"Markco,
You have a fantastic blog. I have read it daily for the past 6+ months and I am very grateful for all the time and effort you put into sharing ideas with the WoW community. I am a small-time earner (160K gold w/o gems or enchants), but one of these days I plan to kick things into high gear and establish a more formal system.
However, a question occurred to me and I think your response would make a interesting blog post. If making tons of gold is so easy using the glyph market (and I am not arguing with the results as it seems there are plenty of people there doing it), why haven't the Gold Farmers got in on the action on every sever and effectively destroyed the market? With a relatively low barriers to entry, it would seem a natural fit.
Thanks.
Matt"
I'm sure they have Matt! The nice part about the glyph market is that it is so big no one person can really control it without devoting ridiculous amounts of time babysitting, organizing and crafting. Also, I'm not sure how much time farmers actually put into their gold making but there is a lot of setup required to properly run a glyph business; just organizing multiple characters with glyph bags and gathering of thousands of inks is a barrier to entry. These farmers often have quotas to meet, like 300 gold per hour or something, which is also why you see them selling items for so cheap on the auction house: they need their gold this hour to pay for their quota at the end of an eight hour shift. Factor in the gold required to get books of glyph mastery and very few farmers would be willing to do this, at least not the short term ones who basically just want to meet their quota and then allow the next farmer to take their place on the same toon. Many farmers leave nothing for the next person who will take over their shift, so if they tried to leave mats to make more glyphs than the next person would probably sell these to meet their own quota!
Professions in general are usually left to gathering for farmers since this requires no materials in the bags of the farmer to get the job done. A farmer would rather sell a bunch of herbs now for 20 gold than spend the five minutes it takes to turn these into inks and then products to sell for 100 gold over night. It's consistent and that's all a farmer really desires. I'm sure there are some gold selling companies out there who make gold with professions but they are few and far between. As far as individual farmers using professions to craft items goes, it's a rare sight indeed.
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11 comments: on "Why haven't Farmers Attacked glyphs"
Stokpile said... May 13, 2010 at 8:33 AM
There's also about a full month of daily research that needs to be done for all the glyphs you can learn. And you'll never see a full glyph enterprise run by one person who farms all their herbs. I can go through over 2k inks in a single week and the amount of farming that would take is beyond imagining.
Asmrioth said... May 13, 2010 at 9:08 AM
Anything requiring more skill than *undercut by 1c* won't be farmed. Many crafted items sell for less than their mats. Think about that for a second, nearly 90% of everything that can be created sells for less than the bare materials (did you make money leveling a crafting trade skill?). Those mats however, always sell.
As for glyphs in general, the basic ones trained rarely make a profit. The ones from books can from time to time but you need to spend about 1K to learn them. The ones from research make more money because less people can make them. Sort of like JC, where it takes a long time before you have a good set of recipes to make money. Farming is all about the short term investment.
Gudshand said... May 13, 2010 at 9:10 AM
There's a couple of goldfarmers dedicating their time on the glyphmarkets on the lower populated servers in Europe.
I'm at this moment battling three of them, all in the same guild but not on the same account because they're all logged on at the same time and moving at the same time.
justarb said... May 13, 2010 at 9:24 AM
I would also expect that farmers avoid professions because the time (and gold) spent levelling them is time not making gold and they never know when Blizzard will drop the banhammer. Why invest the time and gold to level if that account might disappear at a moment's notice?
Anonymous said... May 13, 2010 at 9:31 AM
I'm beginning to wonder if a farmer isn't trying to make a little additional money on my server through glyphs. When ever I am online I can count on one of his 3 posting alts being online. I've checked 6am and various times during the day until well past midnight and always find one of his alts online. If I undercut him he will relist almost immediately. One day we played the undercut game for over 4 hours until I decided I'd had enough. I thought he'd get bored of the nonstop relisting but he's been doing this for over 4 months. He's either a farmer or really bored.
It's a good thing I'm diversified.
pagb666 said... May 13, 2010 at 9:40 AM
Haven't? HAVEN'T?!
I've been suffering a damn chinese farmer for 3 months now. He spends 24/7 (really) at the AH if necessary. He speaks poor english, and already has reached the gold cap.
Posting 4k glyphs at <2g each for weeks to discourage him didn't work.
They DO attack glyphs, and already did in other spanish servers.
Euripides said... May 13, 2010 at 9:40 AM
One reason I've always suspected that farmers leave it at farming is that if they were to adopt a more complex business model, they'd have to invest more time in getting their character's professions maxed, and when they get wave-banned, they'd lost that much more.
Liam said... May 13, 2010 at 10:01 AM
Be being a gold farmer i assume the account is more at risk of getting banned. the time it takes to level insciption would be too long and risk where as leveling mining / herbalism can be done with a automated bot program. a lot less risk in the time invested.
Farmers will always stick to farming materials as they are always needed aswell. loads of glyphs are obselete.
Anonymous said... May 13, 2010 at 12:54 PM
JC, enchanting scrolls and to a smaller degree glyph market is today being run by gold selling companies on quite a few EU servers. Blizzard are quite happy about it though it seems.
Fun thing is how they in 99.9% of the cases rather sell a "treated" product instead of raw when they have driven down the prices below mats cost.
Bobbins said... May 14, 2010 at 6:24 AM
Insciption
Just because some people can't make money or are unable to compete with others doesn't mean they are competing against gold farmers.
I want to make money in the shortest time. I do not reply to mail telling me i'm doing it wrong. I do not get into deep conversations about how to control the market. I do not look at what sells.
I post everything if it sells i make money if it doesn't it goes to stock and gets reposted. I make money by volume and selling everything. I buy cheap herbs. I mill. I make stuff. I post.
Its quick it works. If other scribe wish to spend time tracking what I do so be it. I could make more - Yes. I could crash the market - Yes. But they take time so I don't.
JustinAndrewJohnson said... May 14, 2010 at 10:35 AM
On Stormreaver-US, Glyphs, Enchant Scrolls, and Gems are 80% controlled by 4 foreign farmers. I've made friends with them all, and they've described their working setup as "Independent Gold Supplier" where they work on contract from their own home. .014 RMB/Gold is the going rate that they get paid by their companies. Our server also has it's share of farm bots who employ the more traditional methods, but it is these skilled auctioneer gold sellers that wreak havoc on the market. Observing their statistics panel suggests they hit gold cap every 2 weeks.
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