VekTor, Ysera US

This topic is for results and comments posted by Gold Speed Run IV participant...

Challenger: VekTor
Realm: Ysera US
Category: Solo, Both Factions

Speed run IV, I assume?  Otherwise, I'm in deep weeds...   

Fixed 

6/30 - Two days before the launch of GSR4

I thought I'd post a bit of background before we get started, and air some of the potential problems I'm trying to foresee in order to avoid them during the run.

For those of you who haven't been following some of the threads that I've put up, I'll let you know in advance that when I post, I tend to go to almost ridiculous lengths.  So if you elect to follow this thread, be prepared for some significant reading assignments.  That being said, there will definitely be a reason behind it.  I've been looking forward to the opportunity to participate in a speed run since I first joined MGB (right around the time that the last one was wrapping up).  I've had some significant ideas about ways to optimize the first 30 days or so of a transition to a new server, and I hope to have this run be a real-world test of those concepts.

Some important points which inform my approach: 

1)  I'm a min-maxer.  I almost obsessively optimize processes in the games I play.  It's my own little mini-game.  I love tweaking approaches and shaving off inefficiencies in an attempt to create (for me at least) "best of breed" methods and techniques.  This naturally made MGB a near-perfect fit for me.

2)  As a side-effect of 1), I also tend to be an altoholic.  I make boatloads of characters in the process of finding (to me) better ways to go about things.  This run will be no exception.  I already have defined roles mapped out for at least 15(!) different characters for this run... and that's before considering toons for Limited Supply runs, so this may hit 20 before it's done.

3)  I'm quite tightly constrained on play time... another reason why MGB attracted me so strongly.  So I'm going to be trying to get optimal results within highly constrained time parameters, and going for the style points.  I'm likely to have a one-off upfront hit from initial setup time, but once I hit steady-state, I'll be lucky if I get two brief windows per day in which to work, so I expect my time-per-day to be quite low for the remainder of the run.  Some days may be one or even zero windows.  I want to validate how high the MGB process (with the tweaks I use) can get on a very low daily time budget while trying to get a new server going.

So those three points will all be having a strong influence on the way I'll be approaching this run.  I had already constructed a fairly detailed plan of attack for optimizing this, but unfortunately there were critical elements of it which called for either one or two Death Knight characters for best results.  Rule 7 prohibits Death Knights, so I've had to go back and rework the plan to account for this, and come up with my next-best approach with that constraint.  (In real life, I'd be certain to leverage the advantage that being able to create a DK has on establishing a new server's pipelines.)

There are a variety of techniques and tools which I plan on leveraging for this run, and I'm very interested in sharing them with other MGB members.  I have an
internal tension that arises over that, due to the competitive side of my nature.  While I want to share these techniques and findings, there's a part of me that feels foolish over the notion of directly handing an opponent the tools with which to beat you in a contest... especially since many of the other competitors will have significantly more time-per-day available to use them.

I'm trying to find the best way to reconcile that tension.  Given the front-loaded nature of the extra time that will need to be spent on this, what I'm considering is just keeping a log of my observations and intended discussions, and delaying the write-ups and posting regarding these until things have "settled down", perhaps after the first week or so.  I'm unlikely to have much time to devote to write-ups in the first week with that extra time load of getting the setup in place. That would create a natural delay in relaying the information, preserving most of the competitive advantage, but it would still get the information out there for use by other members in reasonably short order.

Or I may just throw caution to the wind, stifle the competitive side of me and just post away.

One way or another, though, expect this to be a high-content thread, unless something unexpected happens to take me out of the competition.

Pay no attention to VekTor, folks, he is just trying to scare off us normal, non OCD mortals.

People... you need to start repping this man up!  Am I the only one that knows rep points exist?  Upper right click his salute button!

Vek... I'm having the exact same conflict regarding posting strategy.  Recently I've learned that my time may be constricted as well which ironically has me leaning toward disclosing my strategies in advance.  I am hyper competitive and love to win.  I'm most likely not interested in any prize and would ask jk to do an open lottery for the prize based upon style points if I DID win.

I'm thinking that I make enough gold already on my servers so I'll post so the newer MGB members can boost productivity.  Haven't made a decision yet however.  If you decide to go for it I will as well.

I've been thinking it over, and the comparison that has tipped it over for me is the following:  Which would I rather see, a bunch of people do really well on this run, or me having a marginally better chance at winning a competition that is really for bragging rights, with a token prize?

Put that way, the choice is now easy for me.  I'll be starting my series today, and hopefully as many speed-runners as possible can benefit from it this time, rather than next time.

VekTor

Once again, THANKS for all the great information!  I think there is a bit of competitor in all of us and there really are no losers in this run!!!

I look forward to your posts!

Jeff

Given the time-limited nature of the speed run, and how busy we're likely to be in the initial few days, now is the ideal time to get prepared on the things you can do before things start up.

For those who have been following Jonathan's recommendations diligently so far, you already know about using Auctionator's "shopping list" feature for rapid "focused browsing".  If this is the first time you've tried expanding to a new server, one of the pleasant surprises is that these shopping lists carry over to the new servers automatically!  This means that you can use your main server today to put together any and all of your potential targets that you want to watch into dedicated shopping lists for this run, and they'll be waiting for you the moment you start.

The single biggest tip that I can offer, and I'll be coming back to it several times during this posting series as things move on, is to use a good tracking and data-processing system to identify your opportunities and decisions.  The one that has been most useful to me by far is the "pipeline discovery" spreadsheet that I referenced back in January:  http://massivewowgold.com/memberforum/index.php/topic,1096.msg5346.html#msg5346

For optimal speed, I recommend filling in the entries of the spreadsheet in the order that they appear in your dedicated shopping lists.  That way, you can walk through the entries on your list and update the entries in the same order.  Once you have your initial values filled in, you can print it out and scan through without having to alt-tab all the time to the spreadsheet... just when a new low value shows up.

For the first three to seven days, I recommend just filling in the "Low" value for each entry with the lowest price you see on each side.  This is a concrete value, since you know that you would have been able to buy the item at that price (even if you didn't).  Unless you've decided to gamble and buy-and-post one early and gotten a sale, I'd wait for at least 5 to 7 days to fill in the "high" value, and when doing so, I'd initially plug in the value that Auctioneer gives you under the "Purchased" section.

(If you haven't turned on the tracking of Purchased under Auctioneer Stats modules, and the associated tooltip entry, now's the time to do so.  Do Histogram while you're at it.  I prefer to turn on 3 day and 7 day averages in the tool tip to give me an idea of trends).

The "purchased" stat won't be 100% concrete, but it should be a reasonable estimate of what Auctioneer believes it's seen things actually sell for, rather than just what people are listing them for.  This stat is also critical for getting the "daily volume" right, as many pipeline decisions down the road will hinge on knowing that value.  Auctioneer can track that far better than any human, so leverage that!

I'll discuss filling in the daily volume figures once we're nearer the end of the first week.

So how deep should the list go on this spreadsheet?  That's a function of how much time you want to invest on checking and filling in values.  The wider you cast the net, the greater your chances of identifying the real treasures.  I'm a bit of a freak, so I've accumulated a list of about 180 items over the past 8 months or so that I've considered potential pipelines (not including limited supply recipes, since those are a no-brainer to decide in favor of).

I now have those stacked up in four consecutive shopping lists (Finder through Finder4) since you're limited to 50 items per list.  Much of that identification process was done some time ago, as I sought to shake out better potential pipelines on my main server.

So, go get the spreadsheet, get the shopping lists set up, and be ready to do some focused browsing after the starting gun goes off!

I've valued the utility of having a second account for quite some time, and it's a huge help on speed runs and setting up on a new server, but I've had a hard time justifying the extra cost of buying a full set of all three versions, plus the full monthly subscription price, for just the added extra benefit.  So I set out trying to figure out the best "bang for the buck" combination that would give me as many benefits as possible for the minimum price... the classic min-max analysis.

One of the huge possible benefits of a second account is all of the bonuses that come from Blizzard's "Refer A Friend" program.  Triple XP while leveling characters together, bonus levels to grant to the main account and the ability to summon characters to each other are all real time-and-effort savers.  Blizzard explicitly allows you to refer yourself, so this is ideal for the sort of two-boxing that goes on a lot in MGB.

The combination that I've been using for that last 6-8 months is as follows:

I can buy a plain vanilla retail WoW box at a variety of stores for $20 each.  (My local Target had a special a while back where they'd throw in a free Burning Crusade copy with the purchase of a vanilla WoW box, so I stocked up on several).

I sent a refer-a-friend email to my own Battle.net email address, and then filled in the 10-day trial key to activate it.  This automatically integrates it with my Battle.Net account.  That gives me 10 days.  I then fill in the retail key from the vanilla WoW copy, and that adds an additional 30 days, bringing the total up to 40 days. 

One of the bonuses in Refer-A-Friend is that you get one free month of game time when your "friend" pays for their first month of game time.  So when those 40 days are up, the first charge on the referral account gives me 30 free days on my main account, which adds up to a total of 70 days of play time for a net cost of one vanilla WoW box:  $20

That gives me a cost of only 28.57 cents per day on the second account, when I pay about 50 cents a day for my main account... nearly a 50% discount on my second account.

The triple XP bonus lasts for the first 90 days of a Refer-A-Friend relationship, so at the end of 70 days, I cancel the secondary account, and start over again with a new vanilla WoW copy (after transferring off the stuff I had on the old referred account).

Since I know I'm going to be cancelling these accounts 70 days after they start, I deliberately don't invest in a bunch of soulbound stuff for them, nor do I try to build any characters that I would plan on keeping around.  I just use them for leveling mules and cross-faction trading, plus as on-demand teleporters via the summon friend function.   I get the ability to salvage some of the leveling from these characters for alts on my main account, via the bonus level function.

OK, so maybe you can't afford a second account at all, and you're only planning on playing a single faction for the speed run anyway.  Do you have to miss out on the fun of Refer-a-Friend?  OF COURSE NOT!

Even if you don't want to spend a dime, you can still get 10 free days of triple XP and the ability to summon toons to each other.  Just send a Refer-A-Friend invitation to yourself, and only put in the 10 day trial code.  The RAF triail will limit the trial characters somewhat (they can't go above level 20, they can't trade or join guilds, can't use the chat channels), but this is the ideal way to rapidly level up any grinding characters you might make.

Just run a second copy of WoW, log on a RAF trial account character, group up and set them on "Follow" on your grinder character.  Every once in a while, flip back over and issue a command to clear the AFK.

+200% XP on both mobs AND quests certainly beats the +10% XP bonus on mobs from the Midsummer Festival... and it's free!

Everyone will be busy doing lots of AH scanning over the next week.  Don't neglect an opportunity to make some instant money from the... how shall we say... less attentive AH posters on your server?

On every full scan of the AH, be CERTAIN to go to the Auctioneer Search tab, select Vendor, and hit the Search button.

I have made literally HUNDREDS of gold from doing this.  Yes, sometimes people really will list things on the AH at a buyout LESS than the vendor value!  When these show up, buy them up fast (if you have the cash on hand at that point, and this is why it's good to have at least some on hand at all times).  I've made upwards of 20 gold profit on a single item mis-posted like this.  I literally begged to borrow 10 gold from someone for five minutes on the early part of my second server expansion, which allowed me to buy an item with a vendor value of 30g.  I turned it around in seconds for 20g profit and promptly returned the loan. 

Obviously, in the first week or so of getting established on a server, the marginal increase in gold from this has a far greater impact than after you're up and running.  At some point, it may no longer be worth your time to check, but it's definitely worth it in the early going!

I plan on editing this post over time to provide a list of "silly poster tricks" for each side on the server I'm running on.  We'll see which faction has the higher proportion of silly posters.

One of the easiest way to jump-start the initial day or two of a speed run is to get a quick cash infusion from someone looking for guild signatures.  These typically go for 5 to 10 gold each, as folks look to rapidly and easily create a private guild to make guild banks.

For those with two accounts, a little bit of prep work can get you double the amount of gold when these opportunities come along.  Make sure that you create at least one toon on EACH account to be positioned at whatever the main guild recruitment spot is on your new server.  Typically, that's Org and Stormwind, but sometimes it's Undercity and/or Ironforge.

Heck, unless you've run out of slots, create a toon for all 4 locations, one each of your accounts.  Have these ready and standing by for when you see an announcement that someone's looking paying for guild sigs.  Immediately reply back to them that you're interested, and can get a second one for them as well.

Remember, once the guild is formed, if you haven't already been kicked from it, you can bail out yourself with a /gquit in order to allow that character to sign additional charters.

just.... nice 

One of the critical concepts for a successful early start to a speed run is getting over the early lack-of-gold barriers, so that you can get yourself started on pipelines.  Your first 20 to 100 gold is a serious priority, the faster, the better.  Being able to get a large collection of limited supply items up in the AH can get you to that "first 500 g" threshold, where you can start doing some serious trading.

Accordingly, it's better to have at least a decent amount fast, than it is to have a slightly higher amount much slower, in my opinion at least.  I'm going to recommend two things for the first few "big ticket" items you get (which I'll go into in a bit):

One, give strong consideration to using the trade channel to find a quick buyer, instead of going straight to the AH with the item.

Two, be willing to give up some marginal profit for a faster early sale.  I believe in being flexible on the first sale or two, rather than holding out for the best possible price.  I'd rather have my first 150g right away, versus 220g in a day or two.

I'm planning on offering my big-ticket initial items as following in Trade Chat:  "WTS [Whatever].  PST ASAP, no reasonable offer refused!"

Then I'm planning on being flexible (but not silly) on the price.  If I get no takers at all over a reasonable time frame, then I'll consider popping it up on the AH, and hope that I've priced it right to find a quick buyer.

The upside to a trade chat sale is that you can get the cash right away, and get it back into circulation without having to lose 5% to the AH cut and waiting an hour for the funds to arrive.  The downside is that this doesn't show up in your total gold acquired stat.  I'm less concerned about the marginal impact of that not being there, but Jonathan has said before that if it concerns you, be sure to write down what you sold and for how much so that it can be added back in later.