Selling normal/heroic dungeon runs

[z0k]

Recently I was leveling one of my solo characters and hit 120. It took me about 8-10 hours to run enough normal dungeons to not be a complete shitshow on gear, do Nazjatar for the 380 weapon, and finish the legendary cloak quest. I probably wasted 3-4 hours of my time running normal dungeons for gear. There's no ilvl requirement to do Nazj, but you're going to have a rough time on the legendary cloak quest if you're not at least 340.

With the proliferation of people leveling new characters, added to the fact that a character is typically ~280 ilvl at best when they ding 120 and the heroic dungeon queue requires an ilvl of 365, I'm thinking there may be an opportunity here. The problems with the normal -> heroic gate are that everyone is either not 120 or needs the gear that drops in order to do heroic dungeons, so there's not much opportunity for trading. In each normal dungeon you're guaranteed to get 1-2 pieces of loot doing LFG and it's completely possible to get a shitter group. If however, someone was to get carried through these dungeons, everyone in the group wore the same armor type, then the expectation would be that a character could get 3-4x more loot.

I was thinking of giving this a go. I don't currently have any clothies, but I could support a leather, mail, or plate carry. The only question would be how much is someone willing to pay for such a service?

Some basic math:
It probably take ~8 pieces of 400 loot to get to 365, if you include the Nazj weapon.
Each dungeon with armor stacking will get you somewhere from 4-6 pieces of loot, depending on how many bosses are in the dungeon
Most 350 epic weapons are on the AH for about 2k gold on my server. 400 ilvl BoE epics cost anywhere from 4k to 20k.
A reasonable price would therefore be somewhere between 2-10k per piece of loot.

You wouldn't sell it by the each though, you'd sell it by the run, let the buyer choose their dungeon. Normal dungeons take like no time to run. If I sold them for 10k each it would probably be on par for me compared to emissaries from a time/gold perspective. I could see 20k also being a reasonable price point. I know we're talking about a small amount of gold here, but we're also talking about something people can do themselves with a little more time. It's a minor inconvenience to gear a character up otherwise and gold is harder to come by this time of the expansion.

Anyone have any thoughts? Could you or should you charge more or is it a bad idea all around? I have no idea how much mythic carries sell for.

[WOWBOX40]

I havent dinged 120 in ages on a new character, but dont you get instant access nowadays to the questline to get the legendary cloak? When you finish it, it unlocks the two assualts zones, and you can just get the rarescanner addon and run around / fly and tag/kill any rares for possible decent items, in addition to doing some quests.

[z0k]

You have to unlock nazj, then you unlock the legendary questline. The problem is that you're typically not geared enough. Even at 350ish the questline take a while and is a lot of banging head against glass.

[Lyonheart]

WQs man..WQs .. there is no insta way to gear up.. but nothing faster than WQs. If you dont mind a little PvP.. get all the Call To Arms weekly quests.. The first reward for getting 500 conquest is a 440 weapon/off hand ( you choose ) IF your too low to kill anyone.. just run it with one or two toons at a time until you get them all done ( via custoim groups )

Mythic carries are selling on my realm (Whisperwind) for 150k low +keys to 400k for 15+ keys. i have seen heroic raids runs for 150k

[z0k]

Yes, I was doing a combination of WQs and normal dungeons since WQ loot scales off of ilvl. Thanks for the reference on mythic+ and heroic raids. My thought was that I'd basically be selling someone on the convenience of not having to spend 4-5 hours of normal dungeons and WQ farming. Doing WQs solo without much gear was shockingly painful.

EDIT - Still unsure as to whether or not someone would pay for this or what a fair price would be, and if that amount would be worth my time.

[WOWBOX40]

Heroic raid runs (if you mean Ny'Alotha), is usually 150k yes, but thats only for the last two bosses (or only the final boss). A entire full boost run costs a lot lot more.


No idea what a regular solo player would be willing to pay goldwise, for dungeon boosts to get "ilvl 365 geared".

(i did some research: if a person got gold to burn, boosting guilds usually sells "mythic dungeon +15 runs" for 315k per run and you will get 3 x 465 ilvl items per run). Seems they arent interested in doing any other types of 5man dungeons boosts, so there is apparently a "void", which you could fill, to provide a option for those who doesnt have a lot of gold. Personally, if it was me, and i was all alone and wanted to get aid, i would be willing to buy a wow token and use the majority of that gold to get "geared and ready for the assults". Rough math = 8-10k per item seems about right.

[Ellay]

There is already level services that people can solo spam level you up from 110-120 and the exp bonus is in full effect now till prepatch expansion.
Then like others have mentioned you have the mythic+ runs where you get really good quality gear and they will typically armor type stack for you too, so if your plate. They'll run tank /healer/dps all plate.
So you'd fit in the inbetween slot. Selling a heroic or low key mythic. I'm not sure what one would charge for this and the demand for it would be a bit lower. (there's a ton of sellers in trade chat spamming all day long).

Not to discourage you, if it works that would be really interesting. I'm just wondering what a player would pay for it.

[MiRai]

I certainly wouldn't, personally, be a customer in this market, but I'm sure there are people who will pay for anything. However, I do find that this doesn't already exist to be a red flag, in the sense that there probably isn't a market for such a thing, as solo players would have "monetized" it long ago, if there were.

I think it just comes down to the fact that, as you, yourself point out, it's pretty easy to just purchase crafted pieces of gear that have an item level of 400, and after a few days it's expected that WQs would just fill in the missing Azerite slots. Rings, trinkets, and a good weapon have always been the most difficult to obtain, but even then, WQs and Emissaries will continue to give gear upgrades, and it won't be long until a player has a high enough item level to begin LFR and Heroics after a week or so, assuming they're not already buying Mythic dungeon runs.

[z0k]

You all have pretty much echoed a lot of the thoughts I had. The only thought I had is that I could do it for cheaper than what it would cost for someone to buy all the crafted BoEs. The time savings though (3-4 hours for a player) really isn't that high, or else yes, someone probably would have monetized it. I was thinking at 10-20k per run, it's absolute petty gold to someone who just leveled their nth alt, would take me less than an hour to do 2 runs per customer (at which point they would be geared to 365), wouldn't necessarily be worth a group of player's time to do, but for me, at a decent scale would be reasonably solid gold/hr for when I could line buyers up.

That being said, even if I could make let's say 30k gold an hour doing this, it's probably more hassle than if I go farm herbs and I've been making 20-30k gold/hr doing that. The only problem is how much that market is tanking and will continue to tank.

EDIT - Appreciate the feedback, this is exactly why I wanted to post it here.

[mrdsp]

I havent dinged 120 in ages on a new character, but dont you get instant access nowadays to the questline to get the legendary cloak? When you finish it, it unlocks the two assualts zones, and you can just get the rarescanner addon and run around / fly and tag/kill any rares for possible decent items, in addition to doing some quests.

What ilvl do the rares drop?