Temporary Hiatus

If you've read this blog up to this point, you know exactly why I'm going on Hiatus. There is so much new data and money prospects here that reporting on hypothesis or theory at this point seems outdated by the time I would put it to text.

When I started writing this blog, it was to challenge myself with a WoW I had never mastered. To learn a part of the game that interested me, yet I had not yet explored. WoW has just given me many, many new unexplored challenges. I am going to take my time enjoying them and memorizing them.

And if and when a blog post comes into mind, I'll likely stop by and make an update or share a story from what I'm doing.

(example)

Stormvine was 600G per stack on Tuesday, is not 200G per stack today. I can hardly speculate the influx in price it will experience as the 5000 or so alliance players get into their crafting mode and start needing flasks and the like. I won't even pretend to know that. I will report on it however.

Happy farming! Enjoy the inflation while it lasts.

Humor Highlights

Unscripted humor. yes, someone actually thought lower Durability meant less damage output. No, he did not mean 'having red gear is less damage', he meant 'having 99/100 gear is less damage'. 24 other people in raid, no one corrected him.

Enjoy your week, see you in Cataclysm.

Self Sufficient

Has this ever happened to you? Maybe not specifically, but to someone in your raid? 25 people all put aside 3-4 hors of their lives to work together to accomplish a difficult task in a video game for the purpose of enjoying good execution and feeling like they're making progress on their abilities as a group to accomplish difficult tasks... and one person wastes the time of the other 24 because he's poor. Of course, someone will give him gold, he knows that in advance. His logic has to be 'I want to raid, but don't have the gold to repair myself. If I go anyways, and I run out of gold, surely someone will pay (carry) me.'

This is always unacceptable. Everyone who joins the group silently agrees that he or she is ready to perform to the expectations of everyone else. If not, why join a group that you know will not achieve anything, only waste gold, since everyone will be fail? What I'm getting at is highlighting the loser personality type and using it as a contrast to the importance of being Self Sufficient.

World First, Top guilds, they are not all basement dwelling no-lifers that spend 80 hours a week playing WoW. Most of them are very successful in their business lives and family lives as well, and that's the key. They practice good time management and have discipline to keep their goals on track. When they bring these tools to WoW, you see them spending minimal time between wipes, understanding and comprehending mechanics and flaws on past attempts, improving ever so slightly try after try on the same content, and will ultimately overcome any obstacle in their path that is possible. This is not because 'they are non-lifers' or because 'they are better than me'. It's because they use their real life skills to great success, and so should you.

Lets say that on average, 25 guild members on the raiding team 'we pwn nefarion' have 8 hours a week to themselves outside of raids. Other than that they have to be in a raid, or are offline. They have to make enough gold during those 8 hours to cover all repair costs during their raiding schedule, produce food and flasks for their characters, glyphs, gems, and enchants for upgrades, and finally read up on and practice their class abilities so they can perform to the output expected of them. How do they do it? They plan out their time to be as profitable as possible and are making gold as their priority online, not hunting for +10 achievement points for fishing some vanity pet while making 50 copper/per mouse click.

When one person doesn't come prepared, because he/she is not self sufficient, it is as detrimental as having 3 less people in the group.

Imagine doing content designed for 25 players with only 13 people, because 3 of your group dead from first aoe damage, some are not flasked, your group used bloodlust while waiting around before fight listening to description of mechanics, and your main tank has broken armor. Sadly, these are not fake scenarios, they all occur daily in groups.

It all ties back into how engaged people are with their activity. What are their motivators? Why are they playing the game? What do they want out of it? And how hard are they willing to (or not willing to) work to get it?

Quick Buck

I normally am against side-ventures when you're starting out. You need to focus on your business, and collecting data for it is key to your long-term success.

When you're first starting out though, you need some capital. Leveling and skills, you might have spent the easy 3-4k you get just from being alive. The most common thing I hear is 'How can I make 4k gold quickly?' because people just want to get their flying mount or shiney-worthless-object or +10 achievement points for fake money as fast as possible. This blog isn't for people like that. The things I write about are breakdowns behind logic and theory of trading fake currency virtually. Don't confuse the two.

Regardless, everyone should always be on the lookout for deals and profits to be made. I tested one this week, and saw it fizzle out on Proudmoore in about 4 days. This is merely an example. In /trade, I offered to buy the new Stormwind cooking badges for 20 gold a piece. Yes I know you cannot trade Badges, but the items that you can buy with badges sometimes are tradeable! Here's what I did:

New cooking recipes and new cooking meat means people will have demand for a new commodity... One that officially doesn't become available until Dec. 7th. But there is a way to get your paws on some. 'Crate of tasty meat'

Which will give you a random quantity and selection of some cooking reagents, as well as some trivial grey item. I've been lucky and not received any empty boxes, but I've heard it can happen.

So for 40 gold I picked up boxes of random meat, and turned the meat around to the AH for the going rate, minus a reasonable undercut to hopefully prevent competition. I sold out all of my inventory in a matter of minutes. During this time, I watched and waited... seeing no one else offering to purchase crates as I was doing. My testing period was a total of approximately 4 hours.

I only sold 9 pieces of meat, which cost me a total of 160 gold for 4 crates. My revenue was around 780 gold. This activity ate up around 60 mouseclicks of effort, maybe 2-3 minutes of planning time, and the passive activity of reading /trade for four hours post-process. What I risked was the investment fee, plus the potential of having inventory goods that I could not use or craft anything with, and might possibly become devalued in a limitless commodity environment as is possible with anything from an NPC vendor.

So looking for these kinds of quick-money profits are not long-term profitable, nor are they 100% safe, they can be the boost you need to get your business rolling. Or just finish saving pennies for that stupid-mount-that-is-identical-to-all-your-other-ones.

Nuff said

Video. Watch it. No summarizing needed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc

Autonomy. Mastery. Purpose.

Labored Breathing

Today marks WoW's 6th anniversary. Huzzah!

While that's not blog-worth enough to really talk about, what is occurring today is. Blizzard sent in-game mail stating 'look forward to Cataclysm!' and on their website announced 'Two new pets! Only $10 each!'.

This, of course, led to an amazing amount of crying.

Now we have something to talk about! Not so much that Blizzard is wrong to charge for their entertainment property, or that people crying about not getting a new vanity pet for free. Rather, this interesting relationship between purveyor and client.

If you've ever read any self-help books, you've most likely heard of a book called 'Who Moved my Cheese?'. While not the most interesting literary translation of 'man up', it does attempt to give people lacking motivation to see their situation for what it is, rather than how they want to see it. Essentially, mice get used to cheese being in the same place, and thus when it is moved die of starvation. Mice with intelligence on the contrary decide to go explore to find the new location of the cheese. This ability to overcome obstacles and not wallow in self-pity is the important feature of today's post.

Ever sold something on the AH and made a lot of money on it? "Yay, I'm rich! I'm going to sell lots of these and duplicate this profit!". Then when your market shrinks, you are out-produced by a competitor, or market changes make your product less valuable, what mindset are you going to adopt?

"Oh no, I can't make money anymore. I guess I should go do daily quests."

or

"Looks like I need to find a new market to make profit on. Time to start doing research again."

That's really up to you. And the choice you make completely determines how successful you can be. I imagine everyone has the ability to overcome difficulty, if they can accept it for what it is, rather than choose to let it stop them in their tracks.

(back to laughing at people in /trade crying about not getting something for free)

Bubble

Just a pic of the sillyness I was mentioning. These are Leveling Glyphs, not researched ones. Takes about 30 seconds to talk to a trainer, pay 10 copper, and make these. /facepalm

Current Experiment

I've always liked the idea of doing interviews with people. You learn a lot about how others think, and their insights definitely provide perspective. No one is 'wrong' unless they say no to Gold for zero effort.

How funny, today, that our experiment is just that!

I've started a guild for anyone called 'Motive' (it's a bit of a complex pun), without any requirements. All you have to do is join it, and you get all of your repairs paid for. That gold comes from my success on this server. I'm basically just going to chart my progress by using the guild bank.

Today's interview I was mentioning comes from a random person in /trade, who I caught griping about Dragons Eye's and their price change post 4.0.1 patch. Here's a sampling:

I will most likely bring the entire thing down into a dissertation about the terms 'normalization' (False) and look again at 'opportunity cost' because I think I can improve on our definitions. It should be noted here that I was referencing our partner's use of the word 'normalized', and was not implying that it makes any sense to me or that I use it. I was misquoted when this player stated I would see no real gain. (That should have been obvious based on the implication of the comment)

To end for today, just remember: Other people want to give you money, and competition doesn't want to work as hard as you for it. Find the balance between these two factors, and profit.

(post script: The patch created a bubble. I'm up to 1k gold on my level 1 from trading 40 items. This is not reasonable, and I'm not going to list it as legitimate profit.)

Aaaaand We're Back!

A year has passed, and now I find myself returning to blogging about WoW. It's interesting how much you can do in a year, trying new things, living in different places, and coming back to one thing familiar.

So here I am again, playing this game again. What will I find interesting this time?

Clearly, making money from slackers and morons. Of course.

I've moved to a PvE server (Proudmoore), I've found a 'socials' guild to help establish myself on the server with. Starting up my business again.

I think I'm going to enjoy this.

probably not original, yet important

Didn't finish the last project regarding trade mods as which is superior. I know for a fact auctioneer wins, but would have been nice to explain why. maybe I'll come back to it.

Working on a side-project. Making money in WoW hasn't lost my interest, I just don't have anything interesting or new to share about it. When I get some progress on side-project P, I'll let you know.

Do have a rambling to share. In order to understand any of what I write, you either have to think similarly to me, or be educated enough to approach my conceptualizations in their context for what they are. I want to explain my foundation principles which I use mentally to decompose people, which is what I use for my analytical process for playing against others online.

Ishmael won Daniel Quinn $500k when he published it in 1992, and it delved into human history in a way that is far enough away from human-derived conclusions in it's fictional setting, yet hit home hard enough to really make an impact with me. A gorilla that is taken from the wild is raised by a young child of a wealthy family. It learns how to read, and communicates telepathically. It shares it's view of the world from a lifeform not inflicted by the human condition, and warns against the serious consequences of uncontrolled growth in a closed resource system. That's watering it down a ton, but the core value is that agriculture was a mistake.

Why would something that feeds humans be a mistake? In nature, all life forms are bound into a cycle of predation and transference. Humans are a part of that, yet rather be bound to cycles of bountiful seasons and droughts that spurt any single creature over-expanding; Humans discovered the method to control what natural process otherwise would have. Lets look at Bluejay and Grasshopper populations. If it's a rainy year, more grasses grow, more food for grasshoppers, more grasshoppers for blue jays. Imagine if grasshoppers managed to invent weather machines that can facilitate the amount of preciptation, so they could endlessly feed on succulent grasses all year round. And then with these increased populations which would inflate beyond powers of 10 and 20, these grasshoppers invented fire, built houses, and invented a diety of grasshopperty ordained dominance over all other species. No longer predated due to inventions of weapons, permanently growing populations due to the infinite grass, and rainy weather year round. Nothing could go wrong, and life is how the Great Grasshopper had ordained in his grasshopper creationist ideal.

Then lets move 2000 years past Grasshopper Jesus, and see what effects all that rain did to topsoil (almost non-existent) the blue jays (no food source, nearly extinct) and bountiful population growth (overpopulation, exponential increase in demand for grass on diminishing remaining soil, depletion of limited resources) and grasshopper governments led by grasshoppers with agendas of their own that want to be elected next spring.

So what we have is a bred mentality that spans an epoc, that states anything can and should die if it opposes the life of a single grasshopper. All resources, food, and all living things in the ecosystem are property of the grasshoppers by His divine design. *if* there is a grasshopper diety, you pray that they never colonize other planets.

So to wrap this up as a moral, and explain what this has to do with my psycho-analysis:
People are trained from birth that they are Right.
People are born knowing that everything that is not Human is prey.
People believe in whatever created existence suits their need to preserve the first two points of knowledge.

And lastly, People are never wrong in their actions, unless it's against other people.
--
I could go into detail about ape-subroutines again, how tribes form and all males are either babies suckling on mothers, responsible 'contributing' members of the tribe, or 'outcasts' that don't support the tribe. Only one of these three are seen as successful or get to reproduce, hence motivating others without physical representation in a virtual world relies so heavily on the implied perception of others. My mammoth is so big, it means I am the best tank, and everyone knows it (I will be praised and receive social acceptance [reproduce]). My meter was the biggest! (my virility is potent, and will ensure my seed will spread across the entire planet overcoming all other males). I have the most achievement points/ilevel gear for my class/the most vanity pets/many titles I never wear/friends in tradechannel so I must win this game (you cannot win an mmo, only participate in it. Yet people constantly say 'fail' and 'lol' at each other to put them down, because it raises their own level to 'be the best' in an arena of stupid idiotic proportions).

Hope that wasn't too much to read. So I troll /trade, lol at people, aquire ilevel max items and wear a title for doing some thing that doesn't matter. I am as guilty as everyone else of being an ape and not choosing my actions rather being controlled by years of apes before me. I choose to continue my actions so that the system remains constant in it's downward spiral and is predictable, as it's the only component of a virtual world I can count on being the same. The most money can be made on PvP servers for these reasons. The most money can be made on people who have high i-levels and achievement points and mount collections for these reasons. You can become rich off mouth-breathing idiots that choose to remain apes because they don't know better as I have.

so I choose to 'fail' because there is no 'winning', only working the idiots and not caring at all.

p.s. science cannot compete with human id telling it to reproduce. when agriculture crashes, populations will crash with it. there is no infinite farming land, no infinite water supply. You cannot eat solar power. You cannot distill toxins out of water that currently is inside 50 billion humans. We won't see it in our lifetime, but the true 'apocalypse' is one that we create by staying 'ape-subroutine' idiots who only live to reproduce infinitely in a finite world.