Nurru

You took that out of context. If the program REQUIRES it to be run / running before I start WoW (as another post said) and is closed source then I have no reason to trust it. Why would it need to be running otherwise? If it just updates to a server and doesn't need the WoW client at all then that's another thing entirely.

I trust Blizzard more than a random executable off the net. When it comes to trust and open/closed source some caveats have to be made.

< Aislinana> Why would it be my job to sleep with vontre? Don't I have standards?

 

Valerian

Well I really don't have much of a fear of Blizzard stealing my WoW account name and password...

 

◊ Shalas

If you want to, you can run it after you run WoW, or even copy the savedvariables file to and from a completly different computer than you run WoW on. It encourages you to use the WoW autostart so that people will run the updater as frequently as possible to improve the quality of thier data.

They're been around for close to three years now without a single incident.

 

◊ Shaker

WoW.exe takes your username and password and sends them ACROSS THE INTERNET to a remote server! Keylogger!

 

SoAnIs

WoWEcon works like this:
WoWEcon.exe updates the savedvariables file and the WoWEcon addon (normal LUA addon.)
WoWEcon launches a small batch file & terminates.
The batch file launches wow.
The batch file's contents:
set woweconpath="C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft\WOWEcon.exe"
set wowcmd="C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft\WoW.exe" -console
rem type wowecon.bat
rem sleep 20
echo Running World of Warcraft...
%wowcmd%
start "WOWEcon" %woweconpath% -upload
rem sleep 100

That means the following:
The path to wowecon is X
The path to WoW is Y, using the command line options Z
Run WoW.
When WoW closes, run WoWEcon and upload all new price data.

WoWecon is NOT running while WoW does. RootkitRevealer shows nothing. ProcessExplorer shows nothing strange going on. All WoWEcon.exe does is update price data. Launching WoW for you is to make it easier to use.
I work in network security. I'm paranoid. I hate closed source stuff and don't trust closed source encryption, etc, etc. But I've not found anything malicious in WoWEcon. I've still disabled the autostart, but it SHOULD be safe.

All in all it's no more dangerous than running Cosmos, the Curse Client, or the WAU. Just like Cosmos/Curse it includes an autostart. Unlike those two it makes that autostart explicitly clear via the use of a batch file.

Also, it IS a memory hogging addon. I recommend having an AH alt. Leave WoWEcon and Auctioneer enabled on the alt, disabled on your main. The alt doesn't need all the raid addons, the main doesn't need all the auction addons. With something like BulkMail+BulkMailInbox to help with the mailing auctioning things becomes very easy & results in less performance decreases. Also less need to try to find a (^*(&#$ way back to Shatt with the hearthstone down.

 

Polgarra

Well, that was a fun little bunny trail we went down there, but back to the actual topic of the thread. This is a very situational tip, but since I recently went through it, I thought I'd share. I found a group of old friends that I haven't played with for about a year on a different server. I decided to take one of my many alts and transfer it to their server to spend some of my play time with them. Point is, I made an alt on their server and spent a few hours getting very familiar with their AH. I was bringing a char from a server that had 1 BT/Hyjal guild to a server that was spankin new and had very few guilds that had fully cleared Kara. Doing your homework pays off. The char I was moving was only lvl 32, so the max gold he could move with was 1000, so I bought a few choice items off the AH. Specifically, items that could not be found on the new server. Epic items created from raid drop recipes and the like. This way I not only ensured that I would not lose any gold in transferring over, but actually made a good deal of gold instead. If you are ever going to transfer a char, take the time to learn the new market that you are moving into. This has been your tip of the day from someone who enjoys the initial topic of this thread.

Inignot: And remember, there's no such thing as a dumb question.
Happy Time Harry: I have a question.
Inignot: Yes, in the back, the retard with the dumb question.

 

Kir

You guys are a little quick to jump to conclusions sometimes. I misspoke slightly, because I haven't used WoWecon in awhile. I meant to say you have to run the update before launching WoW (you could do it after, but I'd rather have updated price information when I'm logging in to play then when I've logged out), and it will auotmatically start WoW for you if you want it to. It's just setup that way so that people will use the WoWecon icon on their desktop to run the update and start WoW, since most people would not update their shit if they had to run two separate .exe to get into WoW. Hell, I hardly used it when I first DLed it and hadn't done research to make sure it was safe. It was a PITA to run it first before logging in each time.

 

• Tecton

Speaking of farming the ZA vendors, the reagent vendor has proved extremely profitable for me because of the scroll cases that spawn. I've not been farming it, but just during normal ZA runs (I'll almost always sprint to them first to grab food/pots/recipes) and I've yoinked two epic recipes from it so far. Probably good luck on my part, but if you're farming the food guy, it's worth farming keeping an eye on the reagent vendor too.

 

Dustwhisper

For someone working in network security I'm quite surprised you put faith in two wellknown applications as rootkitrevealer and processexplorer when anyone even remotely interested in windows-security knows it takes about 10 minutes to develop an undetectable ring0 rootkit with stealth-capabilities that bypass Rootkitrevealer and don't get me started on ProcessExplorer which is a simple process-enumerator.

Nonetheless, you run what you run and you choose to run what you want. If one does not feel any security-issues by running .exe files that supposedly do great work for WOW then so be it.

Sorry for a derail >_< ! =D


Regarding money, i find live strat and DM farming for righteous orbs, large brilliant shards and greater eternal essences quite decent money for the little time invested.

 

• redliner

Regarding WoWEcon, the guys at curse-gaming has supposedly reviewed the code due to the accusations repeated in this thread and they found it clean, which is not to say it is or is not. Personally I've used it despite its questionable operation, but not because I trust it. WoWEcon most likely is clean, nothing indicates anything else, but one is right to be paranoid about things they care about. If you don't trust WoWEcon, don't use it. It's a great addon for those willing to take the risk involved, just as it's a risk giving Blizzard your account details. I don't suppose the majority goes through three firewalls and a proxy when they enter their account details anywhere (I do), and if you don't, running WoWEcon would perhaps not be the biggest threat to your account or credit card details anyway.

As for the topic at hand, I'd just like to thank all the contributors. There is a great deal of valuable information to sift through for the interested. Making gold is not hard, but any means of making it easier/less time consuming is greatly appreciated. Big thumbs up for a thread that's universally informative and interesting no matter how you play the game.

 

Dhirken

That actually wouldn't work, because what WoWEcon tracks are not AH prices, but AH sales, which can make it more reliable for good pricing information than Auctioneer. When you upload your data to their site, what they're getting is a list of all items you've bought or sold, and the price and time of the sale. This means that they only have in their database transactions with a WoWEcon runner on one end, but it also means they're only picking up transactions, not the ludicrous 99g grey auctions, or the auctions run by the "buy everything out in a small market and jack up the price to screw over naive auctioneer users" guys.

I'd note as well that if all you want is access to their database (and don't want to contribute), it's publically available on their website. I don't run the mod myself, because as someone said earlier, it's a huge memory hog, but I'll check it for prices of relatively rare things that Auctioneer doesn't have good price information on, or if I think someone's manipulating the market.

 

NickFas

I looked over that WoWEcon addon for a few days, used it, tried it, tested it and it didn't really do what I wanted to do. What I was looking for was an addon that scans the the AH, then takes the median price of X item at Y time, and exports that data table into an spreadsheet program where the user can then graph that scatterplot; identical to the way the NSYE exports individual stock data at that time. This would allow anyone who uses this addon to see the hourly, daily, weekly fluctuations of their servers market and make purchases accordingly.

Again, not sure if this exists or not, but any information regarding it would be a great help.

 

tdizz

With regards to prospecting, I know every patch there's someone calling nerf, etc etc, so I hate to be the one doing this.

That said, has anyone noticed diminished returns from prospecting adamantite? I've done 50-60 stacks since 2.3 hit, and I'm finding it hard to make my money back, never mind actually turn a profit. I've been going two to three stacks without seeing a blue gem on a fairly regular basis, I was just curious as to whether anyone else has seen this trend, or if I'm just having horrible luck.

 

Wednesday

I've been farming quite a bit since the patch (grinding mount money for a new alt) and have been doing the prospecting + d/e green rings bit. Last weekend I got about 20-25 stacks of adamantite when I woke up early on Saturday morning. I think I ended up with somewhere around 35-45 blue gems. I've done it a couple times since with similarly positive results. I did have one batch that had a few stacks with nothing, but I still got at least 1 blue per stack that go-round. Though obviously both our experiences are anecdotal (I know of no good resource to be able filter these stats by date), perhaps it is just bad luck.

 

Makesha

I've had bad luck the last few days as well, for the most part. Yesterday I bought 4 stacks and got 1 rare gem.. Then waited 15 minutes, bought 1 stack and got 3 rare gems. All you can do is keep at it and eventually your luck will return. I hate to reinterate this exact sentence, but.. "Loot is random" applies here as well.

 

Eyago

It's like getting out of a baseball slump, so to speak, you've gotta just keep swinging. I've had whole weeks where I felt cursed, and then in the space of a weekend had blue gems raining down on me. The RNG in WoW is frightfully random at times...

 

Thiris

I have to agree there. Even though this is also just adding to the "My experience is..." train. I've been bumming the help of a guild JC and was part of several people who was getting ore prospected (we have a lot of Miners and few JC) and the people both before me and after me had 2-3 blue gems out of 5+ stacks of ore, where I brought 9 stacks and ended up with 15 blue gems.

Sadly, it looks as though there is just a lot of randomness to prospecting.

I've also taken to soloing instances on my Feral Druid lately, and it's come up with quite a few prizes. BRD has been a cash cow for me. You can stealth through the entire instance, and all but the earliest bosses loot shards into Large Brilliant Shards. Admittedly I should be looking at somewhere like DM where the greens shard into Greater Eternals though. I might have to give that a go this evening and run my wife's Pally through them for loot upgrades.

 

Caligula

I've been running into this with alchemy transmutes lately. I went transmute mastery (silly me right?) and the streakiness is a killer. I've had a few weeks where every transmute I did proc'd 2. Currently I'm in a slump of about 2 months with no proc and it's killing my profit margin. 5-20 gold per day is almost hardly worth the effort, but I keep transmuting. The thing with transmute mastery is, when it doesn't proc you get hardly any payout, when it does you make hundreds of gold.

The same goes for prospecting as well. I've taken 13 full stacks of adamantite to one of my guild JC's and got literally 4 blue gems out if it. One time I took 3 stacks and got 9 blues. Small sample sizes, I know. Random is random and when you place your money making in the hands of the RNG sometimes you come out behind.

 

Kadaan

It doesn't require it to be run/running. I generally run it once or twice a week, and click the "quit" button after it updates before it starts WoW. It has a 5-second countdown for you to exit the app before it auto-launches WoW.

 

Fiola

The streakiness definitely sucks some fun out of transmute mastery.


I've taken to calling it my "Daily Disappointment".

 

nife

You can't live your life in a bubble. Wow econ passes all the virus scanners I have run it though.

Its just a game. Investigating wow econ any beyond that is just not cost effective. If someone generates a new ring0 rootkit just to get my wow password then more power to them. They wasted a very valuable piece of software to get my password worh at most a few hundred dollars.

 

Mideci

I spent 2-3 minutes reading and re-reading this post and couldn't figure it out. Not one gold-making operation in WoW is devoid of at least the "effort" of clicking. For 5-20 gold a day you must either grab your stacks of the 5 primals and click once or buy one of each off the AH. This cannot possibly take but a couple of minutes. If you are making 5-20g for it, you are at the highest rate of gold making per hour WoW allows.

Or perhaps somehow I'm confused and you can illuminate me. But single-click profit-making is hardly "effort" in any traditional sense when most of these tips involve farming this, traveling to that, crafting tons of the other, etc. etc.

Note: On my server, you'd be losing gold every single day transmuting so consider yourself lucky. It'd be a small loss, to be sure, but a loss nevertheless. And you'd make "hundreds of gold" essentially never. A might sells for about 80g. You'd lose on the order of 5g per day on a typical day.

 

Nurru

Quoted for "...." factor.

< Aislinana> Why would it be my job to sleep with vontre? Don't I have standards?

 

Caligula

I think you're playing dumb, but I'll bite because you asked for it.

A) I sell Earthstorm Diamonds. Not Mights. Mights are a money sink where the end product sells for less than the sum of the materials. Earthstorm Diamonds, on a good day go for 75g, and specifically recently have gone for up to 100 (only temporarily due to the patch) and the materials cost: 20g per water minimum times 2, 4g per earth minimum times 2, 1g per green minimum gem times 12 for a total of 60g at least. Unless I find someone looking for a Might transmute in general (even then I usually wont do it because I can make better money off meta gems if I put in a little extra time) and I sell them my transmute for 5g, it procs, and I keep the might and sell it, I would never attempt to make Primal Mights for profit. Plus, there's travel time, at least 2 or 3 minutes. I guarantee you methods listed in this thread will net you more gold/hour than that (100).

B) First you have to obtain the materials at a reasonable cost to make a profit, which means you cannot buy them whenever. The materials also need to be on the AH for you to purchase them. If they aren't there, no transmute happens unless you go farm (see below). To circumvent this, you could watch the AH all the time (See: more effort than a single click), and keep yourself a steady supply of materials. I will purchase large quantities of materials if they are available at cheap prices. Just from personal experience, I'd say that maybe 1/10 times that I go to the auction house I see primals or green gems going for lower than the regular 20g per water or 4g per earth. Again, hardly a single click here.

C) I could farm the materials. This would take around 20 minutes plus travel time for the waters, about the same for the earths, and an unknown amount of time for the green gems considering the randomness of green gem drops/loots. Plus, even if I could farm an infinite number of materials, I'd still be limited to one transmute per day. No single clicks here.

I could apply your "single click" theory to everything if I wanted. I'd say I made 75g with a single click yesterday selling a Runic Spellthread. It's just that easy. Of course, I'd be completely ignoring the fact that I had to take an hour or more to run a heroic instance to get the primal nether required for me to be able to make 75 with a single click.

I think the most mind-boggling part of your post is where you say that making 5 gold in 2 minutes time is the fastest way to make gold in WoW (120g/h), considering the things that have been posted so far in this thread.

 

Dollar

Zul'aman free food sucks. Where cooking used to be a nice buffer to the other money I make. Where I was selling stacks of crawdads for 35g before, now I am lucky to get 20 gold for a stack.

"Oh he's a sad little man? He's thrown a kettle over a pub, what have you done?"