srsbusiness

When I was a kid I loved comics, I was particularly fond of Mad Magazine and Spy VS Spy. The spies have been waging their “silent” war since 1961, and though creator (and Cuban national) Antonio Prohias passed away some years ago; the strip remains. It is with this in mind, that I decided to write about the Cloak & Dagger world of AH Espionage.

De cape et D’épée
The Oxford English Dictionary defines the word espionage much as you might assume, as being the practice of spying. Espionage in and relating to wow’s auction house can be a fairly complex issue. At it’s root, what we’re doing is trying to gather data to extrapolate for business purposes.

+ Example
You are making some Eternal Belt Buckles on your Blacksmith, and you notice the following in trade chat:
[2. Trade] [Soandso]: WTB Adder’s Tongue, Deadnettle, Tiger Lily and other herbs in BULK.

In this example, we can infer that this player is likely a scribe looking to get materials. Why is this important? People who post messages like this tend to be the very same people who are going to be undercutting every glyph you’ve posted in the next hour. You add him to friends along with a note saying, “Possible Scribe” and move on. When relisting glyphs you notice his name come up as being one of your undercutters, so now you know he’s competition.

How does this help? Now that you know he’s a competitor you can actually keep an eye on him, when he logs on you know he’s going to be posting glyphs. When he logs off, you can relist glyphs and undercut him. This of course, is a simple strategy that I’m sure many who read this have already thought of, so I won’t belabor the facts on this one.

Counter Espionage
Now that you understand the basic psychological aspect of this primitive method, it’s time you understood the other edge of the blade. Alts are handy, and for someone trying to make large sums of gold, it’s almost a necessity. One thing we notice when looking at the Spy VS Spy strip is that often times one spy wins by presenting false information to the other guy.

Take for example, my current set of characters. I have each and every character on my main account listed on this blog to the right. This does not mean however that these are my AH alts. Though I do post with them, I may make a new character (or characters) from time to time on my second account to post without fear of someone undercutting me seconds later. I know for instance that when I log on Miraru he’s on atleast one person’s list… they watch, and when Mir goes AFK or logs off, they start cancelling their glyphs. They then undercut me… Meanwhile, I’m getting my glyphs out of the guildbank on my second account on a new character and while I wait for people on my list to AFK, log off…

It’s all about feint and counter feint. Getting a list of possible competition together is actually pretty easy, watch trade chat, watch QA3 when you relist auctions. See who’s undercutting you, see who’s spamming trade saying they are “Looking for work, will undercut AH guaranteed!” Obviously, this is much more effective with multiple accounts, but it’s definitely doable with one.

Assets and How to Develop Them
CIA Field Operatives and other covert agents are often depicted in films and novels as having assets, that is people who they use for specific purposes. Sometimes it’s for information, other times it’s to provide a convincing cover, etc. The point is, assets are people who are being used for something… Enter the farmer.

Developing assets in WoW is simpler than it is in real life, when spying on Trade chat you may see someone looking to offload large quantities of materials, when you do talk to them. Even if you’re currently doing well on that particular material, it never hurts to get a good deal. Most of the time, you can squeeze a good discount out of people if you’re buying their entire stock of a material. Often times I find these people offering to sell me more later.

Case in point, a couple of weeks ago I found someone selling copious amounts of herbs in trade, I asked her “How much for everything you’ve got?” There was a moment of silence before she said, “You really want to buy all of it?” to which I replied, “Of course, I always need herbs. Figure it up and we’ll deal.” It turned out to be a much better deal than I anticipated, after some small talk I learned a bit more about her playing habits and have since then received regular shipments of 1-2 stacks of Frost Lotus multiple stacks of assorted other herbs and usually 1+ stacks of Eternal Lifes… for under 2K. Lesser herbs are of course immediately sent to my Scribe for processing as Inks, and others to one of my Alchemists to be made into Flasks.

Developing these types of assets is crucial to maximizing your success. Maybe it’s part of my Italian heritage, but I’ve always felt that it’s important to “give em a little extra” on occasion, keep these guys happy because they’re the backbone of your empire. If you don’t, someone else will…

Also critical to your success when dealing with assets is the ability to communicate effectively with them, this can be a problem in the case of the proverbial Chinese Gold Farmer… Never fear however, if you find yourself in such a situation Sarainy of AH-Whoring has a very useful write up for talking to farmers: Chinese Farmer Phrase Book.

The Bloodscalp Report
Stock is still selling well despite prices slowly trending down. I’ve been spending a bit, getting materials stockpiles built up as well as getting tabs for the new SRS Business guild bank. I also loaned my buddy Sharpobject a few K for Primordials, so grats him on getting our third Shadow’s Edge. I’ve also been working on a little side project: my druid Caerroil who is now Restoration spec and gearing quickly (more on that later). Despite the spending, I’ve still managed to bank 20K for the week.

Call me old fashioned, but I learned the fundamentals while playing Nintendo in the ’80s. You might not think that dated 8-bit platforming plumbers have any bearing on a game of WoW’s pedigree, I for one however feel otherwise (so does this guy). If there’s one thing I learned from games like Battletoads, Super Mario Bros, The Legend of Zelda, Metroid, etc. It’s that sometimes you just have to Reset…

When to Reset
Play the market long enough and you’ll find yourself in a situation where prices are no longer what you’ve come to expect. Profits are down, cost is up. And you end up wondering where you went wrong. You may even wonder why you tried to make gold with Engineering in the first place (a valid question). It’s times like these that you may consider resetting. There are several approaches however…

+ 1. Scenario: You’ve been posting glyphs on the same alt consistently for months, and suddenly it seems everytime you log off all of your glyphs are undercut.
Solution: Make a new alt (or alts) to move your glyphs. It’s inevitable, if you’re posting tons of glyphs several times per day from one character… he’s going to piss someone off just enough to make it to their friends list (usually accompanied with a note along the lines of “glyph competition, crush him!”). So periodically making new AH alts is a sound strategy for securing your foothold in the market(s).

+ 2. Scenario: You’ve come to the conclusion that this profession is more work than reward.
Solution 1: This happens a LOT. Sometimes you just have to cut your losses, and work on a new profession instead. My first experience with this was back in Molten Core and Blackwing Lair: a guildmate was frustrated, we both played Mages. He had Tailoring and Skinning, and wondered why he could never really make as much gold as me. I was Alchemy/Enchanting with all of the old school recipes. Back then I made a solid amount of gold disenchanting and selling mats, as well as making/selling Flasks. Supreme Power and Fire Protection potions in particular sold like hotcakes.

Solution 2: Another option for many is to simply make an alt for more lucrative professions. Some of us take this off the deep-end (myself included). I would wager most people can at least make a Death Knight (if they haven’t already) to use as a crafting or farming “alt”. You’d be amazed at what a difference just having one character dedicated to the “professions you wish you had” can make. This particular option is especially appealing to raiders like myself who want to min/max professions on their main and make money with alts.

Note: There are significant possible gains to be made through alts, there is however similar potential for loss. It’s tempting for instance to just throw all of your gold into getting Jewelcrafting up on an alt to start gem cutting… unfortunately this is a problem. The amount of gold needed to get your JC skill from 0-450 is prohibitive, add to that the cost of getting some designs and raw gems to cut… And you have yourself a SNAFU waiting to happen. In the case of levelling a new profession like Jewelcrafting, it just might be more cost effective from a Gold VS Effort standpoint to actually farm the materials necessary to skill up, at least to a certain point. In which case, I refer to my original rule of starting in new markets… RESEARCH, DO IT!

1UP
I’ve decided to do a reset myself, though not in the order of the situations listed above. I’ve decided to start from 0g and see how quickly I can get from 0 to gold cap. And from there, to one million. I’m confident I will reach each goal, and probably faster than I anticipate. In the process of preparing for this, I’ve also taken the liberty of making yet another ALT guild bank: SRS Business. Yes, the name wasn’t taken on Bloodscalp, and it took me this long to figure it out (actually, someone else had the name once upon a time, but they disbanded).

I’m reorganizing my business structure around this guild/guildbank. I am however maintaining a handful of alt banks on my second account for bulk storage. With my new network of banks I should have no problem storing massive amount of goods and materials for “rainy days” and moreover, moving said goods to the proper alts for processing/sale. As a friend of mine said recently, there’s the way most of us sell stuff on the Auction House and there’s the way Hor sells stuff on the Auction House (two completely different animals).

The point is however: it was time to reset. And so, I decided to start “fresh” though I still have my alchemists and jewelcrafters along with several other crafters. Essentially, I wanna just run with it and see how far it’ll go. As such, I’m not leaving Khaas empty handed. I’m leaving him some walking around money. Right now though, the “new” gbank is empty and about to have some new tabs added. I’ll be tracking my progress via the small image to the right of the blog titled Current Gold. As well as consistent weekly updates here, every Tuesday.

The Bloodscalp Report
The market seems to be recovering from the recent lack of farmers, but slowly. Prices on various commodities remain high such as Frost Lotus and other herbs. Enchanting Scrolls are pretty dead. I’ve been selling one or two per week, just trying to liquidate the stock I have. Instead, I’m finding excess enchanting mats selling reasonably well. But I’ll have more on that next week. TTFN!

The end is near, the Lich King has already been killed by a handful of guilds with more to follow. Blizzard’s even removed the limited attempts mechanic from the normal modes. So it’s only a matter of time before everyone is farming the instance from start to finish, and only a matter of time before they get bored and stopd. To reiterate, the end is near…

The Beginning of the End
The fall of the Lich King marks the end of our time in the expansion, it’s been the primary goal of many a player since they set foot on the shores Northrend. For many, even longer: since playing Warcraft III and WCIII: The Frozen Throne. Looking ahead to Cataclysm, there’s a new enemy to face and with that the promise of new adventures and new ways to play the game. While considering the possibilities of the expansion I stumbled across this wow.com post by resident Hunter aficionado Brian Wood. In the article, Wood poses the quest should veteran players really be expected to level from one when they make an alt? That set my mind in motion about Cataclysm, and what I would like to see happen.

Making the Case for Veteran Players
First, let me be clear here: my intent is to outline what I personally think would be a great solution to veterans of the game rolling new alts. In other words, this is how I would do it…

Let’s begin with the reasons for and against established players getting a “leg up” on a new alt. There is an idea that skipping over low levels means you learn less about your class. Second, it’s held by some that by skipping those levels you’re skipping content that you should experience.

Let’s deal with the first one, leveling from 1 to 60 teaches you one thing really… how to level from 1-60. You learn to grind levels, you build up professions (maybe) and that’s about it. There’s generally not much if any interaction with other players, because the lion’s share of players are not interested in grouping up for old content that was designed for a completely different set of talents/spells. Let’s face it, the mechanics of these old instances are not up to par with current class mechanics. So, even if you were to find a group willing to run these old instances, you’d only be learning to faceroll your way through outdated content. I say, this is not learning to play your class. This is not even learning to play well with others, in fact I feel if you DID learn how to group from running instances like Scarlet Monastery with friends you would have a LOT to learn come raid time.

Most players who are going to be leveling especially veterans are just going to grind their way through quests anyway. They’re not missing much by skipping the content that many of us have seen multiple times already to start at a higher level. I’ve been playing for a very long time myself, and sometimes I DO get nostalgic and I may get a wild hair someday to suffer through the first 20 levels of being a Druid *shudder* … when and if that time ever comes, I’ll do it. If not, I would like the option to skip it if I choose.

Obviously, there’s a precedent in place for allowing established players a chance to roll a new alt with level appropriate gear at an advanced level; I’m referring of course to my beloved Death Knights. This gives us a solid framework to build on so we’ll start from there.

Veteran of War Program
The Basic Description: Accounts with a character of level 55 or higher will now have the option to create a character of any class starting at level 55.

Since there are those who may want to eschew the “insta-fifty” and go from level one on, it’s necessary to have the option available. Luckily, there’s another feature Blizzard already uses that is perfect for our purposes. Character Copy has been around for a long time, it allows you to make a premade character on the PTRs of any class. So simply adding the feature to the Account Management page would be the best bet, this would allow those who don’t want to participate the option to do so while still allowing the veteran option.

Implementation

With Cataclysm we have Deathwing to worry about, and there’s obviously going to be a lot of build up for it. But what about the new Worgen and Goblin characters? And what about those who decided they want to be class X for Cata? Well, my solution would be quite simple and a great way of kicking off the lore of the expansion. Chromie along with other ambassadors of the various allied dragonflights are building an army to neutralize the threat of Deathwing. The threat however is sufficient that they need to move to advanced training as quickly as possible. Your new fifty-five character starts out in the training grounds, much like those of the Death Knight starting area. Quests give you access to more talents, gold, and blue starter gear.

There’s a lot of possibilities with an approach like this. The fate of the dragonflights hangs in the balance, Chromie needs our help!

Final Thoughts
For those of you sitting there saying, Blizzard would never do anything remotely like this… They said they wouldn’t. Blizzard has said a lot of things, and as is often the case those who make declarative statements tend to look foolish in retrospect. For example, back when I played a Mage in vanilla one of the things that had me pulling my hair out was the inability to summon more than a meager handful of water per cast. This was over four years ago, and Conjure Water (Rank 7) was a staple of every raid and group. If you were a Mage and didn’t have the spell you were a useless noob. And … it only summoned four water per cast. Mages rabbled about it repeatedly, and we were told “We are aware of your concern, but it has been decided that allowing mages to conjure more than four at a time would be imbalance the class and raid dynamics”. A week later this response to the Mage community was deleted, along with all of the angry responses provoked by it, and replaced with “upcoming changes to Conjure Water (Rank 7) in patch 1.9, will now create ten Conjured Crystal Water per cast, up from four.”

This of course was only my first experience with Blizzard flip flopping on these types of things, and the guy who said one thing then deleted the evidence and posted something else: and then banned people from the forums for calling him on it/deleted their posts, etc. Well, it’s ok… a Shaman told me he got hit by a bus sometime during BC. Anyhow, the point is there’s precedent for Blizzard changing stances on things, look at micro transactions: race, gender, name changes. All of these things were once unheard of in MMOs, and Blizzard for a long time said an emphatic “no” to each of them. Now we have them, it’s a brave new world friends. Time to evolve ideas if you want the game to continue to be engaging and exciting. In my humble opinion, cutting out the boring parts at the beginning for those of us who’ve already experienced them one or more times already is a step in the right direction…

Sometimes there just isn’t time to do what you want, that’s why I do this blog update traditionally during realm maintenance. I slept in today, and I have to go to work in about two hours so… I’m short on typing time. So here comes a quick and dirty update, enjoy.

Opportunities
I’ve talked a lot about taking advantage of opportunities, that means you have to be diligent. You HAVE to watch for those opportunities constantly. Doing this is paramount for understanding trends and patterns. For example, flasks… these tend to start selling late Monday night and as soon as servers come up Tuesday. They will continue to sell (on Bloodscalp at least) for a couple of days. There is a simple explanation for this, Tuesday = realm maintenance and raid ID resets. More importantly though, sometimes the supply taps out…

Last night I noted that Frost Lotus had risen to a new high as seen in the pic above. And Flasks, were all but non existent. A handful of Endless Rage and Frost Wyrm were all that were on the AH.

Moments later I had a load of Flasks posted. Now, as I’ve found a couple of great farmers I’ve had a steady flow of materials. I’ve been on the lookout for flask materials in particular, getting them cheap at one part of the week, making flasks, then storing them for “raid nights” I fully expect these to sell out by the time I hit Icecrown tonight. Why are these things selling like this? Well for one, I bought out all the Frost Lotus on the horde side (and quite a few on the Alliance side) and because now all of ICC is open, the Lich King is available. And now Blizz has announced a removal of limited attempts in normal modes (source: link).

The Moral of the Story
Sometimes you have to make your own opportunity, by buying out all of the cheap materials to a point where the finished product “appears to be a deal” you ensure your product will move AND you help ensure that your competition has less raw materials to work with. This applies to all professions, and it works… fixing the AH is possible. I talked about this a while back when I mentioned my scorched earth campaign and the Zamboni method. I also mentioned I’ve been dipping into the Jewelcrafting market, and I have to say it’s been paying off rather well. Even considering me spending gold to get new cuts, it’s still making really good gold from it…

Inscriptions and the End
I’m by no means giving up on Inscriptions, it has to be said however that the market has gotten a lot slower. Where once I was making 3000 per day easily from glyphs I’m now making 1000 average, and I have to hustle a bit more. I can still make 3K or more, but only if I’m making cards/decks and that is a lot more reliable when the faire’s in town. But friends, this is why I’ve always preached the virtues of diversity and why I’ve dipped into multiple markets from the beginning. In the end, 1K per day from Glyphs isn’t bad at all. It’s just not as good as it once was, it’s not “carrying” my other professions as I skill up anymore. Which is fine, because I’m making enough from my various endeavors to easilly level a new profession each week and still hit my weekly goal(s).

Anyhow, that’s it for this week. Need breakfast before work.

Taking advice from a self-proclaimed “Agent of Chaos” might not seem like a great idea, in fact it sounds downright crazy. But the question Ledger’s Joker poses is a relevant one. And recently it’s one I’ve taken to heart. Read on as we find out the answer to the question, why so serious?

I’d like to dedicate this week’s poster to the best tree ever, Ysosrs.

Where Did It Start?
I started aiming for the gold cap for a variety of reasons. One because it was a goal to accomplish, a new challenge for me personally. The only way to realize your full potential is to challenge yourself constantly. Another factor was the sense that gear may become irrelevant one week to the next, but gold always retains value. Unless there are radical changes to the game 214,748 Gold 36 Silver and 46 Copper will always be a significant amount of wealth. Significant enough in fact to assure yourself that anything you might reasonably want is obtainable. Take for instance my quest for Shadowmourne, this thing is initially daunting for a lot of people because of the amount of Primordial Saronite needed to get past the first quest. I was able to get my 25 before the Plagueworks was open, ensuring I had no problem completing the quest and gaining Shadow’s Edge.

And Then the Penny Dropped
You can only hoard for so long without giving yourself some kind of reward. The point really of hoarding the gold is to have it available to spend, when you want. So that you don’t feel like you “have” to save your gold in case something comes up. I think it really hit home when I read a thread over at the JMTC forums (Original Forum Post: Father Markco…I have sinned). As I say later in the thread, I’ve decided to say goodbye to useless guilt, and spend when I feel like it (and when I feel I can afford it).

I have since then spent a bit getting professions up for various alts, grabbing materials for my Insane in the Membrane achievement. And even hooking up some guild-mates with gold for Choppers, or their own Shadow’s Edge, or whatever (I must confess that this wasn’t entirely altruistic however). I feel better, and enjoy playing more now that I’m not necessarily burdened with the thought that I have to make X amount of gold this week (or I’m a failure). It’s my own fault, I’m a very competitive person.

So, that being said I won’t be doing regular gold reports anymore really. Unless it’s for something specific like say, reaching a certain goal. Or to go over a new method/market I’ve been working in. I’m still keeping tabs on how much each of my AH alts is making and keeping things separate. And I’m dipping into some new markets right now, so I’m definitely going to come through with some numbers to support my findings and theories. I’m just not going to make it into a “race” anymore. In the end, I’m only competing with myself anyway… and that can never be anything but tiring.

With that said…

The Bloodscalp Report
Glyphs are still down. But with the new arena season having just started, and the Darkmoon Faire in town I’m seeing sales begin to rally. Now for the bad news, if you play on Bloodscalp then you may already be aware of the terrible drought of raw materials in the Auction House. The price of Frost Lotus alone has skyrocketed to as much as 100g per. Where have all the farmers gone? One theory is that many of the Asian farmers are on holiday thanks to Chinese New Year, and that after a mandatory week off they should be back at full capacity. Hopefully this proves true, in either case I’m not paying 25g for a stack of friggin Tiger Lily. Prices have been so out of whack that I even started buying mats like Icethorn and Lichbloom because it was cheaper to mill those (12g per stack for a few hundred stacks recently) compared to the a fore mentioned price for Tiger Lily and others.

So, consider this an open letter to any farmers on their lunch breaks… WTB Adder’s Tongue, Tiger Lily, Deadnettle, Frost Lotus, Eternal Life, Eternal Fire, and Pristine Black Diamond in BULK! Contact Khaas with details. And seriously, I MEAN bulk.

In other news, I snagged a copy of Mongoose this week on a whim in Karazhan. Now I’ve got an excuse to go farm those heroics for the meta achievement. I’ve already sold a few scrolls of Goose at 800g each. Other enhancement items like Buckles and the like are moving well too. I’ve been dipping a bit more into gems lately with great success. That’s all for this week, thanks for reading. I leave you with a look at my Auditor info…