Making Gold on the New Server

I’ve now moved my main characters from Nordrassil (EU) to Aszune (EU). Having some time away from work I decided to get the gold making endeavours back into practise. At the start of the week I was sitting with about 45k across the characters.
This was the order of events:

1. Check out the AH prices and the level of competition. There seems to be about 3-4 glyph makers with none of them really ‘owning’ the market. The usual market antics of glyphs selling for 40g one then selling for 2g the next. Aside from the ‘levelling’ glyphs, the general prices are in the region of 2.5g to about 40g.
2. Make the glyph seller and get kitted out with 4 big glyph bags. I’ve set my threshold at just over 4g, anything less then this is more effort than the reward justifies. It does mean I’m missing out about 1/4 of the market and that market sector is most certainly active but there just isn’t enough reward.
3. Getting mats is the biggest problem. Herbs are not cheap here. In Nordrassil I wouldn’t pay over 10g a stack , here there is little below that (lichbloom at 60g a stack? I mean seriously????). There have been times when I have had to gather the damned things myself, which while tedious will also be out of the question when back at work. There are still some bargains to be had with some herbs being listed with massively inflated buyout and very low minimum bids, I got a few stacks for under 1g each, but its not enough for full production. The net result on this will mean paying more for herbs than I’d like but I don’t have a lot of choice. Where are all these Chinese farmers and bots when you need them?

I’ve also been trying my hand at selling some gem. This is quite different from the mass production of glyphs. Aside from my daily transmute, I’ve been focussing on Meta gems. I currently have 3 main cuts which sell at reasonable prices Chaotic Skyflare, Relentless Earthsiege and Austere Earthsiege. This market is very different to what I’m used to. There don’t seem to be any main players and there quantities on the AH are always small, usually between 2-8. They do however get relisted often and I reckon aiming for sales of 2-3 of each gem is going to be the maximum potential.

The big advantage here is to have a transmute master (although I have yet to see a x5 proc) but the free gems on the back of this really add to the profit.

I’ve set up a second trader alt for gems and everything else:

• velums – slowish sales at 8-12g each.
• Nobles deck – which didn’t sell, even though the Darkmoon Faire was about.
• Sapphire Spellthread – very profitable but only sold a couple in the past week and had to relist 3 times per day).
• Some 16 and 20 slot bags – sold quickly for average if not outstanding return.

For gems the problem is still the mats. I don’t like paying 30g+ for an Eternal Fire. So I have been grinding these myself – which due to the lack of bots and farmers is fairly easy. I got 11 in less than 30 mins with about another 100g of vendor trash and greens at the same time. That gives an 800g+/hour ratio which isn’t too shabby for farming. DK with glyph of death grip is a real favourite for me for farming.

By the end of a week I’m up to about 60k, so 15k in a week is pretty good for me. I have also got the paladin to lvl 72 and have replaced engineering with enchanting although this is only at about 120. Levelling enchanting will either be a very expensive process or a very slow one, I’ll probably end up being somewhere between the two.

I’ll be curious to see what kind of target I can reach before Cataclysm comes out.

Gamers Anonymous

This week Blizzard revealed they were implementing a new system whereby in the future posting on the Official WoW forums would show the battlenet account holders name and not a character’s name from the player’s portfolio. This has followed the RealID friends system which was implemented in the last patch.

Much wailing, gnashing of teeth and threats to cancel everything from accounts to Christmas and Blizzard have changed their collective minds and decided it’s not such a good idea to have people posting under their real names. It was mana from heaven to Bloggers and various worded the pros and cons far better than I ever could. The most interesting find I managed was this one. My first thought on this is one less gnome in WoW can only be classed as progress and hopefully others would follow suit. But there is more to this case than meets the eye… (even if the eyes are standing at waist-height to a normal character….)

The real thing for me here is the claims of persecution at work for being a WoW gamer.  In particular these caught my eye:

“Now when I am sick I either need to go to work, or provide a doctors certificate (even though that is not the company policy), because as a known WoW player it is assumed that I at at home playing WoW.

When I work from home (as my role permits) I am required to provide an detailed timeline of my activities (unlike other non-WoW (or declared WoW) players.”

This spawned a debate at the Noisy Rogue. I don’t know what the laws are like in Australia but in the UK no company could get away treating two employees in the same role differently – providing the performance level is the same. Any that tried could easily be taken to an Industrial Tribunal and duly slapped down with a sizable payment going to the claimant on the basis of such behaviour being Constructive Dismissal. That suggests there may be more to the gnome’s situation than first meets the eye, but that’s just speculation.

What also came out of this was a whole bunch of people saying they would not admit to being a gamer if applying for a job or if  already in a job they would be keeping their nasty little gaming habit secret from their boss or co-workers so it couldn’t be used against them.

Its confession time: I’m a gamer and have been playing wow for years. My boss knows, the guys I work with know. I don’t advertise it but if someone asks what I was doing at the weekend and the answer is playing WoW then that’s what I tell them. I’d be shocked if it made a difference to how I was treated at work, and to be honest I’ve never seen any evidence to suggest it has caused me problems at work. I can accept there are people who don’t see the attraction to playing computer games, but then I don’t see the attraction to nightclubs with dance music or going hill walking which some of my colleagues do. I don’t think less of them for their hobbies so why would they think less of me for mine? I’ve always found in the workplace you get judged more by your performance than anything else.

In my job I manage a team of about 12 people. If one doesn’t show on a Monday because he went to the pub the previous day after the football and now has ‘food poisoning’, then I’m pissed off. Not because he went to the pub, but because he can’t perform his duties the following day as a result. The reason doesn’t matter, just the problems that it causes that the rest of the team and I have to pick up because s/he is too hungover to work. If some one arrives late on a regular basis and is too tired to work properly because they have stayed up late raiding then I don’t have a problem with them raiding, but I do have a problem with them not being able to do what they are paid to the following day. It would be completely wrong in this last example for the raider to claim he was getting a hard time at work because he was a gamer,  s/he is getting a hard time due to poor performance.

I’m really curious to find out what other people think on this subject. Are you a closet gamer, who keeps their gaming hidden from those you work with? Why, what do you think will happen if you admit it? If you are putting in a good performance at work do you believe this will be overshadowed simply by being a gamer? I’d welcome any opinions on this one.

PS. The final score on the gnome is he has resubscribed due to Blizzard backing down on the RealID thing.  Just when we thought we had got rid of one of the critters too.