Greedy Goblin

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Money survey

There is an addon, TooltipWealth to check the most money ever owned by the other characters. It simply queries the statistics page. Blizzard was lazy programming the achievement API, while our client does not show the wealth data, the information functions are available.

Using this addon, I just stood at Dalaran and queried the first passerby players without any kind of pre-screening:


What can we say from this? Not much except the obvious: the average player is around the epic flying mount range. Some made it, some did not. It's quite surprising that half of the people don't even have epic flyer, I considered this a kind of baseline. Well it seems if you have it you are already in the top 50%

It seems that the big money sink mounts are aimed to those who make money "seriously". The 16K bike and the 16-18K Mammoth are really expensive to the average player. If we assume they use silly daily quests, they make around 250G/hour. With this speed, a Mammoth is 80 hours of the most boring activity one can program into a game.

So one more reason for us to keep working on the AH and keep away from any form of grinding. Leave that to those who lack intelligence.

Note: I'm fully aware that most AH-pros use low level alts and guild bank(s). However I didn't want to count the goldcapped goblins of the server. I was curious about the random people, the "average guy". Believe me, they don't have a hidden guildbank with 100K.

Note2: how can someone has epic flyer and less than 5K ever? He got the flyer before the Achievement system introduced.

66 comments:

Glyph, the Architect said...

I believe the Tooltip Wealth addon shows the total gold aqcuired statistic from the achievement panel and isn't a real reflection on how wealthy a player is currently. My tooltip says 63K or so, even though I only have 5K in pocket.

pocketheal said...

Actually i believe this addon shows the most gold you have ever acquired at once. So it will only show the max amount of gold you have had at one time, not over time. Especially considering my total gold acquired is 67k. While the tooltip shows my max at any one time being 14.9k. Nevertheless it does serve as a tool to determine the gold making capabilities of a person.
(I've had this addon for a few weeks now)

Anonymous said...

This info was accessible via the default achievement client at wotlk release. Blizzard hid the option a few weeks into the expansion.

Anonymous said...

The addon can be configured to show either the total gold acquired, or the largest amount the toon has had at one time.

I'm guessing from the small numbers in the screenshot that Gevlon has it configured for the latter, which I think is the more interesting option.

I find it weird that the author of the addon doesn't allow you to configure it to show both values at once. It took me only a few minutes to change the addon to do this and I've never written any Lua code before in my life.

Iiene of Kul Tiras said...

As noted by others, It's "Total gold ever" Or... more accurately, "Total gold ever since the achievement patch" not how much money they actually have RIGHT NOW.

Most people are grievously broke. If you see a guy with '5300' on that, that simply means that at SOME point... he ground for an epic mount.

I've been using that for weeks, and I've seen ONE GUY close to gold cap, and perhaps 2 over 40K.

When that ONE GUY showed up with 214K in the tool tip I was WOAH! because it was just so out of place.

People are broke and living raid to raid because that's how their parents taught them.

Anonymous said...

Offtopic question for you:

Have you ever had any experience with GDKP runs? They seem like a very goblin-like way of running a raid.

Info on GDKP here:

http://elitistjerks.com/f15/t77416-gdkp_run_discussion/

Fawr said...

I think there is something seriously wrong with those numbers.

Personally the numbers in my toons statistics page are off, and I'd be suprised if I was the only one. My enchanters highest ever gold used to be 35k, but is now 20k somehow, while my Banker has a -ve amount of gold earnt.

You could verify those numbers by checking the level 80s with very little "highest ever gold" and see if they have purchaed some of the more expensive things.

Thalis said...

I, for example, don't have all my money on my main. L1 bankalts in SW (or Orgrimmer, for you) can be as good for scan as L80 in Dala.

Keeva said...

Does it only show wealth for that one character? (I assume it does, if it's working off achievements)


I never ever do any AH work on my main ever... it's all through alts. I actually checked the other day and apparently I have posted one auction on Keeva.

Whenever Keeva gets more than 250g, I send any excess to my bank alt to store - so I only ever keep 250g cash on me. Of course, if I ever need to buy a big-ticket item, I just post the money over, so my "most ever owned" figure is around the 6k gold mark - the magic mount figure.

My point is - it's impossible to know, when mousing over people, whether they keep their cash in their back pocket, or stored away in a guild bank.

In the case of my little level 1 troll, he never ever keeps the cash in his bags - he always puts it into the bank in 250g increments, leaving enough on hand for AH deposits, and storing the rest away. Being guild bank funds, that wouldn't show as my personal wealth, so I'm betting his record amount is around the 6k mark, too, for any time that he has pulled out ~5k to buy epic flying for alts.

Whatever I have squirrelled away into my guild bank *won't* show up on that wealth tooltip unless I draw the whole lot out at once and hold it in my hot little hands.

Probably won't have a huge impact on your data, but I would guess that there are more people out there that do things in a similar way. They're probably a minority - but even so.

The point is - there are probably a few more rich people out there, but perhaps they prefer to put their wealth into a bank as they make it, rather than keep it in their bags, as you do?



Perhaps a poll is in order - where do you keep the majority of your money? (On my main / on a single bank alt / spread through multiple alts / in a personal guild bank)

Unglar said...

I agree with Keeva's point, and I think anyone who makes money seriously is likely to use a bank alt. Whether or not they then keep the money in a guild bank, on the alt or on their main, it's a reasonable assumption that you miss a large proportion of the serious money-makers because the funds may not trickle through to the level 80 in Dalaran.

Anonymous said...

amusing addon as about as accurat at judging personal wealth as geascore is at judging players skill. I downloaded it out of curiosity and then logged in. According to the tooltip, most gold I've ever had was 2580.93.55 wich is exact ammount I currently have on the character I logged in on.

I went into addon interface and changed the option to total gold acquired. it displayed the same amount. Considering that this character has an epic flyer, obviously the number is not correct. Does it read achievements? well, according to my achievement data, I've acquired a total of a bit over 12k on this particular character, so it seems...it doesn't.

The conclusion? A fun little addon, but not something to be taken seriously.

Anonymous said...

At the beginning of the achievements you could even see this data on the armory. Since I heard this before it went live, I've stored my gold on an alt with my main only showing around 15K. I did this simply because it felt more comfortable that my fellow guildies don't know I'm a rich guy (in wow terms).

Should be fun to do the same with level 1-10 bankers with the clear 'bank-outfit' and see if they have more gold than the TOC-epic geared 80's.

Still I'm suprised seeing such low figures, especially for people with a title like 'Hand of A'dal' indicating a bigger /played. Will try that addon out for some fun :-)

N said...

You can use that addon on my 80 Hunter and see about 19k, or use it on my level 2 bank alt and see about 32k. (Assuming you're using the default "most gold held at one time.")

My gold is spread across several toons and two accounts. A few thousand on each of my raiding characters, quite a bit on my bank alt, and quite a bit on my inscription alt.

So... the addon leaves a bit to be desired in terms of surveying.

Anonymous said...

What exactly is the point of keeping your gold in a guild bank or a bank alt? I mean its not like you could get mugged on a dark backalley of Stormwind or lose the gold somehow.
Unless of course you have issues with impulse-purchases... In which case I doubt you could manage to save up large sums of gold anyway.

Btw, its also likely that a lot of the characters you saw were simply alts. You really dont need more than around 5000g at once on a alt, and even then it would be for just buying your epic flying skill.

mel said...

You do overlook a rather important point...

Of my toons, My main my priest has "Aquried" 35012 total, a mere fraction of my total, and this only since the statics began to be kept, my warlock whom i havent played in 4 years for more then an occasional summon and a pack mule sits at a gigantic 40g accquired.

My rouge whom i dont really play except to post my glyphs on the AH, 187898 and my other mules sit at 10000, 12000 and 54000 (total somewhere around 307683) So querrying my main would show only the 35k (still more then i figured i would see there, but 10k looted and 20k quest rewards)

So unless your querrying the mule you may not know, i keep my gold on the mule because i dont want to spend it all, i send it over as i need.

Anti said...

yeah not a very accurate addon.

for me:

would have 6k on my 4 80s though they usually only carry 1k-2k.

might have under 6k on my 76, 71, 70 and 64. and they also only usually have 1k on them.

my 68 DK scribe might have 10k+ from buying herbs and ore in large batches.

my main / enchant mat bank alt might have 10k

my 3 glyph bank alts might have 2k-10k each

and none of it takes into account my Alt Vaults 100k+ nor my raiding guilds 30k.

Anonymous said...

@Anonymous

"This info was accessible via the default achievement client at wotlk release. Blizzard hid the option a few weeks into the expansion."

It is still accessible via achievements frame. What Blizzard did was they removed it from armory achievements page.

Also, I think the wealth information got reseted with 3.1 or 3.2. Or so.

I've been using it for two weeks now and saw only one person capped on my realm. Closest one was around 100k. In my own guild only two persons with ~40k. Rest are around 10k. I find it a bit weird for people which are playing 5 years, I'd expected them to have at least 30-40k.

pippen1001 said...

i have seen this tooltip not work cause it shows that i have 1300 g when infact i have just stashed 25k in my guildbank so obviusly something is wrong with it.

Dàchéng said...

Anonymous asked "What exactly is the point of keeping your gold in a guild bank or a bank alt".

Simple. It's the bank alts who needs access to the money, not the main; it's the bank alts who are playing the auction house, buying and selling crafting/crafted items and so on. There's no reason for a main to have more than a few thousand on her at a time. Which also shows, as others have pointed out, the fruitlessness of Gevlon's "experiment".

Gevlon said: "I was curious about the random people, the "average guy". Believe me, they don't have a hidden guildbank with 100K."

Gevlon, I don't believe you. Show me the evidence for this statement.

Anonymous said...

For those who bashing addon for accuracy:

It just grabs info from statistic tab of achievement frame, it DOESN'T have anything to do with actual numbers.

Have you people even tried to read description first?

Lovestoshop said...

"What can we say from this? Not much except the obvious: the average player is around the epic flying mount range. Some made it, some did not. It's quite surprising that half of the people don't even have epic flyer, I considered this a kind of baseline. Well it seems if you have it you are already in the top 50%"

I dont have this adon but my main Hunter got the epic Flyer in August 08. This system was implimented in patch 3.0.2 which came out in Oct 08. So unless you know when the character started you comments about having or not having an epic flyer are way off the mark I am afraid.

Keeva said...

Note: I'm fully aware that most AH-pros use low level alts and guild bank(s). However I didn't want to count the goldcapped goblins of the server. I was curious about the random people, the "average guy". Believe me, they don't have a hidden guildbank with 100K.

My question would be - how do you know that you're looking at an "average guy" holding ~5k gold, and not a goblin whose personal guild bank has 150k stashed away?

:)

Dechion said...

Along with several other commenters I tend to keep most of my cash in my personal guildbank, only carrying perhaps 2-3 hundred at a time.

I do this both because of lack of auction houses in Dalaran and because my kids are in my bank guild.

It gives them access to a little cash as needed, and I cover their training/repairs.

I suppose if you quereyed that banker it would show 15-20K, since thats the most I ever handled at one time. The bank has a good bit more however.

Tsær said...

By the way:

If you have had your epic flyer (like i have on my alt) since before wotlk, and before achievements, it won´t show you that you ever owned 5k. So basically, it doesnt work to determine wether someone has epic flying or not.

Carra said...

Never having more then 700g as a lvl 80? Ouch. I'd consider anyone who has to go grind to buy an epic mount poor.

I can see some use in that addon for hackers. Scan people in the city and find you some rich fellas to hck their accounts... Exactly the reason why they removed it on the achievement pages.

Anonymous said...

In the most recent patch the statistics seem to have been reset (well at least at my European server). Instead of showing how much a player had ever acquired at once since October last year it would show the amount of cash a player had since the patch. The addon got a lot more accurate about how much the person has right now, but his real wealth would be hidden.

I noticed this when I saw people on Choppers with only 70g ever owned at a time and other odd amounts. After checking my main's gold owned at a time (I set it to 66.666g66s66c some time ago for funsies for people that actually use this addon :P) I noticed it had also dropped to the amount I had in my hand at that time. I don't know for sure about other servers, but at least on mine the amount was reset for everybody.

Ps. this info is actually visible in your statistics window or when you select "compare achievements" when you have another player targetted, example:
http://zero.isimba.org/images/mostgoldowned.png

Lovestoshop said...

I had a spare 10 mins over my lunch break so checked out 3 of the 4 people in money terms.
I would say that all of them are Alts. Of the 3 I looked at, 2 had bought 7 bank slots approx 1 year ago yet only made Level 80 in the last 3 weeks.

Maybe there a few more sensible people than you think?. :-)

Maus said...

Anonymous Said: "What exactly is the point of keeping your gold in a guild bank or a bank alt? I mean its not like you could get mugged on a dark backalley of Stormwind or lose the gold somehow.
Unless of course you have issues with impulse-purchases... In which case I doubt you could manage to save up large sums of gold anyway."

Once a week I move all but a set amount of money from my alts to the guild bank. At the end of the week, I can tell at a glance how much each brought in.

Anonymous said...

sorry for beeing offtopic...but i wonder have anyone experienced something like beeing blacklabeld as a trader ?........since a couple of days i am not able to buy any materials for my products like i used to do since my competitioners keep selling their stuff, maybe i am just paranoid but it seems like someone spread something about my bankalt...i usually have no problems finding people who sell me raw mats...

anyone got experience with that ?

Gnome of Zurich said...

I don't know gevlon, I think a *lot* of characters use a bank alt, because it's so much easier than collecting and selling stuff on your main.

Of course, the average person doesn't have a bank alt with a captured guild with 100k in it, but they may well have a bank alt, and that bank alt may well have much of their money.

If you queried either of my mains, you would probably get 5-6k for my druid and around 2k for my mage (who bought epic flight before 3.0 and achievements) because there's no reason to carry more than a few thousand gold on a played character when you have a bank alt. When they drop low (from buying stuff or repairs), I just send them a thousand from Gnomeozurich. I'm not gold capped as I typically stop putting time into profs and trading when I get over 100kish, so there's no reason to put tons of money on anybody but my trader.

SiderisAnon said...

I believe bank alts are actually very common. Of the four people I know in real life who play regularly, three have bank alts that they use. (The fourth is very casual and doesn't care about money.)

It is just so much easier to park a character at an auction house than to worry about doing all of that on a main character -- plus all the problems with juggling inventory if you're selling a lot of stuff. It's also common to want more storage space. (Though I think a lot of people store stuff they would be better off auctioning off.)

Honestly, I think you'd get a better average if you took the Dalaran sampling and then took samplings of the low level alts around the auction house in the major cities. I'd bet that a number of the level 10'ish characters would show up with quite a bit more money. (I've seen repeatedly that any character under level 10 won't be restored, so that's a level many bank alts are raised to in my experience.)

Dahkeus said...

Ok, gotta address a quite from a poster here:

liene of Kel Tiras said "People are broke and living raid to raid because that's how their parents taught them."

You really have to understand that this is a game and not real life. People's real life spending doesn't translate directly into game.

There have been times where I've had excess gold and times where I've ran around with just enough for repair bills and consumables. It all depends on what part of the game I feel like enjoying the most.

While many people here seek out wealth, there's a point where the excess gold you save doesn't really serve much purpose unless except for a few vanity gold sinks. Just because someone doesn't have a ton of gold doesn't mean they're irresponsible. Sometimes it just means they don't need any more than what they have.

Anonymous said...

Dunno what the tooltip uses, but I've recently noticed the achievement statistic which this is supposed to reflect, does NOT show most gold ever owned, but current gold owned.

Honors Code said...

While I understand that the author doesn't particularly enjoy questing, some players find it quite enjoyable. There are enough daily quests,and random dailies that you could do quite a few each day and rarely repeat the same quest again.

Doing a (daily) quest involves actually playing my toon, using my gear, and spells, actually playing the game. I'm thrilled the author has discovered a mini game that he enjoys (the AH), but I find his attitude towards others who don't enjoy that part of the game bordering on condescending.

Anonymous said...

Ahhh, nvm, just saw Zerotorescue post about the stat reset ... which I believe to be true.

Heywood Djiblomi said...

WTB rename of this addon to:

Wait for it...

PanhandlerPro

Can pick your marks for gold begging much easier now.

Kevin Marquette said...

@Forreststump

Who do you beg for gold then? The guys near gold cap? They know how easy it is to get gold, why would they give it to you?

The person with 30-60k? They got past the 10k wall and are headed to that 100k mark. They either know how easy it is to make gold or its flowing in so fast that they may toss you some.

The perosn with 5400k gold? They were able to get an epic mount. They are either an alt or a social player. The social that prabably has the least amount of gold, will prabably be the one to give out gold.

In my case, I keep that value down when I can. And when someone begs for gold, I try to bait them into saying something stupid that I can send to this blog or I send him to farm copper ore at 12g a stack.

Anonymous said...

I wonder how much of a coincidence that the people will <5k tend to be in the same guild? (the usual suspects, owl potest, and 1 other I already forgot the name of).

Mind you, it's a horribly small sample size but... birds of a feather?

-Ty

Anonymous said...

Actaully, I think that most people have a bank alt at the very least. Everyone I talk to that struggles with money seems to still have a bank alt, so I think you do have the query all of those alts to get any kind of indication of player wealth.

However I will say that I am actaully turned up so many people with over 5k gold.

Noah said...

What is your estimation of the how many players have a AH grinding bank alt? It's probably impossible to figure this out unless there was a way to query the database of level 1-10 toons with > 1k gold. I guess

EveLeaf said...

The addon itself certainly seems to return flawed data, so I wouldn't personally rely on it for accurate information of any kind.

Especially if I was gathering said information to somehow feel superior about my own wealth status.

Recount, Gearscore, Tooltip Wealth, etc. all sound good on paper, but in practice boil down to nothing but epeen strokers.

Unknown said...

Regarding the Epic Flying - I thought I would be smart and look at the percentage from the achievement trackers. I think that they may be a little broken though - the slow fly skill is at 93.74%, and the epic flying is 93.65%. As the tracker has to track everyone, including people below level 60, I find it hard to believe that every player 60+ has epic flying, and that there are less then 7% of the population below level 60.

Anyone have a better (more accurate) Achievement site?

Links if you want to look yourself:
http://www.wow-achievements.com/Achievement.aspx?id=11
http://www.wow-achievements.com/Achievement.aspx?id=892

Anonymous said...

The achievement reflects the most gold ever held on that toon's person at any one time.

For this reason, I actually sent all my gold on a rotation through each of my toons so that they would all have 150k shown in the achievement.

But yeah, I don't usually keep much gold on my main.

Tonus said...

"My question would be - how do you know that you're looking at an "average guy" holding ~5k gold, and not a goblin whose personal guild bank has 150k stashed away?"

That's a good point. I don't think I ever had more than 14,000 gold on any single character at once in the time I've played WOW, but I've got more than 32,000 gold in the guild bank and another several thousand scattered across numerous characters.

It bears noting that a lot of players are relatively low on gold because they probably only farm for cash when they happen to need it. That's how I played for a very long time, not worrying about gold unless there was a reason for it (mostly mounts). There isn't much need for gold in the game, especially these days with gear so easy to get. That, plus the fact that it's so easy to accumulate gold, is what makes M&S who they are.

Sweetiebird said...

It's not always accurate though ;(

I had 170k on me and it reported that I've only had 150k earned where the figure is probably closer to 800k.

Markco said...

This is why I keep my money in a bank and not let anyone know how much I have! I think most possessed was like 60k or something, but there's a lot more in the bank hehe.

EveLeaf said...

Slocky,

Any chance that wow-achievements is reading *accounts* with epic flying instead of *characters* with epic flying? Because I would easily believe 93% of subscribers have at least one maxed-out toon with epic flying.

:shrug:

Argent said...

Now, I'm not at the gold cap, but across all my toons I'm about 2/3rds of the way there on a fairly competitive server. (glyphs around 3-5g, rare gems under 20g cut, etc.) However, the only way you'd be able to tell is by checking my main banker alt. Each of my other characters has enough to be "comfortably wealthy" at that level (or to make a quick purchase of a cheap epic for resale), but the remaining wealth is all in my bankers pockets.

I don't understand why some people are putting their wealth in a guild bank -- is there some hidden benefit to having it there rather than in your pocket if you happen to come across a great deal?

FWIW, "comfortably wealthy" is around 6k-10k gold for most toons, for toons below level 70, 2.5k seems to do it. If I'm not actively levelling them, they end up sitting in town doing tradeskills, which means they get a bit more gold from my banker in case I spot a nice deal. (e.g. crusader orb under 800g, titansteel under 100g)

cmill said...

I'm actually surprised that so many had over 5200g... 44% of the people you checked had more than they needed for epic flying + mount. That astounds me.


Shameless plug for my blog http://cmill-ions.blogspot.com

Anonymous said...

I personally feel naked without at least 10k on my characters. Limiting yourself to 700g on your main when you have 150k in the bank is just silly in the event you ever need to buy something in a hurry.

Ayonel said...

I should point out the self-selection bias inherent in the readers and posters on this blog. Of course you all have bank alts, as do your friends(because you told them to?). Most of the people I know don't, however. Nor do I. I can't be bothered switching characters. And most of the people I know who play don't have as much money as me.

I'm the only one who spends the kind of time needed to understand the markets and prices, and they can't be bothered. And there is nothing wrong with that. But to assume that most people have bank alts with lots of gold also presupposes installation of auctioneer, don't you think? So why do so many people pay so much for stuff on AH?

Anonymous said...

The addon is a joke. Said a mate of mine had 27k of gold, even though he had only 1500g. Switching the display option does nothing. Totally useless addon.

_ said...

I feel like the total gold acquired number can be a bit deceiving, as it's a revenue counter, not a profit counter. In business, revenue doesn't always mean profit. Take Ford vs IBM for example, Ford has 146 billion in revenue, but is currently losing money (15 billion, actually). IBM has a revenue of 103 billion (2/3 of Ford's), and has a profit of 12 billion.

Perhaps it's the same thing in wow, where people are dealing with big ticket items (large revenue, but small margins) such as epic items, epic crafts, epic plans, etc.

Let's say you have a gold pool of 20k, and then use it craft epic BS items, buy a nobles deck and flip some crusader orbs.

You've just dumped 20k into these assets, and if you sell them all at a 5% profit margin, you just made 1k, and your total gold acquired jumps by 21k. Do this for a month or so, and you've hit gold cap for gold acquired, and yet only made 8k in profit that is actually in your bag.

Granted, this is only one case, but it shows a flaw in the gold acquired system.

Tonus said...

"I don't understand why some people are putting their wealth in a guild bank"

I just like having a central location for it, because I have many characters across several accounts. I don't worry about having cash on hand for a sudden need, I can't recall the last time I wanted to make an on-the-spot purchase like that.

Anonymous said...

You must be playing on a piss-poor server. I just scanned a number of players in Dalaran. Sure, some of them had < 5000G, but the majority had between 5k-10k, with a high number of players at 10k+++.

Nuff said...

Blizzard's stats for gold are incorrect most of the time so the above addon is useless.

For example, I have a screenshot of my character at the gold cap and my statistics shows me at considerably less.

Idletime said...

They reset the Most Gold Owned sometime here recently. My characters that had goldcap previously show either their current gold amount or some amount they had on them recently.

The mod works, but I would stfu if you use this thing as Blizzard removed this aspect shortly after release. If you run around being immature and LOL@newbs and such, the code will be redone quickly and you can't see who's rich or poor. I like the mod since it calls out the bullshitters.

Anonymous said...

Glad im not in those categories.
My main (Pally tank) has 8.5k gold currently, which is about the highest she has ever got. Just from not spending anything (besides raid repairs) and doing dailies for Cooking/Jewelcrafting/rep dailies.
Keep the dialies to a minimum for the afore-mentioned grind factor.

Like all good goblins my L10 alt is the moneybags.

And just for fun i got my tailoring alt to craft NW bags. Generated 1k gold in just a few weeks - without even trying hard. Just buying cloth when its cheap (below 5g a stack)

Ellifain @ Khaz'Goroth

Keeva said...

Argent: There's no benefit, I just like putting it away in the bank, like a savings account, building up over time. I don't like it sitting in my bags. It's just a quirk, just the way I like to do things; there's no real benefit or reason other than personal preference.

Anon: It's not terribly difficult to log out, log onto my bank, and send myself 10k gold if I need it "in a hurry". Like Tonus, I don't think I have ever desperately needed 10k gold so urgently that I didn't have time to go fetch it from my bank.

As others have mentioned, having the bulk of your gold on your AH mule also makes sense, since he's the one doing all your trading. He is far more likely to need 10k gold for investing than my main is for purchases.

Ayonel: you're right that many of us here likely have banks because of the fact that we put effort into making money - but I know plenty of people who have banks primarily for hoarding/storage of materials. I actually help a friend out - he has a guild bank, but has no desire to use the AH, so he asks me to clear out his bank periodically, and dump the funds in there (something I enjoy doing, so we both win). So he's sitting on around 30k pocket money, without being a "goblin" or anything close to it. Just an example of the fact that non-goblin people do have guild banks and money stashes :)

But I also know plenty of other people who have personal guilds and are still broke (they just use it for storage). Starting your own guild is a nice cheap way to get some extra storage space, and I think that people underestimate how many personal guilds there are out there.

It's also a really great way to transfer mats from one account to another, if you have multiple accounts, rather than waiting an hour in the mail. And/or transferring mats from your Org bank alt to your Booty Bay bank alt, and vice versa, without bothering with mail. But that's just another little perk of having your own guild. That is also one of the reasons why my friend started his guild - to be able to transfer materials quickly between his two accounts.

I'm sure it's not something that every second person uses, but I think it is more common than many people assume.

exiii said...

um, these numbers are trash. It shows my main at 1447g. Now granted I usually keep all but 500-2000g on my bank toons, I did buy a chopper at one point and shelled out something like 10kg through this toon at that time for the vendor mats.

If you saw this toon in IF, you'd think I was poor as dirt from these numbers. The truth is, I can buy pretty much anything I want in the game.

I'd be willing to bet that most of the numbers you're seeing are WAY understated.

puzzlez said...

most gold ever ownt is reset if you do a faction transfer btw.
I just realized that when I checked my own toon with that add on, it only shows ~6k :>

Anonymous said...

Actually someone brought up a good point about everyone having an AH toon.

Long before I started reading this blog I had two 80's and 8 other toons on same server (3 of the other toons were 70's).

I have always had an AH toon, simply because I don't think I have ever vendored a white item before trying to AH it a few times. I'd run around on my current toon and mail my AH toon all items I get except gray ones.
(I also had a DE-toon, which would de all the greens I got, and than when I hit max level I'd have mats to enchant things, yes I sold lower-level mats).

So from leveling that way, my AH toon had 12k (that's how much he has now, I've switched servers since, without transfering any toons, so its sitting there with cash). Its not impressive considering the amounts posted here, but it's higher than any of my other toons ever had.

So yes, the mod doesn't represent how much the person actually have, but it still sounds like a fun addon.

offtopic:
I only found this blog a few weeks back by seeing it mentioned on wowhead.com. Even before this I've been making money (on my new server) with inscription, but this blog has aided me quite a bit. Keep up the good work.

Idlethumb said...

Like I said, though, the game reset the wealth information at the time Arena rating got reset. Most people have their epic flyers, it's rare when people don't. The people you are seeing have purchased their epics (more than likely) and are simply not grinding gold because it's not important to them.

Myself, I enjoy the gold aspect because you can make almost anyone dance for gold. For the vast majority, it doesn't mean anything to them.

Unknown said...

It would seem the achievment for most gold ever owned got reset for some players about a month ago or something(im one of those players). This would also explain epic flyer without 5k or w/e most gold ever owned.

Anonymous said...

I am seeing a negative number for total gold acquired. LOL.

I am losing money!

GoblinVernichtung said...

There is a bug with the "Most Gold ever owned" statistic... i have my epic flier, but it says my MGEO is 3.3kg, so the data that this article is derived from is unreliable