MMORPG.com World of Warcraft Correspondent Anna Dietz writes this look at how a few simple herb gathering tricks can earn you big gold in-game.

I am by no means a gold farmer, nor do I endorse them in any way. Personally, I hate gold farmers in every way possible. However, when it comes to making gold for what I want or what I need, I can easily make 600-1,800 gold in an hour. I have frequently made as much as 2,400 gold in one hour. A few factors come into play that I will discuss later on. I decided to write this article after getting tired of the constant gold spammers and friends hitting me up for loans. After a good laugh, I decided to be part of the solution instead of just ignoring the problem. I talked to a few friends and decided to let others in on how easily they too can gather gold instead of buying it or some half-truth e-guide to making gold. Even though this article relates to gathering herbs for profit, anyone can take their profession and make gold with it. In addition, you may ask why herbs and not potions? This is and has always been a WoW phenomenon. Herbs have always sold for more gold than potions.

Read Herbs to Gold? Don't Mind if I Do.

Nothing starts your day like a little hypocrisy before lunch.

Everybody hates gold farmers with furious, over-the-top anger... until THEY need gold.  Then it's time to compare notes on how many thousands an hour you can make!

Not only do i hate gold farmers but i hate the chat spam from them even worse! I see in many games where they are selling items on the market to get thier gold (individual items too).

(AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH Declares plunger war against gold sellers....goes berserk)

When I think of a "Gold Farmer" I think of bots or people making gold for the gold selling companies.   Gathering stuff and selling for your own personal gain is part of what MMO's are all about. Even though regular players are farming stuff and selling for gold, I don't consider them  "Gold Farmers".

Originally posted by Clattuc

Nothing starts your day like a little hypocrisy before lunch.

Everybody hates gold farmers with furious, over-the-top anger... until THEY need gold.  Then it's time to compare notes on how many thousands an hour you can make!

I agree, I get sick and tired of these "you to can make 500 gold in an hour" post. What it is, someone that has gotten pissed off about  competition tampering with their gold farming business so what do they do?

Decide to get revenge by making a post like this so the market becomes flooded with flowers on the auctioneer until they are at 5 silver a pop, like last time.

I don't know, WOW is one of the games I actually have grown to like out of all the MMOs on the market currently but it is these types of posts that irritate the hell out of me (is this what this game has become?).

I suggest, instead of putting these type of posts up for all the kiddies to read and the 18-22 year old pimple faces still going through puberty . Make a post that teaches them about game conduct, and good behaviour within the game world (so many ass holes in WOW not funny, young and old).

Not on my server. 

Lotus sells for 15-25 gold each and stacks of herbs for 10-20 gold and the market is cut throat. 

As with any MMO with a player run economy the AH or whatever it is called in any MMO is the place to make any serious money.

Researching what is selling and what isn't is not that hard to find out. Made a few hundred gold with some rare potions and herbs and leather armor.

Truly a write-up not based in fact that can be applied across all (or even close to all) servers. The market is everchanging with supply and demand and is different on all servers. The write-up fails to address a plethora of questions concerning making gold in WoW and is self-serving to the OP. Perhaps the only partial truth to the write-up is gathering times which is common sense and if someone lacks such simple deductive reasoning then they will do poorly in WoW no matter how many poor tutorials they read. Anna Dietz, this is unquestionably something you consider removing from this site. A ridiculous gold making scheme that helps your server only, if at all.
 

On the server I play on it is cut throat, rarely do you see Lotus selling for those kind of prices and on top of that farming for herbs is a pain because everyone and their mother it seems is an herbalist.    That is one aspect of WoW I wish they'd change is the spawn times and the amount of spawns for herbs.  It should scale according to how much farming is going on for that type of herb, and it should never be so hard to find what you're looking for that it takes up hours and hours of game play.     Locating some herbs is a real chore and nightmare on the server I play on simple because there are so many people who are herbalist.

The one thing I do make money on however is transmuting.   That can make me upwards of a 1,000+ gold a day and has in the past.   My problem is though that I spend more time doing dailies and going to BG's.   ^_^   

I HATE the in game auction houses because they are so narrow and flawed and easily manipulated.  and its really hard to figure out what price to place on your  items (are the items allready posted  fair?  or are they there because they are too expensive?)  and if you post stuff for a low fair price some farmer can just buy them up and repost them at their higher monopoly price

one world  auction houses are a crippling curse to MMOs  and I really hate COMBAT based economies (those that are based on weapons and armor instead of food and drink)

and the games themselves  promote  the use of gold farmers  with their game code  such things as limited bad size  or  quest construction  and especially the construction of the auction house all contribute to  mega inflation.

Originally posted by brenth

I HATE the in game auction houses because they are so narrow and flawed and easily manipulated.  and its really hard to figure out what price to place on your  items (are the items allready posted  fair?  or are they there because they are too expensive?)  and if you post stuff for a low fair price some farmer can just buy them up and repost them at their higher monopoly price

...and yet you still get all the money that you offered for your product...
 

wait...did you hear that....oh...it's the sound of herb prices crashing from overstock now.... 

Truth is if you want to know how to make the most gold watch the gold farmers. There is a reason they farm a ton of saronite. Even though its only going for 16-19g on my server there is always a ton of it and its always being sold. I was recently hacked (2days ago) and they where stupid enough to leave my main in there hackers guild AND he had access to there guild bank. All tabs full with saronite except a half a tab of titanium.  After completely clearning that bank and vendoring the saronite I went to the AH  and bought nearly 60 stacks of saronite they had on auction and a couple stacks of titanium. They had NOTHING else on the AH.

So yea, herbs might make you some gold but I think its safe to say, at least on my server Saronite ore/bars is the way to go. Gold sellers are out to make the most possible gold in the fastest amount of time before they get caught on the current account(s) they are using. All of these "get rich quick" posts are fine and dandy but if you really wanna know the truth on how to make money fast do what the gold sellers are doing. They have it down to an art.

Originally posted by cukimunga

When I think of a "Gold Farmer" I think of bots or people making gold for the gold selling companies.   Gathering stuff and selling for your own personal gain is part of what MMO's are all about. Even though regular players are farming stuff and selling for gold, I don't consider them  "Gold Farmers".

Yes, I agree.

I don't know where the first two posters get off freaking out about gold farming. The OP's post has nothing to DO with gold farming. He's using professions that HE took the time to level and pay for skill upgrades in and using those professions to make gold in game. That's the very OPPOSITE of buying gold from a gold farmer. He's doing what gold farmers HATE....he's doing the "work" himself instead of buying gold.

I don't understand the confusion on this. Gold farmers SELL gold, they don't use it to improve their own characters, help guildmates, buy rep mounts, etc., etc.  Must be a n00b gamer to old-timer gamer language barrier or something.  idk....weird.

When I use the AH for any extensive purpose, I see myself as a wholesaler. Most of the time, I am not trying to make a solid stream of money, and there are many times when the items I am trying to sell are overpriced. I will intentionally price mine for significantly lower than the competition so that I am not one of those pricks that comes by and prices their good for one silver less, and so that my items will sell swiftly.

But this point of view comes from one that does not use the AH to make most of his money. Since BC, I have never really had problems with money, and things have just become easier with WotLK, so I am not worried about squeezing money out of AH goods. The funny thing is, when I place something for 1/4 of the cost of everyone else, there seems to be about a 10% chance that someone will still come by and price the same good for 1 silver less than mine...makes me sad.

Originally posted by girlgeek

Originally posted by cukimunga

When I think of a "Gold Farmer" I think of bots or people making gold for the gold selling companies.   Gathering stuff and selling for your own personal gain is part of what MMO's are all about. Even though regular players are farming stuff and selling for gold, I don't consider them  "Gold Farmers".

 

Yes, I agree.

I don't know where the first two posters get off freaking out about gold farming. The OP's post has nothing to DO with gold farming. He's using professions that HE took the time to level and pay for skill upgrades in and using those professions to make gold in game. That's the very OPPOSITE of buying gold from a gold farmer. He's doing what gold farmers HATE....he's doing the "work" himself instead of buying gold.

I don't understand the confusion on this. Gold farmers SELL gold, they don't use it to improve their own characters, help guildmates, buy rep mounts, etc., etc.  Must be a n00b gamer to old-timer gamer language barrier or something.  idk....weird.

I wholeheartedly agree. While many experienced gamers are slagging this article they are missing the point. it is friendly advice to the newer player and not them. The author isn't a farmer and those that are slagging accordingly rily should take a chill pill. if the advice is simplistic for you please feel happy that there are no new lessons for you. but this is a site for all MMO players. There's loads of stuff I wished  people spelt out when I started SWG. I might not have thought a combat medic/carbineer was the most exciting way to go if there was simple sensible suggestions such as this and saved myself many hour of character reinvention. So please, read mark and comment but there's no drama here. Either its helpful for you or time to move along.

In a well-designed and well-run MMORPG, you should be able to create a character, enter the world, play the game, and advance your character pretty much all the way to endgame, without ever having to take time out to farm or grind for gold.  Any game for which a "Newbie Guide To Making Thousands In Gold" is a useful or needed article, is at least somewhat broken.

Gold grinding, whether done by supposedly "virtuous" players or by scorned and exploited sweatshop workers, contributes to a ridiculously inflationary game economy where wealth is its own reward.  Blizzard shares complicity in this with WoW.

Originally posted by Clattuc

In a well-designed and well-run MMORPG, you should be able to create a character, enter the world, play the game, and advance your character pretty much all the way to endgame, without ever having to take time out to farm or grind for gold.  Any game for which a "Newbie Guide To Making Thousands In Gold" is a useful or needed article, is at least somewhat broken.

Gold grinding, whether done by supposedly "virtuous" players or by scorned and exploited sweatshop workers, contributes to a ridiculously inflationary game economy where wealth is its own reward.  Blizzard shares complicity in this with WoW.

What you describe is the penalty for death or failure.   It is also a minigame for some people, but not so grueling that any casual player cannot earn their keep with a minimum amount of effort.

The economy and the "gold grind" fill a well balanced need in the game if you ask me.  I'm sure there are other avenues to travel.  Perhaps you have a solution to add?

instead of using gatherer I would suggest to use

http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/gathermate.aspx
http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/gathermate_data.aspx
http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/routes.aspx

while gathermate does the same as gatherer, gathermate_data provides all known gather locations from wowhead so you dont need to find it on your own

finally the best: routes, it will create an optimal route for you to reach all gathernodes and draws it on your minimap and worldmap.