The future of casual goldmaking

Before I begin, I can't believe nearly 65,000 people have filled their time reading this blog.  A small percentage have also filled their time writing me hate mail.  Both are appreciated!

With all this talk of garrisons, expansions, easy-bake materials (thanks Stede), cataclysmic changes to professions, and the end of the world as we know it for shuffling, it's been forgotten just how anyone can make gold in the future while actually playing the game!

I'm a big grinder, I love visiting old content, bosses, trash packs, and killing them for old time's sake. When I swapped mains in Wrath to my paladin, I actually went back and redid the 40+ reputations to exalted just because.  Today I'm approaching 80 reps at exalted and look forward to hitting them in WoD.  There's very few things in Warcraft that I really enjoy:

• Leveling battle pets
• Grinding reputations
• Collecting gold
• Getting achievements without even trying and having people get jelly about my score
• Collecting mounts
• Collecting toys - this is now a recent addiction, er addition
• Quick GDKP runs with awesome raiders
• Wondering why certain people completely redirect their lives for this game
• Complaining about changes
• Complaining about Blizzard's decisions
• Complaining
• Doing public BGs so I can join in the melee of bitching about bads in boost gear
• Pissing people off who are poor and just don't get it
• ...This list is getting pretty long, looks like I enjoy more than a few things

But what I love to do is find where things drop in the best quantity and build the better mousetrap.  I often visited Naxx for Frostweave, or Scarlet Cathedral for silk.  I'm currently found in Sunwell and BT just messing around looking for my monk and death knight tier.  I used to kill the trolls in The Hinterlands back in Classic for their prizes.  Every now and again I run over to AQ10 even though I don't need anything. 

I think this is sort of my comfort food.  Since I've been around the game and can officially call myself one of the last men standing from Classic, these things bring back great memories and feelings of nostalgia.  Like warlocks not being able to banish when told, when the casual we used to carry on Archimonde would wipe us, and making people cry over gear (literally, I have that feather in my cap).  I really like old content, so it's with great happiness that the majority of old raids are now completely soloable.  Too bad I already have the 200k Mind on your Money.

Since they're essentially removing dailies, there's going to be a limited number of ways people will be able to get any gold to buy our overpriced items in the auction house.  And really, garrisons are a nice idea, but check back with all the players in about a month.  I assure you, just like Tillers, I will be another of the last men standing.  Why?  Because I have a high tolerance for boring and painful bad content (what one of my old Classic/TBC friends used to say about me).

Raid content I've now been able to solo with ease:

Cataclysm - Dragon Solo is soloable up to Spine.  You need 2-3 more to really get Spine to work right, unless you're a DDR champion and can do more than one thing at a time.  Firelands is a joke in Heroic and Normal.  Tier 11 has lots of painful memories, like the elevator boss and people getting lost on the way back to Cho'gall, but offers some really fast coin and trash.  25M Heroic is just not in the cards but for the average person, 10M Normal or Heroic will be the way to go for these.

Wrath of the Lich King - Naxx and Ulduar were already soloable, but now you can easily pound out No Lights.  I liked it so much I saved an alt for future farming of him.  Lich King, too!  I've scored several kills on 25M Heroic LK, which is kinda sad when you recall people worked for months on him.  I spent about 5 pulls trying to remember the mechanics, and no Invincible yet.  It's amazing that you forget a boss or ten after several years when you used to spend entire evenings doing pulls for nothing.

The average run through Heroic Cataclysm content is going to score you about 150-200g per boss kill, and about 25g in Normal and take about 20-30 minutes depending on you and how fast you can click the RP NPCs.  You can expect to see 2-3 pieces drop per boss, with a value that's all over the map.  Tokens go for nothing, so it's worth exchanging them for the piece when they pop for your class.  Everything should be vendored.

ICC 25 man is going to net you about 500g for the run.  Ulduar will be about the same amount.  And this is at 90.  Best to keep moving because these are going to take a while to get through.

So the future of casual goldmaking?  Old raids, mount farming, and vendoring everything.  I sorta think that this is justice.

Thanks for stopping in!