Gold gaming in World of Warcraft is traditionally a solitary affair. You’ve quested, pvp’d and raided but nothing gets you going as much as sneaky undercuts, chance bargains and dominating the Auction House.
There can be only one!
Anyone who gets in your way must be undercut, have their supply directed to your pockets, and their customers collected and herded steadily to your door.
That’s how I used to think back on the low population server/realm. I had the fire power and the most gold on the server to completely dominate any market sector and intimidate any potential competitor. Jewelcrafting and flask market were entirely mine. I had an order from the top raiding guild for one guild bank tab-full of raiding flasks. At normal AH prices, no bulk discount requested. And we all know who controlled the “normal” AH prices!
I made so much gold I was giving it away. Lily and Argull got mechanochoppers “just because”. Each Christmas Day I would give away flasks and gems outside the bank / AH / inn as part generosity and gratitude, and part hope it would increase my fabulous server-wide reputation.
That all changed when I moved to the big server. The old one just became too easy, too slow. Log on, pump AH for an hour, yawn for the rest of the day. Life at the big server was scary. For weeks I wrestled with trying to price fix and discover why I couldn’t set and sell at stupid high prices. The problem: massive supply and lots of AH players, gold gaming goblins who knew what they were doing and weren’t afraid to use gold addons.
Everyone seemed to know what they were doing and it took a few weeks to adapt. Strike at opportunities rather than forcefully create them. Expand into as many markets and commodities as I could handle, and to be gently persistent with my strongest professions. Instead of forcing all the other competition from the field, I had to work with and around them. These big guys knew the server better than me, and they weren’t afraid to throw their weight and massive secret supplies at anyone who wanted to muscle in. It was time to turn my grudging respect into consideration and cooperation. Envy and frustration got me nowhere.
And then came the biggest shock. I wasn’t just competing against unknown ruffians. I recognised a name in the Auction House.
I was competing with one of the biggest, baddest and most famous of World of Warcraft gold gamers in Europe. Oh crap.
Continued tomorrow morning…
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.
