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A Guide to Farmers In World of Warcraft
Trounce writes "Game Guides Online has a lengthy article exploring how farmers work in World of Warcraft, including their daily quotas, techniques, schedules, and how they hide their gold surplus from employers and possibly thieving partners. It has a section on how players can benefit from shift changes and score items at low prices (which can then be re-listed at a profit). From the article: 'Of course, farmers who stay on past the ends of their shifts, while their boss and/or partner breathe impatiently down there necks, are even more amenable to agreeing to ridiculously under-market offers; so keep looking for bargains after 6:00 as well.'"
I found the article interesting as it does not try to judge farmers but try to bridge their world with that of the ordinary player. Worth reading.
> ...is majorly flawed. No-one has argued that the selling
> of large amounts of items pushes up prices.
The author did not claim that anyone so argued. He said, more or less, that there is a contention that farmers, being greedy, overcharge for their items and thus raise prices.
> What has been argued is that people buying larger amounts
> of gold than they could ever get in causal play gives
> them a big burning hole in their pocket.
Perhaps that argument has been advanced; but if so, it was advanced *in addition to,* not instead of, the assertion disputed by the author.
>If you ask me this article looks like it was written by
> someone from one of the gold selling companies, giving
> helpful hints such as when to be one of the farmers customers,
> in order to legitimise their business. It's a pity they have
> to ignore and argue against basic economic principles to do so.
Hmm, the article is published on a website belonging to a company whose business appears to be restricted strictly to selling game guides and access to private, insiders, game-related discussion forums.
I have the same problem, and I have a solution that's actually quite productive. Take the hit and sell green drops on the cheap.
The place to make your money is on consumable items. Cloth is the easiest one, because every profession uses it, plus the reputation turnins. It's easy to get 100 runecloth in a day or two and throw it up at 4g a stack depending on time of day and server. Mithril is another easy one that can pull 5g for a stack of 20 bars. Leather is decent, too, since most professions use at least a little bit of it.
When you get those green drops, they tend to be harder to sell. I usually cut my price low, especially with off-class stuff (cloth with strength and agility, for example), so even if you can't get it sold for equipment, enchanters will snatch it up for reagents. You can even take up enchanting yourself and burn all those drops and sell reagents or enchants yourself.
The farmers do this too, granted, but there's a catch: Equipment, you can't sell over and over to the same people. If you have 10 level 30 swords, you'll need 10 level 30 sword users to buy them all up. If you have 10 stacks of cloth, it's a good chance you'll sell them all at once to the same person buying it in bulk.