Ode to the Nelf on the Mammoth
So big and so clever up on your mount
I’ve begged you to move or lose your account
Over my mailbox you’ve gone and parked
Tagged AFK? I’m getting narked…
I need to get through to pick up my gold
How will I know how many auctions have sold?
If I can’t get through to open my mail?
Your reverse-parking is a complete fail.
I’ve been trying to click on the mailbox for hours
But to get you to move? Beyond my powers.
At last your guild master arrives
On his massive chopper, over he drives
But he vrooms up and down and revs and chugs
Two nelfs on mounts, chuckling like thugs
As screw it, I’ll set up my own Moll-E
and finally pick up my auctions – whoopee!
Aren’t addons cheating?
An old roleplaying friend surprised me recently, asking the question “aren’t addon’s cheating?”
Wait, didn’t this type of question go out of fashion in 2006?
We were catching up, and he asked me what I’d been doing with myself lately. I told him about my blog here at The Gold Queen. “Gold Queen? Sounds like a gold buying site to me, sounds a bit dodgy.” I quickly explained that “gold queen” is a silly nickname thought up by my son, and not some ego trip. Afraid anyone trying to buy gold here will be chased off the site by an irate gold queen waving a big stick.
Players still think addons are cheating?
It was hard to believe that any world of warcraft player still had the opinion that addons were cheating, or that sharing information on auction house work could be cheating.
Bear in mind that this RP server is one that considers selling Lil’ Timmy’s White Kitten for over 1g as a ‘scam’. But they will happily sell their cut inferno rubies for over 500% of the cost on my home server! I guess it just goes to show how wide-ranging opinions can be. It was a little wake up call for me to remember that not every player knows all the latest tips and tricks. It’s easy for world of warcraft gold bloggers to indulge in a little competition with each other to write the most profound economic theories, or to come up with the very latest most glamorous way of bulk crafting or AH posting.
Don’t forget the ‘little guy’. He’s only a ‘little guy’ because he hasn’t had as much experience as you, he’s not a ‘newbie’, he’s a ‘beginner’. And we were all beginners once.
What do Addons do?
Addons are small pieces of script that plug-into, add onto or otherwise enhance your World of Warcraft client. They don’t alter any part of the game, the world, or your realm server. Addon’s are not bots. Addons are not hacks.
An example of an addon that you might use already is Deadly Boss Mods. This addon warns you about events during a raid boss fight.
An auction house addon performs functions such as storing information about the last posting price of a particular item. Then display that information in a neat line in your tooltip when you mouseover that item the next time. You could write this information down by hand on a notepad, or into a database, however the addon just makes this easier and faster for you. In the same way that a macro makes casting spells makes that easier and faster for you.
Addons get more complicated and sophisticated, although the majority can either be used immediately when they are downloaded, or are very easy to set up at least for basic functions.
What Has Blizzard Banned?
Hacking is banned – when you try to adjust the world to your advantage.
Botting is banned – when you try to run software that automates normal every day actions such as killing mobs, fishing, or ‘farming’ pvp honor.
Paid for addons are banned. Incidently, I think this includes the shiny and glamorous Manaview paid-for addons that are launching loudly this season.
All actions on the Auction House must require an action from you – a mouse click or keyboard click – in order to process. The same goes for things like milling macros or addons – you have to keep pressing that macro button to mill the next set of 5 herbs.
Where Can I Get Legal Addons?
I recommend Curse gaming, WoWAce and WowInterface
Check out my package of Auction House addons
About the Author
The Gold Queen is written by Alyzande. With many level 100s, 9 years expertise in making gold, 10 garrisons, 16k achievements, 1505 days played, and over 18m gold earned. The Gold Queen blog teaches you how to make gold playing World of Warcraft using ethical trading, auction house flipping, crafting, reselling snatch lists, and farming gold making.
photo credit
Photos8.com
Lil Sparky’s Workshop
“How do I know which items I can craft and sell for a profit?” is a very popular question from new gold gamers.
Beginners are occasionally advised to “make one of each”, then to post them on the Auction House, and check which sell.
Instead of wasting your time with this hit and miss strategy, you can use your current in-game data with a small and indispensable addon to instantly see which craftable items are profitable. This is Lil Sparky’s Workshop.
Why is Lil Sparky’s workshop a constant favourite?
LSW has a simple interface, can be used without any other addons, or can work alongside the larger famous guides such as Auctioneer and Auctionator. The name gives you a clue that this addon works with your professions crafting. Lil Sparky made the addon to tell at a glance which of the items in your professions tradeskills window you can make that could sell for a profit. A side-benefit is that it also shows you which ones NOT to craft, which crafted items from your profession would make a loss if you tried to sell them in the Auction House.
Where can you get it?
Traditionally the majority of addons can be downloaded from Curse Gaming, and Lil Sparky’s Workshop is one of my addons pack that you can download in a big bundle with your Curse addon client. However, whilst researching this article I discovered that LSW had not been updated at Curse Gaming since January! Some further investigation found that the website at WoWAce had a more up to date version of Lil Sparky, which had been updated for patch 4.2. The last update was 17 July 2011, only a few weeks ago.
http://www.wowace.com/addons/lil-sparkys-workshop/files/
WoW Ace is more up to date that Curse Warcraft addons for downloading Lil Sparky’s Workshop.
Unfortunately it does mean that you will need to download a zip file, and unzip it into your World of Warcraft addons folder rather than just click the ‘download for client’ button at Curse, but it’s always nice to refresh old skills.
How does Lil Sparky’s Workshop work?
These instructions are for using Lil Sparky’s Workshop with a standard blizzard professions interface. Â If you want to use Lil Sparky with any of these advanced professions addons, your instructions may be slightly different.
Let’s start.
Now we’ve installed Lil Sparky, we can put him to use. Open your professions tab (deftaul shortcut key is ‘K’) and choose your profession. You will see two new columns. On the left column the value of the item, on the right the price of the mats to craft the item. If the value is greater than the mats cost, it lights up!
Left Column
The left column is the value column. Right click it to change which database Lil Sparkys draws its information from. If you have all the addons from my addon thingy then choose auctionator not auctioneer. I’ve personally found that this keeps the prices most up to date, but you can experiment with it, and check it against your live data.
Left click the left column to cycle through different types of data. The choices are auction value, vendor value, disenchant value or best of those three.
Right Column
The right column is the mats cost column. Again, left click it to cycle through the types of data, just like with the left column.
Right click the mats cost column on the right to change which database is used. I recommend auctionator again.
 Both Columns
Both columns can be combined into a single “Profit” column which simply reflects the Value minus the Cost.
Does Lil Sparky’s Workshop save you time?
Lil Sparky’s Workshop saves you from having to calculate the mats cost for a craftable item, and comparing that to its resale value.
Basically, it tells you which items can be crafted and sold for a profit.
Warning:
Just because an addon like auctionator or auctioneer has seen the crafted item for sale at a particular price, doesn’t mean that it will sell at that price. Check the historical prices if you’re in any doubt, either with your ingame data, or over at the undermine journal.com
Taking it further:
You can make your LIl Sparky’s information even more powerful by heading to wowpopular.com and checking the popularity of the item. This works best for top-end frequently used items like level 85 cut gems.
Combining the desirability of an item with its profitability refines your must-craft list to the best items.
About the Author
The Gold Queen is written by Alyzande. With many level 100s, 9 years expertise in making gold, 10 garrisons, 16k achievements, 1505 days played, and over 18m gold earned. The Gold Queen blog teaches you how to make gold playing World of Warcraft using ethical trading, auction house flipping, crafting, reselling snatch lists, and farming gold making.
The Auctioneer NPC Project
There are 60 auctioneers according to Wowhead
http://www.wowhead.com/search?q=auctioneer#npcs:0+3+1
The Auctioneer Project is an idea I’ve had to visit all the auctioneers on this list and take a screenshot. Â Of course, that will take quite a while to visit them all, so I’d like to ask you for a little help.
Take a screenshot of your FAVOURITE auctioneer npc, and leave a reply with the screenshot (try photobucket or imageshack for uploading screenies) plus your character, or alt, and tell me:
- The name of your auctioneer
- The date of the screenshot
- Where the Auctioneer lives
- Why that npc is your favourite. Nearest to resources, least busy, scariest face, you can write what you want here.
- How often you visit that NPC
The auctioneers of Azeroth of a neglected and un-thanked bunch of NPCs and we’re here to put that right lol
My own favourite:
- Auctioneer Jaxon
- 14th August 2011
- Stormwind Trade District
- Jaxon is my favourite because she was parked at the door in the old SW AH, and therefore the first target for marauding horde or sneaky undead rogues. She’s one tough cookie, maybe because she’s related to Officer Jaxon the elite guard?
- I don’t visit her very often because I’m more usually interested in the Dwarf area AH. Â It’s closer to the portal hub out of SW and less crowded over there.
Jaxon – One Tough Cookie
Which Auctioneer NPC will you adopt today?
About the Author
The Gold Queen is written by Alyzande. With many level 100s, 9 years expertise in making gold, 10 garrisons, 16k achievements, 1505 days played, and over 18m gold earned. The Gold Queen blog teaches you how to make gold playing World of Warcraft using ethical trading, auction house flipping, crafting, reselling snatch lists, and farming gold making.
What are the best world of warcraft gold websites online?
Please email me the links to your favourite shareable online resources. I’m not looking for the most well-written, or the most up to date, but perhaps there is a post that made you laugh, or a podcast that is perfect to listen to in the bath (been there, done that), or maybe a spreadsheet, a forum thread, a gold guide or a link to an addon that you just LOVE.
The only rule is that it mustn’t be one of mine. This isn’t a self-promotion exercise, I’d like to hear what sort of things you love, what makes you laugh, makes you think, what old vintage post gave you an a-ha moment. Is there a blogger who is always consistent, or a forum post where you met someone from your own server?
What do you love? What’s your favourite? I will be making a list to share with everyone in a future post.
About the Author
The Gold Queen is written by Alyzande. With many level 100s, 9 years expertise in making gold, 10 garrisons, 16k achievements, 1505 days played, and over 18m gold earned. The Gold Queen blog teaches you how to make gold playing World of Warcraft using ethical trading, auction house flipping, crafting, reselling snatch lists, and farming gold making.
Markco is the writer of 20k Leveling Gold guide, and a famous world of warcraft gold making expert. Â In spite of making a decision earlier this year to stop playing WoW, Markco’s 20k Leveling Gold Guide remains completely up to date. He recently made a vow to return to the virtual-economic game with the release of Diablo 3 real money Auction House in the future.
Download 20k Leveling Guide
I asked Markco some quick questions about 20k Leveling and got some intriguing answers…
Hi Markco, thanks for taking the time to answer some quick questions about 20k Leveling Gold Guide for my readers. The Gold Queen readers are big fans of 20k Leveling.
What is it about 20k Leveling Gold Guide that seems to generate such loyal fans?
 Hey Gold Queen, thanks for the opportunity to answer these questions. For this first one, let me just state the fact that 20k Leveling buyers never stop coming back to the guide. They know that the guide is frequently updated for free and filled with useful content for each patch and even expansion. I’d say that is the biggest draw to a 20k Leveling purchase, especially since many guides charge you monthly or for updates without warning you that they are planning to do so. There are 20k Leveling guide holders who have had the same frequently updated guide for two plus years.
You’re famous for your PvP achievements in world of warcraft. WoW marks these achievements with special mounts. They don’t mark the Gold Gaming achievements in the same way. I’d like to see them implement a special mount for gold makers, a shield carried by gnomes, in the Asterix The Gaul chieftain style LOL. What similar reward would you like to have seen for your Gold Gaming?
I think that hitting a million gold should allow you to place an owned flag on an auction house npc for 10 minutes. Players who attempt to interact with the NPC get a debuff called “Poor†for 30 minutes unless they have 500,000+ gold in their bags. Persists through death.
What inspired you to start writing 20k leveling, and who is it aimed for?
Great question. 20k Leveling was inspired by the dozens of emails I was receiving per day on how to use the auction house, beat competition, and/or find farming strategies. I was literally spending an hour every day answering the questions and eventually I said to myself:
“Self, these people would rather have a guide than an email attempting to solve all their problems in a paragraph.â€
That was the inspiration in a nutshell. It’s aimed to help players who were originally emailing me for help. Now they can buy a huge compilation of strategies created thanks to all the questions that I still receive to this day.
Lots of my readers already know a little about gold gaming, but don’t have a fully-rounded education. They’re self-taught. How does 20k Leveling help them?
20k Leveling fills in the gaps in their education, going over misconceptions they might have as well as grounding them in core principles that have never changed in the World of Warcraft economy. Many of these strategies are timeless and have persisted throughout multiple versions of the guide. There are addon walkthroughs for the latest and greatest player created tools as well as online databases and other nifty things created to help auctioneers pwn the ah.
What is it about 20k Leveling that makes it such a timeless favourite?
Woops, I sort of answered that question with the previous answer, but I’ll add some more of my thoughts on the matter. For starters, 20k Leveling is grounded on economic principles that do not change. Second, the team of writers for 20k Leveling are always looking for new strategies to give buyers an edge on the auction house. Consistent updates that deliver in terms of quality and value are what buyers have come to expect from 20k Leveling.
What did you enjoy the most about creating 20k leveling, and did you discover anything new in the process?
I’m very proud of the team writing for this expansive volume now and am so grateful for the fans who have showed their appreciation for our work on 20k Leveling. I’ve discovered something very unexpected… a community of over 6,000 buyers. Maybe we can get The Gold Queen to write a chapter for us some day? Thanks for asking the questions, I had a lot of fun answering them.
Did you learn anything new about 20k Leveling Guide? I learned that Markco’s gold guide was born from answering questions from world of warcraft players, which is similar to how the Gold Queen was started. 20k Leveling is no longer available to buy (2012 onwards)
About the Author
The Gold Queen is written by Alyzande. With many level 100s, 9 years expertise in making gold, 10 garrisons, 16k achievements, 1505 days played, and over 18m gold earned. The Gold Queen blog teaches you how to make gold playing World of Warcraft using ethical trading, auction house flipping, crafting, reselling snatch lists, and farming gold making.