Introduction

This is a personal recollection of my experiences in World of Warcraft, as I rose to riches in Azeroth. This story is not meant to be neither a leveling guide nor a gold guide, though I am sure some will perceive it as such.

Pre-Wow

I have never been a hard core gamer. Am proud to be part of the Commodore 64 and Atari 2600 generation. In those days, playing was for pure fun. I had never even heard of walkthroughs or cheats. My sole purpose when playing was to enjoy the games. I cared less about beating a game in less than a day, or beating a game at all. While this changed a bit as I grew, inside me the core old school gamer forever remained.

Enter MMORPGs

I never played the early MMORPGs such as EverQuest and Ultima Online. I did play some Diablo II, if that can be considered an MMORPG. But one day I heard a friend in college talk about some MMORPG he has been playing, Asheron's Call. The concept of the online world now suddenly intrigued me. At the time, there was a new MMORPG coming out, Asheron's Call 2: Fallen Kings, and I decided that this would be my entry point to the virtual universe. Asheron's Call 2 (AC2) was a great game, however its release suffered some mistakes that still occur even with releases of newer MMORPGs (history repeats itself). Problems included insufficient content, balance issues, and bugs. Still I had some very interesting experiences there, a topic which I will leave for another article.

MMORPG-Hopping

Asheron's Call 2 eventually shut down which made me feel sad, as I had enjoyed the game deeply. Naturally, this sent me seeking other online worlds. For the next couple of years I was cruising between various MMORPGs. I visited Paragon City (City of Heroes), Perrigen Falls (Eve Online), Tyria (Guild Wars) and various other online worlds. Finally I docked into Azeroth (World of Warcraft) and dropped anchor. I rolled a Horde Undead Warlock as this sounded the coolest (and still does).

Transmute!

At first I was not concerned about wealth and riches, just about having fun as usual, escaping every day issues of the real world. As my professions I chose Herbalism and Alchemy. This choice was influenced by the fact that I had just finished watching Fullmetal Alchemist. Soon I noticed that there were several lower level herbs that were selling in the Auction House (“AH”) for a good price. The main reason being that higher level characters were not inclined to waste time collecting lowbie herbs that would not have increased their profession skill. Thus I started treating herb collection as a job. I would regularly go out and gather herbs, then sell them in the Auction House. Soon I was making a nice profit for a low level character, around 10 gold per day. I used those gold coins to buy cool items- rare blue ones (As at the low level Epic purple items were not yet available). This marked the beginning of my transmutation from casually playing for fun to hardcore playing for greed.

Gold Rush

Soon I got greedy. The 10g per week was no longer fulfilling. I came up with another way to make gold, simply buying low and selling high in the Auction House. I would study the market well: know how much items are worth, when to buy and when to sell. Kind of like playing the stock market, except completely different. I was now earning around 100 gold per week. I did not notice it, but I was gradually spending more and more time in Azeroth, and less and less time in the real world. I had a couple of real life friends who also played this game, and I would no longer see them in real life but instead would just be chatting with them inside Azeroth. Classic online addiction syndrome.

Greed Before Need





I would watch the Auction House for hours, studying and analyzing items and their prices, waiting to find an item that I could buy low and sell for a higher price. I thought to myself “there must be a better way to do this”. I am a software engineer. One thing software engineers like to do is to try and automate everything. So I began studying the WOW API to see if I can write a program that can watch the AH for me. But then I came across an addon called “Auctioneer” which does exactly what I was looking to do. One thing software engineers don't like to do is to reinvent the wheel. So I abandoned my program and installed the Auctioneer add on. Auctioneer analyzes the auction house for me. It scans all items and keeps track of their prices. It tells me for how much I should buy the item and for how much I should sell it. It also automatically scans listings to see if an item has been posted for below the average price, so that I can snatch it. For example, one day it detected a Destruction Potion Recipe that had been listed on the Auction House with a buyout price of 10 gold. The average price for that recipe in my server at the time was 500 gold. So I immediately snatched it and sold it for 500 gold. That is 490 gold earned in 10 minutes. Now multiply this by several of these incidents a day. I was making anywhere between 100 to 2000 gold a day, depending on how lucky I was and how much time I spent scanning the AH.

I'm Rich! I'm Rich!





What could I do with all the gold? I could buy any item I want. I got myself a wardrobe of rare armor. There was no limit to what I could do. You might be asking, “but what about BOP items? Those can't be bought with gold?” First let me explain what BOPs are, for those who don't play World of Warcraft. BOPs (or Bind on Pick) are items that usually drop in dungeons (instances) and once you pick them up they are bound to you meaning you cannot trade them, sell them, and no one else can use them but yourself. As opposed to a BOE (Bind on Equip) item which, as its name suggests, only bounds to you when you equip it, meaning that if you found a BOE item you could sell it. BOP items were generally more powerful and more sought after than equivalent BOE items of the same level. Well thing is, I did buy BOPs. Not directly though. Let's say I was interested in acquiring the Robes of Arugal, a powerful rare spellcaster robe, which only drop in Shadowfang Keep. I would hire a high level character to run me through the instance and kill the boss that drops this item. If it did not drop the first time, then it is rinse and repeat, until the item I sought is dropped. This not only helped me acquire great BOPs (including, later, epic weapons and epic armor) but also helped me level fast. With my character fully rested (gaining double the experience points), one or two runs across an instance would give me a full level. Thus the gold was helping me not only with equipment, but with leveling. I never had a problem finding a high level character to run me through an instance. Most would gladly take 20 to 100 gold (depending on the instance) to do it. This run could take anywhere between 15 minutes to 2 hours (Again, depending on the instance). From my point of view, running a lower level character through a dungeon is not an effective way to make profit. You have to spend an hour in a low level instance (sometimes more depending on how often the lowbie died and had to run back all the way from the graveyard which could be miles afar) and only get 30 gold for your trouble. By playing the Auction House instead, I could make 500 gold in 10 minutes, so I thought to myself that I would never offer dungeon runs to lower level characters (at least not as a way of making profit).

Emptiness

So I had more gold than I would ever need. Ok contrary to whats implied in the title, I did not really have a million gold coins. But I did have many thousands of gold coins – an amount that the casual wow player never reaches – and that does classify me as an online millionaire. I also had no problem leveling as I would just hire someone to run me through instances or quests. I would spend all my free time- and more – inside Azeroth. The Burning Crusade expansion did not change my greed, I was still busy making gold instead of exploring all the new content that had just been released. My social life, college life and professional life were all getting hurt. And for what? There was no more fun to the game, no more challenge. That went against my own old school gamer soul, that soul that played for the fun of it, that liked being challenged. A fierce battle ensued between that soul, and the evil hard core gamer soul, driven by grid and power.

Release

In the end, the old school gamer in me prevailed, and I realized that what I was doing had no purpose. I made the decision to play for fun again, not for (virtual) riches and power. In one day, I got rid of all my thousands of gold coins, mostly by giving generous gifts to low level characters I ran into. I made a new character (This time I tried Alliance and rolled a Human Rogue) which I leveled, and made gold the old fashioned way, by actually playing the game. I limited myself to no more than 1-2 hours a day playing World of Warcraft, and regained control of my real life.

Lesson

The moral of this story is left for you to figure out. At the time of writing this story, the newest expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, is less than a month away. I am looking forward to exploring all the new content and features in that expansion, now that I am no longer preoccupied with making gold and actually enjoy playing the game.

And thus concludes the story of how I became a millionaire in World of Warcraft.