WOWGoldBank

I. Howdy
Welcome to the first issue of The WoW Economist, a WoW Azzor exclusive. This week's issue explains how supply, demand, and competitive advantage create the WoW economy we know and may or may not love. The article finishes up with a few examples to help you apply these principles and make a little gold.

II. WoW Microeconomics 101
WoW is a tremendously popular and large MMO. With two player-controlled factions, 8 races, 9 classes, 12 trade skills, and 60 levels, every character you create in WoW is unique. Even your Leeroyjenkins Paladin and Gymly Dwarf Warrior.

Because even if you can not or do not want to come up with a more original name for your characters, their needs will always differ, as will your ability to satisfy their needs. As your characters go up in level they will have more gold, nicer gear, bigger quest rewards, and will be better at getting around Azeroth.

Even if you give Leeroy and Gymly the same tradeskills and try to level them in lock-step, they will constantly have differing needs. Leeroy will never need to do a warrior quest and Gymly can't quest for a warhorse. Though they both will wear plate, Leeroy will need more intellect and spirit on his gear while Gymly does not care about attributes that are not strength, stamina, or agility. You might choose to never skill up Gymly's cooking skill, each will win different gear in instances, and they may be hearthed in different cities.

If you realize how different the needs can be for just two of your own characters, think about how different they are for the thousands of other characters on your server, controlled by thousands of other people. Add in countless other differences, including the time a player is willing to commit to WoW, what each player enjoys doing in the game, the different resources each character already has, and you have a virtual economy that is quite real.


III. Competitive Advantage - They Demand, You Supply
Competitive advantage is an economic principle which can make you rich if you understand it and apply it, in life or in WoW. This is not the place to discuss the nobility of pursuing riches, but you want that Epic Mount and you are not buying gold to do it .

"So how do I get this 'Competitive Advantage' you speak of?" You ask.

You have a competitive advantage over someone else any time you can do something more conveniently than someone else could. In other words, you have it right now.

"Wait, but why do I want it?"

Because people will pay you for making their lives easier. Even if the only advantage you have is time, there are a lot of things you can do better than others with less time than you. And some of those people have a lot of gold.

The following examples give specific ways to make money in WoW by applying your competitive advantages.

But keep in mind that competitive advantage is not just about making money, in WoW or in life. If you're a mage who gives a friend a portal to Stormwind, you've used your competitive advantage to help out a buddy by not making him wait for the Tram or the boat. And if you build a house for someone less fortunate than yourself , you're a wonderful person who just applied his competitive advantages of free time and compassion.

Now on to the gold-making.

IV. Picking Flowers
I'm a huge fan of herbalism as a money making trade skill, for a variety of reasons. For one, herbs generally have a low deposit price on the auction house, so selling them is much less risky than selling the ore/bars/stone you get from mining. Also, you can start making large sums of money from selling herbs as soon as your tradeskill hits 75, when you can pick Briarthorn. Briarthorn itself sells for 1.5g to 2g a stack on most servers, but the Swiftthistle it often comes with can sell for up to 4g a stack. You can get Swiftthistle off of Mageroyal as well, which only requires 50 herbalism. But why is Swiftthistle so valuable if any level 7-15, 50+ skill herbalist can gather it?

Because Rogues guzzle Thistle Tea like it's going out of style. A single Thistle Tea restores 100 energy for a rogue, meaning it's just as useful to a level 60 rogue as it is to a level 5.

But even if the 60 rogue is an herbalist, running The Barrens or Silverpine Forest in search of Mageroyal and Briarthorn is a waste of his time. So long as there is Swiftthistle available in the auction house, he gains more by farming high level herbs and selling them to have enough to buy the Swiftthistle, than he gains by farming a lowbie area.

In the time it would take him to gather a stack of Swiftthistle, he could instead go to Felwood and bring back a stack of Plaguebloom (10g), 10 Gromsblood (5g), and a handful of Dreamfoil, Mountain Silversage, Golden Sansam, Sungrass, and Arthas' Tears. He could also get some loot form mobs and finish up a quest or two. If he earned 20g worth of items, it's 4x more profitable for him to grind Felwood and buy Swiftthistle with his profits than it is to farm it himself.

The level 12, on the other hand, gains levels by grinding mobs and finishing quests in between picking Mageroyal and Briarthorn. He gains more benefit (utility) from gathering Swiftthistle than any level 60 would.

This is partly why you don't see Rogues on Epic Mounts scouring The Barrens for Briarthorn. Competitive advantage isn't always about the ability to do something better, but about having that act be more useful to one individual than it is to another. In the case of WoW, this holds up even if the same person controls the level 12 and the level 60 rogue.

V. The Librarian
This one comes as a suggestion from a friend and former co-worker, Jay. If you have 3g to spare, this might be the easiest way to turn that 3g in to 6g.

Buying recipes from vendors and selling them on the auction house (AH) is one of my favorite ways to make money. You can walk around Orgrimmar or Ironforge and buy the recipes for Thorium Widgets , Minor Mana Oil , and Sagefish Delight , and easily double your money on any of them just by putting them up in the AH at double or triple your purchase price.

There are many recipes found in those two cities alone which you can turn for a profit and are not limited supply. Your advantage is your willingness to spend time walking around IF, and the risk you are willing to take that the items do not sell on the AH. As long as there are few other auctions of the same recipe up in the AH, you're all but guaranteed to sell just about any vendor bought recipe for a profit.

My favorite vendor bought items are the Expert Secondary Tradeskill Books, needed to go above 150 TS in the following areas:
Fishing - Expert Fishing - The Bass and You , 1g, Stranglethorn Vale - Booty Bay
Cooking - Expert Cookbook , 1g, Desolace - Shadowprey Village (Horde) and Ashenvale - Silverwind Refuge (Alliance)
First Aid - Expert First Aid- Under Wraps , 1g, Dustwallow Marsh - Brackenwall Village (Horde) and Arathi Highlands - Stromgarde Keep (Alliance)

You can buy these books in bulk and sell them 1-2 at a time. It's not uncommon to sell them for 2-3g. People who have the flightpaths to these areas often do not know where to get the book or don't want to spend the time to go get it. By offering convenience you can turn a tidy profit.


VI. Look Ma, I'm a Pirate!
This last item explains why it's easy to make money with Deviate Fish , used by Elixir of Giant Growth and Savory Deviate Delight . Deviate Fish can only be caught in The Barrens (Horde Territory) at one of the 3 Oases or inside The Wailing Caverns. This makes it fairly scarce to the Alliance on most servers, but extremely scarce to the Alliance on PVP servers. Obviously, the Horde can put raw Deviate Fish on the Neutral AH and probably sell them for more than they could on the Horde AH.

But what's really interesting about Deviate Fish is how valuable they are to all sides, even though they aren't used in anything especially useful. Eating the fish can shrink the user or cause some other debuff. Elixir of Giant Growth is nice for Warriors, but only for lowbies. And the only thing Savory Deviate Delight can do is turn you in to a ninja or a pirate.

Wait a second, what's not useful about being a Pirate?

Partly because SDD's effect is so cool, and partly because the recipe is so hard to find, a single SDD can sell from anywhere to 40-75s. 8-15g a stack for something you can cook with only 85 cooking skill is amazing, especially considering you should be able to catch 30-40 in an hour of fishing, depending on the pool and the time of day. If you can get this recipe as a drop or afford it in the AH, it is almost always worth it.

Even high level Horde players will pay handsomely for Savory Deviate Delights, for the same reason they will pay well for Swiftthistle - they could use their time more efficiently than heading to the Barrens just to fish, whereas a level 15-20 might be waiting for her group to gather to run WC, or camping Gesharahan's spawn. On top of that, many people simply dislike fishing, narrowing your competition even further.

Deviate Fish and Savory Deviate Delights are just another example of how even the lowest lowbie can have a competitive advantage over a much higher level player.