My own personal gold challenge

So, background. A while back, the spouse and I decided we wanted some Recruit-A-Friend (RAF) mounts and the short-term leveling bonuses that came with it. It was during one of those sales where the base game costs $5 and the current expansion is like $15 or something. We looked at the cost of the game plus 60 days (since you need to do that to qualify for the RAF mount) and what we’d get out of it and decided it was worth it to us. So we created second accounts, got our mounts, and leveled up some alts quickly. It was fun and, for us, worth it. We let the time lapse and the accounts went inactive.

This past Christmas break, I received a 60-day time card. Now, I could add it to my main account but it was an opportunity to try something for this blog and my own curiosity. Are WoW tokens an option for me? Could I realistically support my WoW playing via the token?

The RAF account I was thinking about already had two 90s on it and I was going to get a boosted 90 since WoD was on sale. I decided to try to level to 100 quickly and I opted to purchase the garrison upgrades, since I figured once that was rolling it would pay for itself. It has on other characters, but that has been over the course of a few months of mostly neglectful tending. I don’t check all of my characters every day. It would take too long. But the ones that I do check more often are doing well and a few could purchase a token.

For the RAF account, these characters basically started off level 90 with no gold, or at least under 100 gold, and I’d like to get them up to self-sufficiency. I’d like to see if I can generate enough gold before the time card expires and how I have to play to do that.

What is your gold goal?

40,000 gold, on one character, by February 25th.

Why?

To be able to purchase a WoW token and still have gold to upgrade garrisons or anything else that is needed. Basically, if this were a realistic thing, I wouldn’t want to spend all of my money on WoW tokens but not have enough left over to do anything. The goal is above the recent token prices by a little more than 10% for this reason. Plus, by being a fair bit above the average, when the price fluctuates I’d still be able to buy a token that month.

Any limitations?

Nothing yet per se. Not making this a huge personal challenge like the ironman or anything like that. Just curiosity really. I was using BoA gear and leveling potions to try to get up to 100 quickly so I could run old raids for gold and doing other dailies.

What things have you done so far?

Questing mostly. Bonus missions and quests have been pretty good for generating gold. I’m planning to get the level three Inn for missions and more followers but beyond that, I’m not going to go out of my way to do a lot of crafting and other collection based gold-making on these characters. (The because to that why is in the next question.)

The biggest daily influx of gold has been from doing the LFRs that have the bonus satchel. That’s close to a minimum 700 gold per run. It isn’t something I can do everyday, but this past weekend I was able to run 3-4 LFRs with the baggie in one day. As a DPS. Which I think says something, but that’s for another post.

What about crafting and playing the auction house?

I’ve never been great about playing the auction house but I’ve had some success. Still, that is not a game for me. I could research it and perhaps get better but that is not something I want to invest my time in. I could stand to be better but I don’t log on to play World of Auction House.

That might come across as looking down on those that enjoy the auction house, but that’s not my aim. It is just isn’t what interests me. So while I’ll do those things, and perhaps get better and learn to support myself more, that isn’t the way I play nor would I want to.

Why not just do it on the account you already have? See if you can generate the 40,000 gold on already established characters?

Well, that’s kind of the point. I am curious if my playstyle would allow me to both explore the game as I like to and generate enough gold to pay for it. If I started off with money in the bank and established garrisons and full-speed flight etc, it doesn’t address what it would be for me to both experience the game the way I like it and make enough gold.

60 days is not a month.

That’s true and an even greater point for my playstyle. If I can’t even make 40,000 gold in 60 days, there’s no way I can do it in 30. This extra time gives me the greatest chance of success and I’m still not very optimistic.

I’m tracking my 3 WoD characters on the account. One is 91 (resto shaman), sitting in the level 1 garrison not doing much, with about 1,000 gold. She’s a healer, so that might be a good way to go because healers and tanks get the bonus satchels much more often. But right now, she’s just gathering resources and leveling followers while I work on the other characters. I plan to get her garrison to level 2 soon so that I can start doing the mine at least – although again, another character to log onto and do chores with.

Another character is 99, just short of 100 (arms warrior) and has around 4,600 gold and is in the level 2 garrison. She’ll be getting to 100 soon and I hope for her to be my main focus for this. Because I like her the best as a characters, not because she's good at generating gold. She’s not having the very good gold luck.

That would be my, begrudgingly, 100 destruction warlock (because demonology). She’s just short of 10,500 gold and has had a fair amount of luck on drops and gold and LFRs.

My initial thoughts are that while I could support a subscription with WoW tokens, I don’t find it very fun so far. I have a chore I have to do every day (make over 1,300 gold) and every day that I don’t do that, it gets a little higher the next day. I need to log on and check follower missions, run raids I don’t really care about, do other events that are good for gold flow but aren’t really fun for me. And most importantly, for an alt-loving person like me – I can’t play my other, lower alts very much. That’s to say nothing of how draining it is becoming to log on to each and every garrison and do the chores.

This is not a new problem I’ve discovered. Many others have talked about it for a while, and I think even I mentioned it at some point. But in trying to focus on these other characters to make the gold necessary, it really brought it home how much it isn’t working for me yet.

I have said “so far” and “yet” because I am trying to be open to the possibility. I’ve mentioned before that one of my favorite characters I’ve ever made was on a RaF account and it is the warrior mentioned above. She is such a fun little gnome warrior. Love her. I’m not very good with her yet but I enjoy playing her and she just looks awesome. But I can’t justify paying for this second account and I won’t. But if I could pay for it with WoW tokens? Would it then be worth it?

To be honest, that’s a whole other problem I have with WoW tokens. For me, specifically. The money I spent on the token could be used to purchase some mounts I don’t have. Or toys. Or pets. Or support other characters as they get garrisons. 40,000 gold would upgrade a garrison to level 3 with most (all?) buildings to level 3 and I’d be able to do that each month.

The 60 day time card will expire on February 25th, so I have over 35 days left to make the money I need.

We’ll see what comes of it by then.

Recruit-a-friend for mounts and levels

If you are someone that plays primarily with another person, the recruit-a-friend program is a pretty decent deal I think.

For $20 you can get a mount, several low-level characters to 90, and a couple thousand gold if you have the time and dedication.

I really enjoy doing this for a number of reasons. One, I love making characters. I’ve long identified as an altoholic. If I can make multiple characters in a game, I’m likely to make the maximum allowed if your game pulls in me. I love trying out various combinations of skills, roles, and races/backgrounds.

Two, my spouse is a pretty big altoholic as well, although slightly less of one than me. That being the case, we usually make characters that go together; but they obviously need to move at the pace of the one the plays less. That doesn’t bother me, but when we do this recruit-a-friend xp level boost, we can move [GENDER PRONOUN] characters up a bit and then I can play my corresponding character solo.

Three, you might try class/gender/race/spec combinations more freely on your temporary recruit-a-friend account than you would on your “main” one. For most people, this isn’t a big plus because they’ve got plenty of spots left on their account or they aren’t hesitant to delete characters. For others…of whom I make no claims for or against…this is a nice benefit.

If you want to do this without adding another credit card into the mix, the process for us has generally been –

1. Wait until Blizzard is having their 50% off sale for the “old content” WoW (currently up through Pandaria as of this writing).
2. Purchase a $15 3-month time card
3. Person 1 will send a recruit-a-friend invite to the e-mail of Person 2’s battle.net I.D.’s account.
4. Then Person 2 will create the recruit-a-friend account under that battle.net I.D.’s. You may have up to 3 WoW accounts under 1 battle.net I.D., I believe.
5. Purchase the $5 WoW
6. Add the 3 month time card
7. Start leveling up together, grant the extra levels gained to a different character (same server, same side only.)
8. Let the recruit-a-friend account expire

By having it linked with your main battle.net I.D. (as opposed to making a new one) you get access to any mounts, heirlooms, pets, or other account wide stuff that you’ve already unlocked. Plus if you get something new, the main account will get it.

This past year happened to line-up with the Midsummer Festival, so we were able to run around honoring/desecrating fires, getting lots of XP, a fair amount of gold, and enough flowers to get the new toys and pets. It did get a bit grindy at times, so we broke it up with some dungeons and quests.

We got 4 total characters to 90 (2 of mine, 2 of theirs), plus by granted levels others to reach 80, 78, and assorted other lower levels. I’m guessing their account added 130 levels across 6 characters in that time. This might not seem like a lot for the 3-4 months of play that we had, but when you don’t have a lot of hours in a week (or a night), it works out pretty well.

There was not a lot of gold generated this time, but I was a bit busy and didn’t really focus on generating gold. It won’t make much but it was still a few thousand that was added to the various coffers.

There are a few drawbacks to note.

Financial Cost – obviously, you are paying for a new game and at least 3 months of time. You get a new mount and some leveling but there is still a fee that must be paid.

Time Cost – if you want to get the most of out of it, you won’t be spending a lot of time on your main account, so they won’t be getting MacGuffin stones or other things you have been working on grinding out.

Grinding – If you want to maximize the benefit of this, you’ll want to power level through as much content as you can. Not really reading quests, not really enjoying content, just doing it. That’s not too bad if you’ve done the same quest a million times and were hoping to skip some boring areas anyway but it can weigh some people down. It can also burn you out a bit if you aren’t careful when you are done. Like any grinding can of course, but still it is not much use in getting a lot of levels and a new mount if you end up needing to take a break from WoW.

Reputation and professions – Your gear says level 90, but your herbalism says level 6. Since you are mainly doing quests and dungeons as quickly as possible, you aren’t typically doing much in the ways of skills. Now, that’s not as huge problem anymore since Blizzard has made it possible to pick high level stuff with low-level skills. But it still means you’ll have to grind up your professions at some point. Same with reputations.

Saying goodbye – if you are a person that gets somewhat attached to your characters and you are the person making the temporary recruit-a-friend account, you might love the new characters you created and try to “rationalize” keeping the second account. And now you are suddenly paying for 2 accounts. To be honest, I think about 3 of my favorite characters I’ve made (by spec or just general design/theme) have been on a recruit-a-friend account. If I could switch them out with some of my characters on my main account…well, I’d have trouble picking who would go to the backbench, but I’d definitely be thinking about it.

There are likely some other drawbacks but those are the main ones that come to mind.

Generally, this works well when you feel like you’ve pretty much done everything in an expansion and are just kind of coasting. It still is doing the same content of course, but with a new drive and a new goal, it can make it palatable.

Plus – flying kitty mount!