It's like another gold rush, but is the race to grow crops for bio fuels such a field of dreams?

In the flatlands of the American interior, grain is flying off the fields. Corn, wheat and barley are thrashing through combines.

And to watch the farmers behind the harvest, you would think you were on Wall Street instead of Green Acres. Members of the boots-and-baseball hat crowd sound more like tassel-loafed brokers on a binge, spinning straw into gold. And in a sense, they are.

Welcome to the latest field of dreams. Farm prices have not been so high in a generation. Wheat has more than tripled from the price of a few years ago. Corn is up 80% or more.

I bring you this news from the farm, not as a discourse on why breakfast cereal may soon cost a bit more. But rather, consider this as another variation of the old saw about being careful what you wish for. Or perhaps it's simply a tale of supply-and-demand economics.

For years people in rural America have been touting ethanol as the best path to energy independence. It's easy to make. It's just refined alcohol, usually processed from corn.

There's a seemingly endless supply of it. It doesn't involve sending billions to foreign despots. It doesn't release as much carbon into the atmosphere as petrol-based fuels do. And for years, most everyone else rolled their eyes and continued to fill up their SUVs with cheap gasoline, ignoring ethanol.

It was a niche, at best. A political bargaining chip for farm states during presidential election years. See Iowa and ethanol - two words that tumble out of the mouths of political candidates with quadrennial regularity. But as oil prices have crept past $80 a barrel, that fuel from the farm started to look a lot better.

At the same time came hefty tax breaks, government mandates to quadruple ethanol production and Wall Street venture capital sniffing around the edges of the prairie. Just like that, the old scarecrow patch became a lot more profitable.

Now 129 plants are making ethanol, mostly in small towns dotting the American mid-section, and another 80 are under construction. Half the states in the US have ethanol plants and it may soon be the leading producer in the world of this home-grown fuel - right up there with Brazil, which makes its fuel from sugar cane.

Moonshine

That ka-ching you heard was coming from farmers making high-performance moonshine from amber fields of grain. In their vision there will soon be a "grass station" in every town, powering a fleet of new cars running on bio fuels.

What's left over might even be used for traditional moonshine. That is, grain alcohol. A plant in small-town Minnesota does just that, producing a high-end vodka in addition to several million gallons of transportation fuel.

One of the farmers I spoke to in the Interior West, a fellow named Read Smith, brought up the other reason people who work the land are so excited about ethanol: the prospect of a renaissance in rural America.

An evangelist for ethanol, Smith was so excited I had to check for dirt under his fingernails to make sure he was a farmer. Towns, now dying, would get a fresh lease on life through ethanol, he said.

The shuttered factory could re-open, with minimal investment, as a farmer-owned refinery, taking Jed's corn to make Jeremy's tractor fuel. Young people, now leaving in droves, would stay behind, lured by the promise of a new, $700bn-a-year industry.

On top of that is the draw of economic nationalism. Not long ago I drove through a small town in Missouri, where a new ethanol plant is the pride of the community.

A yard sign, showing a picture of corn, a gas pump and the American flag, carried the slogan: Our Crop. Our Fuel. Our Country. The not-so-subtle implication, which you hear farmers mention time and again is - stick it to those Arab oil billionaires.

The goal of the ethanol enthusiasts is to have farmers and foresters produce 25% of American energy by the year 2025. As it stands, the US now makes about six billion gallons of ethanol. It's barely enough to replace a mere 4% of the nation's gasoline consumption. And most of that is used in blends.

The "Big Vision" sounds wonderful to farmers who have long complained about bad weather, bad prices, bad rural economics, bad global economics, or some combination of woe.

Protests

Hard times in the wide open spaces date to the Dust Bowl storms of the 1930s. Since then, more than half of the counties in the western Great Plains have lost population - a steady drip, drip, drip of out-migration and loss. Banks are boarded up. Stores are shuttered. Schools are closed, never again to hold a child's voice.

So, you can see why ethanol is greeted as the salvation of the rural economy. But reality has intruded. This new fuel, after all, comes from food. Corn is used for everything from cereal to soda pop. Corn fattens hogs and chickens and cattle. So, of course, as the demand for corn in bio fuel has soared so too have food prices.

This makes corn farmers happy, but everybody else in the food production chain is not. Earlier this year there were large protests in Mexico by people who claimed that ethanol demand had caused tortilla prices to double.

Whether ethanol is truly to blame for higher food prices is debatable. No one ever thought it would take off this quickly and the market may be in for a settling, which will level prices. Still, enough economists say there is a lesson here - you can't have your fuel and your food come from the same source.

Also, environmentalists have weighed in, pointing out that while ethanol is much cleaner than fuels that come from oil, it is not the panacea for global warming.

The process of converting fields into corn and then into fuel requires intensive amounts of fertiliser and old-fashioned petrol in the refining - ultimately adding to the carbon in the atmosphere.

A cleaner method - the sort of Holy Grail of ethanol - is the process of making fuel from straw, or field waste, or wood chips. This is not a pipe dream. It can be done, as a small plant in Canada and other projects in Europe have demonstrated.

But the price, for now at least, is prohibitive because the processing is so much more difficult, although the hope is that costs will come down.

And of course, big oil has cast its shadow over the "field of ethanol dreams". The oil industry initially tried to get in on the boom. Most ethanol plants are now farmer-owned co-ops. The little guy can actually produce ethanol cheaper than the big guy.

Failing to get a toehold on the farm, the oil industry has since funded an anti-ethanol campaign. All sorts of so-called "experts" - many, it turns out, on the payrolls of oil companies - have been sounding alarms about bio fuels. But to be fair, some oil companies are still trying to partner with ethanol producers.

Cold and fallow

But perhaps the biggest blow yet has come from the free market. If it looked like a good thing to plough up prairie grass and plant corn for the ethanol boom in Kansas, it also looked the same way in Missouri, or Idaho.

I met a farmer outside the one-stoplight town of Burley, in the high desert of the Interior West, who told me he was going to rip out all his hay, which requires very little care, and plant a special kind of corn so he can make a killing in the ethanol boom.

Yes, sir, he told me - it's a sure thing. Right. Just like all gold rushes. Now, guess what? There's a glut. In fact, there's a huge glut.

Farmers and the small towns that service them built their refineries nearly overnight. But at the other end - cars that use ethanol, stations that pump it and actual consumers who will trade in their gas-fired rides for moonshine motors - they have not kept up.

So, while food prices remain high, ethanol prices are trending downward, off nearly 30% on the spot market since May. So, is this the beginning of the end of the big ethanol dream? Killed, just as it got going?

Most farm economists say no - ethanol will find its place. Now, maybe it won't replace all the imported oil - more than half of US consumption - and maybe it won't save the planet. Such overstatements, critics believe, set ethanol up for a fall to begin with.

But even if we can't farm our way to energy independence, it's a start toward a more local energy economy - connecting consumers to producers.

That may be enough to keep people on the land, people who dream of putting something in the ground just as it goes cold and fallow. Because, more than anything else, they are farming tomorrow.

Below is a selection of your comments.

Brazil has been doing this for decades, ever since they stopped supplying the USA with unfairly-traded sugar and decided to turn it into motor fuel. Why hasn't the world followed? Might it have something to do with the fact that "ethanol" is the same stuff that the food and drink industry calls "alcohol" or "spirits"? For centuries the distillation of spirits has been tightly controlled, with bonded warehouses and Customs and Excise inspections. To see the rise of a parallel industry producing the same stuff in massive quantities without the same controls must be daunting to our tax officials. But if the alternative is climate change from burning fossil fuel and our boys dying in Iraq in a vain attempt to guard our oil supplies, why don't our ministers tell HM Customs & Excise to exercise a little imagination over the problems involved?
Ian Clark, Whitby, England

Calculate the amount of land needed to produce even 10% of a country's current oil consumption and for many - like the African continent, already unable to feed itself, you will see the physical impossibility of making even a minor contribution to its total needs. Remove the subsidies then see what happens.
T B Muckle, KENYA

Bio fuels are a great boom for the Mid West states but at what cost. That tractor that plows the field is run on Diesel the plant runs on various oil products either to add to the ethanol or to run the plant such as the electricty it need to run. Then when we have a completed product it is put in a Diesel run truck to transport to the station. Now how about those grass lands that are set aside because they clean the ground water that is used for drinking and to water and other uses if we dig this up the aqua fur will no longer have a recharge zone. I grew up in the Iowa and i know how much this new means to the people in all of the mid west so i hope we can find ways to make this truly the fuel to atleast in part replace the oil that comes from the middle east and put the money back in our pockets.
Mark D, Austin USA

Do you want to pay $12.00 for a loaf of bread? Farmers want to max proffit potential, so growing fule may pay more than growing food and produces more pollution overall than what we have now.
Alistair Aldridge, Markham, Canada

It is fine until we can't afford the high price of food and we will have to compromise by not buying fuel
Brian Allman, Hyde Cheshire

BioFuels see to be the latest buzz work and will probably become a "gold rush" with farmers switching to growing biofuel crops instead of typical food crops (e.g. carrots). Eventually I can see certain food prices rising, likee bread or flour, as this will be diverted for fuel production. Mind you at least there will be more than enough Bio-Ethanol available to make starving to death once hell of a party!
Corsa Driver, Norfolk, UK

Degradation of arable land; wheat prices at record high; starving people. Growing crops for fuel is the dummest idea I have ever heard.
Joe H, Guildford

Although I welcome any idea that replaces petrol use with 'greener' fuel, I think that one of the reasons why we are being repeatedly disappointed by other fuels is that we are expecting them to work exactly the same way that petrol does. The sooner we go back to the drawing boards and find alternative ways to power our transport without pumping it into an internal combustion engine the better. Using any fuel that is farmed like corn will have an impact on the diet of someone elsewhere. This question and answer is all about looking at the problem in a new way rather than trying to fit a new fuel into the gap left by petrol or diesel.
Heather, Willenhall

As the farmers rip out yet more hedges and biodiversity to extract yet more money from the ground they are industrially and mechanically estranged from is there really any difference between these "modern" farmers and the slash and burners of the amazon? How much has the EEC agricultural policy contributed to global warming? History points to the eco collapse of ancient Egypt and Greece and their civilization demise. Should we subsidize the destruction of nature or should we only subsidize ecological growth? This means reduction of pesticides and nitrates drastically and growing natural field boundary of a biologically usefull density and spread.
themosthandsomemanever, UK

What about the billions of poor people in the world with no food to eat? Now the rich people can grab away food from their plates and burn it (literally) in their SUVs!
Abhishek Rawat, Pune India

]]> http://gamingtp.wordpress.com/?p=99 Sun, 11 May 2008 23:28:01 +0000 Dr. Foo CY http://gamingtp.wordpress.com/?p=99 Here's an interesting bit of news for MMOG researchers, watchers, and players. Source is here.

Chengdu's Shuangliu county has arrested two virtual item and currency traders, surnamed Li and Zhang, focused on tapping out The9's (Nasdaq: NCTY) licensed MMORPG World of Warcraft (WoW), reports Chengdu Evening News. Police arrested the pair after Li reported Zhang for unfair revenue distribution. Going into business last August, the gold miners accumulated more than 20 employees with 20 computers to generate RMB 1.6 million in seven months of dealing.

How is this news of any importance or relevance? Well, MMOG players either really hate and downright resent gold farming, or they're neutral - the latter especially so if they've bought virtual currency before. Either way, gold farming has resulted in large discussion threads in MMOG forums and headaches for gamemasters who have to respond to petitions from irate players complaining about how some player is running a script around a zone harvesting resources.

What's especially interesting is that the Chinese police has taken action against the above WOW gold farmers. It's not specifically mentioned in the original source if they'd taken action on instigation from Blizzard Entertainment, but it's unusual nonetheless. The net of police-actionable activities on one's virtual behavior in MMOGs is clearly growing larger.

(Picture from http://www.freakygaming.com/)

The Blood Elves he is grinding are located just outside the entrance to the Black Temple. Primarily he appears to be fighting Demon Hunter Supplicants and Demon Hunter Initiates.

The following is his analysis of the method to execute this strategy:

Use rank 1 Consceration, + if u want use a low rank holy shield, while pulling them. Always try to have your front infront of them so that the poison applies proper and dont wear off(usually use low rank holy shield when i take all the guys at the stairs(those that healthemselves) Then when u got em gathered go all out with full rank Consceration/avenging wrath. If u manage to get the elite demonhunter, just judge wisdom on him and use seal of wisdom, u wont go oom and he doesnt hurt more than a regular guy kinda. I usually just deaggros him by jumping off a cliff when the initates are dead.

Use Petrified ancient guard/figurine(figurine drops of last boss shattered halls and it gives 120 health each time u block).
Put a Felspike on the petrified ancient guard(sporregar shield, extremly easy to get, the skullflame shield might work aswell - lower dura on that one tho:P + it might count as magic dmg, so it will kinda suck on the group that gives a magic debuff, compared to using the poison shield. Else, get alot of + block rating and + spelldmg gear

These mobs drop some fairly decent loot - as you can imagine, though, the real gold-maker here is the sheer volume of mobs you will be downing. Make sure to start this strategy with light bags! This can also work great for building up Scryer reputation.

As durion08 states in the video, the importance of getting a map UI mod cannot be stressed enough. Especially if you are new and do not have all the quest givers and locations memorized. While he uses Cosmos, I prefer the Ace2 addon Cartographer QuestObjectives. Whichever addon you like to display quest information on your map, make sure to use one of them! By having the information available visually, you will speed up your leveling immensely - and these addons are 100% legal.

Durion08 also mentions that he uses Joana’s Horde Leveling Guide to learn how to quest and level more effectively. I also cannot stress the importance of having a guide like this enough. Joana's Guide was one of (if not The) first leveling guides to come out for WoW and it is still considered the best. If you are looking for the Alliance version of Joana's guide, you should get Brian Kopp’s Alliance Leveling Guide. There are many very good leveling guides out there now, but these are still considered the best.

]]> http://wowgoldguide.wordpress.com/?p=31 Wed, 09 Apr 2008 19:03:33 +0000 fortuente http://wowgoldguide.wordpress.com/?p=31 Here's a nice little video detailing one player's method for making lots of gold with tailoring and disenchanting.

Napalm on Burning Legion (EU) uses the auction house to buy up massive quantities of Netherweave Cloth then uses his tailoring skills to make a relatively cheap item, Netherweave Bracers. Then he turns around and sells the disenchants on the auction house for equally massive amounts of gold.

This is a classic gold-making strategy and also explains why most of my characters have been enchanters, lol. It's the type of strategy that Valkor’s Gold Guide is all about. At 120 pages, it’s easy to print, is continually updated with new information for free and comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee - it’s virtually impossible to go wrong with this guide.

Coming back to gold farming it's worth seeing Wikipedia article which suggests that over 100,000 Chinese are employed to gold farm and that Korea are looking at bringing in legislation to deal with it. It's a facinating article and shows the extent of the problem and some fo the methods being employed to deal with it.

E Commerce Times has an interesting article on virtual currency and a breakdown of a few of the major centers of this budding market (see source link). It provides interesting fodder for speculation on the future -- where we'll be in five or ten years? Will the virtual marketplace have become a major economic sector? An official model is already in place with Linden Dollars and the LindeX Exchange and gold farming in World of Warcraft is a booming (if somewhat dubious) industry. It seems only natural that the world economy will evolve and adapt to new technology and, ergo, new ways to make a profit. Who knows -- The next generation of e-commerce students might just be studying the 'Second Life L$ market crash of 2011' and the following depression amongst Second Life entrepreneurs (many of which were forced to sell their superfluous organs to keep their subscriptions paid for).

[Source]

You have to repair that expensive upgraded equipment (because you haven’t upgraded you gear since hitting 51 as outlands greens were “just around the corner”) and for that you need gold….. lots of gold.

So where is the best place to farm? You could consult a  gold-farming guide for “an easy 49.95 one-off cash payment” or you could just head out with your gathering skills and get collecting. I have lots of options, I could skin (but have to save the skins for my leatherworker), I could mine (but what about my blacksmith & Engineer & Jeweller?), in the end it comes down to vendor trash… and I’m starting to think that Nagarad has the answer. All those wee little beasties drop tails, and horns, and hooves that make some cash, and the green drops make passable vendor fodder too.

 My guild-mate has the daily-quest rotation all worked out for gold farming but I’m not that organized. So off I go to slaughter Bambi, it beats the horrific Mount quests that my Tankadin has to do.

On February 1, Blizzard poster Drysc wrote the following:

You're pretty close, but it's actually going to be a part of Enchanting. Once every 24 hours, through Enchanting (not Alchemy) you'll be able to split a Void Crystal into two Large Prismatic Shards. This is through a new recipe that's being added in 2.4.
This helps reduce the exorbitant prices currently being seen for Large Prismatics, and helps raise the value of the Void Crystals. While this is the only change planned in 2.4 to help the Void Crystal prices, we're still looking at the possibility of additional 'help' for Void Crystal value in the future.

So do I really need to tell you that you should probably start taking a long, hard look at the Void Crystal market on your realm?

Void Crystals (Wowhead | Wowecon) are currently averaging about 16.7 gold on US Alliance markets, while Large Prismatic Shards (Wowhead | Wowecon) are currently going for an average of 23 gold in the same markets.

On the surface of things this doesn't seem like an extremely lucrative deal, however the markets on your particular realm and even blind luck can heavily skew profit margins in your favor. So it is worth at least a look.

One extremely important thing to note, however: if you are holding any Large Prismatic Shards with the intent to sell them on the Auction House do so ASAP! Or well, at least before Patch 2.4 hits the servers. This is sure to make the price on these drop fast. I would also recommend against buying any unless you actually use them for crafting or unless you see what would be a common sense purchase (i.e. you see one selling for five gold).

While I don't necessarily believe all of these will inhibit F2P's growth, one of the slides in my GDC presentation this year is to do with the challenges F2P faces - so this should help fulfill that requirement.

1. Virtual Property "Ownership"

The term 'virtual' may not have a strict legal interpretation, but if anything it means that the thing being described is NOT whatever comes after the word 'virtual.

- Ginsu Yoong, Second Life’s legal counsel, Linden v Bragg

Despite virtual property's ill-defined legal status, developers have had no qualms about starting byzantine in-game economies driven by the exchange of real money for virtual land, clothing, furniture and much more.

Some developers, like GoPets CEO Eric Bethke, have attempted to get out in front of the virtual property legal issue by defining their own "Avatar Bill of Rights." But most of us have not been as proactive and instead seem content to leave it up to the courts to decide how to define and deal with our users' virtual property.

As precedents regarding virtual ownership are set, the growth of some F2P products may be curtailed as the legal burden of dispensing virtual property increases.

2. Slow Broadband
On the issue of net speed, there remains a huge disparity between North America's broadband ISPs and Korea's military-grade internet provision.

The net effect is that free to play games like Maple Story can take 1-3 hours or more to download in North America, while Korea's 45mbps network cuts the same download to a paltry 10 minutes or less.

It’s fair to say that we won’t soon be getting such high download speeds - but the North American market might have already found a way around the issue. With the launch of streaming game services like InstantAction and the proliferation of Flash as a full-blown development platform, downloading entire game clients become less and less the norm.

3. Poor Advertising Strategies
Some products in the F2P sector have come to rely heavily on advertiser support in order to keep their offerings free for the majority of players.

A recent OMMA article that claims advertisers are taking the wrong approach when handling virtual worlds. And as the populations of virtual worlds appear to be prematurely plateauing, advertisers may be starting to sweat.

But there is hope if advertisers change their strategies to suit the unique challenges virtual worlds present. As Worlds In Motion put it:

...themed events, branded avatar clothing, and representative personality appearances are finding success and opportunity in worlds like There, Habbo and vSide.

4. MMO Overload
From Maple Story to Silkroad Online, there is no shortage of MMOs in the free to play space. In the same vein, there is an abundance of virtual worlds such as Second Life or Kaneva. It seems as though the vast majority of new free to play game since 2005 have been virtual worlds or MMOs.

Perhaps it’s the very reason that these games have proliferated in the free to play market; MMOs and virtual worlds are inherently more inclusive than an FPS. Still, it would be a shame to see the free to play space flounder due to constant reiteration of the same genres and themes, turning away players seeking a different experience.

Of course, games like Kwari are looking to change that, but it’s too early to tell just how well they will catch on.

5. Rising Development Costs
With more prominent developers announcing plans to take advantage of the free to play model, the days of games fueled by ramen noodles and nights in the basement could, once again, be history. EA's upcoming Battlefield Heroes is the latest big budget free to play game, signaling that the big publishers aren't content to sit back and let Far East imports eat their lunch.

If the consumer makes the jump from 2D to more advanced 3D graphics, it could mean the end of the visually rudimentary worlds and Flash-based free to play games as market leaders, making way for the mainstream big budget games.

6. Second Life Slowdown
Second Life is the Apple Newton of virtual worlds. It was here first, but isn't the best representation of the potential of virtual worlds. However, it still occupies a place in investors' minds - akin to a coal mine canary, warning of impending danger.

And while investors took note as Second Life soared to the top, they're noticing its decline as well (active user hours were down 5% in November). There is concern among some that Second Life's time might be up, and that’s not a good sign for potential investors in the free to play space.

7. Watered Down AdverWorlds
With their lower barrier to entry and great potential to spin money, an slew of less innovative products are beginning to hit the market. Hardest to ignore are adverworlds like Build-A-Bear, Rush Zone, BeBratz, BarbieGirls and their ilk - marketing spend thinly disguised as entertainment.

The consumer's willingness to pay money for virtual items in a world where their avatar is little more than a target for advertising will be tested by products like these.

8. Unsanctioned Secondary Markets
Then there’s the issue of gold farming. With websites like IGE operating independently of game developers and establishing secondary markets for game currency and items, it’s not just traditional MMOs that are being subjected to this kind of treatment anymore.

What’s worse, while gold farming might fuddle with World of Warcraft’s player-driven economy, some developers believe a secondary market allows players to skip the middleman altogether - a potentially fatal issue for free to play games who survive on item-based revenue streams.

The recent launch of publisher-sanctioned Live Gamer is a step in the right direction for devs and pubs looking to reclaim lost revenue.

9. Limited Payment Methods

We have hanging on our wall a user who sent a $5 bill in a $15 fedEx package.

- Craig Sherman, Gaia Online

While other territories enjoy a plethora of tailored-to-the-consumer payment methods, North America has embraced relatively few.

SMS would surely be nearly as popular a payment method here as it is in Europe if our carrier surcharges weren't in the range of 50% a transaction. Landlines - an expensive but very secure payment option in China - might also be popular with some services.

GoPets has 90 different payment systems worldwide, catering excellently to foreign payment preferences. Nonetheless, consumers still have trouble getting money into their favorite North American games.

10. Kids Only Games
The current offering of free to play games caters nearly exclusively to the under-25 set. An NPD study released last year showed that while 91% of online gaming among kids aged 2-17 is free to play, by the time those kids graduated high school, the boys had moved to sixty-dollar console games and the girls dropped out of gaming entirely.

In the core gaming arena, Nintendo has found a way to appeal to young and old alike. Free to play's appeal among adults relies on the proliferation of products that do a Nintendo-quality job of bridging the age gap or target older demographics only.

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Start as Skinner and a Herbalist or Miner for a while to gather resources. You may have to travel to a main town to learn these skills early - but its worth doing early.

Skinner as you will be killing many skinnable mobs early on, and either Herbalist or Miner as the radar marker conflicts - you cant have both a Herbalist and Miner radar blip on. I have "toons" that are both Skinner, Herbalist and Skinner, Miner ... I think the coin generated is a little better as a Miner (especially as you get occ. gem drops in ore placements), but if you choose a dark-elf as a race go herbalist as the starting area has no mining resources - there may be an equivalent horde race !

Collect 6 slot bags as quickly as possible. Some will drop as loot, others can be bought from tailors. You can do a /who and /tell and offer to buy COD (cash on delivery) via the mail system so you dont have to buy from an NPC vendor or go to an Auction House before you are ready.

Have a "mule" sitting in your factions Auction House Town (eg. Ironforge for Alliance) - create a character that is closest to the Auction House Town .. best a dwarf or gnome for easy access to Ironforge - Humans need to travel via Stormwind and the Underground tram system, Dark-Elves have to travel via foot for about 20 minutes through dangerous territory to get anywhere near Ironforge for the first time, place your character very near a mailbox that is not busy. There are two mailboxes near the Auction House in Ironforge - one is always crowded. Choose the one that is not busy for your log-in/log-out place. This mule you will post your stacks to for sale at the Auction House.

Keep notes of how much a stack of resources (light leather from skinning, copper ore from mining, silverleaf and peaceblossom from herbalism) sell to an NPC vendor but dont sell to the vendor.

Check the Auction House prices using the search facility and take note of the starting and buyout prices for the stacks of resources you are selling. Many items have a buy-out price upto 10-20 times the price an NPC vendor will buy from you. I personally set my prices as follows .... starting price 2x the NPC vendor buy value (around 1.5-2.5s per stack) and a buyout price 5-6 times the NPC buy value unless all the competitor sellers buyout prices are way above or below that, then I set my buyouts at just below theirs.

A couple of hours work at toon level 6-8 will give you 3-4 stacks of light leather, 2-3 stacks of herbs, 1-2 stacks or metals bars (yep, smelt them for mining experience before selling them ... if you are "grey" on smelting copper (i.e. no mining XP form it), sell the stacks of raw ore) and if you are working in an area of humanoids 1-2 stacks of linen cloth. Don't waste your linen on bandages (First Aid).

Don't waste bag storage space on grey usable items, ruined pelts, broken teeth etc. unless you are filling up an inventory for the run home. Keep green items for Auction House sale if your toon (or an alt) doesn't need them. Always set auctions for 24 hours and put a buyout price about 4-6x the value to an NPC vendor (again check the Auction House current prices so you don't over or under value your items) ... the buyout price allows impatient bidders a way of getting their items quickly - and your money faster.

Mail your major items to your mule for Auction House Placement, dump the rest of the garbage onto the NPC vendor.

Each stack will sell at Auction House for 5-10s per stack easily and up to 20s per stack if the demand is right, low level "green" items 5-10s each.

My first (and still main) toon never got anywhere near this cash return so early (mage, miner engineer) my current level 10 gatherer is getting 1g per 2 hours of game time (mixing it up with questing and general fun) a concentrated effort should nett close to 1g per hour - a huge return for a low level character me thinks.

Don't choose your crafting profession too early ... you can always drop one of your gathering professions for a crafting profession once your cash flow is good.

Buying unneeded items early eats money.
Buying unneeded skills early eats money.
Enchanting eats money !
Engineering eats money !
Leatherworking, Blacksmithing and Tailoring can feed an enchanter, make reasonably good money from auctioned items later.
Alchemy can be fun and provide a good range of buff and potions for your own use, then sell once you get to craft the higher demand potions.

These are just beginner tips. I can show you how you can make massive amounts of gold fast. You will never have to buy gold again! Read here for more

Porter points out that the trading of virtual goods is brought repectibility by LiveGamer and its significant venture capital backing. The broadening of economic trade outside the magic circle of games is further evidence of not only a migration of people to virtual worlds but wealth and economic production as well.

From my amateur's armchair, I've given my take before on the economies of virtual worlds, riffing off the work of Edward Castranova, including my disagreement with him over the concept of protecting the magic circle.

Castranova argues for the protection of the magic circle, but I've been arguing that the membrane is too porous to protect - so long as people value objects, markets will be created for those objects whether in shadow economies, black markets, or legitimate exchanges. While there will still be true game environments, I can't think of many MMORPGs that could survive without some sort of economic engine - it doesn't need to be gold, necessarily, it could be tools, equipment, etc. Otherwise, they're not virtual worlds, they're shooters or simulations.

There's thus the question of whether game environments are tainted by the intrusion of "real" commerce. The argument against this 'taint' is the importance of protecting space for play and immersion. But I believe, as Porter points out, that this is an anachronism of the "big game" era. While spaces for play and creativity should thrive, I think this will be achieved through ubiquity, not through protecting the walled gardens of the "big worlds".

Metaplace is a taste of what's to come. Islands and builds in Second Life are CLEARLY a sign of things to come. Games will be created by kids in their basement, companies wanting a quick new way to train staff on a new product line, and educators wanting to throw together a virtual classroom with live collaborative project and presentation spaces.

We're well past the walled gardens, we're headed into an age of the metaverse everywhere. There will soon enough be little mini worlds attached to mySpace pages, Facebook group profiles, and corporate Web sites. And the rapid emergence of augmented reality games not only means little universes everywhere, but the overlay of our own universe with information shadows and game grids.

Emerging business models such as the Twinity and Metaplace approaches to transparent commerce (use their coins, or use your own payment systems using Web services) demonstrate that the future of virtual worlds and games will include seamless bridges where commerce and content will flow freely into and out of these spaces.

There are, however, a few notes of caution:

Control of Mudflation
Most virtual worlds have economies because there is some sort of control over supply and demand. Objects in worlds cease to have any value if they aren't consumed. In games like WoW, goods are consumed by being made into other goods, and in some cases made into objects that are non-transferrable. NPCs also play an important function in consumption - buying up the raiding junk that won't sell at auction, but at least keeping some kind of market afloat. The issue of consumption of goods is critical - if goods don't decay, if they don't exit the world because NPCs buy them, through degradation, or because player's toss non-transferable items as they level up, then you've got rampant MUDflation on your hands. But controlling for these factors can be a very fine balancing act on the part of the game developers.

Arbitrary Currency Control
The other thing to note is that game developers have levers in place to control the flow of currency into and out of worlds. This allows subtle shifts in the supply of money. Without these controls, players who are partly interested or motivated by the economics of virtual worlds (whether through actually "making" money or simply levelling up by purchasing better gear) can get side-swiped either through sudden spikes or decreases in the supply of money and thus prices.

As virtual worlds increase the level at which they're seamless with "outside" economies, platform owners may start to control fewer and fewer levers. It won't be too long before we see cases of economic collapse because, in essence, the federal reserve has been shuttled out of the picture.

Invisible Economic Metrics
Conversely, however, platform owners can play tricks with virtual economies in ways that aren't transparent to users who may be highly invested in particular virtual worlds. The example of Second Life pegging the Linden to the US dollar is an example. This is arbitrary, and the spread of the actual rise and fall of the Linden is covered by Linden Labs. But just as it's in their power to control against a sudden decrease in the value of the Linden, it's also in their power to remove their hands from the wheel (for financial or other reasons) and let the economy spin off on its own.

Let's face it - with X billions of objects in Second Life, few of which deteriorate (although MANY of which are lost in someone's inventory), surely the value of a shirt is worth less now than it was a year ago. How many shirts have been made? But so long as the Linden is pegged at an artificial rate, the illusion of an economy can be maintained. The real SL economy is in the island and off-world economy, but these statistics aren't tracked (or if they are, they aren't published).

Users often take it for granted, in a cycle of trust, that the platform owners are working in their best interests - they have an interest in working economies that don't collapse, otherwise they lose their users. But as virtual worlds grow and real economic value starts to accrue to them, this might be courting disaster.

I'm as interested in understanding the economic underpinnings of virtual worlds as the Terms of Service IP provisions. Metaplace, for example, promises seamless flow-through transactions, and is offering Metabucks as a mechanism for making micro-payments simple across multiple currencies. I'm eager to hear how they solve the dilemma of exchange rates and whether they would ever float the currency (or will it always be a Metabuck out for every real buck in?)

The Gift Economy
Lost in the discussion of virtual world economies, however, is something that I think is far more profound and would be worth far more to measure, and that's the value of the gift economy. Virtual worlds support the notion that in an increasingly open source, grassroots, user-controlled world that reputation and sharing can be worth far more than how much you got paid for the latest sword. Gold farmers in China might grind out a living, but increasingly the real value, as in the open source software community, will be in how you're perceived within an economy of gifts, contribution, and reputation. This is as true in a guild system as it is in an 'open world' like Second Life and the worlds like it around the bend.

I'd love to see a study on how many goods trade hands without an economic exchange. My guess is that the 'gift' economy might be worth far more than the exchange economy. And my second guess would be that as we come to terms with the implication of this, just as Microsoft and IBM have come to terms (in their own ways) with the "gift" economy of Linux, that we'll start to understand that the real engines of production are both right in front of us and yet invisible.

Here is a video showing how to mass-pull mobs as a low-level paladin, allowing you to grind up to level 20 in a few days, using Engineering to supplement the Paladin's lack of AoE at the lowest levels.

Anyhoo, on with the entry.

I rejoined the wild World of Warcraft about a month ago after about a 6-9 month break. Since then I've went through some interesting changes. As a level 70 mage, I'm left with a few options. I could run Kara for some epics and then attempt to move on to harder and more challenging raids. I could PvP till the cows come home and end up with some nice Gladiator gear, or I could raise my tailoring skill to about a bazillion and craft myself some epic sets. Nevermind the 5,000 gold for an epic flying mount. The point is that currently this seems like a lot more work than play.

It all boils down to gear and gold. You can't get into a good raiding guild without being geared (and thusly you get gear from being in a good raiding guild), you can't run some of the harder endgame raids without great gear due to the fact you'll get crushed like an annoying insect by the bosses, and you can't run heroics (a slightly easier way to get gear instead of attempting the horror that is a Kara PUG) unless you're geared enough to attract a strong PUG and survive the run. If you have enough gold, you can just buy yourself some epics, but we're talking thousands what with the price on mats and labor.

I'm not a big fan of PvP because...well...I'm Alliance. That says enough about our battlegrounds right there. So many decisions, which one is right? Seriously, I'm open to suggestions. My relationship with WoW is of a love-hate nature. I love the game, but I hate how I end up feeling adrift and lost when all of these tedious options arise. Maybe someday an MMO will come along that doesn't give me these unsavory feelings when I hit the level cap. I certainly hope so.

The season one arena gear becomes purchasable with battleground honor tomorrow. That's a start. Hit up those EotS, AV and AB double honor weekends and you'll have some epics in no time. I've got my eyes on a staff, and that'll help. I've found a guild that can run Kara well and most of the members are pretty decently geared and that's another start. You can always farm for money and mats, but that's another one of the 'more work than play' aspects of WoW. Sure, there are great times in WoW, especially when you find a guild full of friendly and helpful people, but sometimes the negatives outweigh the benefits. Then again, I've tried other MMOs and they just can't spark that initial 'ooh' factor that World of Warcraft did for me in the very beginning.

So for now I trudge on in the pursuit of epics and leveling alts. I'm sure you'll hear more from me again, and most likely about WoW. Kanthalos sends his regards, but graduating college > MMOs at the moment. I hope you enjoyed my WoW insight.

~Anaktoria

When you combine AoE grinding with a good leveling guide like Joana's Horde Leveling Guide or Brian Kopp's Alliance Leveling Guide AoE grinding will allow you to level a mage in matter of a few days. And once you hit level 70, these same techniques will make you ass-loads of gold.

The mobs you will want to focus on are Lesser Rock Elementals and Rock Elementals. While I wouldn't say their respawn rates are super-fast, they are fast enough and the area large enough to conceivably support 5-6 players grinding simultaneously. Optimal use of the area would be 2-3 players, however, and if you are alone you should never run out of mobs while grinding.

These rock elementals also drop excellent vendor trash for this level range. You can easily net up to 8 gold an hour just by keeping and selling items like Lifeless Stones, Jagged Pieces of Stone, and Smooth Stone Chips. They also have superb drop rates for Elemental Earth, Deeprock Salt and Solid Stone, which are all used in crafting.

All in all, this is a great grinding spot to level quickly when you get impatient about waiting for your mount, and it's also a great area to make sure you have the funds to afford that mount. Given that there are also a few "kill xx mobs for drops" quests right nearby for this area, this is my spot of choice for these levels.

I've been using The Ultimate World of Warcraft Guide lately, and let me tell you it's good. With a one-time fee you get access to a continually updated database of guides covering how to make lots of gold, how to level quickly and easily, what the best raiding armor for your class is and where to get it and even some exploits they cover it all!

To begin with you’re going to need some herb, and I don’t mean the kind your brother-in-law sells in plastic baggies. You can either be an herbalist and farm it or you can buy it all from the auction house. Even farming, though, you will still need to spend gold on vials and training costs.

The amount of gold needed is approximately 40 to 50 gold if you farm all of the herbs. If you want to buy everything you need from the auction house expect to spend ALOT. And expect that the herbs you need will not always be there. Because of this I recommend taking the Herbalism skill if you want to be an alchemist.

These are the herbs you will need total to go from 0-300 skill points:

• Peacebloom - 60 (3 stacks)
• Silverleaf - 60 (3 stacks)
• Mageroyal - 20 (1 stacks)
• Briarthorn - 90 (5 stacks)
• Stranglekelp - 50 (3 stacks)
• Bruiseweed - 35 (2 stacks)
• Wild Steelbloom - 10 (1 stacks)
• Kingsblood - 40 (2 stacks)
• Liferoot - 40 (2 stacks)
• Goldthorn - 50 (2 stacks)
• Khadgar’s Whisker - 20 (1 stacks)
• Sungrass - 70 (4 stacks)
• Blindweed - 35 (2 stacks)
• Arthas’ Tears - 25 (2 stacks)
• Golden Sansam - 60 (3 stacks)
• Mountain Silversage - 30 (2 stacks)

Skill Points: 1 to 50
Make 60 minor healing potions. You need 55 skill points for the next step; don’t worry if the minor healing pots don’t get you to 60 skill. Make sure to keep the minor healing potions, however, as you will need them later.

Once you hit 50 talk to the appropriate trainer to become Journeyman Alchemist. You have to be level 10 to become Journeyman Alchemist.

Skill Points: 50 to 125
The minor healing potions made earlier are a component of lesser healing potions. You now want to use them to make lesser healing potions to get to 110 skill points. If you don’t reach 110, make elixirs of wisdom until you do.

At 110 train the healing potion recipe; make those until you hit 125 skill points. Then talk to the appropriate trainer to become Expert Alchemist. You have to be level 20 to become Expert Alchemist.

Skill Points: 125 to 200
Continue making healing potions until you reach 140 skill points. Then make lesser mana potions to get to 155, greater healing potions to get to 185 and elixirs of agility to get to 200.

Once you reach 200 skill points talk to the appropriate trainer to become Artisan Alchemist. You have to be level 35 to become Artisan Alchemist.

Skill Points: 200 to 265
Make some more elixirs of agility to get to 210. Make elixirs of greater defense until 215 and then make superior healing potions until 230. Make elixirs of detect undead to get to 250 and elixir of greater agility to get to 265.

Skill Points: 265 to 300
Although you can get to 300 using the elixir of detect demon recipe, the gromsblood needed is expensive when bought from the auction house. If you are an herbalist and are able to farm the gromsblood, price won’t matter and the elixir of demon detect may be the way to go. Otherwise you should use vendor-obtained recipe’s to get from 265 to 300 skill points.

The easiest recipes to use for training are superior mana potions to get to 285 skill points and major healing potions to get to 300. You can obtain the superior mana potion recipe from Ulthir in Darnassus or Algernon in Undercity and the major healing potion recipe from Evie Whirlbrew in Everlook.

For a complete listing of all Horde and Alliance Alchemy profession trainers, check this Allakhazam guide.

I also highly recommend using the Gatherer mod, which will allow you to track all the herb nodes you encounter and then display them on your map.

To learn how to take your alchemy skill all the way to 375 try out The Ultimate World of Warcraft Guide. Heck, with the Ultimate WoW Guide, you can learn how to level any profession to 375. With a one-time fee you get access to a continually updated database of guides covering how to make lots of gold, how to level quickly and easily, what the best raiding armor for your class is and where to get it and even some exploits they cover it all!

It drops from the level 58-60 elite Spectral Researchers located in Scholomance. Taking these down solo is not hard once you level past 60 - for a level 70 it should hella easy.

The drop rate used to be totally low, but it was increased pretty significantly with patch 2.0 Yet it still sells for decent gold on most servers.

As with any enchant recipe, especially weapon enchants, your biggest returns on gold will come from using this enchant on other players’ gear in return for gold. Mainly you will make your gold from level 19 twinks wanting it so they can own in Warsong Gulch.

Dude, you should check out The Ultimate World of Warcraft Guide. It's a never-ending source of awesome insider information about WoW. And it's constantly updated - you pay once and get a lifetime of free updates, so this is one guide that will never become out-of-date!

However, World of Warcraft power leveling is alive and well. In fact, if some forum posts I’ve read are any indicator, it may be (or may used to have been) one of the main methods pay-for-leveling services employ at higher levels. So how do you do it?

To get experience for a kill you must “tag” it, meaning be the first to do damage to it. Then no matter who does damage to the mob, you will get credit for the kill. However, if a character who could not otherwise receive experience damages the mob your experience reward will decrease significantly.

So to power level in World of Warcraft you must have an ungrouped companion within experience range of the mob; optimally the mob will be green (almost but not yet gray) to your companion. Now when you tag the mob and your companion finishes it off, you will get 100% experience for the kill.

Using this technique with a friend or guildmate, you can solo mobs three levels higher than you for the sweet xp they give. And you can do it fast. Better yet, bring along two friends - as long as the mob is at least green to them and you tag it first you will still get the full amount of experience points. Don’t you love World of Warcraft?

To read more about how to use this power leveling technique, look at the WoWWiki entry on Mob XP.

I've been using The Ultimate World of Warcraft Guide lately, and let me tell you it's good. With a one-time fee you get access to a continually updated database of guides covering how to make lots of gold, how to level quickly and easily, what the best raiding armor for your class is and where to get it and even some exploits they cover it all!

If you find yourself alone there you can easily achieve a 20,000 exp/hour rate or more. Because there are so many of these mobs there it will also accomodate three, maybe even four players grinding with little or no interruption.

This spot is also especially nice if you are a skinner, as you can make a killing from skinning these turtles. Another bonus: because it is on the far end of the map and right next to a Horde outpost, those playing on the World of Warcraft PVP realms will not have to worry so much about getting ganked.

I've been using The Ultimate World of Warcraft Guide lately, and let me tell you it's good. With a one-time fee you get access to a continually updated database of guides covering how to make lots of gold, how to level quickly and easily, what the best raiding armor for your class is and where to get it and even some exploits they cover it all!