The PuG update: there are several commenters claiming it's just another casual guild with a raiding core and some casual members sometimes tagging along. There are several others claiming we are all experienced raiders. Last week (our first week) we killed 10/12. In the first 2 days of this week, we killed the same 10/12 and got Sindy to 1% (would be a kill if we wouldn't have to suck with the quest item). However when BQL died, 6 players (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) got the Crimson Hall achievement, including both tanks. That's a quick answer to both claims. We raided with those who were online and wanted to come. This means that if you are in the guild (among 95 others now) and online, you also get your chance.
Every time I post some business advice, I get this crap. There are many variations for this, but the bottom line is always: the idea does not work because of some other player.
I call these people market-socialists. Like all socialists they expect some large force to take care of them. This variant expect the market or the "invisible hand" to rain gold on them. When it fails to, it failed. No, not them, the market failed.
The deep undercutting strategy works. If someone sells for 2G/glyph and drives you out of the market, it's a proof that it works. The one with lower G/hour expectations won over the one with higher. That's the point. The guy with the lowest income expectation wins. Oh dear, it wasn't you?! Let me give you a hug!
"farming is screwed, herbs are for 10G/stack lol" means farming works for someone else who finds 10G/stack a good money.
"som punk sells cut gems 10G above uncut no money in JC" means that there is money in JC for someone who sells cut gems 10G above uncut.
The market is about competition! If you would win without effort, it wouldn't be market on the first place. If you lose it's not the failure of the market, it's the failure of you!
Stop whining and seek other markets. Especially stop whining about bots. Blizzard choose to tolerate them, live with it or quit WoW or start a political campaign on the forums against bots.
You must also recognize that in the optimal situation, where every actor acts rationally and informed, there would be no gold at all in arbitrage, only in productive work. All activities would have the same G/hour (over the long run, as investment costs must be included). It is not normal that someone has goldcap. It is not normal that someone have 2KG/hour income when the average wages (dailies) are 0.3K/hour. These are signs of the existence of M&S. Your huge income comes from their lack of brain. You can sell a glyph for 50G because there are hundreds of scribes who don't undercut you but go do dailies.
Summary: you are not entitled to be rich. You can only be if you work hard, use your brain and there are enough M&S around.
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Every time I post some business advice, I get this crap. There are many variations for this, but the bottom line is always: the idea does not work because of some other player.
I call these people market-socialists. Like all socialists they expect some large force to take care of them. This variant expect the market or the "invisible hand" to rain gold on them. When it fails to, it failed. No, not them, the market failed.
The deep undercutting strategy works. If someone sells for 2G/glyph and drives you out of the market, it's a proof that it works. The one with lower G/hour expectations won over the one with higher. That's the point. The guy with the lowest income expectation wins. Oh dear, it wasn't you?! Let me give you a hug!
"farming is screwed, herbs are for 10G/stack lol" means farming works for someone else who finds 10G/stack a good money.
"som punk sells cut gems 10G above uncut no money in JC" means that there is money in JC for someone who sells cut gems 10G above uncut.
The market is about competition! If you would win without effort, it wouldn't be market on the first place. If you lose it's not the failure of the market, it's the failure of you!
Stop whining and seek other markets. Especially stop whining about bots. Blizzard choose to tolerate them, live with it or quit WoW or start a political campaign on the forums against bots.
You must also recognize that in the optimal situation, where every actor acts rationally and informed, there would be no gold at all in arbitrage, only in productive work. All activities would have the same G/hour (over the long run, as investment costs must be included). It is not normal that someone has goldcap. It is not normal that someone have 2KG/hour income when the average wages (dailies) are 0.3K/hour. These are signs of the existence of M&S. Your huge income comes from their lack of brain. You can sell a glyph for 50G because there are hundreds of scribes who don't undercut you but go do dailies.
Summary: you are not entitled to be rich. You can only be if you work hard, use your brain and there are enough M&S around.
23 comments:
A little note would be that we ran Sindragosa with 1 tank and 4 healers - because we had nothing else available.
The deep undercutting strategy works. If someone sells for 2G/glyph and drives you out of the market, it's a proof that it works. The one with lower G/hour expectations won over the one with higher.
This should be put on a placard and hung above people's monitors. There are so many people that don't get this basic economic concept. Both in game and in real life.
I just had to link you this forum link, seeing how for some weird coincidence, today's post covered the tales in it absolutely precisely.
"im trying to get some gold together to get the Chopper <3 that mount but inscription isnt realy doing anything as you can see."
*snicker*
http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=13816843251&sid=1
well, what´s the matter with farmbots? They lower prices of farming materials, providing good equipment / raidstuff to M&S with dailys.
so which person do they hurt?
well, what´s the matter with farmbots? They lower prices of farming materials, providing good equipment / raidstuff to M&S with dailys.
so which person do they hurt?
They hurt the M&S who used to be able to sell crafted gear for higher prices using their self-farmed materials, "because it's free".
"However when BQL died, 6 players (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) got the Crimson Hall achievement, including both tanks. That's a quick answer to both claims."
Not really. For example, recently i started playing with my alt mage after raiding for a long with with my priest healer. So, I got some achievements on the mage - but i had plenty of experience in the fights.
Besides, even if some of you don't have the experience, they are playing with mostly experienced raiders. I could say they are being carried but I'm guessing they're doing their share of work.
@Nonamefrom: possibly they are alts, but it does not matter for the point. I have no way to determine if they are alts or not. The point is that here 6 people I DID NOT KNOW got a chance to prove themselves despite no achievements and for some, low gear. The point is that if someone have no achievements and gear and can't even keep attendance, he still gets a chance here!
Yes, it changes the fact that you're answering to the claims that everyone is a experienced raider - your are, with alts or not.
But yes, the rest remains the same. Competent raiders can achieve goals while raiding on a casual basis. Lots of guilds do it. Hell, if stupid and incompetent PuG can reach very far with lots of M&S why wouldn't you?
I like your direct posts better than your explanatory posts. Granted direct assaults don't have 'content' (detail, examples, and alternative ways of saying the same thing), but maybe that's why I like them; less useless fluff.
Also, the more abrasive language you use drives home the point better.
Hm, what are the chances to have two different people with "nonameform" as nick posting comments on same blog?
Anyway, I'm pretty sure that I've forgotten to post a comment about Gevlon's advices and how I made money with them. I didn't go the popular way of selling glyphs or crafting epic bullets/arrows, but instead found some small niches with engineering. Since the time I've started reading this blog and up till now I made something like 150k gold, with the highest profit being around 2k per day (maybe an hour or a bit more of actual play time). Of course I've been selling uncut gems and other stuff along the way, but most of my profit came from crafting engineering pets. It might seem that after Blizzard made engineering pets no longer bind when created, there will be a big competition. Not true for my realm. Though there are people who post pets from time to time, most of the time I have monopoly and enjoy 50-100% profits for my investments (I don't farm). considering that I'm also sitting on a pretty huge stock of mats, if things go wrong I can either resell them for higher prices than I bought them (smart investment: setting a threshold really low, so if I decide to sell mats with average price, I still make money), or start undercutting everyone on the market and still making gold from it, as the actual price of producing a pet (except for the yeti) is around 15-25 gold. Time investment is minimal (check AH for cheap mats, send mats to an engineer alt, craft items, send them to bank alt, post), but gold per hour of time invested is nice. Basically, instead of doing what I was doing before reading this blog (farming heroics and doing dailies), I just spend 10 minutes on my alts and make much more.
As for inscription, I can't really tell if it's possible to sell the glyphs at the moment. I just recently leveled that profession and I didn't spend much time doing a proper market research, but still I have the glyphs from leveling the profession and they aren't selling. Some of them might be not good items, but I tried to craft only the glyphs that seem useful. However, not only you have people who are constantly posting glyphs for 75g, you also have those who not only undercut you by 1c or 20s, but those who go 2-3g lower. With the current average price for some glyphs at 5g, that's really boring. Maybe if I have done some calculations, 2g per glyph wouldn't seem so bad (for example, epic arrows will still make me profit at 1g per stack), but most of the time I manage to sell 1-2 glyphs per day and posting glyphs at least twice per day is not an option for me at the moment.
Guess I will wait till Cataclysm and see what happens then.
How the PuG stands out from other guilds:
1) Its recruiting through a blog with a decent readerbase
2) It has not requirements for attendance
Will be interesting to see how those things play out.
The other rules are not unique to this project, and most guilds will have a similiar list of do's and dont's.
Skilled players being able to deal with content in a short period of time (aka casual raidingguild) is as common as celestial steeds.
Actually, the social guilds you keep referring to seems like the anomaly to me, but that's another story.
So as a request for the future, I hope you focus on writing/thinking about the things that actually makes the guild different.
Markets don't fail, people do fail. It's simple and logical, yet unfortunately so few are able to understand it.
Kristine: You have NO idea how many of the guilds are there... I've been on four servers so far and they were vast majority on every one.
My problem with Blizzard and Bots is uncertainty.
Bots make farming unattractive to do and therefore discourage people 'farming'. When blizzard decides to cull the Bots there is no proper replacement. People who would have farmed have been chased from the market leaving behind supply shortages and supply spikes.
In time people will start to farm but won't the Bots return driving supply and force people from farming again?
Bots cause uncertainty which benefits speculators but not a stable market.
Deep undercutting drives people from the market. I agree.
But the question should be does the deep uncutting strategy make you more or less money over time. My experience is that you should strive to maximise your profits and live with rivals. Deep undercutting although increases sales should come with a financial health warning.
By creating a 'price war' you win by making less gold with more effort? Yah.
I think I know the answer to this question already, but I'd rather be certain before I get another WoW account.
If I were to create an EU account, would me starting a new character for PuG at level 1 be an issue?
- B
Check out Historyy's latest activity feed. Looks like he's been doing some pvp!
@Bronte: as it's stated in the rules, people of all levels are accepted and will always be.
You can also call it the "Scooby Doo Excuse."
In every episode of the Scooby Doo cartoon, the rag-tag group of teenagers (and their talking dog) would unravel a mystery and the cops would apprehend a criminal. The criminal would always complain that his plan would have worked, "if it weren't for you meddling kids!" I guess it did not occur to anyone that if your nefarious master plan could be foiled by a bunch of clueless kids and their clumsy dog, that maybe it was a shitty plan to begin with.
So when a person complains, imagine them saying that they would be gold-capped "if it weren't for those meddling gold farmers!" or "those meddling AH bots" or "that meddling undercutter!"
It sounds pretty embarrassing when it is put that way...
@Bobbins
"You should strive to maximize your profits" is an ambiguous statement. Are you trying to maximize your profit on each on every transaction? Are you trying to maximize your profit over a period of time? Are you trying to maximize your profit per hour of effort? These are different goals and your answer may dictate the strategy you adopt.
@Kristine and Jan
Social guilds are both rare and appear often. How is that possible? Simple.
They fail, disband and get reformed with another 'leader'.
So they are an anomaly cause they're insignificant, and yet they're omnipresent because they're like termites. Squash one, and two others plop in its place.
I could see how someone could make the argument that, in a capitalist society, and holding constant everything you have said, corporations are guilty of, not necessarily exploiting the M&S (because they deserve to be so, according to the principles we are accepting for this idea), but because they try to create additional M&S. Whether it be through mis-information, false advertising, evasiveness answers to questions, etc.
Longest sentence in the world, but I hope that makes sense.
Goblin i have a question: recently i have begun to monopolize the markets for raiding flasks on my server. Whenever someone undercuts me, I immediately undercut them so that no one buys their potions, driving them out of the market since they usually give up. However, what should i do when someone posts potions at a price about 2g on average lower than the usual selling price of flasks. Should i buyout and relist, or continue to undercut so that they get no profit?
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