The PC Spotlight 2.05.09: Striking it Rich in World of Warcraft – The Stuff They Won’t Tell You

Posted by Chris Vicari on 02.05.2009

Chris Vicari, the self-appointed MMO economist and marketer, is doing things differently once again this week, but this time providing a thorough guide on how to make the big time in World of Warcraft.

Greetings and salutations eager readers, welcome to another special edition of the PC Spotlight. If you're looking for part three of why 2009 is going to kick ass for the PC platform, look for it next week. This week I want to talk about a little hobby of mine, MMO economics and trading, while giving my strategies, tips, and info about how to make some serious cash in MMOs. You can call me a dry and boring SOB if you like, but we all have our little pets. Today, I'm discussing World of Warcraft (WoW) and its easy-to-use Auction House (AH) system. I'll eventually write something up about EVE Online, and perhaps Warhammer Online depending on reaction and reader interest.

This is a guide best read while playing the game to avoid as much confusion as possible. Prepare to minimize or invest in a second monitor.

---

Introductions



Just like real life, making gold, platinum, or ISK is imperative to survive in any MMO. While making the bucks isn't an entirely difficult feat to accomplish, making the most out of your time, and becoming as efficient as possible, certainly is. This guide goes into great detail about WoW's in-game economy, and how to take advantage of the money-making potentials of the AH. You'll learn how to manipulate markets, know what to sell and for how much, as well as becoming mindful of market and economic trends. You don't need an economics degree to thrive, and you don't even have to be a math wiz. Having a cursory knowledge of both and knowing how to add and subtract is all you really need here. A little experience with Microsoft Excel couldn't hurt either. While World of Warcraft's economy is not as complicated as other games such as EVE, it's definitely a good place to hone your skills.

Before we get started, let's get some ground rules which apply to any trading and market guru out of the way and they are bolded for importance –

• Never risk what you can't afford to lose
• Items you collect yourself are NOT free under any circumstance
• Time is money
• Buy low and sell high
• People are lazy, take advantage
• Bragging about your financial feats is a no-no, lest you want more competition
• If you find a good deal, take it or someone else will

And here are a couple terms you need to be familiar with –

•Supply and Demand – The natural progression of the market to eventually reach equilibrium, which in our case means the average price of a particular item. The basis of any economy, and is extremely complicating.
•Undercutters – Your competition.
• Market Manipulation – Tinkering with the market to inflate item prices, which can also be considered overcharging.
• Crashing the Market – The reverse of market manipulation. Often employed to drop an item back to its original value or lower. Sometimes intentional but often not.
• Patch Notes – Changes to the game which can have an affect on the in-game economy. Can be prepared for and taken advantage of.

Using the strategies I learned and created, I was able to reach my goal of 13,000 gold and all the parts needed for the coveted Horde Mechano-Hog in just a week and a half. The only bump in the road I encountered was learning of the item's level 80 requirement when I was only 77.

Why are you writing this guide?

You'd be surprised at how many people simply do not know how to make serious cash in MMOs. Some go so far as to buy gold, or even pay real money for gold collecting guides on Ebay. I like things that are free and I believe information should be free and readily available as well. Unless I write a book or something, only then I would demand money!

Won't this bring in more competition?

You bet, but that's part of the fun.

What the hell happened to Part 3 or even the news for that matter?

I wanted to do something different, again. I'm trying to mix things up a little and pull away from the dry and boring content. Keeping it interesting ensures that I'm enthusiastic about writing the column, and keeps you coming back for more. Or at least I hope so.

Does the phrase "too much time on your hands" mean anything to you?

I accidentally the internet.

---

Getting Started

Getting started and taking the first few baby steps is always the hardest. Research is important, and becoming familiar with item prices is a good idea. Thankfully, getting some startup gold and items to sell is not all that difficult in World of Warcraft. There's not a whole ton of research involved either. If you've leveled a character all the way to 80, you'll have a good idea of what moves quickly on the AH and what doesn't. Things that move extremely quickly are the trade goods such as ore, bars plants, leather, and enchanting goods. I made the majority of my money through mining and enchanting, but there are plenty of other ways to make bank too. I'll get into more detail about those further into this guide.

Creating a bank alt character, if you haven't already done so, is another necessary and important step. Your bank alt, also called a mule, is where you'll spend all your trading and price hunting time, whereas your main harvests raw goods for selling. Orgrimmar is a wise choice to start as the mailbox and AH are very close to one another. I chose Undercity since I enjoyed the architectural aethestic. Make sure to distinguish your new character either by name or appearance, because it is not uncommon for players to mistake their level 1 bank alts as a useless character and delete them.

Your new best friend on the road to riches is the add-on called Auctioneer. You can download this lovely add-on here. To put it in simplest of terms, Auctioneer scans and compiles every item listed on the AH. In doing so, it calculates an item's average price, helps find deals on under-priced goods, and allows you to know how valuable a particular item is anywhere in the game world. The add-on is a little complicated to get used to at first, but every aspect has its purpose. To get a clear idea of what the major features do, let's study the picture below:



Buttons and Windows
Scan Button – Most important part of the add-on. It scans every item on the AH. Takes several minutes to complete. Best performed once a day
Configure – Auctioneer configuration page (use at own discretion)
Reset – Resets your search parameters
Item types on left – Allows you to better specify what you're looking for
Browse (currently viewing) – Main page where you view items listed on the AH
Bids – Lists items you are currently bidding on
Auctions – Page used to post items, no longer used and replaced by Post tab
BeanCounter – Lists every item you bought and sold on the AH, keeps track of profits and expenditures
Post – Replaces Auctions tab as the page used to list new items
Appraiser – Allows you to update a price on a particular item rather than scanning the entire AH
BTMScan – No longer part of Auctioneer and will not appear with your copy

Main Browse Page – The listing of Wool Cloth
# – The amount of items in a particular stack
Auction Item – Obvious
Min – Minimum level required to use/wear item
iLvl – Item level. Higher numbers mean higher quality
Left – The amount of time the listing has left before it expires
Owner – The individual who listed the item
Price – Price of the item. Top number is bid while the bottom number is buyout. If no bottom number is shown, owner did not set a buyout price.
Pct – A very important piece of information. Shows how much lower or higher an item's price is when compared to its average price. The colors mean the following:

• Blue – Extremely underpriced
• Green – Slightly underpriced
• Yellow – Near average price (100% is average)
• Orange – Slightly overpriced
• Red – Extremely overpriced

Now that we have a firm idea of how to correctly utilize the Auctioneer mod, let's proceed and figure out how to make some serious cash.

---

Baby Steps: Of Items and Research

With the boring stuff out of the way, let's figure out what's out there that we can sell and make bundles of profit. Harvesting skills, as already mentioned, are some of the finest sources of income and I utilized Mining and Enchanting to make a majority of my money, but let's get a little more specific. To make it easier, and since I'm a category and organization nut, I'll break it down by harvesting skill and expect you know what all of these items are. Remember, prices are different for every server.



Now that the new Wrath of the Lich King Expansion is upon us, the price of every old world ore from Copper all the way to Thorium has skyrocketed because people are powerleveling their professions. The price of Fel Iron and Adamantium has dropped however so it's best to look elsewhere. The new ores: Cobalt, Saronite, and Titanium, all yield exceptional profits as well. Saronite bars in particular sell on the Lightning's Blade server at 60g a stack. In higher level zones, you'll be falling over the stuff, but if you're eager to farm it, Sholazar Basin is the place to be. Surrounded by mountains on all sides of the zone, the Basin is the supreme place to find Saronite and its rare and more expensive cousin, Titanium. When players are able to mine for Titanium, they are allowed to create Titansteel, a special kind of bar used in a majority of high-end products. With a 20 hour cooldown, it provides a small but steady income of 20-40 gold everyday. Since the expansion's launch, many players dropped their professions for mining because of all the money one could make. Ore and bars are purchased by Jewel Crafters and Blacksmiths in very large quantities, keeping the price at a consistent level too.

With the latest patch, you only need to take one whack at a node. Because of this change, the supply of ore has increased dramatically. While prices have come down a little since the patch, with a little patience you can still attain pre-patch prices.

Investing in an epic flying mount is incredibly wise.



Similar to mining, old world herbalism and skinning goods have gone up in price, but not at any significant amount. Herbalism is a popular choice because harvested goods are used in large quantities for Alchemy and Inscription. Herbalism also allows players to gather Frost Lotus, a rare drop in every Northrend plant node. Skinning on the other hand is the least popular of all the gathering skills because only Leatherworking uses a majority of the harvested goods. Lucky for them, skinners aren't left out in the rare drop department because of one item, Arctic Furs. Always in demand and always fetching a pretty penny, this drop is the gold mine for the profession, often costing 70g per. No matter which of the two you pick though, demand remains fairly consistent for all Northrend skins and herbs.



Enchanting is the grand daddy of all gathering skills, and it's not even considered as one. If you know what you're doing, you can make an absolute ton of gold here. Profit comes from disenchanting magical items dropped by monsters and bosses in dungeons. It is not uncommon for players to scan the AH for under-priced Green items, disenchant them, and sell the mats at a profit. Depending on your class, as some have an easier time than others, a crafty trader, if noticing a hole in the supply of a particular enchanting material, can run low level instances and farm for the appropriate mats and make a killing. Many also run quests they might have missed and simply disenchant the reward.

Enchanting goods have always maintained extremely high prices because of the difficulty in leveling the profession. Thanks to WoTLK though, prices have gone up even higher, especially for old world goods. Notice the pattern? Northrend mats such as Infinite Dust, Cosmic Essences, and Abyss Crystals all fetch high prices too. Dream Shards on the other hand are fairly inexpensive for the effort involved since high level instances and heroics drop them like candy. Sometimes, blue items sell for more to a vendor than as a shard. Remember though, you must raise your enchanting skill to a certain amount to disenchant higher level goods. It's all worth it though.



Sometimes items aren't selling as quickly as we'd like and we have an overabundance of goods just sitting on the AH not making us money. What we need to do is find items not attached to a harvesting profession or trade skill. How about something to diversify our trading portfolio a little bit or to simply spice things up? Some are easier to find than you may think. Others are so obscure you'd think nobody would buy them. It's time to shed some light on these hidden gems.

The most obvious out of all the goods you'll find is definitely cloth. You know, the stuff used in tailoring and first aid? Yea, I know, not exactly hidden or odd, but that doesn't mean it doesn't make you money. In fact, it can pull in a ton of cash, and it's so easy to get. Just head out into the wilderness and slay a couple humanoids. Bam! Cloth! As you embark further down the path of a trader and run into pretty obscure stuff, you'll learn one immutable fact; people are really freaking lazy. So lazy in fact they'll pay top dollar for just about anything if it saves them time. Use this to your advantage. Chefs in particular are quite agitated when it comes to collecting meats and fish. *Hint incoming* Stacks of Shoveltusk Flanks fetch a hefty price.

Once again we can thank the latest expansion for opening the doors to even more opportunities. As previously mentioned, a wise enchanter can run old instances for lower level enchanting mats, but two obscure items in particular are still used even today and nobody really farms them much anymore. Say hello to Righteous Orbs and Dark Runes. Found in two of the once high level instances in the old lands, these two items can fetch some pretty nice profits at the right opportunities. Righteous Orbs are required items for several recipes, but they are typically used for the Crusader enchant. These are found in Stratholme, located in Eastern Plaguelands, and have a chance to drop off all the Scarlet humanoid mobs. One boss mob in particular has a 100% drop rate. Dark Runes in contrast have many more uses than the Orbs and drop more frequently in Scholomance, which is in Western Plaguelands. Used in several recipes and a required item for the Paladin epic mount quest, there's always demand for the runes. Just don't be fooled by the people who considerably underprice the item, it can rake in decent amounts.

Opportunity!
Even the recently added Achievement feature has opened the door for even more money-making opportunities. If you're a class that has an easy time farming low level instances, you'll find even more goods worth selling. One class of items in particular pull in reasonable profits for the minimal effort required. If you look through the Reputation pane in the Achievement window, you'll find one particular achievement which requires you to be exalted with the Argent Dawn and the Argent Crusade. If you're leveling in Northrend, you should already be familiar with the Argent Crusade, but if you weren't around before The Burning Crusade, Argent Dawn may be unknown to you. Before WoTLK, Naxxramas used to be located in Eastern Plaguelands and was the toughest raidencounter ever seen pre-TBC. To gain entrance into this place, you needed to be exalted with the Argent Dawn. To achieve this reputation, you had to acquire drops in dungeons all over the world, or craft an ungodly amount of items and hand them in. With the introduction of achievements, these items now have a use again and can be sold for a good deal of money to those who wish to complete the achievement.

Here's a list of the things you can collect and the places they frequently drop:

• Crypt Fiend Parts – Drop off any undead Nerubians, but can be found in large quantities while farming Scholomance
• Bone Fragments – Skeletal minions, check Scholomance
• Core of Elements – Dropped by most 55+ elemental creatures such as the ones in Blackrock Depths
• Dark Iron Scraps – Drops by nearly every mob in Blackrock Depths
• Dark Iron Residue – Not needed for Argent Dawn rep, but is required for Thorium Brotherhood reputation. Drops all over Blackrock Depths
• Savage Fronds – A pricey item dropped in mass quantities by the plant elementals in Dire Maul

If you decide to check these old places out, Enchanting is the best support profession to bring along with you. You'll find plenty of stuff to disenchant along the way.

While I have detailed plenty of opportunities for you, there are still many others yet to be discovered and exploited. I leave that up to you, because I haven't found them all.

---

Utilizing Market Strategies

After reading through all that text and information, we finally know what to sell and how to do it. While selling farmable goods and buying low and selling high is all well and good, it's time to call upon intricate market strategies to ensure that you get the most bang for your buck. In this section, you'll find the hidden market maneuvers that many will not tell you how to perform. This is the advanced stuff and what you'll find here is a treasure trove of useful information. Absorbing it all is of the utmost importance.

Knowing When to Sell

Now that we know what we'll be selling for extended periods of time, we need to know when opportunities are ripe for the picking. During certain times of the week, typically the weekends, you'll notice a large amount of under-priced trade goods have been dumped onto the AH. To maximize profits and not to undercut the flooded market even further, it may be best to wait for a sizeable portion to clear, and then list your items at a higher price. Depending on your server, the market could clear in a matter of hours or even a day or two, allowing you to swoop in, price an item at its appropriate level, and sell for more. Listing items in an already saturated market may cause prices to fall even further, which is the opposite of what you want.

In rare instances, waiting for patches to release and then selling can yield immense profits. For instance, let's say a hot new item everybody has to have is on the verge of release and its main component is 16 Titansteel bars. A crafty individual could stock up on Titansteel bars, wait for patch day to hit when everybody and their mother is buying them, and then list their own at an extreme markup when the market clears. This is not a long term strategy. Simply a quick jolt of income.

This market is flooded, hold your stock.
Knowing When to Undercut and By How Much

If you talk to anyone who has ever spent any period of time with the AH, you'll often hear them complain about undercutters. They are your competition and their existence is a fact of life, and you'll be undercutting them back anyway. Undercutting is the supreme strategy to make sure that your listing is the first people see and ultimately buy. Undercutting by one copper is always the best solution and it always has a good chance of spawning some hate mail, but that's simply a bonus. Going undercut crazy though is not always a good idea. You never want to undercut an item that is sold 40% below market value just so you can get a quick influx of cash. It doesn't help you in the long run. Knowing how volatile a particular market might even allow you to avoid the undercutters entirely.

To put it in simplest of terms, market volatility is how quickly the price can change on a particular type of good. For instance, the mining and enchanting materials markets are extremely volatile because so many people are farming those particular mats. Volatile markets move very quickly, and goods don't tend to stay on the AH for very long, especially on the weekends. If you're selling in a volatile market, you should be used to undercutters by now. A nice little trick that you can perform to stay on top of the listing is not unloading your entire stock all at one time. Let's say you have 7 stacks of Saronite bars, and you have an opportunity to sell them at 5% below market value, which is very nice. It would be smart to only list 3-4 of those stacks. Why? If you list all your Saronite stacks at once, you won't be able to do anything if you get undercut, which will undoubtedly happen. By holding off and waiting for the eventual undercut, you can list your reserve inventory to undercut him back, inevitably putting you back at the top of the list and the first to move your products.

Remember, once an item is listed, you cannot alter it unless you remove the listing and then you're out of the deposit fee.

Stacks Are Not Always Best

Many items in WoW are able to be lumped together in stacks. Most are limited to 20 items per stack while others can so as high as 200. In some instances, it may be wise to list items individually rather than all at once. Enchanting mats are a great example of this. If I'm looking to get a particular enchant for my weapon, I'd be more interested in purchasing 1-2 individual Greater Cosmic Essences at a slightly marked up price rather than having to buy an entire stack and letting the rest go to waste. Even the AH itself can give stacks a listing disadvantage. Sometimes singular items are listed at the front while stacks in the back. It's all about having as many eyes as possible seeing your order because that determines how quickly your product moves. Many people, when perusing the market, sort their items by price and not by quantity. What happens then is singular items, with a lower bid amount, are pushed to the front of the listing while stacks with a higher bid are pushed to the rear. Use this to your advantage.

Manipulating the Market or Re-Establishing a Price

Manipulating the market is easier than you may think, but with it comes incredible risk. To manipulate the market of an item and achieve a price you think will still move no matter how much it is, simply buy up everything you see and re-list it at your new price. That's it. I would avoid trying this on the volatile markets though, you'll probably be undercutted five minutes after and all the money you just spent is wasted. Don't try to manipulate an item that moves slower than molasses either, you're just wasting your time. Coveted items with minimal listing such as cloth, potions, and some of the other stuff I discussed are good candidates for manipulation. People are lazy, remember that fact. They will pay.

Now, re-adjusting the price on a particular item back to its average value can be considered manipulation, but you aren't charging an arm and a leg for the service. Re-establishing a price back to where it's supposed to be is accomplished in the same fashion. Simply buy up all the under-priced goods and re-list them. Before you try this though, you need to ask yourself a couple of questions:

• How fast does the item move?
• How quickly do you think the price will revert back to what it was originally?
• Does the profit you make cover the listing's deposit fee?
• Is it worth the risk?

Remember, don't risk what you can't afford to lose. If you have money to burn and the risk is minimal, give it a shot.

While volatile, it's a good choice to try and re-list those stacks. It's priced 50% less than usual market value for God's sake.

El Fin

And that's basically a wrap. I think I've discussed most of the intricacies involving the World of Warcraft market and Auction House system. I think that was all of it anyway. This became 20 double-spaced pages a little too quickly. It's longer than a chapter for my damn thesis! In any case…I wish you the best of luck in your trading endeavors, and I hope to see you guys in one of these babies real soon.



/wave and thanks for reading!!!