My vote for idiot of the month

[shaeman]

Perhaps we should have an idiot of the month award - and I'd like to nominate myself for the first award. :D

I set myself a target of getting myself at least one epic flying mount.

I read that mining and a zapthrottle mote extractor could result in lots of gold so I burned 1.5 - 2k of gold powerlevelling engineering. I also discovered that my normal mount was too slow to do the route and make decent dosh (I really need the epic flyer for that), So I read another guide.

Basic premise stratholme is easy (on this green geared fresh 70 paladin)... other classes should be able to do this from 65 on.

So off I went on my mostly purpled 70 hunter.

Epic fail. I posted here and found out that palaadins solo stratholme more effectively, so off I went powerleveling the pally (and a druid for other reasons). Run after run after run after run of SM followed. Thinking of all the fun I would have in the future, when I could use my pally to rip apart stratholme, and aoe lots of mobs etc.

I realised that for the last few sessions of play for hours at a time I have had next to ZERO fun. I had successfully turned a game into a job - and an unpaid one at that. How incredibly stupid!!!!!

And the only reason I wanted a flyer, was to make money faster so I could buy more flyers for my other 70's.

Please learn from my stupidity - ask yourself why you are grinding away for anything and if it's actually worth it.

(As a sidenote I've decided that boosting my team through instance after instance isn't my definition of fun, it may be the quickest way for me to get to 70 but I think I am going to take the slower route and enjoy myself along the way. I'll BG, instance with a couple of others if i can. I'll Not sweat it if i can't).

[Icetech]

thats how i feel, if i get mounts.. great if not oh well:) Im not all in purples... oh well:) will be eventually:)

[Crucial]

Levelling up a profession is a long term investment :)

The best way to make money is through the AH. Always has been, always will be. Find out what sells a lot and use the fact that you can mulitbox instances to obtain the items - primals/nethers, coilfang/fel armaments, shards, card deck drops- multiboxer friendly dailies can be supplemental, herbs and ore can be obtained as you do instances as well. Just to give you some perspective here, I have 5 epic flyers, about 6 different professions maxed out and almost 10k gold saved up and I barely do any dailies at all. All I do is run some heroic instances, disenchant stuff - then every few days I throw the crap on the AH and wake up the next morning with a mailbox full of loot.

[Sarduci]

If it's not fun, then don't do it. ../forum/images/smilies/biggrin.png

Seriously, you may have hit the end of life for the game if everything you do is no longer fun every time you play. End game is nothing but grinding in one fashion or another.

[shaeman]

You sound like you have the balance right.

You've gone for the fun, and the money has come in as a result. You spent the time getting your 5 shammy team to 70 and (I'm hoping) having fun running them and got the money from it as a side benefit.

My problem is that I took something that I could have achieved over time and turned it in to an item that I must have now.

With that as the focus I started looking at ways to achieve that target as quickly as possible. Spreadsheeting things up working out hourly gold rates farming various places etc.

I'm very target based and normally achieve them. However somewhere in there I got a huge list of money making techniques and decided I wanted to incorporate them all, which resulted in me spending loads of gold (the precise opposite of what I wanted to achieve) and in going off on little side projects that wasted time. e.g boosting my druid and paladin from 30 - 40.

I'm glad that I've figured this out in a couple of weeks rather than months down the line.

So now I've got a plan that doesn't revolve around a flying mount, and should at least enjoy my playtime while doing it :)

[Icetech]

see fun for me is sitting outside the GY at cosmowrench and re-wiping guilds that have just wiped on a boss:) but theres no money in that:(

[shaeman]

see fun for me is sitting outside the GY at cosmowrench and re-wiping guilds that have just wiped on a boss:) but theres no money in that:(hehe - sadly i didn't even roll on a pvp server [edit:fix spelling mistake]

[Gadzooks]

You sound like you have the balance right.

You've gone for the fun, and the money has come in as a result. You spent the time getting your 5 shammy team to 70 and (I'm hoping) having fun running them and got the money from it as a side benefit.

My problem is that I took something that I could have achieved over time and turned it in to an item that I must have now.

With that as the focus I started looking at ways to achieve that target as quickly as possible. Spreadsheeting things up working out hourly gold rates farming various places etc.

I'm very target based and normally achieve them. However somewhere in there I got a huge list of money making techniques and decided I wanted to incorporate them all, which resulted in me spending loads of gold (the precise opposite of what I wanted to achieve) and in going off on little side projects that wasted time. e.g boosting my druid and paladin from 30 - 40.

I'm glad that I've figured this out in a couple of weeks rather than months down the line.

So now I've got a plan that doesn't revolve around a flying mount, and should at least enjoy my playtime while doing it :)
If you're spreadsheeting gold/hour, it's not a game anymore. :)

Let it go. You'll have a LOT more fun that way.

[shaeman]

believe me I've let it go :) No spreadsheeting going on anymore.

[Ellay]

What kind of classes do you play?

During my question from non epic flyer to epiced out bling bling I did all sorts of gold making tactics, the first easiest one now is to do dailies - they are quick and painless. Second is that I was able to run through pretty much any normal dungeon and a swift amount of time and would charge others handsomely to do so. This was probably the most fun method because you met a lot of extremely grateful people in the process which took away the boredom factor and gave a unique outlook on the game.

[Xar]

Wow!

I enjoy many of the dailies on days that I feel like doing them, there are so many of them now that are quick easy gold x5 + rep.

[noir]

I love playing as a tankadin. It's absolutely an amazing feeling being able to tank like 20 level 70 mobs simultaneously, solo. XD And having a tanked as a war and a druid, let me tell you, I'd never five man tank as anything other than a pally unless forced under pain of death.

That being said -- play for fun. That's why I have alts. Don't grind for gold for the sake of leveling something that potentially makes more gold. The farmers have you beat. If you really wanted to do it just for the gold, I'd say get a part time job and spend that money buying gold -- you'll get way more for your time invested.

Oh, and pretty much every tradeskill can make money except blacksmithing and engineering. Just say no.

Want fast, easy money? Just do the dailies. With 5 70's, you're talking about a new epic mount every few weeks.

[Wilbur]

We should have a monthly "Idiot of the month" poll, where everyone submits their favourite (Multiboxing) QQ threads from the WoW forums.

Votes should be cast on the criteria of
Trolling skillz
Originality of QQ
lack of logic
Was staff intervention required during the post


I forsee fun :-)

[Havelcek]

Unfortunately (or fortunately) these games are designed so that there is always another task or item to achieve and if they aren't keeping you on the treadmill then they are losing money. It is hard to find a balance, you're right on there. Grinding BG's for honor is a great example of that.

[Mac]

I was heavily invested in another rce mmorpg before I came to wow. I made a lot of money, but they started changing the game making it less profitable and it was taking more and more effort to get the same results. It wasn't fun anymore, it started to become a job, and a job that didn't pay for the amount of work I was putting into it. At that point, I decided one real job was enough. I was playing online games first and formost to have fun, and it wasn't fun anymore. So I cashed out and never looked back.

Same thing for raiding, when I started getting angry irl because of the idiots that just didn't get it and kept wiping the raid, costing everyone gold and time and effort and gimping our progression, I stopped raiding. This is a game, its supposed to be fun. The moment it starts becoming your second job, or starts causing you irl stress and anger because of things going on in game, then just stop and do something else. Unless your a masochist, why pay money to Blizz to do that to yourself.

MB'ing has made this enjoyable again for me. If it ever stops being fun, I will exit stage left in a heart beat. Try not to spend to much time measuring yourself against other people in the game and what they have. You will always find someone who has more free time to devote to playing and they will always have better gear. Just do what you can with what you have and just measure your progress against yourself and be happy with your own reasonable progression. That's all that really matters.

[Simulacra]

I'm sorry but I also have to nominate myself. Remember in my defence my last 2 mains were a Lock and a Pally.....freeish mounts and no training required. So there I am in Shadowmonn Valley with some shiny new 70s - magex2 and 1 priest and I go and try to buy the riding skill for their flyers....WTF is this ? I have to buy the epic riding skill for land mounts FIRST!!!! - fail. I'd avoided buying epic land mount riding because I thought I'd save some gold and skip to flyer. So I've been riding slowly for 10 levels >.< only to discover I have to buy it anyway. Only been playing wow forever >.< /slap - now of course I don't have enough gold for the flyers AAARRRGGGG!!! lol