The Duping Witch-hunt

Recently, Jim from Power Word: Gold came out with an article entitled Robes of Insight Now Being Duplicated?.  Although the number of Robes is rising, as indicated in his blog and via data from The Undermine Journal, I'd like to take a moment to take a critical look at his observations.  No hard feelings, I just strongly disagree with the views expressed.

'The Evidence'
In Jim's article, he notes that the number of Robes of Insight on EU servers have doubled since June, from 105 to 199.  He also notes on US servers the number raised 90% from 130 to 249.  Okay fair enough, this is a very reasonable observation, and it is a fact.  But does it imply duping?  No.  Here's my thought process.  Below is a TUJ graph of Bloodscale Breastplate, another popular transmog item.

Bloodscale Breastplate from TUJ, click picture to enlarge

As you can see, there is a substantial increase from May starting at ~475 and going up to 812 on September 8th.  A relatively high 70.95% increase.  Hmmm.  Let's take a look at another popular transmog chest, from the Saltstone set.

Saltstone Surcote from TUJ, click picture to enlarge

From May to September 8th, the number of these increased from 50 to 121.  For those of you who are good at mental math, you already know that's well over double what it was, an over 140% increase.

My last piece of anecdotal evidence is another great transmog cloth chest piece, Buccaneer's Vest:

Buccaneer's Vest from TUJ, click picture to enlarge

Again from May to Sept. 8th the number on the US AH went from 110 to 214.  I hope you're starting to see the picture I'm trying to paint (94.5% increase).

Conclusions I've Drawn
What I think is happening, which is also more likely than duping, is that the demand for transmog items is decreasing.  This is something most of us have observed and felt in our pockets in WoW.  In economics, when demand decreases, to stay at the same level of sales from before, prices must decrease.  Because of us though, the prices didn't decrease.  We are all stubborn transmog sellers who are set in our ways (TSM is a blessing and a curse).  For all the items listed above as well as Robes of Insight, the number has been increasing, but the price has stayed around the same number.  So what we're seeing here is more likely the result of you and I, the gold making community at large, than dupers.

Further: On the "Ban Wave" Theory
Jim also suggested that the dip in amount of items on the AH after the 28th (bot ban wave) suggests duping:

"In the US servers, in days before Patch 5.0.4 and the possible ban wave, there was a peak of 245 Robes of Insight on the servers on August 25, 2012. After the patch? In the US, Robes auctions had dropped from 245 on August 25, 2012 down to 174 on August 30, 2012 a decrease of just over 40%."
"In the EU the numbers peaked at about 190 Robes on August 25, 2012 and had dropped down to 154 on August 29th, 2012. A decrease of around 23%."
*Emphasis added by me.

Clearly looking at all the above graphs you can see that ALL of these items decreased in number after the 28th (in my 3 examples by 21%, 20%, and 27% respectively). This most likely due to huge down times for the patch, or perhaps people choosing not to play during that time due to laggy servers and server resets.  All in all this doesn't imply duping, even take a look at the least likely to be duped item:

US: Netherweave cloth July 30-Sept 10

Netherweave Cloth went from this 1,083,550 peak on August 26th, to 846,994 low on August 29th.  A 22% decrease.  Most all items on the AH felt the hit of 5.0.4 being released.  Before we go around screaming "He's a duper! He's a duper!" perhaps we should take a look at all the evidence.








What Duping Really Looks Like
The previous armor graphs all show linear growth patterns, whereas something that is actually being duped (Reins of the Crimson Deathcharger) look more like this:

Reins of the Crimson Deathcharger on TUJ, click to enlarge

Quantity available is increasing exponentially, and Prices decreasing steadily.  That's what a supply and demand curve SHOULD look like.
Also note that on this actually duped item that on August 27th there were 870 on the AH, the day of the patch, the 28th, there were still 810 on the AH (a 7% decrease), and the day after the patch there were 940 (a 16% increase) , and it hasn't dropped below that since.  Your honor, I rest my case.

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

If you like my blog follow me on twitter, @PhatLewtsGold!!

RP + Gold Making = ????

For more tips follow me on twitter @PhatLewtsGold!

I got an email earlier this week from a reader of my blog.  He had an interesting idea that he wanted to open up for discussion, and I thought it was quite interesting myself.  The first time I read this it reminded me of Jim from Power Word: Gold's idea of a gold making guild, but with a maniacal twist.  Take a read from the email:

I wanted to get your thoughts on an experiment I have came up with related to wow economics and gameplay. As many people reach the gold cap (or similar financial goals) I often hear the idea of: What do I do now?  Well, I have a humble suggestion.
I don't know where you stand on Roleplay Servers (or RP in general), however a common problem many of them have revolves around a lack of reason FOR people to participate in character. I believe, and would like to examine this, that the problem is in lack of conflict. Where would Luke be without Vader, where would the Allies be without the Axis? Conflict forces people to react. What does this have to do with gold? I believe economic conflict might actually be the force that could solve such an age old dilemma.

Suppose the following:
What if several members of the goldmaking community came togeather on a server with a unified goal to LOCK the economy similar to the Robber Barons at the turn of the century? What if, instead of trade and auction house alone, they spoke of this intention in public, living up the villany so to cause unrest.  Since virtually everyone would be effected that uses said economy (at least on that server side), people would have to unify in order to break the lock (provided enough capital was there for critical mass).  Well, that is the idea anyway. I'd love to hear your thoughts and open it up from the goldmakers.

I gave him my thoughts, but what do you think?  Feasable?  Fun?  Have something creative to add?  Leave your comments below!

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

How I Look at My Gold Making Strategy

If you like my posts follow me on twitter @PhatLewtsGold! If you want to contact me my email is PhatLewtsGold@Gmail.com.

Today I decided to let my readers know a bit about me and why I choose the strategies I do.  Basically, as far as gold making goes, there are two parts to my strategy.  One includes optimizing my gold profit.  This is something I like to do, and I'll go into detail in the next section about it.  The second is attempting new methods to make gold via maybe patterns or crafting things not normally on a gold maker's radar.  

Optimization

Yesterday on Shannon's twitch.tv account him and Jim Younkin were talking about how they both don't like optimizing for the sake of optimizing, but enjoy doing certain things that make them gold and stick with those.  I for one think this is a great method, the more you enjoy a gold making method, the more you are more likely to stick to it and see some real returns.  For me though I enjoy optimizing my gold made per hour.  For example, this is why I choose to never farm.  Not only am I not optimizing my gold made farming (unless an expansion just came out), but it isn't something I enjoy.  It falls under neither category.  Some may enjoy it though, but I simply do not.  I like to work smarter, not harder.  

A little background about me.  In college I majored in mathematics.  Needless to say I love working with numbers, and I think that's part of the reason the gold making aspect of World of Warcraft appeals so much to me.  To that tune I like doing things like the shuffle or milling my own inks, which don't necessarily bring me joy directly in doing them, but bring me the best return per hour.  That's something I think about a lot, and something I will be looking at this Monday in my Weekly Review post.  I have been collecting data for my Transmog sales, and I'm going to share some of my personal results from this on Monday, should be an interesting post, working on the charts already to display my data :-). 

Innovation

One thing I like to do is experiment with gold making strategies.  I like when I'm able to find a gem like the Icy Cloak turned out to be for me.  I had fun hunting for the pattern, and I enjoyed finally crafting it and having it to sell, even if once monthly, for a great profit.  I also like coming up with addon lists, and experimenting with those as well.  I like searching for mogging gear and Cataclysm Twink Gear, even if it's not the most profitable thing to do with my time.  To that extent, recently I've been more interested in the latter, but I miss the constant gold flow that I used to enjoy.  Doing things like hunting for a rare pattern to craft and see if it sells is fun, as is killing rare spawns in Blasted Lands, but in the end it's not going to make me the most gold/hour.

Finding A Balance

For me gold making is about finding a balance between these two seemingly conflicting ideas for a gold making strategy that is both fun and productive, while trying not to spend everything I make!  That being said, like I mentioned in the beginning, do what's fun for you.  WoW is a game that you pay for to entertain you, if making gold becomes solely a chore, why do it?  Tomorrow I'm going to come out with a post for engineers, which includes a way to get your engineer involved with your Jewelcrafter for a nice profit. Until then,

Cheers,

Phat Lewts 

Weekly Review 2/27/2012

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I decided that I am going to start doing "a week in review" posts to give readers insight into what I am personally doing.  I will be discussing no methods here, but if you'd like me to further expand on what I write, feel free to ask in the comments.

Highest Seller
This week I sold an item for 10k gold (9500 after AH tax).  One search that I like to do every so often is one for "Plans", one for "Recipe" and another for "Pattern".  Doing this search 3 weeks ago I found Plans: Felsteel Longblade on the AH for 3200g.  After much deliberation I bought it, and then held onto it for about a week trying to decide if I would flip it or craft the blades for transmog.  I decided to flip it for 10k, which isn't THAT great of a profit margin, I made 6300g from one transaction.  My highest resale profit to date.  Not all resales have to be mogging!

Constant Sellers
Gems of course are always selling, but this week I decided to go into TSM and craft profitable Cataclysm scrolls, and I've had great luck.  The searching for things to disenchant gets me the best prices on enchanting mats, and I've made about 15k profit this week just from this.  Not too bad for the hour or so it took to make the scrolls.  One of the most constantly selling and cheapest enchants to make is Enchant Chest - Mighty Stats.  I always keep a 20 stack of these on my posting toon.  If you do the ore shuffle, you can easily and cheaply make these too, and definitely should!

New Additions to Gold Making
This week watching Jim Younkin's Livestream (Jim can be found at www.powerwordgold.net) I was inspired to go rare spawn hunting in Blasted Lands.  I know this is a method that others have been using for a while, but I kind of questioned the viability of the strategy (ie gold per hour) and was a little skeptical, but decided to give it a try.  Man were my expectations exceeded.  There are 12 rare spawns in blasted lands, and with the quest items they drop, each one has 2 chances at great transmog gear.  So assuming half of them are spawned, in a bout 15 minutes on a 85 character you can get a chance at 12 mogging items.  While out there I got a Swashbucklers Eyepatch, which I think will be a gold mine in and of itself, so I was very happy.

Also new this week, Faid from the blog Nerf Faids came out with a post: Importable TSM Mog Lists v2.0.  As you know if you've read my blog in the past I have a certain affinity to Auctionator for searches, but I tried out Faid's lists this week, and I really like them.  The current project for my blog right now is looking to make my previous gold making Auctionator Lists into TSM lists that ya'll can import.  Expect them out no later than Friday morning this week.

Non-Gold Making
Recently I've decided to start farming Circle of Flame for my mage.  It's pretty easy to get to now that they added the mole machines to the beginning of BRD but I've had bad luck this week.  Over 45 attempts at this 5% drop so far.  Really like the animation on that one, and going to continue farming it in the weeks to come, hopefully just this upcoming one!  Also did LFR and a feral druid won the caster staff which made me really happy >:o.

Hope you enjoyed my week in review, check out my blog regularly this week for my upcoming TSM lists!!

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

Rare Chest Mogging Lists

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Let me preface this a bit.  When I was on my alt in <Power Word Guild> on Lightbringer [A], I was mousing through the cloth chests when I stumbled upon Black Velvet Robes:

They were for sale for a measly 10 gold.  Since they were Rare BoE's, they were on no current mogging lists on Power Word: Gold (which are the ones that I use for greens) or elsewhere.  In less than 48 hours I flipped these robes for 2500g.  Forget the price right now, but this made me realize that there should be some buyout lists for Rare Chests in Auctionator, maybe even shoulders and pants, but that's for another day.  My list is comprised of BoE Rare chests.

How I Made my Lists
Basically I moused through wowhead, and searched through rare chests with 2 filters: BoE and not made by a profession.  From that pool I clicked through through and chose the good looking ones, and ones that could possibly compete with my common mogging list items.  With out further Ado, here are the lists I came up with!  Enjoy!

***Rare Cloth

Beguiler Robes

Black Velvet Chest

Black Velvet Robes

Chan's Imperial Robes

Demonweave Raiment

Egg-Warming Blanket

Elemental Raiment

Funeral Pyre Vestment

Mechbuilder's Overalls

Necrology Robes

Noble's Robe

Robe of the Crimson Order

Robe of the Magi

Shroud of Spiritual Purity

***Rare Leather

Bulge-Concealing Breastplate

Chestguard of the Dark Stalker

Chestguard of the Talon

Demon-Cured Tunic

Fumblub's Seat Cushion

Greenhealer's Garb

Pristine Glowbear Pelt

Quillward Harness

Skystalker's Tunic

Spirewind Fetter

Starsight Tunic

Wolffear Harness

Ymirjar Physician's Robe

***Rare Mail

Archon Chestpiece

Avenger's Armor

Aviary Guardsman's Hauberk

Bonebrace Hauberk

Breastplate of Rapid Striking

Condor-Bone Chestguard

Demon-Forged Hauberk

Double Link Tunic

Drakescale Hauberk

Dreamwalker Armor

Hauberk of Totemic Rage

Martyr's Chain

Scarlet Chestpiece

Val'kyr Vestments

***Rare Plate

Agin's Crushing Carapace

Breastplate of Blade Turning

Chestguard of Illumination

Demon-Forged Chestguard

Drakescale Breastplate

Hydralick Armor

Patina-Coated Breastplate

Slatesteel Breastplate

If you copy from and including *** to the end of the list you can paste it into auctionator's import tab.  For more on doing this, check out This video starting at 3:00 (props to Jim from PW:G for this video).  If you don't like that it's in 4 seperate lists, have no fear!  You can condense all 4 lists into 1 as follows:


*** Rare Gear
Agin's Crushing Carapace
Archon Chestpiece
Avenger's Armor
Aviary Guardsman's Hauberk
Beguiler Robes
Black Velvet Chest
Black Velvet Robes
Bonebrace Hauberk
Breastplate of Blade Turning
Breastplate of Rapid Striking
Bulge-Concealing Breastplate
Chan's Imperial Robes
Chestguard of Illumination
Chestguard of the Dark Stalker
Chestguard of the Talon
Condor-Bone Chestguard
Demon-Cured Tunic
Demon-Forged Chestguard
Demon-Forged Hauberk
Demonweave Raiment
Double Link Tunic
Drakescale Breastplate
Drakescale Hauberk
Dreamwalker Armor
Egg-Warming Blanket
Elemental Raiment
Fumblub's Seat Cushion
Funeral Pyre Vestment
Greenhealer's Garb
Hauberk of Totemic Rage
Hydralick Armor
Martyr's Chain
Mechbuilder's Overalls
Necrology Robes
Noble's Robe
Patina-Coated Breastplate
Pristine Glowbear Pelt
Quillward Harness
Robe of the Crimson Order
Robe of the Magi
Scarlet Chestpiece
Shroud of Spiritual Purity
Skystalker's Tunic
Slatesteel Breastplate
Spirewind Fetter
Starsight Tunic
Val'kyr Vestments
Wolffear Harness
Ymirjar Physician's Robe

Using This List
To use this list just go to the list and hit "search all".  If you have the condensed list, it will take a while, but is well worth it!  Using this list with mogit will help you determine what price threshold you can buy for, and it will be wonderful.  Champagne will rain from the heavens, and you will be hailed a mogging god!!

Hope this helped streamline a bit of your gold making from mogging, good luck!

Cheers,

Phat Lewts