Earning $ with WOW - advice from you addicts please :)

[Low Key]

Right after BC was released, the race to 70 was on. The first people to 70 that sold their accounts made like $1500 for one toon. I bet the race to 80 in WotLK will be very similar, as will the price for 80s right after it's released.

Selling WoW stuff on eBay isn't much of an option, it will get cancelled if Blizzard reports it, or if some nosey jerk from the forums happens to be scanning eBay for any and all WoW related auctions to mass report them. (Happened to me once)

[ImsaKidd]

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Right after BC was released, the race to 70 was on. The first people to 70 that sold their accounts made like $1500 for one toon. I bet the race to 80 in WotLK will be very similar, as will the price for 80s right after it's released.

Selling WoW stuff on eBay isn't much of an option, it will get cancelled if Blizzard reports it, or if some nosey jerk from the forums happens to be scanning eBay for any and all WoW related auctions to mass report them. (Happened to me once)

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First person to have high level Death Knight will make a lot.

[bigalt]

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Find another game. The chinese already owns this one.

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This is an important point. There are chinese/korean MMO farms set up now which you're competing with. And now that they have the infrastructure, I don't imagine there are any games coming out where you'd be able to pull in a decent earn since they work for peanuts and are happy for it.

[LuckayLuck]

the chinese are very bad at productivity in terms of earning gold/hr. You could keep up. You could go for the things the chinese don't do (first high level Death Knight, epic gearz from raiding)

now if the chinese companies united and formed some good raid guild, we'd all be doomed

as has been stated, the best way to make $ is to "get in early", get the "best stuffs" and be at that point at a certain point in the game, then either sell best stuffs or a gold amount that is very high relative to what the average person can expect to have at that point in the game.

[ImsaKidd]

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now if the chinese companies united and formed some good raid guild, we'd all be doomed

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I know for a fact there were chinese sweatshops farming molten core a while back to get chars with good gear.

They arent just getting solo grind stuff.

That said, they definitely arent the most efficient, but they put in sick hours.

[Low Key]

I doubt any human would be in good form after 12 straight hours of playing, for your five hundreth day in a row with no vacation.

I think the problem with trying to gear up your player to make more money is that you're also contending with all the other people in your raid for gear, and you're wasting time for something that only slighty raises the price your account will fetch. I bet this even applies with the new system for getting pvp gear. (Sure, some of these guys list their accounts for $1200, but I've never seen one with a single bid or a buyout.)

[Shoe]

A few things,

I used to buy and resell a ton of platinum in the original Everquest. I was doing this while the market was still pretty new. Margins were high and business was good. since then, lots of people have entered the business, including the chinese and other cheap labor markets, which have really driven down prices and the amount of $$$/hour you can earn.

That being said, you can still make decent money playing the games, but it is just much, much harder to do, mainly because you are competing with thousands upon thousands of people in third world countries that are willing to do the same thing you are doing for pennies on the dollar.

When I was doing this, playerauctions.com was pretty much the site for buying/selling game money. The site has since been bought by IGE (one of the big 24/7 gold shops), and the site has since gone downhill and is now pretty much a worthless site IMO. You could possibly unload your own gold there though as the site is still frequented by some buyers/resellers.

I have sold a limited amount of gold in wow and have never been banned or had any trouble with my account. I don't know much or have any inside info about blizzard, but I know with EQ/EQ2, sony will not ban you if you make your money from legitimate means (by this i mean farming it your self, no cheats/hacks, or bots that are abusing the system). I don't know if blizzard operates in the same way, or if they crack down much harder. Obviously, one of the biggest risks in this is losing all the time you invested to get to do what is your bread and butter, only to get banned shortly thereafter.

One advantage to chinese gold farmers/power levelers, is that if you find a sweet spot in the game, you can pay them pennies on the dollar for their time to get mulitple characters on multiple servers getting you to the point you want to be quickly.

I have been out of the selling gold/plat for real $$$ business for some time now, but have been thinking of getting back in. Seeing the post that sony set up a site for EQ2 has me intrigued, and I am going to check that out. I played EQ2 for awhile and thought it was a great game, i actually think it is as good as wow, it's just that everyone flocks to wow because everyone loves blizzard and hates soe (and rightfully so in many cases). The thing about EQ2 is it is much more hardcore than wow, it will take a lot more time to reach the max level etc... but I personally find that more rewarding. Wow is definitely much more fun for the average, casual gamer. but EQ2 is pretty damn good game too.

Also, one of the things that sucks about this business is that you will find a great way of making money for a short period of time. but then suddenly, out of nowhere, they will patch/nerf what your doing and you need to find something new. Or over time the item you were making just isn't worth anything more due to expansions, etc... You will never have a great money maker that lasts for an extended period of time. (unless you are lucky enough to find the rare bug or whatever). Even if you do find it, you will generally be bored out of your mind doing this 40+ hours per week unless you can get a bot to do it for you -- but then you are more likely to get banned as well.

If you go forward with this, I wish you the best of luck, but at the same time understand the game is addicting and you can almost certainly make a better use of your time EV wise in another business, whether it be poker or another job. Good luck!

[sdlate]

There are ways to earn a decent return on time spent playing wow, but the prerequisites are quite extensive. For instance, I play on one of the top arena 5v5 teams one of the better (and more populous) battlegroups in the nation (Vengeance).

We leveled up 5 arena teams to about 2200ish rating and started selling weekly spots on the teams for 700g a pop, letting the clowns play 3 games, and us play the remaining 7 to keep the rating up. That way, they got their points, we kept our teams high to continue selling, plus a huge profit. Over the course of the season, I made about 40,000 gold, which I sold to guildies and other players I knew at 1000g for $50, which turned into a decent profit margin. Nothing compared to Poker, obviously.

At the end of the season I plan to end my Wow career by selling my account (Sick geared warrior; full merciless, stormherald, archimonde pants with plenty of extra BT and hyjal gear, plus a full merciless hunter if anyone's interested :P) which should hopefully generate a revenue sufficient enough to justify the countless hours I put into the game. Luckily, I enjoyed the time spent which grants some justification, however it'll be nice if I can pull off at least 2k to feel like I got something out of it ~

All in all, WoW (and pretty much any video game, unless you can be the absolute best and earn a sponsorship) is a bad investment if you're looking to get money out of it. WoW for me has been a nice distraction which will hopefully at least pay for itself in the end, nothing more.

[choccypie]

I'd suggest looking at some gold selling websites that also buy back gold and see how much you'll get. Although imo it's not worth it as it's tedious and you'll have a lot of competition from Chinese goldfarmers.

I know people who've bought gold on EU servers, and not had any problems, but afaik Blizz US is a lot stricter (hence gold being more expensive on US servers) and they will ban your account(s) 100% when they find out.

[Berge20]

I was absolutely floored at the ability of someone to make money in MMOs when I got into it back '99. My guess is that a lot has changed (particularly in respect to the Chinese, et al) and I've been long out of it.

Early will always be key. People are always willing to pay real money to have something others do not or for something that can help them get to that point faster. The game doesnt even have to be a huge one like WoW. In fact, sometimes I think the smaller games might give you more of a profit.

Still a hard gig.