Filed under: Economy

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Fox Van Allen and Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Feed Fox's ego by emailing him, tweeting him at @foxvanallen, or sacrificing your first-born to him. And be sure to catch the return of Basil and Fox's podcast, Call to Auction!

Yes, I know, Mists of Pandaria is a long way off -- too long for most of us WoW addicts. But in terms of making money, no event will mean more to your bottom line than the MoP launch. New patches and expansions are where fortunes are won and lost. If you dream of getting to 1 million gold (or even a more modest figure), the best time to do it are the few days and weeks following the launch of a new expansion.

If you're going to take advantage of the Mists of Pandaria gold rush, you're not going to want to wait until the last minute. You're going to want to work out a plan now, so you know exactly what to buy and what to make.

WoW players today tend to consider the deterioration of the in-game community in terms of relatively recent influences like the Dungeon Finder and then the Raid Finder. We sometimes forget that design tweaks and new systems have been chipping away at the paradigm of Azeroth as a place to forge ongoing personal relationships for years now. Take a gander at the beginning of this analysis I wrote on the death of the Azerothian salesman all the way back in the hyper-modern era of The Burning Crusade circa 2007:

Forget the endless debate over hardcore versus casual -- there's another moniker that we here at Insider Trader hold dear: salesman. What's that? You don't know any salesmen in WoW these days? You're not alone. Times have changed since craftspeople toiled to build reputations as the go-to traders on their servers ... when Ironforge was the hub of civilization, where a few elite enchanters held court over the entire server with coveted formulae from such exotic locales as Stratholme and Scholomance.

It's a brave new world in today's Outland. Most enchanters don't enchant for the general public at all, unless you provide mats and a tip. And in any profession, with so many other players on the servers who have the same patterns (even rare patterns are generally available from more than one player) and so many easy ways to make money (hello, daily quests!), there's little reason to hang around town to build a regular clientele. Components provided or created by other professions are readily available on the Auction House -- there's no need to seek out and nurture relationships with another player from a complementary profession.

Have the conveniences Blizzard has developed for today's crafters meant the death of the salesman?

Most WoW players would agree that convenience and self-service is the way of today's game. But for one stubborn tradesman on Sentinels (US), life as an Azerothian salesman is anything but obsolete. Daen, a dedicated craftsman and proprietor of Daen's Crafting Emporium, single-handedly maintains what may be one of World of Warcraft's last remaining bastions of personal craftsmanship and trade skill service -- with a twist. This proprietor not only aims to provide personal service, but he does it at no charge, with the insistence that customers devote sweat equity to their mutual creations as well.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Fox Van Allen and Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Feed Fox's ego by emailing him, tweeting him at @foxvanallen, or sacrificing your first-born to him. And be sure to catch the return of Basil and Fox's podcast, Call to Auction!

There's no question that time is a very powerful influencer of prices. Most typically, time affects prices via inflation, the natural and inevitable tendency of things today to cost more than things cost yesterday. But that's far from the only way that time affects prices. A Love Is In the Air holiday pet is likely going to be less expensive to buy now than if you wait nine months from now. The cost of i397 BoE gear is going to continue to decay right up to the launch of the next expansion.

It's not a phenomenon unique to the game, of course. Those Super Bowl cakes are going to be a lot cheaper at the supermarket today than they were on Saturday. And if you can wait until January to shop for your winter clothes, you're going to get a far better deal than if you do it in October. A lot of prices are cyclical.

But how do those cycles work in the game? If you're a buyer of mats, when should you head to the Auction House to grab what you need? If you're a seller of ore, should just skip listing it certain days to maximize your profits? Let's see what the data say.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen and Fox Van Allen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Check out Fox and Basil's reboot of Call To Auction, and email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail!

Gold making is one of those games you can play without much cooperative interaction with other players. If I hadn't been set straight about how to raid by cooperative guildies when I started, I'd still be as bad as I was when I started, minus any progress I'd have made myself. This type of environment is a breeding ground for less-than-optimal gold making strategies, so here are five myths about gold making that continue to require banishment.

1. Mats are free if you don't pay gold for them. It doesn't matter whether you picked up a gem from a Satchel of Exotic Mystery, farmed a stack of herbs, procced a bonus somehow, or mugged someone. If you figure your cost on the mats for whatever you're selling as what you actually paid for it, you're doing it wrong. The value of crafting mats is what you could sell them for.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Fox Van Allen and Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Feed Fox's ego by emailing him or tweeting him at @foxvanallen.

There's nothing more American than the idea of making money off the labor of others. Wall Street was built on it. Presidential campaigns are built on it. Even World of Warcraft fortunes are built on it. If you want to be a member of the 1%, you have to do it off the labor of the 99%.

The whole process sounds a lot more unethical than it really is. After all, just about any sale of a physical good involves someone else's labor. You may have put a lot of work into building that lemonade stand yourself, but did you work the fields to harvest the sugar cane? And while you may be the one selling that Darkmoon Card: Volcano trinket, were you the one who collected the thousands of herbs and Volatile Lifes? Or did you visit the Auction House and profit off a farmer's efforts?

Profiting off of others is simply how money is made. But we have a social responsibility to make money the right way. Without an in-game legislature or an in-game court system, what rules and laws should we operate under? As the engines of the World of Warcraft economy, what are our ethical responsibilities? How do we make money without causing social harm?

Since the launch of patch 4.3, transmogrification has been big business for players on the Auction House. But it's a hard market to get a logical handle on, like building an empire on selling classic oil paintings or finely aged wines. How do you know what a piece of gear is worth based on looks alone? How can you make money by dealing, essentially, in random world drops?

Instead of muddling through the topic myself, I decided it would be smarter to go straight to the expert. No one knows more about making money in the transmogrification market than Keelhaul of Proudmoore (US) -- or as he's affectionately known around the internet, the Mogfather. His goal was simple: Prove that the transmogrification gear market was profitable. Forty-five days and 1 million gold later, it's safe to say his point has been successfully proven.

But if you think banking a million gold in 45 days is remarkable, wait until you hear what he did next: He gave it all away.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen and Fox Van Allen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Check out Fox and Basil's reboot of Call To Auction, and email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail!

All enchanters know that Maelstrom Crystals can be expensive, especially now that more players than ever have access to pretty good epic gear through the Raid Finder. This increase in demand has touched all professions that make things that improve gear, including enchanting. I know I went from paying under 90g for a Maelstrom Crystal to paying over 250g at one point soon after the launch of patch 4.3 and the Raid Finder, and that was after stockpiling (and subsequently blowing through) more than 75 stacks. If I knew then that I could have been making them in unlimited supply at 146g each, I'd have made a lot more.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Fox Van Allen and Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Feed Fox's ego by emailing him, tweeting him at @foxvanallen, or constructing a multi-million dollar video wall for his benefit.

One of my favorite topics here on Gold Capped is World of Warcraft's problem with inflation. If affects just about everyone in a very negative way, regardless of whether they're an Auction House maven or a casual player. Inflation makes any gold your character is holding worth less and less by the second, making work you do now far less valuable than work you do later. It even affects the way developers approach the economy, from the amount of gold you get for finishing a daily to the creation of new gold sinks.

By most anecdotal measures, in-game inflation is wildly out of control. And that's one of my problems as WoW Insider's other market follower; the only evidence of inflation we have is ancedotal. There's no real solid way for us to measure inflation in the game and understand what's working to control it and what's not.

The question got my mental gears turning. In the real world, inflation is measured using something called the Consumer Price Index. Creating an in-game version of the CPI intrigues me, but to figure out the best way to construct it, we need to first figure out the answer to another difficult question: What do people buy the most of in-game?

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen and Fox Van Allen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Check out Fox and Basil's reboot of Call To Auction, and email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail!

Every so often, I get asked something to the effect of "What's the fastest way to get 10,000 gold?" It's usually asked by someone who is perpetually poor in game and is looking to get a BoE or some other sort of reward that costs gold. The fastest way for me to get 10,000 gold is to log in and check my mail. My daily haul is many times that and scales based on how much time I have to craft, list, and relist. This isn't a useful answer to someone who lives paycheck to paycheck, though. So what advice would be helpful?

First off, if you're below level 85, get to level 85. This nets you quite a bit of gold simply from quest rewards and vendoring gear you acquire. If you're already level 85, the first thing you need to do is identify how much money you can make per hour running 5-mans for valor points that you can use to sell BoEs. On my realm, I could sell a BoE costing 1,650 VPs for about 10,000 gold. That means every valor point I earn could be worth 6 gold, which makes the 150 points I get from a 5-man worth 900g. I can do seven per week per character with the requisite gear. Also, every trash kill and boss kill has a chance of awarding you with valuables, including enchanting mats (if someone can DE) and BoEs.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Fox Van Allen and Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Feed Fox's ego by emailing him, tweeting him at @foxvanallen, or sacrificing your first born to him.

Hey everyone, great news! The Darkmoon Faire is back in town! From now until Saturday, Jan. 7, you can play some games, eat some carnival food -- and oh yeah, make a ton of money off it.

Usually when new content is released, it's only the level 85 characters who can make money hand over fist. But the coolest thing about the Darkmoon Faire is that you don't need to be a level 85 character to participate or even profit off it. A level 20 character can have just as much fun at, get just as much benefit, and even make as much money as a level 85. It just takes the right amount of knowledge.

And, oh yeah, it also takes a Darkmoon Adventurer's Guide. You're carrying one of those on you at all times, right? Right? Well, according to Wowhead, most of you sub-level 85 players aren't. And that's a gigantic missed opportunity for a lot of money -- thousands upon thousands of gold. The kind of money that's just unheard of at lower levels.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen and Fox Van Allen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Check out Fox and Basil's reboot of Call To Auction, and email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail!

There's a fairly simple way to make gold without professions: Sell summons to a pick-pocketable Hagara to rogues looking to get their legendary quest starter daggers, Vengeance and Fear. These are the most accessible rogue weapons, because aside from picking the pocket of the fourth boss in a raid instance, the quest can be easily completed with a 10k gold and a minimum amount of help. These daggers are the best entry-level options for rogues who PvP or PvE, available as soon as they hit 85 and are capable of completing the quest.

If players are raiders, they'll probably get it for free just by being in a raid that gets to Hagara; however, if all they do is PvP or casual PvE through the Raid and Dungeon Finders, they won't be able to get the first leg of the quest finished. Within a few weeks, most rogues who want to start the quest will have started it. Until then, I've heard of non-raiding rogues paying as much as 25k for the opportunity to pick Hagara's pockets.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Fox Van Allen and Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Feed Fox's ego by emailing him, tweeting him at @foxvanallen, or sacrificing your first-born to him. And be sure to catch the return of Basil and Fox's podcast, Call to Auction!

As someone who greatly enjoys getting presents, I love Christmas. But the truth is that I love the day after Christmas just as much. On Dec. 26, all the stores know you're loaded up with cash and gift cards from your relatives. It's the one day of the year where I get to shop for luxuries as if they're everyday purchases.

The urge is there in World of Warcraft, too. I've worked so hard all year long to make money. You have too. But you can't just sit on those millions forever. Money in WoW is a tool -- it's pointless if you don't spend at least a little bit (or, in the case of today's column, spend a lot of it just to prove you can). I'm not just talking Mechano-hogs and Vials of the Sands here, expensive though those purchases may be. I'm talking about the true World of Warcraft luxuries -- your Magic Rooster Eggs and Swift Spectral Tigers, things only a true Auction House maven will ever own.

When an item is being sold in absolute minimal quantity, it's simply impossible for markets to do what they do best. You can't get the opinions of hundreds of sellers, cross-matched against the opinions of hundreds of buyers, to get one reliable, stable market price. You get the opinion of one seller (if you're lucky) cross-matched against your own senses. If you think this is a simple market to play in, you're wrong. It's the elite level, like a game of Jeopardy! where all three contestants are Watson supercomputers. And because it's the elite level, tactics can get (and are almost expected to get) real dirty, real fast.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Fox Van Allen and Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Feed Fox's ego by emailing him, tweeting him at @foxvanallen, or sacrificing your first-born to him. And be sure to catch the return of Basil and Fox's podcast, Call to Auction!

Here at WoW Insider, we've been on a beginners' class guide kick. But after taking the time to put together my shadow priest leveling guide (and after reading the warlock leveling guide written by my less talented coworker), I realized that we didn't have any kind of leveling guides for professions. Time to fix that! After all, you need professions to make money.

But first, the most important question: What professions should your character choose? The best answer is always going to be "whatever appeals to you most" -- but if you're a magic-using, cloth-wearing class, I'd recommend you at least take a look at tailoring. By leveling it, you get access to Lightweave Embroidery, one of the best level 85 buffs in the game for casters.

Of course, you can level tailoring on any character, and a lot of the craftables you make can be sold at a profit. But if that character can't use the buffs from the profession, you're missing one the key benefits to max leveling a profession.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen and Fox Van Allen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Check out Fox and Basil's reboot of Call To Auction, and Email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail!

Every single content patch, Blizzard turns the tables on gold makers and, for a brief period of time, allows any player to make tens of thousands of gold by selling valor point-bought BoE gear. We've all seen the ads in trade of people looking to buy them or sell them, but most people focus on their own gear first and only think about selling them once they've gotten a few upgrades. Is this unwise?

What if I told you that you could get several thousand gold and still have as much valor gear at the end of the month as your guildie who didn't sell a single BoE? It's all about timing. The valor point weekly cap is 1,000, and in the beginning of the week that valor BoEs are available for purchase, the prices are extremely high. They stay high for a few weeks but quickly plummet as people start to use more points to buy gear for selling. They bottom out eventually when people stop having upgrades available for valor.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Fox Van Allen and Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Feed Fox's ego by emailing him, tweeting him at @foxvanallen, or sacrificing your first-born to him. And be sure to catch the return of Basil and Fox's podcast, Call to Auction!

Some things in life never change. Heart will always be the best band of all time. Tyler will always be dangerously underweight. And gem prices will always spike after a new content patch, often by 100% or more.

The best way to profit off of (relatively) short-lived price increases is to stockpile ahead of time. While it's clearly too late for that, there are still plenty of opportunities to profit off the rare gem market before demand dies down. It's not too late.

Regardless of whether or not you're a jewelcrafter, you've probably noticed that the market is going crazy. The red gems everyone wants are scarce enough to result in doubled (or even tripled) prices. And because people aren't gemming red because of the cost, more folks are buying orange, purple, and to some extent even blue, green, and yellow gems. Why? Socket bonuses are pretty attractive, and if you're expecting to have a piece of gear for only a week or two, why spend 300 gold, especially when you can get a decent boost out of a gem that costs a tenth of that?