There's a new metric in town, well not so much new since it's not but it's becoming more and more blatant.
What I am talking about is gearscore... One score to rule them all, one score to find them, One score to bring them all and in the darkness bind them to mildly abuse a famous quotation.
To put it bluntly the gearscore indicator makes an attempt (or yet another attempt) at taking the sumtotal of all your (gear)stats and boiling it down into a simple hard number for people to judge you by.
And judge they do. Now personally I am not so much affected by it because my gearscore most likely will always be significantly higher than any skill I may have. But people get reamed and mocked pretty badly out in trade and 'bank chat' for whatever their gearscore comes down to.
Now I definitely understand where the idea of 'gearscore' comes from. It allows you to say: "hmmm he/she's probably not going to cut it" before you set foot in a potentially dangerous environment. It saves you hassle and the other person some potential embarassment right?
Yes! But it's not a measure of skill, ignorance, drunkeness, mother interference, screaming gf and all those lovely other events and states that render the average dungeoneer into a worthless pile of raid wiping sludge.
But then who really has time for a 2 hour interview just to figure out if someone is mentally capable enough to actually go to the instance in the first place?
The argument is endless and so instead of argueing I propose we simply apply some common sense, realize it's here to stay and...
1. Know what gearscore is appropriate to ask for
If you do not know what you're asking for figure it out.
That said you can ask for higher than what is needed to increase the speed of your run
2. If they ask for x and you have less, stay clear
You already know they want more than you can offer in pure gearscore even if you have the skills to make up the gap. It's not worth the argument even if you don't agree with the whole 'GS thing'. It doesn't matter whether they ask for gearscore or cooking skill... simply don't apply.
3. Gearscore isn't the universal answer
Gearscore is the answer to the question: given my current group and his/her gearscore and class spec combination will he/she likely be an asset in this run?
Despite the fact that the gearscore manages to boil most gear values down into a single stat it's still just a small piece of a larger puzzle that is 'the worthiness' of a player.
Personally I still remember most of the wipes and failures with fondness and remember very few of the victories on the average 5man run and as such I rather enjoy the occasional miserable wipe.
But if you are of the persuasion that every run must be as fast and as near to perfection as it can be remember that gearscore is a tool, a tool to be used with care.
Showing posts with label theory. Show all posts
Showing posts with label theory. Show all posts
Monday, March 15, 2010
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Is endgame gold worthless?
I did inventory the other day. Outside of the infinite amounts of junk I have smeared out all over my alts I noticed that I had about 10k in gold laying around.
With my hunter, mage and death knight still a ways away from level 77 I quietly acknowledged the fact that I wouldn't have to worry about where the next 2 or even 3 epic flyers would come from.
In fact this time around I wouldn't even have to liquidate any of my assets and can reasonably expect to have another 5k gold through prodding around on the AH for maybe an hour every couple of days long before any of my 3 higher level alts gets to 77.
So looking at the current state of my characters and looking at purely what they 'need' in riding skills to get epic riding and epic flying I am looking at a grand total of almost 50k gold for all my alts left to gather (10 chars in total).
That 50k gold includes everything all my characters could ever want from riding and that is assuming you see epic flying as a requirement rather than a nice to have.
50k definitely sounds like a lot... but given that I already have 10k of that number and it took me about a month with very little effort on the AH to get 5k I could realistically achieve the 50k mark by the end of the year without putting any significant effort into making gold whatsoever. Significantly less if I just devoted a month or two to gold making activities.
I considered putting effort into the gold making process but then it hit me: Assuming you've already bought all the epic flyers you could possibly need and your professions are maxed what is there really left to buy?
A mammoth?
A chopper?
A couple of flimsy rings?
A gigantique bag?
Soap on a rope?
Some other random vendor stuff?
Most of everything else is either tied into some kind of badge/seal/token/honor/rating system or doesn't require gold to get but instead requires effort a.k.a. time. Worse still there is nothing that would allow me to trade in my gold to save some time in that regard.
So what does one buy once one has bought all the 'essentials'?
There's no gold sink big enough that would keep taking your gold and paying you off in a way that you would want to repeat it indefinitely (i.e. gold -> honor might be a start).
Repair and travel cost barely factor in at this point. Sure repair costs can be painful if you have no gold income from anywhere and you run instances all day but that's really a choice you make when you choose that particular lifestyle.
Gear comes from instances, from badges or from honor and arena rating none of which I can buy with gold. Titles come from achievements which translates to effort rather than gold and anything cosmetically interesting seems to come from an obscure trading card game which only kind of comes from gold... if you were allowed to sell gold for cash.
That indeed leaves a rather paltry selection of mounts, rings and arbitrary vendor junk...
So depending on the amount of alts you have there is actually a virtual cap on how much gold you can have before it becomes essentially nothing more than a little number on the bottom of your main bag. And even that number will stop climbing at 2^31 copper because even blizzard thinks that by the time you have that much gold you really should quit or seek help or some such thing.
So, did I miss something or is endgame gold really worthless?
With my hunter, mage and death knight still a ways away from level 77 I quietly acknowledged the fact that I wouldn't have to worry about where the next 2 or even 3 epic flyers would come from.
In fact this time around I wouldn't even have to liquidate any of my assets and can reasonably expect to have another 5k gold through prodding around on the AH for maybe an hour every couple of days long before any of my 3 higher level alts gets to 77.
So looking at the current state of my characters and looking at purely what they 'need' in riding skills to get epic riding and epic flying I am looking at a grand total of almost 50k gold for all my alts left to gather (10 chars in total).
That 50k gold includes everything all my characters could ever want from riding and that is assuming you see epic flying as a requirement rather than a nice to have.
50k definitely sounds like a lot... but given that I already have 10k of that number and it took me about a month with very little effort on the AH to get 5k I could realistically achieve the 50k mark by the end of the year without putting any significant effort into making gold whatsoever. Significantly less if I just devoted a month or two to gold making activities.
I considered putting effort into the gold making process but then it hit me: Assuming you've already bought all the epic flyers you could possibly need and your professions are maxed what is there really left to buy?
A mammoth?
A chopper?
A couple of flimsy rings?
A gigantique bag?
Soap on a rope?
Some other random vendor stuff?
Most of everything else is either tied into some kind of badge/seal/token/honor/rating system or doesn't require gold to get but instead requires effort a.k.a. time. Worse still there is nothing that would allow me to trade in my gold to save some time in that regard.
So what does one buy once one has bought all the 'essentials'?
There's no gold sink big enough that would keep taking your gold and paying you off in a way that you would want to repeat it indefinitely (i.e. gold -> honor might be a start).
Repair and travel cost barely factor in at this point. Sure repair costs can be painful if you have no gold income from anywhere and you run instances all day but that's really a choice you make when you choose that particular lifestyle.
Gear comes from instances, from badges or from honor and arena rating none of which I can buy with gold. Titles come from achievements which translates to effort rather than gold and anything cosmetically interesting seems to come from an obscure trading card game which only kind of comes from gold... if you were allowed to sell gold for cash.
That indeed leaves a rather paltry selection of mounts, rings and arbitrary vendor junk...
So depending on the amount of alts you have there is actually a virtual cap on how much gold you can have before it becomes essentially nothing more than a little number on the bottom of your main bag. And even that number will stop climbing at 2^31 copper because even blizzard thinks that by the time you have that much gold you really should quit or seek help or some such thing.
So, did I miss something or is endgame gold really worthless?
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
68 Ready for Northrend?
So here we are, 3 characters in northrend and a 4th slowly crawling to that magical number of level 68 and now the time has come to determine whether or not it's worthwhile to bring number 4 - 10 to northrend at 68 or to put off till later (level 70+).
I am not going to say one way is better than the other, that varies per person (yes it does). What I can do however is list the facts and let you come to your own conclusions.
And thus, I present to you the pros and cons of going to northrend at level 68:
Pros
1. Higher XP/gold gains for quests and kills
2. Higher valued quest rewards
3. Higher grouping potential
Cons
1. Higher risk
2. Reduced max gold potential from questing at 80
3. More competition
4. Outland loremaster quests won't give XP
That's essentially it. What it comes down to is a choice between northrend's higher xp rewards, more valuable quest rewards and more grouping options vs outland's low risk environment, lower competition for mobs and the ability to squeeze the maximum amount of gold out of northrend quests later on (the more you quest in outland the more quests you can turn to gold at 80 in northrend).
Is one better than the other? That is a matter of personal preference and I am sure you will find people on both sides of the fence.
As I have pointed out in a previous post however is that ideally you'd want to ding 80 after completing Borean tundra, howling fjord, dragonblight and grizzly hills in order to get the maximum amount of gold out of northrend at level 80 for the remaining quests.
If you're interested in that and still want to go to northrend at level 68 consider taking a little break from questing and focussing on dailies for a while.
They give decent XP, decent gold and are finished quite quickly but can provide enough of a buffer to get you to ding 80 earlier than you normally would by just straight up questing through northrend.
Incidentally if you have any intention of becoming a loremaster then you'd be well advised to finish outland while there's still XP to be had from the quests.
The choice is yours... and while it's probably not interesting for your main to ponder there's always alts. Yes, that off-gray pile of dust on your character screen may in fact be a long lost tauren just waiting for you to take him/her to northrend... You're not just going to leave it there are you?
I am not going to say one way is better than the other, that varies per person (yes it does). What I can do however is list the facts and let you come to your own conclusions.
And thus, I present to you the pros and cons of going to northrend at level 68:
Pros
1. Higher XP/gold gains for quests and kills
2. Higher valued quest rewards
3. Higher grouping potential
Cons
1. Higher risk
2. Reduced max gold potential from questing at 80
3. More competition
4. Outland loremaster quests won't give XP
That's essentially it. What it comes down to is a choice between northrend's higher xp rewards, more valuable quest rewards and more grouping options vs outland's low risk environment, lower competition for mobs and the ability to squeeze the maximum amount of gold out of northrend quests later on (the more you quest in outland the more quests you can turn to gold at 80 in northrend).
Is one better than the other? That is a matter of personal preference and I am sure you will find people on both sides of the fence.
As I have pointed out in a previous post however is that ideally you'd want to ding 80 after completing Borean tundra, howling fjord, dragonblight and grizzly hills in order to get the maximum amount of gold out of northrend at level 80 for the remaining quests.
If you're interested in that and still want to go to northrend at level 68 consider taking a little break from questing and focussing on dailies for a while.
They give decent XP, decent gold and are finished quite quickly but can provide enough of a buffer to get you to ding 80 earlier than you normally would by just straight up questing through northrend.
Incidentally if you have any intention of becoming a loremaster then you'd be well advised to finish outland while there's still XP to be had from the quests.
The choice is yours... and while it's probably not interesting for your main to ponder there's always alts. Yes, that off-gray pile of dust on your character screen may in fact be a long lost tauren just waiting for you to take him/her to northrend... You're not just going to leave it there are you?
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Gold 101 - Auction House Basics
Every now and then I get the question how I handle my gold and what I do to get more of it and the simple answer is: Play the AH game
I am no farmer or grinder, I don't do many dailies and I don't really do much questing once I hit my level cap. I don't farm reputation, I don't do many (high-level) instances and to add to that I spend a lot of time on gold-sucking alts. In short, I do whatever amuses me and this rarely makes me any gold.
So truthfully said that beyond what little income I can generate through playing my alts I am 100% dependant on the AH for an income.
Rather than telling you my specific business ventures I am going to attempt to give you the basic toolkit needed to make a profit in the auction house, give you a few tips on how to discover niche markets and most importantly dispell the Nr 1 myth or rather half-truth that currently floats around in regards to making money on the AH.
In fact lets deal with the half-truth first because it can be the decider on whether or not you decide to play the AH game or stick with your daily grind:
You can make a ton of gold with only 15/30 minutes a day on the ah
This is a myth for those who start out playing the AH game and will become closer to a truth a ways further down the line.
Getting that gold train started takes a lot of time in the beginning. Organizing bagspace, supplying resources, scanning the AH, finding niche markets all these things take up time. If you're just starting out with the AH game and you're serious about getting some form of income from the AH expect to invest 3+ hours initially... Eventually you can bring it down to maybe 30 mins per session but that assumes that you already are organized and have found your various niche markets.
You will also become good friends with excel or whatever you choose to keep track of your investments. Basic bookkeeping is a necessity if you're serious about money and just writing down cost/profit will really help in the long run to determine the viability of your investments.
If nothing else you will probably have to write down some market prices for various mats or other things depending on your chosen market.
This means ADMINISTRATION and Administration takes time.
Making money on the AH is easy but while you can make much much more gold on the AH than doing dailies you should expect that you will have to sacrifice doing your dailies in favor of spending that time on the AH (or in excel).
Ok, I hope the above really made it clear what you're up against with playing the AH and so lets move on to
The Basic toolkit
Auctioneer, an addon widely available through various addon sites is your primary tool. Get it, download it, install it and run the scans preferably at least once a day. Ideally scan before you're getting ready to dump a whole bunch of stuff on the market.
Don't have Auctioneer yet? Get it, run scans daily for at least a week and only then start making decisions. You will really need the average price indications auctioneer provides and you will lose hundreds if not thousands of gold if you decide to play the AH game without auctioneer.
That said, once you're used to auctioneer check into the various option menus. You can do a lot of beneficial customizing that may help your specific ventures but until then the default settings will do fine. Auctioneer generally also comes with extra tools like bottomscanner and beancounter etc. Try them all and see what they mean to you.
Be aware that a scan can, depending on your connection speed and processing power take up to 30 minutes on a decently saturated AH. My scans currently run 10-15 mins for about 300 pages in the AH... time you stand in the auction house and pretty much can't do anything except guildies over guildchat.
Even though it takes time: Auctioneer scans are absolutely vital!
The other thing that's absolutely vital is: Bag space. Have lots of bag space available especially on characters you want to be involved in your grand gold making schemes.
Seed money
Seed money is your basic starting funds. Just like a farmer would buy seed and expect to grow crops for a profit you need seed money to expect to grow a profit in the Auction house.
The simple truth of seed money is this:
All your gold is seed money. The more seed money you have the more profit you can make. Seed money sitting in your bank does nothing for you.
You can start the AH game at any time and at any gold amount however be aware that you may lose your investment in a bad deal so make sure you have enough gold available to cover your daily repair cost/ consumable cost for about a week in case stuff really goes bad.
With your seed money in your pocket and your Auctioneer scan freshly completed there's a couple of things we can start doing:
1. Flipping
2. Bidding
3. Market research
Flipping
Flipping is the art of buying low and selling high. You don't need a specific market for this... you can simply run a blank search on the AH and then sort by the percentless column. The lower the percentless value (blue) the more the item can be re-sold for. You can check the average price of an item by hovering over it and checking what auctioneer says is the average moving price.
Pick items that you think are popular (ores, rare crafting materials, specific weapons/armors etc.) or that you know a lot about and buy the ones that have a percentless value less than 50% and immediately put them back on the auction house at approximately 80%.
So if a stack of copper ore (20 pieces) normally goes for 8g and you see it on the market for 4g buy it and re-list it for 7g or 6g50s. The only time when you don't want to do that is when there's a lot of people offering copper ore for less than the average price of 8g. In which case you can either decide to list it for less (but always more than what you paid for + the auction house cut) or to hold on to the materials until the market is more favorable.
That's all there is to flipping... buy low, sell high. The percentless column will help you tremendously in this and you can decide whether to resell specific stuff or generally try and flip everything available in the auction.
Bidding
Bidding is a lot like flipping except that it takes a little more time to 'flip' the item. Do a blank search on the AH and sort it by how much time is left on the auctions.
See all those 30m / 2h remaining auctions?
Go through them and once again look for items that either have a really low percentless value or a very low low-end bid.
Just put in the minimum bid on the item and move on to the next item.
The beauty of bidding is that even if you get outbid you don't lose money (you get your bid back) and if you win you just picked up an item for an extremely low amount of gold and can then flip it for the average price (or a little lower).
This is especially interesting for slower moving markets like weapons and armor where auctions can often run their full duration. That said there's really no restrictions on what you should bid on. If you think there's a decent chance of selling it for even a little more than what you bid then you should bid on it.
Market research
Flipping and bidding are both very basic activities. You can make decent gold off of them without really worrying about book keeping and other things. If you just want to make some money on the AH to keep your characters afloat then bidding and flipping are usually enough.
The real money however comes from the results of market research. Market research is all about figuring out what people want and then providing the supply to their demand.
There's a few things you can do to determine demand:
1. determine needs. We know people 'need' consumables. We know people 'need' certain crafting materials. People need a whole bunch of stuff, some of it is more needed than others but based on their needs markets develop. All we really need to do is figure out what isused the most (like consumables for example ) and what crafting materials are in demand and then figure out how we can get those cheap and then drop them on the AH. I recently traded a few frozen orbs to someone who had more mammoth meat than they knew what to do with.
The market for mammoth meals was terrible at the time so he happily parted with 10 stacks of mammoth meat for some frozen orbs. After a few weeks mammoth meals were back in demand and I was able to sell all my mammoth meats as mammoth meals and made enough profit to buy back my frozen orbs and still be left with a lot of gold. I determined the need and used that need to my advantage.
2. Determine gluts. Not too long ago I picked up 20 stacks of netherweave for 2g50 a stack which was exceptionally low for my server. I couldn't resell the netherweave due to the market being covered in people trying to sell netherweave but I managed to get my netherweave crafted into stuff which I then disenchanted selling the enchanting materials for quite a profit (at least a hell of a lot more than the 2g50 a stack I paid). Using raw materials from a market that is flooded with said raw materials is a very good way to turn a profit.
3. Determine shortages. There are shortages. Keep an eye on trade for people asking for specific things. If the thing is not on the AH and people are asking for it in trade then they are willing to pay a premium for the item once it does get put on the AH. A shortage is different from a need in that needed items will always be needed, a shortage may occur for very off-beat items (levelling gear for example) which no one really needs but a lot of people would want to have. If you can supply a shortage with your goods then you are practically guaranteed a profit. Unfortunately unlike needs shortages go away and may never come back. But keep in mind... there are always shortages somewhere.
4. Re-evaluate professions. You have crafting professions, or at least you're very likely to have them. Go through each item on your profession list and have a look at what the raw materials cost and what the end-product goes for. Normally you won't be able to turn a profit but every profession has a few items in there that can turn the raw materials you need into a profit.
Never stop researching your markets. All good business ventures go down the drain at some point or the other. Just because you can make a profit selling x now doesn't mean you'll be able to sell x tomorrow. Keep an eye out for opportunities.
Keeping track
I know you think you'll remember all of it. And maybe in the beginning when you have 1,2 or 3 little business ventures you will... but at some point you're going to have to keep track of how much you make and how much you spend for each of your little business ventures.
Determining what raw materials cost on your realm and how much they would have to cost (max) for you to turn them into a profit is also worth noting down.
If you do not keep track of your business ventures you will eventually have a few business ventures that seem to be profitable but really aren't. In the end if something takes 1h of your time and you make 200g then you need to ask yourself if you could make the same amount of gold doing dailies or something else. If the answer is yes, then why are you doing it?
If you can't provide a good reason then you should probably find something else to spend your time on.
Grinding / Farming
Grinding and farming generally isn't needed when playing the AH game. However if an hours worth of grinding can fork you a tremendous profit then there really is no shame in getting down and dirty with some monsters especially if you can also gain xp at the same time.
My paladin has been farming some rhino meat for a while to supply the huge demand that was present at the time based on the cooking daily. I made a good chunk of gold from the rhino dog sales and half a level to boot.
Grind and farm when it is profitable to do so. If you can do something else to make you more money then why grind in the first place?
In the end you would ideally want to bring your grind/farm time to 0. This is very much possible... but don't be so shortsighted as to say farming/grinding is for idiots because every now and then you can make some serious gold by grinding the right things.
Before I leave you to your thoughts I'll leave you with a quick comment: smaller stacks sell better than bigger ones on the AH. I alway thought that to be obvious and yet I still see a lot of people trying to sell a full stack of frozen orbs on the AH for 1000+ gold and be surprised no one ever buys it even if they sell if for half the average price. No one wants to spend 1000+ gold on a stack of frozen orbs unless they intend to sell them as singles for a profit in which case you might as well have put it on the AH as singles in the first place and made a decent amount of extra gold.
*edit* If it's hard to read leave a comment and I'll chop it up a little... the post's structure made for some very long sentences that could use shortening. if you tl:dr then it's your loss. I don't cater to people who only want to voice an opinion and not read someone else's.
I am no farmer or grinder, I don't do many dailies and I don't really do much questing once I hit my level cap. I don't farm reputation, I don't do many (high-level) instances and to add to that I spend a lot of time on gold-sucking alts. In short, I do whatever amuses me and this rarely makes me any gold.
So truthfully said that beyond what little income I can generate through playing my alts I am 100% dependant on the AH for an income.
Rather than telling you my specific business ventures I am going to attempt to give you the basic toolkit needed to make a profit in the auction house, give you a few tips on how to discover niche markets and most importantly dispell the Nr 1 myth or rather half-truth that currently floats around in regards to making money on the AH.
In fact lets deal with the half-truth first because it can be the decider on whether or not you decide to play the AH game or stick with your daily grind:
You can make a ton of gold with only 15/30 minutes a day on the ah
This is a myth for those who start out playing the AH game and will become closer to a truth a ways further down the line.
Getting that gold train started takes a lot of time in the beginning. Organizing bagspace, supplying resources, scanning the AH, finding niche markets all these things take up time. If you're just starting out with the AH game and you're serious about getting some form of income from the AH expect to invest 3+ hours initially... Eventually you can bring it down to maybe 30 mins per session but that assumes that you already are organized and have found your various niche markets.
You will also become good friends with excel or whatever you choose to keep track of your investments. Basic bookkeeping is a necessity if you're serious about money and just writing down cost/profit will really help in the long run to determine the viability of your investments.
If nothing else you will probably have to write down some market prices for various mats or other things depending on your chosen market.
This means ADMINISTRATION and Administration takes time.
Making money on the AH is easy but while you can make much much more gold on the AH than doing dailies you should expect that you will have to sacrifice doing your dailies in favor of spending that time on the AH (or in excel).
Ok, I hope the above really made it clear what you're up against with playing the AH and so lets move on to
The Basic toolkit
Auctioneer, an addon widely available through various addon sites is your primary tool. Get it, download it, install it and run the scans preferably at least once a day. Ideally scan before you're getting ready to dump a whole bunch of stuff on the market.
Don't have Auctioneer yet? Get it, run scans daily for at least a week and only then start making decisions. You will really need the average price indications auctioneer provides and you will lose hundreds if not thousands of gold if you decide to play the AH game without auctioneer.
That said, once you're used to auctioneer check into the various option menus. You can do a lot of beneficial customizing that may help your specific ventures but until then the default settings will do fine. Auctioneer generally also comes with extra tools like bottomscanner and beancounter etc. Try them all and see what they mean to you.
Be aware that a scan can, depending on your connection speed and processing power take up to 30 minutes on a decently saturated AH. My scans currently run 10-15 mins for about 300 pages in the AH... time you stand in the auction house and pretty much can't do anything except guildies over guildchat.
Even though it takes time: Auctioneer scans are absolutely vital!
The other thing that's absolutely vital is: Bag space. Have lots of bag space available especially on characters you want to be involved in your grand gold making schemes.
Seed money
Seed money is your basic starting funds. Just like a farmer would buy seed and expect to grow crops for a profit you need seed money to expect to grow a profit in the Auction house.
The simple truth of seed money is this:
All your gold is seed money. The more seed money you have the more profit you can make. Seed money sitting in your bank does nothing for you.
You can start the AH game at any time and at any gold amount however be aware that you may lose your investment in a bad deal so make sure you have enough gold available to cover your daily repair cost/ consumable cost for about a week in case stuff really goes bad.
With your seed money in your pocket and your Auctioneer scan freshly completed there's a couple of things we can start doing:
1. Flipping
2. Bidding
3. Market research
Flipping
Flipping is the art of buying low and selling high. You don't need a specific market for this... you can simply run a blank search on the AH and then sort by the percentless column. The lower the percentless value (blue) the more the item can be re-sold for. You can check the average price of an item by hovering over it and checking what auctioneer says is the average moving price.
Pick items that you think are popular (ores, rare crafting materials, specific weapons/armors etc.) or that you know a lot about and buy the ones that have a percentless value less than 50% and immediately put them back on the auction house at approximately 80%.
So if a stack of copper ore (20 pieces) normally goes for 8g and you see it on the market for 4g buy it and re-list it for 7g or 6g50s. The only time when you don't want to do that is when there's a lot of people offering copper ore for less than the average price of 8g. In which case you can either decide to list it for less (but always more than what you paid for + the auction house cut) or to hold on to the materials until the market is more favorable.
That's all there is to flipping... buy low, sell high. The percentless column will help you tremendously in this and you can decide whether to resell specific stuff or generally try and flip everything available in the auction.
Bidding
Bidding is a lot like flipping except that it takes a little more time to 'flip' the item. Do a blank search on the AH and sort it by how much time is left on the auctions.
See all those 30m / 2h remaining auctions?
Go through them and once again look for items that either have a really low percentless value or a very low low-end bid.
Just put in the minimum bid on the item and move on to the next item.
The beauty of bidding is that even if you get outbid you don't lose money (you get your bid back) and if you win you just picked up an item for an extremely low amount of gold and can then flip it for the average price (or a little lower).
This is especially interesting for slower moving markets like weapons and armor where auctions can often run their full duration. That said there's really no restrictions on what you should bid on. If you think there's a decent chance of selling it for even a little more than what you bid then you should bid on it.
Market research
Flipping and bidding are both very basic activities. You can make decent gold off of them without really worrying about book keeping and other things. If you just want to make some money on the AH to keep your characters afloat then bidding and flipping are usually enough.
The real money however comes from the results of market research. Market research is all about figuring out what people want and then providing the supply to their demand.
There's a few things you can do to determine demand:
1. determine needs. We know people 'need' consumables. We know people 'need' certain crafting materials. People need a whole bunch of stuff, some of it is more needed than others but based on their needs markets develop. All we really need to do is figure out what isused the most (like consumables for example ) and what crafting materials are in demand and then figure out how we can get those cheap and then drop them on the AH. I recently traded a few frozen orbs to someone who had more mammoth meat than they knew what to do with.
The market for mammoth meals was terrible at the time so he happily parted with 10 stacks of mammoth meat for some frozen orbs. After a few weeks mammoth meals were back in demand and I was able to sell all my mammoth meats as mammoth meals and made enough profit to buy back my frozen orbs and still be left with a lot of gold. I determined the need and used that need to my advantage.
2. Determine gluts. Not too long ago I picked up 20 stacks of netherweave for 2g50 a stack which was exceptionally low for my server. I couldn't resell the netherweave due to the market being covered in people trying to sell netherweave but I managed to get my netherweave crafted into stuff which I then disenchanted selling the enchanting materials for quite a profit (at least a hell of a lot more than the 2g50 a stack I paid). Using raw materials from a market that is flooded with said raw materials is a very good way to turn a profit.
3. Determine shortages. There are shortages. Keep an eye on trade for people asking for specific things. If the thing is not on the AH and people are asking for it in trade then they are willing to pay a premium for the item once it does get put on the AH. A shortage is different from a need in that needed items will always be needed, a shortage may occur for very off-beat items (levelling gear for example) which no one really needs but a lot of people would want to have. If you can supply a shortage with your goods then you are practically guaranteed a profit. Unfortunately unlike needs shortages go away and may never come back. But keep in mind... there are always shortages somewhere.
4. Re-evaluate professions. You have crafting professions, or at least you're very likely to have them. Go through each item on your profession list and have a look at what the raw materials cost and what the end-product goes for. Normally you won't be able to turn a profit but every profession has a few items in there that can turn the raw materials you need into a profit.
Never stop researching your markets. All good business ventures go down the drain at some point or the other. Just because you can make a profit selling x now doesn't mean you'll be able to sell x tomorrow. Keep an eye out for opportunities.
Keeping track
I know you think you'll remember all of it. And maybe in the beginning when you have 1,2 or 3 little business ventures you will... but at some point you're going to have to keep track of how much you make and how much you spend for each of your little business ventures.
Determining what raw materials cost on your realm and how much they would have to cost (max) for you to turn them into a profit is also worth noting down.
If you do not keep track of your business ventures you will eventually have a few business ventures that seem to be profitable but really aren't. In the end if something takes 1h of your time and you make 200g then you need to ask yourself if you could make the same amount of gold doing dailies or something else. If the answer is yes, then why are you doing it?
If you can't provide a good reason then you should probably find something else to spend your time on.
Grinding / Farming
Grinding and farming generally isn't needed when playing the AH game. However if an hours worth of grinding can fork you a tremendous profit then there really is no shame in getting down and dirty with some monsters especially if you can also gain xp at the same time.
My paladin has been farming some rhino meat for a while to supply the huge demand that was present at the time based on the cooking daily. I made a good chunk of gold from the rhino dog sales and half a level to boot.
Grind and farm when it is profitable to do so. If you can do something else to make you more money then why grind in the first place?
In the end you would ideally want to bring your grind/farm time to 0. This is very much possible... but don't be so shortsighted as to say farming/grinding is for idiots because every now and then you can make some serious gold by grinding the right things.
Before I leave you to your thoughts I'll leave you with a quick comment: smaller stacks sell better than bigger ones on the AH. I alway thought that to be obvious and yet I still see a lot of people trying to sell a full stack of frozen orbs on the AH for 1000+ gold and be surprised no one ever buys it even if they sell if for half the average price. No one wants to spend 1000+ gold on a stack of frozen orbs unless they intend to sell them as singles for a profit in which case you might as well have put it on the AH as singles in the first place and made a decent amount of extra gold.
*edit* If it's hard to read leave a comment and I'll chop it up a little... the post's structure made for some very long sentences that could use shortening. if you tl:dr then it's your loss. I don't cater to people who only want to voice an opinion and not read someone else's.
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Bigger numbers, bigger problems
Everything gets bigger.
This is an axiom that has held true for most games in the game industry but especially MMORPGs. Patches and expansions are rolled out in order to give the player more to do and to keep the money rolling in for those that design/create the game.
Everything getting bigger has held true even in the days of the old dungeon and dragons. I remember the days where we would flail around in small groups, slaying the occasional orc or desperately running away from the dragon's cave. I remember those days where level 15 was the ultimate goal and represented a significant portion of power for anyone involved in AD&D.
But it got bigger. In the form of extra rulebooks and other expansions and in the end the old power cap of level 15 was extended for everyone.
And with this growth of the power cap things became skewed. Combat tables and rulesets that were initially designed for level 15 and under simply didn't work anymore for players that literally outgrew the content and were well on their way to level 30.
The world initially designed for a modest power cap of level 15 was only able to cope with these new godlike players by throwing new godlike challenges in their face via supplemental rulebooks and yet more expansions.
How do you provide content for godlike players?
How do you provide content for those that have accumulated wealth far beyond what the game was initially designed for?
This is a conundrum that MMORPG designers have been fighting with for ages and thusfar the only answer they could come up with are simple reactive measures to structural problems of the game design.
If people are super rich... then we make stuff super expensive (remember the cost of black dye tubs in ultima online? or say... a wow mammoth mount)
If people are super proficient... then we raise the difficulty of their proficiencies (say hello to another tier of crafting, fishing, cooking etc.)
If people are super powerful... then we simply add creatures that are more powerful than them (I heard the lich king has between 2 and 3 million hit points, assuming we get to fight him)
If people have super gear... then we add gear that is more super (ok fine... better... ).
And once again things get bigger.
Both the designer and the player find themselves stuck in a cycle. The designer raises the power cap and this immediately raises the bar for the player who will always strive to get more wealth, more power and as a result will go out and slay the more powerful creatures that have just been added to the game via the patch.
That illidan chap? He's a pushover now... curator, prince, magtherion you name them... mere jokes that have been relegated to the realm of those that like to solo dungeons with the new gear that has been added in the latest patch.
And as things get bigger, bigger numbers start to cause significant problems. A game that was initially balanced for 60 levels will find it more and more difficult to cope with 10,20,30,40 additional levels and more stats to go along with it. A 10% bonus to stamina may have been insignificant at level 30 but is a huge boost at level 100 where the stats are much greater and percentile scaling goes through the roof.
The problem becomes exponential even with a linear increase in stats across the board and designers/developers will have to jump through flaming hoops to retain even the smallest sliver of balance.
What it comes down to is this: No game system can adequately handle players that are too far outside of it's initial design.
And that's not so far fetched... look at real life. If you apply yourself, work hard or just have natural talent that you can cultivate you may become an Einstein, a Sun tzu, a vincent van gogh but your potential is capped. You will never be a god (i.e. all-powerful) whereas most game systems will lead you from the ordinary to the heroic to true godhood in the end.
If you allow people to grow beyond the hard cap of the initial design you effectively turn a player into an unknown variable. You have no control over this player other than to satisfy his/her need for 'more' and the only way to keep the player happy at that point is to add new, more powerful, bosses and give the player the equivalent of a nuclear bomb to fight them with.
Without a hard cap on player potential you invalidate your carefully crafted gaming environment. People will stumble over themselves trying to get to the end-game ignoring whatever was between just to get to those new, hastily thrown together, bosses and instances that carry the most powerful equipment and yield the highest level of rewards.
As things get bigger, your game system starts to show cracks, glitches and weird effects like sudden problems with burst damage, 100% critical hit chances, massive resistance issues and problems that previously never seemed to be an issue.
Your players are leaving the ruleset, the boundaries of initial design... they have become too powerful, the numbers too large to control. I've seen it happen a dozen times ... games that ended up so skewed that players could do so much damage that an attack was either fully resisted and no damage taken whatsoever or the player was instantly pulverized when hit.
Now that's Epic...
I am watching the numbers increase and I can see the potential problems.
I'll give you one of many examples. Try not to nitpick it too much, it's an example after all: Resistances. With the new wotlk gear its easy for a paladin with a frost resistances aura and about 3-4 pieces of gear to become fully capped in frost resistance. With a little bit of creative gearing and some aura switching the same paladin can probably achieve full frost and full fire resistance at the same time.
Once you reach this point you'll probably have a lot of unhappy mages walking the world (I for one never heard a mage curse more than when most of their spells get resisted).
Certainly this comes at the cost of other stats, but it illustrates that bigger numbers will invariably lead to bigger problems.
This is an axiom that has held true for most games in the game industry but especially MMORPGs. Patches and expansions are rolled out in order to give the player more to do and to keep the money rolling in for those that design/create the game.
Everything getting bigger has held true even in the days of the old dungeon and dragons. I remember the days where we would flail around in small groups, slaying the occasional orc or desperately running away from the dragon's cave. I remember those days where level 15 was the ultimate goal and represented a significant portion of power for anyone involved in AD&D.
But it got bigger. In the form of extra rulebooks and other expansions and in the end the old power cap of level 15 was extended for everyone.
And with this growth of the power cap things became skewed. Combat tables and rulesets that were initially designed for level 15 and under simply didn't work anymore for players that literally outgrew the content and were well on their way to level 30.
The world initially designed for a modest power cap of level 15 was only able to cope with these new godlike players by throwing new godlike challenges in their face via supplemental rulebooks and yet more expansions.
How do you provide content for godlike players?
How do you provide content for those that have accumulated wealth far beyond what the game was initially designed for?
This is a conundrum that MMORPG designers have been fighting with for ages and thusfar the only answer they could come up with are simple reactive measures to structural problems of the game design.
If people are super rich... then we make stuff super expensive (remember the cost of black dye tubs in ultima online? or say... a wow mammoth mount)
If people are super proficient... then we raise the difficulty of their proficiencies (say hello to another tier of crafting, fishing, cooking etc.)
If people are super powerful... then we simply add creatures that are more powerful than them (I heard the lich king has between 2 and 3 million hit points, assuming we get to fight him)
If people have super gear... then we add gear that is more super (ok fine... better... ).
And once again things get bigger.
Both the designer and the player find themselves stuck in a cycle. The designer raises the power cap and this immediately raises the bar for the player who will always strive to get more wealth, more power and as a result will go out and slay the more powerful creatures that have just been added to the game via the patch.
That illidan chap? He's a pushover now... curator, prince, magtherion you name them... mere jokes that have been relegated to the realm of those that like to solo dungeons with the new gear that has been added in the latest patch.
And as things get bigger, bigger numbers start to cause significant problems. A game that was initially balanced for 60 levels will find it more and more difficult to cope with 10,20,30,40 additional levels and more stats to go along with it. A 10% bonus to stamina may have been insignificant at level 30 but is a huge boost at level 100 where the stats are much greater and percentile scaling goes through the roof.
The problem becomes exponential even with a linear increase in stats across the board and designers/developers will have to jump through flaming hoops to retain even the smallest sliver of balance.
What it comes down to is this: No game system can adequately handle players that are too far outside of it's initial design.
And that's not so far fetched... look at real life. If you apply yourself, work hard or just have natural talent that you can cultivate you may become an Einstein, a Sun tzu, a vincent van gogh but your potential is capped. You will never be a god (i.e. all-powerful) whereas most game systems will lead you from the ordinary to the heroic to true godhood in the end.
If you allow people to grow beyond the hard cap of the initial design you effectively turn a player into an unknown variable. You have no control over this player other than to satisfy his/her need for 'more' and the only way to keep the player happy at that point is to add new, more powerful, bosses and give the player the equivalent of a nuclear bomb to fight them with.
Without a hard cap on player potential you invalidate your carefully crafted gaming environment. People will stumble over themselves trying to get to the end-game ignoring whatever was between just to get to those new, hastily thrown together, bosses and instances that carry the most powerful equipment and yield the highest level of rewards.
As things get bigger, your game system starts to show cracks, glitches and weird effects like sudden problems with burst damage, 100% critical hit chances, massive resistance issues and problems that previously never seemed to be an issue.
Your players are leaving the ruleset, the boundaries of initial design... they have become too powerful, the numbers too large to control. I've seen it happen a dozen times ... games that ended up so skewed that players could do so much damage that an attack was either fully resisted and no damage taken whatsoever or the player was instantly pulverized when hit.
Now that's Epic...
I am watching the numbers increase and I can see the potential problems.
I'll give you one of many examples. Try not to nitpick it too much, it's an example after all: Resistances. With the new wotlk gear its easy for a paladin with a frost resistances aura and about 3-4 pieces of gear to become fully capped in frost resistance. With a little bit of creative gearing and some aura switching the same paladin can probably achieve full frost and full fire resistance at the same time.
Once you reach this point you'll probably have a lot of unhappy mages walking the world (I for one never heard a mage curse more than when most of their spells get resisted).
Certainly this comes at the cost of other stats, but it illustrates that bigger numbers will invariably lead to bigger problems.
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
The spreadsheet behaviour
Every now and again I tend to go off into a little game design tangent. This is partially related to the fact that I have been playing games since the advent of pong (wait, scratch that... it makes me look old... pacman... no... tank wars... no ah to hell with it... I'm old). The rest is occupational hazard (software development) and a inexplicable fascination with game theory.
So today we're going to go off in one of my tangents together and take a look at how the evolution of games in general led to what I like to call spreadsheet behaviour.
Looking back over the decades of games we can fairly clearly see that most games are little more than a simulation that is heavily reliant upon numbers / math. Not surprising of course considering the involvement of computers but we can also note a significant trend towards 'showing the numbers'. This means that in most modern MMORPGs you can clearly see how many hit points you have, how much mana/energy/rage, how much strength, int, stamina etc. etc. and you can literally compile a large spreadsheet of data about your character.
This more often than not leads to so called min-maxing, numbercrunching and theorycrafting where all of a sudden the power of your character isn't determined by using terrain effectively or knowing when to strike and when not to but increasingly becomes a game of allocating stats / talents in the correct way.
Sun tzu's art of war is conveniently discarded in favor of putting the right stats in the right place and the whole process of watching the numbers increase evolves into somewhat of an obsession for players.
This obsession results in a number of unwanted behaviours. Why do people steal kills? Why do people use 3rd party tools to gain advantages? Why do people exploit bugs? Sure, there are those that enjoy making other people's lives miserable but in general this behaviour is motivated by the spreadsheet and for the spreadsheet.
It is no longer the world or the lore that dictates the progression of characters but more and more it becomes a matter of watching the right numbers increase on your spreadsheet.
Unfortunately most game designers tend to play into this behaviour. Games quickly evolve in giving players more numbers and more things to 'spreadsheet' in order to keep the game interesting longer. Expansions are brought in in order to provide more ladders for players to climb, to provide more and better equipment forcing people to re-evaluate their current spreadsheet in favor of a new one.
And this is very much understandable from a game design perspective considering the alternative.
After all, what would happen if the numbers were not visible? What would the result be if repeatedly killing the same mob(s) [grinding] didn't give you any visual representation of improvement and you simply wouldn't know if the grind was doing you any good or not past the 10th orc you just whacked?
It would take away most of the spread-sheet behaviour but in return would put much greater demands on game designers that all of a sudden have to find ways to keep their world interesting without giving tangible feedback like: you've gained 1200xp
The question begs to be asked however: Is the game designer shooting himself in the foot with this spreadsheet orientation? If the only thing that matters in a game is getting the numbers right then what happens to that content that doesn't give the right numbers?
Are game designers trading the dream of an immersive world for more ladders and more spreadsheet math because they're too lazy to build actually engaging content?
So today we're going to go off in one of my tangents together and take a look at how the evolution of games in general led to what I like to call spreadsheet behaviour.
Looking back over the decades of games we can fairly clearly see that most games are little more than a simulation that is heavily reliant upon numbers / math. Not surprising of course considering the involvement of computers but we can also note a significant trend towards 'showing the numbers'. This means that in most modern MMORPGs you can clearly see how many hit points you have, how much mana/energy/rage, how much strength, int, stamina etc. etc. and you can literally compile a large spreadsheet of data about your character.
This more often than not leads to so called min-maxing, numbercrunching and theorycrafting where all of a sudden the power of your character isn't determined by using terrain effectively or knowing when to strike and when not to but increasingly becomes a game of allocating stats / talents in the correct way.
Sun tzu's art of war is conveniently discarded in favor of putting the right stats in the right place and the whole process of watching the numbers increase evolves into somewhat of an obsession for players.
This obsession results in a number of unwanted behaviours. Why do people steal kills? Why do people use 3rd party tools to gain advantages? Why do people exploit bugs? Sure, there are those that enjoy making other people's lives miserable but in general this behaviour is motivated by the spreadsheet and for the spreadsheet.
It is no longer the world or the lore that dictates the progression of characters but more and more it becomes a matter of watching the right numbers increase on your spreadsheet.
Unfortunately most game designers tend to play into this behaviour. Games quickly evolve in giving players more numbers and more things to 'spreadsheet' in order to keep the game interesting longer. Expansions are brought in in order to provide more ladders for players to climb, to provide more and better equipment forcing people to re-evaluate their current spreadsheet in favor of a new one.
And this is very much understandable from a game design perspective considering the alternative.
After all, what would happen if the numbers were not visible? What would the result be if repeatedly killing the same mob(s) [grinding] didn't give you any visual representation of improvement and you simply wouldn't know if the grind was doing you any good or not past the 10th orc you just whacked?
It would take away most of the spread-sheet behaviour but in return would put much greater demands on game designers that all of a sudden have to find ways to keep their world interesting without giving tangible feedback like: you've gained 1200xp
The question begs to be asked however: Is the game designer shooting himself in the foot with this spreadsheet orientation? If the only thing that matters in a game is getting the numbers right then what happens to that content that doesn't give the right numbers?
Are game designers trading the dream of an immersive world for more ladders and more spreadsheet math because they're too lazy to build actually engaging content?
Monday, November 17, 2008
How to get to Dalaran (no quests)
I've been spending my time musing about Northrend when it occured to me that I had no idea how to get to Dalaran. Since I am not high level enough for any kind of questing in Northrend this is somewhat theoretical but should still work just fine:
1. Get to level 71
2. Group up with someone that already is in Dalaran
3. Have that someone queue the group up for a Battleground
4. /afk out of the battleground or run out.
The level 71 will ensure you end up in the right queue, the fact that your buddy in dalaran queued the group means that is now the default location for people to pop out when they're done with the bg.
I couldn't come up with anything simpler than that other than paying a mage or figuring out what the actual questline is to get to dalaran. Assuming that the quest doesn't come any sooner than lvl 71 anyway...
Just a thought but maybe worth the post depending on how far you are at in Northrend.
1. Get to level 71
2. Group up with someone that already is in Dalaran
3. Have that someone queue the group up for a Battleground
4. /afk out of the battleground or run out.
The level 71 will ensure you end up in the right queue, the fact that your buddy in dalaran queued the group means that is now the default location for people to pop out when they're done with the bg.
I couldn't come up with anything simpler than that other than paying a mage or figuring out what the actual questline is to get to dalaran. Assuming that the quest doesn't come any sooner than lvl 71 anyway...
Just a thought but maybe worth the post depending on how far you are at in Northrend.
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