TSM Public Groups & Casual Gold Making - Wowhead Economy Weekly Wrap-Up 353

Posted 2024/11/24 at 1:06 PM by SamadanPlaysWoW

SamadanTSM Public Groups & Giveaway
Since the launch of the new TSM website, we’ve had a lot of feedback about the missing directory of publicly shared group imports.

While it’s easier than ever to make your own groups in-game by searching the Base Group, or using Wowhead to leverage more powerful filters – we wanted to improve the way you find and use community-made groups on the web. It wasn’t quite ready for the recent relaunch of the overall website but we’re excited to announce that it’s back and the first iteration is ready to use!

As was the case with the old TSM website, the ability to search for and use these groups will remain free and does not require a TSM Premium plan.

You can access groups by using the global search bar or via the Groups menu option in the navigation bar. When opening the page you’ll see a list of popular groups, groups you have looked at recently, and a link to view all of the groups shared for the game version selected. The page is always pre-filtered based on the game version you have selected in the top right of the page, so you won’t see Classic Era groups mixed in with Retail groups for example.

If you search for a particular item in the global search bar or on the Groups main Browse page, you’ll see published groups in the results along side the item itself. This is very handy to find groups you might be interested in using based on the item you want to group.

The first major evolution to the system is that they can also include operations associated with the group. This is possible because the way groups are published is based on what a TSM user uses in-game, rather than collecting some item IDs from Wowhead which was the only option on the old website.

If you’d like to use a group you can click on the Add to Addon button to generate an import string to be copy and pasted in-game.

Publishing Groups

There are two ways to publish a group on the TSM website.

Clicking on the My Published Groups sub-menu item will show a list of currently published groups. From here you can click on Import From String and copy and paste the import string that can be manually exported from any group in-game. Learn how to export a group from the TSM knowledgebase.

Alternatively, if you are a TSM Premium (Gold) subscriber, all of your groups are synced to the website automatically so you can publish them from directly from the My Addon Groups tab after selecting the appropriate WoW Account and TSM Profile.

Once published, you’ll get a shareable link you can provide your friends or community and the group will appear in the public directory. You can however opt to make the group ‘private’ so only those with a link can access the group if you’d prefer not to have the group included in the public directory.

Future Improvements

We have a lot of other ideas to improve the process of finding and managing groups on the TSM website including showcasing published groups that contain a particular item when you view that item page and introducing a rating system to share feedback.

Additionally, with a TSM Premium plan, we’re exploring options to synchronise a group to the game directly via the TSM desktop app to skip the manual importing process. This could also enable some cool mechanisms such as ‘subscribing’ to a particular published group so you would be able to keep up to date with any changes or updates without having to think about it.

We’d love to hear your feedback on how you used the old version of the public TSM groups feature, what you like or dislike about the newly revamped version, and what you want to see out of it in the future!
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— TradeSkillMaster (@TSMAddon) November 22, 2024Casual Gold MakingWhere has all the casual gold making gone?
I'm so close to just resorting to buying tokens for gold. Help talk me off the ledge.

Obviously deflation is a problem, and Blizzard banning bots to fight deflation is actually against their interests in wanting people to buy tokens with real money instead of being able to farm or generate any kind of gold income that's comparable. Now, I have a decent job, so 1 token is about 20 mins of my work time pay.

I've reached the point where its hard mentally to justify spending an hour farming to make like 15k gold, or try to flip recipes cross server to not really get much gains fighting against other sellers, when 20 minutes of my work time is equal to ~250k gold. Even if I only made $20 an hour at work I would still have a hard time justify spending time in game grinding professions.

Sadly this is exactly what blizzard wants.

I wish the game had some form of risk vs reward aspect to the economy. There's no real risk so prices just deflate. I played a lot of Albion Online, which is a completely different beast and I would never advocate for full loot pvp in WoW, also I don't want to play Albion, I want to feel like my time is being respected in WoW, and currently it just isn't. In Albion I was able to find a niche way of transporting goods through dangerous territory pretty successfully, because of their mount system, so I was able to make loads of currency because where I would buy them at and where I would transport them to would be like a 40%-100% markup. I even would still die and loose my transport once in a while, but the benefit was high enough that I was still making plenty.

I think people would lose their god damn minds if Blizzard set up a zone where if you died you lost what you had gathered or transported in the zone. I'm not advocating for that, I just wish there was something that created a risk potential to the economy.

At this point I'm just rambling.
all playersManthieus The gold is the byproduct of playing the activities in the game i enjoy. This mostly revolves around the crafting profession and collecting. This is why I also can not stomach farming for very long.

I would not say deflation is much of an issue in wow, mostly as 99% of the gold is just being passed between players and Blizzard keeps a mostly "hand off" approach to the economy. In-fact I would welcome them doing more to push for more gold to be removed from the game.

If you can find some enjoyment in making gold, you will quickly end up with way more of it than you ever need. If you are looking to make gold for the sake of wanting gold, OP meet Ledge, Ledge meet OP. I can not blame you.
I've found a lot of enjoyment in looking for new ways of making gold. I go back to old expansion content and see what can be made farming those mats, doing old WQs, running dungeons and raids, or leveling old profession trees. I feel like this is a more enjoyable way to "farm" while also getting to explore parts of the game I never got to experience.

It's definitley not a get rich quite scheme, but it makes me enough gold to stay in raid mats and pay for my game time.
Slum sharks have made me like 200k gold just through passively fishing pools when I find them.

Anytime I'm in Hallowfall or Azj Kahet I will fly along streams and lakes to look for them. I also have an alt that farms herbs and ore, and usually go to Hallowfall, when I see a pool there I stop at it.

I never find them if I actually go looking though, lol.

The shark pools seem to be super rare. I can't confirm with math, but I get the feeling that blood pools pop up more when beledar goes dark. I feel like I see them much more often then, but haven't done any math to confirm it, because I suck at math.
Zanzarful Finding Crafting ProfitsKaychack Further ReadingGumdrops Perculia setting this up initiallyissue 100"Time is money friend!"/r/woweconomyDiscord Server

Comment by ManthieusIt has been a pleasure reading each week. Thanks Samadan!Comment by AlcsaarI have to agree with many of these issues. I tried to grind some gold recently to buy the Bruto mount, and the only thing I discovered is that its a massive waste of time to do right now. Grinding some boring game mechanic (herb/mining or skinning for example) makes a pitiful amount of gold. I spent a few days grinding herb/mining and skinning and my results were pathetic. When compared to the cost of a token and the current value of tokens to gold, it was equivalent to making like 0.73 cents per hour. That feels like absolute crap and forces me to feel like I have to buy gold with tokens, but I refuse to do that since its exactly what Blizzard wants.

Feels like if you don't spend days grinding gold at the very start of an expansion where prices are much, much higher, its just too late.Comment by SarranuvaBeen an absolute pleasure reading these over the years Sam. Thank you for your writeups (and even including little-ole-me in them once or twice as well).

"Everything has a price."Comment by kcthebrewerFeels like if you don't spend days grinding gold at the very start of an expansion where prices are much, much higher, its just too late.Comment by SerenalThanks Samadan! I always enjoy reading reading these, sorry to see they are stopping.Comment by WizzlepantsVery glad that you pointed out, immediately after mentioning it, that an alt army for profession concentration maxxing is not really a casual thing to do.Comment by GumdropsThank you for continuing the series Samadan, it has been an important presence on Wowhead for the community at large!Comment by BriandrisThanks Samadan! Been reading for a while. Really helped get me going when I wanted to get the original Bruto. Take Care!Comment by VonblahThose weekly posts are a nice form of curation regarding dozens of low effort posts that appear every day (hour?) on /woweconomy asking the SAME things (and most of the time a simple/quick search would give the answer), like a filter showing some relevant stuff discussed there in the last week. Even the discussion in the comments here sometimes is interesting, unlike most comments on news posts.

I hope that whoever takes the mantle keeps the legacy that Gumdrops started and Samadan continued. Guess we'll know it next sunday.Comment by BrimzI have to agree with many of these issues. I tried to grind some gold recently to buy the Bruto mount, and the only thing I discovered is that its a massive waste of time to do right now. Grinding some boring game mechanic (herb/mining or skinning for example) makes a pitiful amount of gold. I spent a few days grinding herb/mining and skinning and my results were pathetic. When compared to the cost of a token and the current value of tokens to gold, it was equivalent to making like 0.73 cents per hour. That feels like absolute crap and forces me to feel like I have to buy gold with tokens, but I refuse to do that since its exactly what Blizzard wants.

Feels like if you don't spend days grinding gold at the very start of an expansion where prices are much, much higher, its just too late.Comment by MARTWINFunny enough I've been preparing 5 alts for farming for a good moment lolComment by EentjeThx Samadan for all the great Blogs you wrote. You helped me and so many other people.Comment by StarchaserTime for the BMAH lookup to go back to being free.Comment by bondmykebondThank you for your time, interest and discerning eye through the years Samadan! We will miss you as an ever-present voice of calm and reason.Comment by HolyTechCopy & paste article againComment by KaratarThank you for all the blogs! I've been reading non-stop since they began and I'm looking forward to whatever comes next, at whatever pace it comes. You've helped me a ton!