Textures.com

Just a quick FYI for mappers... textures.com has some pretty good textures in the PBR section. You can download up to 15 1024x1024 textures per day for free too.

I'm tempted to pay for higher res versions of a few of them.

https://www.textures.com/browse/pbr-materials/114558

Many of the non PBR diffuse textures work quite well after using a tool like ShaderMap4 or Materialize to generate proper PBR textures from them.

What I've been up to lately

I finally got completely fed up with WoW and quit playing near the end of Cataclysm. There were many reasons why I finally quit WoW. Suffice to say it was something that had been building up for a long time already, then along came the news about Kung Fu Pandas to put the final nail in the coffin.

I've been playing Eve Online casually for about 8 months now. One of the things I like best about Eve is it's completely different from WoW in just about every way.

The player base seems to be quite a bit more mature too though that might be because there is no global chat channel providing a convenient soapbox for the worst sociopaths. Or maybe it's because block (Eve's equivalent to /ignore) has NO LIMIT on the number of players you can block. I love that feature and use it quite liberally!

Another point in Eve's favor is it's very cheap to play. In fact if you're any good at making money in games you can play Eve for free. You don't have to buy Eve Oline, the client is a free download and expansions are free too. All there is is a one time $5.00 activation fee and $15.00 for 30 days of game time (less if you purchase multiple months at once).

Then there are PLEX which can be purchased with real money from CCP's website or bought from other players with ISK (Eve's in-game currency) off the market in game. Any PLEX you have can be sold on the in game market for ISK or used to add 30 days time to your account. If you make enough ISK to buy PLEX you can pay for your accounts without spending any real money. I currently have 4 Eve accounts, over 50 billion ISK and easily make more than enough ISK to purchase PLEX for all the accounts every month with plenty left over to keep growing my wallet bigger.

For those who might be interested in trying Eve Online there are 2 types of free trial accounts, 14 day trials and 21 day trials. 14 day trials are available to anyone from CCP's website. 21 day trials are "Buddy" invites from existing players.

Here's a link to a free Eve Online 21 day trial from me via Eve's "buddy program". The link is safe, it leads to a secure "buddy invite" page on CCP's official Eve Online website.

Feel free to give me ( Moxnix Induli ) a shout in Eve Online if you start playing after reading this.

I'm starting a new Eve Online blog which can be found at Merchant Monarchy

Sheep and Lemmings - Don't be one!

Sheep are herd animals and herd animals follow the leader. Lemmings will follow the leader right off a cliff! Many auction players behave like sheep and lemmings.

Sheep
Sheep like to play it safe. They don't come up with ideas of their own. They just follow someone else's lead, whether it be the lead of a rich player on the server, some blog author's lead or even just following to the letter some guide full of old, outdated ideas and information. Sheep come in two types, the ones that follow the  lead of other players (rich ones mostly) on the server and the ones that dive right into whatever the latest post on their favorite blog says will make them "lots of gold" without knowing a thing about their server's specifics in that market. They can't understand why it never seems as profitable as promised for them. Tip: it doesn't work as well because a) your server isn't the blogger's server, conditions may be very different and b) whenever a popular blog posts about something a whole lot of new people dive into it headfirst.

Lemmings
It might take a while but sheep will usually notice (eventually!) if they're losing gold and will leave unprofitable or low profit markets. Lemmings on the other hand don't even seem to realize when they're losing a lot of gold. They'll just keep on going right over the cliff. You can take advantage of lemmings simply by posting under your cost.They'll keep undercutting and you can buy them out.

Moral of the story
Sheep will continue bleating the "buy low, sell high" mantra, droning on about how "1c undercuts keep prices high" while ridiculing more advanced strategies and talking about hitting the gold cap (years behind) as if that proves their methods are superior. They don't even realize market leaders who don't follow the herd have capped entire accounts in less time than they needed to cap just once.

If after playing the auction for a while you still can't spot the sheep and lemmings then you probably are one. Stop following the herd, lead instead of following and make more gold!

Cataclysm Ore Processing

Ore is one of the most basic bulk materials and can be processed in many different ways. Most auction players probably already know about the shuffle but there's more to ore processing than just the shuffle.

I'm going to limit myself to talking about processing cataclysm ores today though similar methods apply to most other ore types too. I'll further limit myself to talking only about *bulk processing methods that can help us use up mountains of ore. Pre-expansion blues have set in pretty much everywhere now so most servers should have mountains of cheap ore available.

This is the time to be buying and stocking up on things you'll sell to leveling / skilling up characters during the  next expansion. If your liquid gold keeps going down now but your stock keeps going up, don't panic. It sounds like you're doing it right to make a very lot of gold in the expansion!

Cataclysm Ore Types


Elementium
- prospects into uncommon and rare gems.
- produces a rough average of about 4.5 uncommon gems per stack and 1.5 rare gems per stack
- smelts into Elementium Bars

Obsidium
- prospects into uncommon and rare gems
- produces a rough average of about 6 uncommon gems per stack and 1 rare gem every 3-4 stacks
- smelts into Obsidium Bars

Pyrite
- prospects into volatile earth, uncommon and rare gems
- produces a rough average of about 4 uncommon and 3-4 rare gems per stack. Not sure about the earth.
- smelts into Pyrium Bars

Useful professions for ore processing

Jewelcrafting
- prospecting
- cutting gems
- crafting jewelry to disenchant
- great synergy with enchanting

Enchanting
- disenchanting
- crafting scrolls
- terrific synergy with other crafting professions, especially jewelcrafting and smithing

Alchemy
- gem transmutes
- great synergy with JC

Blacksmithing
- crafting armor to disenchant
- crafting belt buckles to sell
- great synergy with enchanting

Mining

- Smelting bars

- good synergy with smithing

The Shuffle


The shuffle (aka Elementium Shuffle or Obsidian Shuffle) in it's simplest form only requires Jewelcrafting. You prospect ore into gems, cut some gems and sell gems in both cut and raw uncut form.

Alchemy and Enchanting are commonly used to add value and often considered part of the shuffle.

You can make jewelry from uncommon gems to disenchant for enchanting materials. Either sell the mats for a quick profit or take it a step further, make scrolls with them and sell the scrolls, hopefully adding even more value.

- Carnelian, nightstone, hessonite, jasper and alicite are all good for this.
- Carnelian are often reserved for inferno ruby transmutes, but they DE into far more Celestial Essence than anything else (rough average of about 2.5 GREATER essences per spike).
- Jasper usually have the largest profit margin but produce a lot more dust than essences.
- Nightstone and Hessonite share the same DE table. They are usually the most expensive uncommon gems to buy (besides carnelian) but they also disenchant into more Celestial Essence than anything else (again besides Carnelian). This usually means a significantly larger total profit (not to be confused with profit margin) than Jasper or Alicite.
- Alicite are usually the cheapest useful gem to buy and have the same DE table as Jasper but you need 2 of them to make 1 pendant with. If you can buy 2 Alicite for less than half the price of 1 Jasper it's more profitable making jewelry with Alicite than with Jasper.
- Zephyrite is completely useless for the purpose of making jewelry to disenchant and usually sells for around vendor price.

At times it may also be profitable to craft jewelry that disenchants into heavenly shards from rare gems and volatiles. In my experience to date the only one that's ever been profitable for me is Viscious Amberjewel Band (4 amberjewel, 8 volatile water, 1 setting) though if gem and volatile prices continue dropping other such crafts could become profitable too. In particular if volatile air ever drops to around 5g Vicious Sapphire Ring (4 ocean sapphire, 8 volatile air, 1 setting) should be profitable DE fodder too.

With alchemy you can transmute uncommon gems into rare gems, mainly inferno rubies and shadowspirit diamonds (other gem transmutes may be profitable too but often are not). Shadowspirit Diamonds are particularly good for using up very large numbers of uncommon gems very quickly and in equal numbers (3 of each color per transmute produces 2 diamonds).

Beyond the Shuffle

That covers what most auction players do with their ore now and what's generally considered to constitute the "full" shuffle, but there are still a few more things we can do with bulk ore..

First of all there's smelting bars, which often sell for more than the ore goes for though smelting bars by itself isn't enough to make having a miner really useful. Of course you can take it a step further, add some more materials and smelt Hardened Obsidium or have alchemists transmute Truegold for you, but that's not what you really want smelting for either. What you really want smelting for is to smelt vast quantities of bars on demand so your blacksmith can use them to make huge numbers of things to disenchant.

With your blacksmith you make Stormforged Shoulders (or Stormforged Legs, both use the same materials) which disenchant into 1 heavenly shard. These take 2 folded obsidium, and 8 Elementium bars to make. If elementium and obsidium are both going for 40g a stack, your cost is 4g per bar and 8g per folded for a total cost of 48g per shard. If shards are usually 75g or more on the auction, you can make a pretty decent profit selling them in bulk at 70g each. If you sell scrolls it's always nice to be able to produce your own shards on demand and at a reasonable cost.

Then there are Ebonsteel Belt Buckles. It takes 4 Pyrium Bars, 4 Elementium Bars and 4 Volatile Earth to make one buckle. If both ores are going for 40g a stack, that's 2g per ore, 4g per bar and earth is probably under 1g each everywhere now for a total cost of 36g per buckle. If you can sell them for 72g each that's 100% profit, not too shabby. Another good way to make a sizable mountain of ore disappear.

Finally there are Carnelian Spikes, which take 3 carnelian to make. Many shufflers get so caught up in the cutthroat inferno ruby market they forget all about doing anything else with carnelian. I often see competitors selling inferno rubies for 50-60g each when carnelian are going for 25-30g and GCE are over 100g... Go figure! Of course when questioned they always insist they're making big bank on rubies because they get their ore cheap/free.

Another thing that's particularly nice about smelting, producing belt buckles and shadowspirit diamonds is you don't have to sit there repeatedly clicking a button. You can start up a long crafting queue and walk away from the computer until it's done. You don't have to disenchant them later either and they even stack, saving you plenty of bank / bag / mail space!

There are of course even more things we can do with ore such as using Engineering and Blacksmithing to craft items for sale but I don't consider that bulk processing and my purpose today was to talk about bulk ore processing.

Third Antonidas Monthly Mogging Contest

Parabola - 2 Honorable Mentions in Best Overall and Most Original

The 3rd Antonidas monthly mogging contest was held today. Since my usual co-sponsors/judges couldn't make it today I had to do it all alone. As a result I cut down on the number of categories this time and ran the whole thing in about half an hour.

And the winners...


Overall Best Dressed
Darkathena - 1st place for 25,000 gold
Fleurjolie - 2nd place for 15,000 gold
Xcraft - 3rd place 10,000 gold

Parabola - Honorable Mention 5,000 gold

Cheesecake
Eowin - 1st place tie 10,000 gold
Lustforblood - 1st place tie 10,000 gold
Lustforbust- 1st place tie 10,000 gold

Wuh - Honorable Mention 5,000 gold
Mindkontrol - Honorable Mention 5,000 gold

Most Original
Gratram - 10,000 gold

Parabola - Honorable Mention 5,000 gold

Darkathena

Fleurjolie

Lustforbust

Lustforblood

Wuh

Gratram

March Mogging Contest Results

The second Antonidas monthly mogging contest was held yesterday with a total of 205,000 gold in prizes handed out.

Ister - 1st place Overall Best of Show 

We will continue holding this contest on the last Sunday of every month. Categories and rules may change or be tweaked from time to time but the contest will be a regular thing. Check the Mogging Contest Page for the latest, most up to date details on the next contest.

This months sponsors were myself (Moxnixx), Mybankchyck, Jackiel and Notken. Winners and prizes for the March contest follow.

Overall Best Dressed:
1st- Ister 25,000 gold
2nd- Crythias 15,000 gold
3rd- Darkathena 10,000 gold
Farquel- Honorable Mention 5,000 gold
Bob- Honorable Mention 5,000 gold

Best Impersonation:
Squeakster 10,000 gold

Most Outrageous:
Gratram 10,000 gold
Farquel- Honorable Mention 5,000 gold

Cheesecake:
Tempt 10,000 gold
Imeatshieldl- Honorable Mention 5,000 gold






Best Dressed Bank Alt:
Myththsonian 10,000 gold

Most Original:
Ðoom 10,000 gold

Best Classic Set:
Gulvak 10,000 gold
Bob- Honorable Mention 5,000 gold

Best Use Of Plate:
Primarycrit 10,000 gold
Slateface- Honorable Mention 5,000 gold
Endlessvoid - Honorable Mention 5,000 gold

Best Use Of Mail:
Starcrossed 10,000 gold
Rangiku- Honorable Mention 5,000 gold

Best Use Of Leather:
Wuh 10,000 gold
Farquel- Honorable Mention 5,000 gold

Best Use Of Cloth:
Darkathena 10,000 gold
Sy- Honorable Mention 5,000 gold
Brekkie- Honorable Mention 5,000 gold

Finally it's too bad this needs to be said, but it's become apparent it is necessary.

It's our contest, it's our gold we're giving away and we award prizes to the outfits we like best.. If you don't like the way the contest is run, or feel it's "fixed" because your buddy didn't win, you can always start your own contest and give your gold away too. The contest is intended to be a fun event that only takes an hour or two to run.

We will not consider requiring applications from contestants to pre-judge and qualify outfits before the contest. We will not spend excessive amounts of time on judging and researching outfits during the contest and boring everyone to death either.

Antonidas Mogging Contest Results

The first Antonidas Mogging Contest is over and was a huge success. 170,000 in gold and other prizes were handed out. A few categories were difficult to judge and some lessons were learned for the future (note to self: hold the next contest indoors so mounts aren't a problem) but overall things went very well and it was a lot of fun. We'll definitely be doing it again next month!

I've added a new page to the blog with more information on future mogging contests. That page will be updated frequently.

Being the first time, we got so wrapped up in organizing and running the contest we forgot to have someone write down the winner's names until after the contest was over. We couldn't remember the name in a couple cases.

Overall Best Dressed
1st place Famine 25,000g
2nd place Soliss 15,000g
3rd place Mike 10,000g
Honorable Mentions (5,000g each) to Dreary and Jalepeno, both of whom won prizes in other categories.

Creepiest
Thegayblade 10,000g

Most Outrageous
Dreary 15,000g

Cheesecake
Szonya 20,000g
Darkbrekke 20,000g
A tie, both winners were awarded 20,000g

Best use of Cataclysm Dungeon and Raid Gear
Frostgeneral 10,000g

Sexiest Male
Jalepeno (male) 5,000g

Sexiest Female
Shocknawwe 5,000g














Most Intimidating - No picture available
Farquel
15,000g


Most Original (10,000g) and an honorable mention who got her choice of 6 Epics (she chose a Lovebird mount) are the winners who's names we forgot.

Also, the picture at the very top of this post is Eklipse a competitor with a terrific outfit who went unnoticed due to some jerk on a mammoth following her around and standing on top of her the entire time. She received a consolation prize later and is encouraged to enter again next month since we loved her outfit once we actually saw it.

Mox' Mogging Contest - Minimum 65,000 gold in prizes guaranteed!

The First Antonidas Mogging Contest

Who: Founded by MoxNixx, your friendly auction house mogul!
What: Mogging (Transmogrification) Contest
Where: Antonidas US server at the Stormwind Docks
When: Sunday the 19th of February 2012 starting at 4:00 pm server time!

Sponsored by:

MoxNixx 50k gold
Sagal 15k gold
Jackiel 25k gold
<Hypnotic> 5 BoE Epics, 20 Living Embers
<Independance> 10k gold
Pürê 10k gold
MyBankChyck 40k gold
Thurstonhowl 10k gold

If you have any suggestions for the contest (categories, rules, or whatever) or wish to volunteer to help us run the contest feel free to post here on this blog. If you wish to volunteer your services as a judge please explain why you believe you'd make a good judge.

Mogging The act of changing one's gear to look like another piece of gear in World of Warcraft. Gamer abbreviation for "Transmogrifying". - Urban Dictionary


Prizes
160,000 in gold
BoE Epics
Living Embers


Rules
- Judges decisions are final
- Category sponsors may appoint their own judges if they wish
- Sponsors and judges are not eligible for prizes in any category they are sponsoring or judging. They are however allowed to enter and may be eligible for prizes in other categories at the discretion of sponsors for each category. Exceptions may be made for guild sponsored categories allowing their members to enter.
- To enter the contest you simply need to show up and parade before the judges for any categories you wish to compete in.
- There are no entry fees.

Entrants outfits will be judged upon a number of criteria including but not necessarily limited to:

- Aesthetics (looks)
- Originality
- Creativity
- Completeness
- Difficulty to obtain


Contest Categories

Overall Best Dressed
Sponsored by: Moxnixx
Judges: to be determined
1st place: 25,000 gold
2nd place:15,000 gold
3rd place: 10,000 gold

Most Outrageous Look
15,000 gold
Sponsored by Sagal

Sexiest Outfits
5,000 gold Sexiest Male character
5,000 gold Sexiest Female character
Sponsored by <Independence>

Best Cataclysm Gear Set
Transmog items limited to Cataclysm Dungeon and Raid gear only
10,000 gold
Sponsored by  Pürê

Cheesecake!
For scantily clad female toons only!
Must be wearing an actual full set of gear, not just naked.
2 prizes of 20,000 gold each
Sponsored by MyBankChyck
Judged by MyBankChyck

Most Original
For something cool we haven't seen before
10,000 gold
Sponsored by Thurstonhowl

Most Intimidating
15,000g
Sponsored by Jackiel

Creepiest
10,000 gold
Sponsored by Jackiel

A number of  BoE Epics have been donated too. We're keeping it surprise how these prizes will be handed out but it'll be fun.

A few other categories that are being considered include, Best NPC Impersonation, Classic Outfits, Funniest and some fun stuff like honorable mentions and booby prizes.


Sponsors
Additional sponsors, both individuals and groups are welcome. You can sponsor a new category of your choice or contribute to the prize pool for existing categories. A minimum of 10,000g or prizes of similar value is required to sponsor a new category.

Note to my regular blog readers, this is an idea I've been considering for some weeks and finally decided to give it a shot. This post is really intended to direct players on Antonidas US server to for contest information and rules. It will be updated frequently as things progress, new categories get added and so on.


Mogging Links

http://wowroleplaygear.com/
http://wowlookbook.blogspot.com/
http://www.wowhead.com/transmog-sets

http://www.curse.com/addons/wow/mogit

Tradeskillmaster Release Version 1.03 released

Just a quick note the new improved version of TSM was released on Curse a few hours ago.

Get it here: http://www.curse.com/search?search=tradeskillmaster&filter-project-sort=3

Make sure and grab all the modules you use, except Gathering, which is obsolete now.

Also, the home site for TSM has moved to: http://www.tradeskillmaster.com/

The release version has a completely redesigned auction interface with a new auction tab replacing the old sidebar, many improvements and some new functionality including a market reset scan function. So much has changed it takes a little getting to used to but once you do it's great.

*** IMPORTANT NOTE *** The Gathering module was split into two new modules, Item Tracker and Warehousing. Make sure you UNINSTALL GATHERING when installing the new version.

Unlimited Maelstrom Crystals

The demand for high end chants has gone up and driven the prices of high end enchanting mats up too (particularly Maelstrom Crystals and Heavenly Shards). Maelstrom Crystals are going for 200-250g or more on many servers now. What many don't know is it's possible to manufacture unlimited Maelstrom Crystals for under 150g each.

To get the best cost per crystal you need an enchanter in a level 24 guild who's exalted with Avenger's of Hyjal. Go to the Firelands vendors, buy cloaks and disenchant them for unlimited Maelstrom Crystals. If you're not exalted you must be at least friendly to buy the cloaks.

Exalted rep with Avenger's of Hyjal gets you a 20% discount on prices with the Firelands vendors
Bountiful Bags (level 23 guild perk) gets you a 20% bonus when disenchanting
Bartering (level 24 guild perk) gets you a 10% discount and stacks with the rep discount

In the best case, assuming you're exalted with Avenger's of Hyjal and in a level 24 guild, your cost per Maelstrom Crystal comes out to about 146g. Shattering crystals will keep your cost on Heavenly Shards to about 73g too. Horde characters of the Goblin race have it even easier, all they need is friendly rep since thier racial gives them a 20% price discount with all vendors (which does NOT stack with rep discounts).

In the worst case, you need to be at least friendly and the cloaks cost 250g each. Guild perks still apply though, you'll get 10% off for Bartering, and 20% more crystals from disenchanting with Bountiful Bags. Bountiful Bags alone brings the price per Crystal down to about 208g and Bartering brings it down a little further to 187.5g per crystal (5 x (250 x 0.9)) / 6 = 187.5. Exalted rep alone without the guild perks will bring the price down to 200g per crystal.

TradeSkillMaster Release Version Preview

Sapu's been working hard on the release version of TradeSkillMaster and it's getting close. Here's a link to the official preview at the TSM home site.

TradeSkillMaster Release Version Preview

Sapu was good enough to send me a pre release version to play with. Here are my thoughts after playing with it for a few days.

The most noticeable change is the auction house part of the User Interface has been completely redesigned. This  is a huge change, everything has been moved around and it takes some time to get used to it.

The configuration window (which opens when you type  /tsm) is mostly the same as before. A few things added or moved but for the most part it's the same old familiar configuration UI.

It's hard to say for sure but it seemed to me it's faster and less laggy than before. I'll be able to say more about that after running it when the server is most crowded (prime time raid nights Tues-Thurs).

A few features seem to have disappeared in the process. I don't know if they've been dropped for good or will be added back at a later date. One thing I really miss though is the ability to manually change post prices on the fly while doing a post scan. (Edit: The author says this feature will be in the release version)

Many of the changes are IMO major improvements. In particular I like how the sidebar window is gone (mostly anyhow) and has been replaced with an auction tab.

There are a few details I'm not fond of but this isn't a review, the new version hasn't been released yet and many of those details could easily be changed by release so I'm not going to get into that now. They're mostly little things anyhow, like a double click where I'm used to a single click with other addons or a key piece of information I want to see missing from a scan list.

Glyph Walls - are for teaching lessons

There's been some talk about glyph walls lately. As one who frequently uses glyph walls I'd like to share my views on them.

In particular I'd like to address some of the comments and assumptions made by Croda of the marketsforgold blog. Recently he made the following series of posts regarding glyph walls.

The Glyph Wall – what is it and what is its purpose?
The Glyph Wall - how to combat it

In the first post Croda says "The ultimate aim of this strategy is one of two", then goes on to say it's either to permanently reset glyph prices or it's to force others out of the market.

Actually there's at least one more reason to use glyph walls. The reason I use them. To teach obsessive campers a lesson.

In the second post Croda talks about how to fight glyph walls. He says "The aim here is to bring all glyphs where there is a Wall down to just above cost price and let the glyph wall competitor undercut me and so make losses on each sale. Eventually they will become dispirited at crafting, posting making a small loss and repeating time and time again."

Awesome! When I post glyph walls that's exactly what I want the camper to do. Waste his time, effort and materials obsessing and stressing over undercutting me for very little profit. I will find his real threshold, post just over that and let him be the one to "become dispirited".

Croda assumes the purpose of a wall is to sell glyphs and that's not necesarily true. In fact in my experience the exact opposite is usually true. Walls and especially glyph walls often aren't intended to sell at all, they're there to cap the market at very low profit margins and teach someone a lesson.

When I use glyph walls I don't use them to sell glyphs, I use them to teach obsessive glyph campers a lesson. I'll keep the wall (or walls if they try buying me out) up for as long as it takes. Months, years, it doesn't matter, it's not costing me anything to keep the wall up and as long as they keep undercutting the wall, it doesn't take much effort to keep it up either. When the camping finally stops I raise my prices until the next obsessive camper comes along.

Doing a little simple math it costs 1s to post 1 glyph for 48 hours or 1g per 100 glyphs. If I post 5 of each glyph that comes out to approximately 20g to post 5 of every glyph in the game. An insignificant amount, easily covered by selling just 1 or 2 glyphs a day. Even if no glyphs sell, which virtually never happens, losing 20g a day won't make me go broke anytime soon (it'd take over 800 years).

I guess the moral of the story is don't assume the other guy thinks the same way you do. Doing so increases the risk  your plan to combat his strategy is exactly what he wants you to do. You're doing all the work tanking the market for very little profit while he's just posting once every 2 days and laughing at you.

Epic Gems in Patch 4.3 - Queen's Garnet flooding and why prices are the way they are

It looks like there's another wave of cheap duped goods starting up now. There have been reports from several servers about being flooded by level 1 toons selling stacks and stacks of Queen's Garnet very cheaply. If it happens on your server don't be the sucker who buys the first few cheap stacks because it won't be long before they're selling even more for far less

There have also been a few mentions of cheap Essence of Destruction showing up in suspicious numbers on a few servers.

You've probably noticed some colors of epic gems sell better than the rare equivalents and others worse. Queen's Garnet (red) sell like crazy, Shadow Spinel (purple) hardly sell at all and other colors sell better than purple but nowhere near as well as red.

It's the same for specific cuts, some cuts that sell well as rare cuts hardly sell at all as epics. Everyone wants Queen's Garnet (red), the other gems don't sell nearly as well. Shadow Spinels (purple) have been hit the worst. Cuts like Veiled, Glinting and Etched hardly sell at all and prices are dropping fast. Yet those same cuts rare versions still sell quite well. It's the same with other colors and cuts too, Rigid Deepholm Iolite for example hardly sells at all, Sparkling, Solid and probably even Stormy far outsell Rigid... Yet Rigid Ocean Sapphire still sells well.

Ever wondered why?

Epic Gems - How the market is shaking out

This analysis is server specific to Antonidas (US) and may not match what's happening on your server though I do believe the epic gem market is following a similar pattern on most servers.

Prior to patch 4.3 I made some educated guesses and came up with the following:


What I expected 
I figured epic gems would start out insanely high priced (20k+ per gem for reds, 10k+ for other colors) and virtually none would sell at those prices. I also thought it would be possible to pick up the occasional far more reasonably priced gem out of trade chat, especially after someone spent a day or two *not selling his precious red gold mine at the crazy initial prices everyone would be asking.

For the short term (the first month or so) I decided 4-5k would be a good price to buy red epic gems at and 2-3k for other colors. The plan was to buy raw gems at those prices, then cut and resell them for a 1-2k profit (maybe even more for the first few of each color).

Over the middle term I figured red epic gems would go for around 4k raw and 5-6k cut. The other colors about 1.5-2k raw and 2-3k cut. I felt this would continue until several guilds have been farming most of the new bosses for a while, upgraded most of their gear, gemmed it with epic gems and began getting more epic gems than they use. It's hard to predict how long this phase will last, it could be just a month or so or it could last for several months.

For the long term I expected red epic gems would eventually drop to around 2k raw, 3k cut and other colors to 1k raw, 1.5-2k cut. This could take several months, particularly for red gems. Other colors will almost certainly drop in price sooner and possibly much sooner than red.

Of course there are other factors that could affect the market by increasing the availability of epic gems. For example the possible future addition of transmutes, prospecting, vendors or any other new source of gems could cause prices to drop further and faster.

Then the patch finally landed....

TSM Blacklist Modification

In a prior post Dealing with obsessive campers - Part II advanced I detailed how I modifed TSM's post.lua to calculate price cuts differently to bring prices down fast and discourage camping. At the time my server was literally infested with campers and auction bots. There were so many campers at that time the best approach was an indiscriminate blanket approach that simply lowered prices quickly until the camping stopped..

Conditions are a little different now. There's far more cooperation between big auction players, fewer obsessive campers and the worst of the campers (the bot) transferred. On top of which demand is high and supply lower than in the past. I found the old approach too extreme for current conditions but there are still a few obsessive campers in certain markets. A more targeted approach is needed so I tweaked my modification to use the blacklist and only target specific campers.

Most of it still works the same as before except it only kicks in for blacklisted players.

Co-operation does work!

Lately there's been some talk around the gold blogs about co-operation. Many feel that co-operation is doomed to fail few believe it works. For the record I'd like to say it can work and very well, especially when you get enough big players involved.

On my server (Antonidas US) there's long been a couple factions that competed hard and didn't like each other very much.

The first was the "Glyph Cartel" which has been around controlling the Antonidas (US) glyph market since before my time on the server. The cartel had 16 or so members with 3 or 4 main guys. One of them was pretty much always online watching over glyphs. They pretty much ran the glyph market a couple years ago. They matched prices with whitelists and had a number of other rules regarding the undercut amount (1c), maximum number of glyphs to post at one time (3), policy and proceedure for resetting prices and so on. This worked extremely well for them until my group started competing with them.

The second was a group I put together of mostly gem sellers and a few anti-cartel scribes. We kept 2 whitelists, a general purpose one for gems, chants and just about everything else and a smaller list just for glyphs. We kept things simple with just 1 rule, whitelist the other guys and that was it. No other limits. Those of us on the glyph list thought of ourselves as the Anti-Cartel Cartel. :) This worked extremely well for us too though with 2 competing groups fighting for control of the glyph market glyphs were usually in the tank.

Epic Gem Transmutes and Day 1 of Patch 4.3

Epic Gem Transmutes
4.3 has been out for a full day now and there's still no news regarding epic gem transmutes. When the patch first came out and transmutes weren't on any vendors most of us assumed they must be raid drops but after a full day with no reports of any dropping on any server it doesn't look like that's it either.

That probably means epic gem transmutes are either:

- not intended to be available yet (IMO most likely), or
- something is broken preventing them from dropping / showing up on a vendor.

At this point I'm going to assume that epic gem transmutes while they may be in the data files are not yet obtainable in game and will not be anytime soon. Maybe in some later patch a few months down the road, maybe not until the next expansion or maybe never.

Patch 4.3 - Expectations, Random Thoughts and Ramblings

Patch 4.3 is almost upon us now. Possibly as soon as tomorrow but probably still another 1-2 weeks away yet. Tomorrow according to a just released blizzard status update.

The following is an assortment of facts we can be reasonably certain of as well as my own speculations, conclusions and expectations that I've been taking into account while preparing for patch 4.3.

Potion materials requirements are being greatly reduced. Most cataclysm potions will take just a single herb and a vial to make. Expect potion prices to drop significantly and once players get used to new low prices they should start selling in greater numbers too.

Epic gem transmutes. We don't know what the materials costs will be and we don't know how the cooldowns will work either. We don't even know for sure if they'll be in the patch though it seems very likely. Blizzard hasn't said a thing about transmutes but from what they have said about the availability of epic gems don't except an instant gold mine. Transmutes will likely be limited by both high materials costs and long and/or shared cooldowns.

Addons and User Interface - Data Brokers every good goblin should have

Data broker plugins are addon threads for displays using LibDataBroker. A data broker display like Fubar, Titan Panel, or my personal favorite Chocolatebar is required to use data broker plugins.

Many plugins display additional information when you mouse over them and/or have drop-down menus allowing you to clean up your user interface yet still have quick and easy access to everything. By adding plugins you can set up a broker display mod to show virtually anything you want exactly where you want it.

Chocolatebar




Creates a bar at the top or bottom of your display where other addons called broker plugins can display things like your fps, latency, gold earned, and much, much more.


Ara Broker Money

I really like Ara Broker Money for keeping track of how much gold I have across all characters. It also shows you how much gold you've made (or lost) for the current session, today, yesterday, the last 7 days and the last 30 days.









Ara Broker Tradeskills

Another handy addon from Ara. This one shows you all your tradeskills on all characters. It shows cooldowns, including which ones are up and how long it will be until the others will be up again. You can also open and view the tradeskills for any character on the account.








Broker Micromenu

I like this one because it allows me to completely remove the blizzard default bars. I can use a custom bar mod (Macaroon!) for abilities and macros while Broker Micromenu takes care of things like opening a ticket or viewing the character. It also displays FPS and Latency, putting many seldom used but useful things into a small space where they're unobtrusive yet still readily accessible for when you do need them..






If you're looking to find more broker plugins there's a nice big list of broker plugins over at WoW Ace complete with pictures for most of them. Mouse over the thumbnail pictures there to see larger pictures.

Addon Control Panel isn't a display broker or plugin but it comes in real handy for turning various mods on/off and reloading the UI without leaving the game... Like you'll be doing when trying out a bunch of new data broker plugins.

Brief history of a scammer

That crook Markco is at it again with yet another scam. Faid over at Nerf Faids has done a nice detailed video expose of his latest scam, the so called WoW Crusher Addon.

WoW Crusher claims to make you the best at everything (yes everything) on your server.

It slices, it dices, it even cuts tin cans! It cures colds, flu, whatever ails you, even cancer! It cleans, calcium, rust, lime, grease, all the worst most difficult to clean up messes in just seconds and you don't even have to wipe it off, everything just disappears like magic!

You get the picture, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably isn't true. Snake oil sales at it's worst. This isn't the first time Markco's been caught in shady business. He's been doing it for years. Here's a brief history of some of his more obvious scams and shady dealings over the years.


Nerf Faids Nov 2011 - WoW Crusher "addon"

The Gold Mint Sept 2011 - Tycoon "addon"

Cold's Gold Factory May 2011 - Coaching fiasco

Tobold's MMORPG Blog Nov 2009 - Trying to get other bloggers to run his scams too

Greedy Goblin Nov 2009

Read the comments too, it's hilarious how he tries to weasel his way out of things with more lies and constantly tries to change the subject.

He claims to have sold the JMTC website and the name Markco for 50 thousand dollars but many fellow bloggers don't believe that. More likely it's just another lie in an attempt to disassociate himself from all the crooked business going on there.