Rebuilding My Empire: The First Big Purchase

Awwwwwwyeah, look at that armor. Dat sparkle. Dem goggles. And you know what? I paid for 8/9 of it and I'm not ashamed to say it.

Over the first week or so, operating about 90% in glyphs and 10% in gems, I was making about 10k profit per day. Not amazing but certainly a good pace for a newly-casual player on a relatively low-pop server. With the expansion winding down I still had one big goal on my list from before I quit: Challenge Mode Gold armor. A year ago I finished Gate of the Setting Sun on Gold but never got around to trying for the others. I'm unsure what will happen with CMs in WoD but I've found that if you want something you shouldn't put it off, it may be removed in the future. So I really wanted to get these CMs.

Unfortunately the effort and time needed to find and build a group that had compatible schedules and was skilled enough to get gold without taking 10 hours per dungeon of practice didn't jive too well with my casual attitude. And so I did what any moderately well-off player might do: I paid someone else to do the legwork for me.

I used to take a very negative view of buying carries. While I wasn't opposed to doing it I did feel that someone who bought a carry necessarily was not as "worthy" as someone who "earned" it.  Admittedly I still feel a bit that way and so I'm glad to say I earned at least one gold "legitimately" to keep that feeling at bay; I know I had the skill for challenge mode golds, I just didn't have the desire to go through the group-building process.

But it's brought up an interesting subject of discussion in my guild and has got me thinking about carries quite a bit.

I expect gold-makers probably have a positive-to-neutral view of buying carries; people with more gold than they can spend are usually happy to take opportunities like buying runs. But that's not how everyone sees it, of course.

I didn't receive any blowback, at least not to my face, for buying my carries. I think this is because my guildies recognize my reasoning: a) I did already earn at least one gold, so it's not a skill issue and b) I'm casual and can't put in the time anymore, so this was easier.

So I was surprised when, after I gave the contact information for the group that sold me all my golds to a guildie, a little argument started in guild chat over whether or not it was "right" to buy carries. I won't rehash something that bordered on guild drama but basically some who "earned" their golds were talking down to people who "didn't earn" theirs.

Now, I'm still a bit on the fence on the issue; I think there is more merit in building a group and doing them (or any raid) yourself. But I also see a lot of things that could drive a person to buy a carry and I no longer see it as not having "earned" the achievements, loot, etc.

In the case of challenge modes I still worked pretty hard for it; I played my own character and was a contributing member of the team. I viewed it more as paying for a guaranteed competent group that I didn't have to gather myself, not as paying to avoid work. 

Furthermore, I earned a decent amount of gold to pay for them. (I paid 17k per run which is over the usual going rate; but I paid more so they would accept liquid gold payments on my server, removing my need to get the gold to their server.) And so while other players were sacrificing time out of their day to get their golds was I not also making a sacrifice in the form of over 100k gold? And in that case doesn't the discussion boil down to a "work smarter, not harder" subject in which, if its easier for a player to make the gold than to get the group, they'd be foolish not to buy the carry?

Anyways, I have no strong opinion on this either way; I'm not trying to write a persuasive essay here. Just some things I've been thinking about recently. I'm honestly not sure where I fall on the issue of buying carries anymore. I'd be interested in hearing how others feel about them.

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PS: A special thanks to Phat Lewts for my new Crocket! Check out Phat Lewts' gold blog if you don't already! (You should!)

PPS: Look at that top photo. Look at it. Doesn't Tabard of the Lightbringer look like a Boob Punch Tabard on human females? I call it a boob punch tabard. I think everyone should.

Rebuilding My Empire: The First Hours

At the time I decided to leave WoW I had approximately two million liquid gold and a decent stockpile of materials and crafted items for all professions. Not intending to come back any time soon I decided to do something with that. I sold all of my stock via the Consortium forums and also ended up selling every cage-able pet I had. This brought me up quite a bit and then I got rid of all of my gold as well. By the time my accounts expired I was down to 1,000g and I thought I had no stock remaining. I don't regret getting rid of my gold; gold-making is easy. I do regret getting rid of my pets. I've regained a lot of my favorite ones (I got my new Ethereal Soul-Trader for 10k cheaper than the first one!) but am still missing my Tuskarr Kite and Rocket Chicken, I'm sorry to say.

But basically the bottom line is I came back to WoW pretty impoverished compared to the wealth I'd grown accustomed to. So what'd I do?

I logged on and borrowed 1,000g from Eluniar, who also recently returned to WoW, promising him 10k in return in a few days. This gave me 2,000g investment capital. Like anyone in a desperate situation I returned to what I knew best and immediately set about making glyphs. Glyphs were a superb choice because the cost of materials is typically no more than pocket change the profit per sale is phenomenal, meaning my bit of gold would go a long way. (Plus my old glyph partners were willing to get me back into the fold and so I was able to return to a perfectly pruned and tailored market.)

In the meantime I petitioned Blizzard to request a small amount of time on my second account. Now that I'm not "super srs bsns"-playing I can't justify paying for my second account on an already tight budget; but I wanted to see what was left there. They were kind enough to grant me a two or three day credit and I hopped on to visit Liquidate once more.

There wasn't much on the Alliance but I was shocked to get on Nodes, my Horde glyph seller, and find I'd apparently decided not to liquidate his glyph stock before leaving. I had approximately ten of each glyph just sitting there pre-crafted.

And so it began.  It took me approximately three boring, agonizing, painstaking hours to move thousands of glyphs through the neutral AH one. at. a time. But I did it!

So I was able to pay back Elu's loan within a few hours of him giving it to me, which felt good, and I was off on my new gold-making adventure!

Hello o/

Hi.

You remember back in the Spring I said I was quitting WoW and that, while I would never say never, I didn't intend to come back? Well, now I remember why I always said "never say never."

I returned to WoW a couple weeks ago and am considering a return to blogging. I wanted to explain the . . . conditions under which I'm returning to both before getting into it, since they're going to change the way the blog is written quite a bit. Then we'll see what happens.

I've been doing so well since this Spring. I'm back in school, I changed my major to something I am passionate about and it's going well,  I'm going to be doing Study Abroad this summer if I can scrounge up the cash to pay for it, I'm teaching myself a second language, I've lost a ridiculous amount of weight (in a good way!) and I'm generally doing great.

The problem came because my schedule is so hectic and busy it's hard to find times to do social things, so when I do find free-time there's often nothing to do. I decided to start playing WoW again over the Christmas holiday to kill time. It's been great to come back. I've come back as a super-casual (did I mention those schedule obligations?) so I'm not really raiding other than flex here and there with my guildies. I'm mostly doing pet battles and achievements and it's been a great semi-social timesink for the times when I'm out of school work to do.

I've been playing the game entirely different from the way I once played and I've had some very interesting adventures. I wanted to blog about them but I remembered my love/hate relationship with blogging. I like writing. No, I love writing. And, as you can probably tell, I like talking about myself.

When I originally started NerfFaids back in the day it was not meant to be educational or to provide a service or help to others; it was meant to be more of a public journal while I learned to make gold. I want to do the journal thing again.

So I might be putting up some WoW posts in the coming time. The majority will probably be gold-flavored (once a gold maker, always a gold maker) but I'm going to return to writing for me, and only for me. If you'd like to keep reading that's great. Now I'm off to class.