One on going question from many newcomers to World of Warcraft and even many veterans for that fact is how to make gold. Many people complain day in and day out about how they are unable to make enough gold for their epic riding mounts let alone their normal and epic flying mount. Making money in WOW is probably one of the easiest things we can do if we use our professions wisely and the addons that are available to us.
Probably the one money maker we overlook the most is our professions. While on many servers some professions just cannot make money even at the highest levels others are simply cash cows. For example on many servers professions such as engineering and even enchanting these days are not making much revenue for those of us that have spent the time leveling them up. One of the reasons for this is that many others do not appreciate the time involved and even expense of obtaining the highest levels of these professions. Many other players who simply will not take the time to level their professions believe that they should receieve items and enchants from some of these professions for little to nothing. This could not be further from the truth, it is after all those of us that leveled them who took the time to obtain the necessary recipes and levels to use them. Now I am not saying we should charge them exorbantly, but we should be paid for the work we have done.
On most servers the top money making professions are some of the easiest and most neglected by new and old players in terms of keeping them skilled up. Mining, herbalism, alchemy and skinning are the easiest skills to level with alchemy being the hardest of this group. I cannot recall how many times I hear each day not only from my own guild members, but from other players as well that they have not leveled their professions and have no gold. Now I can understand this from a newer player, but from people that have a level 70 character is just unbelievable. Most of them believe that their professions are secondary addon pieces of the game that they can do without because the ultimate reward and goal is to get to level 70 and get geared, however, this is not completely true.
Much of the game of World of Warcraft really begins at the highest levels. Getting to these levels is a journey, but once there the real fun begins. So making gold to maximize this fun should be our highest priority. For example a new player who keeps their professions leveled can easily have enough money by level 60 to obtain their epic riding mount as soon as it becomes available to them. The same holds true for their level 70 flying mounts.
One of the things you must do to keep the gold flowing is to pick every flower that you come by while questing, mine every node and skin every beast you slay. Of course these will each depend on your professions. When I start a character on a new server I normally choose to make the new character my money making toon. This means that I take two professions that compliment or enchance each other. For example on Maiev my level 70 hunter was my first serious horde toon. I started there with no gold and did not know anyone. I used my knowledge of the game and choose to be a miner and enchanter. I know enchanting is not a great one to choose with mining to make money, however, I needed to be able to enchant my own gear if need be and it worked out quite nicely for me. My other character on this same server is a level 70 rogue that I made into and herbalist/alchemist. Between the two of these characters I have been able to supply new gear, mounts and much more quite easily and lend friends I have made on the server enough gold to buy mounts themselves if they were having troubles.
On any given day I make between 600 and 1000 gold through my professions and daily quests all without ever spending any of my real money for gold from the sellers online. One thing you may have caught is that I just said daily quests. Many players overlook these quests at 70. They might only do a couple a day to get some quick gold, but doing even half your daily quests will give you access to about 200 to 300 gold per day from the turn ins and drops that you will obtain.
At the beginning I mentioned addons. The two most important addons I have found are Auctioneer and Gatherer. Auctioneer is probably the single most important addon in the game in terms of making money. This simple addon is extremely easy to install and use. Typical installation of it takes all of 1 to 2 mins to download and install into your interface/addons folder. These 2 minutes of your game time will be worth thousands of gold per month if you use it.
So how does this one addon work and allow you to make so much gold in game? The answer to this is quite simple. When you install Auctioneer you will need to make sure you activate it like you would any other addon for the game. Once installed and activated simply go into the game and go to the nearest auction house. You will notice that your auction house screen has some more tabs and buttons available now. One of these buttons you will notice is called scan. Click this button and wait until the addon scans the auction house and is complete. How will you know it is done? Simple. The addon will display a serious of numbers in your chat box that has the information for that scan including auctions scanned and updated etc and will play a musical number once it is done for you to be aware of its completion.
Scanning the Auction house allows your addon to obtain the average sale price of each item that has been sold over the past several days. If an item has not been sold lately do not worry auctioneer can help you determine the best price to sell the item at. Make sure you update your auctioneer quite regularly so that you keep up with the most current prices. Since on Maiev this update takes only 3 minutes I normally update it each day, but on larger auction houses on very busy servers you may consider a schedule such as Friday, Monday and Wednesday so that you catch a good range of prices and to avoid having to spend 10 minutes updating everyday. Auctioneer provides much much more then just this, but that is for another article. For more info on it visit Curse.com or the official AuctioneerAddon website.
The other addon I mentioned is available from Curse’s website as well and is very, very simple. Once activated it will help gathering professions track the best and most common spawn points to find herbs and nodes for mining. In addition it does track treasures you find, but for my purpose just being able to fly or ride to the most likely spots to find mines or herbs is by far the most valuable time saver and money maker for me.
Making gold in World of Warcraft is quite simple and very enjoyable if you use the tools available to you and if you simply keep your professions up to date. Remember that there are many websites out there that can help you learn the best ways to maximize your WOW experience.
For those of you who do not know how to install or activate addons you can find more information on them at Curse.com.
