Greedy Goblin

Thursday, May 5, 2011

Selling the staff

As I mentioned the new legendary staff will be on sale in our guild. I'd like to discuss the specifics, which is hard as there aren't any details about the questline. However WoW doesn't give too much space to the developers, and I think every possible way were covered in previous legendary earnings.
  • Thunderfury needed 2 rare drops from two bosses, a quest item from the endboss, 10 expensive materials, and killing an extra boss.
  • Sulfuras needed sulfuron ingots (boss drop materials), other, very expensive materials, and a rare boss drop.
  • Warglaives of Azzinoth had two half, both rare endboss drops.
  • Thori'dal was a rare endboss drop.
  • Val'anyr needed 30 shards, dropped by bosses and needed to kill the endboss in hard mode.
  • Shadowmourne first needed 25 expansive materials and 2 boss drops. Then you had to farm 1000 trash kills. Then kill the 3 wing endbosses in difficult (not hardmode) ways. Finally 50 boss drop shards.
All steps were either getting expensive BoE materials, getting a boss drop, or killing some new/hard mode/special mode boss. Each and every steps can be sold. The boss drops can be auctioned, for the special boss kills raiders can be paid.

I'd like to emphasize that we won't sell the staff in a package, since "we" can't sell anything. The guild as a whole is not a body that is able to make contracts. You shall buy the individual parts from the raiders who help you get it. This system allows dynamic price changes: if the demand increases for staff parts, their prices will elevate. On the other hand if you are the only one wanting the parts, you get them for minbid, helping people starting the quests, generating competition.

Of course it allows multiple staffs being around in different completion phase in the guild. However your staff completion is your business and not ours. I won't help you get monopoly rights just to complete your staff. If you are one shard away (assuming Shadowmourne way) from completing and a guy outbids you on that shard, despite he just started the quest, the more power to him (and the more pot for us). The only way to guarantee your staff completion is being very rich, active and good player (as mistakes can get you removed from the raid).

So spellcasting goblins of the EU severs, prepare your purses as orange pixels are being sold here!

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great system Gevlon, it's dynamic enough to allow for price fluctuations and gives advantage only to the one prepared to pay the most for it. I wonder if this model will be copied by others on future GDKP runs?

KhasDylar said...

Gevlon, please check MMO-Champion, there are some datamined infos. Of course as every other datamined news, this is also not reliable, but more than nothing. There are two items, which seem to be Legen - wait for it - dary quality: Seething Cinder and Heart of Flame and two epic quest items: Branch of Nordrassil and Timeless Eye. This let's to think that we can make Dragonwrath just like we made Shadowmourne.
One more thing to note and you seem to forget: how do you want to sell these things? I'm not talking about transfers or something like this, but about boss kills. Earlier you wrote, this is a unique opportunity for HC raiders to get two legendary staffs sooner - but this is not true! Your raiders will not kill a boss earlier than they can, just because they are paid. If they would, you would have already paid them for HC raid boss kills, to increase the reputation of the guild on the realm. So if you can't even kill within, let's say, the first month the boss that drops the quest items, how do you want to sell it? I'm not just jerking, I'm really curious about this as you must had thought about that.

Sirenfal said...

You forgot the legendary staff Atiesh, Greatstaff of the Guardian from the original Naxxramas raid.

Anonymous said...

It may work 2-4 month after 4.2 release to sell the staff or certain steps of it. I just don't think that the progression of the PUG will be such to allow you to sell the staff to any guild which is going for competitive PVE as you wrote a couple of days ago.You now killed the last boss in tier 11 and competitive PVE finished month ago. From experience killing some hardmode or similar difficult encounters will be required. So most probably you will sell this later on to twinks when the instance is on farm for good guilds. Still it could bring some good money to people

Gevlon said...

@KhasDylar: I don't know when will we kill them, but still we will some day. The legendary will be good even in 4.3 and every guild is limited by lockouts. So for a competitive raid guild it would surely pay to transfer an alt. When he gets the staff, he can transfer back and replace the main in the raids.

Bobbins said...

By dividing the resources/drops between competing parties don't you run the risk of not being able to complete the staff?

Are you going to compete for the staff?

Anonymous said...

@Gevlon
Chances that somebody is going to transfer an alt to complete an extra staff is extremely small. As much as I like the idea of your guild/portofolio, people that minmax will just organize a 10man with said alt within their own guild, while grabbing more "shards".
I'm not saying that selling the staff is going to be impossible, heck it's going to be very profitable if you have people in the guild willing to spend money on it.

Frostys said...

From what I have seen, you will be lockout short much faster than the guild this might be interesting for much faster as you probably not progress as fast as them. More boss kill would usually yiel more parts to craft it so teh sooner you clear, the better. Top raiding guilds usually clear the raid the week it's out unless it's gated. Then come the hard mode race to the top all over again. The few weeks required to craft a legendary out of guild will not be worth it for a guild already clearing the content.

Your potential buyer will be people who are just way too damn far on those guilds list of legendary after the initial clear runs after stuff is on farm. Someone might by then try to snatch a staff for himself while his guildrun are already "reserved" to more "deserving" momber of his usual guild.

Wilson said...

If I were interested in hiring your guild to get me a staff, I would use the following strategy:

Join The Pug. Run a few raids, learn who the good raiders interested in taking my gold are.

Quit the guild.

Let the people I've identified know that I am still going for the staff, and that they will be compensated appropriately.

Start a raid ten minutes before your scheduled time. Advertise it in /trade so that everyone's ass is covered, then send invites to my business partners.

This way, I would get all the benefits of your plan, without any competition or any of the inconveniences of the guild rules (such as no refusing people based on their gearscore). Of course, this could seriously fuck with the guild's long-term stability, but that would not be my concern.

BBQ said...

@ Wilson

If there are legendary drops, these are unlikely to be 100% drops. If you plan on compensating people for carry-runs, you may end up paying a lot and not get anything at the end.

Anonymous said...

@Wilson: Not really. The rules of the PuG are fairly lax, so it seems like a lot of hoops to jump through just to be able to refuse people based on their gearscore. Why not just schedule a raid and inform the people you want ahead of time?