Gold Management in Games

© Viri G on Flickr under Creative Commons licence

Sometimes I have to sit & have a really good think for ideas for posts here but other times, a passing comment on skype, twitter or a podcast will set me off on a train of thought & this is one of those, so bear with me while I ramble a bit!

I've been dabbling in poker on FB for a while now & I got to thinking how my attitude changes between my poker chips pile, my WoW gold stash & my real life money. I'm an accountant by trade so money, maths & numbers games always feature heavily in my downtime although I'm not so good with economics type theories etc.

In World of Warcraft, I hit 1 million gold about July last year and although the buzz had gone out of it for me, I continued to make gold in a half hearted way through until December. I've just got back into it now & full of enthusiasm again. But I'm a dabbler - I dip in & out of markets, never investing large amounts of gold in any one area but never making huge amounts of gold either. I guess you'd say I am risk-averse although I prefer the term 'laid back' - I get there - eventually!

The thing about having so much gold in World of Warcraft is that you can spend & spend & it feels like a bottomless pit of gold. I bought so many mounts, epic gear & little luxuries when I hit my goal but here we are one year later & I'm still at 1.2 million! Yesterday a guildie joked about giving him 35000 gold for a Vial of the Sands - I didn't hesitate - I just said ok & told him to meet me so I could trade it to him. He thought I was joking until I opened the trade window :) I wasn't intending to show off or anything, I just wanted to do something nice for him & that is the power of lots of gold in game.

One reason I like to start fresh on new servers though is to play without all that gold behind me. The challenge of building a nest egg from scratch is the buzz for me & it keeps my feet on the ground when writing here or explaining stuff to friends & guildies.

In poker, I'm still learning when to fold & when to stick to my guns but I've found I have the same risk-averse attitude - most of the time!  Some days I fold way to early or chicken out but other days I blow the lot on a risky bet. As with most things I do online, I spend some time reading articles, blogs & forums & came across this 'Respecting Money' post. It pretty much sums up what I've been realising about my WoW gold habits - I could easily afford to lose 90% of my gold but I would never risk that.

I also found an article about Money Management for poker players. Whilst it is aimed at people playing poker for real life cash, the rules laid out apply almost as well to World of Warcraft as they do to many other gold/cash/money making games.

• Play in your risk comfort zone - you'll make bad decisions when you're running scared or nervous.
• Know when to stay in a game or a market & when to get out.
• Keep notes of successes & failures - you can repeat your successful tactics & learn from failed ones
• Mental presence! don't make big money decisions when you're feeling unwell or very late at night - you will do something silly sooner or later!   

Over the years, I've played other cash based games - 'fantasy stock market' for example but I've never had the courage or confidence to take it to real life money. Diablo3 with it's Real Money Auction House is definitely tempting but I have to wait for a new graphics card before I can play there. It will be interesting to see just how well my existing skills will transfer. In the meantime, I'm still piling up virtual cash all over the internet!