As I tool around on my Netherwing dragon (yay!), a new trend has emerged. From friends, guild members, and complete strangers alike comes the question…

“How did you get the money to buy your flight skill?”

It’s a simple question, but what surprises me the most is how often I am asked it. So I thought I would go into exactly how I went about getting the cash.

First, a quick note about saving money. Any money. As my friends would gleefully tell you, I spend money faster than it comes in.

Got a new piece of head armor with gem slots? Time to head straight to the AH looking for precut blue gems to fill it out. My first bit of advice to you is, don’t start trying to save gold while still worried about gearing your character out. You’ll get about 1500g into it and find yourself seeing JUST the right thing you simply MUST have in the AH. Be happy with where you are at, or at least plan on getting your gear upgrades from instance runs.

Now, the first thing is that all of my gold saving has come from Tailoring, Mining, Daily Quests and green and blue drops.

I did not start saving for an epic mount until I had already been level 70 for a few months. As a druid, I had my flight form, and I was quite happy with it. I did not buy a regular mount, and saw no need for one. I was under the mistaken idea that, just as a regular land mount was 60% movement speed boost and epic land mount was 100% movement speed boost, that the flight mounts worked the same. I just couldn’t see the point to spending 5000 gold on a 40% increase in speed.

Well, I happened one fine day on www.wowwiki.com to see that epic flight mounts were NOT 100% movement speed boost, but 280%. Also, you needed the epic flight skill in order to start the Netherwing quest chain, in search of the Netherwing flight mount. And yes, 5000g was worth it to me to be a dragonrider.

So, as a level 70, I had leveled Mining to max, and farmed a lot of ore, but I had not used it. It sat in the bank along with all the gems I had gathered, against the day when I made a jewelcrafter alt.

When I started to save gold for the mount, I had dropped Mining to take Tailoring and trained that to max, and I farmed Primals, cloth, and green BOE drops so that every single time a cloth transmute for Primal Mooncloth, Spellcloth or Shadowcloth was ready, it got used with no wasted time.

I use auctioneer with all of it’s associated addons. One of the auctioneer addons gives you a popup window on mouseover of an item, showing what it would sell for direct to vendor. For quest rewards, if it wasn’t an upgrade for my gear, I always chose the one that would sell for the most to a vendor.

My rule of thumb was, if the BOE green was worth 2.5 gold or more, I would sell it to a vendor. I never, ever sold a green BOE on the AH. If the green BOE was worth less than 2.5g, I disenchanted it and stored the mats for Imbued Netherweave Cloth. If you cannot disenchant yourself, see if you know a friend that would be willing to D/E your greens for you.

In my opinion, the cost of posting an item up for sale in the AH is not worth the small possibility of a larger profit than vendoring an item. And if the item is worth less than 2.5g, than the enchanting mats you will get are worth more.

Selling all of my stored ore, gems, enchanting mats and cloth transmutes made me around 2000g to 2500g.

From Tailoring and doing transmutes and tracking my profits, I finally decided that the cloth transmutes always sold, but that the components that make a cloth transmute is in many cases worth more than the cloth itself. Farming Primal Fire and selling it direct would be far more profitable. The only exception to this rule is to be a Tailor and performing your Specialized transmute. Specialization grants you two cloth per 1 transmute, and that makes a good profit.

Still, while dumping my mats and ore on the AH was a good start, it just isn’t enough. When grinding Primals or for cloth and green BOEs, there are also the occasional rare Blue BOE drop, especially Profession recipes. These I always sent to AH for a nice Auctioneer guided profit.

The one thing that I cannot overemphasize, however, is the importance of getting attuned to all available daily quests and running them every day. This is where I truly made my money.

There are two daily quests available at level 70 as long as you have a flying mount. A very short mini quest leads you to the mountain peaks of Terrokar Forest. There, you fight for Sha’tari Skyguard reputation. The first daily quest is a simple bombing run. You have an inexhaustible supply of bombs and are to destroy 20 clutches of eggs that are in treetops. Completing this quest nets 11.99 gold each day.

The second quest comes from a Sha’tari Scout, taht spawns as a prisoner in one of three locations. Check www.wowwiki.com under Faction => Sha’tari Skyguard for spawn locations. Talking to him activates an escort quest that can be done solo or with a party. You have to escort him down out of the trees. It is short, and the only spawned mobs are two birdmen that appear during your exit and attack. This quest can be soloed by any class. Completing this quest gets you another 12g, and a choice of 2 Unstable Health Potions or 2 Unstable Mana Potions every day.

So that is 24g every day. Both quests are quick if you’re lucky, so that’s not too bad.

The other set of dailies comes from the Blades Edge Plateaus, from the combined rep of Ogri’la and Sha’tari Skyguard camped there. There is a quest chain that requires 5 man parties to complete, that allow you to become Friendly with Ogri’la. These chains can be done by following another group that is doing the quest. Each quest requires looting an item dropped on the ground rather than looting a body, and for a brief time after a party has completed the quest, any one else nearby can quickly run over and loot it as well, completing the quest. The item does not disappear when looted. There are a few sections of this quest where having additional healers or DPS nearby can be a darn good thing, so if you are dogging a party doing the chain, please help out. It will be appreciated.

Completing this chain unlocks the Ogri’la and Sha’tari daily quests and quest chains in Blades Edge Mountains.

There are 2 daily quests available from Sha’tari here, and 2 from Ogri’la. they vary in difficulty, but each rewards you with 11.99 gold each turn in.

If you do all 6 possible daily quests, you end up with an income of 72 gold each day, plus drops and cloth. If you add this to the gains from any gathering Profession, say at a measly rate of 30 gold a day, which I think is reasonable, then assuming no blue drops, good green drops, no other quest completions at 70 which net good gold, and no Primal Fire or Primal Mana farming, you are still talking 100g a day, which last time I checked adds up to 5000g in 50 days.

50 days sure seems like a long time. And yet, when I purchased my epic flight skill about three weeks ago, I was broke afterwards. Absolutely dead broke. But I started the Netherwing daily quest chain, and continued my mining. And two days ago when I saw the Staff of Natural Fury in the AH for a buyout of 2000g, I had just exactly that amount on hand. Thats is no kidding 2000g in about three weeks without really trying, since after getting the epic mount flight skill I was burned out on daily quests for sha’tari and ogri’la and stopped doing them. Of course, there are 9 or 10 daily quests in the Netherwing rep area, so you don’t ahve to go traveling to get them all done.

If you do the daily quests, if you use a gathering profession, if you kill mobs in search of recipes or drops… and if you do not spend your money on the AH, you WILL save your money faster than you might think.

I hope that this helps someone to stay with it and see it through. In the end, just being able to mount that dragon and tool around in the sky is a damn fine feeling, and a good reward for your hard work.

The single biggest key?

Investing the time to complete those quests every day. Don’t give up, don’t put it off, and don’t procrastinate. Every day you put it off is another day that you are not saving money and getting it over with. Keep putting it off and you’ll find another month has passed you by, a month that will feel like you have been saving and getting nowhere, when really you haven’t. And please, don’t spend money in the AH. Focus on your savings first. There will be plenty of time to save money when you are farming Mining or Gathering at 280% speed.

It was a royal pain, and at the end I was so sick of the quests that I do not do any now. Not at all. I just can’t bring myself to do any of themever again.

Well, almost. Except for the Sha’tari bombing run ‘Bomb Them Again’ in Blades Edge Plateau. With an epic mount and a Riding Crop, it just feels too much like Top Gun. Boom!

I think someone should make a guild named Baskin Robbins, just so there is a place for all the many flavors of guild drama that develops.

You know, it can be amazing, the amount of drama you get in most any guild with more than 5 people. It shouldn’t be, but it is. If you take a moment to think about it, the larger a guild in WoW becomes, the more like high school it is. And we all know how free of drama your average high school is. Little cliques form, you get some that want to pvp all the time, some that want to be powerleveled by the higher level players, some that want free crafted gear, some that want to raid all the time, and of course those that just want to have fun, and firends to chat with and socialize with.

Heck, let’s have some fun, dissect how your average guild grows up.

You got 4 or 5 friends, maybe you start a guild because you thought up a cool name, and you want to design your own tabard, and that way you get a guild chat channel. That’s cool, now you and your 4 friends are in a guild. But it doesn’t change the game for you that much. Same friends, just easier to chat. It’s the same as getting together after school for some D&D or something. Maybe one of you gets cranky once in a while, but you are still friends. You knew each other before the guild, and if one person gets cranky, they’ll calm down eventually. There was a friendship before the guild, and the guild is only there to ease communications between the players. No more, no less.

But let’s look at even a small guild of 20 people. People that wanted to form a guild NOT because they were all tight friends that wanted a chat channel and a cool name. No, these people all want to play the content that requires groups. And to play group content you can either trust in getting together a group of mostly complete strangers, a group that only lasts as long as it takes to get the shared quests done, or you can try to join a group of people that get together regularly, and you know are pretty good. Or at least hope are pretty good. And this is where the drama comes into play.

Let’s look at how these larger guilds get new members. A wonderful source of drama. Since these guilds are built around the core idea of ‘lets get people together in a guild so I have others to do group content with’, all guilds are going to want to recruit people that will help them meet their goals. Remember, if you just want to play with your friends, or make new friends, then a small social guild is fine. We’re talking about the 15-20+ size guilds.

Some guilds, the hardcore raiders, are led by people that are dedicated to pushing through hard content fast. They want the best loot, they want to win every time, and as soon as they have mastered one instance or challenge, they want to move on to the next.

Death & Taxes is probably one of the most famous WoW guilds for it’s mastery of all end game content… and it is also famous for the many long hours every member is expected to play. To join Death & Taxes is a more rigorous process than nearly any job interview you could name, and a good example of the recruitment techniques of these guilds. They set standards and minimum entrance requirements. They usually require at least one group instance run with a new applicant to test if they can play well with others, and know their character. There may even be a requirement for several group runs to make sure that the player is reliable and committed to the schedule the guild demands. Mandatory attendance to guild raid events 3 or 4 times every week at a minimum is very common, because in an end game raiding guild, the whole point is to take on and advance through the end game content. As soon as one instance is cleared repeatedly, and all members have improved their gear as much as possible from it, it is time to move on to the next challenge. That instance will not be returned to, unless a brand new applicant joins the guild and needs to be ‘geared up’ to bring them up to the same level as the rest of the guild. And this in itself becomes a sticking point, as many of the more advancemetn oreinted guilds will NOT go back over old content jsut to gear up a new recruit. They expect that person to come to the guild ready to step right in, and that means the player had to come from another guild where he advanced very far and got great loot drops… and then chose to quit to join the new raiding guild. For reasons we will soon discuss, this kind of guild hopping leaves many hard feelings among the people in the guild you left behind, who feel that you ’stole’ loot they needed for their own guild advancement.

In this type of guild, it is expected that every member understands that they are not receiving gear for themselves. They are receiving gear expressly to help the entire guild be capable of tackling more difficult content. In a high end raiding guild, you do not earn your gear by simply being there. Gear often goes specifically to the person the guild leaders think will help the guild as a whole advance, and that means that if there are 3 mages on a run and the epic awesome mage helm drops, it is unlikely the three mages will be rolling to see who gets it. Instead, the guild leaders will decide amongst themselves, and will most likely hand it over to the mage that attends the most runs.

If a guild leadership loot system is not used, then most likely a DKP system for loot will be sued isntead. ‘DKP’ (or Dragon Kill Points) systems are ways to make sure loot goes to those with the most deedication to guild advancement. Many hardcore raiders will claim that DKP loot systems are the fairest, or at least most common ways of distributing loot, and the assertion seems to be that if everyone else is using DKP, then it must be fair, right?.

What DKP systems do is ensure that only the people that show up the most to events have enough points to win loot. If an item drops from a boss that multiple members of a run want, they bid on it by spending DKP points they have earned. Whoever bids the most wins the item. These bids are usually blind, and have minimum point costs. In some of them, you spend your points even if you don’t win the item. How do you get points? Why, by taking part in a raid, of course. So the more raids you go on, the more points you accrue… and the greater the likelihood that the gear that drops will only go to the members that play the most and help the guild advance the farthest. Only once every frequent player gets a piece of gear, will the more casual raiders be able to get it, because they will have no competition on the DKP bid. Remember… the point is to encourage players to play in the guild runs as much as possible. The DKP system makes sure that a player in the guild that wants better gear has to play often, and choose between doing something else, or raiding to earn DKP. You would think that the stress of playing like this would bring lots of drama… but you would be wrong. In a high end raiding guild, the people in the guild are there for a reason… and if they can’t measure up or show up, they are either kicked out or leave themselves. There are no misconceptions. Everyone knows that you’re not there to hang with friends, or to grind PvP honor in battlegrounds. You are there to raid, and if you don’t want to do that you’re in the wrong place.

Ah, but what if you want to be in a guild, and maybe do some runs in instances and stuff, but don’t have the time or energy to make WoW a second job? What if you just want to be with your friends, and also get some isntance runs in?

You get guilds that advertise themselves as ‘casual’. These guilds are also formed, the same as the raiding guilds, around the core concept of having more people online at any given time to group with. they may start at teh ‘friends only’ stage, but at some point the members decided to bring in mroe poeple to do more stuff they couldn’t do alone. In these guilds, the drama flows like wine at a wake.

Some casual guilds will also have an application process, hoping to weed out poor players, but this is mostly aimed at trying to prevent loot ninjas and antisocial types from joining. Invites will usually be given out based on how well a person played and how nice or friendly they were in a pick up group, or because they have been recommended by a person already in the guild.

In general, when deciding whether or not to join a casual guild, keep in mind that the easier it is for YOU to join a guild, the greater the likelihood that immature or selfish players will also be members, and the greater the probability of guild drama.

Ah yes, lets get to the drama.

As long as a guild is at the ‘friend only’ level, everything is cool. Maybe 10, even 15 members, it’s all good. Past that point, and the guild is starting to be seen around a lot… and is getting recognized as a fairly large or active guild. And that’s both good and bad.

Good, because a large guild represents stability, and many casual players, players that are very good and mature, want to be in a guild where the roster doesn’t change every two days. Where friends that they will get to know are still playing two weeks later. And most importantly, where the guild can begin to feel like a home, full of welcome and cheer every time they log in.

And then there is the bad. There are many players that want to get the end game loot, and raid, but for one reason or another can’t get into an end game raiding guild.

Some of them don’t like the rules of more strict guilds, and some of them simply can’t play as often as hardcore raiders and as such get tired of never earning loot no matter how often they can play. They aren’t bad players, but they will be joining what they see as a large active guild, with the express expectation that there will be many opportunities for them to raid. They will be pushing the pace towards raiding as often as they can, and may begin sending constant streams of requests and then demands for more frequent guild raids. The more casual players will certainly feel pressured by this, esepcially if every time they log in they are instantly greeted by tells requestnig themt o run something o other that represents a time commitment of 2 or 3 hours. For a casual player, who may be just logging in to check the AH or their mail or to say hi to guildies while dinner is cooking, this will add stress… because how many people like to tell their friends no?

And if a player is constantly faced with the decision to either log in and have to tell someone that no, they don’t have time to help in heroic Sethekk Halls, or to simply not log in at all, or maybe just play an unguilded alt, well… thats one player in the guild that, even though they aren’t saying anything or adding vocal drama, is still drawing away from the guild.

And then there are those that… well… simply suck. Loot ninjas, people that want others to run them through content to powerlevel them up fast, and see a large guild as being a place where there are lots of bodies to get them what they want. Selfish and immature players that float from guild to guild and may even delight at adding drama. Many of them take pride in being guild trolls and seeing what they can stir up.

And so the drama begins, as a small group of friends will reach the end game levels… and will be having fun tackling 5 man instance content at their own pace. But maybe there are too few of them to run often. They will struggle for a while juggling schedules, and instead of leaving their small friend guild and joining another guild as the new people, the outsiders, they will decide to invite just a couple more players into the guild, and if they are the ones inviting others in, why, then they can keep control. And so they will invite a few more, trying to find players that have character classes the guild lacks. And maybe things will go well for awhile.

But then some players will start playing their alts more and will be gone for long periods, or school will start and some will be playing even less, and more players will need to be recruited. And then they will realize that they need ten steady players to play in Karazhan, and will recruit a few more. And now, the guild is a ‘Kara raiding guild’, and will be justifiably proud of that fact. But when they look for a few more members to fill out the ranks, because they are aloways short on healers or tanks, some will be joining because they want to make new friends, and some will be joining specifically to be carried into Kara for epic loot. And the founders will have their inner clique and will want to play mostly with each other, and toss out invites to run content to those that have classes they lack. Some players will sign up for a spot on a raid, and if they are bumped in favor of another guildie, one that maybe is in the inner circle, drama will certainly explode.

One of the worst signs of sickness in a guild, that I have seen, is when the same core group of players, usually single students that have large consistent blocks of time to play, begin running with each other, and only interact with other guild members when they happen to need a person to fill out an instance run that they want to complete, but remain silent whenever any other guild member asks for help with a group quest, or info on a mob, or simply how to find someone or do something in game.

I have found that, when you see the same 10 people sending out tells for ‘need tank for sethekk halls’, ‘need healer for heroic mech’, and that they are always running instances, but those same people never reply to the questions or requests for group from other people in the guild, that guild drama, hurt feelings, isolation and /gquits are not far behind.

In the end, every player has to decide what they want from the game, and from a guild. If you joined a guild and had a lot of fun, and you find that the character of the guild has changed over time into something you don’t like, especially if you find yourself dreading logging in because of what may be waiting to greet you in guild chat….

Don’t be afraid to go unguilded, or create a small guild just for you and your friends’ alts, so you can recapture that feeling of just being friends and bagning around the world.

When it comes to having fun, really having fun, then how powerful the character is doesn’t matter. All that matters is having that small group of friends that it’s fun to hang with as you get owned in Deadmines just one more time.