All she wants to do is dance

— but you can keep the damned romance.

In any case, it’s not all she does. Mostly, Elegia stands by the mailbox in the Exodar, and occasionally she shuttles down to the auction chaps. Elegia, as it turned out, is my “auction char,” of which I’d never had one before, and I’m still a little surprised at myself. Normally I consider myself far, far above such petty concerns as making money in MMOs — or rather, I know I’m a crafter ho, and in most games crafter-hoeing isn’t profitable until you reach very high levels of it, if ever. It’s difficult to make a profit in games where — as always seems to be the case — raw materials sell for more than the finished product. In WoW, where they admitted that crafting was designed as a money sink (which, ironically, is one of the things that made me leave the first time), it’s totally obvious unless, like me, you spend 6 months pretending you don’t notice that you never have any money.

This time around I started WoW with a little more experience and revised expectations. I took gathering professions and told myself sternly that I would NOT craft. Okay, so that didn’t quite work out, but I’m mostly not crafting and I am selling a lot of what I harvest at auction. I’ve been surprised to find that almost everything sells — even low level stuff  like light leather, peacebloom, and clam meat. This being the Winter Veil event, eggs have been selling like crazy, and when I finally got a clue and started making the gingerbread cookies themselves (needed for a quest), they sold like more crazy. Recipes from out of the way vendors? Sell like crazy. Pets that people can’t be arsed to travel to get for themselves? Sell like crazy, even with a several hundred percent markup on the base price. Everything sells like crazy. even with me keeping my prices lower than what Auctioneer reckons I should use, half the time (because making profit is one thing, but ripping people off — even of e-money — is another). I’m not the undercutting ho of the century, but I’d rather undercharge than overcharge. Whch I’m sure has nothing to do with me never getting rich in MMOs, so shaddap.

While the value of an Azerothian groat may not be what it was, in a couple of weeks and with really rather minimal effort, I am now sitting on a little over 100 gold, which is probably more than I ever had in my previous WoW stint except when I was saving for that 90g+ mount at 40. (Another good change, cheaper lower-level mounts. Yay!) Auctioneer has been very helpful in working out what to charge for what, but since I barely understand what it does, I’m sure I’m not using it very effectively. Still, it does take the drudgery out of price checking, and more to the point it has a much better memory than I do. Where my auctions haven’t sold it’s because it was something people didn’t want (so okay, Darkshore grouper isn’t a hot ticket pet-feeding item, so sue me) rather than because it was overpriced.

While I subscribe to the “you won’t take it with you, especially if it’s MMO money” idea, having a little cash does make a few things easier. The main thing is that I’m not worrying myself bald over how I’ll get Icewolfe’s mount when she turns 30, which she would already be if I weren’t such an altoholic slacker. Selling this stuff at auction is also, as it turns out, a much better outlet for my harvesting mania than selling stuff to vendors or trying to use it all myself past the point of its usefulness in leveling crafting. I’ll be interested to see how stuff sells when I make it into the next tier of goods, which would mean being less slackerish and levelling Icewolfe some more. Hopefully stuff will sell just as well, hopefully for a little more money, and Elegia will be dancing all the way to the bank.