Okay so first up we have GreenGuts series on Goblins: Who and Why? Part 1, 2, 3 and the soon to be released 4.

These posts are part of her new idea for a ‘Goblin Psychology’ blog, which seems like an awesome idea. There’s just so many people making random blogs right now, that it is nice to see a WoW Economy blog with a specific focus and plan.

This is a blog you need to subscribe to if you aren’t already. You do not want to miss out on all the great content GreenGuts is producing.

Next up we have The Promenade. This pretty new blog is by Debussy and it’s yet another blog that isn’t just “This is what I do!”. There is obviously a lot of thinking and forethought that goes in to his blogposts, and like me he isn’t afraid to make them as long as they need to be.

Take for example his recent write up on the new microtransaction pets Blizzard introducted, All the pandas were Kung-Fu fighting. It weighs in at just over 1,200 words, yet this is a boon to the post not a drawback.

This blog post isn’t the exception either, almost all of his blogposts are really great reads that are long enough to fully discuss the matter.

For reference, if you want to know what I think about the new microtransaction pets, for now just read his blogpost – he is 100% on the money as far as I’m concerned. My thoughts on this will be appearing sometime next week.

And that’s all for this week! Remember to comment on this weeks Discussion post!

This blog review is being done due to Veliaf posting about my Crafting Spreadsheet last week, where anyone who did so got a free blog review this week.

So Veliaf’s blog is der Hexenmeister, and it is a really fantastic blog.

Before we get started it is important to note that der Hexenmeister is NOT primarily about gold making. It is his own personal journey, blogging about things that cross his path or interest him in WoW.

That’s not to say that his blog is ‘just another random WoW blog‘ – not by a long shot.

His blog has great insight into many different aspects of the game, as well as things that help take the edge off all the playing.

For example each week Veliaf posts a puzzle, which you have a week to try and solve before he posts the answers. People in the comments try to solve these puzzles, so it’s best to avoid reading them before you think you’ve figured it out! I do this by reading in my Google Reader, as it just doesn’t show the comments.

In addition because Veliaf plays a warlock, der Hexenmeister has some great guides on them. From some awesome beginner friendly video guides on how to play a warlock – perfect for showing the girl friend to get her started playing! ;) – or on each spec at 80, as well as a decent rundown of each ability and its uses. These are split in to level brackets, like 21-30, which allows a leveling warlock to quickly see not only what they might have, or are getting soon, but also some tips and help with integrating them in to their current playing.

There are also numerous high quality content blogposts on his site, most recently about account and computer security. These talk about things like using the Blizzard Authenticator and using Firewalls. Some of you might think these have nothing to do with a WoW blog but if you look at just how many people get hacked – and how easily – then you can’t deny that the WoW playerbase needs educating in these matters, and Veliaf is really doing that!

He has actually been blogging for quite a few months, and has an extensive archive of posts, recently hitting his 100pth post a couple of weeks back. While the majority of his early posts focused almost exclusively on warlock related matters, there are some amazing posts lurking among them, like his series covering Blizzcon – parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6!

Now on to my favourite part of reviewing a blog – the design, structure and overall feel it has

It has to be said, that the theme isn’t a favourite of mine. It is too ‘involved’ to be a simple theme, yet is too ‘lacking’ to be an advanced theme…

What I mean by it being too involved is that it has a rather garish and colourful header which is a blue to red gradient. Within that is a salmon pink tab which is essentially useless in a practical sense, and sticks out like a sore thumb from a design perspective – No where else is this pink used.

This isn’t to say the scheme itself is flawed. It just needs to be taken advantage of!

The colours actually make a warm and cool split in the blog, with an overarching  triad colour scheme.

The triad of colours come from the deep blue to red gradient which interacts with the yellow of Veliaf’s ambigram avatar to create his triadic scheme. The problem is, it doesn’t look remotely intentional! The yellow is not used enough to truly bring out the effect, and neither is the red apart from in the header.

The warm and cool split really does work however. The pale blue sidebars really contrast against the deeper reds and blues used, while complementing nicely with the dark on light text.

The sidebars themselves however are rather cluttered. The calendar on the left is rather useless when used in addition to the Archived posts. Also the site search is tucked away in the bottom of the left sidebar, when it should be displayed right at the top or not at all – nobody is going to use it down there!

Next, there are no sidebar links to subscribing to the blog, either by email or RSS. These are really handy features, and remind less experienced web users that they can actually do these things.

The posts themselves are fairly basic style wise, which in my books is a good thing – Veliaf makes good use of markup, such as bold, italics, lists and so on which help keep the blogposts looking interesting even if it’s paragraphs of text (like this blogpost is!)

Personally I think that Veliaf would be better off taking his site ‘back to basics‘ and getting rid of the bright header and avatar and replacing them with something slightly more subdued.

However if he were to go the other way, then he needs to build upon the triad of Blue primary, Red secondary and Yellow tertiary he has in place. The blue could be done by making the links a blue which matches the header. The red by making permalinks and postmeta the same as the header red. As for the yellow, this can be difficult. The problem with a triad like this is that it too easy to make it feel cartoony, like your website is a super hero costume or something. Too little on the other hand and it just doesn’t work! Use the yellow sparingly like an ‘accent’ and be careful to not over use it.

As for the structure…it’s pretty good!

Above the sidebars at the top right of the header we have buttons for About and Contact. These are too hidden and need to be given more screen space. Some quick client side editing later and it seems they would ideally be of a 24px font, twice the current size – just so they can be noticed.

It is great that Veliaf added them though, as in my opinion they are necessary for any blog. Yet so many blogs don’t have them! An About page lets a new visitor catch a glimpse in to what your blog is about in a single page, and he has done that perfectly.

As for the contact page, it’s easy to use and just right in what it gives the user. Trying to get in contact with a blogger, and not being able to find their email address is a nightmare – you may not want to leave a comment to do so! Veliaf has given everyone the abilitiy to get in contact with him in seconds, and that is exactly what you want.

All in all his content is top notch and can’t be faulted. There is not too much ‘heavy reading’, yet he doesn’t just post single sentence posts about stuff nobody cares about. It is all exciting and interesting stuff that is worth a read.

He even has a competition going at the moment, where you can win great prizes AND support a fantastic charity. So make sure you check that out.

All in all, I think the theme needs a lot of work done to it. But in reality that isn’t that pivotal – what is important is that he has a blog with great foundations, and a whole load of pillar content which will help his blog to continue to flourish.

Go ahead, check out Veliaf’s der Hexenmeister and leave him some comments!

So, no new blogs that I know of this week – however a great new website has been put up which is worth checking out.

It is wowoah or WoW Online Auction House.

It is in a fairly early alpha at the moment, so it has a few kinks and it only has data for US realms. This makes it rather useless for me currently, what with being a Brit, although it could be really useful for some of you.

Searching for Netherweave Bags on wowoah (random server)

At first I thought the site was just a wowecon clone, which should the average value of goods for any server and faction.
This is NOT the case.

Essentially it allows you to do a search on the auction house of any server or faction (again, currently US only) and get ‘live’ data as if you were searching in game.

This means you no longer even need WoW to search the auction house!

It even lets you do things like see every item a seller has for sale, via the SellerData. Very handy for spying on competition even when you can’t be at home, as well as allowing you to easily do so without having to install Auctioneer.

It is in alpha however so there are a few bugs. A couple of times it wouldn’t show any data from Live Searches and I had to search a couple of times.

Another great thing is that you can see time left and current bid on any auction. This means you could bid on an item, then still check and see the time remaining and if you have been outbid all from outside of WoW.

Then there is also the Data buttons, which tell you the sale prices, and sale volume, for the past 7, 14, 30, 60 or 90 days – displayed in easy to understand graphs. It also tells you the total amount seen in that time frame.

I'm giddy for graphs, so this is heaven for me!

I am really really impressed with this site, and while it might not ever be a big hit like Wowhead or Thottobot because it’s target audience is limited to just people like us, it could easily become a major WoW website once it is up and running.

So, go check out WoW Online Auction House! Remember it is still in alpha – and that any website thrives on feedback from its readers, so make sure you send them your feedback!

That is all for this week. Again if you know of a something that deserves to be highlighted then let me know.

So this is the first ever Saturday’s for Sharing and today I would like to tell you about a couple of things brought to my attention recently.

First of all is the JMTC IRC chat. For those of you who have no idea what that even means, worry not! JMTC, or Just My Two Copper, is one of the ‘big’ WoW Economy blogs out there, which has a great forum.

As for IRC, Internet Relay Chat, are basically ‘chatrooms’.

For those of you who are in the know, you can find the channel at irc.quakenet.org #JMTC

For the rest of us, just visit it in your browser!

Then there is Rags to Riches, a Blogger blog recently created by neroli. Really loving the layout, and it is nice to be able to comment as name/url (Curse you Blogger people who don’t allow it!) Send some comments neroli’s way and help it take off – we can’t have too many WoW Economy blogs!

Next we have Green Guts Goblin Emporium, by Green Guts. Another Blogger blog, and with a nice dark on light theme, and a custom header. Can’t help but think the Blood Elf in the header should be a goblin though! Unfortunately Green Guts doesn’t allow name/url comments, so curses to you it seems ;) In saying that, there is some real quality content here, well worth the read.

In other news Blackwolf, of Too Greedy fame, is back in the blogging business. For anyone that hasn’t heard of Too Greedy you need to take a look – it is one of the better WoW Economy blogs out there and he has some fantastic content in his archives, or check out his MVP section for a highlight of his great content.

That is all for this week. Again if you know of a something that deserves to be highlighted then let me know.

Any review I make will be…

• My own opinion
• Unbiased – no favouritism
• Commenting on the good AND the bad points
• Showing why the review is being done, along with any transactions or services that were done with the reviewed party (such as freebies/blog posts/advertising etc.)

With that out of the way, I present to you my review of Bobreazes WoW Gold Tips!

Bobreazes WoW Gold Tips - by Bobreaze

This blog review is being done due to Bobreazes posting about my Crafting Spreadsheet last week, where anyone who did so got a free blog review this week.

Bobreazes WoW Gold Tips is a really new blog, hosted under the Blogger platform. He started just over a week ago, and is already doing pretty well!

One of the biggest hurdles for a new blog is getting past the first week – so many bloggers just lose interest once that’s up. They check their analytics, see fairly ‘low’ results (“What! Not even a thousand visitors in my first week!?”) and think they are wasting their time. Yet they aren’t! You just need patience and dedication.

And it seems Bobreazes has both of those in equal measure. He is posting pretty much daily, if not multiple times a day, and each post actually has substance and opens a point of discussion – or at least tells you a nifty trick!

Like with most new blogs however, he is suffering from “No comments = no comments = no comments”, whereby his blog receives only a small amount of comments, because nobody else has commented – and because of that, he continues to get low comments. This isn’t a dig at him or his blog in the slightest, it is simply a step that all new blogs, including mine, must continue to push past.

Because of this I am now going to try and make a conscious effort to comment on his blog as is appropriate. That’s not to say every post for the next month you’ll see a redundant comment from me, but I hope to add something to the points he raises from now on if at all possible! You should head over to Bobreazes WoW Gold Tips and do the same!

As for the site itself, it pains me to say it yet the theme is slightly garish to me. It’s mainly the mustardy yellow background that does it for me. Maybe it is just my monitors but it seems too dark compared to the text, and as such Bobreazes blog is added to my list of “Blogs that I only read in Google Reader”. It is nowhere near as bad as light on dark themes though!

I was glad to see his post on ‘Auctioneer bid low sell normal step by step guide‘ as not only is it some really helpful information to new Auction House players, it also injected some much needed colour and vibrancy in to his blog.

Prior to that post there were no other images or videos, and the site itself is all in muted tones, and with no header image. This is purely an aesthetic issue, and one that Bobreazes may not care about at all!

As for the actual content, it seems to focus almost exclusively on what Bobreazes himself is focusing on at the time. Combined with the ‘current status’ aspects of his posts this gives the blog a good feeling of progression and direction. You can clearly see what he is working on, and how it is all working out.

The blog packs important information in to small easily read chunks, something which is very opposite from the way I blog! This partly makes me like reading it even more, as it is a good way to still read even if you only have a few minutes spare.

Finally I would like to see Bobreazes maybe develop one idea further, in one market. He is obviously very spread out (for better or worse!) and the posts can tend to jump around a lot without too much focus from day to day. It would be nice to see results of one of his ideas over period of a few days or possibly a week.

All in all Bobreazes WoW Gold Tips makes for an excellent read when you aren’t too worried about reading masses of text and just want to catch up on some ideas that are working right now.

Again his biggest ‘problem’ at the moment is a lack of visitors commenting – something which you can all fix by visiting his blog and leaving comments!

This is my first blog review, so it is worth laying down some ground rules for them.

Any review I make will be…

• My own opinion
• Unbiased – no favouritism
• Commenting on the good AND the bad points
• Showing why the review is being done, along with any transactions or services that were done with the reviewed party (such as freebies/blog posts/advertising etc.)

With that out of the way, I present to you my first ever blog review!

One Copper - by Seth

This blog review is being done due to Seth posting about my Crafting Spreadsheet last week, where anyone who did so got a free blog review this week.

One Copper is a fairly well established blog, first created back at the end of April of this year (2009). It covers all aspects of the WoW economy, with tips for pretty much every profession there is going to be something for everyone!

The biggest attraction of Seth’s blog right now is his upcoming podcast – which if the poll on his website is anything to go by it will be primarily about making gold – Go vote now however!

There really is a shortage of WoW economy podcasts, and it would be great to have another :)

Seth is a ‘Goblin’, no doubt about it, in fact he shamelessly admits it and advocates it. This does occasionally stir up some controversy, especially from the dreaded ‘Anonymous’ posters who see it as  good flame fodder!

His Goblin ways also cause him to be compared to Gevlon of Greedy Goblin from time to time – some posters even saying he is “just copying him”. However anyone that spends time reading Seth’s posts will see that while there are some common traits and attitudes they each have their own distinct flavour and variances on the idea. Of course they will have some parallels they are both goblins after all.

The site itself is very easy to read, and is ‘dark on light’ – this makes it great to read, and I have somewhat of a personal dislike against ‘light on dark’ themes anyway!  The site is elegant in it’s simplicity. There are no flashing images, adverts or things like that and any semi-redundant information, such as Google Followers, is placed low in the sidebar. This leaves you free and easy access to the content itself.

There are some minor problems with the site however in my opinion. Nothing major, and in fact most blogs suffer from the same issues, even mine currently!

The first of which is while the site has a great backlog of posts, some just as relevant today as the day they were posted, it is annoyingly difficult to find the important posts that matter. In Seth’s defence the sidebar does have links to labels (Categories) so that you can narrow down what you are looking at – but still some of them are actually empty and never posted to, and others haven’t been posted to for months. It is a very good idea, it just needs to be executed better!

The list is also below the fold, so you have to scroll down to see it. This could be addressed by moving some of the contact information to a dedicated Contact page.

One Copper also allows for Anonymous and Name/URL comments, which is a real plus for me. Quite a few Blogger blogs have Name/URL turned off meaning I can’t actually link to my site if I comment, instead you have to link to your Blogger profile or something similar.

Seth is also looking for a fellow blogger to post 2-3 times a week. As far as I know nobody else currently is so this is a great way to test your feet and see if you can manage a blog of your own later. Or if the whole issue of creating and maintaining a blog seems like far too much hard work, but you want to post then this is a great way to do it!

Overall One Copper is a fantastic blog with great insight in to the goblin way of AH Whoring. As a semi-goblin myself I can’t help but relate to Seth and his posts, but even if you aren’t a goblin his blog is a good view of the other side of things.

Personally I feel like the podcast will be a major boon to One Copper and hope that it stays frequent, regular and packed full of good content. From what we have seen in the past, Seth is certainly going to deliver!

Again check out One Copper by Seth – Vote on his poll, leave him some wonderful comments and let him know if you want to guest post for him.

Current Gold Total: 1000g
Working on: Paladin leveling (64) and passive mining (360)

Well I’m back home at last and have hit level 64 on my paladin, it’s surprising how fast you can level now even without a single heirloom item.

Anyway this post is about giving something back to all the people that have helped me, or have promoted me recently.

First of all a thank you to Jederus from WoWenomics for not only linking to me, but also for providing a really informative site on the WoW economy – in well thought out and constructed posts.

Secondly, a tipping of the hat to Natural20 from Just Plain Better @ http://wcradio.com – which airs 6pm GMT Mondays. While it is actually about theory, he plugged my website on his live broadcast and if you want to learn more about theory without getting bogged down you should defintely check his show out.

Now on to the actual update of how things are. Well I’m already back up to 1k gold, and have continued to stockpile stuff from my old server.

The prices there are far cheaper on so many things it is insane. Not only that but there’s runed and crusader orbs I can buy with my ‘wasted’ badges which should bring over a whole load more money.

I also will be bringing over a small amount of the specialist cloths, as well as about 20 stacks of infinite dust, frostweave cloth and other assorted goodies. To most of you this is probably chump change at this point – but you have to start somewhere!

As mentioned previously, with any luck the transfer should happen towards the end of this week.

P.S. It seems yesterdays scheduled post didn’t actually post… probably my fault. It is up now however :)