Weekly report

Since last week the gold in my backpack increased by 23.5K. 18.5 came from selling my old inventory, I'm almost done.

So the net income is 5K + 5K in the guildbank. Much better than last week.

The income from the glyphs was 13K, with 3K ink cost. 10K/week as I like it. Besides abusing the most messed up tradeskill, I sold some mongoose enchants. There are around 4.5K glyphs in the AH, 1.5K are mine.

That's all. I'm playing surprisingly low. I craft my glyphs, log in 20 mins before the raid, log out. The rest of the time I play with my girlfriend on other projects and other games.

BTW she has 3.6K without help, high level toon. She only does AH arbitrage, with about 1 hour/week, 1.5K/hour. You can do that too! Good luck making money!

PS: I noticed that I don't post direct tips lately. However until no one bothers to take my glyph business, most probably no one will bother to take yours.

Casuals and "casuals"

According to Webster, the word casual means something "without plan" or "Occurring or appearing or singled out by chance". In gaming it was originally (and officially still) used for players who don't plan their gaming sessions, play when they feel like.

WoW is a casual friendly game, as the world is persistent, you don't miss out on anything if you don't login, and also the content (quests, monsters, dungeons, battlegrounds) are available anytime you log in.

It's neither "wrong", nor "harmful to the community" to be casual. If someone logs in only at the weekend to level his main from 77.1 to 77.3, he harms no one. If he puts the herbs he picked during this insane XP-marathon, he harms no one but himself with the ridiculous pricing. No harm done, easy AH targets and lot of $15 for the development of the game we play much more than them. We should love casuals.

We don't. The reason is a politically correct term.
"politically correct term" is a politically correct term for "lie".
The word "casual" nowadays does not mean casual.
The word "casual" means "someone who plays a lot but suck in it terribly".

The reason for such lies is emotional self-image defense. Except for a few of us, we are not excellent in this game or in anything else. Most of us are not bad either. Most of my commeters have killed this or that in Ulduar (or at least claim so). Most of the bloggers killed lot of things in Ulduar. It's not a small thing. According to wowprogress, only 25% of the players have killed XT-002. If you did, you are in the top quarter.

However being in the top quarter is not good enough for most people. They want to be in the very top. Too bad that they are not good enough for that. I am not good enough for that. Last raid I was benched because the guild was trying on XT-hardmode and I have no DPS spec and gear to kill the heart in time. I'm fine with that. Most people are not.

So they set up the lie that "gaming success depends mostly on gaming time". By this lie, me, with only 2/4 keepers is not worse than those who killed Yogg, just have "less time".

It's a lie. I did not killed Hodir because I got frozen, and not because I lack free time.

The most negative effect of self-image defending lies is that they affect the way we see other things than ourselves. From the lie "I did not have Mimiron hard mode because I can't play that much" comes the lie "those who can't get out of the fire and do less damage than the tank, have even less time than me".

This lie is the reason why the M&S gets support. To acknowledge "M&S is lazier/dumber than me" one has to also acknowledge "I'm lazier/dumber than the guys who killed Yogg". For me, who believes in numbers it's not hard to do. I look at the charts and say, "hey, 85% is behind me and only 15% before me, so I'm fine". For a social person who compares himself to (a mostly imaginary) peer group it does not work. He sees a guy in Dalaran with ilvl 239 stuff, and feels bad. The idea that "he plays better than me" in unbearable. So comes the lie "he plays unhealthy more than me".

By this lie, the "casual" is called to existance. The social helps him and does not call him M&S, because he wants the "more HC" to help him and not call him M&S. The circle is now complete, no one is responsible for his actions, all results are function of "play time", which is out of our control.

Of course the reality is a stubborn thing, so slowly the "casuals" (and via that, unfortunately the real casuals and beginners) are viewed as "useless scum who make PuGs terrible". The casual vs HC opposition is formed to ravage the forums, the trade and general chats.

The solution is always in numbers. They are unbiased and free from all ape subroutines. I killed more things in Ulduar than 85% of the players and less than 15%. That's a fact. I got 1 flame wave on my last ten Sarth visits (that was long ago). I've never blown off others as light or gravity bomb. I got frozen 3 times out of 8 tries on Hodir hard. These are numbers, facts, measuring my performance.

There will always be people who do things better than me. Not "have more time", or "luckier", or "had chance" or such nonsense. Better. And there will always be people who are worse than me.

As long as the first group is much smaller than the second, I'm fine. From my ability to call those who are better "better", comes my ability to call the M&S "M&S".

Worst tradeskill design

During the years of development, WoW improved in several ways. The "hard work" moneymaking was shifted from mindless grinding to daily quests. The kill 10 wolves was changed to phased "ride on storm giant" quests. The "you need the prot warriors of half of the world to beat the 4 horsemen" was changed to "you have one hour/week to kill Algalon".

Yet it's the latest tradeskill, inscription that is obviously the most messed up. Let me explain why: tradeskills are mostly for making money. They give some special bonuses, but they are all equalized (or supposed to be), so raiding does not really force you to have one and only one tradeskill. So let's see how can you make money with various tradeskills.

At first let's clarify that while all tradeskills are able to craft items of lower levels, - beside twinks - no one buy them. Even a braindead can level to 80 in greens. Only top level players pay gold to buy crafted items.

Blacksmiths, tailors, leatherworkers, engineers craft epic items. They are expensive, but pretty good. Some of them are BiS, others are "good starter items" and more or less must have to get into any decent guild. There are not many types of these items, for example blacksmithing crafts 21 epics. You check the AH price, check the material price, check competition and craft one. If it sells, you craft another. Simple.

Alchemy, enchanting and JC are more focused on "accessories". While the previous tradeskills also had some enchanments like belt buckles, these three are focused on these. However the number of gems, enchants and flasks are limited. For alchemy, you sell 6 flasks and 5 potions. For gems there are SP, AP, Stam, +hit gems and 5 types of meta. For enchants, there are 6 slots for tanks, healers, spell DPS, melee DPS, max 24 enchant, actually rather 14-16.

Inscription has 341 type of glyphs. Each and every glyph can be used by max level characters. OK, most of them are not used by skilled players, but unlike in gear, there is no tool for the morons to identify which is better. Ilvl 226 is better than ilvl 200, purple is better than blue, and hopefully even a moron can find out that a +agi epic is not the best for a mage. For glyphs there is no help, so they buy lot of types.

This means that anyone who wants to make money from glyphs must sell lot of different kind of glyphs. There is market for 150 runed scarlet ruby/week. Maybe not for you, but someone can sell that amount. No one can sell 150 glyph of nourish or glyph of rejuvenation. Why? At first becaue only restodruids buy it, while scarlet ruby is good for all healers and spell DPS. Secondly, because there are still morons who buy glyph of innervate and such. A businessmen can't teach his customers. I can't tell the idiot to get a decent glyph. If I want his money, I must supply what he demands.

So here I am, having two alts with 4 32 slot inscription bags full of glyphs. That's about 250 different kind of glyphs. I post 4-8 of each type (totaling 1500+ individual glyphs) every 2 days.

I use two alts, 5 addons, mass cancel macro, 800G worth of materials every two days. That get me my 10000+/week income. It's not much of human work, less than 1 hour of time every two days. But it needs such an infrastructure, such a research and focus that is unlikely in everyone who focuses on other game aspects and want to get some gold in 10 mins.

If you are a BS, you can make gold in 10 mins. You check the titansteel weapons in the AH and if you see one above material prices +200G or missing, you craft it and list it. The money will be in your mailbox, or the item returned to be listed again a bit lower.

On the other hand if you want to make money from glyphs, you have to do it as I do, or don't do it at all. If you just craft some random glyph, you most probably sell nothing. Glyph prices shift very fast, driven by random sellers, random buyers and the ever changing "flavor of the month".

On the top of that, even the materials for glyphs are inscribe-made and random, so the "LF for BS for [titansteel destroyer] have mats" is inconvenient for glyph-buyers, they must buy from the AH.

I start to realize that when I say "go sell glyphs", it's like Kungen saying "farm Mimiron hard mode". Trivial for someone who has the skills and the infrastructure, impossible for others.

I was rich before the inscription. I had like 50K, collected by a years' careful AH and furgal spending. After inscription I started to make 10K/week, reaching gold cap in 4 months.

On the one hand I could say I'm using a loophole in the system, an unneccessary complication that is too much for 99% of the players (some doesn't care that much, others couldn't understand). On the other hand in the real world every really big business is like this. Finding something that is there, but unconquerable (or even undetectable) for the others and take it.

Blizzard managed to create something that is so HC, both for creation and buyer selection that it would fit into the old Naxx40 ages and not WotLK. Imagine a gem saying "increase the effect of next Regrowth spell if a Regrowth is active on target"! Of course I'm not complaining, I'm just saying that making all other profession easy-mode and one to uber-HC makes a certain unbalance: you either do this, or you'll have hard time making lot of money. Of course you can make enough, but if you want "a lot", inscription is must be.

I don't know how could the genie be pushed back to the bottle. I guess it would be quite an uproar if the whole profession is deleted. Maybe a simplifying where every glyph does "+10% damage/healing to its corresponding spell" is in order. I don't know.

One thing is sure: this thing is messed up. "Messed up" means "profit" in goblin language.

Manager's heart

Today's post is really essential. You surely heard about the cardiovascular diseases of middle aged men. Google drops over half million results for these words.

It's the No1 death cause in the USA (not just for middle aged men, but all).

Of course this is not the place for some medical stuff, especially since I'm no expert. I could copy&paste or link some texts but there is no point, you can find the same or better if you want. I'd like to focus on one cause that leads to cardiovascular diseases, a cause that's common among businessmen: manager stress. Surprisingly it's not stranger to gamers too, and for the very same reason.

I've never understood this "stress-thing" until I had a personal experience recently. The things I've learned first-handed helped me understand the problem and might help you too.

The stress is the activation of the "fight-or-flight" subroutines of our brain. These are even more ancient than the social "ape-subroutines" as simpler animals have it too. It prepares the body for fighting (by fangs and teeth) or running away (literally).

This is completely inadequate as the stress in our life is not biological. The threat is not something we can beat with our fists or run away on our legs. The threat is in our career or personal relationship. Actually we should live in the peace of Buddha since our life and health is more secure than any time before in history. But we can't.

I did not know such stress before as I've chosen my real world workplace smartly/luckily. I'm a development engineer with absolutely zero management job. I don't have to herd cats, I only have to herd fluids and fluids are quite reliable. They never-ever behave differently than chemistry/physics laws tell them.

While several people blame WoW for college dropouts and "addiction", I found them stupid as the WoW-world is persistent. I cannot miss anything I don't want to. Every monster, quest and item will be just as available tomorrow as today. I have no bills to pay, no jobs to do in time. I can play completely in my own pace therefore without any stress. I never understood people who played like it was a second job, grinding for hours or leveling to 80 in a day or raiding 12 hours a day. I saw no point.

Same thing about real job. I make enough money not only to pay my bills but also to have an increasing deposit in the bank. I could not imagine why my managers are always in a stress. They make more than me. Much more. So if I'm fine, they should be perfectly happy. They are not.

The event that made me understand stress was a recent gaming issue in the other game I play, Ikariam. For some unforeseen reason I couldn't log in to manage my empire. I couldn't focus on anything else, upsetting my girlfriend. I couldn't sleep, I woke up like 6 times the last night, upsetting her even more. Finished the night on the couch. (note: upsetting all the "friendly helpfull ppl" is one thing, upsetting my GF is quite different) I could only think of what can happen to my cities. Stupid isn't it?

Of course I made decisive action to solve the problem: I've completely abandoned that game.

However the question remains: how could this happen. After all that's just a stupid game with no real world consequences. But then it hit me: does the manager's problems have real world consequences? The first answer is obviously yes: they could lose their job and even destroy a company.

However these things are not real. I mean it's not something that directly affects you. The end of the civil war in Sri-Lanka does happened but it does not affects you. It's not real in the sense that if it would be just a media hack, your life would be no different.

But losing my job makes my life different! - you say. Well, I haven't heard of starving unemployed in the USA, Europe or Japan. If I'd lose my job, I could find another and in the meantime I could live on savings for two years. And there is also welfare (how much I hate it). Does losing my job would really affect me? Is is a life-threatening thing?

Our brain considers everything we focus on "real". While I spent more time in WoW than Ikariam, I was more focused on the latter as it was a PvP game. I could lose resources I already "had", unlike in WoW. If I log in WoW a week later, my buffs would have the same time remaining as they had last time. In Ikariam, my army could be destroyed, my resources stolen, my people deserted. It felt important to manage my cities, although it was absolutely not.

Managers focus on their job, try to defeat competitors, boost statistics, be the "worker of the year", get a raise, be a partner and so on. They consider it crucial, while it's just as important as my non-existent cities in a video game.

I think the solution is setting goals and evaluating every step's utility towards this goal.
- Why do I work?
- To get money to pay the bills.
- Are my bills paid?
- Yes.
- Do I have savings for a couple months if something would go wrong?
- I have savings for years.
- Then I'm fine.

- But you could get more if you'd do one more project! - says the little devil on my shoulder.
Bad answer 1: - Yes, let's go for it, after all, I can do a couple hours overtime!
Bad answer 2: - No, I can't because I couldn't bear it. (creating negative feelings of inferiority and fear from being fired)
Good answer: - Yes I could, but I don't want to. My bills are paid. I'm fine.

Typical bad, self-stressing thinking is what I find in comments on this blog, saying that: "I need this or that alt or this or that grind to prepare for some disaster like my class becomes totally unplayable". You can always make up some impending disaster, forcing you to work hard to avoid it. Too bad that the utility of your action cannot be evaluated as you have no metrics. So no matter how much you do, you still feel you didn't do enough.

"I need 100G/week for repairs" have metrics. If you made 20G today, you're fine, if you made 10, you are not. However "I need a raid-ready alt" has no metrics as you cannot quantify raid-readiness. No matter how much gear you get you still could get more.

You can do two things to eliminate the stress of such "disasters".

• Prove to yourself that they are not real. It's quite unlikely that Blizzard will ever make a class unplayeable. And if they would, you could still start an alt then, so there is no disaster here, just annoyance.
• Find an expert who quantifies the disaster for you. For example if you afraid that your home burn down, you can turn to an insurance agent, who professionally (over)estimate the risk and give you a contract. If you pay $X every month (X: quantity), they insure your home, paying for fire losses. As long as you pay X, you are fine.

Be fine!


Finally: why middle-aged men are most affected by stress disease? Because the traditional thinking expect them to be the head of their family, support wife, kids, parents, workplace, community, country, everything! That's way too much for most of them. It's not for me, because I'd never even try to do it. I can support myself, and strongly believe that the others can do it too, so I don't have to worry about them. Of course to do so, I have to accept that I'm not so special, I'm not an alpha-male, a shining example of the community or a girl's dream. I'm fine with that.

I'm fine.


PS: I did not have defined purpose with playing Ikariam, so I could not measure the utility of my actions. I just got sucked into it without noticing. I have a purpose with WoW, spreading the goblinish ideas on this blog. The metrics is the visitor count of this blog. My WoW actions are measured against these. As I can recall, I play much less now than I did before bloging.

Giving terrible advices

Those who follow the economy news remember that financial advisors rated Lehman Brother papers great. Well... they were not so great.

There are lot of theories about how could all be wrong about models and heuristics.

Through my own misery I've just found the real reason: it was not their own money they played with, so they didn't really care.

I found on some blogpost a comment, on the bottom of it there was "Kimberly's last blogpost: the failed goblin". I've followed it, finding her post where she writes about trying to flip Je'tze's bell. She bought it for 4500G and attempted to sell it for 6750G.

The Bell was selling on my old server for 6000G on its heyday and in a freefall since then. On my new server it's way below 5000G. Once, when it was BiS, I researched its market and found not worth messing with. Selling it for 6750 seemed nonsense to me.

So I posted a comment, advising to sell it even for 500G loss before it fall even lower. My motivation was simple: she was nice enough to mention my blog, so I was nice in return by giving kind advice. As you might guessed: "being nice" is not a really strong drive in me. It was just enough for the effort to type in my instant thoughts.

It was way insufficient to research her server, finding its much less HC than mine, so Ulduar trinkets are much less abundant to push down the prices.

It was insufficient to even check the date of her post. Only after I sent my comment I noticed the arrows on the interface of her blog, pointing the next day's post. Actually her post was not the most recent as the automated link on the other blog told. The newer post was about selling the bell for 700 profit. (4500+700)/0.95 = 5475G. So she sold it 1475G (or 1200G if she ignored the AH cut) above the price I suggested.

That's the way to make yourself a complete clown.

Here's the catch: if I'd find her post earlier and she takes my advice, she'd not only be 1475/1200G poorer, but also ignorant about it, as selling it for 4000 makes it impossible to prove that it would ever sell for 5475. That's how most advisors never get caught. The Fitch guys were fine for years with their nonsense, until everything fell down.

What people observed and did are facts. What they think are not facts. Of course you can use their ideas. But you have to make up your own mind. It's your money, the advisors may only say "sorry" after you lost it following their word. Always think for yourself and trust no one, especially not a sociopath goblin.

BTW, I've finished answering "how could I make gold with BS?" questions by mail. I don't know. I don't know your server, I don't know your playing frequency and I don't know your skills. If I'll ever make money with BS, I'll post about it (actually, I already did). I won't make up any more advices from overall trends and mmochampion news. I don't want to end up being the Fitch of WoW.

Planning ahead

As I've mentioned, I have a little warlock, to play together with my girlfriend, "just the two of us", trying to do content that was definitely not designed to be two-manned.

Well, this little lock is not so little anymore, so I thought herbalism is maybe not the dream job for a warlock. Dropped it and started leveling enchanting, using my own old guide.

As you know the enchanters need serveral rods, crafted by blacksmiths. They are either terribly overpriced (900-2000% of material cost), or missing from the AH.

People use to buy them when they need them. First they buy a silver, then half hour later a gold and so on. They pay the ridiculous price or spam trade for a BS for 5-10 mins for each rod.

Not me! When I needed the silver rod, I've checked the AH for all rods, up to titanium. Only arcanite was near the price of its materials, bought that. Then I got materials for all other rods, and spammed trade for a BS, offering 50G tip. Found one in 5 mins, flied to Orgrimmar (I do the AH and tradeskill stuff in TB, I love that city). The BS crafted all my rods and I was set for my whole enchanter carrier.

The moral of the story is obvious: plan your road ahead and buy the things you'll need when they are cheap, or in one big batch, getting discount. Some tips:

• If you are lvl 75-79 and plan to raid but have no guild who will boost you in greens, start buying epics or materials for epics.
• If you are leveling a tradeskill, seek for higher level materials too. It's quite annoying to need 1 more stack of wool cloth for tailoring 150 and the AH is empty.
• If you are leveling a twink, start collecting BoE blues and enchanting scrolls during the process.
• While you're leveling quest for the factions that you'll need the reputation later. If you want Argent Crusade rep for example, go to Zul Drak at lvl 75, skip Grizzly. If you want Horde Expedition rep, do both starting zones, Dragonblight and Grizzly, even if the quests are green.
• If you plan to have a gathering profession, level it up to the zone where you quest. DK-s use to make the great mistake to level to 80, then starting to level mining. No. Level it to 300 before you go to Outland, so you can mine there while questing.
• If the quest requires a buyable item, have it with yourself before you get the quest.

Planning ahead may need some time, but repays it greatly in time not wasted later.

About trust

You've most probably heard about the great uproar because one famous paladin blogger was found to be not what she (?) called herself.

No. I don't want to wrote about the "scandal", because I couldn't care less.

I want to write about the uproar itself. Several bloggers found it important to voice their opinion, including Matticus, the No1 healer blogger. His article had all the feelings that social people having now.

If you ever want to become rich, you have to avoid all these traps. Even the title is wrong: "disappointment for paladins". Why? Somehow her guides are less valid than yesterday? Somehow her fun stories are less fun than they were? Why should anyone care if the person(s) behind the blog were lying in other things, like her identity.

Matticus wrote "I’m actually quite impressed that someone’s been able to carry on this charade for a long time. We’re talking on the scale of years." Really, how could she pull this for years? Simple: because no one really cared. We came to the site for information or fun reads. The rest is not our business. In five years there must have been mistakes. No one bothered to catch them.

If no one cared, why is the uproar? Matticus answers that too: "Too many people these days read something and just automatically assume it’s true since the source seems authoritative." Morons, I'd call them. Other people are sources of information, but you have to evaluate the information itself. It can be false not only because the source is lying, but also because he's wrong. If you believe anything just because someone told you, you're an easy target and you'll be separated from your money.

One more thing, very typical for social people: "The thing about the blogging community here is...", well, I don't want to rain on your parade (I'm lying now), but there is no blogging community. There are individual bloggers who all write blogs, but this does not form them into a community, just like there is no "blue eyed people community". Social people imagine groups everywhere and they get attached to the ones they find likeable. That's a trap that marketing campaigns use when they build up a "community" image to a brand. You don't only drink some water with CO₂ bubbles and artificial flavor, but you are in a group, typically a happy, party-group.

You don't know the bloggers you read every day. You don't know me either. Everything you think you know comes from my writings.

You don't know the guy who live next door to you. Serial killers lived next door to someone and they did not notice him.

Scary? Not. You don't have to know me to read my blog. My statements are true or false because of themselves. My stories are funny or boring because of themselves. Still, the social people have bad feeling if they don't know someone. These mental schemes are remnants of the ages when we depended on certain people so we had to know them. "Ape subroutines" I call them.


Once with coworkers and I was taken to a "coaching". (Or not. Maybe I'm just making this up. Does it matter?) The program was aiming for "social competences". "How to handle emotions?", "How to mourn a loss?", "How to accept a new person?" and so on. Hated it.

On the last day they had a "trust-test". People were asked to stand on a large box and fall down to the concrete backside, just like on the picture (those are not us, that's just a picture I found on the net). Of course such action is lethal, unless the others catch you. So you must trust them. The coach asked for a volunteer. From the "nice, friendly, open and socially competent" people, no one stepped up. He gave another terribly annoying speech about the values of trust and asked again. No one volunteered. I did.

Obviously they did not drop me. The coach was honestly surprised. He told "I thought you were closed and detached from others. How could you trust them so much?". I told him that when no one volunteered he gave such a speech that I'd rather smash my head on the concrete than listening to one more. Everyone were laughing and he turned red.

I was lying. Of course I did not prefer death to a boring nonsense speech (especially since we got full salary for the coaching time). I deeply, truly, honestly trusted my coworkers. I trusted that they are not so stupid to go to jail for manslaughter.


TL;DR: Don't trust in people. Trust in facts, systems, maybe even ideas. And just because you meet someone often (or read him often) don't think you know him! You don't. When something comes up that does not fit into your picture, it's not his fault to disappoint you. It's your fault to have expectations from him. He owes you nothing except what law says (and even laws can be broken).

Remember the Forsaken motto: Trust no one!