Alt Professions

I enjoy the idea of being mostly self reliant in the game. I have a couple of friends that I know from real life, but I don't like to rely on them too much. I start to feel guilty if I am continually going to them to get things crafted. So to further my self sufficient goal, as well as to bring some more utility to my little group of friends, I am leveling 3 professions, more or less in parallel. My low level druid has Herbalism and Inscription. I had wanted to level inscription but did not want to have to buy all the herbs on the way up, as I know at certain levels they become rather expensive. Meanwhile, my higher level mage was going to skill up alchemy, so as to take advantage of transmutations. The problem here, is that I can either spend twice the time gathering herbs as I level herbalism, or buy them off the auction house, emptying much of my bank account.

Well, I have devised a third alternative. I do not claim credit for it, as I first read it over at the greedy goblin, but it is an interesting idea. My mage has developed a bit of a bank account by selling netherweave bags for several gold profit per bag. Since I didn't want to be spending upwards of 15 to 20 gold for a stack of herbs to level alchemy on this character, I decided to buy the herbs to level inscription on the other character instead. This wouldn't make for any difference of price, except for the fact that many northrend herbs are cheaper, and when milled and turned into ink, can then be traded down to any lower level ink. So, over the last couple of weeks, I have gathered around 120 to 140 stacks of herbs, which I will ship over to a friend of mine to mill and turn into ink.

Not sure if I saved much money or not, but I'm fairly certain that I did. Plus, I'll soon have 2 crafting professions up to a level where I can start selling their goods on the auction house, or start saving them to make future goods.

In Game Auciton House Available... Out of Game?

So, recently announced was Blizzard's decision to make the Auction House available outside of the game world, through the use of mobile devices. Many others have already written about the topic already, and I feel my view falling in line with what seems to be the majority. Most seem to be waiting to see more of Blizzard's idea before taking a firm stand one way or the other on it. I keep swaying from one side to another as I look at it from different points of view, though...

First, this is something that I've thought would be interesting to see for a while now. I have a lot of downtime in my life, so being able to jump on the auction house for a quick snatch or posting might be interesting. While on the bus or on break at work being able to jump on the market and make a few sales, or get some materials so that when you log on at home you can get right to crafting/playing would be great!

On the other hand, this has the potential to be the beginning of the slippery part of the slope for RMT... From my perspective, nothing that Blizzard has included for RMT so far has been particularly unfair to anyone. For some extra money, you can change your name, faction, race, or even server. For $10, you can buy one of two non-combat pets. Although the pets contribute to the pet achievements, those achievements were attainable without resorting to spending real world money. My opinion on this kind of thing is that as long as it isn't making the game unbalanced to other players, there was no real problem with them. The issue with making the auction house available to people on a mobile device for a premium, no matter what the premium ends up being, is that those that pay it will have an advantage over any other player that does not pay it.

I feel that, without knowing the rest of the details that they are planning, this does not look like something that I would support. No matter the game, it has always seemed unfair to me to allow the money of a player to give them an advantage in game. If wow starts down this path, I would not be surprised to see it wind up offering gold, levels, or even items to people for a couple of dollars...

Edit:
Healertrek does a better job at saying exactly what I was thinking than I did...