Project Lore

Heartbourne brought up some excellent and not-often-talked-about points in his recent post on the logic and thought process behind the use of frost emblems to buy gear versus their use for gold. Depending on how you play and what you value in-game, there's a lot of aspects to consider before spending those emblems. Read it - it will get you questioning whether you're spending your emblems right.

I'd like to bring a bit of a counterpoint as to why I choose gear over gold. As Heartbourne contends, using your Frost Emblems for gear is pretty much standard despite the fact that they could instead be used to buy and then auction off Primordial Saronite and earn yourself a nice profit. Despite the gold that you and I could be earning from that, I'm here to champion the case of using your emblems to buy gear.

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I often can't understand the average player. Many players acquire gold primarily by doing dailies, farming, or running random dungeons. All three are relatively comparable in profitability. Then again, most players don't have much gold and make just enough to get by. Sometimes they get a windfall, like a Battered Hilt or rare pet drop, then put it on the Auction House, convert their fortune to cash, and stop working to acquire gold. Most players will buy their tier 10 pieces or other Frost Emblem purchases as soon as they have enough emblems instead of buying Primordial Saronite and selling it for an easy ~2,000 gold. Its almost like having the ability to control when you get fortunate enough to cash in on a high-tag item, but hardly anyone does it. Why?

There are three cognitive biases that can help explain this phenomenon - the endowment effect, also known as loss aversion, system justification, and hyperbolic discounting.

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The barrier has finally come down.  Blizzard has admitted defeat.  The company is now selling WoW gold.

/me reads the rest of the announcement.

Oh, that kind of gold.  Like the Activision-Blizzard merger, Blizzard has simply taken my breath away with its latest business venture.  In an effort to expand the World of Warcraft brand to as many people as possible, Blizzard will begin selling collectible coins.  Yes, thanks to DC Unlimied the extended universe has branched out to the QVC lover in all of us.

Starting June 23, players, and coin collectors, will be able to get their mitts on two Collectible coin sets.  If you guessed an Alliance version and a Horde version, you'd be correct.  Dare I ask which faction has the better collectible set?

Each set comprises of three coins of differing sizes plated in precious metals (that means the coins are just wrapped in the precious metal).  The set will feature various faction leaders set in a fancy box and topped off with a faction emblem.

Alliance coins:
Gold: Varian Wrynn
Silver: Magni Bronzebeard
Copper: Tyrande Whisperwind

Horde coins:
Gold: Thrall
Silver: Sylvanas Windrunner
Copper: Cairne Bloodhoof

Does it need to be said that this strikes me as incredibly odd?  Sure, we use gold, silver and copper coins in the game, but I...I don't know.  Collecting coins just isn't my thing.  They are right up there with stamps and commemorative Elvis plates.  I'll stick with my vast collection of slowly corroding retro games, thank you very much.

The only thing that doesn't surprise me is the continued neglect to gnomes and trolls.  The two factions should really just splinter off and make a new faction called "Emo."  I doubt anyone would even realize that they'd left.

Not my cup of tea, but I am sure the sets will sell out anyways.  Even if they are "on sale" for $59.99.

*Note* I realize this happened last week, but I just came across it.

I'll tell you right off the bat that I'm not much of an economist. I don't play the Auction House, I don't farm for things to sell, and I only do dailies on occasion (usually if I'm determined to raise my reputation with a certain faction). With the guild vault taking care of most of my raiding bills, I don't usually have a whole lot else to spend money on aside from sending gold to an alt every once in awhile, and that's almost always repaid by the time they hit Level 80, themselves.

I've sat, more or less comfortably, around 4000 gold since Wrath of the Lich King launched. That is, until now. Trial of the Crusader, in all of its incarnations, has made me dirt poor!

Just two nights ago, I finally got the main-hand dagger I'd been looking for, Gouge of the Frigid Heart, off of Twin Val'kyr in 25-man. My guild's core group also likes to run 10-man Heroic on their own time, and wouldn't you know it? Nemesis Blade drops off the very same boss. Now, Nemesis Blade is ever-so-slightly better than Gouge of the Frigid Heart, but I'd already gone and spent 7-800 gold on enchanting it with Berserkering and I honestly didn't have the money left to do it again. So, for now, the superior dagger sits in my bank, completely unused.

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Mo' Money, Mo' Problems features tips and tricks to striking it rich in World of Warcraft.  If you need some extra gold to cover those costly repair bills, are working on an epic flyer for your umpteenth alt, or are attempting to hit the gold cap, Mo' Money, Mo' Problems is for you.  Have ideas or tips you'd like to submit?  Then @iTZKooPA or leave a detailed comment. Ahh, gold, I collect it even though I have little use for it these days.  Due to that fact I am willing to share my gold making ways with you, free of charge!  No longer will you have to drop real money on some random gold making guide seen on Google Ads panes.  You can just come to your friendly ProjectLore were we, and the community, will collect, refine and categorize ways to turn a buck in our favorite MMORPG.  We've already given out a few basic tips in the past, but now I will pull out all the stops, and go so far as to tell you my biggest money makers. On this second edition of Mo' Money, Mo' Problems we will cover ways to turn Brewfest into a beer drinking and money making seasonal event.  Okay, ways may be stretching it, as I have only found one surefire scheme to turn a tidy profit from the seasonal event.  The quests generally reward nothing but steins and tokens, and the loot from Coren Direbrew is unvendorable and not disenchantable.  All of it except the Tankard O' Terror.  The gnome-sized tankard is truly a money maker. For starters, the tankard is the only BoE weapon above ilvl 200.  That makes it worth at least 1000 gold right there.  The mug isn't exactly rare, I've already seen a few, but it's highly limited availability, only drops during Brewfest of course, will also impact the price.  The non-unique status means that a moneymaker like yourself can have on in the AH, and continue to farm for another.  Oh, and people may want to dual wield them, driving up the demand, thus the price, further.  A perfect storm of potential profit in my mind. That's all pretty basic stuff, but here's the real tip, hold out on putting your tankard on the AH.  As mentioned, the supply is limited by the presence of Brewfest.  If you don't need the money right now, then you'll be able to raise your profit to stupid levels if you can hold out until a few weeks after Brewfest is complete.  Just be sure to play the AH before Blizzard decides to release another high ilvl weapon for the next seasonal event! Tankard O' Terror is running around 1500 gold on my server at the moment.  What it's priced at on yours?  Have you already cashed in?

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It started out great. Hitting 80, jumping into dungeons, my first downing of the Black Knight and subsequent farming of ToC. Then came the daily heroics. I was slowly building up my collection of purples, and it showed as my DPS jumped from really crappy to only moderately crappy (still working on that part - hoping rounding out with more purples helps!) Yes, Locomomo's advancements in Azeroth made me giddy. What did not was the depletion of my bank from a couple thousand gold to only a couple hundred; mostly from high repair bills and buying gems to socket into my shiny new gear. Those stupid jewels, if you want the good ones, are ridiculously expensive. And I DO want the good ones, at least for the gear that I probably won't replace for a while. I haven't even started looking at enchants yet, unless it's something a guildy can help me out with. In the grand scheme of things, what I've spent so far isn't all that much gold - I'm sure I could make it back pretty quickly if I really needed to. But therein lies the problem. If I take the time each day to run the dailies I need to make back gold, I lose out on raiding time. If I raid, I get more awesome gear that needs gems to make it even more awesome. Not to mention higher repair costs. What's a girl to do!? I'm thinking it comes down to time management. I don't play as much during the week anyway, but if I can manage to pop on for a few dailies each day, then save up longer raiding sessions for the weekend, that might be the key. Finishing up my exploring may have to be put on hold. Another possible solution - finishing off leveling up my leatherworking so I can get my buffs from the profession, and maybe even making some money off what I can make. Then once I get the leatherworking up, I could drop skinning and pick up another crafting profession. But then there's the issue of leveling it up without the gathering profession - of course, that takes more money! Then again, if it's jewelcrafting I pick up, then I won't have to buy jewels anymore, just the reagents. Ack, too many decisions! Any readers out there with two crafting professions? For that matter, any with dual gathering? Do you use it more for the benefit of your own buffs, or for money making? What other methods have you found to manage gold-making and gold-spending?

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One of the fundamental things that players should understand about the WoW economy is that there is massive deflation. Items, in general, become less valuable over time as new items are introduced. Players no longer want iLvl 200 or even 213 crafted gear, as well geared players from high level raids can easily carry them through heroics or Naxxramas. As such, materials for crafted gear are less in demand than they once were. Blue gems should lose value once epic gems become accessible. Additionally, once an item is introduced, the players that want it the most will pay ridiculous prices to get it first. Prices lower over time as supply ramps up for non-top tier raiders. In general, its a bad idea to stockpile items. However, understanding how new changes will affect the economy and acting early can lead to huge profits. There are two major changes that will affect the economy in patch 3.2. The first is the introduction of epic gems; the second is that Emblems of Conquest are now obtainable in all pre-Crusader dungeons and raids. We will talk mainly about epic gems for now. Epic gems are obtained in a few different ways. Lets review:

• Alchemy Transmutes
• Icy Prism. You can't save them up now, so don't try
• Prospecting Titanium Ore
• Buying with Honor or Emblems of Heroism

Buying them with Honor and Emblems will probably be very unpopular, as everything will be dropping Emblems of Conquest and players will be eager to grab new gear before they will grab new gems. The other three will have a profound effect on the market. First, lets look at Alchemy transmutes. Most Alchemists are Elixir Masters. As as Alchemist myself, I can vouch for how useful this is. I make dozens of flasks a day, and this generates tons of gold. If I can get a friend to craft my elixirs who is elixir specced, Transmutation Master for myself might be profitable. Since transmutations are on a 20 hour cooldown, its hard to share that ability with anyone, but a group of a few alchemists could have 1 elixir master and all the rest be Transmutation Masters to optimize overall output. I know my guild is organizing something like this. Transmuting an epic gem usually requires a blue gem of the same color as the desired epic gem and a specific Eternal. The following is a list of transmutes as they are now on the PTR:

• Transmute: Flawless Amytrine: Monarch Topaz and Eternal Shadow
• Transmute: Cardinal Ruby: Scarlet Ruby and Eternal Fire
• Transmute: Dreadstone: Twilight Opal and Eternal Shadow
• Transmute: Eye of Zul: 3 Forest Emerald
• Transmute: King's Amber: Autumn’s Glow and Eternal Life
• Transmute: Majestic Zircon: Sky Sapphire and Eternal Air

The first thing to note is that players will be getting epic gems from a few sources. Players will largely be consuming the same amount of gems overall, as they will have about the same number of sockets. Some of the new recipes require epic gems, but it won't have a huge impact on the market. Since only some portion of the epic gems being consumed use current rare gems as a material means that consumption of rare gems is going to go way down. There will still be a market as the poor man's gem and as reagents for transmutes, but the prices of uncut and cut rare gems should drop significantly. Get rid of any stock that you have. The exception may be Forest Emerald, which requires 3 gems for the transmute. Only time will tell relatively how valuable they will be, but blue gems are used a lot by tanks, so I'm predicting a good market for the epic blue gems and hence Forest Emerald. Also, expect Eternal consumption to go way up with lots of new recipes and the transmutes. Its unclear how often Icy Prism will give epic gems. It will be the only thing keeping Frozen Orbs valuable. It will continue to be the only thing keeping uncommon gems in consumption. There are lots of these in Titanium Ore, so expect them to lose even more value in patch 3.2. We are looking at vendor trash level of value. According to WarcraftEcon's results, they are getting around 6 uncommon gems per prospect, and people will be prospecting a lot to get epic gems. Speaking of prospecting Titanium, this is going to be the game changer. People are stockpiling Titanium now, which may or may not be a good idea. It might be overvalued right now; it's risky to do. However, with rare gems losing demand and rare gems being the result of Titanium prospects as often of epic gems, rare gems should lose a significant amount of value from this alone. The flipside to this is that the value of Saronite and Cobalt should crash, as they will no longer be valuable to prospect. This is going to be a huge window of opportunity for Blacksmiths, who can potentially make lots of BoE stuff and disenchant it. Expect Enchanting supplies to increase in supply in the long run and prices to drop. Finally, note the materials for the new crafted items, including a new orb from the Argent Coliseum: Crusader's Orb. This list was complied by the writers at WarcraftEcon:

• Titansteel Bar
• Saronite Bar
• Arctic Fur
• Heavy Borean Leather
• Icy Dragonscale
• Nerubian Chitin
• Moonshroud
• Spellweave
• Ebonweave
• Crusader Orb
• Various epic gems, Eternals, Enchanting materials
• Deadly Saronite Dirk
• Corroded Saronite Woundbringer

These will probably enjoy a small price boost in the first month or so of patch 3.2. Remember, the first two weeks will be crazy, as everyone will want epic gems and consumption will be through the roof. Expect it to level off within about 6 weeks. What are your plans to profit in patch 3.2?

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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?

• Just My Two Copper
• Zekta's Stuff
• Warcraft Econ
• One Copper
• The WoW Street Journal
• WoWenomics

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!

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So I’m sure you will be all calling me very late to the party on this one, but I made a personal discovery recently. This discovery is just how profitable the Argent Tournament dailies can be!

I have never been a big fan of doing dailies, they have always seemed a bit too much like work to me. In fact there has historically only been 3 dailies I will ever do, those are the fishing, cooking, and jewelcrafting dailies. Beyond that, I would rather drum up my repair gold elsewhere.

Well with the recent news that Paladins would be getting an exclusive mount for obtaining the “Crusader” title, I had to give the tournament a try; after all I am a sucker for mounts!

Once I grinded myself up to champion with my home faction, the Exodar, my eyes were opened to the huge amount of gold you could acquire just but making the Argent Tournament part of your daily routine.

It doesn’t take long to realize that many of the quests offered by both the champion quest givers and the valiant quest givers overlap. If you are killing 15 scourge for the champions you are likely to kill 10 scourge for the valiant’s at the same time. In addition to the cash you get for the quest rewards, if you are exalted with all factions like I am, you can pick up the champions purse for more gold and a chance at an additional champions seal.

While I am on the topic of champions seals, collecting these is a great way to pad your bank account as well, as they can be turned in for BoE pets that can catch a hefty sum on the AH or in trade. On my server these pets are averaging 1000g gold a piece. Figure 40 champions seals equals one pet, and simple math would value these seals at 25 gold each. Add that to the cash from two quest rewards (20g) and the purse (10g) and a few of these dailies will net you between 55-80g per quest!

I know the Argent Tournament has been covered on Project Lore before, but I really want to stress the money making potential of these quests! For a more complete guide on the Argent Tournament, but sure to check out iTZKooPA’s awesome guide on all of the quests!

If you have been oblivious to this whole racket, like myself, get out there and fund your repairs! There is gold to be made!

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With patch 3.2 on the test realms and the Ulduar hype slowly fading, it seems like the live servers are more empty than usual. Not only are there less players overall, but there may be less gold farmers than usual. The game economy on each server is relatively small and sensitive to these temporary changes in player demographics, and right now the shifting player base on at least my server has had some serious effects on the economy. The first thing that I noticed are less raw materials at a higher price. Since there are less players on, there are less players running around doing dailies and quests that lead them to herbs, mining nodes, or dead animals to skin. On the flip side, there are less people spending hours and hours a week raiding than there were with the launch of Ulduar. Thus, the demand for things created by these materials - like elixirs, Ulduar recipes, etc, has also declined. The result is an overall smaller market that is overall easier to manipulate.  With less herbs (especially Frost Lotus) available on the auction house, I'm not able to make quite as many flasks, but they aren't all getting bought either. With less competitors in the market, I have made quite the pretty penny on flasks - though I am selling much less overall. Its a perfect opportunity to expand and explore into other areas. I recently picked up Engineering and I'm going to see how many of these Nesingwary 4000 the market is willing to buy. It makes me wonder how much of am impact gold farmers really have on the market and how many are really out there. Back in the vanilla WoW days, you could hardly walk into Tyr's Hand without seeing a dozen gold farmers gathering cloth and other baubles to sell in the auction house. It might be more subtle these days. Ever see those power-leveling services advertised in trade chat? If they are going through the hassle of advertising in-game, they are getting at least a few people to buy into it, and all those characters at their disposal gives them a great way to farm up cloth and materials while leveling those characters and dump it into the market. Where there's fire, there's smoke. Illegitimate services like power-leveling are likely a sign that gold farmers are still out and about on the realms in some fashion. With a steady supply of raw materials into the market from illegitimate players like gold farmers and hackers, many of the prices we are accustomed to are likely the work of a great supply. We are used to the land of bounty where we can go to the auction house and get almost whatever we want if we are willing to pay a reasonable price. If gold farmers leave the game completely, will this change? How negatively do these types of services actually impact the game? Looking forward, the release of patch 3.2 will bring an influx of players eager to jump back into heroics and all the old raids as well as the new Argent Tournament content. Start preparing now and stock up on potions, elixirs, eternal, and other materials. With epic gems and many new recipes, patch 3.2 will undoubtedly jump-start the WoW economy.

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