The Power Word: Gold Podcast - Episode 027

I just listen to the podcast last night and I must say one thing about the transmogging. I love the skepticism that was talked about. And this is the hard truth about it.

When transmog was first released on PTR, that was when I personally started to pick up items for really cheap, I'm talking 10-5g each off the AH, I wasn't worried because the fact even if the items didn't sell at the market up prices I could always DE them and get my gold back.

That being said, I've made form the moment that 4.3 has been out 14k gold form it, only spending about 1200g (this isn't counting what I spent before patch 4.3 on stock).

The fact the mogfather made over 1 million gold does come down to two factors; His realm and the fact he was using the remote AH.

Because now this has gone main stream and only a matter of time before the list you guys have worked so hard to make are stolen and posted on MMO Champion (you and I both know they will release there own list) and mogging will become just like the Glyph Market, it'll be an undercut war and unless you have the time to farm and get those rare sets or camp the AH day in and day out to buy those cheap items.

Sooner or later it wont be worth it anymore for many people because you wont either find the items cheap anymore or you wont get sells. I've only gone a hand full of them no where near a million gold in the same time and on my realm I'm the only one doing it and even took a 2 week break form doing it.

That said, keep up the great you guys, best gold making podcast out there.

Some parting fun facts to take into account:

1) I didn't make 1,000,000 gold on Proudmoore. I think with the media attention this fact has gotten lost in the fray of followers, despite the number of times I've repeated it. In reality, I've probably only made about 600,000g on Proudmoore.

2) It was never about making a million on one realm, it was always about giving away one million doing whatever it would take. It took earning it and giving it away on three realms, which the WoW Insider article accounted for but I feel it's gotten lost in the headlines that followed.

3) The pricing structure I'm known for I also implemented successfully on Earthen Ring (Horde and Alliance), Tichondrius and Lightbringer, each of which combined to over 600,000g which I gave away over time. It's no secret my model is most effective on high population realms, particularly on the Alliance side. I've been quite vocal about that for some time.

4) No realm will likely ever match the initial success I had on Proudmoore, which was the one realm I spearheaded transmog right out of the gate with my entire inventory. It was a timely release of relevant inventory with no competition. So whether it was that timely release where I owned the market for the first few weeks with no competition, or whether it was the local gay population wishing to "dress up", as you pointed out, we'll never know for sure which was the primary driver behind my success on Proudmoore, in particular.

5) I've been documented a number of times saying that there are differences realm to realm, and local players may need to reduce prices in order to remain effective. In fact, I spent a great deal of time exploring other realms and sharing my findings about those differences with others via Twitter, blog posts as well as the PW:G Podcast.

Best of luck, y'all
-Keel

Kind of glad Faid spoke up about transmog, I was starting to think I had lost my touch.

I've been seriously playing the AH since 2008, so I'm a fairly experienced goblin, and I've just been having very little success with transmog. Despite lack of competition and pricing lower than the few others who are trying, things rarely move. I knew middle pop PvP/PvE servers wouldn't sell nearly as fast as an RP server, but I figured by this point I was doing something wrong. I've been working three different servers, and I've only made three sales, two of which have been weapons. Good to know I'm not the only one experiencing this.

Anyway, thanks for the podcast, I quite enjoyed it and am looking forward to the next one!

Hooray podcast! Always a pleasure to do them. :D

Thanks so much for listeing. Glad you enjoy them.

Also, while I'll take our criticisms into consideration I don't necessarily agree with them offhand.

It seems like you don't want me to have fun on the podcast. All business, all the time. That's really not me.

Well, finally got around to listening to this one, and here's my take...

First of all, stating the obvious, the mog-market will shrink, and the mog-market will become crowded and more competitive. But the market will always be there.

First of all, we already had similar markets. Rare Recipe markets, Rare Mount market, and rare pet market. Those markets are driven by urge to complete sets, and Mount and pet market are also driven by "wow look at that" effect.

I've seen these types of market in other games, and it's repeated over and over again. The only question is what the size of the market is. The fact that these uncommons are random drops makes it pretty good bet that the price will probably keep up, and there will always be some people who will drop'em for 10g, like the person who dropped Schematic: Flame Deflector for 1g, albeit, at lesser rate.

The interesting thing to me, is how the pricing is working out. I totally get the *theory* behind Keelhaul's pricing. In many ways, his pricing system is educating, and enticing the uneducated buyers. When he is listing 3K green, that alone is engaging people to critically look at the look of the gears. He might not sell that particular piece to that particular customer, but the customer might now look through his inventory and bank tabs, and then start thinking about possible matches, and he becomes the potential buyer to the entire stock of "Mog-collection". This process sometimes takes longer, but we know this works, since those of us who are actually selling gears, I'm sure, are actually starting to transmog ourselves. It's kind of like Nike coming out with these "Limited Edition" Kicks. You might not shell out 1000 dollars to buy the particular sneakers, but you are then primed to look at the other Nike sneakers that we *can* afford. I have a feeling that Keelhaul, doing this type of thing for living, understands how to tempt and sell "fashion/design" to the consumers a lot deeper than we do. In many sense, I think Keelhaul is our "Anna Wintour" (Nicer kind). The purveyor of taste. And his list now drives and trend-set the fashion, just like each issues of Vogues also functions the same way. Imagine dropping some random ugly set in the list, and I bet they will sell. Another sign that he is the Wintour? He's running a fashion show...

I also think the persona of Keelhaul/Mogfather at this point is a "brand". And he can command the price because of the persona, as a trend setter. We are more of the "Gap", mass-market stores who follows those high-end luxury designer brands. And as a goblin, that might be the better market to be in...who knows.

Another interesting thing we could do, is to see if Keelhaul can actually cash in on the branding he's built. Imagine "Mogfather Spring 2012 collection". Have him create 3 outfit (one each for plate, mail, and cloth), each peice hand-picked BoE, complete 7 peice (Exclude cloak). Put the image up and auction it on WoW Proudmoore forum. Starting big 25K. I wouldn't be surprized if he can make cool 200K from 3 sets.

Anyways, I'm beginning to ramble...there was more thoughts but Leather market is still tough nut to crack ._.

Oh, one more thing. According to wikipedia:
"Despite its taxonomic classification as a carnivoran, the giant panda's diet is primarily herbivorous, consisting almost exclusively of bamboo."

It even has citation!

-K