WoW Auction Mastery is a gold guide by Mayle Winter that teaches players how to make a killing using only the auction house.  The individual topics range from the basic (setting up the Auctioneer addon) to the advanced (aggressively taking over a market and gaining a monopoly) and are distributed as videos which can be played on the PC, Mac, or iPhone / iPod.

The official site for WoW Auction Mastery can be found here.

WoW Auction Mastery Review

Since WoW Auction Mastery was released in August of 2009, I’ve had a good amount of time to work with the guide and become a master of the WoW auction house.  Before I get started, I’d like to mention that if you’re just getting started with the auction house and need to learn the basics, you want to click here and put your email address into the form on the page so you can get the free videos and ebook.  They will go a long way towards helping you get started on the auction house.

Now, with that out of the way, let’s get on with the review.  WoW Auction Mastery consists of several videos that address gold making on the auction house with a sort of scaling difficulty curve.  You will definitely want to go through them in order, as most of the higher level stuff requires information that’s taught in the earlier videos.

The videos start with the Foundation series, which teaches you how to properly configure Auctioneer (get this wrong and you won’t make a copper!) as well as how to assess which items are the hottest sellers on your server, using stack size to your advantage, and how to decide whether to undercut or overprice your auctions.  The Foundation series quite literally gives you a rock solid foundation on which to build your auction house techniques, and it does it well enough that you should be making a LOT of gold once you start implementing everything you’ve learned… But we’re not done yet.

The second module is the Advanced section.  This teaches you how to use the more intricate features of Auctioneer, like the Converter, Vendor, and Snatch tools as well as the Realtime Search function.  This will let you pick up on other people’s mistakes and turn them into pure profit.  Video number 2 in the Advanced section is dedicated to finding your gold making mistakes.  It sounds a little bit hokey at first, but this video might be the most valuable part of the whole Advanced module!  It shows you how to analyze your auctioneering to pick out mistakes that are costing you money, and how to make sure you’re spending your auction time doing things that are actually going to make you gold.  The last part of the Advanced module is killer.  It shows you how to use manual searches to clean up on the deals that Auctioneer misses, as well as how to set up a secondary auction house search tool that will net you more gold than you can spend.

Now, try not to get overwhelmed here.  We’ve still got one more module to go.  Mayle calls the last module “The Golden Videos” and once you’ve been through them, you’ll understand why.  Let’s get one thing straight right now.  The Foundation and Advanced modules are more than enough to keep you rolling in gold for as long as you play the game.  The Golden Videos take it over the top.  If one of your goals in WoW is to hit the gold cap, these videos are for you.  In them, Mayle covers how to turn disenchanting, tailoring, and inscription into constant gold generation, as well as the Warehousing technique that she used to push 3 bank alts past 100,000 gold EACH.  The stuff she shows in these videos is so powerful that if I were her, I wouldn’t have released them to the public, but luckily for us she decided to share!

So, here’s what it all comes down to.  WoW Auction Mastery is, in my opinion, the absolute BEST gold making guide in terms of time spent and gold earned.  Spending no more than 20 minutes per day, I’ve been able to keep my many alts in AH-bought gear, weapons enchanted, and riding skills as soon as they can use them, including cold-weather flying at 68 in Northrend.  It is my #1 preferred gold guide, and I quite literally have them all.  I would happily recommend it to any and all of my readers who have ever had any issue making gold, or have felt that they have to spend too much time grinding to get the gold they need.

The bottom line?  Click the link below, grab the guide, and dominate the auction house.

Click here to get WoW Auction Mastery now!

Well, Blizzard is finally starting to drip feed us some info on the new Cataclysm expansion for World of Warcraft.  They’ve been going over class change previews day by day, and much like with all things WoW, I have an opinion.  Without further ado, here are the mage changes as presented so far:

In World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, we’ll be making lots of changes and additions to class talents and abilities across the board. In this preview, you’ll get an early look at what’s in store for the mage class, including a rundown of some of the new spells, abilities, and talents, and an overview of how the new Mastery system will work with the different talent specs.

New Mage Spells

Flame Orb (available at level 81): Inspired by Prince Taldaram’s abilities in Ahn’kahet and Icecrown Citadel, this spell allows the mage to cast a flaming orb that travels in front in a straight line, sending beams that cause fire damage to passing targets. Once it’s cast, the mage is free to begin casting other spells as the Flame Orb travels. While the spell will be useful to any spec, Fire mages will have talents that improve it, possibly causing the Flame Orb to explode when it reaches its destination.

Time Warp (level 83): Grants a passive Haste effect much like Bloodlust or Heroism to party or raid members. It also temporarily increases the mage’s own movement speed. Time Warp will be exclusive with Bloodlust and Heroism, meaning you can’t benefit from both if you’ve got the Exhaustion debuff, though the movement-speed increase will still work even when under the effects of Exhaustion.

Wall of Fog (level 85): Creates a line of frost in front of the mage, 30 yards from end to end. Enemies who cross the line are snared and take damage. The mana cost will be designed to make Wall of Fog efficient against groups, not individuals. This spell is intended to give mages a way to help control the battlefield, whether the mage is damaging incoming enemies (Blizzard can be channeled on top of Wall of Fog) or protecting a flag in a Battleground. 10-second duration. 30-second cooldown.

Changes to Abilities and Mechanics

In addition to introducing new spells, we’re planning to make changes to some of the other abilities and mechanics you’re familiar with. This list and the summary of talent changes below it are by no means comprehensive, but they should give you a good sense of what we intend for each spec.

• Arcane Missiles is being redesigned to become a proc-based spell. Whenever the mage does damage with any spell, there is a chance for Arcane Missiles to become available, similar to how the warrior’s Overpower works. The damage and mana cost of this spell will be reworked to make it very desirable to use when available. This change should make gameplay more dynamic for the mage, particularly at low levels.
• We are planning to remove spells that don’t have a clear purpose. Amplify Magic, Dampen Magic, Fire Ward, and Frost Ward are being removed from the game, and we may remove more.
• The ability to conjure food and water will not become available until higher levels (likely around level 40), as we’re making changes to ensure mages generally won’t run out of mana at lower levels. Once mages learn how to conjure food and water, the conjured item will restore both health and mana.
• Scorch will provide a damage bonus to the mage’s fire spells. Our goal is for Scorch to be part of the mage’s rotation and a useful damage-dealing ability, even if someone else is supplying the group with the spell Critical Strike debuff. Scorch will provide the mage with more specific benefits, which can also be improved through talents.

New Talents and Talent Changes

• Arcane Focus will now return mana for each spell that fails to hit your target, including Arcane Missiles that fail to launch. We want Arcane mages to have several talents that play off of how much mana the character has and give the player enough tools to manage mana.
• The talent Playing with Fire will reduce the cooldown of Blast Wave when hit by a melee attack, instead of its current effect.
• Pyromaniac will grant Haste when three or more targets are getting damaged by the effects of your damage-over-time (DoT) fire spells.
• The Burnout talent will allow mages to cast spells using health when they run out of mana.

Mastery Passive Talent Tree Bonuses

Arcane

• Spell damage
• Spell Haste
• Mana Adept

Mana Adept: Arcane will deal damage based how much mana the mage has. For example, Arcane mages will do much more damage at 100% mana than at 50% mana. If they begin to get low on mana, they will likely want to use an ability or mechanic to bring their mana up to increase their damage.

Fire

• Spell damage
• Spell Crit
• Ignite

Ignite: All direct-damage fire spells will add a damage-over-time (DoT) component when cast. The flavor will be similar to how Fireball works; however, the DoT component will be much stronger.

Frost

• Spell damage
• Spell Crit damage
• Deathfrost

Deathfrost: Casting Frostbolt places a buff on the mage that increases the damage for all frost, fire, and arcane spells. The only damage spell that won’t be affected by this buff is Frostbolt.

We hope you enjoyed this preview, and we’re looking forward to hearing your initial thoughts and feedback on these additions and changes. Please keep in mind that this information represents a work in progress and is subject to change as development on Cataclysm continues.

Looks like Arcane Mages are going to be one of the most fun class / spec combos in the game so far.  Arcane Missiles as an Overpower effect are going to be a ton of fun, and should add a lot more of a dynamic feel to the spec in PVE (instead of just facerolling arcane blast) which most players will probably appreciate.  Time Warp will be handy, I doubt you’ll find many mages complaining about getting Bloodlust.  The Mana Adept bonus from Arcane Mastery is looking pretty interesting.  I’m guessing most mages are going to be having to rethink their rotations a bit.  The removal of Dampen / Amplify magic as well as the Ward spells is great.  They’re nothing more than a waste of gold and hotbar space in their current iterations, and I applaud Blizzard for being able to admit that the spells are better off removed from the game.

Fire Mages are in pretty good shape as well.  Flame Orb is looking absolutely brutal for AoE in PVE and PVP, as well as just being an immensely cool spell in general.  I’m also happy to hear that Scorch is going to become a bigger part of the rotation.  Scorch is one of my favorite fire spells (there’s just something about a quick-casting heat burst to the dome that makes me smile!)  so seeing the devs take some time to make it relevant again is great.  Ignite moving to a baseline ability provided by the Mastery path rather than a talent is a good change as well.  Ignite was kind of a boring talent, but it’s a relatively useful addition to Fire DPS, so it’s cool that they were able to preserve it while simultaneously letting Fire Mages invest their talent points in something a bit more interesting.

Finally, Frost Mages have not been forgotten.  It looks like Blizzard has finally decided on a role for Frost Mages on the battlefield, and it happens to be a role that I am very fond of:  disruption.  Wall of Fog is pretty much the perfect mass disruption spell, and combined with Blizzard it is going to be the bane of many, many players.  Good times ahead, mages.