Yeah, this is all opportunity cost. Other than large capital base trading - if you're doing this, you don't care about much else - most things that produce money in WoW are a question of how much time and effort you mean to put in. You can probably make close to a thousand gold/day if you run all the daily quests and spend the rest of the time mining intensely. But this takes a lot of time even with a paladin/DK-enhanced epic flyer, involves some risk of time (if there is heavy same faction competition for nodes), and often involves warfare on a PvP server. When I go mining in the Sholozar Basin, I usually have to physically remove several Horde before I can do really effective patterns. Of course, I can't remove PITA Alliance. I then have commercial risk on how I can liquidate my ore and gems versus what the traders are doing. If your class/gathering character's gear don't support aggresive 1v1 PvP, you pretty much can't do this on a PvP server.

It's also physically exhausting and unpleasant to just grind gathering and daily quests for several hours.

About two weeks ago, someone mentioned level 1 traders buying out uncommon quality gems and mass selling titanium bars. I would like to know, what is the situation right now? (edit: i'm referring to this and following posts: The icy art of making gold)

I ask because, on my server, uncommon quality gems were practically unavailable for a reasonable price for the last two weeks (the AH listings were twice the normal price, only 1-2 gems, rarely a stack). Same for eternals. Two days ago the AH was flooded with uncommon quality gems at x1.5 the normal price. The amount of gems dumped in the AH was just surreal (on good days there were 2-4 stacks to buy. on that day there were about 80 stacks in the AH).

I wonder if this was a one time gold transfer from professional gold farmers or just someone manipulating the market. Are you guys still seeing those mass-buyers/sellers?

Edit: or it's option number three: a random one time market fluke caused by the ptr launch.

I see a lot of people stocking up on titanium ore. Considering the use of most of the rare gems in transmutes, does anyone have a feeling on what the price will do when 3.2 hits. I'm thinking that they should go up in price, considering the amount of people who will be re-gemming the epic gems. I have been stock piling all that i get at the moment from saronite prospecting, using the dust and essences to level my enchanting, selling the unused dust and scrolls in the ah which covers the cost of getting more saronite pretty easily.

It's option three. The first PTR notes said green rares would transmute into epic reds with no cooldown. People (like me) started madly buying Forest Emeralds at elevated prices. The next PTR note changed the transmute recipe making the green rares almost worthless. People like me then rapidly tried to dump our hoard on the AH before the word got around, shaking our fists at Blizzard.

There's a reason it's called speculation...

Sorry, by "green" i meant "uncommon quality" gems (original post edited to reflect this).

I'd rather hold on to your Forerst Emeralds than desperately try to sell them. It's a small investment and I wouldn't be all too suprised if they could be used for something come 3.2.

I'd say right now it looks like the real money will be in final cuts. At 5 tokens a piece, even the most dedicated JCs will likely have to pass up at least a few good cuts.

[e] Also, I suspect many JCs will be wanting as much titanium ore as possible to get more tokens to get more patterns quicker. There is likely to be a huge shortage of titanium when the patch hits, even more so than now.

I suspect prices will be high likely because people aren't planning ahead, not because there will be solid economics backed reasons for it. There will also be people convinced they can somehow make money by buying stupid amounts of titanium creating demand that no rational actor would expect to exist, whether their thought is more titanium dust for tokens to buy cuts or more prospected gems to sell.

A note of caution for those stocking up on titanium for the sole purpose of "using the dust for tokens & recipes". I've got about 120 stacks on my alt. You may think that will get me a ton of recipes, but nope:

120 stacks x 3 dust per stack = 360 Dust
360 Dust / 10 Dust per turn in = 36 tokens

7 recipes only.

Of course it's a nice by-product for a 12,000g investment.

And what about the 100+ epic gem, and 100 rare gem?

Assuming epic gem prices average to 100g only and rare gem averages to only 10g, it's still easily 11,000g back.

If you can still buy titanium ore at 100g per stack, don't stop *lol* No reason you will lose on that investment.

Please read my post, it was directed at those wary of investing in titanium out of fear that epic gems will be worth very little due to market flooding. Some reasoned that even if all gem prices crash, you could still recover your investment with dust turn-ins.

Also 2 pages back I predict a value of 200g++ for titanium ore stacks. Perhaps you should read the thread as well *lol*.

You do not make money on crafting fees - if by that, you mean that you wait around for people to come to you with stuff they want to craft. You make money on providing a usable item - either the result of prospecting or a cut gem.

I don't know if it's the same on everyone's server, but on mine you can sell Sanguine Hibiscus on the AH for 10g EACH to people who want Sporeggar rep. This makes Underbog farming worth over 1000g/hour, I've never run into any kind of pure grinding that makes that much gold.

Crafting fee was a poor choice of words. What I was referring to was the mark up you can place on a cut gem vs uncut gem via the AH.

That being said I think that epic gems will be the new blue gems and cost MAYBE 100g. There are just too many ways to acquire them. (Honor, badges, prospecting, and alchemy)

Altough you may be right that there are more ways to get epic gems now, (TBC had only Emblems and Raids if I remember correctly) there is also alot more demand for them. People can get T8 and T9 from just doing Heroics and next to that half those people have 2 specs and 2 sets of gear.
Also titanium ore is not as easily farmable in big amounts as saronite ore is. If the price of Titanium ore doesn't drop then the epic gem prices definately won't go down.
And last but not least: People have a ALOT more gold than they did in TBC.

My guess is prices will be 3-4 times as high as current blue gem prices and will not drop for the first 4 months. (since thats the time it takes to farm your t9 from heroics )

Speaking about people that will get t8 only from heroics will also be collecting bunches of conquest badges. It will take 10 days to get one piece of ilvl 232 loot (shoulders or gloves) according to current PTR pricing. The lowest number of conquest badges that you will get from just running the daily heroic and daily dungeon is 7 (H AN + 4 for any of the daily dungeons) and that will still give you 70 conquest badges by the time you've earned enough triumph for one piece of gear.

I would think any drop in prices related to increased dream shards from 5 man runs would be compensated for by the increase in demand of them due to all the new gear people acquiring.

Players who are capable of reaching the Keepers in Ulduar-25 are already spending Emblems for Runed Orbs. When heroics start dropping them as well, I would anticipate a market flood and price crash that should leave them at just under twice the price of a Frozen Orb. By the time they have 135 EoCs for the gear, they'll surely have earned enough cash not to need to collect 196 more for Orbs. This will shorten the window of maximum demand for epic JCing.

Don't forget that players at a Heroic Instance/Naxx-10 gear level also have numerous upgrades available to them from Valor Emblems. They'll start with the better Conquest gear, but will probably aim for 2pT7.5 as well.

This could be what happened...

Some idiot hears 'green gems will transmute into epic gems with no cooldown?!' and madly buys up green quality gems for a while, having misunderstood.

When someone corrects them they dump their inventory.

I've heard of people doing sillier things..

I was wondering if anyone else has any experience with this issue that they can share. I searched this thread for other posts about account closure, but only found one.

This morning I noticed that my account was banned and this was the explanation given in the email:

As far as what kind of things I did on the AH it was pretty standard. I bought Saronite Ore and Eternal Earths from various sources, prospected, created rings and disenchanted. I would have the blue gems cut, either myself or through a friend that had the desired cut (always tipping). I generally posted early in the raid week during prime time hours and once again after I was done raiding.

I also did the usual "buy low, sell high" on some common commodities like eternals, raid consumables and enchanting mats. I had a couple of guild banks for storage, nothing too excessive, and my average auctions posted at anytime was somewhere between 2-500. Even during peak hours posting stacks of one infinite dust at a time I don't think I ever went much higher than that.

Over the course of the past two years I probably made something around 2-300k from the AH and used most of it for funding guild repairs, mounts, BoE gear and other things of that nature. It seems like a lot to most people but I know there are plenty of people that have done this much more extensively than I have (I never spent more than an hour a day at the AH).

There was never any botting, excessive undercutting or spamming the AH because frankly I'd get bored. A lot of times I would even tip a few hundred gold to a friend to prospect or disenchant for me, just because I didn't enjoy doing it myself.

About three weeks ago I transferred to a new server for PvE reasons, taking 20k gold and a few stacks of eternals and raid consumables with me. The week before I transferred I mailed around gold from various alt to my main before transferring (someone told me this might have been a red flag). I haven't really tried to play the market on the new server, mainly because I've been busy with raids and also because I was lazy. My AH activity was limited to selling a couple of stacks of eternal fires and buying some raid consumables.

***

I've already sent an email to blizzard's account administration department, explaining what I sold on the AH and asking for the ban to be reversed. I also tried calling customer support but wasn't able to reach it for some reason (phone line kept saying busy).

Basically what I'm looking for is information from people who have had a similar experience, or anyone that knows what kind of activity qualifies as "activities designed to gain an unfair advantage" in the WoW economy. I've read the Terms of Use and the Account Administration FAQs and they really don't seem to be very detailed.

I'm also wondering if there is anything else I should be doing to restore my account. I really just play WoW for the PvE aspect and raiding is my focus. I played the AH as a side activity because I think it's fun, and to make sure I'm never in need of gold during progression expenses. Unfortunately, my main is on the same account as my bankalt and this closure is rather inconvenient for me.

If anyone can offer any advice, suggestions or information I would very much appreciate it.

The only thing I would suggest is the CSR forums on the official WoW site. You will still have to email AA, but they could speed up the process.

Did you happen to buy your ore at a very low price? (5g a stack)?

It sounds like you bought from a gold seller and got caught in the web. This should be cleared up soon.

One last thing to consider is that you were hacked and your account was used to spam gold selling adds.