Tuesday is for Gold Making...

When I began my journey through WoW several years ago, I had no idea about how to make gold in World of Warcraft.  Like a majority of people beginning in this MMO, I would just grind quests and kill mobs for coin and the occasional valuable rare drop.  My first few years would find me always having just enough gold to purchase the things that I needed in order to raid, but not much else. 

I found out about the Auction House late in the BC expansion (yeah, admitted noob there).  See, playing WoW is my first experience in an MMO and I spent the better part of the first 2 years playing it like a console video game, only now on my computer.  My experience in playing console games overall were that they are predictable and not much social interaction is needed to play those.  Of course, much has changed in the console market over the past 4 years allowing for more interactive game play between people.  I grew up playing Sega Genesis, Atari, Colecovison, and other game systems that did not require other people to have a gaming experience.  (Thinking about this makes me realize how long I have been playing games...) 

Anyways, tangents aside, I treated the Auction House for the next 18 months or so as a vendor for the items I farmed in game.  So I always had the gold I needed, but after every time I would purchase another epic flight for another toon, I would be out of gold and need to go back farming again.  A little over a year ago, I saw a friend of mine on a Traveler's Tundra Mammoth .  I thought it was the neatest thing ever, a multiperson mount that had vendors attached to it.  I was thinking of how awesome it would be to have when I go farming instances (still thinking small at this point...).   So I asked my friend how he got the 18,000 gold for this mount.  He said one word, "Professions." 

Needless to say I was confused.  I always had my enchanting and tailoring, but never thought about using any of it to make money.  (I can see the faces of people reading this now -- LOL it is so obvious noob console gamer guy)  I knew I never had that much gold in game ever, so something needed to change in how I played this game.  It was obvious to me that other people could make gold in game legally, but I needed to find out how.  I began to search tirelessly on the internet for blogs, sites, and forums on how to make gold. 

One of the first places I found with regular updates and a common sense approach to gold making, was from Markco over at Just My Two Copper.  Markco provided daily blog post updates that appealed to someone like me who was looking for ideas.  Soon after I started following JMTC, Markco expanded his ideas for developing something more than just a blog about gold, he began setting in motion the development of a gold making community on the JMTC Forums.  Now the forums have well over 5,000 topics compiled over the past few years on everything from farming to Auction House to speculation.  Many of the forum contributors are active on their own servers in doing the things that they speak about on these forums.

Markco's blog and the forums were not the only places he wanted to reach an audience.  He has been a part of several podcasts, such as Call to Auction and Castaclysm.  Although these podcasts may not be currently active, there is wisdom and plenty of entertainment in them.  The socialization of the gold making community is leading us into more avenues for learning about making gold in WoW.  I would like to leave you today with a list of links to blogs and podcasts about gold making that I follow regularly to get information:

• Gold Capped from WoW Insider - Euripides of Call to Auction writes weekly articles about gold
• Phase 3: Profit! - Big Jimm also of Call to Auction has a great collection of gold making articles
• Kaliope's Crafting Blog - Kaliope provides awesome lists of everything craftable and often has a listing new items from PTR and Beta testing
• El's Exteme Anglin - El provides the most comprehensive fishing compendium
• Cold's Gold Factory - Cold provides interesting posts and is one of the hosts of the new Auction House Junkies podcast along with Wes from Capped by Cata
• The Undermine Journal - incredible resource for Auction House activity on almost any server
• The Consortium - fantastic new community on gold making and great resources 
• Tarou WoW Guides - Tarou provides free guides of professions and has weekly updates on the market he experiences

 Again, these are not the only wow gold making blogs and sites out there, but these are the ones that I follow.  I am always looking for more great places to find information on the web.  Tell me in the comments below about what your favorite gold making blog/site is.

Thank you for checking out this Long, Strange Post today....

Time for me to go deal with some Zombies on my Lawn....