Why Some People Can Never Play WoW Casually

Back to playing WOW,like most WOW Vets do, and so far I am liking it. I like how they made more WOW more casual and that you can just take it easy and still see reasonable content and gear.

But, old habits die hard and I find myself min/maxing: doing dailies to get rep, grinding heroics for that one or two BiS pre-raid gear, leveling professions to get those extra stats, reading up on Bosses of whom I may never get to see, and reading theory crafting about Warriors, DPS, Tanking, and WOW in general. I think I was top 20 best geared warrior in the realm and I haven't even stepped into a raid let alone be in a raid group.

I guess this is a problem for those who used to play WOW and are used to the demanding environment of a top end raiding guild. I asked one of my old friends who used to be in a top guild and he said he can never play WOW casually because he will always want the best items and it would just consume him that he doesn't have them. I don't think my friend is alone in this one and if you are one of the "old vets" please leave a comment and share your thoughts.

Most of the folks I raided with have families now and more responsibilities and have shifted to playing WOW casually but you cannot take their

I am currently in a guild who is competitive enough that they are top 8 in the realm. I did not sign up for their regular raids as I have no more time for them but I did sign up for their 10 man group. In the end, I just want to raid be it only 10 man, see the bosses, wipe, learn from it, kill the boss, and onto the next boss.

In addition to seeing raids, I also want to get into Arenas. Last time I've played Arenas was in BC and I feel like I missed out on not playing them. I'll be making a couple posts about my arena adventures here pretty soon.

Thanks for reading and safe travels.

A week of playing the AH

It's been about a week now since I started playing the AH. I started with 300 gold and within a week I am now sitting at 10k gold. I could have had more if I didn't spend flying cold weather mount on two of my toons(soon to be 3). If you read my last few posts I was aiming for 10k gold by the end of the month! My hopes are high that I will be sitting at 20k gold come August.

I started with belt buckles but now I am starting post a couple more item like enchanting scrolls, rods, and some rare gems. I've run into some AH campers and I really don't have the time to hit the cancel button on my QA3 every minute so I just let them undercut me. I will try to slowly break into the alchemy business and get more into JC. I'll post a report on some lessons learned and AHA moments by the end of the week.

PVE wise, I am one achievement short of getting my Red Proto Drake. What sucks about it is it doesn't involve skill but pure RNG. I need to kill Moragg from Violet Hold on Heroic to finish the Lockdown achievement. I have never ever seen him come up as a boss at VH ever! Maybe once while I was leveling up. I can't believe it has come down to this but I guess it just means I need to try every day to see if I would get lucky.

Now this is just crazy.

Last night's AH adventures was a little bit slow at first but it picked up right around 11pm eastern time when most of the raids are done. Belt buckles were still selling but the one thing that is just truly perplexing are the prices for saronite ore and saronite bar.

I made a killing last night buying stacks of ore for 15g then smelting them and selling bars for 55g per stack. For some reason people needed saronite bar so I kept smelting my bars. The highest bar I sold was for 65g per stack! Considering I only invested 30 gold, heck that is an awesome deal! What makes me wonder though is the people that post the ores have the ability to make it bars yet they dont ... is it because the amount of time it takes to smelt? Or is it because they also wanna supply jcers to prospect ores? I'm not saying they should start making it bars but I'm just wondering why they just settle for ores.

I'm looking forward to this weekend mostly because I know there is going to be a lot of cheap mats on the AH. Currently sitting at 6kg, still can't believe I got this far just by investing 300g last Saturday and using my untapped crafting professions such as BS, JC, and enchanting.

Noobing it up at the AH

Last night was a decent night of AH adventures. The one thing that I sold the most last night was eternal belt buckles. I sold about 10-12 of them. At one point I was the only one selling it so I kept posting it for 50g. Considering it takes about 20-23 gold to make one belt, that's a pretty good profit.

Another surprising item that kept selling was solid sky sapphire. I bought the uncut gems for 10-12 gold, turned around and sold the cut gems for 50 gold each. I sold around 7 of them. Another excellent profit!

The rest of my sales was enchant scrolls, enchanting rods, and fishing stuff. Now I am sitting at almost 5k gold. Considering I started with 300 gold last weekend I think I am not doing so bad. My goal is to reach 15-20k gold at the end of the moment.

I would like to expand though. I have an alchemy who is sitting at 300ish skill and a tailor who is at 350ish. I'm thinking of leveling them up so I can enter the alchemy and tailoring market. My approach though will be the same as blacksmithing, enchanting, and jewelcrafting, I will try to pick 2-3 items that is not too crowded and concentrate there.

As soon I break the 20k gold mark I think I can start buying tons of cheap mats like a wannabe AH player spending around 8-10k on mats. For now though I am content with just crafting a few items and collecting around 1-1.5k gold per night.

Going for Gold

I have spent most of my gold in the two weeks buying mats to get a decent tanking gear, as such, I am bankrupt.

Last weekend saturday morning, I had 300 gold on my banker and 200g on my main. I decided it's time to go back to AH but this time I'm going to take it more seriously to get enough gold.

I currently have JC(441)/BS(440) on my main, an alt enchanter(390) and a miner(310). I started buying cheap materials to make some belt buckles

saronite ore - 13g/stack <- pretty cheap!
eternal water - 30g/stack
eternal earth - 120g/stack
eternal shadow - 160/stack

I made about 20 of them and started listing two at a time for 35-37g per belt. These went pretty fast especially during the weekend

Next up, is my enchanter. I decided to level up my enchanting and while I'm doing it I might as well buy some armor and weapon vellums. I was surprised how much profit scrolls were giving me. My best sellers these past days are SP to gloves, icewalker, +8 stat to chest, +atk gloves, and +def to chest.

After collecting profits last weekend. I decided to buy the recipe for +24 stam gem as I notice there are hardly any posted. Bought a stack of cheap rare blue gems, cut them, and posted two at a time. I sell them for around 45-65g. I can't touch the epic gem market since I am not 450 yet, I should be though in the next couple days or so.

I've just been messing around with the three professions I mentioned above in the past couple days and I must say I am both enjoying the AH experience and of course the gold waiting for me on my mail box.

As of last night I was sitting at 3400 gold on my bank alt. I only gained about 3k gold but you gotta remember I started with 300 gold last saturday plus I'm a complete beginner.

What I need to work on:

I need to have a system down, switching characters back and forth only to find out that I missed and item to send can get really old. I am new at this so I guess this is normal?

Adding on to the item above, I need to have a list and a spreadsheet of some sort to keep track of items that I need to craft and hopefully see a pattern of what items sells when.

Lastly, I need to get my alchemist up there. I think my hunter(lvl 62) is at 305 alchemy. I need to get it up there so I can break into the herbalism so I can start transmuting.

I need to be patient and intelligent on how to deal with AH campers. One already on to me on my belt buckle business. He keeps undercutting me and even sent me a message saying he is gold capped and he will drive the price down. My reaction? I just posted the belts and let it sit at AH as I know they will sell. One thing I should have noticed though is he kept cancelling his auctions whenever he'd post a new one(maybe those were the same items he posted?) If he goes below mat cost I will definetely buy them.

My goal before July ends is 15k-20k gold. I'm new at this and I'm learning along the way. Hopefully once I have a system and have more gold to invest, my earnings per day would increase exponentially.