WoW Gold.net

Whilst America is suffering an economic downturn, gas prices rise day after day and the dollar weakens under pressure, one American is going against this trend; virtually. An avid Internet gamer from Chicago IL, known only as Jake, has made history by making the largest purchase of “virtual currency” ever reported. He did so through the game World of Warcraft, purchasing 1,000,000 Gold (the game’s currency) at a cost of just over $40,000.

The exchange of “real money” for its virtual gaming equivalent, whilst an insane concept to many, is nothing new. Real-Money Trading, or RMT companies as they are better known, have been around since the early days of Ultima Online but only became newsworthy with the release of World of Warcraft. The game’s population of almost 11 million subscribers makes it a lucrative marketplace for third-party companies, with no shortage of customers and suppliers (though the majority of the industry’s “product” is sourced through China). Industry analysts have predicted the RMT market to be worth around $2 billion in 2008, with a large proportion of that coming for World of Warcraft.

Though many gaming addicts will admit to purchasing virtual currencies and services, perhaps spending as much as a couple hundred dollars at a time, one wonders why someone would spend so much money on what is essentially pixels on a computer screen.

“My friends ask me, ‘You could have bought a car, a boat or put down a deposit on a house - why waste all that money on a game?’. I don’t like cars, I get sea-sick and I already own a couple of properties of my own.”, Jake contends. “I find less sense in blowing $40,000 on a BMW - at least WoW Gold retains its value.” You can almost understand his point - almost. After all, expendable income is all about enjoyment, whether it’s expensive holidays, a luxury sports car or the ability to own (literally) your friends at your favorite game. But still…

The lucky recipients of this record order were www.MOGS.com, an American provider of WoW Gold, based out of Lakewood, Ohio. “When we saw the order request come in, we just laughed; it’s not unusual to get joke requests”, said Joe, the Customer Service Leader managing the shift the order came in on. “But the guy persisted and provided us with a phone number that matched up with his registered address. When we realized that this might be a serious order, we took the steps to further verify Jake’s identity and the validity of his request with his bank.” Within a few days the deal was done and Jake was on his way to being what must certainly be the only World of Warcraft millionaire on the planet… though he’ll have to spread the wealth over atleast 5 characters as the currency limit for a single player (only ever acheived twice before in the game’s history) is just over 210,000 Gold.

Jake plans to gear up his characters with the best of everything the game has to offer, but he’s not forgotten his fellow guild members either. His girlfriend, also a World of Warcraft player, was pleasantly surprised when she found a 50,000 Gold 21st birthday gift from Jake in her in-game mailbox. It’s no diamond ring, but it’s pretty close in WoW!

Unless you’ve been hidden under a rock in the farthest corner of Azeroth, you’ll have noticed that the price of many vendor items have dropped over the past few months. This is seen as an attempt by Blizzard to curb what they see as a Gold farming/selling/buying epidemic. The principle was simple; reducing the price of core items requires players to have less Gold, thus lowering the temptation to purchase Gold from third parties.

The problem lies in the heart of the Azeroth economy; the Auction House. WoW players are finding themselves with a larger expendable income when they approach the AH, and are thus more able to pay higher prices for the items they want. This is reacted upon by sellers who no longer need to cut their prices to sell items, and infact opt to increase their prices across the board. Whilst Blizzard’s economic plan may have had good intent, it seems they didn’t pay too close attention to economics in school.

The result is two-fold; players need more Gold (to afford the higher priced items) and farmers are able to sell their farmed items for more, thus producing more Gold and becoming more cost-effective. This seems like another situation that will lead to Gold saturation on the main servers, and see another dramatic drop in Gold prices in the near future, regardless of the recent price hike.

The only thing that can seemingly save Blizzard from this situation is repeating the mass bannings seen recently, removing Gold from the economy and sending Gold prices shooting up once again. This is a proverbial game of cat-and-mouse, bust-and-benefit for both the game developer and RMT companies, but one must ask what the effect is on the average gamer.

Will we see constant fluctuations in the AH, where tools such as Auctioneer are rendered useless? Or have Blizzard simply preparing the landscape for another big change? Only time will tell, and we’ll certainly be watching closely!

A wave of mass bannings instigated by Blizzard’s anti-RMT unit has shook the WoW Gold industry and sent prices soaring… well, kind of. WoW Gold has decreased in price month-on-month since January 2007 ($126/1000g) to it’s lowest point recently in June 2008 ($17/1000g). Prices have now doubled-up to the $35-$40/1000g range; a bitersweet blow for the Chinese farms that were hit. Whilst many have lost tens, even hundreds of account and thousands of dollars in lost Gold, the price hike will allow for double the profitability while it lasts.

Industry analysts predict this to be a temporary rise and for prices to return to the $20 mark within 2 months. Though some farms will have ceased operation after this latest Blizzard offensive, the rate at which new Gold farms are springing up will more than take up the slack.

Suprisingly the vast increase in price has not deterred the average RMT customer, with major companies only reporting a minor dip in sales. With the majority of gold-buying-gamers residing in the United States, this is an interesting turn of events when considering their economic fortunes in the real-world.

If you’re planning to start gaming the WoW Auction House we suggest you observe the following 4 tips.

These are the basic fundamentals, but mastery of these fundamentals is fundamentally fundamental if you wish to… Ok enough - just read them!

Auctioneer (www.auctioneeraddon.com): This add-on scans the AH and compiles a database of all the items posted and the prices they were sold for. It uses that information to determine who is over or under selling, how often items are sold, and what the ideal sale price should be. Use the suggested price as a guide to what you should sell the item for, but don’t rely on it - it can be prone to manipulation by your competitors. To keep your data up-to-date, use Auctioneer to scan the AH two or three times per day.

Use your Alts: Create a new character and get them to Stormwind/Ogrimmar. This gives you the versatility to sell your items under a name other than your main character and create artificial competition. Having a trading Alt is smart if you’re going to be aggressive in how you approach selling at the AH because people will hate you. Also, If you’re looking to prevent someone else from trying to flip the items your focusing on, having two of your own characters sell the same item makes it look like you already have competition.

Keep your poker face on: No matter what you’re selling there is going to be competition. Unless you are dedicated to just one item, or have a significant amount of money already, you can’t buy out everyone who sells lower than you. What you have to determine is if it’s worth it to cancel and re list or just let it sit and wait for the price point to go back up. Unless you’re sitting 20 stacks deep in Essence of Fire, you shouldn’t cut your losses just to put some coin back in your pocket because it will hurt you in the long run. Sometimes if the item is popular enough both your items will still be sold.

Playing Dirty: Auctioneer is a great add-on, but it can’t tell the difference between items meant for sale and items meant to inflate/deflate the market price. If you find that the market for the item your selling keeps dropping price, you can place an item or to for sale with no buyout at a ridiculously high price. This will drive the market value up, making it look like their items are selling for nothing. Once someone purchases all of those, the desire to undercut your items being sold at the lowest price will decrease the competition. This works the same an item for 1 copper to bring down the price in the item so you can replenish your supply at a price lower than what you will sell it back for.