WoW Rest Stop

The last two days my druid Shribryn has run the Culling of Stratholme instance for the daily heroic.  CoS used to be a very difficult dps race if you wanted to get to the extra boss with an extra badge and the chance to roll on the drake mount.  Most people usually just /afk'ed if they had the drake as it was one of the longest instances due to the NPC interactions.  Since 3.3 this instance has been pretty easy due to the change so the NPC don't get in the way anymore and the fact that our gear makes the instance a joke.  The Culling of Stratholme was one of my favorite parts of Warcraft 3 so I'm glad they made the place more fun to visit but ultimately it is your party members that make up a pleasant experience.  I definitely had to different experiences the last two days.

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It is easy in this game to get what I call - "Purple Fever".  This usually occurs when the loot screen pops up and someone needs an item. 

"OMG!!! OMG!!! OMG!!!"

That is what you usually hear when someone has an advanced case of purple fever as their new gear is so close they can almost see it on their character.  I have actually seen some reduced to tears when struck by "Purple Fever" but they are unable to get the items.

Blizzard is smart in the way they hook people into the game.  At first you get levels very easily and new gear is always around the corner.  By the time you hit max level you are hooked on the game but suddenly it gets tougher and tougher to get gear.  The best gear is mostly the Epic Purple items so that is where people turn their attention at max level.  And the only way to get the best purples is in a guild.

As I have mentioned before, the first character I played was Shribryn.  The night elf starting areas were amazing and even though there were enemies to fight, I felt safe with the capital of Darnassus nearby.  As I finished my last quest in Darnassus I knew I had no choice but to leave the safety of Nordrassil and head for the unknown mainland.  It is hard to imagine now but I was actually a bit nervous as I got onto the boat that would take me to Auberdine.  As we entered port I noticed the coastline stretched out as far as the eye could see.  Finding my way off the boat and onto the dock I was immediately greeted by a fellow night elf that had decided to start a guild.  His name was Shamanizer and although I didn't know him I decided to join up with him.  He made me an officer and through continuous recruiting our guild was soon the largest on the server.  We were all noobs but everyone was a noob in those days.  The main thing was everyone was having a blast.  The fun came to an end when we hit max level and suddenly there wasn't much to do.  We tried our hands at running the max level instances but our guild struggled mightily due to our noobness and broke up.  Shamanizer and I lost touch.  Fast forward a few months and I decided to switch servers and I find out Shamanizer had done the same thing. I messed around in a few guilds but he found a new guild called "Requiem" and wanted me to join him.  He and his wife love it so I apply and am quickly accepted.  Since they are short on healers I play my druid and they both are playing priests so between the 3 of us we are half the healing for the guild.  And the game is fun again.

End game at that point was Molten Core and we made slow but steady progress through the instance.  Shamanizer, Concertina (his wife) and I made our own chat channel so we just healed and talked all night long and things were perfect. At some point during Molten Core our guild leaders had a major fight and the result was half the guild quit and I was asked to be an druid officer.  When the priest officer quit a few days later I convinced the leadership to promote Shamanizer.  Since we were on the winning side of the "revolution" everything was great but storm clouds were on the horizon in the form of Concertina.

CC (as I called her) had a bit of a temper and was a bit of a conspiracy freak.  I enjoyed talking with her more than just about anyone else in the game but it seemed like I spent a lot of time defending her to other people.  It wasn't too bad until a few months later when she accused another officer of stealing guild funds.  I talked her out of making a big deal about it because I was 99% sure her accusations were wrong.  She promised me she wouldn't say anything but when I came home the next day I found a post on our forums with all sorts of accusations from her.   The other officers had already responded in anger but I convinced the other officers that the best thing to do was delete the thread and I would explain it to her.  Tempers cooled.

I felt for Shamanizer at this time because as he had access to the the officer forums he saw some very direct comments about CC.  As her husband he had little choice but to defend her honor and ultimately he decided to step down as officer.  Sham/CC and I still had our secret chat channel for raids but it was no longer nearly as much fun because on one hand I am seeing the officers bash CC in officer chat and CC bash the officers in our private chat.  I tried to play Switzerland but it was to little avail.  I know one thing -- I wasn't having fun anymore.

Things were bound to come to a head and they did about a month later when the rants CC made in our private channel started seeping into guild chat.  I told the officers I would talk to her about but a few days later after that she put up another inflammatory post on our forums.  The next time I logged I was informed that there was an officers meeting after the raid.

I don't remember much about the raid that night except that I was miserable because Sham was constantly asking me what the officers were saying.  The officers weren't saying anything in officer chat but I was sure they were conversing in whispers.  All the while, CC defended her actions and was planning the next step in her war against officer tyranny.  I remained quiet through the whole thing and only gave vague responses to direct questions.  I could do little else because frankly the officers weren't talking to me.  I do remember that CC saying that they were untouchable because the 3 of us were the best healers in the guild (which was pretty much true).

After the raid was over we had about 3 things to cover.  I don't remember the first two items on the agenda but the third was whether we needed a guild shakeup.  We had gotten stuck at the beginning of Blackwing Lair and we all agreed that something needed to be done to re-energize the guild.  Every class officer discussed the pro's and con's of each member and majority ruled.  At the end we had a list of 4 people that we were going to kick.  We hadn't discussed the priest class because we only had 2 - Shamanizer and Concertina.  The GM brought it up and said ... "We discussed Sham and CC before you logged in and have decided they are out."  I tried to defend them but the other officers were in 100% agreement that they had to go.  When I mentioned that kicking them put me in a bad position since they were my friends, the other officers responded that they said they understood and would understand if I felt it necessary to leave as well.  I was stunned.  I told them I needed some time to think about it.  They told me that I had until the raid the next night to decide.

As you can imagine Shamanizer and CC asked me a bunch of questions after I logged off Teamspeak (!!).  I told them that I really didn't want to talk about it and logged off and on to an alt that no one knew about.  I remember it was like 2am and I was just running in circles around Ironforge thinking about the decision.  I remembered leaving Darnassus and meeting Shamanizer for the first time.  I remembered the fun we had leveling.  Then I remembered how lost I felt after our guild broke up and I changed servers.  In our 4 months with Requiem I had gotten some of the best loot from Molten Core and I was now one of the leaders in an up and coming guild.  The bad thing was my best online friends were now being asked to leave.

Finding your place in an online world is difficult.  Nothing is physical and much of the game occurs in your mind.  People come and go from guilds and servers much quicker than you'd ever see in real life.  Occasionally you meet people that you want to meet in real life.  Shamanizer and CC were two people like that for me.  Now I was being forced to choose between them and the only true guild I'd ever known.  I thought back to the time I mentioned earlier when I first hit max level and Shamanizer's guild broke up.  We spoke occasionally but it wasn't the same.  If I left the guild there was no guarantee that I'd ever find one that fit me as well as Requiem and no guarantee that be able to get in one with Shamanizer/CC.  If I stayed with Requiem I would have lots of power and access to the best loot in the game.  I decided to stay.

The only person that was online when I decided was our raid leader, Modhne.  I told him my decision and he was happy that I had decided to stay.  I asked him if I could be the one to tell Sham/CC that they were out and he agreed to tell the other officers.  The next night I logged in and asked Shamanizer and CC if they had a few minutes to chat in our private channel.  They agreed and before I could say anything Sham said, "We're out aren't we?"  I said yeah.  The officers had booted a few other people during the day and rumors were flying about the meeting from the night before.  I told them that I was staying in the guild.  Shamanizer said he understood but CC lost her temper and called me names.  I told them both that it was a very difficult decision and I'd hope they understand.  We could always be friends.  To CC's credit she quit the guild without a scene but she also left our private chat channel.  Shamanizer did the same thing a few moments later.  I never spoke to either of them again (I heard they re-rolled horde on a different server but I really don't know).

I felt bad about my decision for a long time but the effect on the guild was pretty amazing.  We revamped our recruiting process and got a new group of players that helped us conquer Blackwing Lair far quicker than any of us thought possible.  When we beat the final boss and I held his sceptre in my hands I felt justified in staying with the guild.  But as time has passed I feel less sure that I was correct.  In the new world of pixelated rewards and transitory friends nothing is certain.

Ultimately the question of friends vs guild has no right answer.  Only two paths filled with the regret of a choice you'd rather not make.

The glyph market on my server has been pretty tame since last fall.  There's about 3 of us that post a few times a day and with the average posting price of about 15-20g we are all making money.  One of the things I did to let my competition "win" was to stop posting/reposting 3 of every glyph and focus on the top 75 best selling glyphs.  This gives them a bit of profit which reduces the chance of a price war while giving me great profit (at least 1000g/day).  One other thing is because there are 3 of us posting at all times of the day it is like we are camping the Auction House without one of us needing to be on our computer 24/7.  This has discouraged anyone else from entering the market so peace has reigned --  that is until "NewScribe" (not his real name) entered the market.
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Rinda's scribe journey

When WotLK came out, I decided to change one of my rogue's profession from tailoring to inscription. I didn't know much about the profession but I had every other profession covered and it sounded interesting so I leveled it to max soon after patch 3.0 came out.  Fast forward a few weeks and the actual WotLK game was released.  Stacks of herbs skyrockets to 100g and since I was cash poor I decided to stop glyphing altogether and abandoned the profession.  I mean everyone already had their glyph and they never expire so in my mind the profession was basically tapped out. 

Six months go by and I'm listening to a podcast called "How I Wow" and the guest is Markco of Just My 2 Copper.  He is describing how to make money in the game and he says the best way is inscription.  As someone who rarely had more than a few thousand gold I was very interested but I have a hard time believing his claims of massive profit.  I researched his claims and soon realize that the way he made the 30k gold in a day was due to a special circumstance when Blizzard allowed dual specs.  That meant that on the day of the patch, a large population of people needed 6 glyphs immediately.  I knew the circumstances from that patch would never be repeated and I'd missed another opportunity but as I studied I realized that you could still make plenty of money in the profession.  The main reason was the higher barrier to entry and once I realized this I immediately leveled my rogue's inscription to max and started listing glyphs.

Scribes can make many things but glyphs are the basis of the profession.  Currently there are 345 glyphs in the game and you can learn 138 by training (40%), 64 by minor research (19%), 83 by major research (24%), 3 by bought vendor recipe (1%), and 57 by reading a BoE Glyph Book (16%).   Many people getting into the glyph game buy everything possible from the trainers and learn everything they can from the glyph books meaning they now have the ability to make 198 different glyphs or 57% of all the recipes in the game.  This is a bit misleading.  First, of the top 80 glyphs sold, only 29 of them (or 36%) are learned this way.  That is just the start....

Scribe Barriers to Entry

1. Low price of trained glyphs - As mentioned earlier there are 29 trainable/book mastery glyphs that sell in good quantity.  The problem is the low barrier to entry on these items means the price of these glyphs are perpetually below cost as there are always people leveling the profession.  This gives the impression that there isn't any money to be made in inscription.
2. Bag Space - A player that has trained and used book mastery is faced with the prospect of making 200 glyphs.  Each glyph takes up one slot in your bag up to a stack of 20.  As a player with maximum normal bags has about 100 slots that means you have to fit glyphs on your character in addition to all your armor/weapons/food/flasks and anything else you happen to be carrying.  I have found that is is almost impossible to make glyphs on an active character for this reason and if you want to list all glyphs you need to use Inscription bags and 3 different characters.
3. Listing issues - You've made an alt to list your glyphs but you need to list 200 glyphs x the number you want to list.  Profit on glyphs at the beginning are only 1-2g each and demand is sporadic so the key is in being able to post 4-500 glyphs at a time.  Without help of a mod this is almost impossible.
4. Knowing what to produce - An alternative to producing all 200 glyphs is to pick a lesser number of glyphs and make only the most popular glyphs.  The problem is how do you know what people are going to buy as most people only player 1-2 characters and don't know what glyphs each class considers mandatory. 
5. Time Investment - Milling a stack of herbs takes about 10 seconds.  Creating 6 Inks from that stack takes another 20 seconds.  Creating 6 glyphs from that ink takes about 20 seconds.  So in 50 seconds you have 6 glyphs.  Obviously this is best case scenario but lets use this 8 seconds per glyph as the standard.  A good scribe will sell about 100 glyphs per day.  If you make 100 glyphs it will take you almost 14 minutes (8 x 100 = 800 seconds).   Keep in mind that this doesn't include the time to figure out which glyphs to create, buying inks from the ink trader, buying parchment, the time to list glyphs, getting all the unsold glyphs from the bank, and  all the associated running to do all these things.  Assuming you take 3-4 minutes for each of these activities you are looking at another 20 minutes to list your 100 glyphs everyday.  When you consider that you can do 2-3 dailies in the same time frame it is hard to justify inscription.
6. Time / Cost to learn the reseached glyphs - Leveling inscription isn't cheap but it is just the beginning.  Once you get to a skill of 75 you have the ability to do Minor Inscription Research.  Every day at a cost of 1 Moonglow Ink and 2 Light Parchment you can learn 1 of the 64 minor glyphs in the game. Once you hit a skill of 385 you have the ability to do Northrend Inscription Research which cost 1 Snowfall Ink, 3 Ink of the Sea and 5 Resilient Parchment to make 1 of the 83 researched major glyphs in the game. It will take any scribe a minimum of 3 months to learn all the glyphs at an approximate cost of 2200g.  This can be daunting considering that inscription isn't very profitable when you first start.
7. Constant competition in the Auction House - As I have mentioned earlier, inscription isn't very popular but the 5-10 people that focus on it will undercut within an hour of posting.  For a player that isn't expecting it, the constant posting/reposting is maddening.
8. Low percentage of sales - I usually sell anywhere from 10-20% of what I post but I only post the best sellers and a new scribe doesn't have that option.  Using the 100 glyph example from before, I'd imagine a new scribe would sell about 5-10 each time they post and have total revenue of about 40-50g vs their startup costs and time/cost to make the glyphs.

So the prospect is this -- you are working in a profession that is initially unprofitable, takes quite a bit of time, has lots of competition, and takes a long time to master.  Is it any wonder that most people drop out?

On the other hand I laugh every time I see someone post on the forums about how there isn't any money in inscription.  I like that line of thinking as it is lessens competition.  My scribe has made over 300,000g (1700g/day) in the last 6 months and I only list 80 x 4 glyphs per day.  On an average day I post 3 time and sell anywhere from 80-120 glyphs at a profit of 10-20g.  Of course all this is dependent on competition.  The key was understanding that the profession was still profitable and then getting the right tools (mods/macros/) to maximize profits.  Because once you have all the glyphs, know your competition and have streamlined your production process, making a glyph is like printing money.

If you haven't read my mini-strategy on how the 7 stages of inscription you should take a look. Not only should it help you understand the frustration of inscription but I included a mini guide at the bottom that is essentially how I overcame the barriers listed above.

This is a post I did for the JMTC forums about a new scribe thinking of getting into the trade.
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I've been doing inscription since it was introduced and the biggest reason it is a huge moneymaker is because no one thinks it is a huge moneymaker (at least people that don't read jmtc).  If someone is told that inscription is the best way to make money they go through what I call the 7 stages of inscription:

 * Excited Scribe - You heard somewhere that that inscription is a huge moneymaker.  You quit your old profession and become a new scribe.  You invest all your money in herbs and start milling.

 * Disappointed Scribe (2 weeks) - You realize that leveling inscription is expensive and have to start farming and doing dailies to get enough gold to continue to level the profession.  You've done all the training, created a bank alt, bought all the books and made a few cards to get the profession to max level but sales are slow and creating/posting glyphs is taking quite a bit of time.  Where is the money I was promised?!?!?!?!

 * Resilient Scribe (1 month) - You notice that you most of your glyphs are selling for less than 2g and the glyphs over that amount are undercut the next time you log in.  You notice that the same names are undercutting every time.  You do a little research and find the mod Quickauctions.  You also start tracking your sales with Beancounter and researching the most popular glyphs on WowPopular.  You start a second bank alt because 1 toon isn't enough to post everything.  You are going to make inscription work if it bankrupts you.  Your raiding buddies begin to wonder where you are....

 * Experienced Scribe (2 months) - Money is starting to coming in and your glyphs are starting to sell.  You've set up all the mods and are beginning have configured them.  You add a third bank toon as you are now making 300 types of glyphs.  You have stopped raiding altogether.

 * Wizened Scribe ( 3 months) - You know all the patterns.  You know what sells.  You have all the mods.  You know your competition and may have even started getting hate mail from other scribes.  The money is coming in fast and furious and you mock people that don't put epic gems in their heroic gear.  You buy epic flying for some of your raiding buddies alts just so they remember your name.  That doesn't stop them from removing you from active raiding status for inactivity.

 * Jaded Scribe (4 months) - You are on top of the inscription world.  The money is still coming in but you wonder to  yourself... "Didn't I start this to make money to get gear, gems, enchants so I could have more fun playing?"  You reduce the number of glyphs to focus on just your best sellers and use just 1 bank alt to post.  You start hitting the 10 mans with your guildmates on their offnights to gear your toons.

 * Retired Scribe (6 months) - You've passed the the gold cap but the money continues to roll in.  You ask yourself, "How much money do I really need?"  You've got the raiding bug again and apply for reinstatement as an active raider -- the donation of 1000 flasks helps your cause immensely.   You've got more than enough money for the foreseeable future but your are confident in the knowledge that inscription is always there if you need it.

Now here's the thing - 90% of scribes stop trying when they hit the Disappointed Scribe Phase and probably another 9% quit during the Resilient Scribe phase.

People that are scribing today have two other things that are causing them to quit -- 1) Spring Fever and 2) Expansionitis.  Spring Fever should be self explanatory as many people don't want to play as much when they could be outside.  Expansionitis is what happens 6 months before a WoW expansion as many people stop raiding as the gear they can get will be replaced by greens in a few months.  That is a good time to level alts or just find something else to do with their time.  Blizzard knows this and usually makes a few token changes in PvP and some lame sidegrade content to try to keep people interested.  It works to a degree but what really brings people back is beta testing.  This does little to help the "real" WoW world but it does keep people paying their monthly subscriptions.  What brings people back to the game is when they release a patch about 2 months before the expansion with all the expansion's new class abilities.  It's pretty smart on Blizzard's part as they get to beta test on a large scale and it brings excitement back to the game just before the release of the expansion.

What's this mean for scribes?  There will be less players in the coming months but with that comes less competition.  The good thing is when people stop raiding some will change focus to creating alts as now is a good time to switch mains.  Some may fear that the additional alts will increase competition but the barriers to entry listed above will still occur for alts as most won't have the knowledge or will to make it work.  So we are headed into a period with less competition but little drop in glyph demand.  The only wildcard is if Blizzard decides to make massive changes to inscription in the expansion which is a huge subject all by itself and you will make tons of money long before anything like this happens.

The bottom line is now is a great time to become a scribe.  My tip for beginners is level your toon to 400+ the cheapest way you can find then get Quickauctions and learn it.  Create a bank alt and equip him with 4 Bags of Endless Pockets.  You should also goto Wowpopular and click on the glyph toggle.  Make a list of all the Major Glyphs on the page and also include the top half of the Minor glyphs.  This will give you about 50 major and 30 minor glyphs on your list.  You will notice that you can only make about a third of the list with only training/glyph books so you should go into glyphs by class and add a 4-5 of each so you have a good list of glyphs to create (Skip this additional step if you are cash poor).  Now mill herbs (use a macro), create inks (afk nap time!), and use QA, ATSW, or Skillet to make 20 of each glyph on your list and send it to your bank alt with a focus on streamlining your production time (I make my create list in QA on my bank alt and then create my glyphs in QA with my scribe).  Make sure you have Quickauctions configued and install Postal/Mail Opener to streamline getting mail.  You can post and cancel all day long if you'd like but the key period is starting around 6pm server to about 11pm.  Make sure you cancel and repost during that time at least once.  The glyphs you can not make from your Wowpopular list are learned from daily research so make sure you do this every day.  There are 64 Minor and 83 Major Glyphs to research so in 2-3 months you will have the full list.  Make sure to watch what glyphs are selling and eliminate the slow sellers as you learn new ones through research (I use Beancounter).  Also make sure to watch the patch notes for any upcoming changes. 

If you follow this and have enough tenacity you will hit the gold cap long before the expansion arrives.  I just hope you aren't on my server as that would suck. :P

I haven't really posted much on the subject but about half my gametime these days involves playing the auction house game.  The fact that I have 6 80s helps me quite a bit in this area.  For instance my druid is an alchemist/herber, my pally a blacksmith/miner, my hunter a leatherworker/skinner, my mage a tailor/enchanter, my rogue a scribe/engineer, and my deathknight a jewelcrafter/miner.  Since all these toon's professions are at max level I have everything covered.

Currently my bank account is sitting at 190k gold which is probably higher than 99% of the people that play the game.  I got into the AH game last summer a bit by accident as I was trying to gear out all my toons but was continually frustrated because I was running out of money.  The only solution was to get smart at making money.  I originally focused on inscription as I had heard that it was a great way to make money but soon realized that the easy days there were over and it was going to take a long time for my toon to learn all the recipes to put the theory to practice.  So while I worked on that I maxed out everyone else.  My toons focused on the following:

Kelyn	Enchanter	Various enchanting scrolls based on market price
Kelyn	Enchanter	DE'ing random greens
Kelyn	Tailor	400g every 4 days for Spellthread, Ebonweath, Moonshroud
Shribryn	Alchemy	100g for an epic gem 1 Epic gem
Malla	Jewelcrafting	50g for turning epic gem to crafted gem
Rinda	Inscription	Took lots of time / little profit
Henna	Blacksmithing	Create various blacksmiting items for DE if mat price low
Henna	Blacksmithing	Create Eternal Beltbuckle
Delan	Leatherworking	Create Drums and Leg Enhancements

I started to slowly accumulate gold with this strategy but as I watched and learned the auction house I realized that there were 100s of opportunities that I was missing.  I got heavy in to speculation in November before the 3.3 patch at the same time I learned the final few inscription recipes.  Suddenly my moneymaking went to the next level with inscription taking the lead and I was making about 3-4k g per day after expenses.  The bad thing I realized was I was that while I had geared out all my toons with epics I didn't have time to play them because I was spending about 2 hours playing the AH instead of the game.  Now that inscription had taken off I picked my 80 best recipes and focused on them and cherry picked / speculated for the rest which got my time down to about a half hour per day while still making about 2k gold per day.  This has worked well with one problem ... it is virtually impossible for an scribe to get rid of all their Snowfall Ink.  Scribes make their ink by milling herbs and for WotLK that means milling mainly Icebloom or Adders Tongue.  For every 6 glyphs I make I end up with 1 Snowfall ink.  Since I sell about 600 glyphs a week that means I have 100 Snowfall Ink need to get rid of every week.  The problem is demand.  There are only 4 ways to get rid of Snowfall Ink: sell them, make offhand weapons, make scrolls of fortitude or make darkmoon fair cards.  Offhand weapons can usually get rid of a maximum of only 5 per week and Scrolls a max of another 20.  That means I need to sell at least 75 snowfall per week to break even.  The problem with selling them is since there is only 3 things the people can do with them so 1) I am either selling them to my direct competition making cards/scrolls/offhand or 2) selling them to people leveling inscription and increasing my future competition.  The bottom line is I've slowly accumulated 1,100 Snowfall Ink and it is growing.  It's really a no win situation and ultimately it is almost better to think of Snowfall Ink as worthless and figure out the easiest way to get rid of them.

A year ago the best way to get rid of Snowfall ink was easy and very profitable - Darkmoon cards.  The reason is that every time you create a darkmoon card you have a 1 in 4 chance of creating a Nobles card which make a trinket called Greatness.  The Greatness card is by far the best purchasable trinket in the game and at one point it sold for around 10k gold.  This decreased as better content was released to today's price of 4-5k gold.  The problem with this trinket is with the release of Icecrown Citadel there are trinkets out there that are actually better.  These trinkets aren't attainable to people other than raiders but that leads to the other issue.  Greatness is level i200 and there are many other trinkets that are easily attainable that are i219-i232 so the perception is that it is inferior.  So sadly, the only people that really understand how good the card is are the ones that have other options. 

Last month I created a Greatness card and it took me almost a month to sell it for 4k so the demand is very small.  Still I need to get rid of these because the Snowfall ink I have are currently taking up 55 slots in my inventory and it is growing so I have to do something.  That brings me to the title of this article .... The Darkmoon Gambit.

Since Snowfall Ink are essentially worthless I'm thinking of doing something crazy but first I need to figure out the bottom price I can do this and still make money.

	Qty	Each	Cost
Snowfall Ink	6	0	0
Ink of the Sea	3	2	6
3 Eternal Life	3	20	60
Resilent Parchment	1	0.4	0.4
Min Cost of Card			66.4
Cards for Greatness			x 32
Cost of Greatness			2125

What this is say is if I make 32 cards I need to sell my Greatness Deck for 2125 gold to pay for the non-Snowfall mats and this assumes that all of the other cards are worthless.  The truth is I should be able to sell the other 3 cards for about 100g each and I'm pretty confident if I deep undercut the current market to 3k that I would get almost immediate buyer/resellers.  If that were to happen I would have a profit from my Snowfall of 1175g or 6.1g per ink (1175 / (6*32)).  If I listed my Snowfall in the Auction House today at 6g all that would happen is my competition would match the price and none of use would sell many.  Of course there is risk with this plan as there is no guarantee that I will get the number of Greatness cards I expect or that i will be able to turn them into full decks.  But if the math works I am looking at turning my 1100 Snowfall ink that is just taking up space into a minimum of 7k in gold.  I have a feeling I will do a lot better than that.  Time will tell.

What do you do when you aren't having fun? I've been playing this game for over 5 years now and I've noticed it is starting to be a bit stale. When I first started the game everything was new and it was fun even though I didn't know what I was doing. One of the best things about the game at that time is I banded together with a bunch of other people to form one of the biggest guilds on the Khadgar server. We were all learning the game, exploring and just enjoying playing the game. The problems arose when we hit max level (60 at the time). My first toon was my paladin Henna and I distinctly remember hitting 10 man Scholo with the guild and getting owned. The issue was we were a bunch of noobs but didn't realize it so our guild slowly fell apart as we figured out that we all wanted different things. It was at that time that I started leveling Shribryn again who I left at level 37 when I started leveling Henna and decided because our guild was lacking in dps to create both Kelyn (mage) and Lemhi (warlock that I've never been able to get to max level - now at level 54). This happened to many of us in the guild and we soon found that we were spending more time with people outside the guild so we slowly disbanded. After I gquit I focused mainly on getting Shrib to 60 then realized that now that every guild was concentrating on Molten Core so I started working on getting my Wildheart set. I tried to do the same thing with Henna but soon realized that 1) paladin dps was terrible 2) paladin tanks didn't exist 3) Paladin healers weren't accepted 4) buffing 15 people every 5 minutes sucked and 5) the competition for plate armor was tough. On the flip side no one was playing druids at the time so it only took me a month or so to get my tier 0 armor (Henna never got a single piece). Now I was ready for the big time and i bounced from guild to guild never really finding a good fit or any fun. When the option to change servers happened in January 06 I decided to take the opportunity to jump ship and move to Eitrigg. Moving to a new server is always difficult but it was a bit exciting because it was a new beginning. My first guild didn't work out because I found out pretty quickly that they left their previous server because everyone hated them. They were working on a similar rep on Eitrigg so I joined some friends from Khadgar in a guild they had just joined called Requiem at the beginning of March 2006. I had finally found a home of likeminded people.

I have been in Requiem for 4 years and in that time I was a main raider in Molten Core to an officer in Blackwing Lair/AQ. I went back to raider for a short time until we started Gruul Lair then was a recruiting officer from that point through Sunwell. After 3 years raiding I decided to take a break when WotLK was released and have spent the last year PuGing and focusing on increasing my money. At this point I'm sick of PuGs and I'm well on my way to hitting the money cap but no desire to spend any of the money.

I've been waiting for my desire to raid to come back but I think it is gone and may never return. I do know that I'm not having fun and it makes me wonder why I continue to play. I think it has something to do with the fact that this is one of the first persistent world games I've ever played. It's not like when I finished Baldur's Gate that I had anything to do. The bad guys were beaten and I moved on to the next game. With WoW that will never happen and the treadmill gets to you after a while. There is no doubt in my mind that helping put a team together that did a server first kill of Vashj and Kael then being the only guild in Black Temple for a few months was the most satisfied I've ever felt in a game. The thing is the game moves on and raiding is stressful.

So what to do? I'm really not sure. If I'm not having fun I really shouldn't play but I worked pretty hard to get where I am and I'd hate for the time investment to feel like it was all for nothing. The thing is I know that is irrational as I've spent a lot of time in other games and had no problem walking away. I am thinking of moving a few toons to another server/guild to see if that helps but if things keep on the way they have lately my days in WoW are numbered.