Don't Panic!

I was prepared. With 25+ of every glyph, thousands of ink and herbs in reserve, and a last-minute buyout of pretty much everything glyph-related from the AH, I posted my wall of glyphs right before the servers dropped and dreamed of gold caps.

Two days after 4.0.1 hit I'd only made 20k in sales and was still in the red. The day-one reports of 50k, 150k, 300k profits by some of my fellow peers was like adding salt to the wound. What had I done wrong?

I kept going through the motions, buying out herbs below 40g a stack and glyphs below 10g. I lowered my threshold, lowered my fallback, started undercutting every 30 minutes, even bought out everything below 20g to try and reset the market--nothing seemed to help. My dreams shattered, I was ready to throw everything I had into a 10g wall in order to punish the other scribes on the server.

Suddenly, a glimmer of hope appeared in my mailbox: six different glyphs sold at my fallback. I rushed to Iressa and Fanin, begging them to show me how my wares were faring. A handful of other glyphs were all selling, many of them at my fallback value. My competition was running dry and, five days after the patch released, I started to gain control of the market.

When I'd thought that my competition had won, it ends up my server is just a little slow. Many of those who pulled in 50k or more on the first day found their sales dropped sharply after whereas mine have been only steadily declining. Who would have thought a more laid-back server would have more laid-back purchasing patterns?

Two and a half weeks later, I'm at 200,000g in sales and 160,000g in profit.

The moral of the story? Don't Panic. What happened on one server will not necessarily happen on yours. Oh, and don't buy out *everything* below 20g or you'll end up with six stacks of Glyph of Voidwalker. No one wants that shit.

Next time I'll be sure to bring my towel.

Glyphmas Hangovers

Appropriately called 'Glypmas', the 4.0.1 server patch two weeks ago brought in a huge influx of glyph buyers. Some JMTCers pulled in 300k worth of sales in the first few days and others walked off with 50k profits with only a night's worth of preparation.

Now, however, most folks are glyphed out and sales have been declining. But don't switch professions just yet; there's still some potential for profit in the near future.

Patch 4.0.3

New Race/Class Combinations - Tauren paladins, gnome priest, dwarfen shamans--all of these new rerollers will be needing glyphs. The first trio of glyph slots is level 25; those who are seasoned rerollers will be there in less than three hours. Within a week many will have hit 50 for the second trio of glyph slots.

Cataclysm

Ink Trading - Once Cata releases, the ink trader will be updated to trade down Cata inks rather than Ink of the Sea. With the number of rerollers there will likely be an abundance of lower-level herbs to start but the mid-tier and Outland herbs will be in less supply.

New Goblins and Worgen - New characters mean new glyphs. Those gunning for server first will be at 25 within a few hours (server stability aside) and 75 within a few days. Everyone else will be hitting 50 within a week and 75 within two or three.

"Skills to Pay the Bills" - This new achievement will hopefully bring in some extra draw for those glyphs that no one really knows what to do with. Each class has roughly 30 glyphs available so expect a number of folks to figure 'might as well get them all!'.

How do you plan to prepare?