Not that there's anything wrong with that . . .

Don't worry, more Interacting with Players to come; at least a few more, but the most recent post (Bernard) has finally given me enough of an idea of what I want to say on a subject to actually make a post about it.

For those who haven't already I recommend reading the previous post, Interacting with Players: Bernard as well as the comments. I'll stop referring to him as Bernard since Brongly actually came in and replied himself, so I don't think he minds.

We've been having a bit of a discussion on the concept of casual and/or fair-weather gold-making. He makes a lot more gold than the average WoW player; is probably on-par or a bit above the average gold-maker, but is likely not at the same level as most advanced gold-makers. After saying this I constantly found myself adding in "Not that there's anything wrong with that" type of comments.

And I mean those comments completely sincerely.

Most of what I do is not fun for the majority of people. Hell, it's often times not super fun for me, but it's easy and can be done while doing something more fun. (CKS + D3? Yes please!) I expect that if most players played the way I do they would not have the stomach to stick it out. That's not that they're not up to snuff, but that I have a very high tolerance for boring, repetitive tasks others would find mind-numbing.

Unfortunately the word "casual" has become somewhat of a put-down in the general-gaming world and so I think people see it as a put-down for gold-making. "Oh, you only make gold casually, you're not as good at it as the rest of us."-kind of a thing. But that's not how I'll ever mean it when discussing gold-making.

There is no right way to make gold. I mean, maybe grinding out vendor greys for cash isn't ideal, there are probably better ways than that, but I don't see anything wrong with people who only make 1k a day; and I don't think they're less skilled than someone who makes 20k a day.

Income is largely about effort invested. You can invest effort in many ways: crafting a lot, camping a lot, researching/learning rare patterns, gathering a lot, learning markets, leveling profession alts, managing addons and spreadsheets, etc. and so depending on where you like investing your time and effort you will find a way to make gold that works for you.

I said some time in the past that I consider myself a blue-collar nose-to-the-grindstone gold-maker. I don't flip, I don't go for big profit margins. I spend my effort through flat-out perseverance and stubbornness. This is actually not very efficient. Someone who takes the time I spend on the AH and instead spends it discerning the most valuable use of that time will likely make gold successfully as well; possibly more, possibly less.

And so when I refer to "casual" gold-making it's not meant to refer to people who don't know as much, or people who aren't as skilled. It's people who don't put in the same amount of time, flat out. But if they use their smaller amount of time more efficiently than I use mine they can have much better numbers while still being "casual" in the time-spent sense.

Once again, I recommend you read Brongly's comments on my last post; they're largely what sparked this one. Brongly takes a very different approach to auctioning, dealing with competitors, etc. than my own stance but I hold that neither of us are wrong, just different. In fact, in some ways I would probably say his stance is a better one to take. He probably enjoys the game a lot more than I do, to be completely honest, because it's not mind-numbing prospecting, milling, etc. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the game as well. It's just a "different strokes for different folks" kind of situation and I wanted to clarify that I don't believe that people who make gold differently necessarily do so because they are wrong or lacking in skill; simply that it's not the way I would do it.

Find what you like to do. If you spend five minutes a day reposting auctions you're not any better or worse at gold-making than the guy who spends five hours. You're just doing it your way, and that's what's important in this game.