20 Days of Gold Making, Day 4 - The Cautionary Tale of the Neglected Alt

Evening, folks. I apologize that it's been longer than expected since my last post, but you know how that pesky "real life" thing can get. My time for WoW in general got sporadic for a bit, and when that happens, the attention I give the blog also tends to suffer.

Anyway, I thought I'd finally dive back into Nev's "20 Days of Gold Making" topics. Why, then, did I skip from day number 2 to day number 4? Well, first of all, day number 3's question is about strategies when first starting out, which I plan on discussing further when I get into some "Back to Basics" sort of posts. Secondly, I had a...learning experience today that related to day 4's question.

So, without further delay...

4. Do you use a banker alt/guild? When did you start doing that & why?

When I first started out, I used my main, my Druid, as a banker. I had things down to a general process, for each day, which would go something like this:

1. Use any daily cooldowns on crafting alts
2. Check Druid's mail
3. Post anything that had expired
4. Queue up the various professions' Restock queues in TSM
5. Shop for all the mats
6. Send the mats off to the various crafting alts
7. Hop onto each crafting alt and do the actual crafting
8. Mail everything back to the Druid
9. Have the Druid post everything

That actually wasn't as much work as it seems. Steps 6 and 8 were also made much easier than they would otherwise be by the use of TSM Mailing. Still, not everything was perfect there. Step 6 in particular became much more complicated when two of my crafting alts needed the same mat. Herbs, ore, and especially the various Volatiles (thankfully gone in MoP) were common offenders there. I couldn't set TSM Mailing up to mail some of an item to one alt and some to another. (At least as far as I know. If anyone knows differently, please let me know.)

The other problem was the sheer amount of mail for the Druid to sort through in steps 2 and 8. Postal helped with that, of course, but bag space was still an issue, not to mention that only 50 items can be displayed in the mail at once. I would spend very long stretches of time going between long stints of mail opening and long post scans on TSM.

In addition, the fact that my Druid was the one with 99% of the gold wasn't ideal. The crafting alts may not have been really interacting with the Auction House at all, but many of them still needed vendor mats. Most notable was my Jewelcrafter. Hundreds, if not thousands, of Jeweler's Settings add up, and the vendor value of cut Zephyrites wasn't cutting it. Having to send more gold his way every so often was a bit of a pain.

There were other, more subjective problems with the arrangement, as well. Most notably, I just felt like I was spending so much time hopping between characters as opposed to how much time I was spending actually doing something. Granted, this was before I got my first solid state drive, so load times were longer, but the feeling likely would have been there regardless.

All in all, I like the way I do things now better. Almost everything is handled on the character that crafts it. Mats a character acquires that they have no use for (like cloth on anyone but my tailor) gets sent off to the appropriate characters, but otherwise, each character is mostly independent. Each handles his or her own mail, buying, crafting, selling, etc.

Honestly, it solves most of the problems of the other method quite well. Each character's mail load remains relatively small (except my Scribe, but that's the nature of that profession, really). I have TSM set to not count any other character's inventory, so it doesn't matter that, say, my Scribe and my Alchemist both have herbs. Each character handles their own gold, and is thus quite unlikely to go broke. (In fact, it often makes it much easier to get an at-a-glance idea of whether a segment of the business is profitable.) I probably spend about the same amount of time "toon hopping", but it feels like less, because I'm stopping and doing quite a bit between each hop.

It should be noted, however, that this system is not without its drawbacks. Unfortunately, I discovered one of them the hard way today. In cases where you just plain get very busy for a while, it can be surprisingly easy to leave a character alone for too long.

Under the current system, I'll start at the top of my list of characters, finish all of that person's crafting and posting needs, then move on to the next. Time has been limited lately, so I haven't always been making it all the way down the list. Still, I'd start from the top each day. I figured there would be so little needing to be done on those characters near the top that I'd still make my way down the list in good time.

I was corrected today, when I finally logged onto my Death Knight, who happens to be my Tailor and Enchanter. All of the greens I had sent from my Jewelcrafter recently were there in his mailbox...but nothing else was. It took me a while to realize what had happened, but finally, I figured it out. It had actually been more than 30 days since the last time I had logged onto that character to check his mail. As a result, every single mail message, whether it be gold from auctions that had sold, or items from auctions that had expired, was gone.

The tailoring stock wasn't a big deal. Cloth is still dirt cheap, for the most part, so I was able to restock fairly easily. Enchanting was another matter entirely. I don't exactly mass produce the high-end weapon and bracer enchants, since they're fairly slow sellers, comparatively. I usually only keep 3 of each in stock. Still, restocking those all at once meant needing almost 150 Sha Crystals, which are currently running between 200 and 300 gold each on my server. I was honestly tempted to wait until 5.4, when they would be much easier to mass produce (more on that in a future post), but ultimately, I decided to take the chance at profit now, particularly since we have no idea when 5.4 will actually go live.

Was it something I could afford? Yes, of course. Was it something I was happy about? Absolutely not!

Still, there's nothing to be done for it now. No amount of fretting will magically bring back what was lost. I just have to move forward and take it for what it is: a learning experience.

Don't Fear the Undercutter

This may not be news to many, but your most precious resource in the gold making game (and in general) isn't some ultra-rare item or some esoteric bit of knowledge. It's time, plain and simple. Every person only has so much of it, and once it's spent, there's no way to get it back. It's the ultimate limited commodity.

Now, of course, how much time one has to spend on WoW in general, and on gold making specifically, varies enormously from person to person. Some people have more free time than others. Some people have other things they want to do with that free time. And you know what? That's perfectly okay.

Yes, time spent is a factor in gold making, but is it as big of one as we may think? "But Tailswish," you may say, "I need more time, no matter what, so I can keep up with those undercutters!" There's certainly some basis for that line of thinking. It's not uncommon to get undercut within minutes, or sometimes even seconds, especially on high population realms.

And here's the biggest thing I've learned over the last couple of years: that's okay. No, really, it is. You don't have to spend all your time trying to stay on top of the people undercutting you. In fact, there's a good chance that trying to do so will hurt your sales.

When I first started out in my gold making journey, I had quite a bit more free time than I do now. More than that, the idea I had stuck in my head was that I had to "use" all of the free time, that doing so would give me a huge advantage. I had everything I crafted sent to one banker, and that banker would run a cancel scan every hour or so.

What was the problem with that? Between running the cancel scan, retrieving everything out of the mailbox, and posting it back up, the whole cycle would often take upwards of a half hour. This means that for the items that continually ended up at the bottom of that huge stack of mail, they were only even on the AH about half the time! It's true that the lowest priced auction sells, but you know what doesn't sell? An item that's not on the AH at all.

There's also another important thing to keep in mind. Supply and demand are constantly fluctuating, and although they'll always go back to equilibrium, there will also be plenty of spans of time when one is greater than the other. Specifically, there will be times, often several in a day, when demand outstrips supply for a given item. At that time, the cheapest auctions get eaten up, and the demand takes a healthy chunk out of the middle.

So what's the moral of the story? There will always be someone there to undercut you. Rarely, if ever, is "camp the AH and run continuous cancel scans" going to be a viable strategy. Instead, be patient. List enough of a variety of items, all at reasonable prices, and simply leave them be. Yes, plenty of them will expire, but that's okay. Plenty of the constant undercutter's auction don't sell, either, but he's paying more and more fees every time he relists, while you're only paying once every 24 or 48 hours. More importantly, you'll be pleasantly surprised at what did sell, and with nowhere near the time investment of the camper.

Gold is valuable, but your time is infinitely more so. Yes, all other things being equal, the person who has 8 hours a day to spend making gold will earn more than the person who has 1 hour, but not nearly as much more as you may think. Now, if you have that massive chunk of free time every day, and want to spend it at the AH, then hey, more power to you. But if you don't, or if you want to say, duck off and play some Borderlands 2 instead, don't think that means you can't make gold. It's about using what time you have effectively, more than anything else.

Personally, I fall much closer to that hour a day end of the spectrum than I used to, and I'm still doing just fine. I can even leave my auctions be for a day or two, and it's far from the end of the world. I don't fear the undercutter, because I see him for what he is, and I know I'll do better than he could ever imagine.

Not Dead - Again!

So, just a quick update before hopefully more posts to follow. I'm not dead, nor have I quit WoW, nor have I quit gold making. It's just been a combination of being busy with college and, honestly, not having a whole lot to talk about in regards to gold making.

It's a bit sad, really. There just hasn't been much of a change, at least in regards to gold making, since 5.2 or so. Some of the PvP gem priorities changed a bit with 5.3, but really, most of the same stuff's been working. I was doing Nev's 20 Days of Gold Making to give me some ideas, but I was far enough behind on that I felt the motivation waning.

If I'm going to be completely honest, a big part of me was ready to simply abandon this blog. I didn't post anything to that effect, perhaps because I felt like that would be too final. In every way that mattered, though, the plug had apparently been pulled.

What changed, then? There are a couple of things, really. First off, I had a period yesterday where I was trying to track down what was causing some crashes for me, so at the advice of Blizzard Customer Support, I was playing completely without add-ons. It made me realize just how much we all rely on add-ons, and how much of an advantage that gives us over those who only use the default AH interface (that unwieldy behemoth that remains largely unchanged since launch).

Now, that's not to say that I couldn't do what I do without add-ons. If push came to shove, and TSM, Auctionator, etc. were all broken in a critical moment like a patch day, I could deal. However, it would take me so much more time and energy, compared to how I'm able to do things with those tools. In short, like any tool, they're still only worthwhile if you know what you need to do in the first place.

In addition, my raid group's had a bit of a revolving door lately. Things are starting to stabilize, but for a while, there were quite a few new recruits or random people joining us on any given night. One thing that surprised me when meeting all these new people was how many of them complained about being broke. And when I say "broke", sometimes I mean "less than 2k gold across all their characters" broke.

We were having a conversation about gold in tonight's raid, and my guild leader said, with pride, "You know, Tails even has his own gold making blog". His comment, along with the realization that I haven't updated this thing since March, filled me with shame. That's the one thing I don't want to feel about this blog. I want to be able to proudly tell people with questions that I have a blog full of advice.

To that effect, I've resolved to start posting again, and quite possibly get back down to basics. The beautiful thing about basics, after all, is that they're useful to everyone. People new to the gold making game get the most good out of it, of course, but it's not at all uncommon for a more seasoned gold maker to see something simple they were missing, or have a much more complicated idea sparked by reviewing a basic concept.

For those of you that are still with me, I thank you for staying. I hope to have much more to show you in the future. Of course, if anyone has any specific topics they'd like covered, I'm more than happy to cover anything left in the comments.

For now, though, for the first time in far too long, I bid you all good night and good gold.

Rev Up Your Crafters - Blizz Gives Free Week to Lapsed Accounts

This post will be relatively short and sweet, as I'm actually finding myself with a ton to do in-game right this moment, but I just wanted to give you guys a heads up.

I logged on tonight to find things selling in much more massive quantities than I'm used to for "setting and forgetting" auctions.  For example, I logged onto my Jewelcrafter and took about 28k gold out of the mailbox, all from gems.  An entire stack of a few things had sold, along with smattering of everything else.  I'm crafting PvP gear and flasks almost constantly.  I didn't want to look a gift horse in the mouth, but I thought to myself "Where is this all coming from?"

Then I saw something interesting.  My former Guild Master and a couple others who'd quit, suddenly signing on for the first time in weeks.  Turns out, Blizzard is giving a free week of game time to people whose subscriptions have lapsed.  Presumably, they hope they'll see enough in 5.2 to make them consider coming back.

This represents a huge market.  These people have just come back to the game after an indeterminate amount of time.  They only have so much time given to them for free, and they want to try out everything the new patch has to offer.  And seeing as they have no idea whether or not they'll stay past that free week, they're not being stingy with the gold.

So, what should you be doing?  Get your crafting alts producing, and get posting the fruits of those labors.  Basically, anything that helps someone do Throne of Thunder, or progress through LFR in general, is a good thing.  PvP gear, Ghost Iron Dragonlings, flasks, gems, belt buckles, enchants, spellthreads, etc.  Get crafting while the crafting's good!

5.2 Round-up

Hey there, gold fans!  First of all, apologies are in order.  I know I've been a bit scarce lately.  Part of that's been class work getting heavy, but most of it was just plain not logging on to WoW much.  If I don't have much motivation to even log in, it's certainly difficult to write about the game.

Regardless, 5.2 is here, which means a return for plenty of us, including me.  It also has some fairly significant changes from a gold maker's point of view.  In-depth posts may follow, but for now, I'll settle for simply giving a birds-eye summary of what's happening.

Blacksmithing

Blacksmithing has undergone some rather significant changes.  Most notably, recipes have been added to skill up from 1-500 just from Ghost Iron Bars.  Be warned, however, that these recipes are often extremely inefficient.  They also have no real use other than their rather low vendor value (although this is true for much of leveling most professions).  In general, I would treat them as a gap filler for those levels where the old-school mats are either prohibitively expensive or just plain not on the AH.

All three of the major gear professions (Blacksmithing, Leatherworking, and Tailoring) have new PvP recipes and epic recipes available.  Unlike with previous patches, these are all learned through a random discovery method on a daily cooldown.  This means the basic 450 gear will probably be viable to sell for a while still, as everyone randomly learns their new recipes.  This is particularly true because these recipes are exact replicas of what was offered from the honor vendor last season, meaning many pieces are actually class-specific.

Unfortunately for Blacksmiths, their daily cooldown, Lightning Steel, requires a quest item from the new Thunder Forge, which is only unlocked when their server's Thunder Isle reaches a certain stage.  There were reports of players being able to get into that area early, but from what I understand, the NPC that drops the item has been hotfixed out.  Unfortunately, the way Thunder Isle works, even if your server has full participation each day, it will likely be a while before you see the Thunder Forge.

Leatherworking

Like Blacksmithing and Tailoring, Leatherworking has new patterns learned from a daily cooldown.  It's actually two daily cooldowns, but only one can be used any given day.  Magnificence of Leather and Magnificence of Scales are both BoP world drops from any Pandaria mob.  Much like meta gem recipes, these seem to be "smart drops" and will only drop if you're a Leatherworker (not yet known if a particular skill level is required). 

Personally, I recommend our good friends Wyrmhorn Turtles in Valley of the Four Winds for this one.  They're clumped relatively well, they don't have much health, and are already very popular with skinners.  I got both recipes in less than a dozen kills.

The daily cooldown will let you use either 20 Exotic Leather or 20 Prismatic Scales to make a Magnificent Hide, and teaches a random new recipe in the process.  This ability to make one of your Hides more efficiently each day is particularly nice since, from what I've seen so far, the new PvP recipes all take Hides exclusively.  You also seem to be able to learn both leather and mail recipes from either cooldown, so feel free to make whichever is more cost effective.

Tailoring

Like Leatherworking and Blacksmithing, Tailoring has new patterns learned from a daily cooldown.  Tailors have it particularly nice, though, as the discovery has simply been folded into their existing Imperial Silk cooldown.  Thankfully, though, the new PvP recipes don't require any Imperial Silk, just your normal Bolts of Windwool Cloth.

Jewelcrafting

Jewelcrafters have two new recipes of note:  Serpent's Heart and Primal Diamond.  Both seem to be world drops from Pandaria mobs.  Basically, anything that can drop your meta gem patterns can also drop these.

Serpent's Heart is essentially the new "Prism" spell of MoP.  It uses 3 Serpent's Eyes to make a container that will usually contain a random rare gem, but can occasionally also drop a Primal Diamond or the recipes for the Jade Owl and Sapphire Cub.  The recipe is, of course, on a daily cooldown.  Depending on your realm prices, this can be a gamble.  It's great if you get a Wild Jade, for example.  Not so great if you get a River's Heart (I know on my realm, even one Serpent's Eye is worth more.).

The new Primal Diamond recipe makes a Primal Diamond with 5 of every uncommon MoP gem, plus a Spirit of Harmony.  I guess this is great if you have extra Spirits just sitting around on your Jewelcrafter?  Don't expect this to change the meta gem market much, if at all.

Sunsong Ranch

There are a few noticeable changes with the farm.  First of all, if you're at Exalted with the Tillers, you can talk to Nana Mudclaw to get a quest that culminates in you taking over the farm from Yoon.  This means two things:  First, the farm house essentially becomes an inn, letting you rest and bind your Hearthstone there.  I guess that's cool, although there's an inn maybe 30 yards away already.

More interesting, though, is the fact that this allows you to fulfill work orders for the various 5.0/5.1 factions.  Each work order means using 8 plots, and the reputation reward is nothing to write home about (400 before any bonuses).  They're usually not the best use of your plots, but if you're still struggling with a reputation, they are one more thing you can cram into a day.  It should be noted, though, that the work orders won't let you get around rep prerequisites like Golden Lotus (sorry, Enchanters).

Also of note:  seed bags.  The seed vendor now sells seed bags of every type of seed.  Each bag has 10 charges.  When used, it puts a targeting reticule on the ground.  Click an area containing up to 4 plots of Tilled Soil, and it'll plant in all 4 of them at once.  It's so much quicker than planting everything individually.

Lastly, the patch notes say that the yield on special crops has been increased.  I'm still in the process of testing the results.  So far, Songbell seeds remain unchanged, but that's hardly surprising.  Raptorleaf seeds are still disappointing, giving 3-4 Exotic Leather instead of 1-2, still with no chance for Prismatic Scales.  Winshear Cactus seeds actually aren't half bad, each giving somewhere around 6-10 Windwool Cloth, as well as a decent chance for a Bolt of Windwool Cloth.  I'm still in the process of testing the rest.

Reputation

On the subject of reputation, there is one more notable change.  You can now champion a faction for your first dungeon run and scenario of the day.  Dungeons give a base of 300, while Scenarios give a base of 200.  This is somewhat similar to the old tabard system, except that it's limited to once a day.  To champion a faction, simply open your reputation panel and select the star next to your desired faction.  It's also interesting to note that this method will let you earn Shado-Pan or August Celestials reputation even if you're not Revered with Golden Lotus.

Conclusion

Phew!  That was actually quite a bit to cover, even in brief.  Still, that should be the most relevant changes from a gold-maker's point of view.  What are your favorite changes in 5.2?  Let me know in the comments.

Until next time, good night and good gold.

Gooooooooooaals! (20 Days of Gold Making, Day 2)

Greetings, gold fans!  I apologize for my absence, but I'm afraid my class load was hitting me harder than usual.  Still, things have calmed down a bit, so it seems like a good idea to continue with the "20 Days of Gold Making" inspired by Nev.

2. If you set yourself a goal, what was your goal & at what point did you set it?

 I think goals are just as important in gold making as they are in any other area of your life.  The hard part, though, is figuring out exactly where to set those goals.  Set them too low and there's no real sense of accomplishment.  Set them too high and you're likely to get frustrated when it either takes too long or just isn't possible.

That being said, I probably aimed a bit on the high side when I set my initial goal.  When I first started gold making, I decided almost right away that I wanted to be gold capped, to have a million gold.  That being said, I knew it also wasn't going to happen anywhere near overnight.  I knew it could take a year or more.

As it so happens, I set that goal in January of 2012 and reached it at the end of October.  That may not be as fast as some others could do it, but it was in my predicted timeline.  I have to say, though,, that if I were doing it all over again, I'd likely set a series of smaller goals leading up to it.  I could see myself making progress each day, but sometimes it seemed like so little compared to where I wanted to be.

Still, I did it.  I climbed to the mountain.  I made it to the top and then...well, that's a story for another day.  Specifically, it's a story for day 8's question.  So until then, keep striving for those goals, whatever they may be.

20 Days of Gold Making - Day 1 (Better Late Than Never)

Evening, gold fans.  Like many out there in the blogging community, I sometimes experience a shortage of that most important element:  topics.  I've lost count of the number of times I've been in the mood to post something here, only to realize I couldn't think of a particularly interesting topic.

That's not surprising.  Gold making is, in some ways, ten percent inspiration and ninety percent perspiration.  That is to say, the vast majority of my time in game is simply spent going through my routine:  buying my mats, doing my crafting, posting, maybe occasionally cancelling.  There are weeks at a time where nothing really changes.  Shockingly, those parts aren't very exciting.

So when I saw Nev (of Auction House Addict) post her "20 Days of Gold Making" post, I was intrigued.  Give me a topic, and I'm perfectly willing to ramble on until you beg me to stop.  It took me a while to hop on board, but I'm going to try my hand at this.  I certainly can't promise they'll be 20 consecutive days, but my goal is to get all 20 covered over the course of...well, however long it takes me to do this.

With that in mind, let's head straight into Day 1.

1. When did you start gold making & what triggered it?

I'd venture to say I'm a bit newer to the gold making aspect of WoW than most of the bloggers out there.  I'd been playing since mid-TBC, but the event that sparked my interest in gold making actually took place in December of 2011, not too long after Dragon Soul released.

I was taken with the holiday spirit, and decided to get presents for all my raid members.  It wasn't a gold making exercise in and of itself, but most of what I got everyone was Argent Tournament pets, which were going for 3-5k at the time.  Multiply that by ten people (I was doing it in a sneaky, anonymous way, so obviously, I also needed something for myself), and it was enough gold that I really had to work for it.

That taught me that I could make gold, and that it was actually pretty fun.  Around the beginning of 2012, I actually entered into a competition with my partner to see who could reach gold cap first.  It was fun, but I don't know that either of us were that serious about it at the beginning.

Things changed, though, near the beginning of February 2012.  That was when my mother, who had been battling with breast cancer for the last three years, decided that the last couple of chemotherapy options available to her were too riddled with side effects.  She decided to end chemotherapy, and began in-home hospice care.

I'm thankful for the hospice team's help, but other than nurse visits and bathing visits, the rest of the care pretty much fell to me (and to the amazing family and friends who brought food and things like that).  Surprisingly enough, though, I still had some free time, and was in desperate need of a distraction.  I had classes (mostly online, as leaving the house was difficult), but that didn't take up all my time.  Maybe it should have, but when you're averaging 4-5 hours of sleep and pretty much unable to leave the house, it's funny how the free time builds up.

There was WoW, of course, but the nature of my free time didn't lend itself well to traditional WoW activities.  I might have as much as an hour or two at a time between Mom's medication, but at any given moment, she could need something.  Of course that's more important than any group I may be in or even any mob attacking me.

That's where gold making and the AH really started to shine.  They were one form of play where if I needed to drop everything and rush into the other room, I could do so with absolutely no consequences.  It was the distraction I so desperately needed.  And when the couple of weeks the doctors predicted turned into a couple of months (a gigantic mixed blessing, if ever there was one), gold making is one of the things that got me through the toughest time in my life.

I realize that's a bit more personal than something one normally expects to see on a gold making blog.  I apologize if I offended anyone by being so open.  I just wanted everyone in this wonderful community to know that their blogs, podcasts, and videos provided me with so much more than just virtual currency in a game.

Everything Is a Learning Experience

Greetings, gold fans!  I can't help but feel I've left you in the cold again.  A few weeks ago, I announced my new project for the new year...then promptly proceeded to post absolutely nothing further about it.  I do apologize most sincerely for that.  It wasn't right to just go silent, especially after disappearing for most of December.

So what happened?  Well, some of you who follow me on Twitter may have gotten bits and pieces, but let's start from the beginning.  My guild's raid nights were cancelled from December 24th through about January 7th.  No real surprise there.  There was Christmas, then people were on vacation, etc.

It was when I poked my head back onto my main server on January 9th, what should have been our next scheduled raid night, that things went in unexpected directions.  It turned out that, seemingly out of the blue, our raid leader/guild master was quitting the game.  He just felt the game wasn't really doing anything for him, he had other things to do with his time, etc.

Now, I don't have a problem with anyone deciding to quit.  It's a game, after all.  However, when you've been raiding with a group for almost three years, and most of them consider you a friend as well, it seems a bit rude to give no warning until the day you're leaving.  Doubly so if you're in a leadership position.

But that's neither here nor there.  The bigger concern was that there were 2 or 3 RL friends of his that were likely to go with him.  Now, that may not sound like much to some, but we're a 10-man group, and our server was inactive enough that we'd often have trouble getting a stand-in when one or two people were absent.  Four people would be unthinkable.

To be honest, I thought our raid team was doomed.  The one thing I didn't want to do was start all over with another group.  If I couldn't keep raiding with them, would I quit raiding?  If I quit raiding, would I quit the game?  I have my gold making, but even with this blog going, I mostly consider it a side project.  I couldn't imagine quitting, but I couldn't imagine losing my raid group, either.

Thankfully, the remaining members of our group pulled together in a way I wouldn't have expected.  Basically, we all got together and said "Well, I guess that means it's time for that server transfer we've been talking about, so we can start recruiting."  And just like that, within a couple hours, we were all moved over.  Of course, we had to wait for the guild itself to follow.  Apparently, in order to server transfer a guild, you need to have been the GM for at least 7 days.  Who knew?

The new server is treating us well, but as it happens, the new server is Zul'jin, the very same place where I had been engaging in my "from scratch" project.  At that point, the temptation to mix those gold pools was too much to maintain the integrity of the project.  Thus, it ended much quicker than I thought it would.  However, it was still a valuable learning experience, and I gleaned a fair amount of knowledge to share with you all.

Hopefully, I'll be posting more regularly now, but with classes getting back into full swing, we'll see.  If nothing else, feel free to poke me on Twitter if I go a week without posting.  Sometimes I'm not really busy, per se, just too distracted to notice how long it's been.

Happy New Year! A New Project Unfolds

Long time, no see, gold fans!  I'd definitely like to apologize for my extended absence.  Things have just been so busy with the holidays.  Combine that with the fact that there hasn't been anything terribly new in gold making, and it makes for a real lack of motivation to post.

Still, it's a new year, and I'm excited to take Swishco Ventures into 2013.  It's certainly been an exciting year, with many things to celebrate, from the start of this blog to reaching my first million.  And as much as I may sometimes complain, wondering if anyone's reading this thing, I can also look at the stats and see this blog is doing better than I ever imagined.

However, with success comes choices.  What should I do next?  What's the next big goal?  At first, I thought it would be 2 million, but that just doesn't seem to have the same appeal as that first million.  I'd rather have a learning experience, do something I haven't done yet.

So what do I want to learn, and perhaps through my experience, teach others?  I want to learn how to start from scratch (slowly develop an army instead of already having at least a decent basis).  I want to learn the differences between a medium population server where my side is the minority (like my current server), and a high population server where my faction's in control.

Then I remembered a discussion my guild had a while back about possibly switching servers.  It hasn't panned out so far (we've got a member or two holding out), but it gives me a flimsy excuse.  I can investigate and build resources on that specific server, rather than some random one that may not ever see any further activity.

Furthermore, as I bounced this idea around with my partner, he expressed the desire to join me, and to perhaps turn it into a competition as well.  So we're both going to start out on this new server, without any outside help, and with very few rules otherwise (one of the main ones being no Death Knights until at least one character is level 55).  Classes, professions, and methods are all up to the player's discretion.  First one to gold cap (or perhaps to make such a large gap that the other gives up) wins.

Thus, it is with great pride that I introduce the star of this new endeavor:  Naturalcause, Undead Hunter on Zul'jin-US.

Look for another post later in the week as I sort out what I want to do as far as professions.  Inscription has definitely crossed my mind as one, since much as I hate the glyph market, it is one of the only professions where you can make things right from the beginning that are useful to characters of any level.  I'm still definitely open to suggestions, though, so post them in the comment section if you have them.