One of the changes in the latest expansion of WoW is that you no longer cook fish. You first gut the fish, getting flesh. This is needed, because fish comes in 3 qualities, small, normal and enormous. Each give the same flesh, but in different quantities. Gutting the fish takes one click per one batch (5 enormous, 10 normal, 20 small).
Today I went and bought 130 enormous Abyssal Gulper Eels for 12G each. That's 1560G. I gutted them and got 553 flesh. I sold them for 4G each, 2212G. That's a nice profit for a few clicks that literally anyone could do. Except morons. They can't do anything.
However, the story isn't over. There are daily fishing quests, requiring fish eggs. When you have the quest and gut fish, you get the usual amount of flesh and some eggs. If you have more than 10 eggs, you get no eggs. However if you list your 10 eggs on the AH, you get eggs again. As I listed eggs as they came, I also received 195 eggs that I could sell for 8G each, 1560G total, equal to the price of the fish. So I made 2200G pure profit without any skill or effort, on the expense of morons and slackers who buy their eggs on the AH.
As more and more competitors show up, the egg market is winding down. In the glorious first weeks I could sell an egg for 20G. It shows two things: M&S seem hopeless and that free market is their only hope, as the competition of sellers will finally drive the flesh and the eggs down to fish cost + some % profit.
Today I went and bought 130 enormous Abyssal Gulper Eels for 12G each. That's 1560G. I gutted them and got 553 flesh. I sold them for 4G each, 2212G. That's a nice profit for a few clicks that literally anyone could do. Except morons. They can't do anything.
However, the story isn't over. There are daily fishing quests, requiring fish eggs. When you have the quest and gut fish, you get the usual amount of flesh and some eggs. If you have more than 10 eggs, you get no eggs. However if you list your 10 eggs on the AH, you get eggs again. As I listed eggs as they came, I also received 195 eggs that I could sell for 8G each, 1560G total, equal to the price of the fish. So I made 2200G pure profit without any skill or effort, on the expense of morons and slackers who buy their eggs on the AH.
As more and more competitors show up, the egg market is winding down. In the glorious first weeks I could sell an egg for 20G. It shows two things: M&S seem hopeless and that free market is their only hope, as the competition of sellers will finally drive the flesh and the eggs down to fish cost + some % profit.
11 comments:
I think you are applying a variation of "farmed it for free" to your logic. What you are doing clearly requires little effort, but it does require some effort. People who buying your items are making a decision that whatever knowledge it takes to get these eggs, it is not worth their time. Their gold is worth less to them than their time to learn this, so they gladly pay you for your time using gold they do not care much about. Seems like a rational choice.
I'd have to agree with the first comment.
While each individual click is not that much work, in total it is a truly tedious action. Not to mention that you bought the fish from various people, allowing batch work.
You traded real life time for in game gold.
But if the traders in question have enough in game gold and just put up the items to help those that still need the gold, then you and they are happy. How is this moronic? At the same time, they get to spend their real life time NOT mindlessly repeating the same action. How is that slacking?
@Eaten by a Grue: The knowledge needed is provided by the quest giver: get fish and gut the fish. They are either too dumb to read what's written, or unable to comprehend.
@Anonymous: Because - unless they buy illicit gold - they got their gold with a much more tedious action and will have to replace when it's gone similar way.
8 gold per egg means the person doing the quest paid you 80g for the trouble of providing the eggs.
Buying 10 large eels (you won't get 10 eggs with just 5) would cost you 120g.
They are still morons, because eel flesh in your market more than pays for the eels themselves (so the opportunity cost of buying eels is essentially negative).
But they are not one-step morons that are doing what they are doing just because they can't read the quest.
Sounds like you're having fun with such meaningful gameplay as gutting fish and selling eggs.
@Mugg: not really. I get gold, that I can spend on my expenses.
You put time and effort into finding this opportunity. I get it wasn't much, but I think this is the catch. Of course anyone could gut and list fish on AH, if someone told them this is what they should do in order to make money. By the time they find it out, it's not profitable anymore.
The quest giver told them. I understand that some might don't care listing the eggs. I just don't get why does anyone not making his own eggs.
Buying eggs on the AH is quicker than buying fish, gutting it yourself (hoping you get enough eggs), then listing the meat back on AH.
And as a goblin you know time is money!
So perhaps they can make money quicker NOT gutting fish, or they already have enough money so they don't care.
You're basically insinuating that you are able to engage in arbitrage based off of information disparity.
You think the people are either ignorant, lazy, or just plain too stupid to understand how to harvest meat and eggs.
I'm sure there is an element of truth in your belief; however, I think the lion's share of the profit you make is earned in exchange for the risk you're taking on.
A server AH is not a global clearing house like a stock exchange. Prices quoted on a stock exchange are real-time up to the second prices - in most cases stock can be immediately bought or sold at almost exactly the quoted price. While your meat and eggs sit in the AH, prices could lower significantly before all your auctions sell.
Prices for eggs and meat could (and likely will, eventually) crash as more people arrive at the same conclusion you did. Right after you invest a couple thousand gold into fish - a few people could come right behind you and do the same thing.
One other point to consider: gutting 130 fish and breaking it up into lots of 10 eggs and meat is substantially more time and effort than "a few clicks". In not much more time than it took you to do that, I could solo farm ICC or Naxx 25 (although Naxx does have one pesky time-consuming boss) and come away with 2k without ever assuming any real risk.
@Blackhawk: since fish is only used for flesh and flesh only comes from fish, the two are interchangeable and their equilibrium price is equal. So even in worse case where eggs worth nothing I can recoup investment on flesh. My only risk is that all of them crash because people suddenly start to fish en masse.
Creating the eggs is literally a few clicks. Namely you click on the fish and 4-8 is created. After two clicks you open auctioneer (do it front of the AH) press "post". I just posted 120 eggs in less than 5 mins, that's about 5000G/hour if we assume flesh=fish.
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