Dual-Spec glyph honeymoon over?

I was checking my Actioneering Alt, Copramo, yesterday and noticed that the glyph market is cooling down. Fast. At the same glyph you could have the high price of 25g and the lowest selling price at 78s.

I wonder if the 'new' reset of the talents causes any kind of hike in there?

Most probably not. Hope to sell the cheapo glyphs out and go along with the business as usual: vendor, convert, disenchant and resale. That's my Auctioneer Search rotation.

It works, but takes about 45 minutes to complete with a scan. All away from my questing.

What a bliss!

Trade channel comments

Another fine day in the AH world in two separate servers. In Thunderhorn the money keeps slowly rolling in: 'only' 120g profit yesterday, mostly from commodities. No vendorable deals as usual, which tells that the people on the server know the value of items. Trade channel was full of purples, mostly crafted and few which there are thirteen in a dozen. No surprises there. Half of the income went to resale purchases, though, so the AH keeps rolling money in. And it's the slowest time of the week...

I love it.

On the other server, however, situation is quite different: the prices live like there was no tomorrow! The epics seem to be at a way higher value range, so my measly 200-300g cannot even scratch the market. Then again, I made similar profits from the earlier day, with much lower priced trade items than I have in Thunderhorn. I could say that the lowlie trade goods are in good demand on this server, still. Also the conversion trade works, whereas the price levels on Thunderhorn don't provide such opportunities.

Which actually was a subject of discussion in the trade channel on this server: someone started ranting how the prices of Crystallized Fire had dropped dramatically overnight and how the prices of Eternal Fire seemed to be incredibly low. As you might know, you can split one Eternal to 10 Crystallized ones, this being known as conversion if you make profit from doing this split. And as far as I know, the Eternals are pretty useless in professions, whereas Crystallized ones are used in several recipes.

However, this certain person couldn't take the fact that the demand and supply are the main things that generate the price ranges in AH. Instead he proposed that there should be set limits to the prices of goods in AH, so that the high end prices wouldn't become outrageous and the low level prices would stay 'reasonable'. Now I know that Gevlon could say something great and intelligent on this subject, but as I'm not as economics savvy all I can say is that this thinking is faulty and stupid.

My only comment was that if the prices of certain goods were too low for comfort and demand, make the market accept a new price range. I did that on Linen Cloth, Tigerseye and Wool Cloth the other day, and rose the price to double it was when I started. With minimal money, as the price ranges were very, very low.

The main argument was that the epics prices are too high and in some cases quite outrageous: prices of 10k in Allakhazam were unthinkable. Then again, the Nobles Deck, which is the source of 'incredibly op trinket' (according to one player), was selling like Coca Cola on this server at price range of 6000-8000g... Which tells something about the state of crafting in this server. And no-one thought that this price was too high...

Strange how illogical people sometimes are.

However, I made several mental notes out of this:

1) as the market is still emerging, even the low level trade goods are good money

2) because the raiding is not so fully working on this server, there might be some nice catches coming later on: eyes open on epics and rares

3) the crafting is way behind the level composition of the server, so everything needed for meaningfull crafted items is in dire need

4) You can dominate the AH easily on this server with well placed purchases and pricing.

Ah, I love the smell of napalm... erm... I love the AH in the morning, when the people have mispriced their precious loot.

Oh, yes, and I made 5g 78c from vendoring stuff directly from AH. This server is easy.

Different breeds

Inspite of what the topic suggests, this time I'm not talking about players nor classes. Instead I'm plunging my head into the swamp of different servers and especially their AH economies. Being avid reader of Gevlon, WoWEconomics and MMOAuctioneer, and a long time Auctioneer user on the server I'm residing, I have decided to take a challenge on another server, too. Quite new and only low population server which is on the suggested list still. As a matter of fact, when the opportunity came for free transfers, I transferred my kids toons to this server along with one of my horde side toons. A priest, as it happens.

With just 9g with her, this priest was activated only on weekend. Like I have posted earlier, I have a mild case of burnout to the levelling grind and overlevelling the content. So I decided to start the minigame of auctioneering, flipping and making steals in the marketplace.

Boy what an experience that was! Whereas in Thunderhorn, first generation server with majority of the toons level capped and alts, you really have a huge competition and most of the niches have been covered, in this server everything is open for (ab)use. Within few hours I had built my wealth to 50g only by flipping low priced commodities (linen cloth, Tigerseye and such) and had even found stuff below vendor values in the AH! On Thunderhorn that's something I can only dream about.

Overnight my wealth tripled from the stuff I had left for sale, and most of the outrageous bids I had made came through: the trading community isn't too awakened, that's for sure.

I checked this toon yesterday, and it seems that I'm making more money on this newer server than in the old school Thunderhorn. All I can say is that I really admire sociopathic Gevlon and realistic tyson for their ability to build such vast wealths on any server they choose: I'm having trouble on my main server to break the 10k mark while questing with two toons and trading with one. On the other hand, a half an hour in the newer server generates better income than the same time on Thunderhorn.

It seems that the bread and butter is coming from Conversion trade and the excess wins from the lucky shots in recipes and blues. That's the rule on both of them, but the results vary.

Curiously different breeds these server economies are.

Positive week challenge!

I tweeted last week on Friday, that I challenge all, each and every tweeter and blogger following me to post and tweet only positive things this week. I'm going to do my best at that, because it is a challenge for me: I'm Mr. Negative in my thinking, seeing ghosts and goblins behind every corner. People at the office know me best by my daily quote: "Pessimist will not disappoint", so go figure.

Weekend was fa-bu-lous. I pruned the guild, dropping some 10 or so toons out of the roster: none of them had logged in within the last two months, and I hate the idea of MY guild being an alt garage. Now we're down in the member count, but at least these members are active, up-and-running and available at least occasionally. 

Based on the quick tweet-poll, a social guild cannot be active without an active GM. Social guilds need their town fool to run the show, arrange activities and keep the things running smoothly. Kind of taking the burden off of the shoulders of the players themselves.

I can live with that: I'm on slow fuel, so the guild can take that, too.

On the other hand, I levelled three toons during the weekend: priest, druid and warrior. Boy what a different experience each was to another! Now I understand that you can switch the build but not necessarily master all of them as well: I was so lost of the keybindings of my Warrior after the two casters at first. But soon enough I was killing things some levels above my level, so no real problems in there.

AH was a HUGE success: I bought Slime Stream Bands for 1500g (biggest purchase ever for me) and sold them within minutes for 2800g, making nice 1100g profit (excluding the AH fees and such). What was especially rewarding in this was the fact that I was being 'forced' to accept that the Bands were worth 'just' 2000g in direct trade. Now I'm having Avool's Sword of Jin to sell, which I bought for 1400g: it's easily worth 2500-3000g, now I just have to find the raider who is in dire need of enhancing DPS.  Considering the profit I made earlier, I'm very much on the safe side with this purchase and will be making some neat profit.

All the while, the smaller, bread and butter trades are going on. I've found that the Converter function in Auctioneer is a real money maker, and it's pretty incredible how much money you can make just by scanning the products sold below Vendor prices... my last count was a bit over 12 g in two days, so go figure!

All in all, I enjoyed my weekend in the games. What a change: I just took myself from the grind and enjoyed the minigame of AH.

What a strange and postive thing world is.

New mule and observations

Now then. I activated yesterday a new mule for my Alliance toons. He will be only for the AH duty, so I'm keeping it addon free as much as possible. Naturally, Auctioneer, Postal and Prat are there to make the business run smoothly.

Nice thing about this is the fact that the scanning -of which I have been complaining loudly in here and Twitter- is faster. Well, the scanning itself isn't, but the processing after the scan is way smoother than with Pupunen with all her addons on and stealing resources. Now I get almost up to date data to search with. And that shows already in the performance.

I transferred 4g from Laiskajaakko to this new mule. With the money I purchased some Glyphs that were sold at around 1% of their historical market price (according to Auctioneer). In less than three hours I netted 42g, which I 'wisely' reinvested to AH purchases. All in all, I'm already sitting on top of 17g in profit and almost 70g worth of stuff for sale in AH. Not bad for the first day in game, right?

In fact, the first sales I made with this toon were with the money earned from the first 5 levels of adventuring in the starting area. And earned the first gold with that. Hooray for the constant need for herbs.

My initial observation when I started to check the AH with new, poor toon was that the prices of Glyphs have dropped considerably. But at the same time, there seems to be a couple of people levelling up their Inscription, at least according to the sellers: there were three names filling up all the classes Major Glyphs, which suggests that they are selling their products out at the price they are moving fast. Which is in fact way below their material cost. 

Which is a good thing for someone with money to invest. Which isn't me, yet.

Though I found a couple of lovely Major Glyphs that were on sale for 1 s-10 s (!), which I grabbed and sold for 4g - 8g, thus making some nice profit. As I mount more money, I'll make sure to hoard more of the cheap ones, as the inscription levellers will come in waves and the use of Glyphs is pretty much constant.

Now I have to find some nice Minor Glyphs to snatch...

All in all, 'fresh' start is always nice. Especially when it is smooth and makes the routines easier.

Oh, yes. Now I have Pupunen in active healing duty instead of running to and fro between mailbox and AH. Nice!

Flippin' an' floppin'

In addition to my freakish addon habits, I have been as crazed over the AH in WoW for quite a long time. Before I started to look for addons to do this and that I was already buying trade goods for cheap and selling it on market price: mind you, I have never been greedy, just taking my share of the wealth.

And then I made my first encounter with Auctioneer.

When I came to the EU server I made it my aim to have 1000g before my main hits 40, that is, the level when you could purchase your mount originally. However, with the aid of Auctioneer and BottomScanner I was able to accomplish that way before that. The Auctioneer scans began to take more and more time with each subsequent version, though, and that started to hinder my playing otherwise. A married man with work, kids and dogs -plus actively working with them- equals minimal time to leisure (read: games), and thus every single minute is precious.

And Auctioneer started to steal that time.

Now as I have returned to the habit of scanning, flipping and posting for the guild, I'm becoming more and more frustrated with the scanning and data processing phase of Auctioneer. Granted, it's a great tool for a AH nerd like me, but I'd rather not resort to pen and paper again. As there is an addon which takes care of the data collecting and sorting, I will use that instead. But the time it takes...

It's normal to have a scan take some 12-15 minutes. That's what it took earlier, too. But the darned data processing (Three stages) takes another 15 minutes, if I'm lucky! Then, when I finally get to the searching and deal finding, the first data collected is over 15 minutes old, leaving most of the bids having less than 30 minutes (short in WoW terms) left out of my grasp: they have either expired or purchased. As are the really interesting deals where people who really don't know the value of their stuff just sell them off in redicilous prices. Like Pattern: Robe of the Archmage (Allakhazam: 136g) in sale for 7g...

I have to dig into this. Most probably there is nothing I can do about it, except reinstall the Auctioneer Suite and hope for the best.

Never the less, I have flipped quite succesfully lately. Yesterday, when I checked my post, AH and reposted the expired ones, I saw that I had made almost 700g profit during the last 7 days. And I haven't even touched the materials market, yet. The server I'm in is very competed, mostly because it's one of the EU first generation servers and filled with long term players. I'm really a newbie in that troupe, but I'm doing my best to serve my Guild.

I was just wondering, what would it be if there was no Auctioneer? Would there be less understanding for the pricing? Would there be only hardcore data crunchers running the markets?

I think we'll never know. And I hope they could tweak the Auctioneer a bit faster for the matter.

Me. Add-on freak. UI tweak. Yes, that's me.

Ok. Joined PlusHeal and after reading the UI thread I was again filled with joy and desperation. So many addons, so many beautifully stripped UI's and so crappy UI on my own WoW. Joy came from the fact that I have almost the addons that I require, though the amount of memory dedicated to them is rising... Last night I checked that I had 52Mb dedicated to addons only. Granted, I have Auctioneer Advanced which is most probably the most memory consuming addon there currently is, but still. Bishopgeorge has less than 25Mb and he's running almost the same arsenal. I wonder...

After reviewing the UI's in PlusHeal I added two more. One which I had been seeking for ever since 3.0.2 came and my former addiction to MazzleUI was cut (thankfully, 'cause that UI really dumbifies you). And that was the Mappy: now I got my minimap where I wanted it.

The other one came from a suggestion from my other brother, who is the first timer in the game. He has advanced within this week from 46 to 49 with the 'aid' of Quest Helper. And boy, does that dumb the game down even further! Then again, if one wants to level efficiently, fast and without thinking about how to proceed, Quest Helper is The One addon to rule them all. However, it failed me miserably with the Rayne's Cleansing, as it skipped one quest of the chain and went bonkers for the rest of it. Thankfully I know Ashenvale a bit from my days as Tauren Druid in there, so I wasn't completely lost. In the end, finished Ashenvale and part of Duskwood with the help of this addon, making a level to Pupunen.

And cashing out 60+g from AH sales, "powered by Auctioneer Advanced". There is still some 250g worth sales pending in and I'm already on my own. All that will be P R O F I T.

Back to the subject.

I will be tweaking my UI everytime I login from now on, to get to the point where my UI is as I want it to be. The problem with this is that I have to tweak all the elements one at a time. Last night I meddled with Quartz and ag, the login before that went with Grid and Bartender4. The most problems I'm having with Quartz and Grid, because both rely on the manual tweaking of the parameters. Oh, yes, and Buffalo2, which refuses to co-operate with me.

This time I will do it by myself, not relying on ready compilation UIs. At least I know when I blunder and hopefully I learn to correct the mistakes myself.

Until I install the next Addon and take two down...

In Heaven again

Before the so called hiatus from WoW, when I really burned my interest out by trying to power level to the level cap for the second time, the last things I really concentrated on was to make gold. Lots of gold in AH. I really spent time in flipping items: buying for cheap, selling for decent price. I never ripped anyone off... well, except that poor sod who sold a blue BC item for 5g and I sold it for 75g... But hey, he posted it!

Then came the half a year off from the game, a couple of patches and Auctioneer went bonkers. Really sad, because I hate record keeping on my own. I'm not that organised. You should see my work table or my computer table at home...

After WotLK kicked in I've been playing with my UI so much that I have neglected my Auctioneer. I've only sold the loot from all my toons I've been playing and gotten on with the show. However, on Monday I took a while to see what the 'new' Auctioneer holds in itself.

The Bliss.

I was so disappointed when I learned that the BottomScanner didn't work and it wasn't supported anymore. The main tool for flipping was gone, and I was too lazy to scan the AH item by item to see the price percentages for profit. But now as I started to dig into the functions of the Auctioneer Advanced, I found that the same functionality is in there, as the Real Time Scanner!

I started playing with it immediately. I found deals in there with price only beliw 10% of the 'market value' of the products. I grabbed a few of them and even put something on a higher priced end of things, too. I spent around 230g in a few minutes and regretted that while I put the stuff for sale. It would take some serious grinding if Auctioneer's database was crooked (as it most probably is because of WotLK) and my gut feeling was wrong.

I checked my mail yesterday. Scared of the outcome I skipped the expired deals and only opened the succeeded ones. You know, the scrolls with money in them. I closed my eyes as I cleared the expired deals to my bags for a rerun and closed the mailbox.

138 g, combined from deals and outbids. I made over half of the money back with only petty things! It worked and I hadn't lost my market sense!

Okies. I took it more carefully this time and spent only some 50g on new purchases and re-entered the ones that had been expired. I'm well on my way to the new thousand before Outlands with Pupunen and Laiskajaakko. It's good to be rich.

After this Pupunen took a flight to Ashenvale to run some petty quests. To my surprise Rayne's Cleansing is a long chain, with a really nice story, too. Too bad the phasing isn't in use in here, because it would make sense that the Furbolgs -the cleansed ones- would become friendly towards the Night Elves after this quest chain. It's a real shame that you have to hand the shapeshifting rod back at the end of the chaing, but then again, I'm not going to steal from the trusting questgiver. It's like stealing from a dead man, which you have to do in Bloodmyst Island... which is gross.

These are the simple things that really would benefit from somekind of 'morality' effect in the game. Let alone the much controversial torturing quests in Northrend. How come this kind of possibility to induce the RolePlaying elements into the game had been neglected from the beginning?

Ah. Nevermind. It's money that talks, and I can't wait to check Pupunen's mailbox in the evening!