Guild Store Guidelines (Conceptual)

Guild Store Guidelines

This information is intended for all audiences curious as to how the guild stores in game will work, and how to reach the most efficiency out of them. Please be sure to share this information with anyone who may need it or is curious as how to run their guild store.

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Concept 1 - Profit Basis

Concept 1 follows a profit basis for your guild. Since guild stores are considered small markets we will use concept 1 to make the best profit for your guild. In my opinion this is the best guideline when running your guild store.

Members are farmers, they post items in the guild store at the open market price

The Guild or Officers are the crafters, they buy items from the guild store to use in crafting gear, potions, consumables, etc.

The Guild provides these itemized services to the guild for the open market price.

The members in turn buy the items to use or sell.

Concept 1 allows the guild to make money. Money which in turn can be reinvested into the guild store (members). The guild economy grows, and the richer the members become. Concept 1 is a win win at maximum profit.

Concept 2 - Profit Basis (Selfish, but works)

Concept 2 follows a Profit basis for your guild, but does nothing to reinvest into the member's security.

Members are farmers, they post items in the guild store at a discounted price

The Guild or Officers are the crafters, they buy the items in the guild store to use in crafting items or to sell for a profit in the open market.

The Guild provides little service to the guild economy.

The members can buy or sell in this economy, but have little profit margins themselves. (localizes profit for the guild only)

Concept 2 just sounds evil, but in most cases it will be used in guilds that do not care about personal gain or guild stores for that matter.

Concept 3 - Commune Basis (Will most likely be the most common)

Concept 3 follows a Commune basis, it's a free market, people provide services in exchange for services

Members are farmers, crafters, resellers. They sell items at discounted prices to everyone.

The Guild or Officers are exempt as it is a commune, everyone provides service for little to no monetary gain.

Concept 3 allows for a guild to have a limited economy with monetary value it is no more than a price per item guild bank.

-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

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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Experimentation

As with many ventures of mine, I have a great deal of experimentation to undergo when pursuing new avenues. For the first time in my life I am following through with an idea that I have had. Many times, and I am sure many can sympathize with me, I have picked something up for a few days. Only to drop it and move on with my life. However, this idea is different. I find myself wanting to do more. I find it almost intoxicating.

Blogging has never really been a very important thing for me to do with my online free time. I find myself eager, and wanting more lately. With a few friends and some non-mentioned alcoholic beverages, we discussed the possibility of stock markets on the outside of MMO games. Where players, that either could not play the game, or could not make money inside the game, could still get a piece of the action.

Many people out there, are unable or otherwise don't care about money markets within MMOs.
It is something I love. I spend on average, about 10 hours a week to gold management alone. That's not counting my PVP and my "Ironforging time."

So what to do with all of this useless information that I have accumulated over several years? Sell it? Share it? Keep it to myself?

I couldn't look back on my wasted life and say I did nothing with the knowledge. I have decided to share it.

So my friends and I will be sharing with you, all of our secrets in the months to come. Hopefully, with any luck, we will have fun along the way.

Welcome to The Tamriel Gold Goblin.

I am your host. ChillBilly.

Good to have you.