Devil's plan

We all have different amounts of time for entertainment. Some of us can only invest one or two hours of our days to play video games. Others can invest significantly more. Whatever your playtime is, the fact is that you can only do one thing at a time. Actually, one of the first things they taught us in media studies is that it's all about fighting for a piece of consumers leisure time. The invention of television is often blamed for ruining the popularity of movie theaters for this same reason.


Since May 15th, WoW players are dealing with the same problems the movie fans had to confront back in the 50's. We are all investing more of our time to play Diablo 3, which means WoW is being pushed aside. Global WoW economy dropped in size by approx. 30% according to the WoWuction.com numbers.


In my last post I promised to explain how Diablo 3 helped me make more gold than usual. While this idea might seem contradictory to what you just read, believe me, it is possible.


In the last days of boredom before the release of Diablo 3, I managed to hit 900k gold. Most of my profits came from selling level 77-80 and transmog items. People raided less, leveled alts and were in need of powerful items and good looks. The problem is, they are all gone now and they are killing time before Mists of Pandaria with new Blizzard's baby. Other markets are still there, but the competition is fierce and profits are lower. On a server as big as mine, this can only mean one thing. You have to camp the AH!


None of us like sitting in one spot, canceling and re-posting hour after hour. It defeats the purpose and it is definitely not something you would want to pay $15 a month for. However, if you are in a situation similar to mine, there is a solution. Not only am I bound by the Annual Pass, as I described in my last post, I am also very close to the gold cap. I do like playing Diablo, but I want to do what I can to make gold in WoW at the same time. What's the best way to utilize that time?


Well, there is a little thing called Consortium Key Sender. It basically takes any input you make with your mouse and keyboard and sends it to WoW as a desired keysend(s) in semi-random intervals. It works when WoW is in background and, according to extensive discussions on the Consortium forums, it does not violate Blizzard's Terms of Use. I've been using this helpful little tool to create a single keysend that will press the following macro:


/click TSMAuctioningPostButton


This macro clicks the post button on the bottom of TSM. All I have to do now is properly stock up on Gems, Glyphs and other stackable items I want to sell, set up my TSM groups, press "Post Auctions" and the CKS keeps spamming the post button. This automatizes the longest process of camping AH, and that is scanning and posting. Using CKS, I can use that time to play Diablo. Now, every few minutes, in between hacking and slashing, or whenever I portal back to town, I just tab back to WoW, press "Post Auctions" button and it does the same thing all over again.


This single trick has helped me actually earn a lot more gold per day than usual. My usual daily routine would be posting once or twice a day. Now, when I am spending time at my computer anyway because of Diablo, I am actually able to camp the AH at the same time. I don't like the fact that I have to do it, but demand is slow, competition is fierce and unfortunately, that is what I have to do on a mega populated server. I will stop after I hit the cap, I promise.


The macro to be pressed by the CKS can actually be spiced up with a few extra strings:


/click TSMAuctioningCancelButton - same thing for canceling auctions
/click TSMCraftNextButton - for when you have a lot of crafting queued up in your TSM
/click PostalOpenAllButton - for spamming the open mail button in case Postal bugs out


Consortium Key Sender was originally created to help with the monotonous processes of milling and prospecting, so if this is what you want to use it for, here are some useful macros:


Prospecting

/use Prospecting
/use Elementium Ore
/use Obsidium Ore


Milling
/use Milling
/use Cinderbloom
/use Azshara's Veil
/use Whiptail
/use Twilight Jasmine
/use Heartblossom


or if you are using panda addon you can simply use
/click MassMill

In either case, make sure you have your Ores/Herbs in stacks dividable by 5 before you start mass Milling/Prospecting.

I hope this tip helps your internal struggles with dividing your precious free time between Diablo and WoW and come back soon, because I am hoping to get really close to a million gold by the next post. I will also cover some of my Beta experience, since we can finally reach level 90 and things are starting to get spicy!