Sunday 11 November 2012

Gold is not motivating

There are many players in WoW who struggle to keep a few thousand gold, I was one of those people once. I would go to raids with just enough gold to cover repair bills, having just spent most of what I had on Gems and Enchants. It frustrated me, not because I had no gold, but that I didn’t have the knowledge to make gold, and the only avenue left was doing Dailys, which I hated.

I resolved to find a way to make gold. I became a Glypher and soon the gold started rolling in (back when I though 3k a day was a lot). I set myself a goal to make 1 million gold. It took a long time to achieve my goal, mainly because I now had the resources to purchase what I wanted. When a new Tier of gear came out, I would purchase the latest BoE gear. Spending 30k on a trinket wasn’t an issue, so for every two steps forward, I took one back.

At the beginning of Cata I had hit the previous Gold Cap on a few toons and decided to make the push for 1 million gold. By half way through the first tier of Cata I achieved it. But what happened next was unexpected. I couldn’t bring myself to play WoW, I had lost all enthusiasm for the game. Raiding was something I had always loved doing, but even that was empty for me. I decided to take a break from the game.

Four months later I came back to WoW but my intention was to only play PvP. I still did not have the enthusiasm I once had. I changed from Horde to Alliance and started running BG’s. I also got back into making gold. This is about the same time I started reading Critical Goblin’s blog.
What I saw there was a project which I could replicate on Caelestrasz. My motivation was not to make gold, but to see what effect my actions had on my competitors.

The Alliance Glyph market was dominated by 3-4 players at the time, so for the next 3 months all I did was post glyphs walls. 2x @ 15g, 2x @ 20g and 2x @ 25g for 48 hrs.

Prior to me entering the market, glyphs sold at 100gish each, so I wasn’t popular, as I received helpful advice as to how to raise glyph prices from competitors. By the end of 3 months, one consistent competitor remained in business, who seemed more than happy to play the 15g glyph game.

What did I learn from this project……most people realised that they are working for nothing/couldn’t compete and took a break from the glyph market. The one remaining glypher, has a herber and despite the fact that selling herbs would be more profitable, they had the mindset of “I will control this market” and “I will not leave”. The most important lesson for me, was that having a Project/goal is motivating, not the gold, I got my enthusiasm back for WoW.

As I said in last month Consortium Update, one of my goals is to reach 1,000,000 gold profit in a month. Based on our profit to date this month I can see that this goal will be achieved very soon, maybe even this month. I need a new Project/Goal and I’m open to ideas. Furthermore I’m feeling evil so the more mischievous the goal the better. Tung needs your Ideas now before he looses his motivation.

16 comments:

  1. I don't usually leave comments on any of the gold blogs I read, but I really liked this article. I hadn't thought about it too much, but I hit 1M a few weeks before MoP and then started barely logging on at all (one day a week for raids). I never realized how much that goal affected my enjoyment of the game.

    I don't have any good ideas for new goals for you, but I'll definitely be checking back to see other comments and to find out what your next goal ends up being. Thanks for this post!

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    1. Congrats on 1 million gold btw, this is an awesome achievement and should be one that Blizz recognises ingame.

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  2. I had a similar thing happen to me when I finally reached my 1M - I had been so focused on that, that I had kinda lost touch with all the other possibilities in game, friends & guildies knew I would say no to dungeons etc so had stopped asking. I did finally level my hunter to 85, tried some arena (but only very half heartedly), did some BG's & finally pushed myself through to Loremaster. Once I got my Loremaster, within a week I logged off, only to return 4 months later! Wasn't planned, just the way it happened. I haven't set myself any new goals as such yet, I'm quite content right now to level my alts to 90, do the dailies I feel like doing & am finally dipping my toes back into dungeons. I do have a to-do list but it's for the expansion, not for the next few months so it's more of a 'tick stuff off eventually' kinda list :)

    As for a new goal/project - no real idea I'm afraid. How about something like make 1m on just one character - empty their cash reserve to say 5k gold & just work the AH with that - no other proffs, buying/farming own mats etc. Or put a sensible time limit on it & see how much you can make. You could actually get quite a good series of blog posts out of that if you worked thru diff characters - see how diff proffs work when stand alone. :)

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    1. Nev, thnx for your ideas. I'm all about Gold per hour, Caelestrasz mat prices have fallen hugely in the last few weeks, so farming probably isn't an option.
      One possible idea that I though of last night was an arbitrage experiment. Buying all the cheap items on either AH that I could make a profit on by reselling. The neutral AH is a snipers heaven however.

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  3. Seriously?! You're idea for motivation for the game since you had to much gold was to screw with other players trying to make gold? Why don't you just troll trade chat, sit on mailboxes with big mounts and find other juvenile ways to grieve players while you're at it so you can be entertained?

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    1. I know how it looks but my intention for the Glyph Project was competitor research not griefing. There more to this than I realised at the time, and I may write about my observations sometime. I saw each competitor go through a series of actions to try and break the Glyph walls. Demotivating your competition is a valid stategy in AH PvP

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    2. The one competitor that remained and the consortium project now whitelist eachother that's why our Glyph sales/profits are so high.

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  4. Nothing wrong with some AH PVP I usually will tell the ones I'm gonna go after that I am coming, my rules of the game. It's more satisfying to win when they are aware there is a game afoot.

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  5. I have two accounts and I have 7 million in gold.
    I have not played another video game since 2/2009 than wow. Not anything else.

    I would love to quit wow..if I could I would have so much more freedom and time.

    Notice its not a love its not a pleasure to play, I have to thoussands of auctions, its not fun.

    But I assume if I stopped wow cold. I would start doing other things and on a grand scale, a wow addiction is better than other addictions...honestly I know that sounds weird. But wow keeps me in trouble, I am home playing wow instead of going out at night, I am 43 years old, I don't need to be in the bar. I mean I need to exercise and go to work, but aside from that, I am on my computer. Of all my addictions wow is the least expensive and the safest... So sad. and So true.

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    1. When I quit WoW, I played RIFT, unfortunately Blizz has set the bench mark for MMO's and though RIFT is a good game, it's not up to the standard Blizz sets.
      What that ment for me is that I would not play as long and find other activities to utilise my time. I've tried to maintain this since coming back to WoW.

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  6. I really like the article, it really encapsulates my current play in MMOs today. When I was scraping for gold, I found it far more challenging and fun. I am not "rich" by many people's measure, I have about 375k. But I have absolutely nothing I want to buy, I am not a mount or pet collector, I craft/gem/enchant much of what I actually need for raiding or pvp. So, gold is a completely irrelevant part of the game for me know, I have so much more than I need, making more gold is no longer motivating for me.

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    1. I too have more gold than I could ever spend. I encourage you to find a Project. When I started the Consortium project, my Partners new very little about gold making but had a desire, I feel that I've passed on my knowledge as well as developed a great friendship in the process.
      "Teach a man to fish and you feed him for life"

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  7. Prior to me entering the market, glyphs sold at 100gish each, so I wasn’t popular, as I received helpful advice as to how to raise glyph prices from competitors. By the end of 3 months, one consistent competitor remained in business, who seemed more than happy to play the 15g glyph game.http://www.gw2.us/
    guild wars 2 gold

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  8. Tungsten Carbide Rings.Hello Guys ! I resolved to find a way to make gold.tungsten rings it is very popular silver and wedding rings is popular.............

    http://Madtungsten.com.au/tungsten-carbide/


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  9. really like the article, eve online isk
    it really encapsulates my current play in MMOs today. When I was scraping for gold, I found it far more challenging and fun. I am not "rich" by many people's measure, I have about 375k. But I have absolutely nothing I want to buy, I am not a mount or pet collector, I craft/gem/enchant much of what I actually need for raiding or pvp. So, gold is a completely irrelevant part of the game for me eve isk sale know, I have so much more than I need, making more gold is no longer motivating for me.

    ReplyDelete