Here’s the usual gold drill: Grind a few primals (or other items,) sell them off, and make upwards of a couple hundred gold an hour if you’re really good at it and there’s no competition. It’s about the same for the daily quests, plus you get the rep items. If you’re good at playing Auction House games you can double that.

Now consider for a moment what it takes to hit the gold cap: that limit being currently set at 214,748 gold, 36 silver, 48 copper, and once reached will prevent you from receiving any more cash. At 300 gold an hour that’s a measly 716 hours of pure gold making activity.

Brad, of Warcraft Millionaire, has hit that cap on four separate characters.

How was it that this guy had managed to do what is seemingly impossible when millions of other players have been at it for just as long and are nowhere close? You can see the video proof on his home page, which really drives the point home.

When you watch it you will see Brad clicking between several characters he has on the same server, each of which had reached that gold cap of 214,748 gold, 36 silver, 48 copper. It’s rare enough to see one character at the cap, much less several characters.

So how did he do it? What has Brad done that very few, if any, have done before? What did see in the game that others had missed? His strategy must surely be superior, right?

It seems that Brad’s friends and fellow players have been asking the same question of him for some time and so, instead of constantly answering questions, he has put together a collection of resources at his website that promises to guide the casual or even hardcore player through the same process he used to reach the upper echelons of gaming.

The truth of the matter is that it’s not some special secret, as you might think. The difference is entirely in his understanding of how the WoW market works. His secret? It’s all in the Auction House (AH.) We all know that; we’ve been to the Auction House and we’ve seen what kind of gold it can provide, but none of us would have guessed that there was quite that much gold in it.

Suffice it to say, that Brad provides concise, well written advice on how to use the Auction House to make a lot of gold. I think that hitting the gold cap, four times, provides some serious credibility, don’t you?

While I won’t reach a million gold anytime soon, I definitely feel much more confident in my ability to make hundreds of gold on demand and pretty much all of it it with my low level bank alts.

Not Just the AH

Now, while the real gold is made at the auction house, and Brad emphasizes learning to use the AH, there are people who would, for whatever reason, rather do something else to earn their WoW cash. So, I’ll open up my copy of Warcraft Millionaire and note that, in addition to the Auction House domination guide, Brad includes the following:

• All of the Daily Quests - listed, rated (1 to 5 stars,) with notes on the gold and the rep that you will earn, and linked to WoWdb.com for more info. Of course, you do need to be level 70 to do these.

• The Grinding Guide - Want to just mindlessly kill hordes of mobs and fill your bags with goodies? This is the guide for you. It includes where to find certain special items, grinding instances, various locations, and recommended addons to make you grinding easier (besides plugging a case of Mountain Dew into your brain.) Brad hates the grind, I hate grinding, but if you’re Ok with it then this guide is for you.

• A limited items listing - This is a big list of vendors who sell all sorts of limited items. General locations of the vendors are provided, but it would have been nice to see exact locations.For items found in Azeroth the list is sorted by specific item, who sells it, and how much you’ll pay. How much you can sell it for will depend on the economy of your particular server. The Outlands listing lists vendors by zone, plus the items thy sell and the cost. Make a loop of these vendors, grab the items that are available as you hit them, ship them to your banker, and sell for a very nice profit.

• 1-60 and 60-70 gold guides - As you level you should keep an eye peeled for certain items and these two guides cover those items. You can make a lot of gold in the leveling process (beyond taking Herbalism and/or Mining) and these guides will show you what to look for. Naturally the best stuff requires higher level characters.

• A special bonus, is the Warcraft Basics Guide, which covers the basics of the WoW economy, principles, gold making, questing, professions, etc. New players will find this guide to be very useful, experienced players can skim much of it, but will find some useful tips as well.

Since Millionaire is one of the newest gold guides it neatly cuts out one of the problems of the older guides, none of the info is out of date. You won’t find references to the level 60 cap or to items and mobs that are no longer in game or of value.

You don’t have to have level 70 characters. In the video on the home page Brad notes that his level 1 bank alt does most of his trading, buying, and selling. Yes, it’s at the gold cap. You will also get an idea of what he buys and sells.

You won’t just be given a set of grinding locations either, though you do get those in addition to everything else. What you will get and learn is a set of techniques that will massively boost your gold stash.

Even better is that Brad has a Wrath of the Lich King update in the works and that update should be live very soon now. It will be free to members of Warcraft Millionaire.

Just One Thing…

There is one section lacking: With the addition of Inscription into the game, and what it’s doing to herb prices, I expect there will be an update soon that will cover Inscription and that will do more with making gold from Herbalism. The guide was released before much was known about Wrath or anything was known about Inscription.

I’ll bug him until I get the exact word on the Inscription/WotLK/3.0+ update. If you’re not interested in those two professions then the rest of the guide is golden (pun intended.)

You can snag your copy of Warcraft Millionaire here.

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Bits and pieces from other places.

From Tobald:

Blizzard just announced that parts of Wrath of the Lich King content will already be released “in the coming weeks”…

But many people interpret the patch announcement, and the new features that were announced for Wrath of the Lich King and which just happen to be similar to features that Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning has, to be a defensive move by Blizzard…

Here’s the rest: WoW is fighting back. There are a ton of comments on that post, so join the fun.

Blizzard does need some serious competion, but WAR doesn’t seem to be it, except maybe in the PvP area, though I think WAR will do well if it has a smooth launch. I think Bliz has the formula that most others are missing, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be on the lookout for nifty ideas that make their game more interesting for more poeple.

Spooncraft has a post on new voices in Wrath, and a video with the voices: Wrath of the Lich King Beta 8885 brings new Death Knight Voice Options

Spoon says:  Awesome changes, not exactly sinister but at least now Blood Elf Males actually sound like MEN. You have to go into the sound options menu (if you’re a Death Knight) and turn this feature on for it to work. I am very excited about this and hope that it stays in game permanently.

Go check it out. Now I’m going to go see what my DK troll has to say.

Here’s a bit on the new Level 75 ability for Rogues, “Tricks of the Trade,” from WoW Insider: Rogues in 8885: Tricks of the Trade

Ok, time for dinner.

Via MMORPG.com

Blizzard has posted a Wrath of the Lich King talent calculator, which helps players explore the talent changes that are coming to WoW with the next expansion.

Bliz has the preliminary level 80 talents up on their talent calculator. All of these are subject to change, and likely will be changed, as Wrath of the Lich King moves through beta.

I suppose that since Bliz has posted these talents that they must be reasonably close to the final version, but we’ll see.

Still, they’re fun to explore now. Check out the new talents here.

From the offical World of Warcraft Site:

While Wrath of the Lich King will improve many of World of Warcraft’s existing features, it will also introduce plenty of brand-new ones to keep the game fresh and interesting. One of these new features is sure to suit a wide range of play styles: achievements. These self-contained goals will offer new challenges, satisfy goal-oriented players, allow others to see your accomplishments in World of Warcraft — and are just plain fun.

Achievements, of course, are a big thing on the Xbox system and they’ve been done in other MMOs, such as City of Heroes’ Badges.

Personally, I like the idea of adding achievements to WoW and I think it’ll spark some new interest in re-doing some old stuff, as well some other things that aren’t necessarily along the lines of leveling of making more gold. .

It looks like their Feats of Strength achievments will retroactively take care of some past glories, so older players won’t have to re-do everything again. Bliz even says that some of these will be impossible to achieve in Wrath of the Lich King.

For new glories there will be achievements for getting a shave (Ok, let’s load those Dwarves onto the cart!) and there’s even one for people prone to falling off of high towers.

Anything to further the WoW addiction, right?

So what do you think should be some of the new WoW achievements?

It looks like patch 2.4.3 is going live, since it just downloaded today.  Patch notes haven’t made it to the main page, though. They’re still on the test side.

Here they are: Public Test Realm Patch Notes

I’ll be buying a couple of those level 30 mounts ASAP.

From the G4 site: Bushnell Predicts End of ‘Warcraft’

In an interview with Gamasutra, Bushnell said:

“World of Warcraft just passed what I call the Bushnell Threshold. The Bushnell Threshold is… I watch my sons, and because they’re my sons, they tend to start things at the beginning, or sometimes a little bit before. So they play and play and play and play, and all of a sudden, they don’t play anymore. They stayed with World of Warcraft for a long time. My older son all of a sudden got Mage 72 or whatever it is and quit. All at once. Cold turkey. I didn’t think it was going to happen. And my 14-year-old is getting close to there, which is surprising.”

Well, my kids showed a similiar pattern, and then they keep coming back when something in the game sparks new interest. When Wrath of the Lich King come out I expect they’ll be spending long hours exploring every last inch of the thing.

When you’ve leveled everything and raided everything and done every BG many many times the game gets a bit old.

Given the continuing growth of WoW and the fact that the #2 game is so far back that you have to use a telescope to see it… well, I don’t think WoW is ending anytime soon.

It’s also kind of funny to see an Atari guy saying this. Atari has had a record of sharp to brilliant ideas shot down with unbelievably bad follow through.

No, I don’t think the End is Near.

How about you?

From the Washington Post blog:

This afternoon (July 8,) game publisher Activision announced that its shareholders have voted to approve a merger with Vivendi Games.

The proposed merger between the two video game giants was announced in December, but required the blessing of Activision shareholders. The game publisher said that 92 percent of shareholders approved the deal, which is expected to close tomorrow.

One analyst has predicted that the merged company would make $1.38 billion in profits during its first financial year, enough to make Activision Blizzard the world’s largest game publisher

This could mean interesting things for the World of Warcraft, or maybe that the new company will have the resources to come up with similarly successful games.

But I don’t think I’ll be calling them Activision Blizzard very much…

More on Blizzard Activision:

Source: Activision’s ‘DJ Hero’ Was A Vivendi Game, Now A … - We now know that “DJ Hero” was in development under publisher Vivendi before they merged with Activision to become Activision Blizzard. The now-called “DJ Hero” was one of the few unannounced projects that the new mega-publisher decided …

More layoffs at Blizzard Activision - Vivendi, Blizzard’s owner, officially combined its interactive entertainment business with Activision, a publisher of mostly console games, in July and renamed the group Activision Blizzard. Layoffs have been reported at other locations …

Could Activision Enter The Console War? - Take a look at your game collection, and see how many of your games either have Activision, Blizzard, or Vivendi on them, and then think back to the Atari 2600, and how many quality games over the last 29 years have been released by …

Activision tried to buy Blizzard before merging with Vivendi Games - Merging with Vivendi Games was not Bobby Kotick’s first thought. While talking about the deal today, the Activision (and now Activision Blizzard) CEO admitted that in his first conversations with Vivendi Games CEO Bruce Hack, …

Obviously the World of Warcraft isn’t, and isn’t going to be, free to play, as interesting as that thought might be. But it seems that Bliz actually considered such a model (possibly ad supported,) then dumped it as being non-sustainable.

I happen to agree that a paid model is the way to go if you want to seriously develop a game. Whether of not we agree on the exact direction that Bliz takes with WoW I think we can all agree that they do a lot of support and development work so those few bucks that they pull in each month get put to use.

Here’s the clip, from Massively.com:

Blizzard’s own Rob Pardo recently dropped something of a bombshell about World of Warcraft at the Paris GDC event when he revealed in a keynote that the game was originally planned as a free-to-play experience. He also adds that, “We didn’t want to charge a subscription, but as we researched market conditions, we realized that wouldn’t support us.”

Here’s the rest of the article: WoW Originally Planned as Free to Play

Coming Real Soon Now, 2.4.3.

Lots of fixes and a few changes. Mounts will be availabel at level 30, for example.

Patch notes are on WoW Insider