wow gold farming

[rogerdv]

Well, seems that I have a lot of free time lately and I was thinking if I could use it for something useful. Can somebody give me any directions about how to get into the gold farming bussiness for WoW or other online game? I have been googling about this and cant find any good result.

The only reason this thread is still open is because of KaOTiK's interesting story. If this becomes a how-to in breaking EULAs, this thread will be closed.
-ViRGE

 

[Leopardos]

Just get a bunch of 20 chinese workers and pay them 20$ monthly farming 24/7 with very cheap computers ...

And you are set to Cow milk kids using their parents money...

 

[diesbudt]

So you wish to get your account(s) banned?

Is that why you want to sell gold?

 

[rogerdv]

Just get a bunch of 20 chinese workers and pay them 20$ monthly farming 24/7 with very cheap computers ...

And you are set to Cow milk kids using their parents money...

Well, I was thinking more about being hired for $20 monthly

 

[Skott]

First off I think your question is not going to go over well with people here. Secondly if you cannot find your answer via google then you are not looking hard enough.

 

[vshah]

why don't you get a job instead, you'll earn a lot more....

 

[kache]

First of all, you need a bot.

 

[Chiropteran]

If you want to make money online doing silly little tasks,

https://www.mturk.com/mturk/welcome

is probably a better way to do it. Gold farming is only done in very poor countries because the labor is free or nearly free. Doing it yourself and trying to profit on it is nearly impossible.

 

[rogerdv]

why don't you get a job instead, you'll earn a lot more....

Have one already.
And yes, I live in a poor country.

 

[gorcorps]

You have free time and you want to fill it with something tedious and boring? Why don't you play another game or something and have some fun?

 

[JTsyo]

Might be easier to play D3 and sell things in the auction house for real life money without the risk of being banned.

 

[pontifex]

1st, pretty sure that's against the games ToS and posting about doing that stuff is not allowed here.

2nd, this ruins games.

 

[KaOTiK]

I sold gold in WoW for awhile and made a lot of money doing it. I sold to guildmates and their friends, all my business was word of mouth to only trusted people. I always sold it for as cheap as the cheapest site you could find that was at least somewhat legit or cheaper. If you sell to sites then you wont even get half of what you can get selling it yourself. I was lucky in that I had 5-6 people who purchased rather large amounts fairly regularly and I had a lot of repeat customers for small amounts.

The other option instead of trying to setup your own network to sell or go chinese is try some of those auction/buy/sell forums people use to move accounts, they normally have a place to sell currency and items as well and you can make good money there.

One tip of advice. People pretty much will always ask why are you selling gold? Aren't you scared to get your account banned? etc etc. Tell them this, you don't care about playing anymore and make it come off like you don't care about the game or your account. The reason for this is, someone might try and screw you out of payment (always get payment first). Now if they try and screw you out of the payment after delivering the goods, you tell them you will notify Blizzard that they bought gold from you and both of your accounts will be banned. Now this is where most will freak out because if they are buying/stealing gold they are wanting to play and care and since you've given the impression of not giving a fuck previously they don't think you are actually bluffing (doesn't hurt to say after saying you will tell Blizzard that you don't care about losing the account because like you said before you don't care about the account). So the person scamming you will either give you back the gold or send you the money again to not lose their account.

 

[Anteaus]

Even if you wanted to the margins are way too low for any single player. The illegal gold seller market works because they have many people adding gold to a larger pot, which they can then divy up and sell in large quantities. On top of that they have to compete with each other, helping to keep the price down. If you consider that the going rate right now is as low as ~$1.50 per thousand gold when bought in quantity, you will need to make many thousands of gold a day just to match the lowest paying jobs.

 

[Schfifty Five]

I sold gold in WoW for awhile and made a lot of money doing it. I sold to guildmates and their friends, all my business was word of mouth to only trusted people. I always sold it for as cheap as the cheapest site you could find that was at least somewhat legit or cheaper. If you sell to sites then you wont even get half of what you can get selling it yourself. I was lucky in that I had 5-6 people who purchased rather large amounts fairly regularly and I had a lot of repeat customers for small amounts.

The other option instead of trying to setup your own network to sell or go chinese is try some of those auction/buy/sell forums people use to move accounts, they normally have a place to sell currency and items as well and you can make good money there.

One tip of advice. People pretty much will always ask why are you selling gold? Aren't you scared to get your account banned? etc etc. Tell them this, you don't care about playing anymore and make it come off like you don't care about the game or your account. The reason for this is, someone might try and screw you out of payment (always get payment first). Now if they try and screw you out of the payment after delivering the goods, you tell them you will notify Blizzard that they bought gold from you and both of your accounts will be banned. Now this is where most will freak out because if they are buying/stealing gold they are wanting to play and care and since you've given the impression of not giving a fuck previously they don't think you are actually bluffing (doesn't hurt to say after saying you will tell Blizzard that you don't care about losing the account because like you said before you don't care about the account). So the person scamming you will either give you back the gold or send you the money again to not lose their account.

How did you make enough gold to sell it on a consistent basis?

Did you have just your one account and play for 12 hours a day? Or did you have multiple accounts and did the multiple instance type thing? Flip on AH?

 

[KaOTiK]

How did you make enough gold to sell it on a consistent basis?

Did you have just your one account and play for 12 hours a day? Or did you have multiple accounts and did the multiple instance type thing? Flip on AH?

I controlled the AH for my server for a lot of crafting goods. Odds were if you bought enchanting or jewel crafting mats on the AH, you had to buy them from me. I would flip on the AH as well. I had a few chinese farmers that would mine ore all the time and sell directly too me at nearly 40% off current market value. Catch was to get this deal I had to agree to buy all of their ore when they were selling (normally in the range of 300-400 stacks). So I had massive supply at the cheapest prices. If someone tried to undercut/put a lot of stuff up on the AH on me, I'd buy it up and have the price jacked back up. I was so good at this people would message me out of hate for how expensive mats were for those 2 professions next to everything else. Hell even my own guild hated it, but I gave them a discount and in all honesty they found it funny as hell that I had the server tied up like that.

I played the AH a lot too, since I work from home, I'd have the AH open on one monitor and work on another and check the AH fairly often. When new content patches came out is always when I sold a lot because people would get new gear and had to get the mats for new enchants/gems

I always had around 400k on hand, the most I had at once was 2.8m gold.

 

[Schfifty Five]

I controlled the AH for my server for a lot of crafting goods. Odds were if you bought enchanting or jewel crafting mats on the AH, you had to buy them from me. I would flip on the AH as well. I had a few chinese farmers that would mine ore all the time and sell directly too me at nearly 40% off current market value. Catch was to get this deal I had to agree to buy all of their ore when they were selling (normally in the range of 300-400 stacks). So I had massive supply at the cheapest prices. If someone tried to undercut/put a lot of stuff up on the AH on me, I'd buy it up and have the price jacked back up. I was so good at this people would message me out of hate for how expensive mats were for those 2 professions next to everything else. Hell even my own guild hated it, but I gave them a discount and in all honesty they found it funny as hell that I had the server tied up like that.

I played the AH a lot too, since I work from home, I'd have the AH open on one monitor and work on another and check the AH fairly often. When new content patches came out is always when I sold a lot because people would get new gear and had to get the mats for new enchants/gems

I always had around 400k on hand, the most I had at once was 2.8m gold.

Damn, that's sick man. I can't imagine the time needed to do that. Most gold I ever had was around 100k, maybe a bit less. This was in WotLK. Can't imagine having 400k-2M+

 

[kache]

I controlled the AH for my server for a lot of crafting goods. Odds were if you bought enchanting or jewel crafting mats on the AH, you had to buy them from me. I would flip on the AH as well. I had a few chinese farmers that would mine ore all the time and sell directly too me at nearly 40% off current market value. Catch was to get this deal I had to agree to buy all of their ore when they were selling (normally in the range of 300-400 stacks). So I had massive supply at the cheapest prices. If someone tried to undercut/put a lot of stuff up on the AH on me, I'd buy it up and have the price jacked back up. I was so good at this people would message me out of hate for how expensive mats were for those 2 professions next to everything else. Hell even my own guild hated it, but I gave them a discount and in all honesty they found it funny as hell that I had the server tied up like that.

I played the AH a lot too, since I work from home, I'd have the AH open on one monitor and work on another and check the AH fairly often. When new content patches came out is always when I sold a lot because people would get new gear and had to get the mats for new enchants/gems

I always had around 400k on hand, the most I had at once was 2.8m gold.

I don't play WoW, but I hate people like you in other MMORPGs I play.
Especially when they merch extremely rare and important equipment, making me pay 2-3x market price...

 

[diesbudt]

I don't play WoW, but I hate people like you in other MMORPGs I play.
Especially when they merch extremely rare and important equipment, making me pay 2-3x market price...

I had someone try to control the market on the server I was on in BC. Sorry for the sap, i had funds and time up my sleeve, in that I would farm so much of the stuff he tried to control, and undercut him with 10-15 stacks or items or whatever by 20% or more.

He would buy all them out and repost at his price, then I posted another 10-15 at 15% less price.

Repeat until I get bitched at and then I report them and in their 24hr absence I destroy the market to low prices. Or until they give up.

Worked often enough. I don't take kindly to monopolizers. I also hate people who post 100x 1 of a herb/ore.

 

[Skott]

I controlled the AH for my server for a lot of crafting goods. Odds were if you bought enchanting or jewel crafting mats on the AH, you had to buy them from me. I would flip on the AH as well. I had a few chinese farmers that would mine ore all the time and sell directly too me at nearly 40% off current market value. Catch was to get this deal I had to agree to buy all of their ore when they were selling (normally in the range of 300-400 stacks). So I had massive supply at the cheapest prices. If someone tried to undercut/put a lot of stuff up on the AH on me, I'd buy it up and have the price jacked back up. I was so good at this people would message me out of hate for how expensive mats were for those 2 professions next to everything else. Hell even my own guild hated it, but I gave them a discount and in all honesty they found it funny as hell that I had the server tied up like that.

I played the AH a lot too, since I work from home, I'd have the AH open on one monitor and work on another and check the AH fairly often. When new content patches came out is always when I sold a lot because people would get new gear and had to get the mats for new enchants/gems

I always had around 400k on hand, the most I had at once was 2.8m gold.

How long was this? I can see it in the early years but I'm wondering if it can be done now in WoW today? Which is probably what the OP wants to know as well. And no, I dont have any interest in doing this. Just curious if you did this back then or recently.

 

[diesbudt]

How long was this? I can see it in the early years but I'm wondering if it can be done now in WoW today? Which is probably what the OP wants to know as well. And no, I dont have any interest in doing this. Just curious if you did this back then or recently.

You can if the item is rare-ish.

Like Non combat pets from old raids. You can buy some of them all up (that only have 2-3 on AH) and keep that market on lock down.

 

[KaOTiK]

How long was this? I can see it in the early years but I'm wondering if it can be done now in WoW today? Which is probably what the OP wants to know as well. And no, I dont have any interest in doing this. Just curious if you did this back then or recently.

I quite playing/selling 5-6 months after Cata came out. I made the most in that 5-6 months then in my previous time in WotLK.

 

[rogerdv]

You have free time and you want to fill it with something tedious and boring? Why don't you play another game or something and have some fun?

I never played WoW (at least not in large scale), so it is not going to be that boring.

 

[bonkers325]

How long was this? I can see it in the early years but I'm wondering if it can be done now in WoW today? Which is probably what the OP wants to know as well. And no, I dont have any interest in doing this. Just curious if you did this back then or recently.

You just need the seed money to get started. I ran the economy on my server from Cata launch until firelands (when I quit). Spent more time on the AH than actually playing the game. 30 minutes when I wake up, 30 minutes the second I got home, then a few hours after dinner, then 30 minutes before I slept.

If you have toons with all the crafting professions, you can pretty much make money off of anything in the game. So I smashed ores for gems and sold daily gems and made jewelry for disenchanting. Used herbs for alchemy and milled the crappier ones for inks for my inscription char.

I made a variety of spreadsheets that helped me figure out "break-even" points for mats and found that I could make a profit on almost any mat if I fed it through different professions. It's not hard, just extremely time consuming.

 

[Xonim]

How long was this? I can see it in the early years but I'm wondering if it can be done now in WoW today? Which is probably what the OP wants to know as well. And no, I dont have any interest in doing this. Just curious if you did this back then or recently.

I'm going to guess it'd probably be extremely difficult, and heavily dependent upon your server. I've never tried to fully corner an AH by buying out, but I have tried cornering markets through my toons (all profs at 580+ except inscription), and it just doesn't usually work anymore due to large numbers of people trying the same thing / people with lots of alts.

If you're going to do it you're going to have to expect to lose money from people like me, because I gather my stuff just through every day play, and since I'm not buying things out, I don't really have any money invested to lose.

For example, on my server I tried forcing my way into a couple markets -- belt buckles, flasks, cooking mats, golden lotus, etc. I had a banked supply, so I could put 3-5 up each time I undercut, but there were 3-4 other people in every market I found/tried that would undercut me CONSTANTLY -- I'm talking within 10 minutes, every time.

We took belt buckles from 600g per to under 300g in under an hour. I tried listing perfect cut green gems for 45g each, no matter the cut, and we'd be down to ~25g in no time. My break even was something like 10g/gem, I don't care.

Eventually I found that nobody else was listing 100 year soy sauce, I could get 4 / day from my toons. Made ~15k from those in about 2 weeks, then they started catching on and I saw spams in /trade and VotFW /general that they were buying for half of what I was charging, and then they started undercutting me. I started listing mine for under what he was paying people, so he started buying mine and I'd get more back up right away, though for slightly less each time so he'd keep buying me out. I brought them down to 75g per, let him reset the prices, and started all over again at 125g, though he figured out what I was doing, quit buying me out, and just took the hit until I left.

Tiger Gourami was selling for 300g per 5 stack due to the cooking quests and none on the AH, same people started showing up with theirs after a couple weeks and brought it down to 7g / fish. Gave up on that one.

Only thing I still do is golden lotus. I plant enigma seeds on 2 characters/day (do songbell seeds on the other 2 for now), so I get between 7-10 golden lotus / day for 10 minutes of "work". Tues/Wed/Thurs I list individually for market price (95-97g), sometimes they sell sometimes they don't. Fri/Sat/Sun/Mon I just save them up and list whatever I have in 20 stacks on the following Tuesday afternoon for 40g under what this guy sells his flasks for. One of two people snatches them up ~4:30pm server time, I can get rid of 2-3 stacks at a time for 1800/stack. If I don't see any flasks up from 2 certain people, I'll try to sneak some of those in there if it's just before 5pm server.

Not gonna lie, I miss the days of 200g per mongoose enchant. I made 12k in an hour once just by standing on the IF bridge when the shattered sun vendor opened up.

TLDR: I don't NEED gold for anything, but it's kind of a mini game to see how many people I can upset in the process