Tuesday, January 18, 2011

First Foray into the Blogging Community

Seems to have gone well!  Spread my blog around, and 41 followers within the first day.  Found a lot of great blogs, subscribed to those too.  I have a feeling this is going to be a good community.

The reason why I just started putting it out there is because I wanted to have a good amount of back information, before I said "Hey, here's a new blog, I know what I'm talking about I promise!"  I wanted readers to check out some of my other ideas, and hopefully realize I'm not full of garbage and stick around for awhile.

On to today's post: risky investments.

We all know that if you buy items for less than the vendor value, you're guaranteed to make SOME sort of profit.  It may only be a few silver, but you'll profit nonetheless.  If you buy things that you can craft and sell the finished goods, you'll make a bit more profit, BUT there's always the chance that the item won't sell.  Let's look at the riskiest of all markets: epic flipping.

Epic quality items sell for a lot: anywhere between 6,000g and 22,000g.  Sure they're worth a lot, but the task is finding someone to purchase them.  I've seen a lot of people buying cheap epic items, and trying to resell them (usually in trade, /WTS [Gloves of Epic PWN] 12,000g!).  This is great and all, but this is a different type of investment; one with depreciation.

You want to hold on to the epic for as little time as possible: the epic item isn't like any other item at Wal-Mart, where it will stay fresh and won't expire.  The epic items are more akin to cars; each year, they lose a little value.  Why is this?  New car models come out.  Likewise, more players start raiding, and start getting the gear from raids.  When more people are getting gear from raids, they're less likely to shell out the gold for an item which may be replaced in a week.

Put yourself in their situation: Would you rather spend 12,000g on an item that's 13iLvls higher than your current, or would you rather raid the instance, and have a chance at getting the item for free?  Free is always better, and I'm willing to bet that a lot of players would opt for the latter option.

Here's a quick hypothesis (let's remember the scientific process for proving fact here - I have no data on the subject, nor do I intend to collect any), players purchase epics most on Wednesdays or Thursdays.  Why?  Here's my reasoning: the raid just ended on Tuesday or Wednesday night.  The player is disappointed that s/he didn't get the item, and is now feeling bad that they have to wait a full week for another CHANCE at the item.  Then, along comes someone in trade chat, looking to sell the very item the player wants.  Later in the week, the player may think, "Well, it's just a couple more days until Tuesday maintenance and reset, I think I can wait," and in addition, most later days in the week are progression nights.  Guilds will most likely want to progress, and better gear helps this happen.

Cliffs:
-Epic flipping is high risk/high reward
-Epics lose value quickly compared to other items in the game
-My hypothesis: Epics will sell best on Wednesdays or Thursdays.

13 comments:

  1. Everything can lose value even quickly in some instances :) For examples gems our now pretty cheap.

    Good guide however!

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  2. Very informative post...looking forward to more.

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  3. very nice post! keep it up that way!

    everybody who is interested in more followers
    you follow me:
    http://all-around-toto.blogspot.com/
    and i will follow you

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  4. Interesting hypothesis. I much prefer raw mats and selling those. At least, I did back when I played in BC.

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  5. Nice post. I haven't played WoW in a while, I think I'm gonna start up again. The game is probably a lot different now.

    http://dustinbones.blogspot.com/

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  6. Very informative. Thanks for taking the effort to type this up bro.

    http://www.simplyscotches.blogspot.com/

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  7. i wonder in what yearr wow will die

    http://allaboutneobux.blogspot.com/

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  8. Could be a long time Speakers. EQ's been around longer and that still seems to be going strong. Stay tuned for a new update later today.

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  9. interesting blog :)

    your friend,
    http://ectomorphmuscle.blogspot.com/

    ReplyDelete