Thursday, March 24, 2011

How we handle BoEs

I hate farming. Not real farming, because even though that's hard work there's something to be said about the pride of looking out on a field of whatever that you've grown. No, I mean farming in WoW. I don't care if it's farming herbs, cloth, honor, or what - it sucks. I don't get any satisfaction out of it, and I'd personally rather spend my time doing just about anything else.

Right now my current passion is arguing with Monger about what we can 2 heal and what we can't. Right now we're 2 healing H-Magmaw, 3 healing H-Chim, and 4 healing H-Halfus. I want to knock Chim down to 2...

Back to the BoEs

Fortunately, or not depending on your PoV, I'm not the only person in my guild who hates farming. We all do. Sure, some of us do it from time to time for various reasons, but none of us get excited about it. Personally, I think my hatred stems from back in Vanilla when I was working on my Thunderfury. I've never been a big AH player, I had no DPS gear, and I was a tank through and through. Heck, I didn't even have any real high level alts. So I ground out the gold I needed slowly but surely. Man that sucked.

While gold is exponentially easier to come by today, I still don't want to grind for it. Fortunately, there are those with really deep pockets, that ensure that we don't have to.

It started in Ulduar

Back when our 10m first got going in Ulduar, we recognized that we were extremely lazy as a group when it came to farming, and that there were plenty of folks out there dying to spend their hard earned gold on the epics and recipies we collected. Enchants were in high demand, patterns for epics, orbs, etc. We recognized early on that selling say, a tailoring enchant for 10k and then spending 1k to have it crafted for the single person that needed it, was way more efficient and profitable.

ICC threw a bit of a wrench into those plans, but there were still BoEs to sell, and it kept us from having to really work. GDKP runs at the end really loaded our pockets, but that doesn't have anything to do with BoEs.

What we pay for

Right now our guild funds every aspect of our raiding. Flasks, food, gems, enchants, repairs - you name it, we pay for it. BoEs are sold in guild (after one 'oops' at the start - sorry Thraxx) for 5k. If nobody wants to pay the 5k and use the item, we sell it on the AH. Once the gbank hits 60 or 90k, we knock it back down to 30k and split the rest. I think we've had 2 or 3 splits already since the launch of Cata. You don't get any interest on the money, so there's no use in having it sit there.

This type of thing really does wonders for all of us. It allows about 1/3 of the guild to raid on a second server with some older raid partners that aren't at the same level we are. Some of us take the time to level alts or just play less, and a couple of the guys are playing Rifts on the side. The biggest thing for me is there's no pressure to do anything but raid well. I'm not scrambling to get flask materials, fishing or herbing for my buff food, etc.

How far will the money stretch?

We've already seen a decline in prices for some of the items we get, heck the healing belt is probably better served as a Maelstrom crystal. But even if you figure each raider is spending 200g a night in repairs (sure, maybe more), and 100g a night in buff food/flasks/pots (heck say 300g), that's 5k a night we're spending. I don't think it's near that much, but say it is. One good BoE drop will net 20-25k, and a bad one will get 5k. While we do have dry runs (like last night in BoT), we generally get 2 or 3 BoEs a week. That's a lot of funds we're pulling in.

Who knows. By the time Firelands rolls around we may be dipping into our own pockets again. It's certainly possible. Firelands will bring a whole new round of BoEs and other profitable goods though, and I'm sure that we'll start to see some decent GDKP runs cropping up in the future.

It sure beats farming.

5 comments:

  1. I stopped playing wow just after ulduar came out and have recently come back so I was unaware of this concept of GDKP runs. I read the elitist jerks article about it and it seems like a very clever way to benefit a lot of people.

    I do have a question that I wonder if its been discussed and how the discussion went concerning GDKP runs: Do people feel that GDKP runs really drive up the market for gold sellers and all the negative externalities associated with them?

    One thing is the lure of gold sellers to ease farming needs, but its far more direct and alluring if people see direct price points for very coveted epic items which GDKP runs would create. How do people feel about this?

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  2. I don't think GDKP runs impacted gold sellers very much. Maybe, I don't know. All I know is that the runs impacted my bank value in a very positive way.

    If everyone had an authenticator, or if Blizzard locked your account immediately upon logging in from a new IP, maybe the gold sellers would go away. People will always buy gold though I think - it's up to the individual to take as many precautions as possible to avoid being compromised.

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  3. I'm not saying that someone running a GDKP would get scammed or broken into. But being on a raid and seeing someone plop down 10k gold, or whatever for "Awesome Trinket of Rare Dropness" sure is a very direct way of enticing someone to plunk some real world dollars down for some quick gold before then next raid. That creates a much higher demand and profit window for gold seller driven scams, hacks, etc.

    Account hacking / scamming exists almost exclusively because there's a demand for people to buy gold from gold sellers. I can see GDKP runs creating a kind of arms race of gold dumping, which ends up most likely fueled by gold sellers. Just wondering what people more intimate with GDKP runs feel about this and/or have had discussion realed to this.

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  4. I just reread your post and I mistook you referring to the scamming of raid members. You don't seem to imply that.

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  5. Personally, you have to take the good with the bad. Contributing a service like GDKP to a server is a great benefit for those looking to gear up (the buyers) and those looking to make a profit (the sellers).

    Both sides gain equally to an extent, if the buyer is a person who buys gold with RL currency that is his problem. You cannot take on the role of asking "Hey did you buy gold to come on this run? Cause if you did you're outta here." I feel it is not my job to be the moral police handing out infractions to those in the game who are dumb enough to spend real money when the in-game currency is at the point to where you can make thousands in a day.

    That being said, GDKP IS a service that the experienced provide to the under-geared, under-experienced, and the under-privileged(those that can't raid due to not having the adequate number of people). This provides the server with more drops to the casual player and more money to the serious raider, fulfilling 2 very different aspects of the game for 2 very different playstyles.

    In the end Casuals get what they want (epic drops without months invested) and Non-Casuals get what they need (money to fund the raid machine). You can say this would lead to gold selling, hacking, botting, etc.. But at the end of the day its the responsibility of the individual to make the right choice.


    To close I would like to ask you a question "wewhoeat". Given your stand on GDKP and the questions you brought forth. How does a GDKP differ from 25 people farming all day then putting their fruits of labor on the Auction House. Would those who want the farmed goods but don't have the money be inclined to buy gold? If so, how is normal farming for profit different than GDKP for profit?

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