High Pop vs. Low Pop

Hi Guys,

Today I wanted to talk about High Pop vs. Low Pop servers, specifically my experiences with them.  For those of you who don't know or don't remember from previous posts, my main server is Low Pop (until MoP when it'll probably hit medium).  Recently I participated in a gold making competition where we competed on a high pop server.  Since then I have been playing with their AH on and off for fun, and I've learned quite a bit about how size effects sales among different markets, and I just wanted to share some general observations.

Transmog
Being on my Low Pop server and having a large (~800 item) transmog inventory, I get less sales per 48 hour posting  than my character on a high pop server with ~150 item inventory.  This could be due to a few factors I suppose.  There are probably more characters with disposable income on a large server, and more characters interested in transmog as well.  One thing I'm interested in seeing the results of once MoP comes around is doubling all my xmog prices (except my highest tier which is really expensive as is :-P), and seeing how the two markets react.

Jewelcrafting/Enhancement Professions
Since my experiment is mostly for fun, I decided to use a gem strategy similar to what I use on my Low Pop server and see how it worked on a high pop server.  As I don't have a JC on the larger server, I bought up gems I would craft and resold.  As you could (probably) imagine, I actually sold less gems per 12 hour posting on the High Pop as compared to the Low.  This is due to more/faster undercutting on a higher population server, which just makes sense.  Although, when I did dungeons on the high pop, I got A LOT more sales posting in between queues.  iSold was going crazy!  For a regular player who posts from their main, a High Pop server will give you a distinct advantage for repost sales, but I can't say it makes a huge difference from a small with "set it and forget it" auctions.

Inscription
In this one I have a clear favorite.  Small servers.  If you are the type of gold maker like me, you aren't logging and reposting all the time, you either want to enjoy the game time you have, or other aspects of your life, and want to get your routine done and over with.  This is where glyphs on a small server blows large servers out of the water.  Even if you have a competitor or two, it's nothing compared to what you have to face on a large server.  You can make lots of gold not having to repost so often, and that's great for me.

Advantages of my Second Server
If you're someone like me who enjoys making gold just for the "how much can I make" aspect of it, you don't like spending gold on your main server.  If you're a hardcore gold maker you'll find it easy to get on a high pop server and start making gold relatively fast.  Although I had an extra kickstart of motivation to make my characters, I look forward to using this character to purchase high-end TCG mounts, rare pets, etc. that will be account wide in MoP.  Why spend all that gold on your main server when you can get it on another server you are not interested in?  Also even though I have the utility to make gold on that server, I don't have anywhere near as much utility as I do on my main server.  That being said when Black Market AH comes out in MoP I'm not going to be depending on my secondary server to buy things (nor would I want to, especially in the case of something like gear).  So having a large gold stockpile will be functional (maybe).  What is your favorite (or least favorite) difference between low and high pop servers?

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

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