When I Open Pandaria's Box I Want A....Kiosk?

Cold's Gold Blogging Carnival post submission for the January 2012 Blogging Carnival.  Thanks to Cold and his wonderful website for making the carnival such a big hit in the WoW auction enthusiast community.

Mists of Pandaria (MoP) will soon be upon us.  Deathwing is toast.  Epic gems are flooding the AH (more of a welcome rain).  Cataclysm has been beaten.  Now what?  I know that this particular expansion has renewed the alt craze and in doing so has made dungeon running fun again.  I would like to see that part of the game continue to thrive in MoP.

How do you make the dungeon matching system better though?  I want a pause.  I want a pause at the beginning of every dungeon.  That's what I want for MoP.  Thanks for reading everyone.  I hope you enjoyed my blogging carnival entry and that it inspires you to pause in MoP!  Take care!

Huh?!  Whaa?...  CRUSARD!  Come back!!  Explain yourself...what's a pause?  We're all confused...

Oh yeah, sorry.  I thought it was obvious.  We have a pause at the beginning of a dungeon to set up our lemonade stand!!!  Everyone likes lemonade right?  [crickets rubbing their legs together] [an occasional cicada mating call]  Nobody get's this?  Okay.  What if at the beginning of a dungeon we could hit a button (dragged and dropped from the profession pane) that allowed us to showcase our wares in a sort of mini-flea-market style kiosk.  The person that right-clicks you (not unlike right-clicking vendors in the game) will see all the patterns that you have selected to be your showcase items.

Still not getting it?  You'll be a traveling salesman!  A gypsy!  That creepy guy from Majora's Mask!  Obviously this is a stab at server to server transactions in an environment where that would be possible due to the matching system.

This may not sound very appealing to some but it does have potential.  The same kiosk idea can be just as good in another setting, say for instance a portal (think DMF) to the "Pandaria Bazaar" where people come from all over the server to buy and trade items in one big event.

You could set-up your kiosk.  The event would have sections that could be purchased from the Bazaar host (no trolls please). You could then set-up your kiosk by simply right-clicking the area you want to sell your wares (the clickable areas could be predetermined squares laid out in a grid with aisles and so forth).

Barking would have a smaller area of effect to keep spam under control.  The tables would have your created items on them that you could simply mouse-over to get the tool-tip or a sign that lists them all in a special window created for the event.

Other things that are possible:

• Live auctions- take a seat and wait to see if anything comes along that meets your fancy.  Bid up your opponent or lay low to wait for that sweet deal!  All sales are final!!!
• Door prizes-  Blizzard's gift to Bazaar visitors.
• Auction House integration-  Once you list your item at the bazaar it becomes available on both auction houses (your faction and the neutral) but the catch is you do not pay the AH cut.  I see motivation in this particular idea to make this worth someone's time to sell their wares here when they can.
• Rain checks-  The item is currently out of stock....but you can pay me now and the item will be created in 48 hours or your money back.  Once created it is simply placed in the mail for that particular transaction.

Well there you have it.  This idea will create a brief way to sell wares to cross realm clients and give you a new, more personal, economy on your own server.  Please post any ideas that you have to improve upon this idea and maybe Cold can persuade Blizzard to make it happen for us!  [wink]

Image courtesy of peopledaily.com

Darkmoon Faire! -Or As Earl Simmons Would Say DMF!

First off I hope everyone had a nice holiday.

I would like to make note of the hugely successful Darkmooon Faire for those of you that had lost interest over the years.  It is definitely worth checking out.  Heirlooms are available from the DMF at great prices considering the minimal effort it takes to get the tickets that are used for currency.  I have been steadily leveling alts and acquiring new Heirlooms for them to level faster and DMF is my hat trick to getting that gear even faster.

Google "DMF Guide" for the numerous walk-throughs available to get a better understanding of how it all works or just take the plunge.  You can earn upwards of 150 tickets and 14K reputation per month (depending on the blue artifacts you turn in).  These earnings will diminish somewhat after completing some of the achievements but not too much.

If you do not want the heirlooms then follow the guides to get other things (mounts, companions, loot from fishing, etc.).  Please remember that you can do this on all of your toons.  If you do want heirlooms then making alts just to do these dailies is highly recommended to get every piece of heirloom gear that you currently need or don't have (it is great to have them all just in case you want to level your class of choice without worrying if you have the right gear or not).

Have fun!

Late secret Santa tip-  if you want to burn some time effectively on Darkmoon Island go fishing for crates.  These things contain lots of expensive materials that you can sell of goblinize for your gold-making professions of choice (this info better explained in those guides I told you to search for).

** I am at work so I will update this post with links to some of my favorite gold blogs that have different perspectives on gold-making during the DMF.

So there I was...sitting in my cubicle at work...

I decided to get the AH addon (WoW Armory) and I had no idea how much it had evolved.  I have it installed on my Motorola Photon so it looks great first and foremost due to the 1080p screen.  Aesthetics aside the app is killer in terms of its usefulness.  I just posted dozens of auctions from my personal bags and personal bank in minutes. 

Now that gems stack you can utilize this application to sell multiple items like never before.  I was always so frustrated by the lack of support that JCs had in terms of stackable wares and decent sized bags.  Cataclysm has recently changed all that for the better.  JC is now even more dangerous when it comes to making gold...this app just multiplies that even further.

I am having great conversations with guild members as well.  I just joined this guild (Delinquent Society -AD US) on my main pvp toon and they are a great group of people.  Now I can chat with some of the more obscure players while I am at work...working. LOL!  Seriously I am very happy with my $3 purchase and highly recommend this for the 9-5 workers out there who day dream about the crowded AH.

Office Space- The Bobs Interview with Peter...

Season 11

When the servers come back up two things are going to happen-  People are going to buy items that have resilience on them and then they are going to buy enhancements to those items.  The well prepared with turn in various PvP currency types to get new gear but they will come to the AH to pimp it.

You should be selling any and all items that a battleground-pounder will need- enchants, gems, PvP crafted gear, buff food, and bandages.  People will do anything and everything to squeeze out as much resilience as possible as they grind their way to get the honor needed to start purchasing S11 gear.

This cycle will last for at least three weeks as there are easily three tiers of gear to upgrade to- S11, S10, and S10 equivalent crafted blue gear.  Get on the ball when the servers go live and create those lists for your AH mod of choice if you have not done so already.

I will personally be doing both the honor grind and the AH supply during this event.  Check out Cynwise's Battlefield Manual for PvP tips and to get a glimpse at what might sell well on your server.  Happy hunting and may the best Justicar/AH Goblin win!

Picture origin unknown

How do you kill that which has no life?  [Blizzard Exec #4]  South Park season 10

Back in the Saddle Again...Again

Hello Blogiverse!  I am back from a ten month hiatus and I am ecstatic to be here.  I fired up WoW after applying for the one year renewal; insuring my guaranteed copy of Diablo III. Once I made it in I noticed that my account had been hacked.  The 600k gold I had on my main was gone and just about anything of value was also gone.  Despite this set-back I am still very happy to be playing again.

I am currently figuring out what addons I want to run for the auction house.  If anything has changed over the last ten months to make auctioning a little easier please let me know readers.  I am also adding feeds to Google Reader to give me stuff to read at work to add to my "food for thought" plan of attack.

I am excited and optimistic that I can get my account up to 5 million gold.  I will running more secure this time with a complicated account password and an Android mobile authenticater, should my old account hacking buddies decide to return...

First impressions of my first two days back (Sat-Sun) are very high.  I love the changes in 4.3. I knocked out numerous achievements with Darkmoon Faire.  I was buying season ten PVP gear while queuing up repeatedly for random battlegrounds...AND WINNING MOST OF THEM!  I also pulled in about 27k my first day and about 50k the next day from auction sales without any addons!

The time away has put me behind on recipe acquisitions (JC) and training.  I will have to do a lot of research to see what has come out from new reputations, dungeon drops, removed items, etc. but I'll figure it out.  Once again if any of you have any tips, especially new websites and utility services (like WoWEcon for example) then shoot me a message.

One last thing, I got my Sea Pony companion on the second cast...moments after a friend told me it was a loot-able item.  Since he fished for well over an hour the word "friend" is not exactly a word he may choose to describe me (LOL) but it does give me hope that all will be back in good order soon.  Thanks everyone!

Just two more episodes of Dexter to go!!!  [happy and sad face]

More to come- I will be adding a pro-tip section, not only a blogroll section but a review of each blog as it is added, expanded reader saturation (I am going to hogtie some experts, make them read my blog, then have them invite all their readers to add my blog URL to their favorites), and last but not least [drumroll] a daily post that will be scrutinized by myself for at least 20 minutes [scouts honor]. 

The [more to come] section is not a promise of things to come but more of a "hope toilet" that I will stand over and wait for a steady stream of ideas to culminate into a healthy torrent of warm liquid thought...

TradeSkillMaster (continued)

I guess now that WoWInsider has spilled the beans on TSM it is only a matter of time before everyone with an ounce of sense will begin using (abusing) the addon.  [sigh]  I am on board.  I have no choice.  The other addons are deceptivly inferior or broken/discontinued.  TSM sucked up most of the talent to make its design team...

I use Panda, Auctionator, AuctionLite, and the staple of all (most) goblins- Auctioneer.  With TSM replacing QA, ZA, APM I must use it to fill that void.  I already said what I think the perfect AH addon would be but I am a but one small voice.

I can do everything I need to do with Panda and Auctionator but it just eats up all my play time.  I LOVE Panda FYI.  What a beautiful way to simplify professions.  Tiny little morsels of GUI-clicky goodness!  ...I digress, I hate getting "ranty".  I am going to try Norganna's answer to making glyphs to see if that will delay the TSM takeover.

On a different note...Rift.  Try the open beta currently underway but don't blame me if you find yourself spending less and less time in Azeroth.



Bai Yun at the San Diego Zoo. Click pic for live Panda-Cam!!!





TradeSkillMaster

I like it.  I don't like it.

I personally miss the simplicity of the QA scan, click queue, click buy materials, and then click to create each item (or multiples of that item).  Why make it harder...more complex...more resource heavy?

My idea for an easy to use AH addon- Make it intuitive.  I should be able to open the AH, wait a brief moment for the addon to get the information it needs then it can produce a pop-up screen (log style) of what has sold, not sold, and been undercut on.

Eliminate multiple steps, irrelevent settings, and options.  The mod should be called "Sell Stuff".

The addon should sell your stuff with competence.  It should create its own history in which to judge the market(s) it is competing with.  Done.  I can haz more gold and watch more TV.  Substitute "watch more TV" with your favorite past time.

In a perfect world...right?

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