My Long, Strange Trip...

Four score and five years ago I started playing this game. I was consistently poor and never leveled a toon to 60 before BC came out. I continued to stay consistently poor when BC hit but I did manage to level my main to 70 and started doing end game content. I was able to get both tailoring and enchanting maxed out and I raised all the factions applicable to granting me more recipes to increase my wares. I did my best to get all the drops I could so I could make some gold but I stayed consistently poor. [NERF BAT] Kara, Gruul's, Mag, SSC, TK, Hyjal, BT...loot was good but I was STILL consistently poor.

[Cherubim angels singing] Sunwell is released. Everyone bands together to open the raid. Dailies, dailies, dailies! TY Shattered Sun Offensive! Damn...SP is hard. SP is waaaay too hard. Dailies get boring. Gold reserves run dry. I am poor again...

I watch a video on YouTube. In this video this gnome is leading a pug in SP. He has a system that allows him to kill the first mob then CC pull both linked mobs leaving the dragonhawks CC'd as everyone runs out of the instance. Why was this so cool? Because those 16 mobs (14 kills) drop epics...lots of epics. As long as you left the two animals hibernated and ran out (since they were all linked) when you ran back in the mobs previously killed were restored... OMG! Sunmotes! Epic Gems! Best-in-slot gear! Epic Patterns! This guy was my hero.

So I started my own pug on my server. I found a good tank who only wanted an epic gem per run as payment, plus a chance to roll on any drops. I was the master looter. My payment was one Sunmote per raid for organizing the group and inviting attendees. Sunmotes were selling for 6-10k at the time. We were running this pug almost every day. I was making 6-10k a day. A DAY!!! I was rich for the first time in WoW. Then WotLK was announced, Sunwell was nerfed, my gold business was decimated. I was sunk. Within a month I was consistently poor...again.

[Fast Forward] July, 2010. I decided I was tired of being poor. I could not stand dailies. I could not stand grinding, I could not stand farming. I wanted to check my mailbox and see those lovely little scrolls that make coin sounds when you open them. …But how?

I crafted something. I put it on the AH. It sold. I crafted more things. They sold. I made alts. They leveled and maxed their professions. They made stuff. It all sold too. I was finally doing it. I was earning gold in WoW. I was not using some cheesy exploit to farm valuable BoEs. I was actually working for a WoW living. [Hums Huey Lewis]

[Friday, 27 August 2010] I have every possible profession maxed. I have a good understanding of the AH and the add-ons used to automate my interaction with it. I have 32k liquidity and about 40k in stockpiled items. My goal is to cap my gold and have ten toons ready for Cataclysm. I will use this blog to chronicle my successes and failures. I will refrain from revealing too much about myself or my toons but I will share anything that I discover along the way.

I am not trying to reinvent the wheel and there are certainly more blogs out there with more street cred. I am going forward despite these shortcomings. I want to do this for myself. I want to have financial freedom to play the game the way I want to play when new raid and pvp content is revealed in the expansion. I invite you all to tune in for future installments of my misadventures!

To keep this blog interesting I will be using The Ferengi Rules of Acquisition as a source of inspiration for my blog posts. Today’s lesson will be the defining rule by which all other rules are judged-

Rule #1. Once you have their money, never give it back!

...Don't worry 'Great River'...I won't.

Post quote- "Time is money, friend!"  ...every Goblin in the game says this...I wish I had listened from the beginning.