Next week will be interesting

Two things should happen next week. The first one is a definite: I will be finally finished with my Glyph Research. I finished Minor Research a long time ago, and obviously bought all the glyph books I could use, but you still need to do Northrend Research every 20 hours for a whopping two months or so before you know all the glyphs. I'm at -1 right now, just Lifebloom to go. Probably monday for that one, unless I take the day off.

The second is a maybe. It seems VERY likely that patch 3.3.3 will drop next week. This is going to have some interesting effects on the glyph economy. All the 2-ink glyphs will become 1-inkers, which means everyone's pricing structure will be simplified a lot. No more "Hey, that glyph sells for 6g, can I make a profit on it?" At the same time, players will be able to trade Frozen Orbs for Frost Lotuses. I predict a short-term drop in the frost lotus market (either that, or a small number of people buying a TON of really cheap lotuses). I don't think it's likely that the market will depress for the long term (the actual rate of frozen orbs/hour is relatively low for a pugger, compared to the rate of return on frost lotus farming), but I do believe that in the short term herb prices will elevate a bit. Frost lotus farmers will take time off, seeing their prices drop, and the remaining ones will be able to make the other-herb market increase in price.

If I were a real betting man, I'd try and ride that wave of cheap frost lotuses- just buy up a whole lot of them and use them slowly over time to make flasks for sale. It's a long-term investment, and I'm not sure what the rate of return will be. We'll see about that.

I am, however, going to ignore my friend Fizzle's advice and shoot straight to the "nuclear" option on the glyph market. I've gotten relatively tired of the constant cancel-repost dance I have to do with My Nemesis. I've been stockpiling herbs and inks for the past two weeks, I think I have enough to weather the storm of herb price fluctuations. Starting tuesday, I'm going to figure out a low fixed price (something like cost +1g) and try to post all my auctions at that rate. Let's see how that works.

Getting Creamed

I'm getting trounced, barbecued, and filleted in the Glyph market lately. I know exactly why, and it's not like I'm losing money, just failing to gain as much as I probably could.

The glyph market on my server (Wyrmrest Accord-US, Alliance) is dominated by two glyphers: me and the other guy. There are about three or four other glyphers who have a big enough impact on the market that I pay attention to them, but they don't have our tenacity. When The Other Guy comes online, (and I can see him in my friend list, on all my characters, of course), I know that in about a half-hour, I'll have approximately 800 auctions to cancel. Happily, that's only about 2g50s in relisting fees, but it's still about 25 minutes of work (cancel, then 60 seconds per 50 canceled auction in mailbox delay, then relist).

The problem is, the Other Guy is more diligent than I am. He clearly has me /friended as well, because as soon as I pop off of my Glypher, he pops on to his glypher. I can see him log in, because he's a friend on all my characters (see my earlier post about Friends With Benefits). I don't know any of his regular mains, so I can't see when he's online in general, just on his character. He may or may not know my mains- I've been careless in choosing a posting toon, since my glypher is my posting toon (I'm lazy), and is guilded with the rest of my mains. Not hard to figure out in the long run. The Other Guy runs a lot more of a stealthy operation. For all I know, it's really Fizzle in disguise. But probably not.

Anyway, at this point, I seem to only get about 30 minutes of exposure during primetime hours. I can log in on offpeak hours and do a relist if I really want to, but they're called "offpeak" for a reason. As soon as I relist, he logs in and does his own undercut. Because I don't have the intestinal fortitude to keep up the tit-for-tat game, mainly because I have more interesting things to do, like raid- my guild downed Rotface for the first time last night, woooo!

I have four options:

1. Do nothing about it. I keep on going. Eventually he might get tired (unlikely, though) or just take a vacation. I'm still making money, just not as much as I'd prefer.
2. Offer a collusion deal. I'm not sure how "legal" this is- Blizzard has the right to hand you a suspension or other disciplinary action for "market manipulation". But I could contact the other guy and see about getting into an agreement to not undercut each other, and/or break up the market.
3. Step up my game. I could get another account, transfer all my glyphs to that account, and double-box my way to market domination. The cancel-relist practice is relatively automated (a few button presses every 10-20 minutes), so if I had that running in the background, it could be pretty simple. Of course, this boils down to paying $15/month to make more gold, which is kind of hinky.
4. Nuke the market. This is especially viable after 3.3.3, when all the 2-ink glyphs will be reduced in materials to require only one ink. Given my current supply costs, I can profit from selling any 1-ink glyph for 4g. So, I post ALL my glyphs, no matter what the current market value is, at 4g or so. The trick here is: I get much lower profit per-glyph, but since that's the lowest price I can afford to sell at, I can post all my glyphs with 48 hour durations and leave them be. If I get undercut, it's because somebody else has a cheaper supply of inks, and I can't re-undercut them or else I'll lose money on the sale. Better to just list at 4g and see if they get bought up by someone else.

That last case is the most interesting to me. I'd still avoid any glyph whose auction value is expected to fall below 4g, which comprise most of the low-demand, low-utility, trainer-taught glyphs. Some of the trainer glyphs are high enough demand that they sell fast enough to keep prices high, but not many. That case has the benefit of being simpler to manage, and the cost of totally destroying my profit margins on my best glyphs. I'd say about 50% of my profits (estimating from BeanCounter numbers) comes from only 10% of my glyph sales- those glyphs that sell for 30+g apiece. On the other hand, my volume of sales could make up for lost profit on the Mortal Strike, Cleaving, and Divine Plea glyphs.

Effectively, although The Other Guy and I are competing, we're also cooperating. It's an interesting prisoner's dilemma game: provided we both undercut each other by small amounts, the prices in the market will dip down a bit, but not too far. I tend to undercut by 2g, he undercuts by 10s. It's really only a matter of time before the market gets nuked by somebody, either myself, the Other Guy, or some new guy in the field.

Because it's only a matter of time, I should probably push the button first. Next Tuesday sounds like a good day- provided that's the day 3.3.3 comes out. I'd better stock up on inks beforehand. WTB Adder's Tongue, 50s per, unlimited quantities. PST or COD.

The Addon Corner: Friends With Benefits

Sometimes, addons are needed to do what World of Warcraft should do in the first place. For example: your friend/ignore list really should be an account-level setting rather than a per-character thing. At least, that should be an option. But it isn't.

FriendsWithBenefits takes care of that for you. It synchronizes friend lists across characters. Easy-peasy, really. Install and it just works.

This is a really useful addon for glyphers (or any other auction player), in addition to the normal uses. Whenever I see someone regularly undercut me on a lot of glyphs, I /friend them. This way, on all my characters, I can see when my competition gets online and goes offline. Of course, I can't see when they're online but on an alt, but neither can they see that of me. I'm not precisely a compulsive undercutter, but it really does help to know if someone was just online, if I've got nothing else going on, I can swap over, cancel-repost, and be the lowest again.

When do you get to brag?

This is pretty much the place. My gold growth has surpassed "obscene", I think. I feel embarrassed, or worried. Like the guys in Office Space must have felt when they found that the Superman Gambit paid off big time. I don't want to go blabbing it around my guildchat, since that's probably bad form.

So, I'm bragging here. As of March first, I've been in the glyph industry for exactly one month. A short one, as well- I started on February first and it's not a leap year. In that time, I've made approximately 33,000 gold. That's crazy.

The question to you, my dear reader(s): how much is enough? I don't know how long this gravy train will keep a-runnin' - future changes to the crafting system could easily undermine this market. Maybe sometime soon blizzard changes the way glyphs are learned, allowing people to skill up faster, and cherry-pick the good glyphs instead of waiting on random researches. Maybe they change the vendor/deposit values on glyphs, forcing a less-aggressive cancel-repost policy. Who knows? The only thing I know is - I should probably keep farming this market until I get enough money that I can say, "I don't think I'll ever need gold again".

How much is enough?