I ended up placing the order and goofing around in game for a bit, catching up on my lockpicking that I had been neglecting since my mid 40’s. About two hours later, in the middle of picking doors in LBRS, I get a tell asking if I could please come to Org for a trade. 10 minutes later I was 10k richer.

So all in all, from checkout to delivery, it took a little over 2 hours to get 10k gold on my server, which is pretty good. Mogs.com definitely pulled through for the gold order, delivered well within the time frame they gave me and overall it was a smooth experience.

—

A few days later I needed some powerleveling done. Essentially I just wanted to catch up as fast as possible with the rest of the guild so I could start heading into Uldaur as soon as possible. Again, I went into the Mogs.com live help to ask some questions about their power leveling services. This time I got “Jon”, and I asked him a couple basic questions about their power leveling.

Jon: Welcome to Live Help, how may I help you?
Yohduh: I just had a couple questions about your powerleveling.
Jon: no problem, shoot
Yohduh: I guess I’m just a little confused as to why there is such a price difference between you and other sites?
Yohduh: I’ve bought gold from you before and never had a problem, but when I see other sites advertising 1-80 in 10 days for $60 dollars, it makes me wonder why you guys are so much more expensive.
Jon: honestly, if it’s a brand new account and you don’t care if it gets banned or not, i might choose a cheaper powerleveling team myself. but for my main account? i want gauranteeed powerleveling.
Jon: i dont want a refund when my account gets banned, i want to know it’s not going to get banned in the first place.
Jon: we offer a secure, and just as important, supported and gauranteed powerleveling service.
Yohduh: So basically what your saying is, you end up getting what you pay for?
Jon: exactly. everything is leveled by hand pretty much exactly if you were playing. we do a solid mix of quests, grinding, instances, and anything looted stays on the account. it’s all done over a secure network so no risk of getting banned.
Yohduh: How many hours do you spend on the account each day?
Jon: well it depends on the power leveling package, but for a flat level grind you can expect us to be on the account for 12 hours, then let it rest for another 12.
Yohduh: Ok Jon last question mate. How long would it take for your guys to grind out 120 Emblems of Conquest?
Jon: one sec let me check.
Jon: looks like that would take around 5-6 days, depending on how active groups are on your server.
Yohduh: Sounds good Jon, thanks for the info.

I ended up placing the order later that night and have used an alt account to keep tabs on the Mogs powerleveling team for the past few days. Sure enough they have steadily been on my account grinding out my Emblems, 3 days in and I’m already at almost 80 emblems, sooo much faster than I would have been able to do it myself. At this rate they should be done a day or two early. I’ll make sure to post back and let you know how everything goes.

So many of these companies are overseas, funded by venture capitalists who just pour money into these operations enabling them to spread in hopes that they can gain a customers trust long enough to take their money. Due to lack of service quality these companies cannot grow organically. They can’t retain customers so they must resort to in-game advertising, click-jacking and fake web storefronts in order to generate sales. One company might have over 20 fake storefronts that just directs orders to one “global” system. As soon as one of the storefronts tanks they just shut it down and open up another with a new domain name.

So how safe is gold buying really? What common questions do most gold buyers have before making a purchase and which gold sellers can you trust with your account?

Is Going Buying Illegal?

No, buying World of Warcraft Gold is not “Illegal” in a “legal” sense of the word. Swat won’t be kicking down your door for buying your kid a couple thousand gold for an Epic Flying Mount. There won’t be any court costs, no long drawn out meeting with Social Services. However, it does clearly violate the games Terms of Service (TOS) and End User License Agreement (EULA), as shown in the quote taken straight from the WOW Terms of Use:

Ownership/Selling of the Account or Virtual Items. Blizzard does not recognize the transfer of Accounts. You may not purchase, sell, gift or trade any Account, or offer to purchase, sell, gift or trade any Account, and any such attempt shall be null and void. Blizzard owns, has licensed, or otherwise has rights to all of the content that appears in the Program. You agree that you have no right or title in or to any such content, including the virtual goods or currency appearing or originating in the Game, or any other attributes associated with the Account or stored on the Service. Blizzard does not recognize any virtual property transfers executed outside of the Game or the purported sale, gift or trade in the “real world” of anything related to the Game. Accordingly, you may not sell items for “real” money or otherwise exchange items for value outside of the Game.

As you can see there isn’t really any gray area in which you can get around it. Since it can get you banned, what are the odd that it will?

Will I Get banned for buying Warcraft Gold?

Selling gold and other virtual items is quickly becoming a multi-billion dollar industry. I believe it would take way too many resources in order to ban all the buyers, so that is why they mostly seem focused on banning the sellers. Ultimately if your an average player and you haven’t been doing anything else stupid on the account, your gold will be “pulled back” and whatever items you bought with it will be removed. Often times they wont even remove all the items you bought, but will strip your flying skills just out of spite. True story.

World of Warcraft Support Article Base:
Exchange of World of Warcraft Currency/Goods/Services for non-World of Warcraft Currency/Goods/Services, and Vice-Versa (Buying/Selling Gold, Items, Characters, and/or Accounts)

Questions to ask your Gold Seller before you buy

Ultimately it all boils down to one question, “How good is the company you are buying gold from at their job”. Until you actually use their service it might be hard to find out, but really all you need are a few questions and a live help representitive and it should be fairly easy to find out who knows what they are talking about, and who is just using canned responses. Heres a few questions you can ask your gold seller before you buy from them in order to make sure they actually know what they are doing.

How do you make your trades?
Right now, the only safe method of trading in World of Warcraft is called “Face to Face” trading. It’s exactly the same as normal player based transactions. If you have ever bought something from trade chat, or given someone mats to enchant your new purple bracers, you have done a Face to Face trade. The auction house and in-game mail trades may be more convenient, but they WILL get you flagged and you WILL get caught.

Where should I trade?
Orgrimmar or Stormwind are fine, but I highly recommend not trading in a “high traffic” area in the cities. Scammers often park in these areas on popular servers looking for gold trades and will scam your gold right back from you if you aren’t smart. “Hey I just traded you some gold, I need it back real quick so I can screenshot it first”. Don’t fall for it.

Where is your delivery team located?
Good luck getting an answer to this question. The only company I have ever had give me a real response were the guys over at Mogs.com, who quickly responded “Ohio” and very efficiently destroyed me in a game of “American Pop Trivia”. But ultimately, it doesn’t matter if they are in the US or in Guatamala as long as they are connecting out on a US IP. Using a VPN, secure gold sellers can connect out through a US based IP address from anywhere in the world, limiting the risk your account will get flagged for trading with an overseas account.

What will you do if I get banned?
Again, very few companies offer any kind of real guarantee for their services. In they end most of them end up saying “You knew the risk, there’s nothing I can do”, which is a far cry from the sales pitch I got in live chat before I ordered. Ultimately, as long as they guarantee to refund my order should anything happen, I’m happy. And hey, if they will work with me on getting a new account or provide some CD Keys, even better.

What do you do in order to make sure my account doesn’t get banned.
This is the most important question out of the five. Even if you’ve asked the other questions, which pretty much lay out the response for this question, it is still important to ask. Why? Because whoever is sitting there at the other end of live chat is going to have to answer that question, and whether they give the same canned response over and over or actually form a new sentence for each question can really separate the scrubs from the gold selling heros.

Who sells safe WoW Gold?

I hate to sound like a broken record, but for Warcraft gold buying at least, I have yet to find a better provider than www.mogs.com. Nearly Instant Delivery? Check. American Support? Check. US Based Delivery? Check. No-hassle Refunds? Check. No spamming, scamming, upselling, general RMT crap? Check!! I highly recommend just popping into their live chat and asking a few questions about account security, they are always professional and actually know what they are talking about.

So anyway, I was auctioning off all the crap my bank alts build up trying to get the gold together for yet another epic flyer, when I realized I didn’t really feel like waiting a week for all my auctions to clear. Perfect time to do my first gold seller review, so I fired up firefox and did some searching around google. One of the sites I kept seeing in the major gold review sites and mmo forums was Mogs.com, a gold seller based out of America that had some pretty good reviews.

The first credible result I found was Bizrate.com, and to be honest their rating and reviews there were pretty impressive. Most of these sites just have comment after comment about poor customer service and crappy delivery, but the comments about mogs should hopefully be a good indication of how good the service is.

MMOBUX is a gold seller review site that rates companies within the RMT industry and allows customer reviews. The reviews posted on the site were all recent and you can tell their review page gets a bit of traffic.

MOGS (Massive Online Gaming Sales) is a US-based virtual currency seller founded in 2004 by Hayden, a veteran virtual currency seller who was involved in selling Everquest Platinum on eBay since 1999. MOGS has been around for more than 4 years and focuses on serving US and European gamers. The customer service is provided from an office in Cleveland, Ohio.

MOGS has some of the best (if not the best) customer service in the industry. There response time is generally within a few minutes and all of their customer service agents are located in the United States and speak perfect English. Furthermore, unlike many virtual currency companies which often seem rather secretive, the people I talked to were very open about business operations and where their office was located which made me feel at ease. It should be noted that MOGS has the highest rankings on BizRate of any participating virtual currency operation ranking either Good or Outstanding in every category. This is quite an accomplishment for the customer service department.

MOGS is one of the few companies to experience traffic growth 2008, increasing its Alexa Rank to 75,000, whilst other major competitors such as IGE and THSale have seen a decline in traffic. The company now stands as the largest MMORPG service provider in North America and is currently the highest customer-ranked RMT company at BizRate.

I found the American thing a little hard to believe, but after checking out their website I stumbled across the “About US” page, and sure enough, not only are they located in Cleveland, Ohio, but there’s pictures of the staff up on the site. Kind of cool actually seeing the faces behind the website.

Finally we have, Gamerates.com, another independent review site dedicated to keeping track of the tons of different gold sellers on the internet. Suprise suprise, Mogs.com continues to shine as both Gamerates.com and comments both give the site almost a full Five-Star rating.

When your risking your account by buying gold from a site, it’s definately important to see what other customers have to say first. Based on all the reviews from reputable gold seller rating sites, I’m kind of psyched to do my first review on MOGS. Check back for my follow up post where I’ll let you know how my purchase goes

There are two parts to getting yourself into the saddle. The first step is training your riding skill. You’ll upgrade your riding skill at level 40, 60 and 70, giving you access to faster mounts and mounts that fly.

Apprentice Riding (Skill 75)

• 60% land mount speed
• Requires level 20
• Cost: 4 gold
• Mount cost: 1 gold
• Mail will be sent to players at level 20 guiding them to the riding trainer.

Journeyman Riding (Skill 150)

• 100% land mount speed
• Requires level 40
• Cost: 50 gold
• Mount cost: 10 gold
• Mail will be sent to players at level 40 guiding them back to the riding trainer.

Expert Riding (Skill 225)

• 150% flying mount speed; 60% land mount speed
• Requires level 60
• Cost: 600 gold
• Mount Cost: 50 gold
• Can now be learned in Honor Hold (Alliance) or Thrallmar (Horde).

Artisan Riding (Skill 300)

• 280% flying mount speed; 100% land mount speed
• Requires level 70
• Cost: 5,000 gold
• Mount Cost: 100 gold

Because some of the game’s content is accessible only by air, you’ll need a flyer if you want to enjoy the entire game. You’ll get your first flying mount at level 60, allowing even first-time players to fly above the dangerous territory of Outland (The Burning Crusade content). To fly in Northrend (Wrath of the Lich King content), you’ll need the Cold Weather Flying skill, which requires level 77. If this is your first time through Northrend, you must work your way through Northrend on the ground (you cannot use your Outland flying mount) until then.Experienced players with a level 80 character, however, can purchase a Tome of Cold Weather Flying to send to an alt who’s level 68 or higher (on the same server and faction).

Training your riding skill is the expensive part of riding. Apprentice-level riding training is only 4 gold in this day and age, and the next step up is only 50 gold – but beyond that, brace yourself. Even though money is much easier to come by than it used to be, buying upper-level riding skills is generally considered a character-defining expense. Faction discounts will help soften the blow.

Simply training your riding skill won’t increase your speed or get you into the air; you have to buy a fast(er) mount, as well. At 1 gold for a basic land mount, mounts are relatively cheap by comparison to the training needed to ride them. Finding where to buy your mount, however, can seem somewhat mysterious to new players. Stables and trainers are not located in the main cities, so be sure to consult a list of riding trainer locations before setting out to make your purchase.

Class-specific mounts
Several classes train or perform class-specific quests for their mounts as part of their class progression. Warlocks get Felsteeds and Dreadsteeds, and Paladins also quest for their Warhorses and Chargers. Druids get a special Flight Form later down the road, and Death Knights earn their own Deathchargers. The level requirements for travel abilities (Druid, Shaman and Hunters) and class-specific mounts have been adjusted to match the introduction of earlier mount skills in Patch 3.2. The various spells are now available at level 16 and match the regular mounts in speed and level requirements.

How fast can I go?
Here’s how fast you can go on a mount:

• Level 20 land mounts: 60% on land
• Level 40 land mounts: 100% on land
• Level 60 flying mounts: 60% on land, 150% in flight
• Level 70 flying mounts: 100% on land, 280% in flight
• Special mounts such as Swift Nether Drake or Ashes of Al’ar: 310%

The infamous Carrot on a Stick used to be every character’s first and longest-used trinket. Today, there are other speed-increasing trinkets available for players under level 70 (Mithril Spurs, glove enchants and more), but Blizzard has removed the ability to augment riding speed once players are level 70 or above. Enjoy them while you can!

The perfect mount
Mounts are one of the most obvious and enjoyable ways to personalize your characters. Players today have many ways to earn or purchase a whole stable of mounts:

• Purchase another race’s mount and go for an entire collection (plus the related achievements!).
• Earn mounts through PvP and Battlegrounds.
• Raise your faction to earn rare mounts such as the Winterspring Frostsaber and the new Ravasaur.
• Win a rare drop from an instance or quest.
• Make your own mount via Engineering (copters and motorcycles) or Tailoring (flying carpets).
• Obtain a special mount code from a World of Warcraft Trading Card Game card.
• Get a special holiday mount during Brewfest or Hallow’s End.
• Receive a Swift Zhevra when you participate in the Recruit-a-Friend program.
• Buy an exotic mount (even one that holds multiple passengers) in Dalaran.
• Earn a Bear, Drake or Proto-Dragon by completing certain Achievements.

Before you saddle up
Heed these tips and you’re ready to roll on your new mount:

• Be sure to purchase both the riding skill you need plus the mount to use it.
• Your newly purchased mount will appear in the Mounts tab of your character pane once you’ve clicked it for the first time.
• Drag your mount’s icon to your hotbar. Click it to mount, click it again to dismiss. (You can also dismount by right-clicking the mount “buff” to remove it.)
• You cannot cast spells or mount other mounts (including quest mounts/vehicles and flight path mounts) while mounted. Check the auto-dismount option in your options menu if you’d like to dismount automatically when you cast a spell.
• Mounts can generally only be used outdoors (with a few exceptions, such as in Undercity).
• Getting hit by even grey-to-you, low-level mobs can dismount and stun you. Use caution when riding through mobs.
• You cannot summon your mount while in combat, so mounts aren’t useful as getaway vehicles!

May the road rise up to meet you, and may the wind always be at your back!

Source: Lisa Poisso

When WOTLK first launched, a number of players found themselves amazed and frustrated at the rush of new players who were able to grind through the initial 1-70 content in less than a few days. There were players getting to Level 80 from level 58 with a Death Knight in the same amount of time it took normal gamers to reach 70-80. Even months after the patch there are still plenty of players who havent reached Level 80 yet and who are going to be spending a good chunk of time grinding gold and xp for weeks or months to come. So, what should a new player expect for played times to Level 80?

Vanilla Content (Original 1-60)

In the old days it took around 10-12 days to reach Level 60, but since the minor adjustments that have been made over the years it is now possible to hit Level 60 in around four days of gameplay. With the mount changes in patch 3.2 and the ability to obtain a 60% land mount at level 20, I expect that leveling time to shrink even further.

Burning Crusade Content (Level 60-70)

Burning Crusade content also recent underwent some nerfing to aid Warcraft players in reaching Wrath of the Lich King content. Outlands can be completed in a single day of played time now, with some players pulling it off in 18-20 hours of concentrated gameplay.

So, it’s easy to get through Outlands these days, but how long does it take to powerlevel through Northrend?

The New WOTLK Content

The new content in Northrend seems like it would take a long time to get through, powering through to Level 80. With more than 1.5 million XP per level, it is a whole lot of content to sort through if you want to continue leveling at a fast pace. However, as it turns out you can finish each level faster than most people did the levels in Outland. Not only is rested XP a bit more inclusive these days (up to a full level of it – usually 2000 XP per kill when rested) but quests reward 20,000 XP per completion and there are dozens of subzones that reward up to 100,000 XP per zone for simple exploration. Add it all up and combine it with streamlined leveling processes, faster mounts and help from friends and you can get from level to level in five hours each or faster.

The Bottom Line

The bottom line is that most players should be able to reach level 80 in no more than 8 days of total gameplay (time actually spent logged in and playing) and some players are clocking times as low as 7 days or slightly lower. Those times will continue to reduce and smooth out and that is only for those that are actively doing so within content that is built for solo questing. Instances, group play and AoE grinding make it all even faster.

If you want to advertise your professions easily in trade chat, your might want to use a very simple macro that will link your professions, say where you are and that tips are appreciated..

Step 1: Open Your Macro Window
This can be done either by typing /macro into the chat window, or by hitting Escape and clicking on Macros in the options panel.

Step 2: Name and Icon Selection
Every time you make a macro you will have to give it a name and an icon. Any time I make a macro for something other than my primary attacks I try to give it a unique icon that my character wouldn’t normally have available to him and try to name is appropriately so it is easy to know that the macro is.

Step 3: Write the Trade Channel macro
This is where we are going to write the actual code to advertise in trade chat. Since this post is about advertising your professions, that is exactly what we will do.

The part in Red is where you will put the name of the profession that you want to show up, in this example we are using Enchanting, but really it can be whatever you have (Engineering, Leatherworking, Tailoring, etc). This must be wrapped in double quotes, ie: “Enchanting”.

The part in Green is where you will type whatever message you want to appear with the link. This message also needs to be wrapped in double quotes. In my example below I say I have “+15 Agil, Berserking, Mongoose. Your mats or mine! Tips appreciated..”

/script CastSpellByName(”Enchanting“);SendChatMessage(”Mongoose, Crusader, Surefooted and more “..GetTradeSkillListLink(),”CHANNEL”,nil,GetChannelName(”Trade – City”));CloseTradeSkill();

You can copy/paste that right into your own macro, just make sure you change the Profession (if needed) and the message to whatever you want to say.

Step 4: Drag the Icon to your Action Bar
Place the icon wherever you would like on your action bars, just make sure not to accidently type anything while you still have mouse focus on the Macro text window or you may accidently cause errors in the macro.

Step 5: Advertise Away!
Now all you have to do is click the macro on your bars when you want to use it. This Trade Chat macro is setup to only broadcast into Trade, and that’s really the only place it belongs.

If you try to use this macro where Trade chat is unavailable, it will give you an error. You will also receive an error if your profession book is already open. These errors will not cause any damage or freeze your client, the macro just wont work and it will give you an error message.

1. Table of Contents
2. Wintergrasp Eternal Farming
3. Eternal Fire
4. Eternal Water
5. Eternal Air
6. Eternal Shadow

Eternal and Crystallized drops are the new version of elemental materials used in WOTLK. There are 6 Eternal types: Air, Earth, Fire, Life and Shadow.

On average, Eternal Fire, Eternal Air and Eternal Life are worth far more than Eternal Shadow, Eternal Shadow or Eternal Earth. The price of these materials will vary from server to server, always keep an eye on the patch notes to see what Eternals may become in demand.

1. You need 10x Crystallized Air to create Eternal Air. Same for all Eternals
2. You can farm most Eternals in Wintergrasp. Farm crystallized drops while you PVP!
3. Herbalists can farm Crystallized Life while gathering Herbs.
4. Miners can get Crystallized Earth, Crystallized Fire and Crystallized Shadow from Mining nodes.

Eternals are used in almost every high-end crafting profession, from Blacksmithing to Alchemy. Depending on your class, it is almost always better to farm Eternals than just normal gold grinding, you will get a much higher gold per hour ratio by farming Eternals yourself and vendoring any junk loot. Even if you don’t need the Eternals yourself, they are easy to farm up and always sell in the auction house for some quick Warcraft gold.

Wintergrasp

You can only farm the “Revenant” class mobs when your faction is in control of Wintergrasp, but be careful: Wintergrasp is a PVP area. If your faction is not in control you will be unable to see the Elemental Revenants; greater elementals that have a 100% chance of dropping 1 to 3 Crystallized Elements. There are still lesser elementals floating around, but it’s generally not worth the risk for such small reward.

Each Elemental has their own area where they will spawn and in the map below I have color coded the location for those mobs.

1. Flame Revenant, Raging Flame.
   In Wintergrasp the area dedicated to Crystallized Fire is in the southeastern part of the zone called “Cauldron of Flames”. This is easily the most farmed area of Wintergrasp because of the demand for Crystallized and Eternal Fire. I highly recommend selling Crystallized Fire instead of converting them into Eternal Fire.
2. Water Revenant, Glacial Spirit.The waterways of Wintergrasp are filled with small Glacial Spirits and their Water Revenenant counterparts. Unfortunately there are many more Glacial Spirits than Water Revenants.
3. Tempest Revenant, Whispering Wind.All along the southern end of the zone we will be farming Crystallized Air by hunting Tempest Revenants and Whispering Winds, as shown in the yellow coded area on the map.
4. Mature Lasher, Living Lasher.Eternal Life, like Eternal Earth, is easiest farmed up by Herbalists (or Miners respectively). However, Wintergrasp does have one area available in the lower left hand corner of the map containing Mature Lashers and Living Lashers. The Mature Lasher is like a Revenent class mob in that it has a 100% change to drop a Crystallized Life.
5. Shadow Revenant, Wandering ShadowColor coded Grey on the map, for farming Crystallized Shadow to turn into Eternal Shadow, you will be hunting Shadow Revenants and Wandering Shadows. Shadow Revenants have a drop rate of ~140% which guarantees at least 1 Crystallized Shadow per Kill. The Wandering Shadow’s have a drop rate of around 30%.

Eternal Fire Farming Locations

Crystallized Fire is a little bit more common than Shadow, but still not nearly as common as Water, Air, or Earth. On the plus side, there are a few decent places to farm it, and when your trying to make warcraft gold as fast as possible it is important to have some options.

Stormpeaks - Wailing Winds - 61.8, 40.0

Storm peaks actually has two good places for Crystallized Fire. Although the mob density in these areas is fairly low, the drop rate is decent. These are not good places to be if there is more than one farmer there, but if you have the place to yourself it is pretty easy to get over 10 eternals per hour. The Wailing Winds in Frostflow Deep and the Seething Revenants at Fjorn’s Anvil (which may require some Sons of Hodir questing to unlock) are the hottest spots in the zone.

Borean Tundra - Raging Boilers - 49.4, 14.7

Head to Charred Rise, directly south of Bor’gorok Outpost in Borean Tundra. Your looking for Raging Boilers, level 69-70 elementals. The best part about the Charred Rise is that the mobs are low level and very easily gathered for AOE farming. Additionally you can farm Crystallized Water from Boiling Spirits and air from Enraged Tempests.

Where to Farm Eternal Water

Crystallized Water is much easier to get a hold of than Shadow or Life, you can get it just about anywhere. Most people say Wintergrasp is the best farming spot, but in my experience I usually find myself getting sucked into pvp over actually getting to farm. Yes I’m a carebear. Otherwise, you can get them from Fishing and miners can get them from Cobalt and Titanium nodes. Check out the maps below for some good placed that non-Miners can farm Eternal Water and make some easy Warcraft Gold.

Stormpeaks - Icebound Revenants - 44.0, 67.0

Shoalazar Basin - Aqueous Spirits - 36.1, 45.6

Howling Fjord Crystallized Water Farming - 61.5, 22.8

Eternal Air Farming Locations

Storm Peaks - Scion of Storm - 67.9, 41.4

Scion of Storm drop crystallized air 25% of the time, and has an additional drop for Relics of Uldaur 33% of the time. You will also recieve a +50% movement speed bonus that the Scions of Storm will give you when they die that will help your kills per hour. As a ranged class it is very easy to farm Eternal Airs at this location, and is in my opinion the best grinding spot for Eternal Air currently in the game.

Sholazar Basin - Storm Revenant - 24.1, 34.4

The Stormwright’s Shelf is located above and to the west of The Maker’s Perch in Sholazar Basin at 24,34. It is full of Storm Revenants and Aqueous spirits, which are used in the Oracles daily quest “Song of Wind and Water” and “Song of Fecundity”. Like most Non-Wintergrasp Elementals, the Storm Revenants have a 25% chance to drop Crystallized Air, along with other grey trash that can vendor for up to 5g each.

Eternal Shadow

Dragonblight - Death Revenant - 74.6, 23.2

In Dragonblight you can find a cave (Frostmourne Cave at 74,23) where Deathbringer Revenants will spawn. They only have a 25% chance to drop Crystallized Shadow, but these mobs tend to respawn fast so at level 80 this is a great place to chain grind Eternal Shadows.

The employees are over-worked and under payed, the customer service staff speaks little to no English, using canned responses for every question that I ask. If you can’t communicate what safety measures you have in place to ensure my account doesn’t get banned, why would I risk my account that I have invested over 5 years into?

I make a decent amount of money at my job, but one thing that is a luxery to me is my private time. When I have time to play Warcraft I’d rather be raiding Ulduar 25 or hitting up Arenas. The last thing I want to do when I get home from work is spend my few hours of playtime farming consumables or grinding for an alt’s epic flyer.

So I started looking at the RMT (Real Money Trading) industry and buying wow gold. My goal is to find a stable US based supplier for World of Warcraft gold that can provide for me the safest and most reliable place to buy.

Over the next few weeks I will review a couple different Gold Suppliers based out of America and see how they rate up against some of the big name overseas suppliers.

While this trick doesn’t help much with funds while leveling, it is something to think about during your 70-80 grind. Following the optimal questing path layed out below, you can easily make a thousand gold an hour from XP to Gold conversion at level 80.

The Rules
1.) Turn auto loot on. Loot everything. Most greens vendor between 5-12g, and can be disenchanted for materials that sell for 3x that. Even stackable trash loot will net you 4-7g a pop. Send any non-junk loot to a bank alt and vendor the rest.

2.) Quest each zone until you obtain the Zone Completed Achievement. The optimal path for questing through Northrend in order to get the most out of your XP to Gold Conversion is pretty straight forward. Just follow the list below and fully complete the zone before moving to the next.

• Borean Tundra (68-72)

Achievement: Nothing Boring About Borean & D.E.H.T.A’s Little P.I.T.A.

• Howling Fjord (72-75)

Achievement: I’ve Toured the Fjord

• Dragonblight (75-77)

Achievement: Might of Dragonblight & Veteran of the Wrathgate

• Grizzly Hills (77-78)

Achievement: Fo’ Grizzle My Shizzle

• Zul’Drak (78-79)

Achievement: The Empire of Zul’Drak

Depending on your class, at this point you should be level 80 and just setting foot into Shoalazar Basin or only a few quests in. That leaves 3 open zones, Shoalazar Basin, Storm Peaks, and Icecrown. If you take the time to also complete these three zones to the Zone Achievement, you will have completed an additional 315 quests at Level Cap, earning gold instead of experience for those quests.

I recently started selling some of my surplus gold over to Mogs.com, a Cheap American based Warcraft Gold Supplier. At first I was kind of wary of the whole gold selling thing, but after talking to one of the guys in their live chat I was shocked to find out that not only did they actually speak English but they were located in America. Mogs.com has everything from WOW TCG Rare Loot Items, Hand Powerleveling, Quick Face to Face Gold Trades, and of course excellent customer service.

Most World of Warcraft patches present a unique opportunity to capitalize on the fundamentals of commerce. Your ability to prepare for a patch will make or break a good patch day lottery. When you start to learn more about the WOW Economy it becomes easier to see which changes are going to have a big effect and plan ahead for them.

One of the easiest ways to find out what is going to happen is to go straight to the source and check the patch notes. Scanning through the most recent World of Warcraft PTR Patch Notes we can find a couple potential gold-making highlights and market tips.

Engineering Takes a Small Hit

Engineer crafted Injector kits let you stack 20 pots into one slot, thus saving on bag space. When you need to pot, you use the injector. It has 20 charges and each charge gives the same health or mana that a runic pot gives by itself.

All stackable potions now stack to 20.

Now that by itself might not mean much, but when we consider one of the handful of money makers for any Engineer is Mana Injector or Healing Injector Kits, a cloud of trouble starts to emerge.

With the next patch, Engineer’s Injector Kits become almost worthless. Although they will now increase the amount of health or mana gained by 25% when used by engineers, there will be little to no market value for them… the same as every other Engineering only item.

Inscription

Glyph of the Claw is being added to the game, and you can expect pretty much every feral druid pre-level 50 (when they are able to train Mangle) to pick it up. Although you wont be able to make this until patch day, you can farm the materials ahead of time and be prepared.

All you need is:
1x Midnight Ink
1x Light Parchment

Glyph of Exorcism will be back in demand for PVP Specced Paladins now that 3.2 will allow it to be usable on players again, albeit with a 1.5 second cooldown.

Mining

Titanium Ore. Mine it, buy it, trade for it, steal it from your guild bank.Once the patch hits the demand is going to go sky-high. It will find a new use in some new epic Blacksmithing gear, and Jewelcrafters are going to prospecting it en-mass in order to fill the demand for empty sockets from new content upgrades and the ability to craft Epic Gems that can be obtained from prospecting Titanium Ore.

Fishing

If you haven’t bothered to level your fishing since the last changes, now would be a good time to start. Do it yourself or get your fishing powerleveled by a professional, just make sure you get it done or your not living up to your full earning potential. Besides the benefits of being able to auction off your Buff Food, in patch 3.2 Fishers with a min 300 skill may find a Waterlogged Recipe in with their Northrend Fishing Daily quest rewards.

When the Waterlogged Recipe is turned in it will grant several Dalaran Cooking Awards. You can sell the Waterlogged Recipe to achievement junkies and cooking enthusiasts who want the new Chef’s Hat (will soon speed up cooking times) and the related achievement, Cooking with Style.

New Non-Combat Pets

Patch 3.2 is introducing a slew of new content, but one of the most anticipated niche items comes in the form of a new Non-Combat Raptor Pet. These pets will drop from mostly rare raptors and in the first dew days when 3.2 hits live servers you can get big cash farming Raptor Non-Combat Pets and selling them for a very decent 1-3k Gold a pop.

Darting Hatchling – Dark orange raptor that occasionally runs away leaving a trail of dust; dropped by Dart (rare).

Deviate Hatchling – Purple raptor dropped inside Wailing Caverns.

Leaping Hatchling – Dark blue raptor that occasionally wanders off then leaps to your feet; dropped by Takk the Leaper (rare).

Ravasaur Hatchling – Green raptor dropped by Ravasaur Matriarch (rare).

Razormaw Hatchling – Light orange raptor that occasionally screeches; dropped by Razormaw Matriarch (rare).

Razzashi Hatchling – Red raptor dropped by Razzashi Raptor.

Of course, if your lazy, you can always have the guys over at Mogs.com farm up some raptor pets for you. One day of Item Hunting only costs 20 bucks, but some quick googling turned up a coupon code on their WOW Gold twitter page that gives 10% off all power leveling orders.

Check out the Mogs.com Powerleveling services and make sure you use the discount code “MYVOUCH” to get 10% off at checkout.