Another Wasted Day

I think that part of waiting for a highly anticipated game, is the shear boredom of things. I have sunk low in troubled times such as these. There are only so many ways a gamer can keep himself or herself occupied before a big game release. Let's list a few shall we?

• Play another game.

Sometimes this one helps. It keeps your mind off the fact, you are still waiting for your MMO or new game to arrive. Picking another game similar to the one you are preparing to play is the best idea. It allows you to up your skills before release. More or less, it keeps you occupied in gaming and nothing else. Including keeping you away from unnecessary things like cleaning your room / house, doing laundry, or replacing the weather stripping on your back door because the rainwater from the no gutter system off your poorly built house is leaking in and destroying your door and floor.

• Endurance training

Old people, like myself and a few others that fancy themselves readers of blogs such as this one, prefer endurance training. We aren't young anymore, and quite frankly, we cannot stay up past 12am. For that matter I pulled a muscle this morning putting on a sock. So we must train ourselves to be able to keep up with you young whippersnappers. It's not exactly the easiest thing to do considering games don't captivate us as well as they used to. We have to find a totally addictive game or an activity that keeps us staying up past our pill / bed time.

• Character Creation

Before we launch full steam ahead, a good majority of us, will begin to create our characters in our minds. We will even have names picked out, so that we aren't searching randomly for a named item on our desks at launch time. (I literally have a character on WoW named Aqualibrium for that very reason.) We will make sure we have made a final decision on whether our characters will be Female or Male. We will decide if we want to start as Argonians or Redguards. We will write long roleplaying stories on our characters. We will be prepared.

• Guilds

For the more nerdy of people, we will find other people to align with. This is a tricky one. Since there is no current game to play, boredom runs rampant. I have seen only a few guilds this go around that have not 100% went to the dark side. I joined a guild before the launch of SWTOR and they were hardcore. As memory serves, they kicked me out, because I said if SWTOR releases on Thanksgiving day, I would spend my free time watching football.  I guess I got kicked out for having a life? No idea..

• Forums

Joining Forums is the greatest thing you can do. Forums often times have a lot of news and like-minded people talking about the game you are about to play. They even have some developers come in and do private interviews which is kind of cool. As long as the information doesn't violate the NDA, most websites, including this one, will discuss things from videos and other official sources. Forums are a great source of information, and should never be overlooked. I like Enjin's forum over others because its straight and to the point. You don't have to wade through a trough of useless garbage to read what you want to read.

• Writing

Sometimes you just feel like writing. I like writing because it is a form of stress relief. With a generous amount of time, you can have a plethora of information waiting for you at launch. Dust off that old Microsoft Word program you got back when you were flunking out of college, playing video games instead of going to class, and write something useful. Or don't and spend your time playing internet spades with a guy that never covers your nils! Either way, enjoy yourself before launch. Be sure to friend me on Enjin, and we shall play, oh yes. We shall.

(Original Version on ElderScrollsForum.com)
Thanks
-CB

Alternative Currency for ESO?

As we all know, The Elder Scrolls Online uses a megaserver. I don’t know the technical jargon behind this, but the end result will be every pc and mac user being able to interact and trade with each other. In other MMOs with such a large player base, gold sometimes becomes a useless currency for high tier items. This is primarily due to the lack of ways for gold to leave the game economy. In these instances, the new currency (such as Chaos Orb in Path of Exile) is valued equally to each player.  Other games such as Guild Wars 2, have had almost no inflation, and players haven’t adopted an alternative currency. With Guild Wars 2, there is a tax on certain player transactions, removing gold from the game’s economy. It also doesn’t hurt to have economists on staff to help maintain the game’s economic balance.

I don’t think Zenimax Online Studios has, or is currently looking for any economists unfortunately. After an extensive search, I found a few LinkedIn profiles, dozens of job postings, even Matt Firor’s phone number (don’t worry Matt, I won’t be prank calling you). But not a peep on if they have anyone qualified to monitor and manage ESO’s economy.

If ESO does end up having a ton of worthless gold, what items should you look out for? From what we’ve heard so far, and provided that the in-game items and crafting system is similar to past Elder Scrolls games, speculation is possible.

Certain tier of gear? Possibly. Without hands on experience in deconstructing equipment, we have no way of knowing the nature of the items you can acquire this way, their abilities, nor their rarity.

Crafting material? Possibly. Additives are these mysterious items that are an optional ingredient to craft gear with, but we effectively know nothing about them. There have been interviews with Nick Konkle and Paul Sage talking about them in the past, but no updates on how they might have changed, or the specifics on the items themselves.

Other crafting materials? Not a chance. The normal ingredients such as ore, or alchemy ingredients are going to be those things you trip over every ten feet. They’re also the kind of item gold farmers will find a way to exploit and sell for gold, and then sell for money.

Glyphs? Not likely. In case you’re not up to speed on what glyphs are, glyphs are the items crafted in the Enchanting skill line. They are items with an enchantment on them, and when used, transfers the enchantment onto a piece of equipment. While glyphs are a crafted item, giving them potential to become a currency, enchantments can be recharged (at least in past TES games) using a soul gem. With that in mind, soul gems are much more likely to become a currency item.

Soul gems? Likely. If soul gems are indeed used to restore charges onto enchantments, they gain value since everyone will desire them. With the exception of glyphs, everything else listed do not have equal value between each player. Soul gems in past TES games such as Skyrim also have a very high gold to weight ratio, making them highly valued as loot.

I thought about adding horse feed to the list, but decided not to. When Matt Firor talked about horses, and feeding them at E3 2013, he made it sound like there are only have two or three different types of food to feed your horse. It is possible, even probable, that there will be different rarities for these items with increased effects, yet I am not convinced there is a chance they could become a currency in ESO.

That brings my speculation on the subject of alternative currency to an end. If you’d like to weigh in on this topic, please post in the comments below.

I’ll leave you gold goblins for now, with a quote to ponder:
"The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends."

- Friedrich Nietzsche

5 Possible Events After Launch

Based off the information we are given from the Elder Scrolls Online staff, we can expect a few spring up ideas that will make life a little easier in ESO. Here are 5 ideas you can expect to spring up at ESO Launch.

1. Trade Guilds - Players can join up to 5 guilds in ESO, this means you can almost guarantee to see some Trade Guilds to spring up, almost over night. These trade guilds will most certainly have a guild store, multiple members of all levels, and even though traders are not the most violent people in the world, they will have a PVP division as well. 

2. Mercenaries for Hire - With the need for trade guilds, I would expect to see mercenary groups spring up as well. These mercenary groups will most likely join trade guilds to maintain keeps, and without any doubt, get paid generously for their service and protection. 

3. Player Auctions - Yes, we will be kicking it old school. Several trade guilds will not be able to maintain a guild keep, hire mercenaries, or PVP. They will have to turn to alternative methods. In Ultima Online there was no Automated Auction House and no trade chat. If you wanted to sell your materials and items, you had 3 basic options. Place a vendor on your door step, sell your items in populated areas, or sell your items at one of the various player auction houses. I realize that the pampered players from WoW will find this a problem. Your old school players on the other hand, find it awesome and are eager for its arrival. 

4. Guild Politics - I would expect there to be some sort of player driven political system. Even now before launch, you have guild alliances springing up left and right. This will bring the political campaign to a start. I would even go so far as to see cross faction guild alliances as well. This is great for maintaining control of a keep, maintaining guild relations and such. What does it mean for traders? Opportunity. It gives them an opportunity to capitalize off of such politics. 

5. Spies - With politics, you will always have greed, deception, and spies. Spies can be agents, or double agents for that matter. It will take a unique player to pull this off. Given the information we have received about guilds, this is an extreme possibility. They will exist. So look out. 

Have something you want to add to the list? Leave a comment below. 

-CB

These 5 ideas are mere opinion, and are based off of information given from official sources.

Comments should follow the rules of the NDA. Any information using beta knowledge will be deleted.

Trade Unions

     After discussing this topic with some of my new friends, I decided to put a little piece together. Trade Unions are not a very popular subject in the world of MMOs. Not because of the pros or cons, but because it's not an idea very well acquainted with the community. Generally, people consider themselves loners in the marketplace. They are out to get the 1 or 2 gold for their trinkets and affections. What if they could have 3 gold, and a gold standard for currency though? This is no place for rhetorical questions, only facts. Facts may entail a large consumption of quality over quantity. I do admit that my own judgments of Unions come into play. I have yet only experienced one instance of an MMO player-run Tradesman Union.

     It was a foggy afternoon, as I was cinching up my last sack of rotten goods, I saw a shady deal go down right before my eyes. A player was confronting another player about a transaction he had made to yet another player. In full RP these gentlemen played out a somewhat humorous collaboration of rule statements and creeds. They fired back at one another with quips and clever expressions. One of these players had evidently betrayed his tradesman union. He had purchased an item from a non-union player, and was paying his debt by being publicly ridiculed for all to see. I inquired about this from a fellow guild member as I was new to the scene. My guild mate replied with an explanation that these two gentlemen were in a trade union, and it was against their laws to trade with another player other than ones in their union. I felt this was queer, so I decided to get answers from the source. I made my way over to the gentlemen after their dispute had settled to laughs. I asked them if they could involve me into what had just occurred. They refused me.

     Apparently the first rule in Trade Unions is, you don't talk about Trade Unions. These gentlemen had assigned themselves to a creed. They did not want others to compete, as they were the one, and only.
It wasn't long before the little wooden gears and hamster balls in my head started turning. I had to know more about this. I didn't flake it off as a sudden flash mob of role play. There was something more here. I just didn't know how, or where to start. I began to dig. I spent most of my time where these particular players were trading. I noticed that they would buy from other players, not just ones from their union. The prices had to be low though. Lower than average. The market price on a 100 bundle of wood was 1000 gold give or take. I began approaching them with 2 or 3 bundles a day. Only not at the full market price, but at 2 - 300 gold per bundle. I was an immediate success. Not long after I had staged this coup, I was being approached by more and more union representatives. Five days of this endless streak of business, dealing only with union members, I was approached. Not only by a member of the union, but by 3 of the union board members. They asked to speak with me in private. I agreed and met with them on their voice communications server. For two hours, they discussed the possibility of my supplication. To provide with them, a large quantity of freshly cut woods ranging from high to low qualities. I humbly agreed and so began my journey of endless farming and building. I was allowed a guild standard, a work bench to work from, and an endless forest for my axe to never dull. There is somewhat of a literary value here, as I speak so passionately about my experiences. It truly was, the most drawn out chapter of my online life. By the third week of this endless struggle, they had put to my table an offer. Join the Union, and earn for yourself. You have earned our respect. Now you may see, just how far, and just how big this thing is.

     It took me a month. A month of mule work. As my eyes were opening to this underground world of trades, I began to see a series of patterns. Players from one side of the map, moved fluently from one side to the other. They never stopped, they were never brought to the sword. No one robbed them, no one murdered them, they were impervious. The untouchables.
It was a labyrinth of information, but as the dust settled I could see the clear vision. These men, had set together a list of rules to follow and to trade by. In a server of over 3000 traders, 2900 of them were union members.

     Make no mistake, they were not a guild. Guilds control what a player does in certain cases. Unions organize players. They organize what the market price is going to be. If that market price is gouged or undercut, there are penalties for disloyalty. You did not want to be banned from the Union. If that was the case, your trading days were over. You would have to pack up, and sell to yourself, farm what you needed. You no longer had the option of buying in bulk. You were the proverbial stain at the bottom of the swimming pool.

You were the unwanted and the unneeded. Luckily, I never experienced that side of the Union world.

Pros of a Tradesman Union:

There were many microperks to a tradesman union. Here are a few to list them out.

• Guaranteed Sale - Your goods were always going to be purchased through orders given through the union network. You filled the order, and you were paid the full standard market price.
• Protection - The union had determined trade routes, these trade routes were cleared of brigands and highway robbers. Often times caravans had military protection, but the trade routes were often patrolled by Union guards. No one wanted to kill you for fear of total war. Guilds would often times have a union representative. If a guild killed a union member, they sometimes had to pay for their mistakes with tribute or with free trade. They always followed this. None in my time of membership ever broke the rule. There had only been one incident before my arrival. It was declared as being the last. To sum the last war up. Over 50 guilds versus 1, it wasn't long until everyone involved in that 1 guild resigned. 
• No fear of Undercuts - No one in the union would ever undercut you on your price. There was no haggling or discussion, they paid you for the item. They also were required by union law to purchase first from a union member. The market price was set by day, only a 1 to 2 ratio could go up or down from that. 
• Insider information - If a guild merger or guild event such as war or contest, the union knew about it first. Union members were often contracted to provide materials. Some members of the union even could sponsor the events depending on the situation. 

Cons of Tradesman Union:

As with the pros, there were many reasons you did not want to join a Union. Here are a few of those reasons:

• Monopoly - If a union member had a monopoly on a certain item, you literally could not contest his business and compete with him. You had to have 2x his stock to even try, even then it was risky. If the member was good with the board, he could have you banned from the union for any reason. 
• Corrupt - Anytime you put together a group of players, motives will be flown and sowed together. Majority rules as they say. If you became the black sheep by a cross trade or disagreement, your removal was imminent. However, board members could also be bought to swing one way or the other.
• Sub-unions - If the Union board had any off time, Sub-unions would emerge, little leaders as we called them. It was a foundation to tear apart the Union as a whole. If it wasn't stamped out, a player could arise with an idea that could destroy the fabric of the society.
• Dictatorships - Though I never saw this happen, I had heard of this happening in the past. If a union was structured poorly and  one person was to lead this organization. That one person often times became a dictator over a majority rule.

Concluding with one last summary to wrap this thing up. The Requirements of Membership. I have only a few of them written down here. They are the ones that stick out.

1. Never discuss politics outside of the Union.
2. Never trade with an outside player if a member has informed you of the same item listed.
3. Trading with previous union members is forbidden.
4. Trading with previous union guilds is forbidden.
5. The market price is set once per day, You are allotted a 1 - 2 % raise or decrease from this market price.
6. Going above or below the 1 - 2 % is forbidden.
7. Killing or robbing union members is forbidden.
8. If a player asks for your union id, respond with (enter keyword here) 
9. If you ask a player for his or her union id, and they do not respond with the correct keyword, record their name and report to the union board. 
10. Never give out the daily keyword to anyone.

Now some of those rules are paraphrased. Others, are rules written exact. I can see how a lot of these rules had a purpose. The last though seem more like a cult to me than anything. There were a lot more but I felt it was redundant for this entry. A keyword would allow a player to enter the union halls without appropriate tags. I can understand, but report the player to the union hall? Sounds kind of cultish to me. Leave a comment if you agree or disagree. 

Thanks for reading

-CB

Time is Money

In virtually every MMORPG, from Everquest to Defiance, there is something called “farming”. And no, it has nothing to do with milking cows or harvesting wheat (although in Mabinogi you get to do just that). The concept is pretty straight forward, and closely resembles working on a farm in real life. Farming in an MMORPG is a process of repeatedly killing monsters and/or using gathering nodes (such as mining iron ore), the goal being to get lots of loot to sell, or materials to make lots of loot to sell. Sounds simple, right? Well, it is. It’s also one of the most effective ways to make money in any RPG, MMO or not. No ESO specific content this time guys, sorry.

In case you’ve never farmed before, or not entirely sure what I’m talking about, let me run you through it. First you need to figure out what it is you want. A specific crafting material? Better gear? Valuable gear? Any random old thing you can sell? For example, let’s say you want iron ore to make a bad-ass sword. The second thing you need to do is figure out where you will go farming. Typically, this will be where the monsters (more commonly referred to as mobs) that drop the item spawn the most, or where the gathering nodes tend to spawn the most. There are two ways to decide where to farm. Either you check the internet, probably on a wiki for the game, or you use your own experience in-game and memory of what was where. I myself find it more satisfying to figure it out on my own, rather than use the wiki as a crutch. But to each their own. Now that we know we want iron ore, and where to find it, it becomes a matter of how to get it. You might be thinking “What do you mean how? I just go get it, right?” Well yes, and no. At low levels, or playing in a zone with mobs far below your level, yeah, just go get it. At higher levels though, they tend to throw big nasty mobs in the areas with the higher tier materials. Depending on the zone, you might need to organize a farming run with some friends or guildmates. The same applies for farming loot off mobs; if you can handle them on your own no problem, excellent. If not, partner up with someone, and split the loot. Once you’ve done farming for a while, or your bags are full, you of course sell it to a vendor, or auction house.

Now that we’ve covered the basics, let me share some tips and tricks with you. First, check the market on items you know you can get your hands on. If it sells for a good price and/or moves quickly, then you’ll make a ton of dough farming it. In LotRO I farmed a specific jeweler material because it had the best sell price for how many I could farm in an hour. This brings us to the golden rule: time is money. The quantity you can farm in an hour greatly affects your profits. If you can farm 100 units of iron ore in an hour, and only 50 coal, the obvious choice of item to farm would be iron ore, right? Not necessarily. If the iron ore sells for 500 gold, and the coal for 300 gold, you get the following ratios: 5:1 and 6:1. This means each iron ore is worth 5 gold, and each coal is worth 6 gold. Therefor the coal is more worth your time than the iron. Supply and demand plays a big part in the prices (crafting materials in particular). The higher the demand, the more people are willing to pay. The lower the supply, the more people are willing to pay. These are the items that will roll you in coin if you find a good place to farm them. Items in low demand and high supply sell for almost nothing to other players, and you’re probably better off selling them to the vendor. Whether you’re farming a specific item, or just random stuff, spawn times matter. A lot. The faster something re-spawns, the faster you can kill it or gather from it. Sometimes you’ll find something that re-spawns instantly. Odds are, that is worth farming the hell out of. A common tactic to farm as much as possible is to farm in a circular pattern, so that there is always something in front of you. If someone else if farming in the same area as you, and you find yourself one node behind them, I find it best to turn around, and go the way I came. Otherwise the two of you will be constantly “stealing” from one another, and you will not farm as many items. The last tip I got for right now is to get a mount ASAP, and use it whenever possible. Time is money after all.

I’ll leave you gold goblins for now, with a quote to ponder:
“When I was young I thought that money was the most important thing in life; now that I am old I know it is.”
- Oscar Wilde

A WoW Economy

It's not a very easy thing to do, posting a blog per day that is. It's hard to stress that my methods will work for any game. Not just for one in particular, but any game. That is not to say that it isn't work. This line of things is not for everyone. It's not given to you like cheats would, or like hacks or bots. These guides allow you to achieve for yourself, but with help. It's just like these blogs, I am not at this alone. I have help. Help, from individuals whom have proved themselves worthy of the Gold Goblin tag. I look forward to reading what they have to say, as I am sure you look forward to that as well. Hopefully, with any luck, you are reading this now, and are excited, like I am, for the things to come.

I got my start with gold economies from World of Warcraft. The name now, makes me cringe. I realized that I really have no photo evidence of my success on World of Warcraft. I only have my word. Seeing is believing so to speak. So over the course of the "waiting 3 months."  I will show, and explain my methods in depth, via YouTube. Unfortunately for me, this means either resubscribing to World of Warcraft, or "borrowing" an account from someone who already plays. Most likely what I will do is create an entirely new account, using the basic World of Warcraft game. I will not need the expansions to show that my methods work. I will attempt to show you each week, my progress, from limited to no leveling, and moderately all auction house transactions, that it is possible to show a large increase from start to finish, in a few days, if not less. 

As I have mentioned before, becoming a Gold Goblin, is not for the faint of heart. It takes work, a LOT of research, and time. You may find yourself getting up at 6 am to get in on those auction house deals, or those early market trades. Like anything else, including real life work, none of the work matters, it's the pay day that counts. Yes, it may suck, and yes, it is boring. People pay good money for tips like these. Here, you pay nothing but your time reading the blogs. Your success, is our payment. 

Share us, follow us. More to come I promise you.

-CB

Auction Houses? Guild Stores.

Hello Internet! Happy New Year.

For those of you following ESO (Elder Scrolls Online), you probably know that there is no Auction House. Instead, there are Guild Stores. This changes the nature of economy and trade in ESO. Most MMOs go with a system of being able to buy from any player, and being able to sell to any player, and being able to view EVERYTHING currently on the market. With Guild Stores, your market is now limited to a maximum of 1500 players. PLAYERS. You see, each account gets to join 5 guilds. And unless I missed something, the guild cap is 300. It has been said the guild cap will probably rise, I’m guessing to 500. Even still, this puts your market up to 2500 potential buyers.

If you’re a crafter, you’ll have to manage your guilds very carefully. If you’re not a crafter, feel free to skip to the next paragraph. I don’t mind. As a crafter, you’ll need to make sure you’re in active guilds with a ton of people in them. Preferably with no other crafters. You’ll need active and full guilds to maximize that 1500-2500 player base, and have characters that are leveling up and need new gear, more potions, or more food. So if you haven’t yet, check out some guilds, join one or two. Going back a bit, I said “Preferably with no other crafters”. I really meant to say “with almost no other crafters making the same stuff as you”. By being one of the only people crafting a certain item in your guild, say, heavy armour, you’ve now got a niche market. Niche is kind of a funny word, isn’t it? Sounds a bit like quiche. To maximize this niche, you should only focus on the one craft. If you want to craft more than one type of item, that’s cool too. More people will buy your stuff if you’re selling more than one thing!

Even if you’re not crafting, it is still wise to select your guilds carefully if you want to make a buck off the Guild Store. If you like to buy things cheap, and re-sell them for a higher price, you’ll want to be in guilds outside of the Six Degrees of Separation (it’s ok if you need to google that or niche). What I mean is you want to be in guilds with as few people in common as possible. Because if someone is doing the same thing and is in the same guild as four of yours, you’ve got some serious competition. If you’re more of a PvPer or raider, consider joining some non-pvp or raiding guilds too. There will be less chance people are putting up the same items to the Guild Store. Of course, size and activity are also key to making money off any Guild Store. You won’t make any money off guilds with 20 people, and you only ever see yourself online.

As an afterthought, I remembered how Cyrodiil plays into this. I almost even clicked send to Chillbilly to post this article.
Cyrodiil (PvP) unlocks a whole new element to how Guild Stores function. If your guild owns a keep in Cyrodiil, anyone who visits that keep can browse your guild’s store. And likewise, you can browse the Guild Store of any keep your faction owns. So ideally, you want to be in five guilds that each controls a keep. If possible, at least one in each three alliances. If you can achieve this, then you can now sell to everyone playing the game.

I’ll leave you gold goblins for now, with a quote to ponder:
Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art. Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art.
- Andy Warhol


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