I've started questing around 7 AM. By that time the guild XP reached it's daily maximum. It surprised me very much, as most people have not yet logged in. I was also surprised when I've reached maximum weekly guild rep after 3 hours. I think 3 hours/week is a very-very casual cap. It's more likely that Blizzard considers both guild level and guild rep EvE-like skill: everyone gets it as long as he logs in. Even 10-man guilds can reach maximum guild XP every day. Their purpose is simple: long-living guilds will be valuable and guild hopping will be very hard for any social who "needs" a guild mount (3500 rep/week means 12 weeks till exalted with guild).
However there is a way to bypass daily cap: by doing guild achievements. It's a simple task in a HC guild: the GM gives the order and the others do it. But how will I make my guildies do something that doesn't directly support their own ends? By the goblin way of course: gold! I pay 200G for every achievement for every people needed for their completion. At the evening, the server population became annoying (nothing kills immersion more than 10 people camping the corpse of the terrible monster who must be stopped to save the world) so it wasn't hard to find two groups doing guild achievement runs in old world dungeons and BC ones. 19 instances done, 4 people needed to get achievement, so 19*4*200 = 15.2K gold paid. By the time the achievement table is full, I'll burn all my gold.
Update: That was 15K wasted. The extra XP was removed with a hotfix after they decided that guild achievements shall not give any XP. It seems all guilds are meant to be equal, as long as they can gather 6246K guild XP / day, which is true for all guilds except banker guilds and such.
Note on the server: there is no queue, no lag, no problems. Questing is possible. It's just annoying for me to see too many other people in the zone.
This is the proper way of spending lot of gold: supporting great feats. In real life I support research, in WoW I payed a HC guild a year ago, now I'm paying my own guild to get guild achievements.
Why do I care about guild achievements? Because, despite one achievement gives little guild XP, enough can make a level difference between casual guilds and ours. That can be one more unique selling point to attract more players. The guild perks are pretty good and also the hard-working social can be frustrated that his "friends" in his current guild can't be arsed do it.
On the first day half of the members were online which means that they have their main in the guild. Actually more can be have main here as not all people could play today (nasty real life).
5 new members joined today, most probably players who wanted to join long ago but did not play until cataclysm, and 1 left because he "can't be arsed to follow rules lol".
Business was slow. In the 1.5 days since I wrote my gold report, the glyph industry provided 2700G, which is not more than it was in an average day since 4.0.1. The bag business is close to zero. I also sold several kind of random stuff I got during questing.
However there is a way to bypass daily cap: by doing guild achievements. It's a simple task in a HC guild: the GM gives the order and the others do it. But how will I make my guildies do something that doesn't directly support their own ends? By the goblin way of course: gold! I pay 200G for every achievement for every people needed for their completion. At the evening, the server population became annoying (nothing kills immersion more than 10 people camping the corpse of the terrible monster who must be stopped to save the world) so it wasn't hard to find two groups doing guild achievement runs in old world dungeons and BC ones. 19 instances done, 4 people needed to get achievement, so 19*4*200 = 15.2K gold paid. By the time the achievement table is full, I'll burn all my gold.
Update: That was 15K wasted. The extra XP was removed with a hotfix after they decided that guild achievements shall not give any XP. It seems all guilds are meant to be equal, as long as they can gather 6246K guild XP / day, which is true for all guilds except banker guilds and such.
Note on the server: there is no queue, no lag, no problems. Questing is possible. It's just annoying for me to see too many other people in the zone.
This is the proper way of spending lot of gold: supporting great feats. In real life I support research, in WoW I payed a HC guild a year ago, now I'm paying my own guild to get guild achievements.
Why do I care about guild achievements? Because, despite one achievement gives little guild XP, enough can make a level difference between casual guilds and ours. That can be one more unique selling point to attract more players. The guild perks are pretty good and also the hard-working social can be frustrated that his "friends" in his current guild can't be arsed do it.
On the first day half of the members were online which means that they have their main in the guild. Actually more can be have main here as not all people could play today (nasty real life).
5 new members joined today, most probably players who wanted to join long ago but did not play until cataclysm, and 1 left because he "can't be arsed to follow rules lol".
Business was slow. In the 1.5 days since I wrote my gold report, the glyph industry provided 2700G, which is not more than it was in an average day since 4.0.1. The bag business is close to zero. I also sold several kind of random stuff I got during questing.
21 comments:
"Even 10-man guilds can reach maximum guild XP every day."
The guild exp cap is around 6.246m per day, or around 624.6k per player in a 10-man guild. That's the equivalent of handing in 20-25 quests (and not including 'wasted' time such as levelling professions, casual PvP, exploring the world, etc), which is a decent amount of time gaming. At the very least, it's approximately 15-20 hours of focused gameplay across a guild. Certainly, it's not achievable by 'casuals'.
For what it's worth, I've found gathering professions to be the most profitable at this point in the game. Most serious players have either obtained (or can craft themselves) the necessary gear for their starting characters. However, people are so hellbent on questing and leveling to 85 (or are just idiots and didn't pick up illustrious grandmaster professions) that there are plenty of herbs and ore available for collection and sale.
I logged in about 5 hours after the server opened, and logged out a couple of hours later, with some questing done, but with a stack of Cinderbloom sold for close to 1000g.
16 slot bags business will go down. Every faction quartermaster sells 16 slot bags for 1.5g at honored status which is very easy to get. Maybe 20 slot bags will be new 16.
@squish
yes, herbs went pretty well. i'm rather surprised that ores don't go away.
is this an observation that other servers can confirm?
I'm in a 10 man raiding guild, I didn't plan to "gogogo to 85" because of the issues with questing and mob camping, however people were eager to do some instances and I got involved, it's new content and it's something that's the reason we play in this guild (running instances - dungeons, raids - together). It maybe wasn't "the fastest and most efficient" route but we had lots of fun so I think it's what counts.
We had many people who took a day off to sit in the night and what happened: we started around 1am because login server didn't let most of us in earlier. We capped the guild rep. and xp before daybreak hitting like 66% towards guild level 3, people were annoyed being "spammed" they reached limit for guild rep. this week, I don't know since I don't have these turned on in chat window.
Levelling wise, we hit 82 mostly around the morning / before noon, then some people went to quest and some continued with instances, questing was a bit faster for them, but I'm 83 from running instances and already have few nice level 316 items. Some people didn't get it that fast with questing because 1) they got stuck not sure where to go next in the zone, especially in hyjal / deepholm; 2) some had problem completing quests due to bugs or lag. None of us were really going for realm firsts but many of us are halfway towards 85 now which I feel is pretty fast pace.
We've ran the 4 instances available before 84. Sometimes we used to fill up missing spots with pugs in Stonecore and Vortex Pinnacle. And it's the only time of the year when pugs from lfg were decent, you knew they had to put effort to discover the entrances and pass lfg gear check. We had some wipes especially on first attempts in these instances but the pugs did not leave, did not complain, I feel they were these "ahead of the wave" people, mostly from advanced raiding guilds, not M&S trash.
People who just went to discover Blackrock Caverns and ran "random for XP" (which was always the same instance anyway thanks to having rest undiscovered) reported typical M&S pugs, ninja need rolling on everything, ninja pulling, whining.
I also saw which of my guildies were not scared of challenge (several were not allowed by lfg to the higher instances because of low level / gear), we just used summon stone and went through the entrance "old school way" and didn't really find those instances unbeatable because of those "low" level / gear people, the check is probably for "random pugs in random greens" anyway, and which of our guildies were too lazy and scared of "downtime" to try (excuses why they "cannot" join - not "don't want" which would be clearer). :P
@Squish
Your logic fails because you assume every 10 man guild has only 10 people.
On a side note, I'd like to see how many takers you'd get for the slaughter of 50,000 critters, for the measly price of 200g, if the guild achieve XP wasn't cancelled.
Tazar: But those bags are BoP I think? I thought Netherweave bags where mainly bought for alt characters. At level 80 you most certinly have bigger bags on your main.
"16 slot bags business will go down. Every faction quartermaster sells 16 slot bags for 1.5g at honored status which is very easy to get."
Revered, actually, and Unique (so you get 1 bag per city).
Hmm, I sold lots of overpriced 16 slot bags yesterday (all others were going for 8g, I priced mine for 15 hoping for worgen boom - and was correct). But my server is all together weird:
as I didn't have time to do much questing, I skinned some mobs for 20ish minutes (lots of looted corpses in Vashj'ir). I sold ZERO leathers. However, I sold moths, frogs, vanishing powder, dust of disappearance, refreshing spring water and ice cold milk (my favourite, 5 pieces for 33g). I don't get it.
@ Anonymous - Spin it around another way, and your logic fails because you assume that all members of a guild log on every single day for a few hours gameplay. It's all a matter of assumptions.
I had same issue with leather. I didn't skin, but I bought some of what showed up due to bugs pre-cata, and posted it high the night before. nothing sold. Not only did I miss, but it wasn't just because I was strategically undercut by a big seller while asleep -- the price was down to 1g per leather within 24 hours.
Hit 85 earlier today. My plan to level quickly and avoid the rush worked pretty well, and there was hardly any competition in the later zones.
If anyone has got to Twilight Highlands, I'd stock up on the rare reagents you can buy from vendors for stuff like Inscription.
The bag market spiked earlier when people bored with end-of-expansion content went leveling new race/class combos. I was able to sell for about 500% profit, but I held off mass production because I was expecting even higher prices for Cata launch. Looks like you and I were both wrong.
In the meantime, I gobbled up close to 100 stacks of saronite ore sold below the bar's vendor price. Nothing beats a safe investment!
The low demand for leather may be due to the mass of players who are slaughtering crabs in Vash'jir for one of the starter quests. I went there to quest with my rogue and her skinning went from 450-520 in very short order. Later I went flying around to see some of the new zones and skinned a few more kills to get to 525.
I've been ignoring the AH and money-making since I've got the gold I need and will likely make a lot more just from normal play. So I just sent the leather to my LW character and got his skill from 441-460, which also provided two or three upgrades for the rogue and a few for an alt hunter.
My rogue started Cata with around 3,030 gold. After a few hours of play, I have 3,100 gold. Even after buying the old world flight, six profession upgrades, and three green items from the AH. Quest rewards and selling junk provides ridiculous cash flow now.
I suspect the cap on guild reputation is a good thing - it provides an incentive not to guild hop. It means that in order to enjoy some of the perks the guild has unlocked, a recruit needs to invest a reasonable amount of time with the guild.
Here's a tip: On my server lesser celestial essences cost far less than one third of the value of greater celestial essences, which of course take three to produce (without requiring a profession).
Man, all this talk makes me want to play, rebuild my long abandoned JC empire, but I have too much work, can't afford the distraction for a few weeks to come. Hope you guys are having fun.
Weee, I just realised I beat Gevlon on earnings in the last few days! I raked in around 4k on glyphs in the first day after Cata hit.
To be honest, it's mostly because I didn't even try playing new zones, but stayed on my scribe and posted glyphs. Also, most of the other scribes are busy leveling, so the AH is mine, ALL MINE (insert crazy laugh).
Cata herb prices are rapidly going down, but I am not even considering getting into that yet. My main is a druid, herb/alch, and I will probably slowly level my alchemy with what I can herb myself, untill it becomes worthwhile to start buying. I'm in no hurry. This content will be here for at least two years, so where's the rush?
Regarding the AH, I'm glad to hear it isn't just me. On my server the things I expected to move quickly have been very slow (Vanilla and BC mats and cloth, bags, new ore). Obsidium's price has been steadily dropping, from 80 each down to 18, and most of it isn't selling. I think that the shattering's introducing new race/class combinations really dampened and spread out the usual expansion AH explosion.
Because it's slow, I'm also focusing on leveling up and maxing out my crafting profession so that I can profit from players wanting to gear up when they hit 85. I think that players are leveling, not crafting right now, and the demand for Cataclysm materials will grow when a host of players hit 85 with 450-460 skill in their crafting profession.
Embersilk is great on my server, too. I'll be selling it for a few weeks before I start using it for anything, based on my experiences in BC and WotLK.
I am in the planning stages of forming a US version of the PuG. If you are interested in helping make this happen, email me at rlwjr1968@gmail.com. If you just want to join, DO NOT email me YET. I am looking for a person, or two to discuss the "where" and "how exactly" part of setting the guild up.
Right now (again, thanks to Cataclysm) I am playing on a different server with my girlfriend (lvl 84 Protection Paladin), but also have a level 66 Mage I am getting into. Your reports here remind me again why I transferred to Magtheridon with my Druid earlier this year before I quit for a while.
- Hope to join in future again, "Linjii, lvl 80 Druid"
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