Powerleveling

Why do people powerlevel? The answers are many, but this post is not about judging you or promoting any point of view.

What is Powerleveling?
Giving your character to another person or company so they can level up your character.

Powerleveling is Against Blizzard's Terms
Powerleveling is against the essence of WoW and you will be banned, if caught. However, it is not illegal.

How Blizzard Gathers Info
* Blizarrd keeps a log of your IP address anytime you login to the game. This is common practice on the internet. What is an IP and what does it mean? It tells Blizzard what city you are in. Check this out: http://www.ip2location.com/ Yep, that's for real.
* Blizzard uses "Warden" spyware to look for things on your computer. It can see all open windows and read your email list.
* Blizzard logs what IP address you use when you login to the WorldofWarcraft.com website separately from the game itself.

What Blizzard Looks For to Catch You
* Rapid changes in IPs: IP = Your City... so let's say you live in Los Angeles and you log in to WoW at 6pm Pacific time. Then you hire a powerleveling company at 7pm. Then somewhere in Thailand someone logs on at 9pm. So what did Blizzard just see? They just saw you magically teleport from Los Angeles to Thailand in 2 hours. You have shared your account and violated the Terms. You will be caught.
Sidenote: IP shifts within USA from city to cityare not as heavily monitored but THEY ARE STILL SUSPICIOUS. If you are a business traveler playing on your laptop in wait 24 hours between logins. Don't check your auctions in the airport.

* Multiple IPs on website and game: Logging into the game and logging into the www.worldofwarcraft.com website are two separate things. Each one logs your IP - separately. So let's say for a week the kids in Country X have been leveling your new toon. You are bored and decide to log in to WorldofWarcraft.com and change your account settings or post something on the forums or just cruise around and think about how you will build your talents when you are 70th. Blizzard sees you simultaneously logged in from Country X and Los Angeles at the same time. You are caught.

* Multiple Accounts with the same name on at the same time: Some people have more than one account. Let's say one account is being powerleveled and one account is not. Ok, but if you cannot share your account with anyone according to Terms, how could you possibly be logged in to both accounts and playing at the same time? Much less one account in Los Angeles and one from Country X. Not ok with Blizzard. You are caught.

* Huge Proxy Servers: Some Powerleveling companies, in an effort to protect your account, us a Proxy server in the USA/Canada It is basically a way to disguise their Country X IP by forwarding traffic through a USA computer to replace their Country X IP with a USA IP. This is nearly as suspicious as an IP from Country X because it basically looks like 258 accounts from one Powerleveling company logging into WoW from the same IP address somewhere in North America. So you went from logging in from Los Angeles to logging in from Nowheresville, USA along with 257 other accounts all playing WoW. Suspicious? Highly. You are caught.

* In Game Reports: If your toon is behaving suspiciously in any way kids from all over USA/Canada love to report you as a "bot" or "farmer". Only a fraction of these claims are investigated, but if you are investigated and a GM msgs your toon and you don't answer, non-english speaking worker in Country X could be warned. If non-english speaker doesn't answer the warning, you are caught.

* Activity Logs: If you play normally 3 or 4 hours a day, and suddenly one week your IP changes from Los Angeles to Country X and your toon starts playing 18 hours a day, this is suspicious. You will be caught.

What Will Happen
* If Blizzard catches you powerleveling red-handed and they without a doubt prove you shared your account willingly, they will ban your entire account (not just the one toon) within 3 days to 3 weeks after the sharing occured. You will not get a warning. If you appeal the customer service reps will double-check to make sure they caught you and then kindly tell you in more detail why you are banned. But there is no "second-chance". It is OVER.
* If Blizzard sees only one or two of the above "gotchas" and cannot without-a-single-doubt prove you shared your account, you will be suspended. Generally it will be straight to "final warning" and a 72 hour suspension.
* The lifetime of your account factors into this formula. For instance if you have a brand-new account you are more likely to be banned. The formula goes something like this. If more than half of the "total hours" /played for this toon are suspicious or likely powerleveling, then a ban will occur. If less than half of the "total hours" for this toon appear to be powerleveling then a suspension will occur.


Selecting a Service
* Select a powerleveling service that has a phone number in the USA or Canada. It is just one college student with a cellphone, mind you. The real action happens in Country X, but it is better than nothing.
* Do not select the cheapest service, select one that is a good price but not the absolute lowest.
* Select a company that at least "claims" to not use bots, hacks or cheats.
* Select a company that at least "claims" they will not play your toon 24/7.
* Do not select a company that offers a money back refund. There is no way a company can guarantee anything in this risky endeavor. Any company offereing guarantees is either scamming or will be out of business soon. Instead look for a "unused portion" guarantee, so if you stop the leveling or you are banned you will get a partial refund.

Tips to Not Get Caught
* If you don't already have an account, create it and do not login to it for 24 hours minimum prior to handing over your username/pass to the company to start. This is for IP-Swithing reasons. Even better is give the company a game-card number and CDKey and have them set up the account for you, enter all your information, name, etc etc etc and even create the character and name you want. This requires some trust but this whole process is risky so keep your eyes open.
* If you have an account full of 60s that you care about, do not risk it. It is absolutely ESSENTIAL that you setup a separate account for your toon. Instead do one of two things.
-- Commit to having two accounts in the future and paying two monthly fees. Set up the separate account under a fake name so both accounts can be online.
-- Set up a second account with your own name, understanding that during the leveling process you ABSOLUTELY must not log on to the WoW game or the WoW.com website with either account. This will trigger withdrawl for you addicts I know but it must be done...heh!
* Don't be a fool and for no reason should you login to the account being leveled during the process. Not the game or website.
* When the process is done, do not login for at least 24 hours. Instruct the company they are NOT to login to the account after the account hits the desired level.
* If you created a separate account under your same name, you may attempt to transfer the character to your other account when the leveling is done, but wait a week or two first before you do this just to see if you're gonna get banned.

What Can Go Wrong
* The company sucks: They bot, they are scammers, they are slow, you name it. You are screwed and have little recourse.
* You are banned midway through. If this happens, I hope the company is repuatable enough to give you a refund of the unused leveling. You are out about $20-80.
* The leveling finishes and you are banned AFTER. Even worse than banned midway though because you are probably not going to get any refund.

What Can Go Right
After a few weeks and a couple of hundred bucks you have a new level X character and you finally get to play that class/race combo you've always wanted to without seeing the same old "grind" again for 150 hours. You are still a) married b) employed c) hygenic d) getting passing grades or e) all of the above. ;-)

I am In Over My Head!
If you have already started powerleveling and want to stop, that is okay. As long as it's been less than a week Blizzard will PROBABLY forgive you. Play dumb and say you didn't know it was wrong. Ask for forgiveness. They may delete your new PL'd character and might suspend you but they probably won't ban you.

Summary
Powerleveling is risky. Don't fool yourself. However if the risks are worth it and you really MUST have that new character without the grind then I hope my hints and info help you make an informed choice.

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An Interesting Overview of Gold Farming

The economy of the virtual worlds is on the rise. Its interesting to see what opportunities this brings to 3rd world countries. Gigaom makes an interesting presentation related to China’s wow gold farmers:

How did you locate these gold farms?

Ge Jin: I have a friend who had been operating a gold farms in Shanghai since 2003. So his gold farm is the first one I visited. My friend’s gold farm closed in 2005, so did most gold farms in Shanghai. Many of them migrated to smaller cities with lower housing and human resource costs.

So I contacted other gold farms through my friend’s old network… I was lucky enough to find several gold farms that were open to me in Jinhua, Nanjin, Lishui and Hangzhou. Again I was lucky to win their trust. It’s probably because I’m from the same background as many gaming workers (many gold farm owners were former gaming workers.)

Were gold farmers afraid the Chinese government would shut them down?

GJ: The ones that allowed me to film there were not afraid because they are located in cities where local goverments are tolerant of this industry. There is no national policy regulating this new industry yet, so it’s up to the local governments to judge.

Most local governments have no motive to shut down these gold farms, as they reduce unemployment and even reduce the crime rate by reducing unemployed male youth on the street. Some gold farms refused my visit because they don’t want to pay tax and choose to operate underground, or they are worried that their labor practice is problematic…

What does WoW gold farming suggest about the future of work?

GJ: I think these gold farms indicate that the game platform has the potential to engage more people in Internet-driven economy. The gaming workers in China don’t have skills like English, software or graphic design to participate in other forms of Internet-driven work, but they can communicate and navigate in a 3D game world whose tools and routines they are familiar with… So if more social and economic activities happen in an accessible 3D game world, people who don’t have access to other culture capital but gaming knowledge will be more likely to be included in global interaction.

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Returning to the World of Warcraft

After a long absence from World of Warcraft, I stopped to pick up a new copy of expansion. Needless to say, I'm hooked. Since my absence Blizzard has reached over 8 million players and banned over 100,000 accounts due to gold farming. Although this is an astounding number of bans, by the looks of things the market is growing bigger and bigger every day - just look at the number of sites advertising gold or powerleveling.

I'm no longer trying to make real life money from World of Warcraft, but I'm interested in what others are doing to capitalize on the market.
I did happen to come across one website that is against gold farming/powerleveling - www.powerlevelingsucks.com, and it seems Blizzard has implemented quite few automated software tools that you might know about - namely the Warden. I would check it out, as it has some good info.



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Last post

As I alluded to in a previous post I've been thinking about whether the violation of Blizzard's EULA and their strong stance against selling any sort of in game items or gold is too big of a hurdle toward my goal of making real-world dollars in WoW. In short the answer is yes.

Stories like this where Blizzard pushed EBay to ban a legitimate seller of a strategy guide are not comforting to me as I hoped to eventually sell a guide myself. Furthermore account bans are being pursued more and more aggressively. While I am not in favor of automated 'gold farming' using bots or other tools, which I suspect makes up the majority of bans, I see no reason why a legitimate player shouldn't be able to sell their gold and items. Sure I'm familiar with the reasons regarding disruption of the in-game economy, creation of the rich have's and poor have not's, and other such arguments but I think the trend to virtual economies in online worlds is inevitable. In any case, Blizzard (and Vivendi?) doesn't seem to think so.

My short time playing the game and writing this blog was fun and challenging. I appreciate all of the readers who contributed to the blog and encouraged me to write on with all of your insightful and helpful comments. This blog wouldn't have been the same without you (nor would I have made as much gold!). World of Warcraft really does have a great community of players, but the powers that be over at Blizzard are clearly dead set against my original goal of making real world money from the game. Other online games like Everquest and Ultima Online are more receptive to this so perhaps I'll switch over some day, but until now I'm hanging up my hat. Good luck to all and farewell.

Playing time - 8d 10h 3m
Final gold - 423
Main character level - 41, with mount

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We have a winner!

Well, back from a long vacation and I'm happy to see a couple of great comments for the reader contest. The contest winner is Illaraphaniel with a detailed and highly effective technique in Stranglethorn Vale. Drop me a mail at virtuallyrichinc [at] gmail [dot] com to arrange for your prize payout. A reprint of the winning entry is below.

Also thanks to Belletriste for some good tips on maximizing profits with our auction alt by training him up as a 'disenchanter'.

Okay, your money making potential is limited by your profession choice first up because you've chosen a crafting profession. Very, very little of what you can craft in any profession will bring in more money than the corresponding materials would.

However, at level 40, it's not what you do that will define your ability to make money, it's where you choose to base yourself coupled with the time you log on.

If you log on during populated times you're somewhat hindered by the sheer numbers of people all chasing the same resources, so a different log on time might be a first step.

Location: southern tip of stranglethorn vale. 42-45 mobs which means they may be a little high but you're playing a hunter and they play quite a bit above their level with the right pet.

Start point is the crystalvein mine for herbs (chest spawn point just outside the mine; regularly inside the mine). Aim for goldthorn, mageroyal(looking in particular for swiftthistle) and fadeleaf. A quick AH check will tell you these sell well because they are also used in high end pvp potions and raid potions.

From the mine you head south and take the first opportunity to hit the east coast (around zanzil). Schools of fish and wreakage will make you consistent money as they are firefin and oily blackmouth. All the mobs are humanoid which means cloth drops and coins. Do not first aid the cloth. At this level they are used in alliance/horde cloth quest hand ins and will sell for more. Only first aid if you absolutely must the cloth.

As you head down the eastern coast continue to look out for fish and go all the way to the southern tip. Then ride back and head from east to west across Booty Bay to the pirate mobs on the other side. Most of these are linked in two mob pulls, plus they tend to net and run to adds. You want to get over the bridge and start heading along the west coast (again with an eye out for schools of fish and herbs) and start hitting Myrmiddons or whatever they are. These are nice kills as they drop large clams that have a small percentage to drop golden pearls. These sell for up to 40g depending on server and are required in enchants. You can then head up the path across to the mine again.

Remember to stop in at Booty Bay and sell so your bags have space as you start the circuit. Also, if you find the mobs too tough, head north a little and fish up the greater sagefish schools and cook them. They provide a health and mana replenishment plus give mana regen over time. Very nice food for higher levels.

If possible, seriously consider dropping alchemy and picking up either mining or skinning to fully realise your money making potential.

-illaraphaniel

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Reader contest - $10 prize!

I've finally hit level 40 with my Orc Hunter and I'm enjoying riding around in style on my shiny new wolf. No major breakthroughs in money making techniques but the ability to travel more quickly and safely is a major bonus. Anyway, I'll be going on vacation for the next two months, so no more posts for a while. In the meantime I'd like to send out a challenge to the readers while I'm gone.

The challenge is to come up with the optimal way for making the maximum amount of gold per hour. The rules are below:

• The method must be performable by a level 40 Orc Hunter with 100 Alchemy/Herbalism, 200 Fishing and 125 First Aid.
• No bots or other automation techniques are allowed.
• The method must be highly repeatable - i.e. no 'just grind for 3 hours and get an epic drop' sort of stuff.
• The method must be described as a comment to this post before July 20th, 2006.
• The winner will be announced during the week of July 20th, 2006 with the winner receiving a $10 cold hard cash (think of all the things you can buy for $10 - now don't everyone post all at once!).
  

Payment to the winner will be made using PayPal. Let's see what profitable new techniques this contest will reveal. Good luck.

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Market specialization

It's been a while since I gave an update on my primary and most reliable source of income: the auction house. For a few weeks there, Traveler's Backpacks were a steady source of income. At most there were only 3-5 packs up for sale at a time with most people putting them up for 22-25g each. It was a simple matter to buy out the lowball packs and resell between 28-30g. I consider myself a Traveler's Backpack specialist at this point and I'm able to identify the highs and lows of the market as well as quickly spot good deals for people selling over the trade channel. Over the past few days, the supply of the backpacks on my server has far outstripped the demand and prices have plummeted to 19g. I've decided to hold on to my inventory of 4 packs until conditions improve.

The point of all this is to become a specialist in a few items to become intimately familiar with the ebbs and flows of the market. Auctioneer is a great tool to start building some familiarity with price points of items on your server, but does not replace the human touch gained by specializing in a particular item. I've also specialized in Deviate Fish and Stonescale Eels as I've become a proficient fisherman and sell these items often. The Deviates run from 50s-75s each and the Stonescales are usually 1g each on my server.

A new way I've found to try and get my feet wet with a new item to specialize in is using the broker feature in Auctioneer. By typing '/auctioneer broker X' in the chat window (make sure auctioneer is loaded), where X is the amount of potential profit in silver, I can try to break into a new item market at an attractive price point. Essentially the tool looks at the current auctions and compares the buyout prices to historical buyout prices. If it spots a difference between a current and previous buyout price greater than the amount of silver you specified it will list the item out. I usually go with 1000 as my minimum which would be a potential profit of 10g. Again, this is a powerful tool to spot deals on items you may not be familiar with but beware - previous items recorded by Auctioneer may not have actually sold, or the market demand for a particular item may have dropped since then. The key here is to scan often, and take a risk on new items flagged by the broker feature that you are willing to potentially have to sell later at a loss. Like anything, be smart with your risks and don't invest all of your money on one long shot.

Using the techniques I've outlined in this post and throughout the blog I'm up to roughly 400g with my level 39 hunter and an alternate auction character
on a total of about 8 days of gameplay. At IGE prices 400g would sell for about $35 and with 8 days of gameplay that's $0.18/hour. Looks like I won't be quitting my day job anytime soon. As usual I'm always looking for great new ideas on making money, so post comments if you have any. I'm still hopeful that I can push up the $0.18/hour as a lot of my time up until now was spent leveling my hunter and learning parts of the game. In fact I'll be in that mode for a while until I hit level 60. Only 21 more levels to go!

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Efficiency part two: Combat

I'll give a quick warning about this post - it is heavily skewed toward Hunter play as it's the only class I have played extensively. Now that I got that out of the way, let's dive in to some of the combat efficiency techniques I've used to my advantage.

Preparing for battle:

• Before embarking on a mob hunt, make sure you are well stocked. Get into the habit of selling off or banking all your vendor trash or unused items and stocking up on supplies. Buy food and drink so you can quickly heal and refresh mana while out. Fill quivers and pouches with plenty of ammo. Of course, always have the largest quivers, pouches, and bags you can reasonably buy (or better yet find). The last thing you want to do is run out of supplies in the middle of combat and have to run back to town. It really breaks up your groove and slows you down.

Buff discipline:

• Constantly refresh your buffs, whether they are potions, spells, item charges, or whatever. Even when fighting weaker opponents use all your buffs because you'll be able to take them down faster. Obvious stuff, but its easy to lose track and forget.

Takedown timing:

• This one is especially for Hunters - the most efficient way to takedown an opponent I've found so far. First, I send in my pet, cast hunter's mark, and wait until he is right about at the enemy. At that point I'll fire off either a serpent sting (for fast takedown) or scorpid sting (for keeping the damage to my pet low). The idea is that the arrow hits the target just after the pet arrives and 'growls' the target. That way the enemy focuses on your pet and gets slammed with a spell an instant later. When the enemy is very low on health, I do two things depending on if it will run away or fight to the death. If the target is a runner, hit them with a concussion shot when they are about 10% to avoid chasing them down for the final blow. If they won't run then make the final one or two hits hand-to-hand. This saves time as you need to run up to the monster to loot anyway (remember to shift right-click to auto loot). Additionally, it will help level up your hand-to-hand weapon skills along with your ranged skills.

Macros:

• Macros are helpful to simplify some tasks, I especially like one I made to combine the hunters mark and pet attack in to one simple action. Go to http://ui.worldofwar.net/ for a nice collection of macros and other user interface mods to make your combat more efficient. I haven't played around with macros too much, but they aren't too powerful by design as the ability to cast a series of spells with different timing falls into the 'bot' definition, something seriously frowned upon by Blizzard.
  

As always, I welcome any fresh ideas in the comments - especially combat efficiency techniques of other classes.

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Efficiency part one: Power leveling

Like in any good business, efficiency is a key principle in maximizing profits and return on investment. I'd like to share some of the little things that I use to be more efficient that when applied over and over will help increase your profits in the game. Part one will focus on power leveling efficiency. In future posts I will discuss combat and profession efficiency.

Power leveling:

• Quests are often great for gaining quick experience. Pick up all the quests you can in an area at your level range. Often times you are simply required to kill some number of beasts or grab some item off of a mob (which is like a free bonus to grinding). The trick here is to get all of the quests and mark the locations as notes on your mini-map. Use the Cosmos UI for note marking and Thottbot to get quest locations. Once they are all marked, plan a path that will enable you to do a circuit of quests and come back to the town (or towns) where you got them all. The idea here is that repeatedly getting one quest and returning is slow and inefficient, it's better to run from one to another and cash them all in.
  
• Grinding purely for experience purposes should be done with tightly packed mobs. Humanoid mobs are great for going from one to another as they tend to be the most closely packed. Just be careful not to get overwhelmed and make sure you are always in an area that matches your level range to maximize leveling speed.
• Use the rest system to your advantage. As long as you are not playing Warcraft 24x7 you can gain 2x the normal experience after returning to the game after 8 hours. See this article for more details - the game manual also discusses this subject. The key indicator that you are gaining bonus experience is that your experience bar will be blue. My strategy here is to do all of my questing and grinding when the bar is blue and if I still have time to play, switch over to profession leveling or auction house trading when the bar goes back to purple. If I did the reverse I would not be utilizing the rest system to the maximum efficiency each day. The thing to remember is this: if planning on logging off for 8+ hours, do it at an Inn and make sure your experience bar is purple.
  

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Fishing and herbalism update

As I suspected based on some auction scans the Deviate fish are selling well on my server. So far I've sold 3x 20 stacks for a total of 14g. I ran a few tests at our fishin' hole in Barrens (see previous post) and I can pull up 20 Deviates every 30 minutes. I didn't target Deviate schools (they look like little whirlpools) during the test which would increase the yield significantly. That's roughly 9g per hour. Pretty amazing considering a level 15 armed with nothing more than a rickety 20 copper fishing pole could pull down that kind of cash. I wish I knew about this lucrative method earlier! In any case, this is the most reliable (and boring) gold making method I've seen so far.

The herbalism profession is ramping up slowly. It takes a lot of running around gathering herbs to boost the skill. I'm going to try running an herbalism 'circuit' in the Barrens over the next couple of days to ramp my ability. The idea is to use the herb resource map at WorldOfWar.net and run around a big enough circle so that the herbs will already respawn by the time I hit the start. Rinse and repeat. We'll see how well it works.

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Gone Fishin'

Based on some of our reader feedback and my personal observations I'm shifting my professions to more profitable ones. I had leveled up skinning to 225 and leatherworking to 150, but neither of those professions were giving me good returns on my time. Granted, some very high level skins and the top notch leather products sell well (think Dragonscale and Dragonscale armor) at the auction house, but I was just not able to consistently sell stacks of leather and hides for good prices with a near artisan level of skinning. On top of that the few decent leatherworking items I could occasionally sell like Toughened Leather Gloves had expensive reagents which cut into my profits. Time to move on and explore new professions.

One of our readers suggested herbalism and alchemy which, based on some initial auction house scanning, seem to be more profitable at lower levels. Fishing was also mentioned as a good money maker, and it won't even take up a main profession slot! Little did I know that even a secondary profession like fishing could be more profitable than both skinning and leatherworking with less effort and cost.

In Orgrimmar I picked up beginner fishing at the trainer, bought a cheap pole, and started casting away at a murky pond in the Valley of Honor. After about an hour of fishing, using shiny baubles from the supplier near the pool, I was up to a skill of 50. This is a profoundly boring profession - make sure you have something to read or do while fishing. I would just cast and then wait to hear the splash when the fish bit the hook and clicked. I could do this mundane and repetitive task without even looking at the screen for most of the time. I then trained up on apprentice fishing and headed over to the Barrens where I'd heard there were some good fishing holes.

Based on some auction scans, raw Deviate Fish were going for 4g per stack of 20. Wow! Considering you can find Deviates in the pools outside of Wailing Caverns in a low level area like the Barrens this profession definitely seems promising. I fished the pools for a couple of hours, pulled up 45 Deviates amongst other fish, and ramped my fishing skill up to 125. Just for kicks I ate one of the Deviates and it shrunk me down to half size. Apparently they can be cooked into Savory Deviate Delight which can turn you into a pirate, ninja, and other random effects. Guess this is fun for players and they'll pay a premium for it.

In order to get expert fishing, I had to go over to Booty Bay and buy a book entitled "Expert Fishing - The Bass and You" from the fishing supplier there named Old Man Heming. It requires 125 skill in fishing to use. After this I spent a few more hours fishing in Booty Bay to ramp my skill a bit more. I mailed my Deviates and other reagent-type fish over to my alternate character for auctioning, I'm excited to see how quickly I can sell these little morsels.

I'll dive more into herbalism and alchemy in a later post and give an update on how the fish are selling.

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Is selling gold legal?

The legality of our mission to make real-world cash from selling gold and items in World of Warcraft is something that has been weighing on my mind for some time now. Are all of our efforts seen as damaging to the game and illegal according to Blizzard's EULA? Are we subject to termination of our character and with it all the hard-earned gold we've accumulated? Even worse, can our CD-key be banned rendering our game useless? Let's examine both sides of the issue so I can come to some sort of personal decision.

Section 8 of Blizzard's World of Warcraft EULA states the following:

Remember, at the outset of these Terms of Use, where we discussed how you were "licensed" the right to use World of Warcraft, and that your license was "limited"? Well, here is one of the more important areas where these license limitations come into effect. Note that Blizzard Entertainment either owns, or has exclusively licensed, all of the content which appears in World of Warcraft. Therefore, no one has the right to "sell" Blizzard Entertainment's content, except Blizzard Entertainment! So Blizzard Entertainment does not recognize any property claims outside of World of Warcraft or the purported sale, gift or trade in the "real world" of anything related to World of Warcraft. Accordingly, you may not sell items for "real" money or exchange items outside of World of Warcraft.

That seems pretty straightforward to me, right there in black and white "you may not sell items for 'real' money or exchange items outside of World of Warcraft." In Blizzard's eyes we are clearly violating their license agreement and subject to immediate account termination for doing what we eventually plan to do. Maybe that's all that counts as they are the omniscient and all powerful judge, jury, and executioner in our online world. Digging a bit further on their site reveals yet another strong anti-selling decree simply titled, "Selling World of Warcraft In-Game Content for Real Money." Can't get any plainer than that. I wouldn't be too surprised if this blog started to really take off I get a nasty cease and desist letter from Vivendi's (Blizzard's parent company) legal department. Finally, a more recent news item from Blizzard touts the suspension of 10,000+ accounts and banning of 5,000+ for violating license agreements and reiterating their aggressive stance toward the use of bots and selling items and gold:

World of Warcraft Accounts Closed - Ordinn on 4/12/06

In keeping with Blizzard's aggressive stance against cheating in World of Warcraft, we have since patch 1.10 banned over 5,400 accounts and suspended 10,700 more for participating in activities that violate the game's Terms of Use, including using third-party programs to farm gold and items. Such actions can severely impact the economy of a realm and the overall game enjoyment for all players.

We will continue to aggressively monitor all World of Warcraft realms in order to protect the service and its players from the harmful effects of cheating. Please note that selling World of Warcraft content, such as gold, items, and characters, can result in a permanent ban of the involved accounts from World of Warcraft.

Many account closures come as the direct result of tips reported to our GMs in game or emailed to hacks@blizzard.com by legitimate World of Warcraft players. If you suspect that a World of Warcraft player is using an illegal third-party program to farm gold or items, or is otherwise violating our Terms of Use, please report the suspected infraction via one of the means listed above. All reports will be investigated, and those that prove false will not result in corrective action.

Thank you for your continued support, and good luck with your adventures in Azeroth!

-Blizzard Entertainment

Dissecting this post yields some interesting nuances as it suggests accounts were definitely banned for using bots (automated programs to play WOW unattended) and bans "can" result from selling gold and items. Why not use the word "will" to make the statement stronger? My suspicion is that detecting in-game bot behavior is much easier for Blizzard to do than find out if an out of game deal to transfer 500 gold was with a friend or gold selling service. In any case, I'm sure if there was a way to detect gold selling transactions they would ban accounts on both sides of the transaction without hesitation.

Blizzard licensing agreements aside, there are a huge number of very professional looking internet sites eager to sell people gold on any server, any time. A quick Google search for "wow gold" yields hundreds, perhaps thousands, of unique sites willing to sell anyone with a valid credit-card any amount of gold they want. Some of the biggest players in the market like IGE run slick web sites with 24 hour instant delivery. In fact, they make it pretty simple to sell your gold to them. Why doesn't Blizzard go after these sites that are blatantly violating their EULA? Is the effort to find out which characters these companies use just too tedious? Besides, if these companies make enough money a few account bans are nothing - they'll just buy new copies of the game and be quickly up and running again. The only way Blizzard could shut them down would be to ban accounts faster than they could make up the cost for a new game.

Aside from the big operators, there are thousands of independents selling on EBay making it almost impossible to shut down the whole market. The demand to buy real-world items is not going away and where there is demand someone will always be ready to satisfy it. Maybe Blizzard will accept that the secondary online gaming market estimated at $880 million a year is inevitable and try to tap into it rather than suppress it. That's exactly what Sony did with their Station Exchange site - make the secondary market safe and legal to satisfy the demand for online currency and items.

Only time will tell whether the market for selling World of Warcraft gold and items will remain a tolerated underground, get killed off, or go legal. I think Blizzard should capitalize on an opportunity to make more money from legitimate trades while cracking down on farmers using automated bots. That will serve the purpose of not ruining the in-game economics and satisfying the demand for purchasing gold and items. Not to mention provide another revenue stream for great company making an excellent product. For now I have to think about where I stand.

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Hunt for the next wool cloth

Aside from all of the auctioning, I've still been spending time playing with our level 31 Hunter. I'm looking for the next great way to make money outside of trading. My leatherworking skill is up in the mid-100s, but still not high enough to make elite armor to sell. Skinning is up to the mid-200s and is a great feeder for our leatherworking, but not much of a money maker on its own. Doing instances with a party is hit and miss depending on how you roll for the top quality items. Anyhow, many of the rare items dropped in instances bind to you when picked up so they are unsellable. Wool cloth is still the top sellable item we can get from killing mobs which seems kind of crazy as its been that way for 19 levels now!

In an effort to try and break the cycle, I started to explore the more remote pockets of Ashenvale. Perhaps I could find some higher level trade goods to replace the lucrative wool cloth hauls. I poked around Demon Fall Canyon - the kills were yielding good experience, but still no high level trade items aside from some silk cloth drops. I swung north the Xavian/Forest Song area and trashed some Satyr's, but again nothing useful. I then embarked north-east to the boundary of Bough Shadow when I saw some interesting Dragonkin creatures. They were clearly way over my level as I could not even identify their level - only ?? showed up in their thumbnail. Maybe these guys would drop some Dragonscale used in the highest level leatherworking which sells for top price in the auction house. My curiosity got the best of me and I meandered a little too close to them and was decimated in one swing. So much for that. The hunt continues...

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High turnover items?

We've been spending a considerable amount of time wheeling and dealing in the auction house lately. We're starting to get a little taste of which items strike that nice balance of high profits and turnover. We have a couple of item flipping case studies below and we're very interested to hear any tips our readers might have as well.



Case 1: Traveler's Backpack

A callout for 3 packs for 30g went out over the trade channel. We clicked on the item and our Auctioneer scans showed recent buyouts at 13g-15g. We jumped on the offer and within a couple of minutes were the proud owners of 3 Traveler's Backpacks. The seller was likely a farmer from some asian country as he tried to speak to us in Mandarin. Guess he was looking to cash in for his quota. Anyway, we relisted the packs at the auction house for 24h at 12g starting bid and 15g buyout. One sold for the 15g, and the other two for 13g each for a total profit of 11g. Pretty sweet for a 5 minute job. We've had repeated success with flipping these packs; we can only assume they're usable by all classes and increased inventory space cuts down on annoying town runs.




Case 2: Doombringer:

Again, as we were posting items and scanning the auction house, an offer to sell the Doombringer went out on the trade channel. The seller was asking 35g and we countered with 29g. Sold. The Auctioneer data showed buyouts as high as 50g and the average floating around 40g. Seemed like a good flip opportunity, but it definately did not turn out that way. After 2 24h auctions we had still not sold the thing. With such a high price, the auction deposits were killing our profits knocking off about 4g each time - a lesson we unfortunately learned the hard way after the deposit price dawned on us when about to list it for the third time! We then resorted to hawking it over the trade channel, but after several sessions it became clear that this was not a hot item on our server. People were simply not willing to pay the price we needed to make a profit off this thing. Perhaps a sword is less usable by the general population, reducing the market? In any case, the shiny relic is still collecting dust in our pack. Perhaps we can sell it sometime later, but its nowhere near as flippable as the packs.

Anyone have some good advice on items to flip?

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Auctioneering 2.0

Thanks to a great tip by one of our readers, we've taken our auctioning to the next level. The Allakhazam site is a decent general reference for prices averaged across all servers in the Warcraft universe. However, as pointed out by our reader, prices can vary by server age and population. The Auctioneer addon provides the player with an extremely powerful tool. Essentially, the tool enables us to scan the auction house whenever we log in and build up a database of prices in which to gauge the true value of items on our server. Read more features at the Auctioneer site.

Our results so far have been impressive. A decent portion of the population either doesn't care to use the tool, prefers to spend their time playing rather than trading, or buys their gold from websites or independent operators like us (or like we hope to be one day). The real hardcore farmer shops overseas also typically work on a quota system, so they'll be more likely to move items quickly rather than maximize their profits. The result is a major advantage in spotting deals and pricing goods correctly. We've made 30g profit alone on only a couple of transactions by buying from anxious sellers looking to cash out their high quality items quickly. We've yet to try, but putting this technique together with the timing strategies we outlined in an earlier post should amplify the results even further. Seems like trading may be even more profitable than building up a character and farming, but the jury's still out on that one.

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Savvy auctioneering

I got our first blue (rare) item today and it was quite exhilarating. I was in Thousand Needles taking down some water elementals and much to my surprise one dropped a mace called the Looming Gavel. I hurriedly mailed it to our auctioneer character in Orgrimmar. After a few hours I logged into the auction account and received the item. In my excitement I began hawking it on the trade channel (shift-left click the item when typing a message in the trade channel). I started asking for 7g, but no one was biting. I quickly modified my call to "[Looming Gavel] 7g or best offer". I got a couple of bites at 5g, and I negotiated up to 6g. Not bad I thought. As an afterthought, I logged into wow.allakhazam.com to check on the latest auctioning process for the Looming Gavel. Oops. Looks like in my excitement I had sold it way low. Average price was 15g at the auction house! I felt like a total newbie, and I actually went against some key lessons we had already learned, but clearly not well enough. Here's the summary:

1. If you don't know the price on an item, look it up at wow.allakhazam.com. Average, median, high, and low prices over a couple weeks are listed. No need to ever sell yourself short - especially on rare or better items.
2. Patience. If your item doesn't sell right away for the top price, wait it out. Re-list if you have to, it will be worth it. Also remember to list at peak weekend times.
   

Update: Got some good advice from one of our readers, check the comments. Looks like we have more to learn. We'll post a follow up after we try out the Auctioneer add-on as suggested.

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Growing pains

While attempting to slim our overflowing quest log we found ourselves in Ashenvale. This Alliance area has been quite a challenge to us. We have found ourselves a new hunting ground where we have some difficulty killing the monsters and quickly leveling up seems more promising. As our levels increase we realize we need to stay in an area where taking down monsters is difficult. Even though it might be faster and easier to kill lower level monsters they don't give good experience. When fighting higher level beasts you do get injured more often and even die, however you can gain triple the experience which optimizes leveling speeds. As soon as you can take on two or more monsters without worry it's a definite sign you have outgrown your area and need to move on. Another sign is when you receive low experience for killing beasts or none at all. The small monster icon in the upper left corner of the screen will show you the level of the monster in a certain color. Grey means they give no experience, green some, yellow good, orange great, and red is huge (if you can manage to take them down, which isn't likely).

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Auction timing

We're quickly learning that what day and when you put items up for sale at the auction house is almost important as what you put up. To really amp up your profits, weekends are the best time. Obviously more people are on during the weekend, and those that do only log in on the weekend don't want to waste their game time gathering up items they need.

That's where we come in. First of all, like we noted before, always put the auction up for 24 hours and make the buyout price 3x-5x the initial bid. This encourages the impatient (who wants to wait 24h to win some wool cloth?!) and the rich ('aww, I can spend 3 gold on a 20 stack of wool cloth' - and yes, we are selling many that high). Not all times on the weekend are optimal, although anytime on the weekend is better than early in the week. The best time we've found so far is to put your items up for sale late afternoon on Friday. That way when Friday night's rush comes in your wares are available, but the auction won't end until late afternoon Saturday. By late night Friday, the auction house is packed with items that the Friday night players want to sell. Wait to post your wares again mid-morning Saturday (again for 24h long) to hit the afternoon and night crowd. Finally, Sunday morning is good as you'll want all day Sunday to ensure your stuff sells as most people don't play too late Sunday night.

We've been able to pull down sick 3g per 20 wool cloth this way, as well as get a premium price from 3g-5g for upper teen level quality weapons and armor. We're up to 60 gold and have hit level 25 with our hunter. Things are going pretty well and we can't wait to start exploring the great money making methods in the higher levels.

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Party etiquette

Today I picked up our first dungeon journey. The typical chatter of "LFG WC" (looking for group, Wailing Caverns) was crackling over the Barren's channels. I decided to give it a try as I figured there would be some decent items to pawn from the dungeon. I noted my interest on the group channel. My first attempt to form a group was with a fellow named Powderedhulk. He invited me to his group; I accepted and began the trek over to rendezvous with him in front of Wailing Caverns. Other invites quickly came up and I responded to each inviting them to join up with Powderedhulk's group. Several other players responded saying that Powderedhulk was a 'ninja looter'. I had no idea what that meant, but it proved to foreshadow an interesting event in my cavern adventure. I eventually joined up with another band of players as no one seemed to be joining the Powderedhulk group.

We charged into the dungeon and hit the first few enemies. Boy, I was glad to have 5 companions on this trip as all the beasts in the caverns were extremely tough to bring down. Although they were of comparable levels to the simple beasts outside the cavern, they were all elite and could soak up a huge amount of damage. When our enemies would drop quality items (item name highlighted in green) a small box would appear. I could choose either 'need' or 'greed'. We had agreed before joining our group that we would only choose 'need' for items that we really needed. The 'need' requests automatically won over the 'greed' requests. If there were more than one 'need' request, the highest random roll won. Most of the time I chose 'greed', as did the rest of the party.

The drops were good, and the experience was fantastic. Everything was clicking, that is until we came upon a chest deep in the caverns. Slayman (our party's warrior) called out, "Chest." We had a few more beasts to fight off near the back of our group, so I didn't pay too much attention at the time. As a couple of us finished off our Shambling beast, everyone else was standing around the chest healing up, eating food and the like. No one was moving to open the chest. With a pang of greed I ran up to the chest and popped it open. Cha-ching. A quality sword, magic wand, 8 slot bag, mail armor, and a handful of other items were inside.

"What are you doing?" Slayman asked angrily.

"I don't need the sword," I responded.

"That wasn't your chest - it's Maris'," he replied. "You are supposed to roll," someone else added.

Roll? I assumed when I opened the chest the little box for quality items would pop up and we would choose like before. Wrong. I scrolled up in my message box and it looked like everyone had 'rolled' a number between 1-100. Now I felt the pressure. Would they turn on me, leave me in the dungeon to rot? Now I guess I knew what 'ninja looting' meant and I had done it to my own fellow party by accident.

"Ok, sorry I'll give everything to Maris," I pleaded. "How do you roll anyway?"

"Man, just type /roll and the guy with the highest roll gets the chest - its only fair," Maris said.

"Sorry, here is all the stuff."

Only I didn't give Maris everything. Oh sure, I did give him the shiny sword and armor but I greedily kept the 8 slot bag to myself. I had successfully appeased the party by giving back 'all' the chest items, but I also knew they would never know that there was one thing I did not give back. I had a pang of guilt and started to wonder - in a game where I can hide behind a virtual character and do as I please with no repercussions, does one's true nature come out? I knew no one would ever know I had kept the bag and I had done enough to keep the party from cutting me out. However, I did lie and break the honor of the party. Oh sure, some of the members chose 'need' one too many times on the best items, but I still felt bad. We finished off the last few beasts, left the cavern, and went our separate ways likely to never meet up or speak again. If one of those guys had been my friend or coworker in real life, would I have done the same? Is the knowledge that we have to interact with people daily what keeps us honest and willing to respect each other? Does total anonymity in an online game bring out the worst of human nature? Interesting...

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For the Horde!

I found out players from opposing sides can wander in enemy territory first hand today. Comedy and hostility ensued.

Encounter one:

So, as I made my way down the Southern Gold road getting ready to complete a quest, I spot what I thought were two players on their mounts. I take a second look and realize that they aren't Orcs or Taurens, but players from the Alliance! Instinctively I right click to annihilate these enemies but it says they're friendly. Friendly? Confused, I decide to ignore them and go on with my grinding. I get back to killing and as I am about to finish the Thunder Lizard I was fighting, a roaring tiger flashes on the screen. I finish off the Lizard and boggle at this creature and it's female Elf master standing in front of me.

"What are you doing?" I type.

"Fugarah," comes the response.

"Why are you two here?" I ask.

"Bugah sa amiah," (or some such nonsense) responds the Alliance member.

At first I thought the elf was kidding but I then realize the language barrier between us. Maybe I can learn to speak elvish if I keep talking to this person. It goes on...

"So you don't speak Orkish?"

"Bugah abagi bugah"

I decide the only universal communication we have is the emote actions.

I roar furiously.

The Elf's mount roars back.

I laugh hysterically.

She laughs back, and then began to weep.

I clicked on the elf player then typed /flirt just to see what she would do. She responded by flirting with our raptor. It was quite comical.

After this I decided I had, had enough laughs with the elves and I decided to move on.

Encounter two:

I often try and explore distant lands just to see how strong the monsters are and what kinds of items they drop. I was making my way towards Blackthorn Ridge, taking my time, enjoying the scenery when a player (Alliance) runs past me and slaps me straight accross the face! Baffled, I quickly switch to Aspect of the Cheeta (which makes Hunters run at a faster speed) and chase after this hooligan. The audacity. I had no idea how to slap him back, so I just run past him as if challenging him to a race. He falls back but not for long as I see he has the skill to morph into a wolf. He accumulates enough speed to easily pass me. No! I can't let him win and I managed to cut him off forcing him into the mountain. I had won. Juvinile? Definately. However, it was well worth the sweet revenge.

Encounter three:

This encounter was swift, violent, and was finished within seconds.

I was making my way back from my hourly visit to camp Taurajo to sell vendor trash when I spot two Elves on their mounts. Them again? I went to see what they were up to, maybe we can converse through our emotes again. I run up to the mounts to greet them. Their mounts both instantaneously disappear and two Elves stood before me. What is going on? My raptor immediately begins to attack. But...I thought they were friendly - oops these are different Elves. Were they players? The whole situation was still processing, and while I was trying to understand what was going on my Raptor falls over and dies. So fast?! I right click on the Elves and make my last defensive stand. Level 25 their profiles read - well I'm doomed. One level 22 Hunter against two level 25 Elves who not only have cornered me without the protection of my pet, but I'm not sure they were even players. I was slaughtered moments after.

All in a few hours...

-Anaiya

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