Analyzing Overall Gold Making Trends in World of Warcraft

If you haven't already be sure to check out the latest episode of The Drunken Musings Podcast with GoblinRaset and myself over at The Drunken Mogul: Episode #11: Vanna White.

Looking Back
If you plan on playing during WoD, now is a particularly good time to look back on some of MoP's most wanted mats and products on The Undermine Journal to understand how life cycles work throughout a WoW expansion. One favorite of mine is one I like to call "The Batman". See if you can guess what this is a graph of without me telling you (global graph).

Click to Enlarge

So have you guess what this item is just by looking at the graph? Something that has Quantity available spikes during a certain part of the month (hint the 2 spikes are a week apart), and increases in value between spikes, while decreasing value overall.

While you might not have been able to pinpoint the exact trinket from this graph, this is the overall trend for none other than the Relic of Chi-Ji, here's the TUJ page if you want to play along at home.
The "Batman" looking spikes (particularly in the EU graph) show that the quantity (and hand ins) spike during the first and last day of the Darkmoon Faire. So what can we take away from looking at this? Well the trinkets are worth a LOT if you happened to get one completed by the first DMF. In this case the expansion was released roughly 2.5 weeks before the final day of a Darkmoon Faire, so unless RNG was friendly, you either needed a boatload of Scribes (as well as a boatload of then expensive herbs), or to pay an arm and a leg for the cards you were missing. If you got it done though, you were in an elite club, with only 1/3rd of the overall created by the next DMF, and almost all selling.

Anything else you notice? In the time between Faires, especially during the first ~8 months the supply decreased and prices went up. Let's take a look at Dec 2012 - Jan 2013:

So what do you notice here? During the Faire, prices decline linearly, but after the end of the Faire, prices rise until the next fair as supply dwindles down. In general I would start selling my trinkets about 1.5-2 weeks after the end of the faire, and I'm glad that there's graphical evidence to support my madness.

There's probably even more you can glean from this graph, but take the time and look back on markets that are going to have big impacts in WoD, and see how they develop and change throughout the expansion. I may do more analyses, but I highly suggest taking looks yourself and thinking about what you can do with that information. Drawing your own conclusions is essential to becoming a top level gold maker in WoW!

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

Remote AH: No Smartphone? No Problem!

This is a post written for Cold's Gold Blogging Carnival for September 2012, check it out on the 11th for other great posts on this topic!

This month's topic is "The Remote Auction House - Tips, Tricks, Strategies, Love or Hate It?"

When the Remote AH first came out for free I balked at it because I didn't have a smartphone.  Now though, there are some great uses I've found for it on my web browser.

Why it's useful
Now you may be thinking "why would I want to use RMAH on my computer, since I have WoW on my computer?" and that's a great question to ask.  Maybe Phat has gone off the deep end, but perhaps not. My favorite use for this new tool is to buy and sell items on different realms, while playing on my main realm. Now I don't know if it's intended or not, but even if you're logged in to your account on realm X, you can log into the Remote Auction House on the same account, on realm Y. Great time passer if you're mass crafting in the background, especially if you have a side project as I do.  For reference if you aren't a regular reader, I have a DK on an alternate (high pop) server making gold to buy expensive mounts/pets for my main characters on a (low pop) server.  It also allows you to snatch great deals while you're not at a computer with WoW loaded on it, I'll outline how I use it with different AH monitoring sites below.

Using WoWuction to Find Deals
Since you have no addons using the remote AH, you have to utilize some of our favorite tools to find great deals.  One new thing that was recently added was the "Bargain Hunter".  I really enjoy using this tool, and I'll outline how to do it below.

1. Go to wowuction.com and choose your realm/faction.

2. Click Reports, then Bargain Hunter

Once you do, you'll get a list like this:

Click Image to Enlarge

Now search through this list and find a deal you most like.  Aaaah it seems Darkcrest Gauntlets (one of my favorite selling xmog sets) are only 25g!  Great!

3. Go to the Remote AH and find your item!  [Horde] [Alliance] (if you're logged in these links will take you directly there)

It's pretty straightforward.

4. Relist next time you're on WoW.

I don't like using this to relist the items (especially xmog) because it's SOOOooooo much faster to do it with TSM when logged it.  This will get you some great deals to relist next time you're on too.

Maybe You Prefer TUJ!
I prefer to use both!  As I already went over most of the relevant steps above, I'm going to shorten this section.

1. Go to theunderminejournal.com and find your server/faction

2. Click Great Deals, then go to Current Deals List

3. Check out all the great deals that result from this, my 2 favorite subsections are below:

The bids section can be EXTREMELY useful using the remote AH.  Sometimes bids on items are listed WAY lower than they should be, and since the Remote AH lets you both Bid or Buyout, and you're not going to be seeing the items until you log in anyway.  This is just my method, I'm sure if you have a phone you can add to the potency of all this.  What's your personal take on the Remote Auction House?

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

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