WORLD OF WARCRAFT - Do you use a Banker Alt/Guild? When did you start doing that and why?

20 DAYS OF GOLD MAKING

This article is part of Nev's 20 days of gold making you can click on the link above to find out more and participate yourself.

Banker (CHECK) 

I in fact do both of these to help both my gold making and to generally keep my items from overwhelming me. It is hard to remember exactly when I made my first bank alt I am guessing it was either slightly before Wrath of the Lich King or very early on. I had always been told by the person who introduced me to WoW to keep everything white quality and above and after getting two characters to maximum level I decided to follow another one of his rules and use a banker. It seemed like a strange idea to me drag a level one from the starting area to whichever city is closest and park it there outside the AH but after awhile it made sense and after a couple of weeks of using it I would never go back. Before bank alts I was vendoring or destroying a lot of stuff which I didn’t really need to.

Personal Guild (CHECK)

I had been wanting to get a personal guild for awhile as once again my bags were getting too full to properly keep in any sort of order I finally bit the bullet and sat in Orgrimmar on my level 2 Blood Elf and spent the 3 evenings gathering the signatures (yeah it took THAT long even at 100g a signature for those who wanted it). The great thing about personal guilds is Tabs so I would probably recommend you leave getting one until you have a few thousand gold to spend on getting a few Tabs up and working.

I would recommend that anyone who is starting to take their gold making seriously whether to support other avenues or just to have gold to buy new shineys.

Why should I?

So depending on the size of your realm this might be a little bit of work, will it be worth it? Yes and let me tell you why.

If you’re playing with two or more max level characters you can easily find yourself with your bags full of seemingly rubbish items (especially since MOP dropped) sending off the none BOP stuff to an central alt makes staying on top of it easier.

If you’re on a limited time budget logging on few characters to manage your auctions on each of them can drain time better spent elsewhere like endless dailies for reputations. Send all that stuff to a central banker and they can manage the processes every two days instead of daily and you always know where to go should you spot the price of something jump and you can get in on the profits.

Final reason why is that with a central alt you can spoil them with fun clothes and accessories so you can strut around the Auction House looking like the player you are.

World Of Warcraft - BOOM HEADSHOT

So yes I am still playing World of Warcraft and at the moment and strangely enough having fun all thanks to levelling my hunter alt. Aren’t hunters grand? Mists of Pandaria definitely suits the hunter playstyle much more than say a Frost specced Death Knight which is how I did things on my main. The thing with DKs is that they are pretty good at staying alive UNTIL they pull too many mobs which is something that happens a lot in MOP to all classes nevermind a class and spec that depends on AOE to really throw down the damage.

Image from http://elvespictures.com/picture/612-blood-elf-hunter.html

Anyway I have got most of the Factions up to Revered now so that makes for less grinding hopefully which is especially good now that I am up to 89. I have decided to try at least to go PVP on this character but we will see how things work out.

Enough talk about alts let us talk about the AH

So the Darkmoon Faire is back in town and I for one have done my preparation with 8 decks ready. So that sounds promising right? Until you take a look at the prices for the Relics and notice that they have dropped by 50% in price if not more in some cases. That is compared to the last DMF not the prices between.

As of writing this I sold two of them for a little over 20k. A disappointing amount to be sure so it looks like I am going to have to hold onto them until after DMF and attempt to price gouge like a good little goblin.

The only thing that is really selling well for a decent profit is Living Steel and week by week I can see the profits going lower and lower. Gems on my server are a joke with no raws over 30g and only the cuts that take weeks to sell going north of 100g. Gold is a lot harder to come by in this expansion and not just because it is still early in the expansion.

What are you making your gold from?

What aspects of the game are you currently enjoying?

World of Warcraft: More Money Mischief

Yes, next month Mists of Pandaria will be shipping or downloading as the case maybe so I thought I would bless the general public with my amazing plans and tactics for generating some gold  and hopefully not get caught napping.

STORAGE

First I will talk about storage. After all it is pretty hard to do stockpile stuff if you have nowhere to put it (some people use the mailbox storage method but that is not for me). Bank slots are just not enough if you want to make an impression a guild bank will help lots and is easier to deal with (though not necessarily cheaper) than getting loads of profession bags.

I have two guild banks and two of my characters. One is a level 1 with 4 tabs and the other is a level 7 with 5 tabs, the second one cost me a cool 10k but I think it was gold well spent as I have decided that stockpiling is a better idea than trying to go into MOP with a large bankroll. Not that I don’t intend to gather as much gold as possible.

STOCKPILING

So now you got all that room surely you need something to put in there.  Here are my ideas they may not work for you, heck they may be completely wrong but every little helps:

Netherweave cloth – I love the Shattered Sun Offensive and I like to use it when levelling alts. Combine a daily run with through Heroic Magister’s Terrace (still not got the phoenix or the Chocobo) and the result is oodles of the stuff. Uses include Netherweave Bags, Arcane Dust and Imbued Netherweave Bags.

Saronite ore – Stockpile when cheap (on my server that is less than 70 silver each). Saronite shuffle still has its good points. Infinite Dust still sells well 3-5g each, bars can be sold at a profit and transmuting to Titanium can even yield decent profits.

Herbs – Cataclysm herbs are reasonably cheap now 30g a stack so I grab them up as I can find them. I am also levelling a Druid with skinning and herbalism so all the cheap herbs she picks that won’t sell I send into the banks to be later turned into Inks.

Obsidium/Elementium ore – For me whichever is the cheaper is worth picking up. My main use for this is as enchant fodder as the gem market on my server is pretty much kaput. I will be prospecting in order to gather the gems needed for the first few levels in Jewelcrafting post MOP launch after all every little helps.

UPDATE

Saronite is SCARCE

Yep somehow it seems the saronite ore market is a little tight which has resulted in the price going up 500% and seemingly being sustained at that level. I think this has to be at least slightly down to the release date confirmation and people getting ready in their own way. Or it may be the dupe stockpile running out. Who knows?

World of Warcraft: OPERATION STOCKPILE

So today I managed to pick up some additional storage space in the form of a level 5 guild. Bit pricey but I feel like it was a solid investment in the long run. Pretty much cut my investment capital in but now I am going to spend time farming mats to hold onto when MOP hits then start spreading around the AH hoping to take advantage of all the fresh and returning blood.

How are you continuing to prepare for MOP?

IN THE NEWS

Looks like Blizzard are giving those of us interesting in the gold trade little wriggle room to get out of levelling archaeology. Something which I have gone nowhere near but not I see it is linked to one of the Factions, and the one that gives you the updated belt buckle plans.

As if making more than half the decent pets available for real money wasn't enough of a kick in the teeth. It would be nice if someone could remind them that they run the subscription model despite all the evidence to the contrary.