Making Gold from WoW Expansions

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In World of Warcraft, expansions are constantly being released (currently 1 every 2 years). The timing of expansion cycles has a major influence on which strategies are effective at making gold due to its influence on supply and demand.

In other words, whenever an expansion comes out, the supply and demand for various items changes greatly and as a result the price fluctuates wildly.

Throughout this guide, we will give you strategies that you can use to make gold off of these turbulent times. We will always label each strategy as part of one of three categories: New Expansion, Mid-Expansion, and Pre-Expansion.

New Expansions - 0-3 Months After Expansion Release

When a new expansion comes out, the supplies of some items dry up and the demand skyrockets. This results in massive price inflation. A notable example of this is the cost of the newly introduced ores with each expansion:

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- Demand for the top tiers of new ore skyrockets as players try to level up their prospective professions to the new cap in order to get the bonus perks and epics.

- The supply of this ore is very low, because players are out participating in the new quests and leveling up rather than farming and gathering ores.

This perfect storm of supply and demand. The end result is that new ore prices are elevated as much as 20 times their normal price (Saronite Ore stacks were as high as 399g a stack on my server at WoTLK release).

We will be referencing this period throughout the guide and taking advantage of this period can lead to massive profits for the enterprising player.

Mid-Expansion Cycle - 3 Months - Prior to Next Expansion

This refers to the time period from ~3 months after an expansion comes out up until about a month before the next expansion comes out. This is nearly all of the time of an expansion's life-cycle, and as a result it will be the focus of this guide.

The mid-expansion cycle time period is characterized by stability. Items rarely spike in value, though certain brief shortages may cause prices to fluctuate on a server-by-server basis.

Additionally, another characteristic of the mid-expansion cycle is that prices for raw materials, like ore, tends to slowly decay over time as more and more players hit the profession cap.

Occasionally, a content patch will interrupt this stability introducing some unknown new factor. For example, the introduction of Epic Gems into WoTLK and Cataclysm from content patches resulted in a subsequent tanking of the market for rare gems.

For example, Bold Scarlet Rubies sold for as much as 100 gold prior to the introduction of Bold Cardinal Rubies. Now, Bold Scarlet Rubies rarely sell for anything.

With that said, the primary characteristic of stability is simple: it is a lot harder to lose gold by playing the auction house and rarely will investing in a certain item or practice end up making you no gold. However, the flip side is that these time periods are not as profitable, relatively speaking - there is of course plenty of gold to be made no matter what the current expansion cycle.

Pre-Expansion

Pre-Expansion refers to the time period just prior to a new expansion coming out (starting ~2 months prior to expansion release).

For smart players, this is a time to clear house; when you completely empty your bank of old materials that will be able to lose their value. At this point, it is very unwise to invest in any high-level materials like level 80 items, gems and potions, for as soon as the new expansion comes out these will be entirely outdated.

Some players are able to make money speculating during that time as well, which we will cover in later sections. Speculating involves betting that the prices of a certain commodity or item will increase in value in the future.

In World of Warcraft, this involves buying certain items or trade goods, hoping they will rise in price significantly at the release of the next expansion. Speculating is very risky but can make players a lot of gold.

An example of a successful speculator would be those who bought cheap level "old-world" ores and gems prior to the release of The Burning Crusade. The gems and ore needed to level up Jewelcrafting caused massive inflation in this market, and many gems in ore increased 10-20x in price.

We will cover this in more detail throughout the guide. For now, we will start looking at different methods for earning gold.

---> Next: Methods of Making Gold in WoW 

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