Joe from Your WoW Moneycast podcast invited me to be interviewed on their podcast. This 50+ minute interview has quite a bit of information on what I've been up to, why I've been away, If I see myself coming back, and what my predictions are for Legion.

Listen to the episode here (my interview starts around 20 minutes in): Your WoW Moneycast - Show 159: Havah Nice Day Jim

Thanks to Joe and the crew for having me on!

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We had a great first experience installing and exploring the TradeSkillMaster 3.0 Beta. Below are the two parts of the 2:45 stream. Much fun and goofiness was had as well as much new information uncovered about the upcoming TSM 3.0 release.


YouTube: TradeSkillMaster 3.0 Beta! Pt.1/2 - Installation & Exploration


YouTube: TradeSkillMaster 3.0 Beta! Pt.2/2 - Installation & Exploration

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Episode 098 of The Power Word: Gold Podcast. We bring you the latest World of Warcraft gold-making tips, tricks and strategies.

In this episode your host Jim Younkin discusses changes in how he's playing these days, Garrison tactics, making gold with Salvage, TradeSkillMaster Premium and much more. And now… on with the show!

Episode 098:

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Full show notes after the jump.

Remember when you started your gold-making adventure into Warlords of Draenor. You were young. You were fresh-faced. You were excited to apply all the gold-making knowledge you'd acquired to this brand new expansion!

And then you actually tried to make gold in the expansion and you ran into a huge brick wall with the word "Garrison" stenciled on it in big block letters. Read on for some candid admissions by Blizzard on how they ruined professions in Warlords of Draenor.

Episode 097 of The Power Word: Gold Podcast. We bring you the latest World of Warcraft gold-making tips, tricks and strategies.

In this episode your host Jim Younkin and special guest Erogroth discuss making gold with professions in Warlords of Draenor, garrison gold-making, the upcoming TradeSkillMaster 3.0 and much more. And now… on with the show!

Episode 097:

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Full show notes after the jump.

Episode 096 of The Power Word: Gold Podcast. We bring you the latest World of Warcraft gold-making tips, tricks and strategies.

In this episode your host Jim Younkin playing World of Warcraft as a new(ish) parent, garrisons and their function for the time-constrained, a general malaise in the WoW community and much more. And now… on with the show!

Episode 096:

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[Archive.org] View this episode's page on Archive.org.

Full show notes after the jump.

I found myself with a few spare hours tonight and decided to spend 23K gold to reactivate my account for 30 days.

It wasn't an easy choice. I literally shut the game down twice before finally pulling the trigger. I'm going to put on a tech podcast, enjoy a few hours in the game (yes I still do actually day dream about playing WoW sometimes and I don't daydream ever) and try not to get sucked back in.

All I want is a few mindless hours visiting the world I love getting lost in.

(Sadly I've already wasted 1.5 hours just updating all the things my computer needed to update: Anti-Virus, Battle.net client and Steam. I'm sure iTunes and Flash will be bothering me soon.)

One other thing that only playing a few hours means is that I can dispense with things that take more than two hours including auctions, garrisons, etc. Perhaps a bit of laid back leveling on my Druid.

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Who would have thought all that time spent making gold would mean I would never have to pay real money to play World of Warcraft again.

At the current price I have enough gold to buy 10 years worth of WoW Tokens (or 5 years of time running 2 accounts simultaneously).

Do you want to know what the removal of a real money monthly fee has made me realize? That if I'm not playing WoW it isn't because I don't have the money and it certainly isn't because I don't like the game.

Blizzard announced today that the WoW Tokens were going to go on sale tomorrow, April 7, 2015. These tokens can be used to give you 30 days of game time.

The real money cost for the Tokens will be $20. The initial starting price to buy the tokens from the auction house (and potentially purchased without resubscribing) will at initially be set by Blizzard at 30,000 gold.

While the price for tokens will start to fluctuate based on market activity (if there are too many tokens for sale the price will drop and if there are too few the price will rise) I thought it would be fun to play with some Token math.

If you're like me you are a bit obsessive and completionistic about making sure you are doing your work orders on all of your alts. But what are you spending in material cost to stay on the "hamster wheel" of garrison work orders and should you even be spending that money?

I've been playing around with the spreadsheets I have been building using TSM data (See Build a WoW Item Pricing Spreadsheet Using TradeSkillMaster .CSVs + Google Drive Sheets) and one of the sheets I have calculates the cost of materials necessary for doing work orders on various professions buildings.

Head past the jump for an idea of what it costs to pump out work orders day after day on your characters.

Ever since I worked at an MMORPG company and I found out one of my co-workers who had worked on World of Warcraft had an NPC in WoW named after him I've always thought it would be awesome to have an NPC or item in the game named after me.

While I do have an NPC named after me in a previous MMORPG I worked on, having someone (or something) in World of Warcraft would be awesome.

Earlier tonight I found out about (and bought off trade chat) Erorus' Ledger of Trade which is a reference to Erorus, the creator of The Undermine Journal.

I even went into April and let her know that Erorus has an item in the game and how cool that was. I then also mentioned how it would be cool if I had an item in the game but I likely wasn't popular enough for that.

Later that night I decided to build a Trading Post (of course I would!) for my garrison building in The Spires of Arak.

Imagine my surprise and delight when I used my garrison ability (called "Smuggler's Run") which summons a Rare Goods Vendor and his name was "Honest Jim". I thought that was pretty neat but as I looked closer I started to notice some things.

• He's a human named Jim.
• He has facial hair. (Although, he also has hair on his head which doesn't fit my theory. lol)
• His flavor text reads "If you've got the gold, I've got the goods!".
• He is a Rare Goods Vendor (get it…Rare Goods, as in Blues).
• He sells you many rare items, some at pretty high prices (2,200g for a 28 slot bag!?!).

2,200g for a bag? That's some ignorant bull…gimme one!

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I was tipped off by Twitter user @OriShmori that there's a strong chance that Savage Blood is being duplicated ("duped") on several servers.

@PowerWordGold @CM_Lore Hopefully something will be done about the rampant Savage blood dupes. http://t.co/wbaEzSI298
— Ori (@OriShmori) December 26, 2014

If this is true this could be very bad for anyone hoping to make gold selling Savage Blood or selling items made with Savage Blood.

This isn't the first time I've written on the topic of item duplication and its effects on the economy (see Strong Evidence of Rampant Item Duplication in WoW and Proof Of Jeweled Onyx Panther Duping And Its Effects On Pricing). My guess is that (sadly) this won't be the last. Read on for our evidence and the ability to check the data for yourself.

Episode 094 of The Power Word: Gold Podcast. We bring you the latest World of Warcraft gold-making tips, tricks and strategies.

In this episode your host Jim Younkin discusses leveling in Warlords, what are all our cooldowns really good for?, TSM .csv spreadsheets, Trading Post flipping and much more. And now… on with the show!

Episode 094:

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Full show notes after the jump.

In this video I go over how to use the (Beta) TradeSkillMaster Web APIs (Stormspire post explaining the feature) to download a .csv of my realm auction house pricing data and build a Google Drive Sheets spreadsheet that allows me to access and manipulate that data to do things like:

• Quickly show prices for multiple items on the AH in one look.
• Quickly show prices for any list of item names or item IDs.
• Be able to do things like calculate material costs for items.
• See which crafted items are selling for the most and the cost per mat etc.

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In Blizzard's 2014 World of Warcraft in the New Year forum post it mentioned that it is contemplating allowing players to buy in-game game-time tokens and then sell them to other players for gold.




While I'm sure there will be much player reaction to this possibility, when looking at the WildStar C.R.E.D.D. system I couldn't find much to dislike about it. Read on past the jump for a recap of the WildStar C.R.E.D.D. system and what it could look like in World of Warcraft.

In this "explainer" video, I go over how the Garrison Work Order system works. I try to break it down in terms that are simple and easy to understand and help people like me make sure that we're thinking correctly about how they work.

In addition, I go over adding a follower to your Tier 2 Garrison profession building to make even more Work Order items. I should warn you this video (while shorter than my last) clocks in at 40 minutes. Head past the jump for the final (Beautiful Mind-style) output image.


YouTube: Garrisons Explained: How Work Orders Work (Get Faster, Get More)

Looks like fur/leather cages for the Barn now stack. WAHOO!! #yougetbagspace #andyougetbagspace #everyonegetsbagspace

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My initial intention with this video was to sit down and make a "quick 15 minute" video about why gold-making functions differently in Warlords of Draenor. I was planning to do this by mapping out how materials flowed in the game before and after Warlords.

What I ended up with is a 1.5 hour long video that accomplishes what I set out to do. I just didn't realize how complicated the relationships between gatherers, crafters and consumers.


YouTube: Unraveling Why Gold-Making Has Changed In Warlords of Draenor

I think of what I cover in this video as some initial exploration into the underpinnings of what has changed in the game for gold-making. This is only the beginning. There is lots more thinking and theorizing to go. The whole video is embedded above. Head past the jump for the final images I created in this video.

Episode 093 of The Power Word: Gold Podcast. We bring you the latest World of Warcraft gold-making tips, tricks and strategies.

In this episode your host Jim Younkin discusses how gold-making has changed in Warlords, Blizzard fighting botters, gold-making with garrisons, passive vs. active play and much more. And now… on with the show!

Episode 093:

[MP3] Download or play this episode directly.
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Full show notes after the jump.

I'm proud to announce that I have created a new gold-making forum at BidFiddlers.com. I've been contemplating starting a gold-making forum ever since I started the blog back in 2010 but never felt the time was right.

After 4 years of blogging, I finally feel comfortable starting my own gold-making forum and I hope you'll enjoy it. Read on for more on why I started them and what I hope to accomplish with them.