Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Start of my Blog plus 4.1 Patch day!

I'm excited! And no its not cause 4.1 is supposed to hit today (although that's pretty exciting on its own). I'm excited cause I finally decided to take this leap to begin a blog about my experiences with World of Warcraft and the wheeling and dealing of virtual toons that make up the biggest factor in the game for me. GOLD!

Now I know what you are thinking, so what? There are plenty of blogs already out there, and you are correct. In fact I follow most of them. But what I really like is the concept of virtual collaboration. There are hundreds of realms in WoW. There are thousands of characters (toons)! The ways to make money (gold) in this game is a factor of exponential proportions.

I don't know how often I will be able to write these blogs, but I do want to use this site to share things I've learned. Both personally in the game, through connections with friends and guildies in the game. And throughout the various venues of the these virtual blogging communities.

Let me begin this journey by first giving you a background on myself.
My real name is Jacob. I was born in the mid 70s which makes me older than the average WoW player. I have a wife (who does not play) and a son (who is too little to play). I have a full time job that requires me to travel from home (Monday-Thursday). Lots of alone time in the hotel means playing WoW to keep away the boredom. Since I am away from home most of the week, weekends are usually spent catching up on chores around the house and spending as much time with my little one as possible.

Now let me talk to you about my Wow "empire". My main toon and my first toon ever is a human paladin on the Velen server , Ezraiel. I began playing shortly after the release of Burning Crusades. At that time I really did not play much at all and it took me quite a few months to level my toon. I did absolutely nothing in terms of PvP, raiding, or auction houses other than occasionally paying for items I needed to complete quests. I was never a part of any guild either. One day I randomly met a mage that helped me finish a few higher level quests and he invited me to his guild, Honor Bound. Again didn't really do much with the guild other than chatting with them while doing quests.

It wasn't until the release of Wrath of the Lich King (WOTLK) that I even bothered to level any other toons. And even then it was to start a level 55 Death Knight, Ezknite. But once I started leveling again, I found I liked it. In fact, I started to create and level multiple toons, to the point that I actually started a secondary account, and multi-boxed multiple toons at once.

During this time, Ezraiel joined a raiding quild, Section XII that was just getting into Naxx and Ulduar and even some TOC. As my raiding experience grew, the appetite for it grew. I was able to join another guild Unity, just as they were starting some of the LK raids. I have been with Unity since and we are progressing through the current raid content.

During the Ulduar raids, I manged to get my first epic BS pattern. I not only managed to create the item for myself, I was able to figure out that if I could get the mats cheaper than what the item sold for, I could make a decent profit. Once I did this once, I was as they say "hooked".

Since I've always been pretty detailed orientated, I started to track my "work" with Excel. I created a pretty detailed spreadsheet. The first tab, which had all my "raw" materials along with the current price in the AH. The subsequent tabs, were built over time, but included the detail behind different epic patterns that I could create. How much the raw prices added up to and how much the items were selling for currently in the AH. The "difference" would hopefully be my "profit".  (This spreadsheet has since been revised, since most of my work can be done with some really nice addons)

I soon learned that even though Velen was a low population server, there still was a lot of competition in the AH. I soon scoured the web, and came across various "gold blogging" sites. In particular, and still my favorite to date is Marko's (Just My Two Copper). I learned a lot from the daily postings, as well as stalking the forums. With the knowledge gained there, I soon began to implement things I learned, and diversified into as many markets as possible.


Which leads back to my current "empire".


Name Guild Faction Level Class Main Spec Profession 1 Profession 2
Lijumon EzDoesWow Alliance 59 Death Knight Banker - -
Troom Consoritum Alliance 4 Priest Banker - -
Amelmara Syndicated Alliance 1 Paladin Banker - -
Ezraiel Unity Alliance 85 Paladin Heal Blacksmith Inscription
Ezknite Unity Alliance 85 Death Knight Tank Enchanting JC
Eznun Unity Alliance 85 Priest Heal Alchemist (Potion Spec) Herbalism
Ezshammy Unity Alliance 85 Shaman Heal JC Miner
Ezranger Unity Alliance 85 Hunter DPS JC Miner
Ezwar Unity Alliance 85 Warrior Tank Alchemist (Elixir Spec) Miner
Ezkitty Unity Alliance 85 Druid Tank LW Engineer
Ezninja Unity Alliance 85 Rogue DPS Engineer Skinning
Ezlocke Unity Alliance 85 Warlock DPS Tailor Skinning
Ezmagi Unity Alliance 85 Mage DPS Alchemist (Transmute Spec) Herbalism
Yakuranger Creepy Nightmares Horde 21 Hunter DPS Herbalism Miner
Yakubank Creepy Nightmares Horde 5 Shaman Banker - -
Leiarze Corpus Invictus Horde 85 Paladin Tank JC Miner
YakuzÄ Creepy Nightmares Horde 47 Rogue DPS Herbalism Skinning
Yakuior Creepy Nightmares Horde 10 Warrior DPS Herbalism Miner
Yakutotem Creepy Nightmares Horde 3 Shaman DPS - -
Yakuid Creepy Nightmares Horde 11 Druid DPS Herbalism Miner

Sorry for the tiny print, but in essence I have eleven maxed toons with every profession covered at least once. I also have four Banker toons that have their own 6 tab guild banks  (3 on Alliance and 1 on Horde)

As of April 20th, 2011 I have amassed approximately 725,000 in gold across all of my toons and guild banks. My current goal is to hit 1 million by June 30th of 2011.

Most of my money was made during the later part of WOTLK with BS, Tailoring, LW creating the epic patterns from Ulduar, TOC, and LK raids.

I spend quite a bit of my money since Cataclysm (Cata) dropped. This has been mainly to level all of my previous level 80 toons to 85 and to not only max out their professions, but to also get them enough gear to be able to run heroics. 

I hope to cover my journey to a million. I also want to share ideas and get comments and feedback from others.

That's all for today, need to finish downloading the patch and get ready to try to make some money. Stay tuned. Please share this link with others, and please provide any feedback so that I can continue to improve.

thanks,
Ez

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