Weekly WoW Economy Roundup - Multi-Boxing Further Restricted, Price of Burning Crusade Classic Services in Gold

Live Publié 09/05/2021 à 13:00 par perculia

SamadanTSMYouTubeTwitchMulti-Boxing Further Restrictedhas seen further restrictions appliedHardware and/or Software to streamline or automate multi-boxing

On November 3, 2020, we posted an update to our policy for input broadcasting software, and soon thereafter, we began taking action against accounts found to be using third party software to automatically mirror keystrokes to multiple game clients. We find that, like full automation of play, multiple-account mirroring disturbs the gameplay experience for the vast majority of players who control a single account at a time.We will now additionally prohibit the use of all software and hardware mechanisms to mirror commands to multiple World of Warcraft accounts at the same time, or to automate or streamline multi-boxing in any way. Players found to be in violation of this policy are subject to account actions. These actions can include warnings, account suspensions and, if necessary, permanent closure of the player’s World of Warcraft account(s), as activities which effectively replicate automated gameplay are contrary to the terms and conditions of the Blizzard End-User License Agreement (EULA).We urge all players to cease using any means of mirroring gameplay across multiple WoW accounts immediately, in order to maintain uninterrupted access to World of Warcraft.

mirror gameplay across multiple accountsFor those confused, the additional change here is the addition of "Hardware". Previously they stated that input broardcasting SOFTWARE was not permited.

The loophole was that people continued multiboxing but used specific hardware instead of software (1 keyboard + mouse, into a splitter box, connected to multiple computers as a basic example)

Turns out Blizzards really wants to squish this problem completely.

To clarify further for many in this subreddit, having multiple accounts is still 100% ok. You can craft on one, sell on another, play on a third for example 100% without worry. But running all accounts around gathering is now considerably more risky. I would also consider this statment from blizzard to include ANY software for the purpose of multiboxing as an instant uninstall.There's still some super vague language after that though:

to automate or streamline multi-boxing in any way.The Price of TBC Services in GoldTBC Classic Deluxe Edition pricesBoostsCharacter Cloning Services

Service

Cost in Dollars

Approximate Cost in Gold (NA)

Approximate Cost in Gold (EU)

Classic Deluxe Edition

$69.99

Character Boost

$39.99

Cloning Service

$35

The Boosting Economyu/Typh123

Thought about the title above. Realized that for the past few expacs I’ve just been casually making gold in order to buy game time and end game carries.

If a player doesn’t farm gold, and they want a carry, they buy WoW tokens and then buy a carry.

If a player sells carries, what do you do with the gold? I assume you use it for consumables, collectibles, and blizzard cash services (after converting to a WoW token).

The carry economy is strong, and it seems to incentivize people to regularly pay blizzard an extra $20 in addition to sub fees.

Anyone else think about this topic? Feel like carry culture has only grown and I wonder if Blizzard likes it this way, if they don’t outright promote it through design. Are any of you goblins out there finding yourselves farming gold just to buy carries? If so, what do you think about it? Personally after realizing my behavior I decided to take a break from the game.

I think Blizzard genuinely tried to combat boosting for years, they just realized it's impossible to get rid of and if it's just going to happen they might as well earn money with it, the same happened with real money transaction for golds. (hell I never bought a boost but technically in 2005 I bought golds from a website to pay for my lvl 60 mount, and most of my friends did too, it was so tedious to farm golds at the time)

I used to think it was wrong but it's so widespread nowadays I got used to it and honestly these days it doesn't really bother me.

People buy a boost for all kinds of reason, I've had guildies buying a "denatrius heroic boost" for their undergeared alt because "it's just 40k gold, I can make that in less than an hour boosting people on my main", I know some high rated pvp players that hates PvE and buy boosts when they need PvE gear and make the gold boosting PvP, the opposite also exist, mythic raiders buying PvP boost just to min max their ilvl/stats with the gold they earned from boosting.

I even know some advertisers from boosting communities that makes close to gold cap each week spaming /1 to find customers, and spend a decent amount on boosting their own toons.

At the end of the day everyone is happy with the deal, boosters making good moneys, boosted people saving precious time. It doesn't really affect others in PvE, in PvP it's more of an issue but blizzard is still trying to fight it, this change is clearly aimed at people geting carried to a pvp rating they cannot get themselves :

https://www.wowhead.com/news/pvp-item-upgrade-changes-with-patch-9-1-ptr-weekly-win-required-for-upgrades-322100?page=2

Hopefully Blizzard find the right balance so the game stay healthy. In my opinion they're doing a decent job.

----

It's a different cut from community to community but for the one I am in a +15 is sold 200k and the cut is :

136k for the people boosting (34k each)
40k for the advertiser (the guy finding costumers/organizing the group/collecting the golds)
24k for the community (not sure where the money goes exactly but I supose it pays the people maintaining the discord, the admins, the people coding and updating discord bots etc)

Advertising is a lot more profitable if you're good at it, but it's also the most boring you don't even get to play the game. The boosters with the most earnings are making a few millions per week.
u/Wisconsen

There is are very large differences between tolerating, promoting, and de-incentivizing.

Blizzard tolerates boosting at best, and actively tries to de-incentivize it when they can without harming the average player.

The evidence of this is in the history of changed they make and continue to make to the 3 major areas of Boosting, PvP, M+, and Raids.

PvP - The 9.1 PvP gearing changes (must win a match weekly to buy gear at your rank, ilvl changes for PvE vs PvP Content) have a very directed and target effect of making pvp boosting a massively less attractive and lucrative option than it is currently.

M+ - The Great Vault, while at first glance might seem a positive to boosting. The reality is that people buy less run than in BFA because the runs themselves are less rewarding and less efficient for gearing when combined with the other changes to M+ drops and gearing.

Raids - Personal loot was sold and generally thought of as a "defense against those tyrannical GMs who don't give loot fairly". The reality is that people do not and did not stay in those guilds. What it does do however is make selling raid loot much harder. Pre-Personal loot one of 2 things happened if a item was up for sale. Gold Auction, or Flat Price. Didn't matter how geared the boosters were. There was no question of "is it tradable" because Master Looter Existed.

Currently to get raid loot you need what are known as "Funnels" these are people who have a character with both the ability to have the item drop for them and the ability to trade the item if it drops. Which is much harder than just existing in the raid.

Next the item needs to actually drop for them. This leads to needing multiple of these funnels per boostee and even then it is very hit and miss because of how personal loot works.

I say and point these things out as someone who is staff in a 5,000 member boosting community. So i'm not exactly just talking out of my ass or without any experience to form the opinion upon.

As for your specific questions.

If a player doesn’t farm gold, and they want a carry, they buy WoW tokens and then buy a carry.

If a player sells carries, what do you do with the gold? I assume you use it for consumables, collectibles, and blizzard cash services (after converting to a WoW token).

The carry economy is strong, and it seems to incentivize people to regularly pay blizzard an extra $20 in addition to sub fees.

TSM Price SourcesJack the Dipper article going through all the different price sources in TradeSkillMaster

Auctioning and Accounting Price Sources

Each material or item in-game has its own price depending on which source you are looking at.

Most straightforward price sources are fixed like , or that you can use for operations, but they aren’t dynamic as all the others are. Many of those dynamic price sources represent a price of a material or item based on the current posted on the auction house realms and TradeSkillMaster users data.

Take this Mithril Bar for an example that has three different kinds of price source categories;

Auction House is the data that TradeSkillMaster receives from the World of Warcraft servers every few hours.
TradeSkillMaster Users is the Accounting data from all TradeSkillMaster users.
Accounting (Personal Data) is from all your purchases and sales on the auction house that TradeSkillMaster records.

All these price sources are different from each other but calculated in the same way. For example, when you see the word Region, it means every realm on the same continent, like EU or NA.

You can see these different price sources in the TradeSkillMaster tooltip that you can enable or disable in the tooltip settings.

full article here.Opportunity Cost and the Price of Materialsu/LiekuiWhat is the point of selling Flask/Pots instead of Herbs.

Hello I would like to join the AH game and since I have Herbalism and Alchemy as professions I would like to potions accordingly. now it turns out that on my server (Blackhand EU) the individual herbs that are needed for the potions are more expensive than the potions themselves. Why do players put Flask and Pots in the AH when the prices for each plant are more expensive than the prices they receive for the potions?

farmed herbs are "free" by u/Manthieus

Variations of this statement are thrown around this subreddit DAILY! So I wanted to take a minute of your time to help explain some terminology that is frequently misused causing confusion and argument.

I will start with a simple example.
The herbs to make a potion are being sold on the AH for 10g.

The potion is listed for 12g.

If you farm your materials, or buy the herbs to craft the potion and sell it at 12g your profit is still only 2g.

WHY? - If you farmed the materials should your profit not be 12g?
To understand exactly why you first need to be clear on some of the terms that will be used in the explanation.

Profit - The resulting amount of gold remaining after ALL expenses have been considered.

Revenue - The total sales made

Cost - The total value of the material and expertise needed to craft the potion.

Explanation.
The COST of the potion does not change. If you farm for the materials or buy the materials the resources needed to make the potion have not changed. What is often not so obvious is that how you PAYED for the materials has changed.

If you buy the materials then the currency used is gold.

If you farm the materials then the currency used is time*.*

The PROFIT is calculated by taking the REVENUE made by selling the potion minus the COST spent on materials to make it.

It is often not obvious that time is a currency, and should be treated as one even if you do not value it personally.

Why does this matter?
For a lot of people it does not. With the result that if it doesn’t matter to YOU it can be hard to see why it matters to others. It matters most when you are trying to scale past what your own time will allow. Or when you want to achieve the same results in less time.

If you are content with only selling 100 potions a day, you might have enough time to achieve this yourself, but what happens when your 100 potions sell out and you want to sell 1000 potions?

You either now have to spend 10x as much time farming as you did before or spend 10x as much gold to buy materials. What happens if it took you 3 hours to farm for your 100 potions to begin with.

10*3h is 30 hours and there is only 24h in a day. PROBLEM.

Now you will have to PAY for someone else's time, maybe even multiple people's time. This is the transaction when you buy your materials. You are buying someone's time.

Summary
Understanding these principles are key to growing past a “minimum wage” wow lifestyle. This subreddit is for those that want to be more than just the minimum, it is based on the foundation that people want to learn and improve. If you are not willing to conceive that time is a resource, you are at the same time failing at the first hurdle. While it is true that Blizzard will let you buy other players time with your credit card, this does not change the basics.

Lets try to teach and learn from each other and not promote bad habits.

u/canibanogluexplaining Opportunity Cost

"Time is money, friend!" This might very well be the most popular quote among goblins but the more I read content (posts/comments) from fellow goldmakers, the more I think there are some misconceptions about how you should value your time when it comes to goldmaking activities.

Opportunity Cost
Understanding what opportunity cost is and how it applies to any economic activity is very important when making decisions on how and where to invest your time and money. From Wikipedia:

In microeconomic theory, opportunity cost is the loss of the benefit that could have been enjoyed if the best alternative choice was chosen instead.

thread

If I'm collecting the raw materials as I'm playing the game normally (dailies, callings, dungeons etc), they cost me nothing. If I craft a flask/potion with those materials, any price that I can sell those at is pure profit.

Case Study: Asmonmats and his crazy community

Universe A: Marrowroot sells for 10g, int pots sell for 70g a pop. It's clear what to do, craft 1800 pots and earn 36k more by selling those.

Universe B: Marrowroot sells for 10g, int pots sell for 30g a pop. This time, it's the other way around, he'd choose to sell the herbs as they are to make more money.

Universe C: Marrowroot sells for 10g, int pots sell for 51g a pop. Now, this is where we will see another opportunity cost that we haven't considered yet. At first glance, we should again go for crafting the int pots and earn 1800g compared to the other option, right?

How it applies to real life

I guess what really prompted me to write this was realizing how people blindly advocate some actions over others. Many people in the goldmaking community has a condescending approach to people who like to farm or who like to earn their gold in different ways. And the default argument they make is "time is money" and I guess the pretentiousness behind that is what bothered and prompted me to write this. There is no correct way to value someone's time, what might be extremely expensive to you might be worth absolutely nothing to another and this will lead you to make completely different economic choices at times. There is nothing inherently wrong about this.