Today’s post was written in a submission to Gold Blogging Carnivals, over at Colds Gold Factory. The subject was to compare and contrast two different markets and how you would go about to handle those markets. Now I use to do these kind of posts back when JMTC was around back on NeckarUnrivaled.com in the day. Yeah I’ve been around that long, while that blog is gone now and I haven’t done these kind of carnival posts since. I figure I jump back into it this month.
In the every day World of Warcraft you can find yourself looking at a market and asking yourself a simple question. Can I apply what I’ve learned here to another market? This is a question I often times ask myself. Some example markets where you could compare together are Gems and Glyphs. All of which are needed, all of which can play the undercut war and all of which can sell for a good profit.
But they are all different markets. Lets take a look at Gems and the Jewelcrafting market and how it’s different from Glyphs.
Jewelcrafing
The gem market can be pretty cutthroat, depending on what server your on and what day of the week it is. For most people, this cutthroat of undercutting happens on a Tuesday and generally goes into the next few days but not as bad as the first day.
The question is why and to understand the demand of gems is to understand who you are selling too. When you think of doing the whole, posting gems, waiting for undercuts and reposting, can be costly. Trust me I’ve done this and you end up losing more to auction house fees then you end up making. Gems simple is that market you post them up and let the demand outsell the undercuts, you sell less this way, but you make more.
Inscription
The main bad boy of the market is the old Glyph, how I hate you Glyph… its one of those markets like the Gem market can be cutthroat. However unlike gems, which only see such demand on Tuesday, Glyphs are all year round. Everyday, every hour.. you can camp, you can undercut, you can cancel and repost.
You can end up doing this over and over every 10 minutes and even if you end up reposting the same glyph 10 times in one day and sell it, you still walk away with profit.. lots of lost time but profit either way. This is just a design of the game, Gems have a high posting fee, Glyphs don’t.
Your Strategy
So when you look and compare the two, my overall strategy when it comes to how I deal with the two markets, simple are so different its shocking. First off I end up cutting gems and posting them about 5 to 10 each. Most cases I’ll post them early on Tuesday Morning, either before the reset or after servers come back online.
I’ll post them at the lowest price at the moment and leave them on 48 hours. I do not cancel gems at all, even if I get undercut to hell, the posting fees simply make the whole cancel reposting deal not worth it. If by some chance I know I’ll be able to play a lot in that day or next few days I’ll post at only 12 hours. Ideal 12 hours is best because it’s the lowest cost in fees.
With Glyphs the Strategy is much different. First off, I can cancel repost them if I want, even if I post them at 48 hours, it doesn’t hurt much. My posting fee for all my glyphs are generally around 10g, where gems cost me up to 500g if not more (posting at 48 hours).
Overall, I find that while both markets are the same in demand, the days, the times and matter of how you make the gold with each can be so different you almost can’t compare them at all. If there was one thing I learn about the two markets and can take away and move into another market. It’s to not just understand who you are selling too, as a reminder of buying low and selling normal. The change in that guard can be from day-to-day, hour to hour.
While resetting a market can be idea in some cases, can be costly, where I could reset the Glyph market a number of times a day, doing that would gems would cost you in the long run. You have to look at what you’re doing, and just don’t craft and post and cancel and repost thinking, you need to be the lowest price. With Glyphs, yeah I’d agree you need to be, gems no. You can still make gold even if you’re not the lowest price and that is how the two are different.
So today I check out MMO-Champion and came across a blue post about the Pet Battle System which in my opinion kind of makes the whole system stupid now in my opinion. What do I mean? They have removed the option to trade wild pets in-game.
What this means to you, is that you can no longer go out into the game world, find a rare pet, catch it, level it to max level, then put it in the pet cage and sell it on the Auction House. This is not allowed now and the game wont let you. Here is the blue post.
We just finished a pass making all pets that are caught via pet battles in the world non-tradeable. This means these pets cannot be put in cages for trading or posting on the AH. We felt that the option to buy these pets on the AH would take away from the exploration/collection gameplay of the system.
This could always change in a future patch, but this is how it will go out with MoP. You should see the change in our next build.
After I read a few post in the thread, I was shocked to see some people where happy with this changed? Um what? The heck? I don’t understand why people are so against the pet battle system allowing someone to buy it off he auction house. It doesn’t affect you.
I think my replay to the post here puts everything in how I feel about this change. Frankly it’s sad this happened. I was looking forward to finding a new niche market as a gold maker. Now I don’t care, I have this collection of pets I stockpiled and simply will just when Mist hits sell them off slowly.
Even now the pet market as it stands now will die, new players who never collected those pets will still come into the game and pets will still sell mostly, however you wont see them sell as often. Nothing more to say about this, I had so much I wanted to write about with the pet battle system. I understand it because I used to play Pokemon back in the day like a fiend.
Blizzard clearly didn’t do their homework, the one cool part about the pokemon game was the trading part of it, trading to friends, etc. Now that we can’t do that, all these wild pets; their value means nothing now. I’ll keep an eye out, but unless they change this, I’m done with pet battles.
EDIT: Blizzard has made it clear that they don’t want us trading wild pets due to some silly auction house unfairness and to keep the spirit of the game. I’ve said my peace on it and comments are now closed on the matter. I respect everyone’s different opinions. However I don’t agree with most of them and the reasons to take it away even for a short time is a slap in the face.
I think one of the most fun aspects in the game is that of AoE pulling. Just about every class in the game as at least one AoE spell that allows them to kill a massive amount of mobs at once. Be warn that when Cataclysm came out they put in a hard AoE cap.
When I think about AoE pulling, like many of you out there, I bet you first thought is that of WoWHobbs or simply Hobbs. In fact like many of us, I came into the game learning how to make gold the way most gold makers are against; farming.
Back in wrath of the Lich King when was still leveling my wee little hunter to level 80, I started watching Hobbs and the Hobbs way of Pulling. I remember at one point I almost switch to playing just a Paladin because of Hobbs, I even released a video to Hobbs thanking him for everything he did.
So what is this talk of AoeE and Hunters? How does that even move into gold making? Good question and here is the simple answer. Hunters right now I believe are one of the best AoE classes in the game, I say one of and I would agree that warlocks have pretty strong AoE for being a cloth class, while I don’t think they are as strong as hunters. That’s up for debate and more than open to such.
First off, as a hunter you have a number of options, our main AoE is Multi-Shot which got massive buffs and nerfs in Cataclysm due to the nature of Survival AoE. I think everything can agree that Survival while the strongest and quicker AoE of the three hunter specs, Beast Master as the best AoE, just more down time between it. I’m not sure of the numbers but I think two hunters of equal gear, the Beast Master Hunter would burst faster than a Survival hunter could.
It’s about skill, and I would call a Beast Master Hunter more skilled to beat an Survival Hunter simply because as Survival you only need to do two things. You Trap Launch your Explosive Trap, followed with spam of Mutli-Shot with some Cobra Shots to get focus back. The power of Survival AoE is that of Serpent Spread.
For a Beast Master Hunter, one could almost debate you need to use a Worm, for it’s AoE power, being most of your damage comes from the pet. You need to have your pet there, followed by a spring of Mutli-shots. You still need to fire your Explosive Trap and the two together will cause a hunter to reach the AoE cap. You need to use Bestial Wrath and Fervor to keep your focus going.
So the question comes down too this, what would be the most effective spec for use of AoE looting come Mist of Pandaria? I personally with the new Fetch Glyph and AoE Looting Hunters will become THE best AoE farming class ever.
My AoE build could go between BM or SV. Later this week I’m going to talk about all three specs and some solid AoE information to get the best and fastest looting so when Mist of Pandaria launches you’ll be racking up the gold.
Finally here is a nice little advance macro I’ve been working on in beta for some time. This macro will cast Multi-Shot and always attack whatever your pet is attacking or your focus target, which I found to be idea. When you drop combat, it’ll cast Fetch on your last target you targeted. Keep in mind that Fetch is not as good as the Engineering Loot-A-Rang because you can’t move while you’re using Fetch. Also if you use Fetch and then move, your pet will still go to loot but you wont loot anything, however Loot-A-Rang does.
Mutli-Shot/Fetch Macro
#showtooltip [combat]Multi-Shot ; [nocombat]Fetch
/tar [target=focus,harm] focus
/assist [target=focus,help] focus; [target=pet, exists] playerpet
/use [combat]Multi-Shot
/targetlasttarget [nocombat]
/use [nocombat]Fetch
Recommended: If you’re a Engineer you can switch out Fetch to Loot-A-Rang and still get the same effect and use your minor Glyph Slot for something else.
I know there are many out there who will argue that Mist of Pandaria wont be out until some point in November. I disagree and to back up my claim to why I believe this, I put together a little chart for you. This charge shows what I think will happen, this is base off research from past releases, the beta and just how things go.
To be honest with you, I’d be the first person to admit being wrong if some reason Mist of Pandaria doesn’t come out until November. I’ve told people who I felt Mist was going to be coming out at some point between the end of August or in September. That was months ago, but today I can say that I feel that Mist will launch at some point between September 18th 2012 and September 25th 2012.
No matter what, Mist will launch on a Tuesday, given the past, generally speaking and I recall this from when Cataclysm hit the PTR, it was about a month of it being on the PTR, I recall this, it was about 3 weeks or so. Maybe it was shorter, if I’m wrong and it was only 2 weeks of testing, then that means Mist will be out even sooner than the 18th.
Taking a look at the chart, you can see two color sections. The first light blue is the PTR testing, which last between Friday July 20th to August 20th, that’s a total of 32 days so just a little over a month. The question of if I think Blizzard needs a full month of PTR testing before putting the patch out. Ideal I think it would only take 3 weeks with the last week everyone knowing the patch will hit.
The next section, color in a red color, shows the Pre-Launch Event Patch. This will be the patch with The Theramore scenario as well all the changes that Mist will bring that players will get without the Mist content such as the new zones and level 85-90 content.
Again the patch would hit ideally on a Tuesday August 21st 2012 and would last until September 17th 2012 which is only 28 days, just little under a month. Some people say that pre-launchs only last 2 weeks. Maybe someone can correct me how long the Cataclysm Pre-launch patch lasted, I seeming recalled not raiding until the Cataclysm pre-patch hit, and I know I raided ICC about 3 weeks before the release.
Taking a look at the data, if the PTR last less than a month, and the Pre-patch is only 2 weeks we could see Mist of Pandaria coming out much sooner. Either way, we’re looking at a September release date. What do you think? Do you think September is too soon? Leave me a comment and let me know what you think.
