It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single raider in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a fish. Well, not just one fish. Usually 5-20 fish, to be precise. And that’s where us auction house trolls come into play!

My new virtual market has taken off, helped by the release of the new arena season and the frost wing of ICC. As I mentioned before, the bread and butter of my business is basic consumables — ore, cloth, food, herbs, enchanting mats. I’ve gotten better about buying in bulk when the prices take a downturn, and having faith that they’ll pick up again in another week or two.

Having this extra gold liquidity, though, means I can also dabble in more expensive items. Right now my auctions include epic recipes, pricey gem cuts, and lots of level 80 blues, which sell better than anticipated. Having patience and a good sense of the market helps a lot when laying out this kind of gold, as well as lots of experience with the game. It also means that I can jump on extra good deals I see in trade channel, such as the person selling 40 stacks of Lichbloom at a deeply discounted price. What am I going to do with 40 stacks of Lichbloom? I.. um.. did I mention it was really cheap? No more questions!

I’ve also learned what items I will not flip, whether it’s out of financial or moral concerns. I know people make a pretty good WoW living selling vendor items at exorbitant prices, but I turn up my nose at a lot of that business. And I refuse to do that gross thing suggested by another blog where you post 100 arrows at the same price at 1000 and then snicker when someone buys them (or similar methods). I will relist vendor items I come across with a little “convenience fee” — a good example is the cooking recipes sold by that dude waaaaaaaay down in the corner of Westfall — but I roll my eyes when I see Refreshing Spring Water for 20 gold a piece.

Now I have the not-unpleasant task of deciding what, if anything, I want to buy with some of this gold! I’ve already picked up a Leaping Hatchling and Orb of Deception at bargain basement prices (one benefit of stalking the Auction House), and funded getting my alts close to max level crafting and riding skills. I’ve decided against a motorcycle, I think. They’re awfully cool, but just don’t fit into whatever limited RP vision I have for Liore. Perhaps a passenger mammoth? Eh…

What I really want is a giant chicken mount, so I can call it Chicken Boo. (”It’s a chicken, I tell ya! A giant chicken!”)

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An exciting Cats management secret: If you want to join my guild, don’t have a character name that starts with X. When I set up our loot tracking module for the website, years ago, I cheerfully hard coded in a special setting for ex-members which I cleverly denoted by putting ‘X’ in front of their name.

Looking at it this weekend, while working on another part of the site, I realized that I am not to be trusted with 2am application design. I’m not sorry enough to fix it though, so just change your character name, okay? Thanks.

PS: Looking for a bear or DK tank!

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Random quests/dailies, silly

Well, while the servers are down I finally have the spare time to write something resembling a post! It’s not really a post, though. Instead, it’s a … todo list!

Finish levelling professions on Lunedi
Thanks to this guide and some mat donations from a guildie, I got Lunedi’s mining and jewelcrafting up over 400 this weekend. She’s just starting to mine saronite from Sholazar Basin, and will soon be fighting it out with everyone else for titanium, which I can prospect for blue gems to level JC!

Organize daily profession stuff
Continuing my gold-making plans from last week, I’m trying to make better use of my professions. Liore has an epic gem transmute each day that I should take advantage of, plus unlimited meta gems. Lunedi should do the JC daily every day, and make icy prisms when I get to that point. I have a level 70 tailor/enchanter who should really get her shatters and specialty cloth cooldown timers sorted. And on that idea..

Switch Liore to Transmute Spec
Liore has been Potion Spec since the beginning of time. Back in the day, being able to make my own mana potions was extremely cost efficient. It’s still pretty handy for the first few months of any new expansion, but overall I’d be better suited by being able to proc extra transmutes.

One Light In The Darkness (10s)
Both me and another healer just need this achievement to get our Ulduar drakes. I have a timer up to the Keepers saved — ask for help with this from the guild!

Get Exalted with Keepers of Time
Find some poor suck– um, helper to run Heroic Black Morass a few times. How am I just short of exalted with KoT, anyway? It feels like I ran BM a million, billion times to help people get keyed for Karazhan.

Get the Perky Pug on Liore!
Oof. While the LFG system was top of my daily priorities when it debuted, I admit I have been slacking a bit as of late. It’s also really tempting to just run with guildies instead of puggies, but that does not get me any closer to an adorable doggy of my own! Just 19 more random people to go…

Send mats from Guild Vault for flasks
Find a nice elixir master.

Repost all auctions on Friday morning
I’m going away for the weekend, so I’m listing everything my banker owns on Friday morning on a 48-hour timer. Let’s see how much gold I’ve REALLY made with this AH mogul thing.

Evaluate new recruit
Check the logs tomorrow morning.

Read up on new ICC bosses, kill Putricide
Argh, Putricide! 16% last week.. assuming people are on the ball, I think we’d have it… except our Abom driver is away for work this week. Figure out if we should wait until Monday (traditionally a weak roster night), or power through with a better roster but novice abom driver on Thursday.

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Random ICC, LFG, quests/dailies, silly

So this week I’ve been between contracts (this is a civilized way of saying unemployed), and as usual my restless brain came up with a fiddly, time-intensive, and totally useless project: seriously playing the Auction House.

A few weeks ago I was fortunate enough to be the rightful winner of a Battered Hilt during a LFG random. Everyone in the party froze when it dropped, and after giving each other the stinkeye we all agreed to roll need. Usually I am quite strict about need being “need this for an upgrade on this character right now” (and I had passed on another Hilt the week before during a guild run for that very reason), but in all honesty on a pug who doesn’t NEED 20,000g? I need to not have to farm again for a very long time, thanks.

So anyway, all of the above means that this week I have lots of spare time and lots of spare gold. My mission was clear: become an Auction House mogul. Buy low, sell high, have a big money fight with all my friends. This may surprise you, dear reader, but after some effort I learned that apparently buying low and selling high is trickier than you might think! I know! Go fig!

I can’t really give ‘helpful gold-making tips’, because I am a very unreliable source. I will say that I started out with 1000g in seed money and had 750g in profitable auctions close yesterday (gross, not net). However, I turned right around and sunk everything back into inventory so I can’t really tell how well I’m doing overall. I can say that I’ve had a lot of fun so far, which I suppose is the point.

The constant, stable income is in level 80 crafting professions. Jewelcrafting and Inscription seem to basically be licenses to print money with a little research, and I have a level 70 tailorbot who has been quite profitable. Enchanting is less awesome with the LFG system, but still good. Alchemists should be using their epic gem transmute every day. Keep an eye on mat prices, and stock up when they’re low.

The alternative to making money with your professions is flipping. This works best, I think, when you are available to log in during weird hours, such as late at night or early in the morning. With mods you can search for auctions that are about to end and slip in a bid. Items such as herbs, ore, and enchanting mats sell constantly, hundreds each day on each server, so you cannot go wrong by picking some up for under market value. It WILL sell eventually. In truth, the flipper’s motto is “buy low and sell normal”. Go for the sure thing, and go for it in bulk.

And don’t undervalue bidding on stuff! It’s not sexy or flashy or exciting, and it doesn’t appeal to my need for immediate gratification, but holy cow you can find some good prices. Be patient, bid on all those profession goods with the 1s start, and a small percentage of them will show up in your mailbox. There is something really satisfying about having a 50s bid go through and then turning around and selling the item back for 30g. It seems sneaky. I like it!

The big lesson I have to learn now is how to sit on inventory. I don’t have to flip everything immediately, and in fact would benefit in many ways by waiting until the price on, say, Lichbloom goes back up to its usual ridiculous number. I suspect I’ll get better at this over time as I learn the ways of the marketplace.

I will keep y’all updated as to my success. Oh, and Uldumites… go buy a bunch of stuff off the AH, okay? Thanks.

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Random rants, silly

Last night we broke into two 10 man groups (based on existing timers) and had a heck of a time. The group I was in already had most of the Keepers down, so we finished off Thorim and Mimiron and then two-shot Vezax! Three healers definitely helped. Then it was off to Yogg-Saron for the next couple of hours, which was okay by me. It was sooooooo nice to see him, even if he did eat our lunch.

We were also totally unprepared, strategy-wise, so it was an evening of moments like, “I wonder what these green beams do. Oh, I’m dead. Okay, avoid the green beams, people!”

Anyway, let’s get to the important bit: Liore looks awesome now. I feel I have finally arrived in WotLK tiered gear. I swore I’d never change her hair color, but Friday I got new shoulders, and new gloves last night, and I suppose Liore could DYE her hair temporarily, right?

Sure she could. Who’s a badass priest? Liore’s a badass priest. Awww, yeah.

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Random, WotLK gear, silly

Although I took last week off of blogging, I certainly didn’t take that time off WoW. There was a little guild drama, a new boss down (remember the mountains NOW, Thorim?), and one of my officers got hacked and wiped out the guild vault. The worst part of the hack incident is just how little I could do about it. I booted the offender out of the guild (well after they cleared out the vault, alas), put in a ticket, and followed them around Sholazar making rude faces as they mined on my officer’s alt. We should have everything restored by the end of the week, but it’s no coincidence that every single other active officer, myself included, currently has an authenticator in the mail.

Change your password regularly, keep your computer protected, and consider buying an authenticator, because having someone use and abuse your character like that is pretty disheartening.

Anyway, blessed with a three day weekend and a fair bit of spare time, I also managed to play a lot of OTHER games this weekend. Some were MMOS or RPGs, some just puzzle games, but I figured I could write a bit about Things You Can Play When You’re Not Playing WoW:

Plants vs. Zombies
Popcap Games is the fiendish company behind such brainsucking timewasters as Bejeweled and Peggle, and I say that with much love. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, the little “you lose” noise from Zuma echoing in my brain. Plants vs. Zombies combines three of my great loves — Popcap, zombies, and tower defense — so it’s no surprise that I liked this a lot. The gameplay is relatively simple in concept, but detailed in execution: pick your plant weapons (”wallnuts”, peashooters, smashing gourds) and hold off the invasion! By the time I went to bed on Friday, every time I closed my eyes I could see rows of happy sunflowers and lillypads.

Kingdom of Loathing
A friend got me into this game over a year ago, and occasionally I still curse him for it. Kingdom of Loathing is a very text-y browser-based RPG with heavy doses of puns, stick figures, and almost completely inscrutable quests. It’s free to play, although if you enjoy it I highly recommend dropping the $10 on a donation and making your character un-deletable. It’s turn-based, which means it’s good for a time-limited schedule. Once you’ve used your ~40 daily turns you’re done adventuring for the day. On the downside, once you use your ~40 daily turns you’re done adventuring for the day.

Classes include Accordion Thief and Turtle Tamer, and you regularly engage in fights with things like Ninja Snowmen at the Orcish Frat House for a pair of Filthy Corduroys. The gameplay can be infinitely deep or infinitely shallow, but as a warning the quests (particularly the level 11 quest chain) are insanely complicated. Keep the KoL Wiki handy, and take the time to look stuff up. You never know what you’ll stumble across.

Eve Online
I used to always say I’d never play Eve Online because I just couldn’t get into having a spaceship as my character: “Can my spaceship wear a cute hat? Because otherwise I’m not interested.” So I was surprised at myself when I decided to download the free trial. And then kind of exhilarated once I logged in — everything was so confusing! I am quite often very driven by curiosity and wanting to understand how things work, so Eve’s totally different gameplay style caught my interest. What are those symbols? What does that guy do? How do I go there? Oh crap, why is that thing shooting at me?! (One thing that stood out is Eve’s default UI, which lets you ‘minimize’ windows.)

Keep in mind I’ve only played about six hours of this game, barely enough to figure out how to stop ramming random space debris, but I can definitely see the appeal. One of my guildies joked that Eve Online is more like a “MMOSpreadsheet” rather than a “MMORPG”, and I have to admit a little spark appeared in my eyes when I pondered becoming some fancy Corporation head, with an army of miners or pirates or politicians at my disposal. However, there is no WAY I have time to properly dedicate to Eve right now, so I’ll likely just let my free trial lapse in peace. It would definitely be my runner-up choice to WoW at this time, though.

Free Realms
The exact opposite of Eve Online: cartoony, easy, not time-intensive, simple interface, and every character has a variety of adorable hats. Free Realms was created to be kid-friendly, and everything you need to know about the cute factor can be summed up by the character creation screen, where your choice is limited to human or pixie. The point to the game, as far as I can tell, is to run around and do a variety of mini-games (very similar in theory to the stuff you’d find on Popcap) to level up jobs and obtain even more adorable hats.

Free Realms is very simple, but fun, and I like puzzles a lot. However, it’s really missing the “MMO” aspect of an MMORPG. While we’re all together in this virtual world, there’s no chatter between players, no quests that require grouping, and I haven’t even figured out how to tell who is a player and who is just a drifting NPC. One thing I did find amusing was all the similarities to WoW, right down to obtaining “greens” for better gear.

This game is, as the name implies, free, and I’ll probably keep playing it on occasion as a good source of casual puzzle games, but it’s certainly no WoW-contender.

So there are more games out there than just World of Warcraft! At the end of the weekend, though, I found myself back on WoW, doing my dailies, running a raid, chatting with guildies… I guess there’s no place like home.

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Random silly