Thursday, May 20, 2010

Adventures in Auction Housing, or, 'I Want To Reach the Gold Cap Too!'.

Like many of WoW's players, I like gold. I like it a lot. I enjoy looting the bad guys and hearing the money hitting my bags, and I really like watching my MoneyFu's session gains getting higher when I play. I hate seeing my sessions at a loss, and do what I can to invest my gold wisely.

I feel I have a few advantages on my side in the quest for making gold.

First, I have two accounts, so I can easily handle any cross faction auction housing myself. This also makes farming a breeze, as I can farm on whatever toon I desire, and have an easy disenchant option. I can also make my own raid groups on a whim without relying on outside help. If I'm farming far away from town, I can bring my second toon and empty my farming character's bags into theirs, if I lack a Moll-E, giving me a greater up-time on any farming binges I feel like going on. My paladin tank has the vendor mount and does much of my old world dungeon and raid farming.

Second, I have seven level 80 characters, six of which are on my main server. In addition to this, I have two characters in their 70's, and a character at 58. All of the above are Horde, however.

Third, I have every single profession in the game at Northrend level. But, I really need to settle down and max out some of the more boring ones, such as Leatherworking and Inscription. I also need to specialize my second alchemist into flasks, and level alchemy on a third character to take up transmutes mastery. 

I have decided that I want to utilize my resources and achieve the gold cap. Before, my goal was simply to stockpile 50,000 gold for Cataclysm's release, but after having come across such awesome blogs as Just My Two Copper, which was the first I stumbled upon, my goals have changed a bit. Seeing others' stories of success has fueled my fire, so to speak.

However, despite everything in my favor, I have issues with gold flow that I know I need to address. For one, I am a very giving person. When I was planning on having an active 5v5 with some friends, I purchased every single member of the team a Battered Hilt, at prices ranging from 6K for the cheapest and peaking at 11K for the first couple. While the 5v5 team idea eventually fell through, I don't regret giving the gifts I did, as I know those who still play are still benefiting from them. However, it is an example of my biggest enemy: random impulse.

I am an impulse shopper, and this is reflected with my IRL money management as well as my WoW gold. It has lead me to make a handful of poor investment choices, thankfully in the WoW world, rather than the real one! But if I hope to achieve the gold cap, I'm going to need to cut back on lavish gifts (which depreciate in value as time goes on anyways). Not to say I should stop gifting entirely, but I should do it less frequently.

A second thing standing in my way is that I feel easily pushed around in the market. I don't have all of the know-how just yet for what I hope to achieve, I don't think. I'm hoping that the experience I gain working with the markets will help me overcome this in time.

If all goes well, I should be reporting my progress here every so often. :D

As of today, May 20th, 2010, I have:

Total across toons on this realm.

The last seven days of activity.

No comments:

Post a Comment