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.