Transmogrification arrived in World of Warcraft in Patch 4.3.
Mogging, as we call it, allows a player to change their weapon and armor appearance to match an uncommon, rare or epic item from their inventory. With transmogrification you can wear the latest tier armor gear, but mog it to look like tier 1, tier 5, or any of your old armor pieces.
Some smart gold makers took up the challenge to supply these mogging items at profitable, often vastly inflated prices. A green item worth 20s yesterday could today be a rare visual, and therefore worth 2,000g. Other gold makers dismissed the opportunity as a passing fad, a temporary fascination or just too complicated to learn and use.
Months on, and its now clear that mogging as a gold making method is here to stay.
The Mogfather banned
The mogfather, aka Keelhaul from Disenchanting Azeroth blog, was featured in an article by PC Gamer magazine and Joystiq. He’s become famous not just for making gold but for giving it all away. Since patch 4.3 he’s now made and given away over 2 million gold to wow players. He’s been banned 4 times because confused Blizzard GMs couldn’t imagine a plyer voluntarily giving gold to other players and thought he was a gold seller. But to the Mogather the compensation he received was the sheer fun of making so much gold in the AH and the delight of seeing his mogging items transforming mundane armor. A very visual game from the start, mogging creates a more beautiful world of warcraft.
[quote]Mogging creates a more beautiful World of Warcraft.[/quote]
On the opposite site of mogging gold making, excited goblins and auctioneers were inspired by his story. Copying his mogging snatch list and similar shopping lists, they tried to duplicate his selling prices. Many simply failed. Their home server had different levels of awareness and interest in buying armor for transmogrification. Mogging prices and sales volume vary according to demand. The other obvioius factor in sales is supply. Large busy economies offer more choice for buyers, more opportunities for buyers and competitors to catch desirable mogging armor and weapons at cheap prices. When items are slow to sell, a single mogging seller can repost at a good steadily high price, whilst many different competitors will excitedly undercut each other and drive down sales prices.
[box type=”info”] In a large market, the cost of buying all copies of items in a snatch list can run to 100s of 1000g. In order to maintain a monopoly on mogging items you could try specialising in one type of armor, eg plate, or weapon eg maces. Try specialising in one style of armor, eg Conquerors plate or Silver-thread cloth. Alternately, specialise in one part of the armor, eg all leg armors or only chest armor. Allow competitors to fight to sell other pieces of a matching set for 1-2000g each and buy all the leg pieces charging 10,000g for the buyer to complete his set. [/box]
You may like to also read my article on mog prices and how important it is that prices are led by player demand rather than an arbitrary amount that worked on another server.
You Have the Potential to be a Really Great Mogging Seller if:
- If you have ever roleplayed and asked other players where their costumes come from or watched the AH for cool looking armor for your RP character and noted prices or availability
- You have a mathematical brain and an arty heart. You can balance numbers with visuals.
- You have the courage to ask for more, the tenacity to negotiate, the patience to keep trying, and the wisdom to let go of bad gambles to concentrate on wise investments.
Warning
On small servers, players face a different set of problems. Lower overall wealth discourage potential buyers from expensive purchases. Supply is also lower. You might find yourself farming rares or instances to top up your stock. And with slower more cautious purchases, you may need to hold stock longer, taking up more storage space in your bank(s).
Did You Give Up on Mogging?
Caught between a rock and a hard place, mogging sellers have already begun to give up. The sucessful mog sellers to be adaptable an smart, and to find their own server’s sweet spots, and then milk them for millions of gold.
If you’re considering giving up, I want to encourage you to stick with it, and look at your difficulties from other angles to find your right solution.
It’s still viable to make gold from selling transmogrification armor and weapons. Some of my friends on Twitter only sell mogging items, others use it as a side trade. I personally make my profits with mogging as just one of many markets. I spend less than 100g per day restocking 5-20 new items, and sell approx the same number at 200-1,000g each. Not as much as the mogging item specialists, but definitely enough for me to consider it a success. Its a really fun way to play and win at the Auction House in WoW but I had to be smart and responsive to supply and demand.
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Good luck with mogging.
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.
I am also on a small server (under 35K pop) and only entered the transmog market less than three weeks ago, but so far have made over 40k in profit. I usually do not spend more than 10g/item and flip them for 99g except for the more unusual pieces that might appear. The most I have spent is 188g for a Jade Breastplate which I currently list much higher since it had been almost a year since one appeared on the AH. Since not much is happening in the game right now I have been using by high-level alts to farm for pieces to sell (though I lament all of the stuff I vendored/DE’d only a short while ago). There does not seem to be any competition on my server, but it also means I will not be getting as many of the rare pieces unless I farm them myself.
I already have a good hook in the glyph market so this is just something to have fun with and make a little extra money. I might even try to start a Horde toon an check that side of the market as well.
“If you’re considering giving up, I want to encourage you to stick with it, and look at your difficulties from other angles to find your right solution.”
No, don’t encourage them to stay. If they feel it best to get out of the market then they should. The transmog market isn’t what it was (at least on my server). There are too many people in the market and a lot of people that do want to transmog already have their set.
hm, I don’t think he was banned because “they thought” it was just a simple automatic ban triggered by giving players large sums of gold. The problem with this is even 1k can trigger these bans :9 if your character is low level enough
I’ve made 10k in profit in about three weeks off the mog market on my low population server, so it’s not too bad. I actually lost 4k to buying items for higher than I eventually listed them for. I just focus on chest and leg pieces and only two full sets (e.g. Scouting).
I’ve set my prices at about 200g per piece since I wasn’t getting any sales at higher prices. 1000% profit with a couple of minutes a day looking for and snatching up certain pieces is seems pretty good to me, so I’m staying.