Just My Two Copper - WoW Gold Guide

Leave Your 'Tude At The Door

Posted by J.E. Douglas at 2:40 PM

Going Looney over the Lunar Festival
Cleaning Out The Closet (Achievement Edition)
WOD: Future Catch Up Zones
Ebay Warriors Prepare For Battle

Mommar here.

If you want to refer to my 'career' with World of Warcraft, I should be thankful to many of the people I have met in and out of the game itself. There are people even to this day that I consider close friends, others that I have had the honor of meeting even if it was for a fleeting moment.

But then some weeks tend to be more difficult than others. To the point that you start to wonder whether the reputation, gold and experience is truly worth it. As I have said before, I am running some of the older Mists of Pandaria raids for gold and reputation. There is this mental itch I have that when I see a non exalted reputation I must finish it off. In this case I do all of the Throne of Thunder raids i can get during the week. These raids include the dreaded LFR that everyone finds so tasty on the brain.

Most of the time these go off without a hitch. Poke Durumu in the eye with a big pointy stick, ride Tortos like a bronco even get a little shock to the system with Lei Shen.

But this week seemed to be a cavalcade of grumpy players. Players looking to pick fights for the smallest problem. Then a full blown meltdown if there was a wipe. Remember this content was the new shiny raids not 6 months ago. Most players are overgeared for the content, but there is still a certain amount of possibility of dying a horrid game death. But no one really signs on to be the target of someone's abuse.

Having spent easily 10,000g on repairs over the years I have been playing, seeing a raid fail to a boss is a normal experience. You just pick up, look to see what can be fixed and move on. If nothing can be solved, then it is time to leave the raid and go find something else to do. But there are times I feel I am in the minority when it comes to this attitude.

Noob, idiot, *&*$ and other words that would get you punched out in the real world get slung around as normal conversation. My raid can joke with me and tell me I'm weak sauce, but everyone has their limits. Lately my patience to have to listen to people go off for silly reasons has become less and less. Most of the time players will just direct it at the random player, but occasionally someone will shoot their mouth in my general direction. One raid i ended up dying due to poor tanking/healing and was accused of taking 'too much damage'. If I had failed in the mechanics I would have completely agreed with them. The wise player knows they are never 100% perfect, but in this case every movement out of raid damage was done correctly. Seemed this player also didn't understand how an arms warrior works when well geared. Hearing 'why is the warrior doing so much AOE damage' finally got me to respond. After explaining in a slow, precise matter that an arms warrior has 3 different cleaves that automatically go off you will get AOE damage. Along with this explanation was the fact that this player needed to be more worried about their low dps (under 100k) than putting the blame on everyone but their own shoulders.

Later this bothered me not because of the words I had used. What bothered me was that I had let his rash silliness get to me and take away my enjoyment of the raid. There will always be hotheads, always be players that troll for attention. There will always be players to be carried with a dps wheelbarrow. Raid wipes will occur no matter the skill of a group. But my attitude is what I choose it to be. I can choose to react or I can choose to walk away. Either choice is viable and functional.

The same goes for the good days and bad days of making gold. Our attitudes attach themselves to whether we can be successful or not. Making lots of gold is fun. Making lots of gold in the game without losing all mental sanity is even better. So enjoy the game with a good spirit and less stress. And remember there is always the choice to turn off the game and take a breath. It is a game and you make the choice of what attitude you bring.

Good Luck and Good Gold Hunting

Want to get in contact with me? . Email me at Dragonbear @ gmail. Dot com or find me on twitter at "@JMTCMommar" You can find me hanging out on the Shandris Server, chat me up, and I will buy you a glass of juice.

Going Looney over the Lunar Festival

Posted by J.E. Douglas at 11:15 AM

Cleaning Out The Closet (Achievement Edition)
WOD: Future Catch Up Zones
Ebay Warriors Prepare For Battle

Mommar here

Over the months I have given a lot of grief to the powers that be that they need to update many of the best holidays in World of Warcraft. Just adding a few holiday bosses would add a lot to the draw of these older holidays.

The Lunar Festival is not one on my list that needs to be updated. There is already a world boss, Omen Having been around in the old days of watching him wipe out entire raids quickly and seeing multiple people needing to run back to take another whack at him brings the way world bosses used to feel. Not to just kill a boss because he dropped great loot, but simply because that is what you did with friends.

As I was flying around on one of my characters picking up the different Festival elders for the holiday and collecting Coins of Ancestry. I still had all of the frilly dresses that you could purchase with the coins in my bank so my major interest in getting coins on all of my toons was for the Festival Lanterns. When these first came out they were a hot commodity to transfer to an alliance toon/buddy and sell for obscene amounts of gold. Now the transfer over to the opposite faction is much easier since pet books are linked across factions and across servers.

Setting aside the quest for gold (I know, blasphemy here) but this holiday is just beautiful to see and enjoy. From dropping into a alliance controlled zone to pick up a coin to looking at the coordinates you downloaded from the guide to figure out the fastest way to get to the next zone. Combining this with the occasional pick-up of pets that I didn't have it becomes a change of pace from just running Timeless Isle and Siege of Orgrimmar.

Where many people are stuck inside from the latest blitz of cold weather finding something that brings warmth and joy is important. Escapism is the biggest draw for Warcraft and this holiday is the best place to escape from.

The Lunar Festival it hasn't changed that much so here is a link to the Icy-Veins guide for 2014 which they deserve all the credit for putting together. Link

Take this weekend and stop and smell the Lunar Festival. Not just for the profit, but just because this is one of the most enjoyable holidays of the Warcraft Calender.

Good Luck and Good Profit Hunting

Want to get in contact with me? . Email me at Dragonbear @ gmail. Dot com or find me on twitter at "@JMTCMommar" You can find me hanging out on the Shandris Server, chat me up, and I will buy you a glass of juice.

Cleaning Out The Closet (Achievement Edition)

Posted by J.E. Douglas at 10:47 AM

WOD: Future Catch Up Zones
Ebay Warriors Prepare For Battle

Mommar here.

On the server reset day I tend to be a busy little Azerothian beaver. Pushing 5 toons through Ordos and Celestial runs can fill up a lot of time. Add to this list wanting to finish up the epic quest line for my hunter, which ends up running TOT looking for raid runs when they pop up. Also include my timeless isle farming, plus two favorite shows being on TV I tend to stay busy on Tuesdays.

Then things start to slow down into the normal questing grind and picking up spot flex raid runs during the week. By Saturday night or Sunday I have started to need a palette cleanser of sorts. I have said before that I tend to keep Sunday's open to running old instances and raids for fun and profit.

One of the things I wanted to pick up before Warlords of Draenor was a Hellreaver Polearm before the next expansion. When this first dropped while leveling it was the coolest thing to lug around. Being the time well before Transmogrification was available to players I had to Vendor it to clear out some bag space. Now with a large amount of spaces to put things I finally picked up another one by soloing Hellfire Ramparts. Then proceeding to work on my Raids that I wanted specific items from I went over to Northrend to run the Eye of Eternity. Two Mounts, Reins of the Azure Drake and Reins of the Blue Drake drop from here. As I was finishing up with smacking Malygos around the achievement You Don't Have An Eternity popped up as completed. This was one of those achievements that I had forgotten about and had never completed during the Wrath of the Lich King expansion.

Popping up the Achievement browser I started eyeballing through all of the achievements that I had not completed. Little bits and pieces started jumping out at me of items I could complete. These didn't offer any gold or mounts or titles for myself. Finishing them would purely be of the 'yay, I did that' variety of life.

As I was running around and flying in a different area I ended up getting tied into a Wintergrasp fight. It had been a long time to be in Wintergrasp, but six of us got together and whooped some Alliance around the field of battle. Then I decided to give a try to finish up the Earth, Wind and Fire (10 man) achievement. This is the achievement that you have to kill all four bosses inside the instance within 60 seconds of each other. After doing a quick lookup I gave it a try. Failing miserably (don't worry true believers I killed them all but couldn't get them all together in a pack to smack them around inside the 60 seconds).

There are plenty of other achievements that are floating around the World of Warcraft for players to finish up. Instance, raid and even PVP achievements sitting there ripe for the picking and completing. So the next time you get bored and sitting in your home city go run out somewhere and look up what achievements you can finish. Not just for gold, but purely for the enjoyment of the game.

Good Luck and Good Profit Hunting

Want to get in contact with me? . Email me at Dragonbear @ gmail. Dot com or find me on twitter at "@JMTCMommar" You can find me hanging out on the Shandris Server, chat me up, and I will buy you a glass of juice.

Engineering Love With 5.4

Posted by J.E. Douglas at 12:10 PM

I love my engineers. They don't make much money but they are very enjoyable to play for me. With Engineering it's an expectation that they will be the redheaded step children by making gold. Their gold making abilities have advanced with the last two expansions but still they have a long way to go before challenging the heavy money hitters.

I was reading the PTR notes, especially the changes that occur in the Vale of Eternal Blossoms. With many of the quest hubs changing or being eliminated and the Sha blight covering the area's reputation and rewards become more interesting. But a little tidbit caught my eye:

On the PTR, any mob in Vale of Eternal Blossoms can drop Schematic: Chief Engineer Jard's Journal. This is smart loot, meaning that it will only drop for eligible Engineers. This contains recipes for Jard's Peculiar Energy Source, Not Sky Claw, Advanced Refrigeration Unit, Pierre, and Rascal-Bot.

A couple of these items were promised in previous patches to be removed due to programming issues. But to add 5 items for sale for engineers will give a quick boost to profitability. The pets and mounts especially. So looking at the items that are required to produce these you can put together that having a large quantity of reserves can put you in the driver seat.

(all of these recipes might change, but you can get a good idea of just what will be required from even the PTR recipes).

Sky Claw
Requires 30 Jard's Peculiar Energy and 30 Living Steel

Advanced Refrigerator Unit
Requires 5 Jard's Peculiar Energy and 5 Living Steel

Pierre
15 Jard's Peculiar Energy and 15 Living Steel

Rascal-Bot
15 Jard's Peculiar Energy and 15 Living Steel

Jard's Peculiar Energy Source Is the main component of each of these recipes and depending on whether it is BOE or BOP will determine it's viability to sell by itself.

The common link of all of these materials is the use of Ghost Iron Bars for production. Living Steel is transmuted by alchemist so it will again be in high demand. The Living Steel market has been depressed as of late so now is a good time to grab some quick low priced purchases.

As more from the 5.4 PTR is identified finding the niches ahead of time and preparing your farmers and purchases can get you that ride fast and have you ready to ride the gold lightning.

Good Luck and Good Hunting

Why Warcraft Needs Microtransactions
The New Face of Opportunity
Bring Out Your Pets
Bring On The Next Wow Killer
The Value of Material Assets
PVP Sales Are Not Kind To Me
Finding A New Ryhthm
Breaking The Million Gold Barrier
Bye Bye... I Will Take Your Gold Now
Post Patch 5.3: The Lineup
Patch 5.3: It's here... well tomorrow
Patch 5.3: Preparing for the Arrival
Patch 5.3: Grasspicking World Order
Patch 5.3: Bring Out Your Miners
Enchanting add-on for quick flips
Prepping for 5.3: Profit lines

Realities Of Making Gold

Why Warcraft Needs Microtransactions

Posted by J.E. Douglas at 1:11 PM

Microtransactions if you're not familiar with them are items (skills, buffs, gear, toys, etc.) that can be purchased inside a game. Most give an advantage of some type over players that only use the 'free' items.

World of Warcraft has a subscription based system with a modified microtransaction system. You can purchase pets to play with inside the game but actual gear that can help you become better, stronger and faster is not directly available. (Before you say it, yes I know there are mounts and other items that can be purchased that technically can enhance your gameplay).

I have been a member of Facebook for about 5 years now. And up to now I've never spent a penny on games such as Farmville, Cookville, Monkeyville and others. It boggled my mind just why someone would pay good hard earned money for a completely fake item. Even in Warcraft you could find ways of spending hard earned greenbacks to obtain gold. (Hopefully if you have read any of these entries that are on this site then you never ever have to buy from a gold vendor again).

But recently I've had a slight change of perspective. The one thing that has made me hesitant to spend my hard earned Georges (I have other names for them) is that I spend 15 dollars a month just to get access to a game. The idea of opening up a game to let the rich become more powerful and the less fortunate end up having to work twice to three times as hard to get there.

My suggestion that if a micro transaction system is created and the free to play system implemented by Blizzard is that there be a cap on the amount of real money able to be spent. I expect that soon (perhaps next year) that there will be a rise in the subscription cost to play World of Warcraft. If a hard cap of 20 dollars real money is placed on what can be purchased for any account it keeps the playing field even, but still allows players a lot more diversity on what they purchase.

Warcraft has a large fan base that stays loyal to the brand even through the large amount of 'WOW Killers' that take their shot at the King. So a conversion to a micro transaction system can generate the same revenue and still allow players to continue to play in Azeroth.

Good Luck and Good Hunting

The New Face of Opportunity
Bring Out Your Pets
Bring On The Next Wow Killer
The Value of Material Assets
PVP Sales Are Not Kind To Me
Finding A New Ryhthm
Breaking The Million Gold Barrier
Bye Bye... I Will Take Your Gold Now
Post Patch 5.3: The Lineup
Patch 5.3: It's here... well tomorrow
Patch 5.3: Preparing for the Arrival
Patch 5.3: Grasspicking World Order
Patch 5.3: Bring Out Your Miners
Enchanting add-on for quick flips
Prepping for 5.3: Profit lines

Realities Of Making Gold

Prepping For the Death Of PVP

Posted by J.E. Douglas at 1:20 PM

Okay, so if you hear from hardcore PVPers they will tell you that with the possible changes in 5.3, PVP will be dead. Some of the changes include

- Removal of Resilence on Gear
- Players have a base of 65% resilience
- PVP power will be balanced on gear.

There were some other changes when it came to the equipment you could buy with conquest and honor points. Most of our business ends up being players trying to piece specific pieces to their set to allow them to enter PVP without getting slaughtered. Enchants and Gem slots get filled in by some but the majority of these are reserved for the high end PVP players.

Patch 5.3 is still months away. But reading these changes should spark some ideas in your gold minded head figuring out what opportunities will exist. Just how powerful will PVE items mixed in with PVP items become? Will players look to min/max (Dungeons and Dragons flashback here) their gear to become monsters in the PVP world or will they stick with just straight PVP gear.

No one really knows the complete answers to these and other questions. It's to be expected that during the PTR stage of patch 5.3 there will be some changes and tweaks to the new system. And how those tweaks go will determine the validity of sales to PVP players as a whole.

One thing to look at now is to look at just where your enchants will be at. Not just the two new possible PVP enchants from patch 5.3 but previous enchants and gems. Gems and enchants will become that much more important to players than straight gear swaps. Players will look at a gem they can buy for 100g to place in a gear slot over paying 2000g for a piece of gear that gives them only a few more points of power.

PVP tends to be a very fickle market. If you live on a server that has an active PVP grouping then it can be a goldmine to print your own money. But if you live on a server that has a weaker PVP system then it can be much more difficult to conquer. Just keep an eye on the PTR notes and look to see where the wind blows.

Good Luck and Good Hunting

Want to get in contact with me? . Email me at Dragonbearjoe @ gmail. dOT com or find me on twitter at "@JMTCMommar" You can find me hanging out on the Shandris Server, chat me up and I will buy you a glass of juice.

Previous Entries

Patience is a Virtue.
I Choose You....: Reputation Choices
Thunderforge Ready for Business
Determine Value: Spirits of Harmony
Hearthstone: The New Wow Killer?
What Days Do You Sell?
Loot Pinata
Taking Advantage of The Market
The Inportance of being Hot(fixes)
Don't Fret Young Farmer
Patch 5.2: First Take
Do you Own Your Tree?

The Non Crafter Harmony Blues

Posted by J.E. Douglas at 10:26 AM

Mommar here.

When I started writing on this little island found in the great sea of the internet, I wanted to enable players to think outside the box. My intentions were to make sure that Gold Goblins expanded their mind to the ability to not just have to be 'go here and farm this' type of gold makers.

But occasionally I see something that was obvious to me, that a player is doing that makes my head spin just a little bit to say 'huh?' As I was trucking along finishing up my Loremaster achievement for my shiny Nimbus disc I was chatting with a guild mate of mine. They had asked me to craft some items for them to raise their ilvl.

As we were chatting I told them that I would need to farm a few Spirits of Harmony for the requirements. They said that was fine, but they threw those things away because they were not a crafter on that toon.

Somewhere a couple of kittens just clutched their little chest and flopped on the ground at the sound of those words. They tossed those poor little Motes of Harmony away like they were worthless. I wanted to find the ethereal trashcan these poor abandoned motes were at to try to save them.

But seriously, I explained to them that the best idea was to save these for later use. There are two vendors (Danke at Shrine of the Two Moons and Krystel at Shrine of Seven Stars) sitting on their little perches ready to grab those hard earned Spirits of Harmony. They have various BOE items included some crafting items that can be given to alternate crafters or save some gold for personal enhancement needs.

But the best bet to me is to stick those little gold mines into the bank and save them. Sometime in a future patch the Spirits of Harmony will probably be made Bind on Equip. And those will be happy days of trading newly freed Spirits of Harmony on the open market. It's a long investment of time instead of grabbing the short term benefits of trading for the items from the two vendors.

So as we continued our chat and I sucked back the tears, poured some root beer out to my spirit homies, I hoped that just a little information could save my guild mate from future torture and abandonment of poor defenseless Spirits of Harmony.

Just remember, Save those spirits. Little Kittens will be proud of you.

Good Luck and Good Hunting

Really????
For Whom Does The Songbell Toll
To Level 90 and Beyond
Tales of a Gold Goblin Bully
Chess Pieces Taking The Field
When Numbers Lie
Arrow to the Knee
Must Have Farming Equipment
But How Much Is It?
You Just Can't Fix Stupid
Trick or Treat Time
Can Pokewow be saved?
Buying Patterns For Investment
How Not To Influence People
Long Term Plans
The Measure Of A Goblin

Can I make Money digging old things?

Posted by J.E. Douglas at 12:46 PM

No Ream First Achievement For You

Archaeology, next to the first aid profession is considered a busted profession by many. It's tiring, tedious and has very little sales value. At least for the normal player who just looks at the items they "craft" from the pieces and fossils and vendor them.

But a Gold Goblin can see a sale in just about anything of value. In this case we are looking specifically at the buying and selling of race keystones.

On a weak server, these keystones (one for all of the major playable races) ended up lingering on the AH. Sales were weak on many servers (which is an understatement) while on other servers they were brisk and continual.

The major difference between the weak sales on some servers and the positive sales on others was the idea of downtime. What were people looking for?. Almost all of the items obtained from archaeology were Bind on pickup or Bind on Account items. They could only be vendored for little or no gold (even the 100g vendored items were not worth the time taken up to collect.)

One bright spot was that players who had maxxed out both their archealogy and alchemist on the same toon were able to collect pieces and craft the recipe for Vial of the Sands.

The Vial of the Sands was the workhorse for many Archaeology/Alchemist combinations when it came to gold making. Many servers had this mount/transformation item going for 50k per. This is what is going to add a lot of money in your coffers in the next one to two years (this is the expected lifetime of the Mists of Pandaria Expansion according to Blizzard/Activision)

I've been a proponent of having big ticket craftable items in your gold making arsenal. I'm sure many people think my preaching about the Mechano-hog/Mekgineers chopper has become tedious til they start selling two or three a month and add an extra 10,000 gold into their goblin pockets. Both of these mounts will be important since many players won't grind out the recipes but will want the mount for themselves. Rarity always means a premium in a seller run market.

So to answer my original question. Yes, you can make money with Archaeology. With the right information and market place it can become a nice stepping stone to increase your profits.

Here is a link to a quick guide to Archaeology and how to level it quickly.

Archaeology Guide
Vial of the Sands Guide (courtesy of How-To-Warcraft.com)

Good Luck and Good Hunting

Past Entries

The Pyrite Experiment

Go and Kill the King

Tipping Point

Pre expansion dusting and scrubbing

The world is your oyster

Selling for Dummies

Iron Sharpens Iron

It's Elemental Dear Goblins

Four words to rock your head (enchants)

Trade Channel Boredom, bring on the dailies

Preview of upcoming events

Gold to burn

I'm gonna tell you a secret

Life with no AH

Yakity Yak

The Auction House Blues

O Brother Where Art thy professions

You will farm... and you will like it

Posted by J.E. Douglas at 3:53 PM