Gold and Silence

One of the first things people ask when they start playing is "how can I get gold?" The best first answer is not from a pay site. I will say here and now, if what you really want out of the game is to be swimming in gold because that's what you've chosen as your measure of success, roll on a high-population realm.

It's almost impossible to be poor on a realm like Illidan. Yesterday while I was waiting for the LFD queue to pop I rode around Durotar and mined a stack of copper ore. When I got to the AH to price it the lowest buyout for a full stack was 12g. This is insane in my opinion so I listed mine at 8g buyout (which still felt outrageously high). My auction sold in five minutes.

Everything sells on Illidan. Engineering items. Bone chips. Elegant feathers. "Of the Whale" gear. Everything. The only items that seem to be dropping in value are the bind on equip blues, which are less valuable due to the proliferation of heirloom items and random dungeon reward blues. The LFD blues are especially good and have no level requirement. Some slots are more common than others - gloves, especially - but there are still some slots left that can't be filled with heirlooms or LFD blues, and the BoEs have kept their high value.

But truly, everything sells on a high pop server. Unlike medium pop, if you craft something halfway decent on a high pop server it actually sells. There are enough people just leveling characters that they buy your useful items, and usually at a decent price. Unfortunately, the raw materials used to craft an item always sell more than the created item itself. The only exception to this is very high-end items that involve rare recipes or crafting cooldowns, and they will often sell for more than the price of the raw materials.

But not everyone lives on a realm like Illidan where the streets of Orgrimmar are paved with gold. On a medium pop server you will still have a decent economy, but the market for crafted goods drops off. In this case the best scenario is to take gathering professions only while leveling, and don't drop one of them for a crafting profession until you have your epic flight. Players are smart, and it doesn't take long for a level 80 to powerlevel a gathering profession, so there won't be any monopolies or niches that you have for yourself. You'll need to walk your new character to Ironforge or Thunder Bluff and check the auction house for yourself and look at the prices for herbs and ore before you choose.

Don't bother checking the price of leather, just take it as your second profession and consider it a bonus because mining and herbalism don't really mix as gathering professions. Some people will say that it's very feasible if you get a gathering add-on that shows you where all the resource spawn points are for both mining and herbalism, but for most of us we only have one resource radar active at a time and we 'gather as we go' instead of doing deliberate farming runs. Except maybe if we're looking for titanium in Wintergrasp.

The other option to skinning as a secondary profession is to level enchanting. In classic WoW enchanting was akin to taking a vow of poverty because it required you to shred all of your green and blue drops, it leveled slowly, and it was very hard to sell your wares. These days with people of all levels running random dungeons through RFD all hours of the day the price of enchanting materials has dropped through the floor making it extremely easy to level. With the addition of scrolls from Inscription it has become easy to sell your wares through the auction house. It's not as profitable as just skinning and selling the leather, but it's far cheaper than it used to be.

If I had to recommend professions right now, I would choose herbalism and enchanting (which I will probably do with my next alt) because the herbs sell very well and at high levels you are still going to find value in your enchants as people continually upgrade their gear. There is still money to be made in the mining-jewelcrafting market also, but the profit margin is narrowing and the buy-in cost is higher. Pick flowers, enchant items, and take the sure path to profits - and enjoy the added bonus of having fresh enchants on all of your gear while you level.

On a low-pop server the economics are different. Basically, you can't ever count on someone being available to buy any of your goods at all, no matter how valuable they are. With the new LFD tool I am sorely tempted to reroll on the lowest population server in the game just to enjoy the silence. Believe it or not, there are some servers out there where people don't spam in the trade channel all day and where you never hear a peep in the Barrens. The price you pay for that silence though is a lack of gold, because there isn't anyone to do any business with.

In this case the herbalism-enchanting combination doesn't work as well (although it is still viable). What you will rely on more is being able to get some return value from your crafted goods. For a low pop server I would recommend mining and blacksmithing. For one thing, it is easier to get a hold of ore because the nodes are farmed less. Secondly, a large part of the items you craft are either plate armor or weapons, and they vendor for a fairly high price. Even though the economy is terrible you should end up with enough gold to pay for your repairs and skills - which can be a real issue sometimes on a low pop server. The changes in leveling speed have made it easy for people to skip through the 30's and 40's so fast that their income doesn't keep up, and you end up choosing not to learn Eye of Kilrogg or Feint or Wingclip because you just don't have the funds at the time.

But the macroeconomic choice is the primary one - you need to choose between a super-healthy economy of a high-pop server, or the silence and pleasure of a low-pop community. I'm leaning toward low-pop because I know I can make it, and I'm tired of the trolls.