Goblin Index Rating

What is it?

The Goblin Index Rating essentially answers the question “what is the best way to make gold?”, which is probably one of the most commonly asked questions in the game. You see it in /trade, it gets entered into Google and on forums, but the answers are sometimes unsatisfying – “it depends on the server”, “you need to have certain professions”, “you need to camp the auction house 24/7″, etc. So where does the Goblin Index Rating come into play?

Well, the Goblin Index Rating is a system that evaluates the most critical aspects of making gold in order to calculate the “best” ones. It’s main purpose is to help you ensure that your time is being used in the most efficient manner possible, and to make gold making decisions such as “should I drop this profession for another?”, “should I invest in this epic item?”, or “is this a good time to get into this particular market?” simple and straightforward. You may have heard of or used PAWN scales for evaluating gear choices – well the Goblin Index Rating is the PAWN scale of the gold making world.

How does it work?

EDIT: THE FOLLOWING IMPLEMENTATION OF THE GIR IS CURRENTLY BROKEN. I WILL LEAVE THE INFO UP FOR INTEREST’S SAKE, BUT SEE THIS POST FOR A BETTER IDEA ABOUT WHERE IT IS CURRENTLY AT AND FUTURE PROGRESS. CONSIDER THIS VERSION AS AN “ALPHA” VERSION, AND THE LATEST “BETA” VERSION IS UNDER DEVELOPMENT…IN MY HEAD.

By evaluating a gold-making opportunity against the following criteria, you can compare it with other strategies to ensure you are maximizing your business with the highest level of efficiency.

Profit

It might seem pretty obvious to be talking about profit, but it is always important to have an idea of exactly HOW MUCH profit you are actually earning. Just because something can turn a profit, doesn’t mean you should go out and do it.

The reason for having 2 scales here is simply because 1 won’t work in every situation. For example, you can’t really express farming in a percentage, and it is quite difficult to measure gold/hr if you are flipping items for profit. You should use whichever scale seems to be the most appropriate for your situation.

Rate of Return

The rate of return essentially measures how long it will take you to get the gold! The reason we want to look at this is because you will probably feel very differently about something that will earn you 100% profit in 3 months than you will about something that will earn it in a night – especially for young goblins that aren’t in a position to have their gold tied up for that long.

Investment

How much is this going to cost me, upfront? This is the biggest risk factor, and there are a couple ways of looking at this scale. You could either consider it as a percentage of your total gold, or once you get up high enough, this could reflect a percentage of your flex, or investment gold.

Competition

This one can be kind of tricky to calculate sometimes, and you are definitely going to have to do a bit of research, but it can make a huge difference. You also want to be aware of the rate of return when looking at your competition because short term markets function quite differently than long term ones when it comes to competition. With short term markets, such as mats, gems, flasks, etc. you will really want to consider the ratio of your listings to the competition, but then also to the total number of potential sales.

To clarify, consider flasks. If there are 200 flasks up on raid night and 100 of them will sell, and you have 20 up, what percentage of the market do you own? Well , you have 10% of the total listed, but if you can ensure that your 20 are in the top 100 (price and stack size will primarily affect this) then you actually own 20% of the market.

Now, if you consider long term markets, like epic gear, mounts/pets, rare recipes, etc. where you are all basically fighting for that “next” sale, then it doesn’t really matter how many you have up. You could have 3 purple swords listed, another guy could have 2, and 3 others could have 1 each, but you still control 20% of the market, and so do the other 4. The only thing that matters here is whose purple sword is the cheapest.

You’ll notice that I have also included relative terms like “high” and “low”, because sometimes, some markets are just extremely volatile and quite risky to get into without taking even more into consideration.

Stability

Nothing kills a great gold-making opportunity like market swings – especially if you aren’t expecting them. You want to have an idea of how much the value of a market is going to fluctuate ahead of time, because if it is really active, you need to ensure you hit the peaks instead of the valleys.

Flexibility

This scale evaluates the number of backup plans available in case things don’t work out. For example, if you are trying to flip gems that have already been cut, you have 2 alternatives to selling them: a) vendor them, or b) use them yourself in your own gear. On the other hand, if you are trying to flip ore, you have many more options or “escape routes”

Always remember that using the item for your own personal use IS a viable backup plan, especially if you play the game for more than just the money.

Total

The last step is to add it all up and then compare. If you have one option that rates at 40, and another that rates at 55, spend your time accordingly.

NOTE: I have opened up this page for comments, I would love to hear some feedback about the GIR – especially about the specific weighting I have chosen for each category. Ideally, each category should match the others – so a “10″ in profit should be just as valuable as a “10″ in competition. Let me know what you think.