Due to circumstances – my Foray into the Bloggers guild, Single Abstract Noun and rolling a new toon as horde with a friend – I started leveling two new toons this weekend from scratch.
My #4 Priest Pugnaciouss ( yes I am insane) I got her to level 14 and a Tauren Shammy Zahrah on Gundrak who is now level 15
Leveling a priest like that. Again. OH THE PAIN 32 deaths so far, and 7 in a WSG game I thought I would have a go at.
I was selling my food for my level 4 priest training. I had to grind mobs to afford milk at level 5 – yes the mana regen has helped a lot, and I could have survived on spring water at 22 copper but I wanted to be faster!
Buying 6 slot vendor Bags on the Shammy one at a time because that was all I could afford – I only become financially viable when a guy gave us a 1 gold to sign his guild charter – 1 gold is a lot
Of course I started playing the Auctionhouse, but with leveling speeds increased – I needed gold sooner than an AH sale could provide. ( Level 18 now and between 40-50 gold on my shammy now)
Both Toons started unsupported on new servers – no gold no gear – no help, except a very welcome donated bag from the Single Abstract Noun Guild bank. More bag space = more loot = more stuff to send to bank alt/vendor = gold.
I should have planned a little better and Rolled a DK first.
I took up Skinning and herbing on my Priest on Argent Dawn- but I was able to bring 1k over on the toon I bought over with the heirlooms so I’ll be right for funds for a while – I don’t need to be rich but will still send mats to the bank alt to sell.
On my Shammy – they were a skinner, now a miner and enchanter. The idea being I make my gold from selling the enchanting mats for a little while, and the copper is worth more than the leather on the AH at the moment. I have been selling some of the starting enchanting mats available from vendor on the AH for profit. I am on track be able to afford my mount by 20 – I have my heirlooms that make it way easier to level, but no extra gold to play with.
I must confess I have now transferred toons with heirlooms to both servers. Yeah for being able to send heirlooms Xfaction! (gold isnt transferable x faction though) and now have a dent in my credit card.
I am over the challenge of doing it from scratch and I think I will recoup the value of the transfer by not dying as often / faster leveling = more pleasant experience.
I did the hard yards on my original toons, and then on several others I have rolled from scatch on new servers. I have a Shammy still on Nagrand at level 40 odd with 480 gold that I can’t do anything with – She was self supported with minimal Auction house effort. I don’t want to do the hard yards again.
The point, and title of this post is – I could not afford even the most basic of training and bag and food by level 4 on my priest, without some grinding, some time passing – and collection/selling of collected items on the AH 1 gold would have made the world of difference. I was leveling then, and I wanted it all now.
I guess I could have danced on tables.
Blizzard have made everything else easier. The struggle to be able to afford what I wanted/needed helped make me a better player the 1st time round, but even with all the changes and the nerfs if you were a brand new player – who didn’t even read the instruction manual – have no idea how the Auction house works, your not going to have enough copper to keep yourself fed and watered, fully trained and bagged up.
1 gold for new toons would make it a heck of a difference to new players.
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Pugnacious Priest's Warcraft Blog 
Giving 1 gold seems like a handout, rather than giving a couple bags which is more like a leg up. Or to put it in other terms; I’m all for a socialist government which hands out bootstraps to everyone. Gold gets spent, which bags help us get more gold, and make the game more fun since we don’t have to deal with the annoyance of destroying items to clear up quest space and that sort of thing.
Klep your always my first commentor 🙂 Bags would be nice – they could make a noob care package waiting in your mail so you at least have to get to a mail box.
Bags are certainly preferable to gold. If you give starting characters 1 gold, that’s 333 in game mails that they can send relatively anonymously with absolutely no effort other than running to a mailbox.
Should this change be introduced you can expect a lot more gold spam.
I never give my starting characters gold unless I plan on twinking their professions – always start from scratch and each time I do its a reminder of how easy it is to make gold. Even without selling from crafting professions, after level 10 gold really does become quite easy. (before that its a bit of a struggle to afford new skills)
Almost none of my toons have played the auction house – I usually just vendor everything because I’m very lazy. From 1-80 I can usually expect to make anywhere in the ballpark of 2-3000 gold, depending on how many quests I do compared to instances etc in Northrend.
Personally my brokeness amuses me. I bumped into lil Timmy and couldn’t afford to buy the kitten. I couldn’t afford both the training to learn skinning and a skinning knife. Getting a bag as a drop was actually a big deal.
I haven’t rolled on a new server ever. So it been a long time since all of these seemingly little things were actually big deals. It makes leveling more enjoyable in some ways as there are numerous mini-goals being achieved in between levels. Additionally since I’m in SAN for social/experimental reasons leveling is something that happens accidentally. That really changes the feel of the game for the better I think.
Super Secret SAN Sobriquet: Xandrah
It was humbling to not be able to afford the most basic of expenses but I think your right about the social reasons – we don’t have to get the toons to 80’s to achieve the purpose of San – and that is just to get us all together
Or you could have done what Tobold did, fishing at level 7 in Northrend, thus earning him I think ~70g from AH sales (you can read about it on his blog).
Earning gold even at low level is not hard, you just have to think a bit outside the box 🙂
But I agree it would be nice if Blizzard would help new players with the leveling experience. A bigger starting pack is an often requested feature and so far Blizzard response has been “we don’t like it but we’re considering it”.
Another option would be to drastically reduce training costs. This makes sense since leveling is so much faster these days so less gold is earned just from quests/drops. This is what I hope Blizzard do.
that required time, and even he said that he spent more time fishing then he did leveling, am up tp 70 odd gold now on my shammy – letting Auction house sales tick overnight has made the world of a difference, and that is still only with mats obtained over the course of leveling without farming
A little helping hand would certainly be a good thing, whether it comes in the form of bags, free training at early levels… even after years of the game I am worse than useless at making gold
I have no interest in the AH, and generally use my professions to help my characters (or friends/guild) rather than make money.
I rolled an alt on the new bloggers guild SAN last night, at level 6 went to the city and found the GB allowed me to withdraw 2g as well as any items in the tabs, I took a couple of 6 slot bags and some new armor. Very helpful for a new toon and very kind of the people there who stocked up the GB 🙂