chance to try out the app during the testing phase, you can check out our galleries below for a little preview of the service.

Gallery: World of Warcraft Mobile Auction House

Gallery: World of Warcraft Remote Auction House -- Web

Filed under: Blizzard, Economy

Gold Capped: The pinch

by Basil Berntsen Jun 2nd 2010 at 5:00PM

Want to get Gold Capped? Every week, Basil "Euripides" Berntsen takes a short break from trying to build a raiding guild on Drenden (US-A) to write up a guide that will help you achieve the goal of acquiring 214,748 gold, 36 silver and 48 copper. Well, technically that's just a symbolic milestone. The goal is making gold, no matter how much you have or how much you want. Got feedback, questions or hate mail? Email Basil!

I've spent the last few months describing different ways to make money. I've also touched on auction house "PvP" a bit but haven't talked about it in depth. The reality is that when you post something for sale, every sale you make is a sale your competitors don't make. The reason I got involved with the AH and in-game economy at the beginning was that I needed money and hated farming. The reason I stayed? My competition.

You know that feeling you get when you are in a battleground and everything just lines up, and you win? That feeling is what I get when I empty my mailboxes every morning. Playing the AH would be much less rewarding if there were no competition.

Filed under: Economy, Gold Capped

Insider Trader: Cooking for cash

by Basil Berntsen May 31st 2010 at 8:00PM

Insider Trader, when written by Basil (also of outdps and Call to Auction), will be all about how to use tradeskills to make money.

Cooking is one of those secondary professions that anyone can learn, even if they already have two primary professions. Because of this fairly low barrier to entry, there are a lot of cooks around. So many that I've actually never leveled it myself! I just rely on the generosity of friends for my cooking business.

How profitable is cooking? That all depends on what you cook. I got into this because I once paid 100g for five Spiced Mammoth Treats for my hunter's raid night. Why was I buying them on a Tuesday? Poor planning. What did I learn? The value of planning. We're going to start with a very important concept for auctioneers, here: tenacity.

Filed under: Economy, Insider Trader (Professions)

Gold Capped: Using the new armory auction house

by Basil Berntsen May 26th 2010 at 6:00PM

Want to get Gold Capped? Every week, Basil Berntsen takes a short break from trying to build a raiding guild on US Drenden-A to write up a guide that will help you achieve the goal of acquiring 214,748 gold, 36 silver and 48 copper. Well, technically that's just a symbolic milestone. The goal is making gold, no matter how much you have or how much you want. Got feedback, questions or hate mail? Email Basil!

This game is constantly changing. Every new patch, Blizzard delivers new content, new rules and new interfaces. We've seen some major quality of life improvements in the auction house of late, and these are continuing. The latest one (which is still in beta) is that the mobile armory now lets you trade on the AH from anywhere using either an app on an iPhone/iPod touch or your browser.

Right now, for testing purposes, we're limited to 25 actions a day (purchases, bids, auctions), but we can clear out our mail! To be honest, that's the killer feature for me. I spend an inordinate amount of time clearing out my mail. The majority of my profits in, say, vellums will come from sales of singles. I list stacks of all sizes, but the singles are what sell best. On my mid-range population server, I can easily sell 200 of these a day, and that adds up to a lot of time watching my mailbox empty.

Filed under: Economy, Gold Capped

Insider Trader: How to profit with tailoring

by Basil Berntsen May 24th 2010 at 7:00PM

Tradeskills are the best tools for making in game gold. Every single profession can be made profitable. Insider Trader, when Basil writes it, is where you can turn to find tips and tricks to using professions in a profitable manner. That or rants about arrows. Really, mostly rants. Honestly, I'm still trying to figure out where the blurry line between Insider Trader and Gold Capped is, let alone what direction it runs. Have something to say to Basil? Feel free to email him! He strongly encourages all mail. Even the angry letters! He'll read those out loud dramatically to amuse his friends.

Tailoring is not the profession most people think of when they think of gold making. Most people will find inscription, enchanting and jewelcrafting are the big money-makers, but what do you do if that's not the path you've chosen?

When you select your profession, there are a lot of reasons to choose one over another. Tailoring has a cool mount and some awesome end game bonuses. If you've taken it for these, rest assured that you can still find a niche in the marketplace if you want to make money with it.

Filed under: Economy, Insider Trader (Professions)

Remote auction house beta test expanded

by Alex Ziebart May 21st 2010 at 6:00PM

Blizzard's community managers have just announced that the beta testing phase of the Remote Auction House is no longer exclusive to the Whirlwind battlegroup and has been expanded to all US realms. This includes both the mobile app for the iPhone as well as the web-based auction house found on the Armory.

For a preview of this app's features, both the mobile and web versions, check out the galleries below.

Gallery: World of Warcraft Mobile Auction House

Gallery: World of Warcraft Remote Auction House -- Web

Filed under: Blizzard, Economy

Gold Capped: Market timing

by Basil Berntsen May 20th 2010 at 8:00PM

Want to get Gold Capped? Watch this space every week as Basil (also of the Call to Auction podcast, the Hunting Party podcast and outdps.com writes about making gold in the World of Warcraft. Have questions, comments, or threats for him to get off your damned server? Email Basil!

The prices for all kinds of things fluctuate. I talked a little about this in my post for casual auctioneers, but there is serious money to be made with market timing for very little investment. Basically, the goal is to watch prices for a few weeks, try to predict their next swing, and take advantage by buying low and selling high.

Watching prices

Easier said than done, like most things worth doing. You might get hundreds of items you'd like to watch, and short of a photographic memory or a manual spreadsheet, you're going to need some help keeping track of it all. Enter Market Watcher. This is a nifty addon that, once configured, allows you to scan the auction house for just the things you're interested in, and will show you a graph of their prices over time once you get a couple scans done.

Filed under: Economy, Add-Ons, Gold Capped

Insider Trader: Selling arrows in singles for the price of a stack scam

by Basil Berntsen May 17th 2010 at 2:00PM

Got trade skills? Want money? Insider Trader is the column to read. Whenever they let Basil write it, he'll do his best to fill your head full of ideas and your bags full of valuables and gold.

I'm going to come right out and say it: Don't do this. I recently wrote about ways engineers can make money, mentioning (among other things) selling epic ammo to hunters. The problem with making the best raiding and PvP ammo in the game only available from players is that it forces hunters to either find an engineer with the recipe who is willing to do all the crafting by mail, or buy it off the auction house.

What do I have against the auction house, you ask? Well, overall it's an excellent tool and far superior to the much nastier alternative of being forced to actually use trade chat for, you know, trade. It's not perfect, however. In fact, there's one massive glaring inadequacy that can be found.

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Cheats, Economy, Insider Trader (Professions)

Gold Capped: Engineering isn't so useless after all

by Basil Berntsen May 12th 2010 at 10:00PM

Gold doesn't matter, right? It's just gold, and you get more than enough for your needs through dailies and the occasional mining spree. Why even bother getting Gold Capped? It's not like you'll ever be able to spend it all! Wait a sec, how does that bank alt have a single Ulduar clear and have Mimiron's head? Every week, check in with Basil "Euripides" Berntsen, also of outdps.com, the Hunting Party podcast and the Call to Auction podcast, as he attempts to mold all the random information jostling for cerebral space into a coherent, readable post about how to make gold in the World of Warcraft.

In real life, engineers are brilliant and dedicated individuals who work together with tradespeople to accomplish some of the technological marvels of the modern world. Historically, these are the people who built the pyramids, the boats that brought Europeans to the new world, and the spaceships that took mankind to the moon and back. In World of Warcraft, engineers are a bunch of goofy characters who speak in childishly high voices and have a tendency to blow themselves up by accident in humorous ways. Anyone else sense that whoever did the concept art at Blizzard for gnomish and goblin engineers flunked out of engineering?

Anyways, while engineering is an amazing profession for certain parts of the game, it's dead last when it comes to making money. There are only really a few things engineers can do to make cash.

Wryxian

In general, we want Engineering to remain a tradeskill mainly focused on creating fun or useful gadgets for the engineer, but we are exploring options for items that can be sold to other players for profit.

source

This quote was from the Cataclysm profession preview we posted about earlier. Engineering is currently barely ahead of farming in terms of income potential, and it's nice to see that Blizzard acknowledges this and might fix it.

Not all hope is lost, though. A savvy player can eak out a living if they focus on the right markets. First off, the elephant in the room: selling epic ammo.

Filed under: Economy, Wrath of the Lich King, Gold Capped

Insider Trader: Powerleveling professions on the cheap

by Basil Berntsen May 10th 2010 at 8:00PM

Can I have 5 gold please? I need it to train my new level of skills. Woah, did you just put two hundred and twelve thousand gold into an open trade window?! Wait, where are you going? Wait!! Get back here! I'm not letting you get out of trade range! Oh my god, all this scrub has to do is click "trade" and I'll be able to buy every single mount in the game!! I am not letting him out of range. I wonder why he's wearing a monocle? Hey, he's jumping down to the docks! I'd better keep up with him. Hmm, he's taking an Elixir of Water Breathing? Strange. This guy must be a gold farmer or something. "/g ZOMG I'm gonna be rich guys!" Oh, you want to go for a swim? I don't care where you go, I'm not closing this window or letting you get out of range. You can't get away from me by swimming under a boat. Or into a cave. Or into that ... what the H-E-double hockey-sticks? "You are dead"? How? This guy is in the same faction as me! Oh.

Professions are expensive! Getting a crafting skill to 450 involves geting all kinds of finnicky odd-ball mats from content that nobody ever runs these days, which typically means paying a whole lot for them. On top of it, all the stuff you make is pretty much valueless, and often fetches more at the vendor than it will in the auction house. What can you do to help turn these lemons into lemonade?

First off, it helps if you're popular, smart, and patient. Popular people have friends who have tradeskills that might be able to help stem the losses, smart people have addons that can provide them with valuable information, and patient people are not at the mercy of low supply.

Filed under: Economy, Insider Trader (Professions)

Time Is Money: Hate mail from competitors

by Basil Berntsen May 8th 2010 at 12:00PM

Welcome to Time Is Money! This is the column where Basil "Euripides" Berntsen is occasionally allowed to post stuff that's too short for Gold Capped, but too long for Twitter. Have comments or questions about the in-game economy? Email Basil!

We received a note from a reader this week, and I felt it was appropriate to get the Drama Mamas involved. While this is a situation somewhat unique to auctioneers, it certainly has dramatic potential!

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Economy, Time Is Money

Gold Capped: Casual auctioneering

by Basil Berntsen May 5th 2010 at 8:00PM

Want to get Gold Capped? This column shows you how. Basil "Euripides" Berntsen, also of outdps.com, the Hunting Party podcast and the Call to Auction podcast will endeavor to fill your head with so much economic wisdom that you won't be able to see straight afterwards!

Making money in game can seem complex. Well, it is. The real pros have addons and UI customizations most people would never bother developing, keen understanding of the chains of supply and demand in the in-game economy, as well as inordinate amounts of time to spend in the auction house. What if you're just out to fund your epic flyer, though?

If you're reading my column to see whether there's a cap on the amount of gold you can stuff into a guild bank, chances are you've already carved out a niche for yourself. If, however, you don't plan on spending any more time in the AH than you absolutely need to, what can you do to make more money there than you make grinding dailies?

Filed under: Economy, Gold Capped