Guild Chat: Interview with Gevlon of The Greedy Goblin
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Heartbourne on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 20 Comments Tags: AH, Addons, Professions, auction, farmer, gevlon, goblinism, gold, greedy goblin, guild chat, inscription, interview, making gold
Heartbourne on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 20 Comments Tags: AH, Addons, Professions, auction, farmer, gevlon, goblinism, gold, greedy goblin, guild chat, inscription, interview, making gold 
I recently had the opportunity to speak with one of my favorite WoW bloggers, Gevlon of Greedy Goblin. Gevlon is one of the few players in the game who has reached the elusive "gold cap" of 214,748.3646 gold. He is known for being extremely cynical and having radical and critical views of almost everything in WoW - from the game becoming too easy and the value of networking in game to more complex topics like objectivism, feminism, and welfare. I've been known to be cynical at times, and Gevlon's unique ideas often give me some great food for thought.Thanks for talking with us today. Tell us a little bit about yourself and how you started blogging.
I've been playing WoW for 2 years. I've never had problems with making gold, had around 5-10K gold all the time. I had my first 100G before lvl 20, and 5000G before going to Outland. I thought everyone was like this. Then someone asked for 1000G for their epic flyer and promised they would "farm a lot" to pay it back. I asked him what "farming" was, and he described the terrible routine of grinding elementals in Shadowmoon for hours. Others joined in guild chat and agreed that besides buying gold, your only choice was grinding. That's when I decided to make this blog. Larísa helped with the first steps; I figured out the rest.
What is the appeal of collecting gold? You often criticize gold sinks like the Traveler's Tundra Mammoth or the motorcycle mounts, so what do you spend your gold on?
The appeal is not grinding. Ever. Nor doing daily quests. I haven't done a SINGLE Argent Crusade daily; no wolvar pups for me either. For me, gold has one purpose: raiding. I pay five thousand gold per week to a guild to raid despite my 20-30% attendance.
You have talked about how you "buy" a raid spot since it is easier and quicker for you to make money than it is for you to spend time with groups that are just learning the encounters. Can you talk about this briefly?
I like the challenge of raiding, but I don't want to spend 3-4 evenings on it, especially since serious part of it is repetitive. Orbituary is great at first, fun the second time, and just boring third. By paying, I attend 1 raid per week. I skip farm-raids and go directly to the most interesting hard mode attempt. I was present on Orbituary and Steelbraker first, and currently I'm going to Vezax hard tries. I don't even have the normal Vezax kill. I've already written that I find gear upgrades overvalued, so I don't bother farming gear. My gear is a mixture of random ilvl226 with 213 and even 200 trinkets. I still got lot of gear, since everyone else already farmed everything out of Ulduar normal modes, so I have no competitor for ilvl226.
You "roleplay" a "greedy goblin" a bit on your blog, or at least use it as a metaphor for the archetype of a player out to make gold wisely. How and why did this start?
Goblins are a money-oriented faction in WoW, so it was an obvious identification. I've started the blog in a roleplaying fashion, but that faded away quickly. I like the word "goblinism" since it is without the non-business aspects of real world philosophies. Terms like "liberalism" not only mean free market, but also the support of gay rights. "Neo-conservatism" not only means deregulation, but also violent crusades against the "enemies of freedom". I don't want to say anything about these things; they are simply not my topic. By being "goblinist" I don't have to struggle with comments like "how can you still support neo-conservatives after Abu Ghraib?"
You have recently started a "goblin apprentice" program where you help lucky players learn how to make gold and blog about it. Can you tell us about this?
From time to time I post an "apply now" post. People send me mails. I pick one, create a banker toon on their realm and start giving them advices how to make gold. Post their progress on the blog for other readers. When I write this, the second applicant is not yet selected. The first one made 5K in a week.
What WoW economy-related blogs do you read or suggest?
Do you think that the professions are "balanced" for money-making?
People agree on one thing: the worst professions to make money are the two they currently have, no matter what they are. Inscription is definitely the most profitable, simply because it's the most complicated (you have to juggle 350 recipes), so not many people do it. The rest of the crafting skills have a similar gold per hour ratio, and all of the crafting professions are way above grinding or even gathering.
You seem to have mixed feelings on Inscription. What do you think about the profession, and what would you do to change it?
WoW is made "casual" friendly (I really hate this "politically correct" term). Still, Inscription needs lot of addons, seed money, and serious time to start (after that it's running quickly). So I'm not surprised that there are not many scribes who use it to make money. I would change the glyph system so that adding glyphs does not destroy old glyphs. When you apply a new one, you should get the old glyph returned to your backpack. That way, the huge demand for glyphs would decrease (and also the huge money the common players pay to goblins).
What posts do you suggest new readers read to get an introduction to your blog?The "my business" tagged posts. They are the most directly about making money.
What/who is M&S, and where did that terminology come from?
Morons and slackers. I believe WoW is easy and everyone who fails in it is either as dumb as piece of rock or as lazy as a welfare leech. However, real casuals cannot fail as they don't raid or PvP. There is no "success" or "failure" in fishing coins.
What add-ons do you recommend or use for your daily trading?
Auctioneer. The rest is for crafting: Lil'sparky, whohas, possessions.
What do you think about gold farmers? Should Blizzard being doing more to stop them, or are they inevitable and even essential to the current game economy?
They will exist as long as there are M&S who can't make money. Blizzard won't do anything about them since the goldfarmers also pay them $15 a month and they don't harass other players.
What simple tips can you offer to players looking to pad their wallets a bit?
Have the Auctioneer addon so you won't sell stuff for half price. Also, don't be a packrat. There is deflation; the items that are worth 100G today will be worth 10G a year from now. Sell everything in your bank that you don't use or plan to use in a short time. You can buy it back later cheaper if you need it.
Thanks for talking with us!
Thanks for the opportunity!
Reader Comments (20)
wish i could have that kind of gold
FIRST
Good advice on selling stuff in my bank I don't need soon. I actually hadn't considered that and have some stuff sitting there "just in case". I'm going to go sell that crap tonight.
LOL Speaking of selling stuff in the bank. I had a ton of old enchanting supplies from 70 dungeons and stuff and when I finally decided to save gold for my epic flying, I sold it all and made an easy 2.5k
This guys a joke he talks about Morons and slackers (M&S) "Morons and slackers. I believe WoW is easy and everyone who fails in it is either as dumb as piece of rock or as lazy as a welfare leech." would he not fall under the role of slacker if he wont put in the 3 - 4 hours a night of raiding and just turns up for the win? and i don't think its a challenge if you paying 5000g to be boosted though a raid.
he must be azn irl
He doesnt pay 5k for the easy win he comes in for the progression not the stuff on farm.
I find it silly. Sure you can make gold off the AH, but where do you think most players get their gold from in order to buy stuff from the AH? Just click a button and *poof* there's the gold? No. Those people get that gold by constantly grinding dailies. So in effect, the AH serves as a "make money off of money". Works decently enough but, such as current events in RL, can go *boink* if the ones earning the gold to buy your stuff get stuck in poverty.
So yeah, I view the AH as a necessity. However, the reason I have nearly 20k gold is mainly because I do my dailies while trying to avoid having to buy stuff off the AH as much as possible.
My response to Gevlon: suck it up.
I agree with Alayea, I also did dailies instead of playing with the AH, at least at higher levels (unless something nice dropped), and so far I never had problems with gold on any of my toons. At low levels I found my ways of getting gold pretty easy, selling deviate fish for example. "I had my first 100G before lvl 20" pff... try having 2k at lvl 6 ^^ all made from selling blood elf bandit masks on the horde AH on my "fresh" undead rogue. And now that you can make DKs it's crazy anyways, making gold in one day with your DK in outlands and sending it to your low lvl "main", and unless you want this DK to be your main, he’s expendable so you can repeat leveling him and making gold over and over, without screwing up the server’s economy. Oh and the last thing. Unless you’re a twink (I want the leg enhancements to be usable again >.<) who needs 100+g before they hit 60 anyways, especially with patch 3.2 lowering the mount prices and levels.
I don't think I'm too bad at making gold because I save up from my dailies, but every time I get to 10k again I see something shiny and buy it. This is usually a companion pet on ah, or a mount from somewhere.
I get almost al my gold from dailies. I don't sell my LWing enough to get gold from it, and the skinning I just stock up to improve my LWing. I also can't be bothered with buying and selling off ah. It just seems like boring work most of the time, because you spend the time sitting around waiting.
Damn i wish i could make so much gold...i can make like 100 a hour or so but 5k..geesh
I don't get it are we meant to look up to this guy as some sort of (anti) hero or something, from what I have read he sounds like an arsehat of biblical proportions.
What you have to realise of his money making schemes (that he does not share a great deal of) all involves the average player being parted with their gold.
The illegitimate son of Robin Hood robbing the poeple to give to himself.
Meh, the ink business is easy, just people don't do it often enough.
There's no skill involved in making money off the AH, but I don't think the guy is saying that there is, so, go him.
But if he doesn't raid or PvP and just spends his time making gold in order to spend a couple of hours a week raiding, then meh. That's not a game imo, it's just a simulated stock market with a demo of WoW added on.
But each to their own.
Its just like real life, there are people who are better with math and can make lots of money on the stock market and investing there money into something that they know that they are more than likely going to make a profit off of.
My self I am not a WoW guru I am still learning about the in's an out's of the game. So I take alot from this Blog, as it as helped futher my knowlege of the game. I dont try and judge people for everything they say, because we are all different in everyway, and we all look at things at different perspectives.
So I just take what ive learned and add it to my own perspective in order to give my view of life and WoW many Facets to beheld.
I just want to thank everyone at Project Lore for all there hard work and good laughs that ive got out of it and all those who have giving there oppinons for i have learned much from them. Thank you all Sincerely...
@Sean - "But if he doesn’t raid or PvP and just spends his time making gold in order to spend a couple of hours a week raiding, then meh. That’s not a game imo, it’s just a simulated stock market with a demo of WoW added on."
Heh, exactly. I find playing the market pretty boring. A while back I found a nice way to make some pretty easy gold in vanilla WoW, just involved buying skins, using LW to make an item, and disenchanting it then selling the mats on the AH for an appreciable profit. It was easy, didn't take long, and my only limitation was the number of skins available on the AH under my max buyout price.
However, I just couldn't do it on a regular enough basis, it's not my bag. So, I guess I'm a Slacker, but I don't really care, I'm still having fun playing the game the normal way.
Gevlon is the Maddox of the WoW blogging community. Which makes him completely awesome and all comments about him completely null- including this one.
@ Alayea theres always someone out there with the gold to buy your items off the AH provided you've chosen the right items to AH in the first place =) Auctioneer and a number of other addons can easily help u discern which items suit best. For instance constant patches and expansions mean constant gear changes. What do people want as soon as their WoW toon gets a new piece of gear? Well an enchant of course and most of them will buy the mats for it right off the AH. I can spend 15 mins on the AH buying greens, DEing them and reauctioning the results and make the same amount of gold I'd make out of 2+ hours of dailies (yeh I used to do the daily grind a while back until I discovered how to AH). Thats just one of the many options available from the AH.
Where do you get the gold to start off with? Well just getting to 80 nets quite a few thousand gold which is more than enough. The only dailies I touch anymore are for rep or tokens.
Unlike IRL if a character needs gold all its player has to do is kill a monster or do a daily as you said. Hence WoW will not run out of gold unless people actually stop playing it. Personally I prefer to spend 30 mins or so a day on the AH making money from people spending hours on dailies than doing the dailies myself, but thats just me. Some people actually enjoy doing dailies and probably find the AH as boring as all heck so to each their own really.
I'm impressed with the fact that this guy makes a lot of money, but as for doing the Argent Tournament dailies and people who can't make money I have a few things to say.
Some people might do the Argent Tournament dailies for the rewards. Also, people who can't make money might not have the time needed that they can dedicate to WoW. People have lives outside of WoW you know.
That's just my 2 cents.
To everyone who says that it takes all day sitting around to make money on the AH, it doesn't. I spend maybe 30-40 mins a day doing my ah stuff and easily clear 10k per week. All you have to do is have the tools and dedication. I like standing in org for 30 mins a lot more than i do grinding dailies. To keep up with my gold making you would have to do 667 dailies a week. But please keep under listing in the ah from the stuff you randomly get while questing.
I read his blog and his social commentary. He is an idiot.