Welcome to Gold Capped!

Welcome, one and all, to my blog about reaching the gold cap in World of Warcraft. Join me on my adventures over the coming months and let's get rich together.

Yes, it may be a bit ambitious to call the blog Gold Capped! when 214,748g 36s 46c is so far away. But through various tricks I've learned on my own and from other helpful posters on the web, I know I can do it. It might take a year or so but I want to make it happen.

Why max out your gold reserves? Really, to see if I can do it. Also, my schedule with work and exercise has become quite sporadic (and demanding!) lately, so raiding doesn't seem to be a possibility, much less a priority. Leveling is something I have come to see as a necessary evil rather than an intrinsically enjoyable aspect of the game. RP is straight up mega-nerdy, and PVP/Arena has never appealed to me (it just feels like a waste of time). The economy in WoW fascinates me and I like the idea of trying to beat the system.

Where are you starting from? Not from scratch, that's for sure! Let me give you the rundown on my toons:

• I have two level 80 characters. Their tradeskills are maxed out; I have a scribe, a blacksmith, a miner, and an herbalist. You can probably guess how those professions are distributed among the two toons.

• I have two bank alts. One is strictly for glyphs, which on my server are not a big money-maker, but profitable enough. Selling glyphs requires an immense amount of management and it forces me to play the AH meta-game differently than I do with other goods. So there's the glyph-seller and the seller of everything else.

• I have a smattering of other lower level toons. As I said before, I'm not big into leveling, but I also don't delete characters just for the hell of it. I wanted to learn which class best suited me in WoW and eventually the two that I leveled up wound up providing the answer to that question. In the end, I find four of the classes in the game exciting and the other six rather dull; I'm going to keep all of this intentionally vague so people don't figure out who I am, but suffice it to say that the two 80s I have are both "interesting" classes.

• The bank alt just hit 10,000 gold last night. That's the pool of gold that starts this experiment: 10,000 even. I realize that to a lot of people, that sounds like a lot, but let's put it in perspective: I'm still less than 5% of the way to where I want to be! 10,000 lets me do a fair bit of investing but doesn't allow me to take huge risks.

So what's the plan?

The plan has three prongs:

• Play the AH for fun and profit. Buy low, sell high. Buy in bulk and sell in small stacks. Remember that profits of 2g or 3g add up (way up!) over time.
• Craft! With inscription, this is a must. Blacksmithing is more of a challenge but there are still items that reward the skilled crafter.
• Level alts to gain access to more professions (and the gold that comes with them!) I've barely touched my DK, and I don't plan to make a raider of him or anything. But he's going to be picking up two professions that I don't have at this point. I also have big plans for a little guy who's just sitting at 16 right now. If the DK leveling goes quickly enough I'll work on him before patch 3.2 drops, otherwise he'll get the benefit of the new heirloom chest!

I expect I'll flesh things out more thoroughly in the future, onceI have a handle on what I'm doing; for now this will have to serve as the introductory post.

Stay profitable!