Day 23: Mudsprocket

I've mostly quested in Dustwallow Marsh, reached lvl 35. Reached Mudsprocket, but unfortunately the quests were too high for me. I'll be back. I was happy to see those always-smiling little green guys again! After that I flied to Stonetalon and rode to Nijel's Point, Desolace. I quested some there, then returned Theramore. On the way back, there was an unexpected pleasure. The flightpath crosses Mulgore, the Tauren homeland. I like it very much and was good to see it from above.

The business was still slow. Few items were sold, my major activity was collecting investment for Thelnia. That was until late afternoon. After that things started to sell like there was the end of the world tomorrow. I smelted around 100 iron and steel bars and put them for sale. They sold too, just like books, remaining enchanting mats and everything. Even the hordies were busy in the common AH. At the end: 1680G, 96 auctions, 12 bids, approximately 1000G at Thelnia.

No posts tomorrow, since I'll be meditating in Ironforge over the meaning of "AFK".

Hybrids

Once upon a time Blizzard had a plan with a MMO game, where people level, quest, interact with the world. Form groups to perform harder quests, maybe fight with the members of the opposing classes. It had to change a lot because of the player's demands. Quests nerfed, leveling can be completely bypassed, PvP was moved to closed battlegrounds to stop the endless ganking.

Once upon a time Blizzard had a vision about different classes. They had to completely change that, due to strong player demand, but it's memory is still on the official page:

• Druid: Hybrid, Primary Healer
• Hunter: Ranged Physical Damage Dealer
• Mage: Primary Ranged Magic Damage Dealer
• Paladin: Hybrid, Secondary Healer
• Priest: Primary Healer
• Rouge: Primary Melee Damage Dealer
• Shaman: Hybrid, Secondary Healer
• Warlock: Debuffer
• Warrior: Primary Tank

So the plan was simple: Warriors tank, priests heal, hunters, mages rouges attack the monsters, warlocks weakens them, and the three (actually two since horde had no paladins, alliance had no shamans) hybrid classes fill in the holes, taking always the role what is needed.
It could work - in a better world. In a world where most people are governed by reason.

There are barely any hybrids in the game. If there are, they are laughed at. There are no 17/17/27 shamans, who can heal nicely but can also tank an add and deal acceptable spell damage. There are deep elemental shamans, there are deep enhancement shamans, and deep restoratio shamans. They are not hybrids, but pure casters competing mages, pure melee competing rouges or pure healers competing priests.

No doubt, that a 17/17/27 shaman can quest faster than any of the pure ones. No doubt that this shaman, with around 1400 +heal can easily heal even a heroic instance, while a broken CC wouldn't mean immediate wipe, like it is with the deep resto, who sometimes wear cloth to have higher healup. Like the difference between 1960 and 1995 healup would make or brake HC Underbog.

The only place where one needs to be a perfect DPS glass cannon, a maximized healing capacity healer or the tank with highest available survivability is end-game raiding. Wowjutsu tracks 4.5M people. 32% has killed anything in SSC, 27% in TK. So about 1.3M people engaged in serious raiding. That's 13% of the 10M playerbase. 55% are not even on the list, since never raided even Karazhan. So it would be understandable that 13% of the people are purely specced and the rest is either on some PvP spec or hybrid, happily instancing or questing. Strike that, even raiders should respec hybrid for longer farming-questing seasons.

Why there are no such hybrids? At first, because people has the stupid tendency to want to look amazing, even if it's pointless or completely counter-productive. While our 17/17/27 shaman could do his dailies easily, perform very well in a random BG or do an instance either as healer or as DPS, he could not excel in anything. He wouldn't be as good healer as a deep resto and would not be as good DPS as a deep elemental or enhancement. No one would say "whoa" upon inspecting. People - unlike goblins - has a strange wish to be respected, even by strangers who don't have any effect on their life.

So our shaman select spec and gear like he would be main healer in an endgame raiding guild. He can barely quest, and in the instance can only hope that the tank and CC knows his job. But people will not laugh on them upon inspecting.

This stupid wish to look perfect can have that funny result, that the guy become useless in a raid, like a healer with 2200 healup and 30 casting Mp5, the tank with 23K HP and 20% avoidance, the DPS with low mana regen or no CC ability. While he is useless, this fact is only obvious to the real end-game raiders, and not to the inspecting crowd. They think he is a very well geared uber player.

This two further negative effect: people tend to choose these "uber" players for pugs or for casual guilds. So while he is practically useless, other people rather pick him because he looks good. On the top of it, if your tank has 22K HP but only 20% avoidance, your healer really need that 2000 healup to keep him alive. If your mage has 35 combat mana regen, you really need a "perfect group setup", including resto shaman or shadow priest, or his DPS will be the one written to his wand. The point is that the average player cannot notice, that the faliure of the instance is caused by the "uber"-looking one, and not the others.

This post was inspired by the "end of the world" talks on resto druid forums. Even if resto druids are a couple percent weaker than CoH priests or beacon paladins, this couple percent can only make or brake a world first kill, and 99.9% of us does not even compete for world firsts. That 2-3% can be fixed by one more gear piece (= one more week of raiding the previous tier, or a couple of instances for badges). The problem is not the 2-3% difference between resto druids and beacon paladins itself (as the current beta build stands). Their problem is that people would look upon them as "noobs", "having funny spec", "reroll pala or respec oomkin noob", and so on.

I've seen many times in Kara, ZA, Gruul, Maggi, SSC, TK that a disc priest who was just asked to jump in because another healer had to go, was in top 3 healing. Skill > gear&spec. The only place where it is not true is the competitive raiding, where everyone is at top skill, so differences can only be made by spec and gear. While most people never-ever will be in competitive raiding they read their sites, reiterate their sayings, try to look like them, poisoning their own life mostly and of others a little.

What is the connection between this and making money? Savings. People rather look rich by buying epic mounts and epic gems than be rich by investing their money into trading. It's the same thinking that stops them from being effective in questing and instancing (95% of their game time), what stops them from being rich. Don't follow their path! Stop look good. Be good.

PS: I go retalent and decrease the number of talents in protection. I want bit more damage. I'll still be able to tank well!

Legal notice: 1) I did not advocaded hybrid talents for a 25 mans raid or 2000+ arena. I was talking about questing, instancing and BG-s, the places where vast majority of the players spend their time.
2) I did not researched the shaman class and not claiming that 17/17/27 is the best questing spec.

Funpost

Pike at Aspect of the Hare came up with the great idea: "Post your bank". Here is Triara's:


I'm so sorry that I did not made a screenshot of the conversation and the trade window, but it was way before I had the idea to have a blog. I had only 1 char, no alts, no other plans than to heal in the endgame raiding (will write about it how did it go south). So I try to remake it from memories:
[cdxefs] whispers: Hello mate!
[cdxefs] Level 2 orc rouge - Orgrimmar
[me] whispers: Hi!
[cdxefs] whispers: We are a gold supplier company and we have 16K G on this server. Do you wish to buy some cheap WoW gold again? (again? I've never bought anything from you!)
[me] whispers: Whoa, that's more than 3 epic mount! (*evil grin*)
[cdxefs] whispers: We are a gold supplier company, our farmers work 24/7 to satisfy our valued customers. That's why we have so much gold.
[me] whispers: There is a little problem. (*evil grin*)
[cdxefs] whispers: What is it mate?
[me] whispers: That I don't need your cheated gold, since I have 18.9K (it was long ago, I was poor back then). And I did not even had to farm 24/7 with a bot army. Now piss off, before I contact a GM.

Finally, a Wintergrasp photo (the inner walls are fine)

Day 22: Feeling nerfed

Went to Ashenvale to quest some. All the quests in Astranaar were gray. Went to Forest Song outpost. Found some quests there, greens, except for 1 yellow. Done some, now I'm 33 1/2. Went to Stonetalon Peak, found only grey quests. And I've never grinded for honor, strike that, I tried to avoid pulling unnecessary mobs, also tried to quest together with others on kill X quests. Still, I can outgrow whole lands. One may say the questing was nerfed in 2.3, but no, our questing experience is nerfed. I really pity those who start playing now and miss so much of this land. But goblin thinking helps, even if not to change, but to understand why did this happened. Already wrote about it, but struck me again today. I created a "fun" label and post today under this. To cheer me up. (and everyone else who need it).

I also quested some in Dustwallow Marsh, reaching 34.

About business: much slower then expected. People seem to stopped selling and buying and raiding and living. The depression before the Wrath is greater than I've expected. I would say that the analysis for today is about that, but that would be a far too great topic. So I took just a little bit of the human errors in Azeroth for today.

Balance: 1260G, 168 auctions, 15 bids, approx 900 at Thelnia.

Day 21: Gnomergan

I ran Gnomeregan with a random group. We killed the endboss 3 men. Memo to self (and everyone else): never go to low level instance without a warlock. While you can find huge amount of noobs on 70, on low levels you can find completely useless kids, who not only cannot use their character, but can't even stop running forward (continuously jumping) pulling new and new enemies then say "sry m8s gtg" and disappear. By the way, I'm closing to the conclusion to automatically ignore everyone who use "m8, gtg, lo, peeps" and such nonsense. They are good signs that the other guy is either a kid, or a very childish (or drunk, or high) young adult, therefor with 90% chance a useless mess.

I created 10 stacks of steel, sold them all. Tomorrow more steel to come. Sent another 3 bags of deposit to Thelnia. She sent back the cloths I bought in the weekdays so I can sell them too. Sold most of my wool cloth for the hordies, listed some more. The Primal Mights sold too, leaving me 1191G, 193 auctions, 20 bids, approximately 800G at Thelnia.

Day 20: Business everywhere

I did lot of business work today. At first smelted hundreds of tin and copper ore into bronze. I already have some on the market, but it's never enough. Secondly I created and listed 5 stacks of steel bar. Bid on some stuff for resale, but tried to remain conservative, I don't want to spend hours packing, listing, organizing the stuff. I'm no longer fishing, I'm whaling. I flied to Booty Bay again to list wool cloth to the common AH for lowered price. Sent Thelnia 4 more bags full of investment. It was really a long business day.

In the meantime I managed to take some time for leveling. Leveled my sword skill too, since I bought a twink sword and couldn't sell it so I chose to use it. Reached lvl 32 in Southshore. I also spent about 8G on gear, some of my items were more than 10 levels old.

At the end: 1140G, 188 auctions, 20 bids, about 600G at Thelnia.

Damage reduction

This will reach every businessmen sooner or later. An investment goes south. And here I'm not talking about a stack of Light Leather bought for 1.5G, expected to sell for 2.5 but finally has to be dumped for 0.5. I'm talking about something big, something you spent lot of time and money to build, you estimated how much profit you will get and planned how you going to spend and enjoy it.

Except, you won't.

This just happened to me. WoWinsider written that honor points will be deleted when Wrath of the Lich King comes out. To supplement my lvl 80 gear with PvP items, I stockpiled some honor with my druid. To be specific: collected 73K honor. And also 90+ from all kinds of badges, so I can turn them in for even more honor! I expected to be able 5-6 pieces of lvl80 PvP gear, so with crafted ones I'll be fully epic in the second I ding 80. Bye-bye sweet dream!

Update: honor deletion canceled! However the point of the post is still valid.

What do people do in this kind of situation:

• Denial. That's the most regular way to handle large scale problems. "It cannot happen. It must be some dumb plan that will be undone!".
  
• Outrage, agression. "#!#@$ Blizzard try to ruin my game, I'll go and troll their forums". Or: "Let's make a poll or petition to force them to undo it!" (Someone please explain to me how can a piece of paper with names on it force anything!)
• Sadness, depression. "Blizzard hates me". "I will never be competitive on 80", "I can't do anything right", "I'm a mess".
  

None of them is the goblin way. The goblin way is to get something out of the mess. The wrecked investment still holds some value (though much smaller than expected) and this value must be salvaged!

While honor cannot be transferred past lvl 70, it can be spent now and the items gained will be useful past 70 (though not in 80, but during leveling). Maybe this wreck can be used to solve another one: Phaelia told that after the merging of +spell damage and +heal stats, the item with +100 spell damage will have +100 spell power while an item with +100 heal will have +53.2 spell power. So my fancy healer items will be much weaker than their damage counterpart. For example:

Merciless Gladiator's Kodohide Helm (ignored stats equal with Vyrmhide)
+35 Intellect
Equip: Improves your resilience rating by 29.
Equip: Increases healing done by up to 81 and damage done by up to 27 for all magical spells and effects. (will be 43 spellpower)
Equip: Restores 7 mana per 5 sec.

Merciless Gladiator's Wyrmhide Helm
+26 Intellect
Equip: Improves your resilience rating by 28.
Equip: Increases damage and healing done by magical spells and effects by up to 49.
Equip: Restores 8 mana per 5 sec.

See: +6 spellpower on the Moonkin gear.

So here's a list of items I'm gonna get:

• Guardian's Wyrmhide Belt (4 spelldam, 2MP5 vs current gear), 17850 honor, 40 Arathi mark
• The mentioned Wyrmhide Helm, 14500 honor, 30 AV mark
• Merciless Gladiator's Gavel (22 spelldam - 21 spirit vs current gear), 25200 honor, 20 Eye mark
• Veneras posted about new PvP items available for honor in the next patch. One of them is a real beauty: Battlemaster's Courage, Trinket Equip: Increases spell power by 70. Use: Increases maximum health by 1750 for 15 sec. I'm currently using Essence of the Martyr, which is 71 spell damage equivalent but the new trinket is passive and can give extra HP which is handy.
• PvP gems will be BoE and non-unique. So I most probably will spend my remaining honor on these. (+2.4 spellpower each)

Of course I will wait until the next content patch to see if it really goes live. There is a possibility that it will be undone, and though I wouldn't count on that, I lose nothing with waiting until this patch.

Update: I've just read, that Shadow Priests (and probably warlocks) have also some damage reduction work to do. Good luck!

Day 19: Slow day

Nothing really worth mentioning happend in my life today. Leveled to 31 in Duskwood finishing it, and also some in Wetlands close to finishing it.

Bought some more cloth, had to send them to Thelnia, due to bank space issures. Was lucky with a nether vortex (bought for 90G, sold for 180G), and with 2 primal mights (bought for 90 sold for 115 each). The hordies bought 1/3 of my wool cloth, the rest returned, will drop price tomorrow.

Some of the "to be wiped" itmes still coming back, I will relist them one more for even lower, than they go to the vendor, I won't waste my time with them any more.

Current balance: 1245G, 177 ongoing auctions, 1 bid, aproximately 450G value at Thelnia.

Day 18: 30

Quested a little in Wetlands and Stormwind castle until I reached 30 and finally got my mount. From now on, the quests that send me to distant lands are no longer so slow to make. On the top of it, I can easily avoid contact with wondering monsters who aggro on me.

On business: I bid on several metals, cloth and motes. The latter was immediately resold as primal. The cloths start to overflow me, and it was just tuesday. I'm afraid I will need Thelnia's assistance in holding them until weekend.

The Thelina-fund increased significantly with material worth around 80G. Server is finally up, so I could check my mailbox. 1250G, 196 auctions, 22 bids, approx 400G at Thelnia.

Day 17: Stockades

I was invited to a group to Stockades. Since 3 of us was 28, it wasn't a big deal. It's a quick and safe way to make an instance. No risk, lot of XP from quests. This is the way I'm going to instance: wait until the monsters become green. At lvl 32 I'll go Gnomeregan.

Made lvl 29 at Stockades and went to return silk cloth to each city's quartermaster, so I'm now 29 and a half.

On business:
Discarded lot of items that refused to sell. This means I put them to the AH for very low price. They simply don't worth meddling with.

I continued to stock for Thelnia. I brought lot of wool cloth and brought it to the common AH. I also bid on cheap silk and mageweave cloth. I expect them to sell on the next weekend, when lot of people level their first aid or return cloth to the cities.

Current account: 1014G, 198 auctions, 88 bids, approx 250G on Thelnia.

Gold spammer ad

I can't believe you clicked on a gold-spammer ad!

Shame on you!

Day 16: Thelnia

It was time for me to hire an assistant for my long term investment. She is Thelnia, lvl 1 and well equipped with money and bags. Her job will soon be revealed. I will invest my money in this business, so on my daily account there will be an estimated cost of investment at Thelnia. Of course this cost is the quantity of the deposited items multiplied by their daily price, so it can move hectically. (worth an analysis)

Currently I have 1054G, 198 auctions, 40 ongoing bids and 100G invested at Thelnia.

This account shows that the weekend harvest was great. Though some low level enchanting material still rots, the bronze sold like candy, and lot of underpriced item were bought in the morning (probably from kids) and resold at the evenings. For my greatest pleasure random hordies found my auctions in the neutral AH. I'll be transporting huge amount of Wool cloth there.

In the meantime I made it to lvl 28.

Found an interesting post on Random Battle. It's on the one hand explain in simple terms how to start your business carrier, on the other hand tell you how to make good money from people who don't use AH but sell their stuff on the trade channel. Though it's really a good way to get rich, I don't bother reading the /2 which is mostly flooded by "LF2M tank and healer" and simple childish nonsense. But if you have the belly, go for it!

Day 15: Duskwood

I quested in Duskwood with random people. I always offered grouping to nearby questers so we finished the kill 10 X, 11 Y quests in no time, giving XP for lvl 27.

I sold lot of stuff, mostly those I bought cheaper the previous day but also some essences and mid-level dusts. Some random hordie bought my wool cloth for 25 silver apiece. In the Alliance AH it's below 8 so I bought a lot and flied to Booty Bay for a quick auction.

I decreased the price of bronze, and so they were all sold out. At the end of the day I had 628G, which is acceptable for a lvl 27 who is working the AH for two weeks. Now I have the money to invest into bigger value items. And can afford to skip those which would only provide couple of silvers. I spent about 200G on lvl 41-50 armor to transform them into dream dust. I hope the dust will sell today. I'm currently thinking of something bigger than everyday buy and sale, will talk about it later.

My recent money boost is connected with the fact that it is weekend. So the analysis of today will be about the weekend issue.

Introduction to goblin philosophy

Some goblins not only lived the goblin way but could also explain it for me in Ratchet. Such were Dizzywig and Gazlow. However they were just hobby-philosophers, unlike Xixil Makspocket in Booty bay. He is one of the real goblin philosophers, the trick-tellers. The trick-tellers make their living by selling their tricks to others. Goblins visit them for their tricky questions which need wits and wisdom to solve. If the one successfully solves the trick, he get his money back. If not, the trick-teller keeps the money and explains the trick. Goblins widely believe that solving tricks makes one smarter and more fit to be successful as a businessmen. Since the teller only keeps his money if the trick was hard, no dumb goblin can set up such business.

As I approached he smiled not with the normal goblin "let's make business" smile, but with a more honest smile of joy. As soon as he started asking questions about the paladin philosophy, I found out not only that he is interested in different cultures but also that Gazlowe most probably got money from him for sending me to him. After I revealed this idea to him, he smiled and accepted that he seek wisdom from every possible way to elaborate his tricks. He quickly agreed to trade trick for trick. Goblin philosophy for paladin. We talked a lot and from time to time I will return to him, and write about what we found out.

Be warned: goblin philosophy can be easily found offensive or evil to many people. So read these posts only if you are open to controversial ideas.
For example the goblins don't believe in the existence of moral. According to them, there is no right and wrong, just effective and stupid. The point of view of each "trick" is different and the result differs accordingly. Some tricks are to be solved from the point of view of an individual, a group or a whole city. The tricks are to be solved according to the interest of the individual or group of the point of view and any others are neglected. This is usually called "inhumane" or "selfish" by humans so be warned again. For example the common trick asks:
- A young goblin sneaks into someone else's house, breaks an expensive vase for fun and manage to elude capture. From his point of view was he effective or dumb?
- A dumb goblin would say he was effective since he managed to do what he wanted. Wrong answer.
- A human would say, he was wrong and evil therefore couldn't be effective. The trick teller would not say it's a wrong answer, he would say it's not an answer to the question. No one asked the evaluation of the action from the point of view of the city security forces or the city itself.
- The solution is: he was dumb, since he could steal the vase instead of breaking it. He just risked his hide for nothing.

But against all accusations the goblin philosophy is positive. Tricks can be solved from the point of a bigger group for the good of it. Above the door of Xixil Makspocket lies: "The one who solves all the tricks from the point of view of the whole world will change the world into a golden fountain". Considering the goblin's addiction to gold, it means something like paradise. We'll see!

Day 14: Ratchet

As a proud lvl 25 I decided to make a long journey to find my spiritual home, Ratchet. First I flied to Westfall, and from there walked down to the river, swimmed down to the Rebel camp of Stranglethorn Vale, to have the flight point there. I had to bubble some times since the lvl 31 crockolisks did not really liked me.

While I was doing that, I was outbid on lot of armor I bid for disenchanting to Vision dust. On the one hand, it's a loss of profit. On the other hand, it's a gain of a like-minded fellow. I don't know his race or class, all I know he wants to make business, like me. Good luck whoever you are!

After that flied all up to Menethil Harbor and took the boat to Theramore in Dustwallow marsh. From there I swimmed all the way up, evading lvl ?? murlocks and defias. After this long and dangerous journey, which I could complete with a single bubble, I reached Northwatch Hold. It was nice to see friendly faces again. From there it was just a pleasant walk up to Ratchet.

After chatting and trading with the long seen fellows there, I took the boat to Booty Bay. When I reached it, first I went to the flight master, just to find out that my perilious journey to the Rebel Camp was pointless, since the flight from Booty goes directly to Stormwind. Anyway, I have the flight point, so I can come here anytime I want to.

There were two more reasons of my visit. At first went to the neutral AH. Unfortunately, it was more or less deserted. Anyway I put some wool cloth in, hoping that the hordies still have wool shortage. If I'd have a partner on the horde side, I could be rich just by trading with him/her. But I don't. So I just hope, some random hordie find my auction. I also bought some cheap armor for disenchanting.

I also visited Xixil Makspocket. It was Gazlowe-s advice, he said "That cursed trick-teller fit to your damn questions lad". Was an advice worth taking. Soon you'll hear more.

I bought some mithril ore to level mining by smelting it. Reached slvl 200 and learned artisan. The mithril bar is just slightly cheaper than the ore, so I did not lost too much.

Later I spent too much time exploring wetlands while done some quest for half level. Another small amount of XP collected why I found Darkshire. Never been here before, collected lot of quests for tomorrow.

Sold lot of cheaply bought expensive metal and some steel which were bought as iron. The damn strange and soul dust still rots, if it does not sell tomorrow, I cut the price and sell it for whatever they give for it. I also bought some expensive soulcloth to resell higher. Currently I have 381G 248 auctions and 24 bids.

World or Retardcraft

The BFD of today was just one piece from the idiot infestation of Azeroth. There are hoards of people who are unaware of the basic mechanics of the game, don't know the skills of their class, have funny talents and actually don't even know which talent does what, pull aggro all the time, run out of mana and die in the fire on the ground.

It has nothing to do with casualness. Casuals may don't know the end-game bosses, but someone who don't know the mechanics of a system he dedicates even just 1-2 hours a week is an idiot. After all, all spells and talents has tooltips, and figuring out that if you hit something it will try to hit back is just common sense.

Low levels are not the only places where these quilboar-minded beings crawl. Wowjutsu tracks 107K guilds. 99% of them did Kara, so we are not talking about twink, leveling and RP guilds, but people who want to raid. 9.7% of them killed Lady Vashj. 7.4% killed Kael'Thas. Repeat, poor Mrs naga and Mr crazy elf, not Illidan or Archimond (who were also firstkilled a year ago)! These sorry bosses drop T5. Anyone needs their loot at all? Everyone outgeared them in their badge items!

OK, maybe they don't have 25 men. Let's see Zul'Aman.

Nalorakk: 50%. You know, that funny bear-guy who has no strong AoE, no MC, no long CC, nothing except 15 mins bonus to your bear-run. Tank and spank.
Akil'zon: Run in, run out, has nature res aspect/totem on. Is that too much to ask? For 57% of the guilds: yes.
Jan'alai: Don't stand into the big balls of fire! Even a 10 year old can do that! Apparently 66% of the guilds don't.
But my personal favorite: Nightbane. No, he is still in Karazhan, he is not the new ZA endboss. But for 1/3-d of the guilds this poor dragon never hit the ground.

There are 2 questions left:

• What turned World of Warcraft into World of Retardcraft?
• What can you, non-retard player do to change it back?
  

The first question can be easily answered by a goblin mind: profit. The Blizzard Entertainment has income from subscribers. Not raiders, not players, subscribers. The money of the member of the SK Gaming is not better than the money of Donald. But to keep them and get more of them, the game must-be retard-friendly. If there would be any challenge in the game these retards would leave. So Blizzard implemented several features to make sure that no one who is intelligent enough to enter his credit card number choose to leave the game because it's "too hard"

• Ghettos for the non-retards: the challenging endgame instances and arenas are isolated from the world, neither Illidan, nor that S4 rouge can attack you unless you let him.
• No death penalty. If you attack a monster that is too much for you, either because of gear/level difference or because of lack of basic skills, you die. So what? You run back to your corpse and carry on. You don't lose XP, gear, significant amount of money, reputation or anything for sucking. You cannot lose in this game.
• XP for nothing: 2.3 introduced more XP from quests. We now have so many quests that one can level up by doing only green quests (yes, I know that it's only until 60, but you can keep on questing on EPL-WS-Silithus, so you can keep on leveling with green quests)
• Epic gear for nothing: all you have to do is go to Battlegrounds for your shiny S2 epics. You don't have to win the BG, strike that, you don't have to do anything, except avoid being marked inactive to get it.
• T5+ for nothing: If you are capable to clear Mechanar, you get better gear from badges than you would get from The Eye.
• Every patch is a PvE nerf. "No, no, dear paying subscriber, it's not you being a complete failure, it's the boss who was overpowered (the one that was firstkilled more than a year ago in half the gear you have now)".
  

While Blizzard makes interesting and challenging raids for capable players, most of Azeroth and Outland are foolproof. It's not a bug, it's a feature. Money makes the world go round and Blizzard needs the money of the retards.

What can you do? On the large scale: nothing. You cannot make the game more challenging by whining on the forums, so stop it. Blizzard would only stop nerfing if more people would leave because of "too easy" than because of "too hard". But where would you go? All other MMO-s are plagued by the same problem. Unless some rich idealist (= non existing since no idealist will ever get rich), make a game without the wish for profit, all MMO creators are forced to nerf their game to the needs of the mindless masses. So you can stop playing MMO and play only chess with your friends or you can play World of Retardcraft, or Retards of Conan, or Retardhammer or whatever.

Since the game remains retard-friendly, there is no motivation to the retards to improve or leave. They are here to stay.

This perspective would sadden a paladin, who wish and fights for a better world, but does not bother a goblin. A goblin is aimed for his own and his close companions good, ignoring the others. You will see the philosophy of this soon. But know this: you are not bound to these retards. The goblin thinking helps you understand this and make peace with the unchangeable while finding ways to still enjoy the life in Azeroth.

• You don't have to bother about the retards until lvl 70. You can reach max level by questing alone or with a few friends. You don't have to tolerate their endless stupidity in instances.
• You don't have to bother about them for gearing up to HC instances. You can gather enough money (just listen to your goblin minded advisor) to craft yourself gear and to buy the best available BoE. You don't have to suffer them in normal instances if you don't want to for starter gear.
• You are not glued to them later. To make a HC instance, you need 4 other people. Don't give up hope, you are not the only non-retard here. You can check the other guys gear in the armory. Don't check for stats, check for signs of intelligence. Is his talent PvE and makes sense? Is his gear fits his talent or is it just a bunch of random purples from being boosted in Kara? Are they enchanted, gemmed? Are the stats are balanced (for example healer with 2200 healup, 40 MP5 or tank with 20K HP 20% avoidance = boosted idiot)?
• You owe them nothing! If they turn out to be aggro-pullers, or less-than-tank DPS-ers, you don't have to stuck with them. You can kick them from the group. They won't like you for it that's for sure. So what? I'd love to have an archivement title (will never get implemented) "scourge of noobs", which you can acquire by group-kicking 50 useless morons.
• To raid, you need a guild. If you want, you can find a good guild, or form one. If the guild you joined tolerates morons, leave quickly (not after you took a >10% chance extra valuable loot). I'm not talking about new players here! Everyone started somewhere and not born with the knowledge of Flame Wreath. If he learns, takes advices, reads the materials and try to improve his character accordingly, it's OK. If he makes mistakes again and again, or he does not improve and the guild leadership tolerates it, it's time to go.
• And the best: you can feast on them by taking their money in the AH. You are not only getting rich here. You are making an idiot poor!
  

You are a free man (or orc, or dwarf or whatever) and you are not bound to boost retards. You belong to people in par of your skills. Don't accept anything less!

Goblin thinking is more than making lot of money. You can't eat money! Goblin thinking is about making your life easier and better. Have you seen a sad goblin? All of them are smiling! It's not by mistake!

Ps: read Larísas post on almost the similar topic.

Day 13: Terrible BFD

While strange and soul dust still rots in the AH, the dream and vision dusts were sold, so I restocked by bidding on cheap armor. Some of them will be overbid but others will be mine to disenchant.

Bought some items for myself and even enchanted them up for better tanking.

Quested up to lvl 23 in Redridge Mountains and to 24 in Wetlands. Was very lucky there, found 2 other players and made the raptor quest chain together. Completed in no time.

After that I collected a team for BFD and went in. Was epic failure. The healer refused to use talent points, the mage attacked every moving object, regardless what did I try to tank and the rouge came up with the wonderful idea of he tanking and I'm healing. I left and had to rethink my instancing policy. Anyway, the analysis for today came from this event (and many similar).

After that I went back to Redridge and leveled to 25, with a randomly joined priest, than a random paladin. Luckily these short time teams work.

I looked at my money and was not amused. Altroug 292 is the highest yet, I'm usually around 150-200G, which is the income of a single daily quest session (granted, no dailies for a lvl 24). Am I doing something wrong? No, just have my gold work. The money in my pocket is not doing anything, while the money in the AH does. I have 288 auctions waiting for buyer and 54 bids waiting for expiration. The items set to auctions have value, approximately 4-500G. Of course it's not money. To change it into money I have to sell these items, and some of them don't want to sell. The "value" is an approximation, my guess on the price I'm gonna get for it. Maybe my guess is really wrong, and will have to accept much lower price for my investments. But they surely worth something and I'm gonna get this price sooner or later.

Day 12: skillups

I bought 14 more iron ore and reached mining slvl 156. I bought some gold ore to make it to slvl 165, although gold bar is cheaper than ore. It was an investment into the skill. I bought cheap iron bars too and smelted them to steel for sale.

I decided to pick first aid and cooking. Both have leveling and money-making purposes. Heavy Netherweave Bandage is the best vendortrashing item. You buy the cloth for less then 3G/stack, make the bandage, sell it to a vendor for 6G/stack. First aid also helps in nasty situations. I can bubble/bandage when I'm are out of mana.

Cooking can also be profitable, mostly on high levels, creating standard raiding buff-food like Golden Fish Sticks. During leveling I can create +stamina/+spirit buff food for literally coppers what is nice when tanking.

In connection with these the analysis for today will be leveling these professions cost-effectively.

During leveling cooking I found lack of Expert Cookbook. So I sailed to Darkshore (remember that 1 G I payed to a mage for Darnassus portal? Was a great investment). From Darkshore I flied to Astranaar and walked to the trade supply vendor and bought 30 Expert Cookbook.

Despite the investment in skills, books, and the enchanting material that still did not sell, I have 176G.

Gold buyers

The MMO Eve Online allowed gold trading. World of Warcraft absolutely not. But gold sellers are here to stay since there is request for their service.

Blizzard is not hunting them too valiantly, skipping even obvious ways to stop them. For example if I write the 4 letter f-word into the chat it will appear as "@#$%". On the other hand I can easily write the url of gold seller site, and it won't be "@@$#$@"-ed out, nor a GM will contact me asking to stop mentioning a cheater site. The logic behind it is obvious and truly goblin: money talks. Blizzard want subscribers and by effectively stopping gold sellers, Blizzard would lose two bunch of subscribers: the farmers themselves, who pay their monthly fee for their farm characters (except when they hack accounts). The other and bigger amount of subscribers lost are the loser players who cannot compete without cheating. It is a large playerbase. It's them to blame for the nerfs too. For the smart there is AH. For the laborous, there are dailies. For the dumb and lazy, there are cheats.

Blizzard will only stop gold selling or any other cheating method when more subscriptions are at risk because of the cheat than because of stopping it. There were two incidents when cheaters were massively punished in WoW:

• Taking arena gear from win traders. The win traders used to artificially arrange matches (for example playing 3 AM) aginst the buyer and they deliberately lost, giving arena rating to the buyer. During this operation their own team ranking went down, and they climbed back to 2000+ by ganking players at the 1500-1900 range. This behaviour made it practically impossible for legitimate inexperienced players to start performing in the arena.
• Banning 500K accounts for botting. Botters made Alterac Valley practically unplayable, since half of the team was AFK. They also made primal farming, and questing in primal-affected areas very hard since for every elemental, there were 5-8 hunters with the very intuitive pet names "boar" and "cat".

In both cases the cheaters ruined the game experience of legitimate players largely. Further tolerating them by Blizzard would risk a public disgruntlement among players and in the long run, losing a serious part of the subscribers.

The gold sellers on the other hand are not such a risk. Just because LegoIass buys his epic mount that he could never gain legitimately, you don't lose anything. Consumables are not usable, BoE items are not convenient in arenas, so no player will lose arena rating because of the illegal income of LegoIass. A hoard of gold allows you to gear up a new lvl 70 for raiding and save a raider from farming consumables. But instance and raid bosses are in unlimited supply due to the instancing, just because LegoIass downed Prince in his full cheated epic gear, you can still down yours.

I think, the BoP system is created exactly to decrease the effect of gold selling. No matter how much gold you have, in order to get your Warglaive you still must down Illidan. Maybe money can buy your way into the raid, but you still has to kill Illidan and hope it drops. So noone will leave just because "you can't outgear a cheater". You can.

So gold buying is a victimless crime, so Blizzard will keep on tolerating it. But of course there is no such thing as victimless crime. In case of gold selling, the victim is the economy. Why? Let's see the act of gold selling from the point of view of the characters. Wtrekwer with his loyal companion, Boar on his side walks to LegoIass and gives him 2000G and goes back to Shadowmoon Valley to keep on farming primals. Does it make any sense? Of course it does if we consider the transaction of IRL money between the player and the farmer company, but in the game world, Wtrekwer is simply extremely stupid.

Wtrekwer keeps on flooding the AH with primals pushing down their price while LegoIass will pay any money for BoE epics, skyrocketing their price. They are both doing something they would or could not do if there were no gold-selling.

Of course someone following the goblin way can adapt to these effects. You can traffic with BoE epics keeping their price irrationally high, since LegoIass can pay. You can get really rich this way. The problem is exactly this. LegoIass is way too dumb to make any logical choice, making our way to gold too easy. LegoIass is to blame that simple AH-sharking (when you just buy and resell and provide no service) is so effective. Too easy = boring. Too easy = you learn nothing.

I'm not preaching to avoid dealing on these markets because of LegoIass. To skip an opportunity because of moral reasons are not the goblin way. But keep in mind that there are other, real-business opportunities out there that can make you rich. Don't forget, anyone with Auctioneer can find LegoIass and undercut you. On the LegoIass-market you are not the only shark. The invisible hand of gold is still at work!

Day 11: Deadmines

I tanked Deadmines with sounding success. Made lvl 22, and got Cookie's Tenderizer. I liked it very much, provided not only loot, but also lot of XP, so instancing is totally go for me.

However as a businessmen I'm hesitating to recommend it to others from the perspective of cost-effectivity. Since patch 2.3 the XP from quests increased a lot between level 20 and 40, therefore you can level quickly alone. Loot is not so valueable, since you can have plenty of green quests to do, if your gear is weak. Questing a sure method and depend only on you. Instancing depends on 5 people, 20% idiot content can turn it into a wipefest. I am a prot paladin, so I'm a tank. I mark the mobs, I set the kill order therefore things can only go wrong if one is really sabotating. However if you are a DPS, and get a noob tank, or one who tanks on full fury/retri with a lowbie shield, things can get really nasty. So make your own call on instances.

I also managed to mine a lot in Deadmines, being the only miner. Later in Ironforge I bought iron ores to level mining to slvl 152 with smelting. It's green now and won't level more. Have to reach slvl 165 by mining nodes for steel smelting.

At the end of the day I have 142G. My enchanting material is still just partially sold and I also invested some gold in iron bars. I expect to sell them later.

I've also found a guide how to use Appraiser, the selling module of Auctioneer advanced. Wanted to write it myself but Og saved me from that.

Day 10: Bad investments?

121G. Half of the amount of yesterday. What happened? At first my bronze did not sell. Happens, not a problem. The problem comes from the fact that I invested my money into enchanting materials. Mostly not by buying them, but by buying cheap armor and weapons and disenchanting them myself. I have 203 auctions out, mostly enchanting material. Will they sell? Of course they will. Will they sell before the weekend? Well that's a good question. If not, it means my money is locked down and I cannot do further business until my money becomes available again. Conclusion: until a business proved to be profitable in the long run, don't invest too much money into it.

In the meantime I made some questing, got the flight point in Redrige Mountains and almost levelled 21. Bought some iron ore to smelt and leveled my mining to slvl 138.

WotLK is coming

Wowinsider said that the expansion will come in November 13. Same date is on an official Blizzard page too. However the game lacks several features in beta, instances missing, the crafting system is miles from being complete, so delay is quite possible. But anyway, the day is coming, whether it is Nov 13 or Dec 13 or Jan 5 or wathever.

Let's see what's waiting for us from the businessmen's perspective.

• All items, except for tradeskill materials used in the BC become more or less outdated and therefore of low price. So it's time to clear up your bags. The lvl70 epics, sellable quest items and such will not interest anyone after the expansion hit the market.
• The next content patch, with inscription will come very soon. Part of it already downloadable, the whole will be here in weeks. So prepare for herb price skyrocketing! Other skillup materials can also start inflating if the BoP tradeskill items in WotLK encourage lot of people to level new skill. If you want to reskill, stock up materials for yourself too!
  
• It's more or less expected, that besides some really dedicated guilds, raiding will stop. Lot of PvE oriented people do it for the loot (or to be more specific, the assumed status provided by the loot), and they will have the attitude of "why suck at BT if the first lvl 71 mob drops better loot in northrend". Though it will not drop and T6 will only made obsolate by lvl80 blues and first raid epics, this is the common attitude. So if you are mostly serving raiders, you may have to find another field.
• WotLK will open a new and strange market: lvl 70 twinking and skillups between slvl 300-375. This won't be a big business in the first months. Most people have proper skills and lvl70 gear. But 4-5 months after the expansion is out, new players will reach lvl60 and will need quest and repu items for powerlevelling, tradeskill items to reach slvl 375, gear to be twinks, items for BC-related archivements. Karazhan, ZA, BT will be just as empty as Solomonce, BWL and An'Quirai today, so they will buy such items. If you have a lot to invest and like this millieu, it's time to stack up while such items are available in great quantities.
• It is probable, that lot of tanks and healers will respec for DPS in order to maximize his levelling potential. They will possibly buy enchants and BoE gear to their new spec, so it's an opportunity to sell affordable mid level enchants and items for them.
  

Remember, people have been doing dailies for weeks, they have lot of money and they are willing to spend it on anything that give them advantages in WotLK. Time for the harvest!

Day 9: Business, business

Still lvl 20 and not a single XP more than yesterday. But lot of business done. I sold all my bronze. I barely could create enough. Bought up all the copper and tin from the AH.

I also found a good method for finding bargains. Since the AH sort on server side, if you sort by time, you get the 30 min, than 2 hour items first. Than you sort the page by percentage and you found all the items that worth bidding and has low time left, so it's likely not be overbid. With this method I could buy up lot of armor and weapons for disenchanting. Sold out the materials.

By the end of the day I had 240G. Not bad from a lvl 20.

A real diamond

When an alchemist reaches lvl 68 and slvl 325 they can choose a specialization, in potions, in elixirs or in transmutation. The specialization allows you to create more than one item from the reagents of one. The average bonus is 17% according to wowwiki, meaning you get 117 potions from the materials of 100 if you are potions master.

The choice between the three specialization seems obvious, if you use lot of potion, you shall be potion specialist. Well, the goblin saying says "seems" is the opposite of "is". Why? Potionmaking takes a second, therefore in an unlimited supply. Theoretically one potion alchemist can create potions for the whole realm. Practically he can serve a guild or customers from the trade chat. You can always announce "LF potion spec alchemist to create X, I tip 5G, I get all the extra proc". In larger quantities it worth to make such announcement, even if you are an alchemist too. Elixirs can be made in unlimited amount too. Therefore potions and elixirs are rarely more expensive in AH than their materials. Usually they are cheaper, thanks to the alchemists making skillups.

Transmutation on the other hand have a cooldown. It means you can only make 1 transmutation in a day. This means limited supply. This means profit. By performing transmutation you can make profit without the extra proc, so it's more than suggested to all alchemists. On Kul Tiras realm the primal prices:

• Fire: 34G
• Mana: 30G
• Earth: 5G
• Life: 16G
• Air: 36G
  
• Water: 30G
• Shadow: 26G
• Might: 131G

So transmute primal earth to water makes you 25G profit. If we consider the 17% extra proc, the average profit is 30G.

But let's see the real diamond: earthstorm diamond. The materials cost 106G, the diamond cost 142G. It's 36G profit. But since the extra proc scales with price, if you are transmute master, your profit is 60G.

On other realms maybe Primal might or Skyfire diamond is the best seller, but one of the three, considering the 17% extra will surely make you nice profit. Every day, without risk. Not by sharking, but by working, by supplying when other supplies are limited, since other alchemists are also on cooldown. Fair trade.

Day 8: slow day

I did not get a single XP today. I just made some disenchanting and AH-resale, finising at 120G. Also purchased some ores and bars. Spent most of the time thinking about the next analysis, what you will see soon, and on some mystical activity called IRL issues.

By the way Gnomegaddon (besides advertising my blog for free) pointed to Goblin Therapist mod. Awesome way to annoy those idiots who make random whispers to you. Anyway I prefer a much more cost-effective method: /ignore. An addon guru could write a mod that automatically ignore those who beg for gold or ask you "r u tank?" (from a mage).

Day 7: Enchanting

I sold all the Felsteel Bars, getting over 100G for them. Nice. I spent most of the gained money on the AH to buy stuff for resale. Also bought some copper and tin for my bronze business.

The wool cloths were distributed in all Alliance cities, providing 4600XP, helping me reach lvl 20. While doing this I went to Exodar. It's brilliant, but alien. Won't be my favorite city. The rest of the XP came from questing in Darkshore, and completing the WSG daily quest. Was easy. and inspired another analysis you will see soon. In Darkshore I also found lot of silver vein. Skillup and silver at the same time. Nice!

Most of the bids I made on the AH were overbid. The competition is not sleeping. This is the main problem with AH-sharking, you may end up with a huge loot, but you may end up with overbids.

But let's talk about the reason I was collecting linen cloth for days. I dropped herbalism and picked up tailoring. No, I'm not intended to wear self-made cloth armor. I just created 120 Brown Linen Robes. Why? Because after I finished with them, I dropped tailoring too and picked up enchanting. Enchanting is a great profession for businessmen:

• It allows you to use your soulbound stuff to something instead of selling it to the vendors for low.
• It allows you to buy cheap green and blue stuff in AH, disenchant and sell the materials for profit
• It allows you to buy cheaper enchanting materials and change them into something more expensive. Funny but usually 3 Small Prismatic Shard is more expensive than 1 Large Prismatic shard.

I disenchanted all the robes, providing myself all the starting materials for enchanting. I gained 13 stacks of Strange Dust and Lesser Magic Essence, worth 45G. The linen cloths cost altogether 15G. 30G profit with enchanting on its first day, and on the top of it, skill lvl 59. I have to level enchanting high if I want to disenchant high value items. By using a cost effective method (which will be posted later, when skill level 300 reached). I managed to reach skill level 210. I have to be lvl40 to pass skill level 225, so I have time.

Still, although the materials for enchanting 210 were not cheap, I still have 65G. AH rocks!

Day 6: Felsteel Bar

90G! Yes! Bronze bars currently selling like candy. It was just bad luck, not a market change or weekend issue. So I'm back in business.

I hit lvl 18 only, I had no luck finding others to quest with and alone it's slow.

I spent 15G on buying 15 stack Wool Cloth for the Donation of Wool quests. I return them tomorrow for cheap XP and rep.

Did some vendortrashing and also had a great luck on the AH: bought 10 Felsteel Bar for 5.4G each. Will list it for 13.50, expecting great profit here. Stocked some more linen cloth and tomorrow I'll use them all.

I also bought some new bags and the first 4 bag slots (0.1+1+10+25G). I also bought a Mining Sack in AH for 10G. Real bargain. I need bag space. The analysis of today will be about bag spaces.

Flower power

This is Triara. Other's may call her Gevlon's alt, but soul-sister sounds better to me. She loves flowers as most girls. But most girls are fine with a bunch of roses. Triara has a bit more flowers. Around 1200 stacks from Peacebloom to Nitghtmare vine. Full bags, bank, guildbank, and the same for 5 sub-alts. As you might guessed, the point is inscription. This is a new profession which will be available in a nearby patch. Date currently unknown but soon. What will an inscriptor need to level his skills?

• 7-10 stack Bloodthistle, Peacebloom, Silverleaf, Earthroot, Mageroyal.
• 4-5 stack: Briarthorn, Swiftthistle, Bruiseweed, Stranglekelp.
• 3-5 stack: Wild Steelbloom, Grave Moss, Kingsblood, Liferoot.
• 4-6 stack: Fadeleaf, Goldthorn, Khadgar's Whiskers, Wintersbite.
• 8-12 stack: Firebloom, Purple Lotus, Arthas' Tears, Sungrass, Blindweed, Ghost Mushroom, Gromsblood.
• 13-19 stack: Golden Sansam, Dreamfoil, Mountain Silversage, Plaguebloom, Icecap
• the outland herb requirements for skill 300-375 is yet unknown
  

WoW insider posted a poll about the people's choice of professions. 26% claimed to try out inscription. That's a lot of people. Lot of people with lot of herbs means lot of profit. Unless some miracle happens, Triara will be very rich.

This is not the first, and not the last instance of huge market change. The prices are determined by demand and supply. If a new demand arises, the prices go up, if new supply source forms, the prices go down. Since the change happens literally overnight by a patch, the market change is rapid and huge. After 2.4 introduced Void Shatter, the price of Void Crystal doubled and the price of Large Prismatic Shard dropped by 30%. After arena season 4 introduced, the price of Greater Planar Essence tripled overnight and kept that high for a week.

But this herb business seems to be huge, even compared to these issues.

• At first it affect 20-25% of the playerbase. Arena season affected the bests of gladiators (who could buy brutal gear), the void shatter affected enchanters.
• Secondly: people are filled with money. Raiding stopped in most guilds, so no money were spent on elixirs and repair. People were doing dailies for months, accumulating money. They even had enough to waste on the 22 slot bag.
• The new content patch will allow inscription but no new instance or quests are introduced. So people has nothing else to do than level professions.

I cannot even approximate the need for herbs, especially in the "Golden Sansam, Dreamfoil, Mountain Silversage, Plaguebloom, Icecap" case. These herbs were usually not collected. Most of them grow in lvl 58-60 territories of Azeroth, which are skipped by most people. They are not ingredients for widely used potions, so even alchemists have no deposits of them.

While herbalists will definately start farming these herbs as soon as the prices skyrocket but no way could find enough herb. Smart people surely collected/bought their resources already. But if most were smart, there would be no place for us businessmen. So here comes Triara with 1200 stacks of herbs. And she is most probably not alone, many businessmen filled his vaults with herbs.

How will this business effect the world?

• Triara will be very rich and very happy.
• Since she buys herbs now, the herb prices elevate. The herbalists get more for their work, so they are happy.
• After the patch, Triara will sell herbs. Selling decrease prices, so the herb-buyers will be happy. Maybe happy is not the correct term, since prices will still be high. But less high than they would be without Triara. And that's the point.

WoW economist also dedicated a topic to this issue, don't miss it.

Taco, a commenter on WoW economist pointed out another probable market change: since lot of people will start Death Knights, and lot of these Death Knights will choose to be blacksmiths, stacking copper, bronze, iron and other metals can also be profitable.

Day 5: Out of gold

1.8G! What happened? Am I bankrupt and doomed to farm peacebloom for the rest of my life?

Unlikely. All that happened is that the bronze did not sell as I expected. The bars are in my bank, they still have value, and could be sold for a low price to regain my investment but I still hope to get profit from them. The bronze sold above 5G at last weekend, so two thing could happen. One way or another there will be an analysis of this at Sunday.

• I either met a weekend issue and will sell my stuff in the weekends.
• I ran into a market shift or sporadic change (10 guys randomly decided to level BS and sniffled all the bronze, elevating prices that day). In this case I can end up with no profit.

I spent my remaining money on bidding items that can be sold to a vendor for profit.

My bank is full of linen cloth too, will make the planned change (and publish the corresponding analysis) tomorrow.

In the meantime I made it to lvl17 by weeding out some Defias in Westfall, luckily didn't have to do it alone, a random warrior grouped with me. Also made my choice of talent: protection. There is a big need of tanks, especially on low levels. I will be able to tank instances, completing instance quests quickly (= fast leveling).

Day 4: Slow day

Made lvl 16 and 38G.

38? It's less than yesterday. The reason is I spent a lot on bidding copper and tin. I either get my money back or I get the materials. I also have bronze on the AH, waiting to sell. Maybe I listed it too high (5G/stack). Maybe I was too greedy and in this case I deserve to sell nothing. The goblin wisdom says:
The invisible hands of the golden gods will pet the smart, slap the greedy and smash the dumb.
Will see. If it does not sell on 5. I will relist tomorrow for 4.50. or 4.30. Or 4.00 if competition undercuts me.

I also have to update the Auctioneer post. I wrote "It's still a solid 50-100G/day income (if you have the money to buy the cheap items) but not more." That was true a year ago, according to a certain horde druid who made business back then. Not today. I tried to bid on really good bargains but I was overbid in an hour. It seems the competition is higher, more people (and hordies) are aware of Auctioneer addon.

Am I sad about the fall of the days when one could make hundreds in minutes? Not at all. These days were maybe golden for a certain tauren but bad for others who were at his mercy. He could buy cheap and sell really high. I can't do the same. Competition - and not good heart - force me to buy less cheap and sell less high. Maybe I won't make it 5000G at lvl 58 like that certain tauren. But the workers who farmed the items get better payment and the raiding heroes who buys the products has to pay less. Bit harder for me, much easier for them. Fair trade.

I've also sold the herbalist bags. 1 G profit each. Will write an analysis on them later today.

I'm currently stacking linen cloth to my bank, preparing for another great enterprise. Stay tuned!

Day 3: Darnassus

Since I have only 2 days data from the Auction House I cannot make buy and resell businesses, so I'm bound to my "secret" trade, that will be revealed tomorrow.

Today I made a choice that was not profitable financially but still worth it. I bought a portal to Darnassus for 1G. I quested in the elven world and it was beautiful. Not from the point of view of profit, but landscape. I think the elven race got the most love from the creators of this world.

But a goblin trained mind can find profit even in such a landscape. I took the free boat ride and sailed to Menethil Harbor, getting the flight point there, so now I can travel between the worlds. Landscape and trade routes, for only 1 G. Fair trade.

I reached lvl 15 by questing with an elf I met randomly. Luckily Darkshore is full of kill X and find Y quests that can be completed together (opposed to collext X of Z quests which I hate)

My current wealth is 48G. On lvl 15 and day 3, without finding any lucky bargain on the AH. Just by proper trading. Spent it all. Mostly on invesment, but spent 6G on gear and bags. It's also investment: into faster levelling.

Day 2: Farming

There is one problem with herbalism-minig, you always bump into something to herb and to mine. Mostly it also include fighting with some beast next to it. Ergo: lot of items, slow levelling. I quested 2 hours in Dun Morogh and other one in Elwyn Forest, reaching almost lvl 10. I know thats slow.
But I collected 5 stacks of copper and 10 stacks of herbs. Put them all to the AH, already sold some. The herbs I put in for low yesterday were sold, letting me start my buisiness. I'll write about it later. For now I only say that it will bring me very nice profit.

I also bought three Herb Pouches from vendor for 9s and put it to the AH for 1.5G.
I also made 50 s from signing someone's charter.
I bought a white mace from vendor. Two times stronger then my previous. Investment into large gear improvement always worth, since you can quest, mine and herb faster and more safe from corpse runs.

Now I'm waiting for some items to sell, and while doing so, write some about Auctioneer, as promised yesterday.

Update: I have more than 10G! And this is only day 2!

Day 1: The first steps

I started my day as everyone else. Killing wolves and disprove the kobolds who claim I won't take their candle. Luckily Brother Paxton in the library gave me a compass to find my objective fast. I want to become strong and rich, and walking in circles won't make it happen.

I already managed to utilize some pieces of goblin wisdom:

• To cooperate, you don't need friendship, trust or a common flag. All you need is common interest. I met a mage. I don't know him. I don't know anything about him except that he was also charged to kill kobolds. I invited him to form a group. We killed all the kobold vermin, workers and laborers together. The quests were completed in half time.
• Time is money friend. I was sent to collect 12 red burlap from Defias. I turned it down. I'm unsure if those defias all carry burlaps, I don't want to spend the whole day killing them and finding only cheese and trash. I lost some XP and loot by this choice. But I kept my time. Fair trade.
• The best investment is your brain. You can lose everything else, if you have brain, you will be in buisiness again no time. So I did not bother to spend all my coppers at the paladin trainer. Those coppers are well spent.

I was lvl5 when I entered Stormwind. I did not want to spend my time on lowly payed servant jobs more than I had to. I had things to do here and I want to have them done. At first I had to make my first trip to the Auction House, the field of getting rich. I will write more about it later.

Secondly I took my professions. Herbalism and Mining. They provide sellable goods needing no other ingredients than my workforce. While I want to show that becoming rich does not need endless farming, everyone must start somewhere. And since every investment needs money to invest, there is no other start than work. So herbs and mines beware!

I met a man who shouted "Free gold for lowbies". Among the alliance, such charity is considered noble. Most goblins would definately call him mad. I talked about this with Gazlowe once, back in Ratchet, who disagreed. I will tell you his opinion about charity. Anyway, I did not took his money. I want to prove you that one can be rich without help, only by his own work.

After all these I hit the Deeprun Tram to Ironforge. I will see what job opportunities do the dwarfs offer. I will take the faster quests from both cities to become stronger fast. In an hour two more levels and several stacks of herbs were collected in the snowy land of the dwarfs.

After the work, I returned Ironforge and put the herbs to the Auction House. I underpriced them a bit, because I wanted them to sell. As the goblin saying says: You can sell fast or sell high, but can't sell high fast. I need some money for start and I can't afford to wait for days for some extra profit.

I also spent some silvers on a 6 slot bag. Cheap and small but better than throwing away stuff that could be sold.

Last year

I'm Gevlon, a human paladin with quite a strange story. I was a squire on a ship which supposed to bring us to Durotar, to our position at Tiragarde Keep. Unfortunately - or maybe fortunately, time will tell - our ship was sinked by pirates. I was saved by goblins. From my clothes they assumed I was rich and someone will pay great money for saving me. When they found out that my family are poor farmers, they held me to pay for their "service" by working for them. I spent a year in Ratchet, and while working, I talked to them as much as I could. The other servants tried to keep away from the "filthy, greedy, unhonorable bastards", or tried to escape. Some might reached Northwatch Hold, but most became raptor food. Maybe I was more curious than my fellows, maybe just hoped to talk my way out, but I did not hid in our barracks out of working hours but tried to know the goblins as much as I could. The point when I knew my time in Ratchet was more than servitude was when i tried to convince Dizzywig about the meaning of loyalty. He asked
- Do you think the orcs are disloyal to Thrall and their clans?
- No matter how much I dislike the greenskinned savages, I have to admit, they are loyal to their last breath. This one thing is similar between us and them.
- You know there are three other similarities between humans and orcs.
- What are they?
- One: they consider us goblins dishonorable just like you.
- Two: When they are hit by a sword or a frostbolt in Alterac Valley, they die just like you.
- Three: and their families miss them the same as yours.
I looked him without words, he continued:
- You think we are dishonorable because we live and die for profit. It's true that I myself killed a guy who tried to get away with a shipment. It was not self-defense, he wanted to run with his loot. My motive was greed. Gazlowe killed dozens who crossed his ways. The barons of Booty Bay, maybe killed hundreds. But to kill tens of thousands, it needs more than greed. It needs a cause and honorable people who are loyal to it.

From this conversation I studied the goblin way of life. After my year passed I refused to continue working as a free employee. I returned to Elwyn Forest to prove that becoming paladin and becoming rich are not mutually exclusive. I hope to prove that getting rich is not equal to becoming evil nor it needs farming for eternity.

I know nobody in this realm, Kul Tiras, who could help me to start, I do everything on my own. I'm new to being paladin, never did it before. Nor I have any relatives in the alliance side. So I have no hidden advantage over my fellow adventurers. Everything that I will reach will be because of the strength of the mace of my ancestors and the tricks the goblins taught me.

Follow me on my adventures