Written by I am officially acknowledging my own personal involvement in the Black Iron Ore April Fool’s Day spoof. But I don’t regret it, not one bit. Any regular readers should have seen it coming anyway, as I have never before posted a “breaking news” style of post on Break the Bank, and don’t really have any intention of doing so in the future. Although, it did seem to have increased the readership by a bit… no! Can’t do it, sorry.
The intention of the Black Iron Ore posts was threefold:
- To make people second guess their decision to speculate in Pyrite Ore
- To measure the impact of the gold – blogging community and see if we could collectively influence an entire market
- To have some fun
In my opinion, we accomplished all three of those things to varying degrees. First of all, let me explain: Black Iron Ore isn’t fake. It was originally datamined during the Cataclysm beta, though – it was not “recently discovered”. What it represents (a possible source of introducing Cataclysm epic gems into the game) is a reality. The vast majority of people out there seem to be stockpiling Pyrite Ore, but there are many different possibilities, including (in no particular order, other than my memory’s innate sorting ability):
- Prospected from Pyrite Ore
- Prospected from another ore, possible even a new one
- Transmuting rare gems via Alchemy
- Purchased with a currency, such as Justice Points
- Drops from mobs/bosses
- Dungeon Finder/PvP Reward
- All of the above
- None of the above / the other ones I forgot
The point that I’m really trying to make is that there are far too many ways for Blizzard to introduce cata epic gems to make banking on one, single option a worthwhile endeavor. Each option is, for the most part, as likely to happen as the next. The other thing that unsettled me slightly was how many people seem to want to “get rich” from epic gems. To me, this means that anyone looking to make it big from the epic gem launch will have to really fight for it. This is one of the main reasons why I don’t generally invest in speculation. I make my gold today, and I will worry about tomorrow’s gold tomorrow.
What’s ahead
Based on some feedback I’ve seen lately at The Consortium (you really should join me over there if you haven’t already), I am working on a comprehensive glyph guide. Stede and I also reworked the formulas for the Goblin Index Rating, so when I get a chance, I would like to throw some data back through that to see if it feels any better. Check out some of the subscription options and stay tuned!
-Kathroman
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