The Pug update:
No, I'm not out of my mind to try to convince Method, Paragon, Ensidia or For the Horde to join our guild. Not even to transfer to our server. However I have an offer that can provide them (or other serious competitor) what they want, the precious World First kills.
The idea came when I read this Hungarian interview with a Hungarian member of Method, Tntmaxy. Let me translate the important part: "If I remember correctly, the first raid invite was in early afternoon on Tuesday, and our first kill happened at 16:35, Omnotron Defense System, which was a world first bosskill. We had a 30 hours session without stop. I think we had bad tactics at start, I'd prefer 1-2 more hours farming 5-mans for some gear, since our progress stopped after the first boss in lack of hear. We were practically in full greens, with 1-2 333/346 blues".
Let me make a little list what starter gear could be crafted for a restoration shaman: (obviously you can wowhead for other classes)
Here comes The PuG, a guild with lot of AH-goblins. We are not HC raiders who would never consider spending precious time to craft for gold, or even worse farm for gold. On the other hand we are neither M&S who have nothing to offer. So, all a topguild need is one guild businessman (they can recruit one, or someone's girl/boyfriend can take the job). This businessman transfers chars with lot of gold and items to us, and sell it here to make gold. A topguild can easily farm BoE epics in masses, along with maelstorm crystals. So the businessman can make millions of gold selling these. Then, simply on the realm forums he places his orders before expansions and content patches, declaring what items he wants and how much he pays for them on the first, second, third day (WTB Chimera's eye, 3K on dec 7, 2K 8-10, 1K 11-15 after). When the patch arrives, he is online on Agamaggan standing in Stormwind, making the trades. When the coffers are full with goodies, he transfers home, distributing them among the raiders.
Seeing the realm forum orders, we can design the crafting paths, make farming contracts and so on, so on the first day the guild businessman can return with several items, and on the second-third day he could transfer lots, practically allowing all the raiders of the top guild to have 2-3 346 blues, 1-2 epics (if chaos orbs were not bugged) and PvP blues to every other slot, top consumables, lot of gems, chimera's eyes, enchants (except maelstrom) on Dec 9. That would definitely make difference.
In the comments he told me that the crafted and farmed everything for themselves via alts, spending their own time. Also, despite they were mostly JC-s, they couldn't instantly use the self-gem as they must craft gems for the guild. This is a huge waste of time I believe, as all these stuff can be made by external contractors for mutual benefit.
Please note that making contracts is essential, as crafting top level items are very expensive at start, and there is no demand for these items outside the bleeding edge raiding. So no one in his right mind would spend his time (= money) on crafting blue quality gems on day 1 (material cost was about 800G) unless he has a contract telling him that X will buy from him Y quantity for Z profit.
While the next content patch will be lvl 85, so consumables will be OK, but I'm sure there will be lot of craftables. Please look at this link. It is the Crusader Orb recipe list. They became available when ToC came out. While the recipes and the orbs were coming from the raid itself, there are many rare materials listed next to them, which were not readily available in the AH. The cloths and the titansteel had CD so they couldn't be farmed. I'm sure that 4.1 will have such craftables that allow cooperation.
Obviously, crafting will be much less interesting as every topguild will be in full HC-gear, and even if the new craftables will be higher ilvl, the difference will be much smaller than "leveling green vs 346 blue". However the next expansion will bring another gear reset. I'm sure that at 5.0 the World first guild will be the one with the best contracts with AH-goblins in and out of server.
No, I'm not out of my mind to try to convince Method, Paragon, Ensidia or For the Horde to join our guild. Not even to transfer to our server. However I have an offer that can provide them (or other serious competitor) what they want, the precious World First kills.
The idea came when I read this Hungarian interview with a Hungarian member of Method, Tntmaxy. Let me translate the important part: "If I remember correctly, the first raid invite was in early afternoon on Tuesday, and our first kill happened at 16:35, Omnotron Defense System, which was a world first bosskill. We had a 30 hours session without stop. I think we had bad tactics at start, I'd prefer 1-2 more hours farming 5-mans for some gear, since our progress stopped after the first boss in lack of hear. We were practically in full greens, with 1-2 333/346 blues".
Let me make a little list what starter gear could be crafted for a restoration shaman: (obviously you can wowhead for other classes)
- Elementium Stormshield (359 epic shield), 1 orb, 3 truegolds, 3 hardened elementium.
- Stormleather stash (359 epic belt), 2 orbs, 50 volatiles, 3 pristine hide, 10 blackened dragonscale
- Twilight scale chestguard (359 epic chest), 3 orbs, 50 volatiles, 3 pristine hide, 15 backened dragonscale
- Tattoed eyeball (346 blue relic), 12 inferno ink, 40 volatiles
- Chimera's eye: jewelcrafters with 500 skill can use it to make self-only gems with 67 stats (27 higher than blue quality gems), the recipe needs 2 tokens, so the raider can get it on the second day, and instantly gain 3 self-gems, and readily more whenever he replaces his gear.
- 339 PvP items: they have resilience, but definitely better than ilvl 310 greens, and have lot of stamina, helping surviving avoidable damage on the first tries. They don't need orbs, just vendor mats.
- Enchantment scrolls, blue quality gems, flasks, food, feasts and such consumables.
Here comes The PuG, a guild with lot of AH-goblins. We are not HC raiders who would never consider spending precious time to craft for gold, or even worse farm for gold. On the other hand we are neither M&S who have nothing to offer. So, all a topguild need is one guild businessman (they can recruit one, or someone's girl/boyfriend can take the job). This businessman transfers chars with lot of gold and items to us, and sell it here to make gold. A topguild can easily farm BoE epics in masses, along with maelstorm crystals. So the businessman can make millions of gold selling these. Then, simply on the realm forums he places his orders before expansions and content patches, declaring what items he wants and how much he pays for them on the first, second, third day (WTB Chimera's eye, 3K on dec 7, 2K 8-10, 1K 11-15 after). When the patch arrives, he is online on Agamaggan standing in Stormwind, making the trades. When the coffers are full with goodies, he transfers home, distributing them among the raiders.
Seeing the realm forum orders, we can design the crafting paths, make farming contracts and so on, so on the first day the guild businessman can return with several items, and on the second-third day he could transfer lots, practically allowing all the raiders of the top guild to have 2-3 346 blues, 1-2 epics (if chaos orbs were not bugged) and PvP blues to every other slot, top consumables, lot of gems, chimera's eyes, enchants (except maelstrom) on Dec 9. That would definitely make difference.
In the comments he told me that the crafted and farmed everything for themselves via alts, spending their own time. Also, despite they were mostly JC-s, they couldn't instantly use the self-gem as they must craft gems for the guild. This is a huge waste of time I believe, as all these stuff can be made by external contractors for mutual benefit.
Please note that making contracts is essential, as crafting top level items are very expensive at start, and there is no demand for these items outside the bleeding edge raiding. So no one in his right mind would spend his time (= money) on crafting blue quality gems on day 1 (material cost was about 800G) unless he has a contract telling him that X will buy from him Y quantity for Z profit.
While the next content patch will be lvl 85, so consumables will be OK, but I'm sure there will be lot of craftables. Please look at this link. It is the Crusader Orb recipe list. They became available when ToC came out. While the recipes and the orbs were coming from the raid itself, there are many rare materials listed next to them, which were not readily available in the AH. The cloths and the titansteel had CD so they couldn't be farmed. I'm sure that 4.1 will have such craftables that allow cooperation.
Obviously, crafting will be much less interesting as every topguild will be in full HC-gear, and even if the new craftables will be higher ilvl, the difference will be much smaller than "leveling green vs 346 blue". However the next expansion will bring another gear reset. I'm sure that at 5.0 the World first guild will be the one with the best contracts with AH-goblins in and out of server.
14 comments:
Well, you said it yourself, the gear difference between 4.1 and 4.0 will be a lot less than ilevel 316 greens vs. ilevel 359 epics. Likewise over the 4+ months of the expansion, raiding guilds will have used their own cooldowns on Truegold et al that they won't need to spend $50 for a double server transfer.
There's exactly one point in time that this is a viable strategy, and that's in the first two weeks of an expansion.
You would not be able to craft gems on the first day of the expansion, no matter the amount of money they would throw at you. Hell, they could maybe craft epic self-gems on the second day, even with someone else's Chimera Eye.
The sole provider of marks for recipes is the JC daily, which is...well, daily.
However, major content patch inside the expansion, maybe. However, you'll still need the contractor to actually have the recipe. Ulduar recipes were BoP, meaning the contractor would have to go raid and kill the bosses first.
Same for ICC. The Primordial Saronites, were bought with badgers that you couldn't get outside daily HC and raiding.
Gevlon: "They became available when ToC came out. While the recipes and the orbs were coming from the raid itself, there are many rare materials listed next to them, which were not readily available in the AH."
By definition, any production of the crafted items cannot contribute to a world first kill. The primary supply restriction is on the orbs, not the other farmable rare materials.
(Btw, somewhat disappointed that you didn't post my last message. It contained a lot of comments that Justisraiser and Andru also raised subsequently.)
@Squishalot: orbs were farmable from normal ToC, while HC ToC was the "real game". I don't think anyone care who killed Magmaw normal first. Nefarion, Alakir, Cho'gall HC mattered.
I can't believe one second that top raiding guild don't buy massive amount of gold via goldsellers and buy everything they need on the AH whatever the price without the needs of a gobelin or farmer.
Anyway I doubt they can admit that.
@Georgette: They are under constant GM observation, remember when Ensidia was caught instantly with saronite bombs. Also, goldbuying doesn't help. On Dec 7-10 there were no blue quality gems, inscription offhands or any other stuff for ANY price on the AH.
They need to make contracts to make sure that someone crafts these things instantly (that involves massive farming and spending lot of gold leveling profession)
@Gevlon
There were blue gems on AH on December 8. At least on Aszune horde AH. I know, because I put them there... undercutting those that were before me.
They sold for around 300g uncut.
I was about to point out a flaw in your plan, namely that character transfers have a long cooldown, but it turns out I was wrong, and that that was reduced to three days a long time ago, so there's nothing gamewise preventing this from working.
I'm not entirely sure what you're suggesting, though. Is it that top guild should cooperate with businessmen when buying crafted stuff and materials? If so, that's reasonable, and I know at least one guild on my server that is doing just that.
If you're suggesting that they should do exactly that, but transfer between servers to do it with your guild for the added bonus of having a market of people with lots of gold, then that's a tougher sell. They need to factor in $50 or whatever the price is for two transfers in the costs of what they buy from you, which would, if you say you could have bought gold for that instead, probably increase the price too far for it to be competetive with even the AH on their home server, so this would only be useful to a guild whose AH does not contain sufficient quantities of what they need.
Given that 'the toppest' guilds usually reside on servers being full partially because of their reputation, I sort of doubt you'd find a market for this - you'd want a guild competing heavily for world firsts, held back primarily because of a small amount of materials in their AH. I can't think of any guilds that fit, but I might be wrong.
What should a hc guild sell at the dawn of an addon or content patch on Agamaggan-EU to make profit? BoEs are worthless at that time.
Materials are cheaper on Agamaggan-EU than on most of the crowded servers.
And who is going to craft it? Anyone of us Goblins? When anyone wants the new shiny thingies and prices brak through the sky?
They would come in and get ripped of their last copper in seconds. They couldn't even compare values since their servers are totally unbalanced in relation to Agamaggan-EU.
And a small add: ToC reciepts were not available on the first day since they dropped from bosses. And I doubt you could make up a buisness based on the first week boss loot. It took me 12 runs to pick up all BS reciepts. (2009-08-04 added "A Tribute to Immortality" last TogC AV done by Ensidia 2009-11-01 so they needed 14 weeks)
Anyway when I look up to the alternative farming HCs getting 1-2 346 pieces per hour in comparsion to paying 40 euros + paying 3-5k per 346 and 30-50k / epic (entering the reputation into this would make the transfer quite hilarous)... ...not counting up the time to resell on AH and searchin for crafters (yes I know only one person but time is wasted in relation to worldfirst). And they would have done a heroic in 30-40 minutes as an hc guild.
I have never seen anyone in trade say "Be my farmer, earn a decent/steady income. I have the most farmers in the realm working for me! I'm the biggest, and am always reinvesting my profit into my business."
It's the old "Rich people don't use their profit to hire new people and grow, they merely horde their wealth. If anything, they lay off more people to maximise cost savings."
Nice plan, but it is a fantasy. It will never, ever happen. Contracting other players to farm for you is a grotesquely minor occurence in all of WoW. Players will not, WILL NOT reinvest their profit to grow their business. They will simply read websites to find tips on how to scale back their operations, make it smaller, and find ways to mazimize profits without relying on anyone else. The Goblin Crafter hates... HATES the farmer he pays for mats, and is always looking for excuses to dump them.
Not too pertinent to the article, but the "color" of an item has no affect anymore. There used to be a multiplier based on the rarity of an item, but if you look at, say, 318 blues versus a green of similar item level, the stats are exactly the same.
The increase in stats is purely determined by item level in cataclysm.
@ 11:25 Anon
"Hey, I'm a farmer and not a goblin and don't get the market! I totally get how they think and stuff."
The guild with world-first aspirations might have millions of gold, but they're still limited by the 50k transfer limit. Now, in the third week of Cataclysm, I had a random BoE drop for me, and it sold for 30k in only a few hours with no effort on my part at all. If someone was wanting me to bust my ass to get to the point where I'm crafting 346s-359s specifically for him in the first few days of the expansion so he can get world firsts, then he is going to pay. A lot. Maybe 100k per epic. Maybe 200k. So we're looking at dozens and dozens of server transfers to move the money to outfit an entire guild. Which opens up all sorts of ways for the system to break down. The gold doesn't arrive, or the gold arrives but there are no leatherworkers, or what have you.
An interesting idea, but I think the execution would be far more complex and expensive than you are depicting. It would be fun to watch someone try it, but I doubt all involved (if anyone) would be very satisfied with the end results.
Speaking of the PuG, some friends and I are trying to form a similar guild on a EU server, Chants Eternels (French). Do you have any tips on how to recruit like minded players ?
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