I Will Gladly Pay You Tuesday...

One thing about WoW Classic Era that I've had to reacquaint myself with is just how poor a new player is in the game. 

Most MMOs don't have this issue. Creating a new toon on LOTRO or SWTOR, for example, will have a person poor, gold-wise, but they're still easily able to afford their training, regular mats, and their mounts. (Yes, even in SWTOR's original form, where you could select the Slicing profession and basically open lockboxes for free credits. #SWTORClassic)

My time spent in Age of Conan had limitations, of course, but most centered around mandatory grouping once you got out of the starter zone.* Other MMOs I've played extensively, such as Guild Wars 2, Elder Scrolls Online, and Wildstar, also don't have gold or monetary issues. Sure, there are other limitations to the games, such as gear or weirdness surrounding the auction house --I'm looking at you, ESO--  but money has never really been a problem.

WoW Classic Era, however, is an entirely different kettle of fish.

My first toon in Vanilla Classic, Azshandra, was so poor that she didn't get enough gold for a riding mount until L47-ish, and then I spent a lot of time fishing for lockboxes to open and sell the contents on the auction house. Before you ask, no, I didn't read "gold making" websites or watch any YouTube videos about it, because I wanted to experience Vanilla Classic without min/maxing my way to a ton of gold. Besides, I don't play video games to make a ton of virtual currency in the same way I don't work irl to amass a horde of cash.**

Progression raiding in Vanilla Classic did me no favors with my gold supply either, as the costs involved keeping Cardwyn raiding --particularly through Vanilla Naxxramas, where the potion/flask requirements for raiding were fairly high-- also kept me gold poor. I frequently found that scouring Azeroth for the mats myself was far more cost effective than being cute and trying to play the auction house as if I was some junior investor for Goldman Sachs. So when the time for TBC Classic --and my corresponding switch to the Shaman Briganaa happened-- I had little gold in reserve to afford mounts for her until well into Outland.***

Fast forward toward the end of TBC Classic and I'd created Cardwyn's clone, Deuce, on Atiesh-US. At first I thought that the ease of which I was able to acquire gold on a brand new toon on a new server had something to do with the knowledge I'd acquired over the years of playing Classic. 

Or maybe it had something to do with the population size. 

However, going back to Classic Era and creating yet another version of Cardwyn has disabused me of either of those beliefs.

Vanilla Classic is simply designed to keep a person poor so they will keep going out in the world.

There, I said it.

***

I mean, it's not a big surprise. The monetary rewards from quests are smaller, the costs associated with class training and everything affiliated with mounts are higher, and the failure rates at professions are also higher, so all of that adds up to a player having to pick and choose what abilities to train and level along the way. 

And if you select a profession such as, oh, Enchanting or Blacksmithing, be prepared to shell out gold**** for enough mats to finish the grind to max profession level. 

Now, there are some ways to generate gold that don't involve begging for gold in Stormwind or Orgrimmar --yes, that is very much a thing-- and they involve leveling a gathering profession. Herbalism and Mining do come in handy, but Fishing does give a player a good bang for the buck in the long run.

I'm sure I'm not giving out any secrets when I say that there's a trick to gaining access to Moonglade at a (relatively) low level if you're not a Druid. Why Moonglade, you may ask? Because the mythical home of the Druids and the Cenarion Circle is also the lowest level area where you can go fish up the Raw Nightfin Snapper. A cook can turn the Snapper into the Nightfin Soup, which is sought after by casters as a raiding buff, which is in demand on the Classic Era auction house. At the present, the Raw Nightfin Snapper is selling for about 6 gold per stack of 10 on the AH, and the Soup commands a higher amount for a stack of 5. You can put two and two together, of course: that's a pretty good gig for steady work. 

The thing is, there's only a few places around Azeroth where you can fish for Nightfin, and there's the issue of having to fish for it between the hours of Midnight and 6 AM Server Time. I mean, it is in the name: Nightfin. By far the lowest level area is in Moonglade, which if you're not a Druid is gated by having to run the gauntlet of tunnels commanded by the hostile Timbermaw Firbolg tribe. While you can eventually build your reputation with them, the Firbolg are all roughly Level 50 enemies, and the entrance to the tunnels is deep in Felwood, a L48-L54 zone, so if you don't want to roll up a Druid you'd either work on leveling a toon or... Get creative.

Besides, you're not old enough for the
shenanigans at Goldshire, Simba. And... Wait.
Why are they talking about Goldshire already?
Shouldn't Simba have "The Talk" first?
From imgflip.

That "get creative" means taking advantage of a glitch in the game where you enter into the low level zone of Darkshore, ride/run/walk all the way to the top of the zone --which abuts Moonglade's zone-- and swim north. Once you get far enough north, you enter into Moonglade's zone, and there you... die.

Seriously.

Once you die, the graveyard you respawn at is Moonglade's graveyard, so if you ask the Spirit Healer to rez you and accept the resurrection sickness debuff, you're smack in Moonglade. Go get the flight point, and you can fly to Moonglade whenever you want to.

Easy peasy.

***

So easy, in fact, it won't surprise you that I never used it.

Ever.

Yes, I drove my questing buddy batty by never taking advantage of this cheat to start fishing Nightfin at a much lower level but instead fished up Oily Blackmouth to sell at a much cheaper price, biding my time until I got to a high enough level to fish up Nightfin at another location.***** This, combined with me disenchanting every magic item in sight severely hampered my ability to accumulate gold for a long time. 

Why not take advantage of the glitch?

Because it's a cheat.

Sure, it's technically in the game, and no, people haven't been banned or anything for it, but to me it's against the spirit of the game in the same way that it's against the spirit of the game to farm mobs in Maraudon or Lower Blackrock Spire or Zul'Gurub for boosting purposes. If a friend asks me to run them through, say, Deadmines, I'm more than happy to. But I would never ask to have it done to any of my toons, and if offered I'm likely to refuse.

It's the same way why I won't go on Heroic Plus Plus dungeon runs, given the current Meta is to simply run past the initial bosses, allowing them to reset. 

I was chatting with my questing buddy the other day, and I saw (via a DBM alert) that she was fighting a boss. A few seconds later there was a "Zarlie has wiped on XXX Boss" announcement.

"Ouch," I responded. "Sorry about that [wipe]."

"It lies," my questing buddy whispered.

"What?"

"DBM. It lies. We ran right through the boss and it reset."

"Oh."

Why do this strat? Because the badges people want --and the loot people want-- only drop off the last boss. There is literally no reason, Meta-wise, to do any of the other bosses and most of the trash, so the bosses and as much of the trash as possible are skipped. 

I mean, at this point why even have the dungeon in place at all if people are simply going to skip to the end?

Impressive Clergyman: "Have you the wing?"
From imgflip.com.

And why do I get the feeling I'd despise Mythic Plus in Retail if it involved a metric buttload of skips and bypasses?

***

Ahem. I digress.

Where was I? Oh yes, about gold in Classic Era.

When you're that starved for gold, you have to be choosy about what abilities to train with when you level up. You start with your primary attack abilities --which for a Frost Mage those are Frostbolt, Frost Nova, Blizzard, and Cone of Cold-- and then select a few other critical abilities to keep current and then let everything else slide. So while the next rank of Conjure Food and Conjure Water may make the cut, Fire Ward and Frost Ward will not. On the original Cardwyn, I reached max level so far behind in a lot of my non-critical spells that I spent my first 120 gold after reaching max level just catching up on a lot of these missing spell ranks. 

This time around, however, I took the gains from my first few Nightfin sales on the Auction House and blew them all on catching up on my spell ranks.

ALL of them.

No, it wasn't ideal by any stretch, but it meant I had a full set of spells to work with. Such as, oh, Mana Shield, which might save my bacon in the Plaguelands. 

It was only after my training was complete and that I was caught up did I save up enough gold for a riding mount. But I haven't stopped there; I realize that I'm going to need enough gold to buy enough mats to finish Tailoring and Enchanting, so my Nightfin activities haven't stopped. If I want an epic mount it's going to take a lot more fishing than what I've accomplished so far, so I'm not in any hurry to get there. 

Maybe there's a purple kitty grind in my future, but I've already done that once. Not exactly the most fun thing in the world, if you ask me. But it is something that can't be skipped, so there is that at least.

*The starter zone, Tortage, is still probably one of the best starter zones I've ever encountered in an MMO. I suppose that the reversion to a "traditional" MMO once you leave that starter zone --not to mention the bugs-- was a huge part of the "bait and switch" impression I and a lot of other people felt the game gave to players.

**This is a US-specific issue, because most of my relatives died with barely a penny to their name. As their health declined, the federal government would only step in and support their stay at a nursing home or a hospice for their final months after they had depleted all of their savings. And the US healthcare system is perfectly happy to oblige in racking up fees and charges. Many of my relatives had a decent nest egg upon retirement, so watching all of their savings being sucked dry by a medical community that is at times part savior and part leech was disheartening to say the least. If nothing else, the lesson I learned from it is that if you die, make it quick so that the healthcare companies can't gain access to all of your money. 

***Trying to level fast meant bypassing extra quests and other activities --such as fishing or picking herbs-- that I could use to supplement Brig's income. When Brig crossed the Dark Portal, I had a total of 80 gold spread across all of my toons. Thank goodness for the Ghost Wolf form that a Shaman has, which allowed me to delay paying for a mount for quite a while.

****That's in addition to never selling any magic items ever again. You're always either keeping them to use, holding onto them to use later, or disenchanting them for mats to use for Enchanting. It's a grind that any Enchanter has to pay eventually, and in the case of the original Cardwyn I paid it later, after I reached L60. Going back and running low level instances just to get magic items to disenchant wasn't exactly a lot of fun, but at least I got to level weapon skills along the way.

*****There's a location in Feralas that worked, so Card needed to only reach the mid-L40s to safely fish there.

EtA: I corrected the grammar before posting but forgot to remove the "in". Oopsie.