I have found that many players never consider the ramifications of their selection of Race, Class, and Professions when creating a Banker. Blizzard has recently taken the “Banker” into consideration with the special abilities they are planning for goblins as a player race. As those are not yet available let us discuss what is available and how to best use it to our advantage. Let’s spend a little time to familiarize ourselves with some of the benefits of these traits for a banker. Remember “Time is Money Friend” and speed is a consideration for any banker.
Race
Your race has a few influences on your banker. Your start location is only a factor as to how far you will have to run. The racial abilities are what are important here. The selections are as follows, Humans and Dwarfs for alliance, Blood Elves and Tauren for horde. Yes I have completely excluded the rest of the races as they have no influence on a banker’s requirements.
For the alliance we have Humans, because of the bonus to faction ability, are the best selection for the alliance. Their ability to grind up faction quickly reduces the fees that humans pay to the auction house. Dwarfs are the next best selection strictly because of their treasure hunting ability. If you are going to be playing the banker out in the world at all this is a nice way to make extra cash.
The Blood Elves’ racial ability of +10 to enchanting is the single best racial for the horde, where a banker is concerned. This allows the banker to make extra gold enchanting and disenchanting items for other players. Tauren bankers have two advantages. One is that they have the +5 to herbalism, the second is that the Auction house and mail box are both outside and with in eyesight of each other. This allows a mounted banker to travel rapidly between both locations.
Class
The class of your banker opens you up to a world of possibilities... if you choose the right class. Four of the class are to be considered for the role of banker; Mage, Shaman, Rogue, and Hunter. Each of these has a useful skill set that can benefit a banker. Can each of the other classes be a banker, yes, but their effectiveness is hindered in that they do not have the advantages that support the role of a banker.
In my not so humble opinion the Mage is the single best class suited to being a banker. The reason for this is simple; as you play your banker in the game the mage class gains the Teleport and portal abilities. What better way to get to your customers than by porting to them to take their money or being paid to send them somewhere else.
Shaman bankers are severally limited in their teleporting ability to their hearth city though this can be an advantage if that city is Shattrath or Dalaran. With the Ancestral Recall a good Shaman Banker can get almost any major city in 10 minutes. This is useful though more limited than the port used by the mage.
Rogues as bankers benefit from their lock-pick abilities. Vast sums of money can be acquired while leveling up your lock-picking. And since being a banker you will spend your time in a major city this is a good skill to have.
The last class to be considered for a banker is the hunter. This is simply because the hunter has no abilities to use in benefit of the banking industry but has the ability to farm items and resources rapidly with the use of their pet.
Profession
The concept of “it takes money to make money” is true for professions, though it takes very little money to make large amounts of money in game. A banker in the mood to make money will have two of the following professions.
Enchanting / Disenchanting ---> Perhaps the single most useful skill set, as a banker with this skill set you can make money enchanting or breaking enchanted items. If you have items that you can not sell on the auction house you can disenchant them and sell the dusts and essences.
Jewel Crafting / Prospecting---> Prospect ore for gems to place on the auction house or to prospect ores supplied by customers and charge a fee. Create items and sell them of course. When paired with Enchanting this skill set makes a banker extremely versatile. Create items that can be sold, or by destroying those items and selling the results.
Mining / Smelting---> Mining is the most useful gatherer skill set. The ability to mine and smelt the ore provides some of the most used resources in the game and there for the highest priced resources in the game. Gems are gathered while mining. Gems, ore, stone, and the bars from smelting all sell very well on the auction house.
Skinning & Herbalism ---> as gather professions these two are a guaranteed method of generating gold on the auction house.
All the rest of the professions in the game consume the resources generated by the previously mentioned professions. This makes the rest of the professions less viable to making a profit and therefor not good selections for a banker.
So when you decide to make your Banker take into account the Race, Class and professions, just as you would when playing a Meat Shield, Caster or Healbot.
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Vendor Supplied Items
Today we address the Vendor Supplied Items. These items are generally useful to purchase from a vendor and resell on the auction house. When we consider the vendors in game maintain items that are for sale, it provides an additional source of product us to list on the auction house.
What items would be good to purchase from a vendor to place on the auction house? Here is a list of 10 to start with.
a) Limited Vendor Supplied Items
b) Herbs
c) Ores
d) Pets
e) Cloth
f) Scrolls
g) Patterns
h) Schematics
i) Recipes
j) Leather
See the reoccurring theme here? Practically all the items on that list are required for crafting professions, and each one is most likely going to be available in a limited quantity. As each of the professions needs raw materials to grind up, all of these items are good for that, with 1 exception, pets. More on pets later.
Now you are wondering. “Well what should I not buy off a vendor to sell on the auction house?” Conveniently enough here is a list of 10 items to not buy.
a) Unlimited Vendor Supplied Items
b) Reagents
c) Engineering Ink
d) Vellum
e) Wood
f) Thread
g) Vials
h) Common Spices
i) Armor
j) Weapons
I hear you now “but if the Armor and weapons are a limited item shouldn’t I buy them?” The answer, no. The listing fee, plus your purchase fee, will be far greater than you can actually expect to receive when auctioning the items. With the exception of Armor and Weapons the items in the list are unlimited in quantity and have very limited uses. Not to mention that all of them are available in every city and town in the world.
Four criteria are to be considered when listing these items in the auction house.
a) Availability
Is the item already up on the auction house for less than you want to charge for it? If the answer is yes, don’t list the item.
b) Base Cost of the item
Is the price to purchase and list the item more than you expect to make in profit? If the answer is yes, don’t list the item better yet don’t buy that item.
c) Level to use the item
Is level of the item consistent with the amount you expect to charge?
If the answer is no, reduce the price or do not list the item.
d) Frequency
How often will the item you are selling appear on the auction house?
If your answer is, “it’s there everyday” don’t list the item.
So at this point you have determined that you have items that are going to sell. What should you charge for them? How will you know you are making the most of your investment? Simple, if you make 100% of the cost of the item pulse the listing fee you have made a profit. So if the item costs you 25 silver and you sell it for 50 silver you make a profit of 25 silver. It is conceivable that you can charge more for an item, for a price suggestion there are several sites dedicated to the data bases for the game. Two of these sites are www.wowhead.com and www.thottbot.com.
A segment of the gaming population disagrees with the selling of vendor items. There is nothing you can do about that. You are servicing the people that are not interested in making the trip out to the vendors you farm. They are the ones that are going to buy your product. The funny part is that these are some of the same people that will give you grief for selling the vendor items.
Several good results come from selling the vendor items. More availability of the items in a larger section of the population leads to more demand for resources. Better distribution of the items for example no more waiting to get to level 30 to get the patterns from Booty Bay that you can use at level 15. Of course you will make your profit and that’s why you play a banker.
Several unpleasant behaviors develop from this practice as well. Vendors with items that are in relatively high demand are camped, sometimes by bots. This makes it hard for non bankers to get the same products. These bots can snatch the items you are trying to buy while you are trying to buy them, it’s happened to me on more than one occasion. Then of course there is the dumping of vendor items on the auction house in an effort to destroy the market. Some times this has a side effect of making the items cheaper to buy of the auction house than from the vendor. Yes there are stupid bankers.
What items would be good to purchase from a vendor to place on the auction house? Here is a list of 10 to start with.
a) Limited Vendor Supplied Items
b) Herbs
c) Ores
d) Pets
e) Cloth
f) Scrolls
g) Patterns
h) Schematics
i) Recipes
j) Leather
See the reoccurring theme here? Practically all the items on that list are required for crafting professions, and each one is most likely going to be available in a limited quantity. As each of the professions needs raw materials to grind up, all of these items are good for that, with 1 exception, pets. More on pets later.
Now you are wondering. “Well what should I not buy off a vendor to sell on the auction house?” Conveniently enough here is a list of 10 items to not buy.
a) Unlimited Vendor Supplied Items
b) Reagents
c) Engineering Ink
d) Vellum
e) Wood
f) Thread
g) Vials
h) Common Spices
i) Armor
j) Weapons
I hear you now “but if the Armor and weapons are a limited item shouldn’t I buy them?” The answer, no. The listing fee, plus your purchase fee, will be far greater than you can actually expect to receive when auctioning the items. With the exception of Armor and Weapons the items in the list are unlimited in quantity and have very limited uses. Not to mention that all of them are available in every city and town in the world.
Four criteria are to be considered when listing these items in the auction house.
a) Availability
Is the item already up on the auction house for less than you want to charge for it? If the answer is yes, don’t list the item.
b) Base Cost of the item
Is the price to purchase and list the item more than you expect to make in profit? If the answer is yes, don’t list the item better yet don’t buy that item.
c) Level to use the item
Is level of the item consistent with the amount you expect to charge?
If the answer is no, reduce the price or do not list the item.
d) Frequency
How often will the item you are selling appear on the auction house?
If your answer is, “it’s there everyday” don’t list the item.
So at this point you have determined that you have items that are going to sell. What should you charge for them? How will you know you are making the most of your investment? Simple, if you make 100% of the cost of the item pulse the listing fee you have made a profit. So if the item costs you 25 silver and you sell it for 50 silver you make a profit of 25 silver. It is conceivable that you can charge more for an item, for a price suggestion there are several sites dedicated to the data bases for the game. Two of these sites are www.wowhead.com and www.thottbot.com.
A segment of the gaming population disagrees with the selling of vendor items. There is nothing you can do about that. You are servicing the people that are not interested in making the trip out to the vendors you farm. They are the ones that are going to buy your product. The funny part is that these are some of the same people that will give you grief for selling the vendor items.
Several good results come from selling the vendor items. More availability of the items in a larger section of the population leads to more demand for resources. Better distribution of the items for example no more waiting to get to level 30 to get the patterns from Booty Bay that you can use at level 15. Of course you will make your profit and that’s why you play a banker.
Several unpleasant behaviors develop from this practice as well. Vendors with items that are in relatively high demand are camped, sometimes by bots. This makes it hard for non bankers to get the same products. These bots can snatch the items you are trying to buy while you are trying to buy them, it’s happened to me on more than one occasion. Then of course there is the dumping of vendor items on the auction house in an effort to destroy the market. Some times this has a side effect of making the items cheaper to buy of the auction house than from the vendor. Yes there are stupid bankers.
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Me, Myself, & I, the story of a Banker
Let me introduce myself. My name is Derbanker. I began life as many bankers do, as an “Alt” to support other characters and our guild. The guild to which I belonged was “Orgrimmar Irregulars”. We were a small guild and the idea of a Guild banker was decidedly off putting to some. The guild banks did not exist yet and some folks were fairly paranoid of a guild banker.
At the time of my creation on Kirin Tor, the realm was new, and I was fresh and new to World of Warcraft. I resided on Kirin-Tor for a long while. I found that being a bank alt, especially one that I played more than my “Main”, was fun and the making of in game currency simple and easy. I leveled up in my spare time and by the release of Burning Crusade I was a whopping level 50, yes I was not in a hurry to level to 60. This prevented me from moving in to the outlands directly but money has a way of making things happen and I found myself firmly ensconced in Shattrath, and finally in Dalaran with the release of “Wrath of the Lich King”. In the years I have been playing World of Warcraft I have moved from Kirin-Tor, to Farstriders and this is my current base of operations. As of the current time I support 16 characters on both sides of the conflict. If you happen to be on Farstriders at any point drop me a line and say hello.
You might be asking, “So why should I bother to listen to the ramblings of a bank alt?” The answer is simple it’s free, its game related and you might find a nugget of something useful. Perhaps you will feel the need to correct me on a subject and in the process I learn something. Over all it wastes nothing but time, and if you enjoy it, can it really be called a waste?
Why would I be doing this for free when there are sites that do the same thing for a fee? Think of it as my method of playing the markets. If the information on how to make in game currency is available for free, the content of the auction houses will hopefully be more versatile and perhaps the environment of play will be better.
For the record, I am not a “Gold Farmer”, in the sense that I make gold and sell it to other people. I play the game and part of that game play is the accruing of in game currency. I certainly do not sell in game currency and in no way will I condone such action.
Should you feel the need to contact me my e-mail address is Der_Banker@yahoo.com Feel free to send me an in game tell, mail or send me an E-mail. I am always open to speaking with people about most subjects… assuming of course I have some thing to say about the subjects.
At the time of my creation on Kirin Tor, the realm was new, and I was fresh and new to World of Warcraft. I resided on Kirin-Tor for a long while. I found that being a bank alt, especially one that I played more than my “Main”, was fun and the making of in game currency simple and easy. I leveled up in my spare time and by the release of Burning Crusade I was a whopping level 50, yes I was not in a hurry to level to 60. This prevented me from moving in to the outlands directly but money has a way of making things happen and I found myself firmly ensconced in Shattrath, and finally in Dalaran with the release of “Wrath of the Lich King”. In the years I have been playing World of Warcraft I have moved from Kirin-Tor, to Farstriders and this is my current base of operations. As of the current time I support 16 characters on both sides of the conflict. If you happen to be on Farstriders at any point drop me a line and say hello.
You might be asking, “So why should I bother to listen to the ramblings of a bank alt?” The answer is simple it’s free, its game related and you might find a nugget of something useful. Perhaps you will feel the need to correct me on a subject and in the process I learn something. Over all it wastes nothing but time, and if you enjoy it, can it really be called a waste?
Why would I be doing this for free when there are sites that do the same thing for a fee? Think of it as my method of playing the markets. If the information on how to make in game currency is available for free, the content of the auction houses will hopefully be more versatile and perhaps the environment of play will be better.
For the record, I am not a “Gold Farmer”, in the sense that I make gold and sell it to other people. I play the game and part of that game play is the accruing of in game currency. I certainly do not sell in game currency and in no way will I condone such action.
Should you feel the need to contact me my e-mail address is Der_Banker@yahoo.com Feel free to send me an in game tell, mail or send me an E-mail. I am always open to speaking with people about most subjects… assuming of course I have some thing to say about the subjects.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)