WoW Economy Wrap Up – December

I had taken a break for most of 2024, leaving Warcraft back in April and while I did return sporadically throughout the rest of the year, it wasn’t until December that I finally fell back into my familiar patterns when it came to gold making. I knew there was a few reasons for this, most noticeably a lack of community and sense of belonging that I just haven’t been able to find in the game. I stumbled off to EVE Online, where I worked on ISK making and because I had quite a large community there, I found it easier to stick with it. That being said, Warcraft is a game I enjoy a great deal, I just need to take some time to find my people.

Back to the sales! I’m currently spread across 28 NA realms, though I do have an active EU account as well (I haven’t been playing it frequently, and I have no plans on doing any gold making there). My best realm for the month of December was Mal’Ganis (2.3 million earned), followed by Thrall (1 million earned). My least profitable realm was Agamaggan, where I only made 31k for the month. I was not particularly consistent with my gold making habits this month, sometimes I didn’t feel like reposting my items so I would just wait until the next day, and I’m still spending a lot of gold playing catch up when it comes to professions.

I deal in a lot of high end materials, mostly transmog. Even though Mal’Ganis was my top selling server as far as amount of gold goes, I still only sold 7 items there. One of those items was 1.7m gold.

As long as I make a sale here and there, it seems to balance out. I spend approximately 1h each day on dedicated gold making, which is mostly just putting items back up for sale, or stock management. I do currently have 5 active accounts, and I’ve been using a level 11 character to power level characters from my 3 main accounts. Once the 20th anniversary (and timewalking) ends, I’ll drop back down to 3 accounts instead of 5. My two ‘extra’ accounts have level 11 characters that I can use without a subscription, so it all seems to work out in the end.

I hope everyone has had a great 2024, and here’s hoping 2025 brings lots of sales and some exciting times to Warcraft. Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Doing All of the Things

I’ve been playing Warcraft again, and I have to say it feels really nice, familiar. One of the first things I did was level up a handful of characters via timewalking (I currently have 5 accounts active, with a few level 11 characters hauling around the other accounts for some easy leveling) and then once I got my top 4 characters to 80 it was time to work on their crafting.

4 ‘main’ characters lets me cover all 8 professions (minus gathering) and focus on collecting recipes. Of course I’m pretty behind in The War Within, but I know I’ll get there. I used the addon posted above to help me keep track of things, and while my engineering is quite far behind, I know it won’t take long to level it up, and it’s more important to have knowledge points than it is to beeline to 100.

I haven’t started the tailor / enchanter yet, that’s the goal over the weekend. I do also have some gathering characters, I just don’t tend to USE them because I’m not a fan of gathering. It’s usually easier (and cheaper) for me to just buy what I need, and then with the free time I have from NOT gathering, I can do something else.

What else? Well, I’ve been working on my ATT collection, pets, mounts, transmog, and of course there’s a LOT to do in TWW. I haven’t completed each of the delves yet, I think I’ve only got two of them done. I’ve been doing the anniversary events, but I wanted to take a look at the achievements to see if there was anything I could complete before it leaves us. I like how comfortable Warcraft is, and while I may not have a static guild or group of people to play with, I’m having fun finding my way again.

As always, happy gaming – no matter where you find yourself.

Leveling Up with Timewalking

Somehow I found myself activating all 5 Warcraft accounts, and running my own characters through Timewalking dungeons in order to level them up. It went very smooth, and I had a lot of fun. I have a fury warrior who is locked at level 11, wearing a bunch of Timewalking gear + TBC gear + SL gems, and then any 4 other characters. In this case I went with my 70 warrior, 70 hunter, and some low level 10 warlocks. I put 4 of my characters in a group together, and left the experience locked character out. Then I queued for a specific dungeon early in the morning, when I figured no one else would be queuing for it. Chance would have it that 5 minutes later everyone got invited to the same dungeon, and I didn’t have to worry about that experience debuff. If you try to group with someone who has experience disabled, and then queue, you won’t be able to gain experience. There’s a few other ways of working around this issue, but I went with the easiest (for me) method.

After that, it was smooth sailing. I was able to queue for the Timewalking dungeons which give a HUGE amount of experience to all characters. It took approximately 1.5-2 dungeons per level for the characters who were 70+ and the lower level ones gained levels much faster. By the end of the day, I had two more level 80 characters to add to my roster, along with two more 50+ characters. The level 11 will just sit there on the unused account. MUCH faster than doing pet battles, and I also now have the 25% bonus experience on all of my bnet accounts due to having max level characters (it caps at 25%, 5% per level 80). It’s not the most interesting method of leveling up, but once I’ve played through the story one time I just really don’t want to keep doing it over and over.

Next up? We’ll just have to see. Probably more level 80 characters. I only have while the 20th anniversary event is up (I believe it ends January 7th or there abouts) and then the regular timewalking weeks after that. I don’t imagine I’ll keep those extra accounts subscribed for too long – but I do intend to take advantage of it while I can.

As always, happy gaming – no matter where you find yourself.

Making Gold – One Sale at a Time

The good thing about making gold is once you know how to go about it, you fall back into those habits pretty easily after taking breaks here and there. Thus it was that I returned to Warcraft and am already making a few million each day, mostly with pet sales. I reached 100 in both leatherworking and jewel crafting professions, and also started leveling up my alchemist / blacksmith character. I now have 3 characters at 80, with another slowly working through pet battles today. She should be able to reach 80 by tomorrow, I figure. Paladin, demon hunter, and monk are the classes who are already there. This will create my stable ‘main’ characters, one of each profession who I play on a semi regular basis.

There’s still so much more to do, but it’s a good solid start. Rumor has it I might even start streaming again as we get closer to the new year. I haven’t come to a solid conclusion about that yet, but it is something I really want to continue to try to do. Each time I try I seem to give up, but who knows if this will be the one time it sticks.

Curious about the gold making statistics from above? They’re from the revamped Tradeskillmaster.com site, previously known as the ledger. I absolutely love the changes they’ve made this year, and I hope other players are taking advantage of it too. I like that I can see all of the gold I’ve made per server, so if some servers are doing better than others, I can focus on them a little bit more and make sure I’m restocking.

I’ll try to be a little more consistent with updates, but no promises. As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Timewalking, Gets me Every Time

I’ve mentioned before that I don’t have a community in World of Warcraft, I just sort of go along doing my own thing – and it has been that way for years now, since my closest friends all decided to stop playing. I’ve been contemplating transferring to a roleplay server to try to seek out some sort of community, but I’m not sure if that’s the path I want to go.

This week when I logged in, it happened to be timewalking. I love this event, and I quickly took my 80 retribution paladin through 5 of them to get her some upgrades. I’ve only got the one character sitting at 80 so far, though my demon hunter is very close, at 78. After that I’ve got a monk and a priest I’d like to max out, so that would be my 4 ‘main’ characters (one of each profession, basically). I had grand plans of one day getting ALL of my characters to 80, but I’m not sure if I have that dedication any more. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed myself, I haven’t really dedicated myself to WoW for quite some time (in part due to my lack of community as I mentioned above). I’m very excited about player housing coming sometime in the future, and I’d like to be fairly established as ‘back’ before that happens.

For once I probably won’t be focusing on gold making, but instead I’d like to focus on collecting. I’ve already got more gold than I can ever possibly use, and I feel like that portion of the game is ‘solved’ for me. There’s lots of other ‘stuff’ I don’t have completed yet, mounts, pets, transmog, and achievements. There’s never a lack of things to do, it’s just a matter of choosing which one of those things I want to work on.

In any case, it’s nice to be playing. Now I just need to find my ‘home’.