WoW Gold Making

What Does it Mean to be a Goblin

stargrace August 4, 2023 No Comments

I don’t play World of Warcraft the traditional way it was meant to be played. I don’t enjoy raids, I don’t do group content. I do like collecting pets, and other pet related activities – but what I REALLY like to do in World of Warcraft, is make gold. If you enjoy making gold the term ‘goblin’ is often used. It isn’t a mean comment, it just means you enjoy making gold. It doesn’t even necessarily mean you’re any good at it (although I am). Right now in WoW I have 50,000,000 gold in liquid form (that means actual gold, not stock). That’s over 14 years of game time if I were to convert it all to battlenet tokens right now. I’ve been paying with gold for anything digital that Blizzard releases for years now, and I do that with my gold making. Diablo digital deluxe? Gold. Hearthstone packs? Gold. 2 WoW subscriptions and all the expansions? Gold. It allows me a certain freedom and also lets me feel guilt-free if I decide to take a break unlike other games where I’m actively paying a monthly subscription with my credit card.

This amount of gold is practically nothing compared to some of the bigger goblins out there – but time IS money, and the more time you devote to your trade, the more gold you’re going to earn. Right now I spend less than one hour a day on goblin activities and I’ve been established for a number of years which is what makes all of this easier. It takes time and effort to get set up and to learn the market and figure out your role in it. Once you’re there, it gets easier.

I started getting into gold making in BFA when the auction house mount was on a vendor for 5 million. My husband was away at depot for 6 months, and I was home with a newborn baby. I used gold making to get me through the incredibly long and lonely days, and it just sort of took off from there. Prior to that I had zero gold making knowledge. I used to ask my husband for gold to help me be able to afford to craft. Needless to say I no longer have that problem, lol.

I personally like to use my gold for good. I like to gift things to friends and family, help out guilds, and I never forget what it was like NOT to have that extra gold. It’s supposed to be a fun game after all, so I would rather help people have fun and not have to stress about an in-game currency when real life makes us stress so much already. Along those same lines, I also don’t enjoy making gold in a method that would bring harm to others. I don’t bait on the auction house or try to talk people out of their money. It’s simply not needed. I WILL spend time sniping auctions, but if someone messages me and kindly requests an item back without instigating an argument, I tend to give it back. After all, mistakes can happen.

My gold making habits tend to carry over into other games, but WoW is the only one I’ve managed to create such an extensive system on. Unfortunately, when I’m bored with gold making it also usually means I’m bored of the game, and need a break. Not necessarily a bad thing, but you don’t make a lot of gold if you’re not playing the game.

Anyway, there’s an introduction into my role as a goblin, and a bit of an explanation. As always, happy gaming – no matter where you find yourself!

WoW Gold Making

TSM and Dragonflight – Is it Worth It?

stargrace July 18, 2023 No Comments

Let’s face it, updates that break our favourite addons suck, and we all hope that the developers of these mods are able to roll with those changes and get everything working again in a timely manor. Tradeskillmaster has undergone some massive changes in the past few years thanks to gold making changes on World of Warcraft’s end, and some of those changes I’m a fan of while others not so much.

The staff is dedicated and passionate (as are the goblins who use it) and the updates do come, but TSM updates in DF have been lacking (IMO). Unfortunately some things that I personally want to make use of (restocking SL with crafters marks) remain broken after 6 months. We all know that as goblins the whole point is to get in before the masses get in, and TSM has fallen well behind in function for anything relating to this.

4.13 has released and cross-realm trading was enabled only to have Blizzard pull the plug on that one temporarily while they look into server stability. This single feature is amazing for anyone who works on multiple realms, it not only tracks gold but also your craft components. There have also been some changes to professions (inspiration function has been added!) which you can read all about on their blog post linked above.

At the start of Dragonflight and for the months following I actually stopped using TSM and instead relied heavily on auctionator and craftsim. TSM wasn’t taking into account the DF specific specials like multicraft, inspiration, etc. Craftsim is a much better addon for these things. Queuing anything into the TSM craft queue was creating an unplayable game with lag and stuttering. I am happy to say that this looks to be mostly resolved, so long as I keep the queue under control. Instead of doing multiple groups at once, I tend to just focus on one section, so for example I’ll restock blacksmithing – > current content, in one go, and then after I’m done I’ll clear the queue and do blacksmithing -> old content.

I have yet to find another addon that offers everything TSM does despite the issues I have with the latest renditions. I continue to use it exclusively to post auctions, restock crafted goods, and check my gold & supplies across multiple servers. For ease I use a profile created by BilisOnyxia for his patreon’s, and then I’ve customized and adjusted it for my server specific needs (transmog) – I use a different profile that I’ve built for pet sales which I do cross realm. In Shadowlands I used a combination of profiles from Penguin & Manthieus.

Is TSM worth it?

It depends on what you’re doing. I think if you’re well versed in using it there’s still potential, especially in posting things like gear / transmog – but when it comes to professions (specifically DF professions) and crafting – other addons like Craftsim really do a much better job. If you’re restocking SL speed gear or anything that uses crafters marks, then TSM won’t be of any use to you (at the time of this post in any case).

Have a favourite addon that makes your gold making easier? Let me know in comments! As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself.

WoW Gold Making

Weekly Wrap-Up [July 9-July15]

stargrace July 16, 2023 No Comments

Well, it was an interesting week to say the least. Some key points! Wednesday 10.1.5 hit, and cross realm trading was enabled. Sadly, it created some server instability because of all the phasing we all do from one realm to the next, so they disable it a day later. It has not been turned back on yet. I did manage to complete a few trades and move some things around that I wanted to move, but now I’m back to a waiting pattern in that regard. It’s not a huge deal, after all we barely had it live for one day, but I know a lot of people are really looking forward to that change, whether they’re buyers or sellers.

Sales for the week held strong, with last Sunday being far beyond what I expected – I imagine people were stocking up. There was talk in the WoW Economy discord about taking advantage of the new Naxx items, most notably righteous orbs, but I decided to go the opposite route and sold before the event went live to those who were stockpiling for after. The price of orbs dropped from 600g to 300g and have risen slightly since then to around 400g. I wasn’t interested in playing the long game for this item when there are bigger fish out there, so I let mine go.

I did start unlocking the secrets to old scholomance and old Naxxramas – I’m not sure if I’m actually going to sell anything / recipes / components, but I do want to be able to unlock them for myself, and if gold happens to come from that, all the better. It’s slow and annoying with lots of RNG in there, so if you’re also working on that, just hang in there.

One thing to note, there was a LOT of confusion about whether or not we’d be able to MAIL across server – you cannot. This was never implied or hinted at. Normally when Blizzard makes these changes their language is clear – for example when they told us we’d be able to mail cross faction on the same realm, and when they told us we could trade certain items in dungeons. Their announcement was for trades, and that means you do need either a 2nd account or a friend to help if you’re looking to trade with yourself. The intention of this change is NOT to benefit gold making goblins – it is a QoL change for regular players who are spread across multiple realms from their friends. This allows them the opportunity to help out their friend with gold or items without feeling the barrier of the server. You do also have to be same faction (as far as I am aware).

That isn’t to say it won’t change in the future, but you have to remember that World of Warcraft is an OLD game, and the code wasn’t meant to allow any of this stuff. Managing to change it and adjust it in a way that does allow for cross realm trading is a BIG DEAL and of course there are going to be unseen issues with it since it’s old and was never intended. Let’s give them our support through these growing pains, and keep our fingers and toes crossed that they get it sorted (soon).

With this update also came a region wide update to TSM – but I’m saving that for its own post in the near future.

As always, happy gaming no matter where you find yourself!

WoW Gold Making

Some Interesting Changes Coming

stargrace June 23, 2023 No Comments

Oh my. This week we saw some patch notes that got the whole goblin community talking. It didn’t come as a complete surprise, what with the changes to the auction house (region wide commodity) but I’m not sure if anyone was expecting exactly this.

A few things I think it’s important to note. This specifically calls out trading and NOT mailing items. People immediately thought they’d be able to mail items and gold cross realm, but I don’t think that is the case, at least not yet. For now I believe this is limited to exactly the wording that was used – trades.

That means you’ll need a 2nd account, or a good friend, or someone you trust to help you with the transaction if you want to trade items / gold.

Overall, I think this change is a very good thing for players in general. That means if you can’t find what you need at a good price on your current server, you can go buy it some place else. On the downside, this does not exactly bode well for gold making goblins – or does it? Sure, you’ll technically have “more” competition because if you’re not the cheapest in the region someone will find a player who is – but how many casual gamers are actually going to take that sort of effort? Instead, you could be the goblin who is providing items on a server that is lacking. You could watch the region wide prices, and go buy the items you think will be in demand on your server. That could be transmog to low population servers, or even BOE gear.

Maybe you could even start up a business where you’re paid a finders fee for procuring rare / difficult to obtain items for players by browsing through the entire region. I think that creativity is key to the success of this change for gold making goblins, and I think in general the change is good for the average player. Simply playing the game rewards a LOT of gold these days between world quests, weekly quests, and a few AH sales in between. Throw in some alts, and I think it’s probably easier to make gold than it has been in a long time (since maybe the days of garrisons and gold printing machines, in fact).

In any case, no matter your thought, this is a change that is coming, and it’s much better to be aware and prepared than caught off guard. I personally feel that a region wide auction house is the next logical move, but perhaps the servers wouldn’t be able to handle such a huge change, so they decided on this smaller one instead. Thoughts? Let me know in comments, and as always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself.

WoW Gold Making

Weekly Wrap Up [Mar6-Mar14]

stargrace March 14, 2023 No Comments

I know, I’m behind in my weekly posts – but I’ve been having a difficult time with an MS relapse, so my I decided it was probably best if I just minimized the amount of extra ‘stuff’ I had to do – sadly one of the first things to go in that case is content creation. During that time I decided to also stop re-listing most of my items for sale, the exception being – pets. I kept listing my pets.

I’m currently selling around 1200 pets spread across 20 servers. It takes me less than 1h a day to re-post those, and I leave them up for 24h with no cancel scanning or anything like that.

It has been interesting to watch the trends – when it was pet battle week I had a significant number of sales vs. non pet battle weeks, and the types of pets I was selling also changed.

My most sold pet of all time is Rotten Little Helper, and it’s used in quite a few pet battle scenarios so it makes sense. This is the first year where I’ve branched into a multi-realm selling scenario, and I have to admit, I see why it’s so popular with larger goblins. You rely less on expecting huge sales from one place, and are still able to make some fairly significant gains with smaller sales spread across multiple servers. I personally don’t want to invest more than 1h a day listing items for sale and handling the basics – but I absolutely see how others could be drawn to this and why it’s appealing.

I’m also still making significant amounts of gold with craft orders which are not tracked by TSM. On the profession side of things I have JC/LW/INSC/ALCH/ENG/BS “completed” (ie: at 100 skill, but not yet completed their knowledge trees) and I tend to check all of the public craft orders a few times a day if I’m in game, and then have a steady number of people sending me personal orders on top of that. I’m using journalator to track these (which is amazing, I love this addon).

Overall? Things are going very well! I’m excited to see what 10.0.7 brings, and hopefully I’m able to continue on creating content now that my hands don’t feel like molten lumps of lava. As always, happy gaming – no matter where you find yourself!

What Does it Mean to be a Goblin

TSM and Dragonflight – Is it Worth It?

Weekly Wrap-Up [July 9-July15]

Some Interesting Changes Coming

Weekly Wrap Up [Mar6-Mar14]

You Missed

Leveling Up With Timewalking

The Construction of Quail Landing

Making Gold – One Sale at a Time

Timewalking, Gets me Every Time