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.