Christmas eggs

No, I'm not confusing christmas with easter. It is just that my latest virtual get-rich-quick scheme involves both christmas and eggs. Virtual get-rich-quick schemes are the more fun the poorer you are, and my hunter on the new server is very poor, as I can't transfer my money from the Runetotem server to the Bronzebeard server. After paying for training, I have barely enough money to buy a good bow on the auction house, and nothing left to improve my leatherworking. But christmas is near, and with that I have a great opportunity to make a lot (well, relatively to my level a lot) of cash due to superior knowledge.

Because today is patch day on the European servers, and the v1.8.4 patch notes very much sound like as if the same christmas event quests that the US already got last year would be patched in for the holidays. But as the European version of WoW only came out after christmas, these quests will be totally new to most of the European players. Only the few people who like me already played on the US servers last year know what is coming.

Now I don't want to give out spoilers, but one of the easy christmas quests involves gingerbread cookies, which are made with the help of small eggs, of which you will need 5 to do the quest. But the quest is in Ironforge, and there are little or no mobs around Ironforge that drop small eggs. In the elven lands on the other hand, small eggs are plentiful. According to Thottbot, the owls in Teldrassil drop them with 70% chance. So what I did was farming small eggs yesterday, and putting them on the auction house for 20 silver per "quest package" of 5 eggs. I figure that 20 silver is a lot of money for my level 16 hunter, but a small amount for people of higher level who don't want to travel to another continent just to hunt some low-level birds. Last year my night-elf druid on the US server made a nice profit with the same scheme, and this time I'm probably the first to think of it. I have gathered 50 eggs for sale (and 5 for me to do the quest myself), so if they all sell at that price, I'll make 2 gold. If the eggs don't sell, I can still bake them into cookies, and try selling the cookies instead. And if it works well, I can go back and farm more eggs.

Actually the fun is in coming up with a scheme like that, trying to implement it, and seeing if it works. It involves knowledge of the game, and some guesses on likely player behavior. The money made is a nice bonus, but if the plan fails and I don't earn anything, it wouldn't stop my character advancement in any way. If it works, I'll blow the money on leatherworking, which is completely optional. It would only open up new get-rich-quick schemes involving selling rare leather armor to me. It is actions like these that make you feel as if you live in a virtual world, and not just playing a single-player game. That is why I think that player economies are very important for virtual worlds, and games like City of Heroes / Villains that don't have an economy are sorely missing something essential for the long-term fun.
- posted by Tobold @ 8:28 AM Permanent Link