I’ve been chilling out over the holidays, fighting my way through a mountain of Christmas Pudding and cream, so I haven’t spent a great deal of time in the Auction House. I’ve also parked my army of profession alts for now, giving them some respite from their endless toil of crafting. It’s at this time that I like to look back over the year, reflecting on my gold making and deciding the success and failure of various strategies.

When I look back over my blog I’m surprised at the amount of content I’ve produced this past year. This is in part a response to others in the gold making community spurring me on and providing me with hints, tips and suggestions for blog posts and articles. It’s also a response to my followers and subscribers who regularly tweet and email me with a variety of ideas and suggestions for future topics or simply to ask me for help.

It was one such subscriber who, having listened to me chat with Jim Younkin on his live stream, suggested I should create my own podcast. And so the Journal of Marcus Ty Podcast was born.

Now, I knew in theory how a Podcast worked and what I had to do, but knowing something and doing it are two different things. It’s what I tell new players when it comes to making gold in the Auction House: you can read about this stuff all you like but sooner or later you just have get in there and be a player. Needless to say I turned to Jim for advice and being a supportive kind of bloke, he pointed me to one of his many articles on the subject to get me on track. So thanks to Jim the Podcast got off to a good start.

Now, Jim and I have been gold-capped for many years. In fact, I’ve lost count of the millions of gold Jim has accumulated. I idle between 1-2million gold across my various alts, but Jim keeps ploughing on accumulating more and more gold. When I remind Jim that it’s only virtual gold, he always replies: ‘Yes, but it’s my virtual gold!’ This inspired me to write a post for Cold Blogging Carnival called What Drives a Gold Maker earlier in the year.

Episode One of the JMT Podcast launched on March 16th. If you listen to the first show – just for a laugh – you’ll hear this British guy banging on about the Auction House in a very formal BBC voice. I’ve since been asked to do the ‘Shipping Forecast’. A lovely lady from New York wrote on iTunes: ‘Don’t know anything about making gold, just love listening to the British accent’. If you want to start your own podcast I would always recommend interviewing a guest or having a co-host.

As it turns out I was fortunate to interview Erik Dekker of the blog The Golden Crusade and Cold of the blog Cold’s Gold Factory for some great episodes. But it was when interviewing Nev of the blog Auction House Addict that things really clicked and Nev has been my co-host on the show ever since. It’s largely thanks to Nev’s input into the show and her relaxed style that the show has continued to gain followers and remains interesting to do. In fact Nev and I can talk for hours on any subject. So much so that I normally have about three hours of material to edit down for the one hour show each recording session!

Half way through the year came the release of the patch 5.3. There were no major changes to the WoW gold economy and I summarized the state of play in the post What’s Been Making Gold in Patch 5.3-Escalation.

It was around about the same time that Trade Skill Master 2 was released. There were many changes to the program and some players were unhappy about having to re-learn and reconfigure the new program. Needless to say the new changes were eventually well received. It was during that time that I received a lot of requests for help on setting up the new TSM2 so I wrote a review come mini guide: TSM2 Review and it became a regular topic on the JMT Podcast.

As we moved through summer I searched and explored new and not so new markets to exploit. I went back to basics and made a good profit snatching undervalued items from the Auction House and flipping them. This technique works best if you employ a little automation so I wrote a post on how to set up Shopping Lists in TSM2.

As the summer waned , Blizzard was preparing to launch the next patch 5.4. Nev and I discussed how to prepare for the new patch in Episode Eleven of the JMT Podcast. I explained that I had been buying up stacks of Living Steel, anticipating the demand from the new Engineering recipes that were in the pipeline. I must have spent around 70,000g on Living Steel at below market price of around 300g on my server in preparation.

Patch 5.4 was released in September, around the time of my birthday. Nev was kind enough to sing me ‘Happy Birthday, Mr Co-Host’ in the breathless style of Marilyn Monroe in Episode Thirteen of the JMT Podcast which, needless to say, went down well with our listeners. Nev went on to give some tips on questing on the Timeless Isle. In the Auction House I made a killing selling all of my stock of Living Steel for around 550-600g a bar over the first week of the new patch.

As the Summer greens of the leaves in my little corner of England started to turn to the yellow ochres and reds of the Fall, I spent more and more time grinding on the Timeless Isle – or TimeSuck Isle as one follower tweeted. I became obsessed with trying to complete the Noodle Cart quest and it became a topic on the podcast and in a post called Dude, Where’s My Noodle Cart. Always ready to talk about food, Nev and I discussed Cooking and the secondary professions in the making of Warcraft gold.

As patch 5.4 wore on I noticed spikes in the price of Living Steel as players set about crafting the new Engineering recipes. Once they had generated enough of Jard’s Peculiar Energy Source they would splurge their gold on Living Steel to make the new Sky Golem Mount. There was a big debate on whether, as gold makers, we should craft the mount and attempt to sell it on the Auction House or simply keep the first mount. I expressed my view in the post Making Gold with the Sky Golem Mount.

As the Fall turned to Winter I revisited making gold with Pandarean Cooking. This got me back into Fishing – which is not the fastest way to make gold – but it aloud me to chill out, away from the endless grind of the Timeless Isle. It also inspired me to write the post Making Gold with Ben of the Booming Voice.

As the year came to its end Blizzard finally announced the new Warlords of Draenor expansion. There were going to be changes to the professions and levels that I thought would affect the Warcraft economy and I summarized my thoughts in the post Warlords Expansion Gold Making Impact.

I had made so much gold during the last patch that I maxed-out the gold limit on my banking alt 999,999.99. and had to post the surplus to my other alts to receive my sales. I was by now just keeping my crafting and trading ticking over. I needed a new incentive to keep making gold. I mentioned this to Nev so we decided to devote the last few shows of the podcast to making gold at the lower levels and I wrote the post Making Gold By The Seashore which also became the topic of the podcast. The final show and post ended the year with the Making Gold During Feast of Winterveil and Nev having to put up with my bad jokes.

So next year Nev and I are planning more topics for the podcast and I’m going to start my Horde project. I’ve always played mainly Alliance characters and next year I want to create a new Horde character and level to 90. From a gold making perspective I will blog about starting out with zero gold and see how much I can accumulate on this new character. I’ll still be discussing more advanced topics and as usual, searching out new markets.

I’m also in the process of writing a Kindle version of my guide Auction House Secrets which I hope to release in the New Year. So watch this space.

Until the next time this is Marcus Ty wishing you a happy and prosperous New Year!