Arbitrage and Cross-Realm Trading:
Most players participating in gold-making will be aware of the benefits of arbitrage, thanks to the Battle Pet market. However, Blizzard’s recent addition of Cross-Realm Trading and access to the Warband Bank has seismically changed the landscape of gold-making for the better. If you’re not taking part, you’re missing out!
Check out today’s article, where I explain the benefits of Arbitrage and Cross-Realm Trading and what you can do to be successful!
What are Arbitrage and Cross-Realm Trading?
Arbitrage with Cross-Realm Trading in World of Warcraft can be highly profitable. The most significant advantage is buying and selling items at different prices in different realms; this means that you can purchase an item in one realm where it is cheaper and then sell it in another realm where it is more expensive, allowing you to profit from the price difference between the two realms.
Another benefit is that Cross-Realm Trading allows you to access a larger market of buyers and sellers; this means that you can potentially find a buyer for an item you may not have been able to sell in your realm. Additionally, it allows you to find items unavailable in your realm, which can be very useful for completing quests or crafting items.
Arbitrage and Cross-Realm Trading can be a great way to make gold and expand your trading opportunities. However, knowledge and research are required to ensure you buy and sell items at the correct prices and in the best realms.
The Warband Bank:
With the impending release of The War Within, Blizzard has implemented Warbands; this offers the player account-wide progression towards reputation, currency transfers, and quest completion across all your characters on all your accounts.
The notable improvement is the ease of transferring gold and items with your alts (including cross-faction) using a Warband Bank. You will have the opportunity to purchase five bank tabs, which increase dramatically in value per tab and cost a total of 3.1 million gold. Each tab has 98 slots (similar to a Guild Bank tab), and thanks to Zanzarful, we know the Warband Bank can hold 99.9 million gold.
The Warband Bank works similarly to Pet Battles, and the first character logged in will have overriding access to the bank to prevent duping. To give access to a different character, log out and then log in on the alternative character. This option is only an issue for players who play multiple accounts simultaneously, alternatively known as dual-boxing/multiboxing!
There’s also a limitation to items you can store within your Warband Bank, including refundable items. For instance, purchased items (Replica Transmog, cooking recipes) with a refund time must expire before you can successfully store them within the Warband Bank. If you send these items or purchase them from the Auction House and the time hasn’t expired, you will be prevented from adding them to the bank!
The Warband Bank is undoubtedly the best and safest method for transferring gold and items from one player to another.
Guild Transfers:
Many of you may remember when Guild Transfers were a profitable method for transferring items from realm to realm. This method was great before the changes to Region-wide Commodities. Players ultimately purchased Battle Pets in High-populated realms, caged them, and sold them in medium and low-populated realms, making a fortune.
With the gold, you either purchased your WoWToken to extend your game time or funneled the gold into future investments to learn it or sell it later. In this example, we purchased items in the interest of stocking them in our Guild Bank, ready for Guild Transfer.
With Guild Transfers purchasable with Bnet Balance, we could calculate the gold we’d need to make to offset any losses associated with the WoWToken purchases and Guild Bank tab unlocks. Using the Undermine Exchange, we could input our current realm, and search for profitable items associated with our target realm, thus guaranteeing us profit!
However, today (as I’ll cover in greater detail), things have changed for the better, making Cross-Realm Trading accessible to all players!
How to: Cross-Realm Trading!
Ideally, you want an alt account; this makes it effortless to trade items from one of your characters (on one realm) to the other. Depending on your success, the second account can start paying for itself. Also, consider a legitimate Multi-boxing software to help keep your multiple accounts in one window.
If you have a dual-monitor setup, this won’t be necessary. If you’d like multi-boxing software (safe to use with World of Warcraft), consider Joe Multiboxer (subscription-based) or WoW Open Box (free).
Alternatively, you can trade with a friend if you trust them. Remember that this option could auto-flag your account(s) for suspicious activity. If this happens to you, contact a GM immediately. Stringent parameters are in place to prevent RMT (real-money trading) and fraudulent activities.
Be aware of faction-specific items; attempting this will close the trade window and cause you to mistakenly learn/use the next item you were right-clicking into the trade window.
Finally, use the Undermine Exchange (previously known as Oribos Exchange and the Undermine Journal). This website can give detailed region-wide pricing data for all items posted on the Auction House; this is how you purchase bargains in one realm and sell them in an alternative realm.
Markets Ideal for Cross-Realm Trading:
Here are some great markets to get involved with when Cross-Realm Trading.
- Recipes (Rare and World Drops)
- Battle Pets/Companion Pets
- Transmog (sell on RP realms)
- Mounts
- Profession Crafts (non-Faction-Specific)
- Darkmoon Artifacts
- Huge Ogre Cache
Region-Wide Auction House:
As a reminder, Cross-Realm Trading commodities have no benefit. Thanks to the Region-Wide Auction House, commodities are traded Region-Wide, not per realm. This option may only be helpful if you’re consolidating characters/realms.
Commodities are stackable items (i.e., Herbs, Ore, Leather, etc.).
Supply and Demand:
Playing in a high-populated realm, you’ll notice a saturation of items available, commonly devaluing many items as players struggle to compete for that sale; this comes in the form of undercutting. However, players playing in a low-populated realm will experience the opposite issue. There is a short supply of items but an increased demand for them; this means we can demand the highest price.
Medium-populated realms are the sweet spot with equal supply and demand. These realms will likely have items priced at the median. Periodically check these realms for mispriced auctions.
As you can see, Supply and Demand are fundamental aspects of gold-making, and understanding each realm’s population can maximize potential profit. Using your Warband Bank or Cross-Realm Trading to move items from High-Populated realms to Low-Populated realms can be very rewarding!
Example.
[Plans – Searing Golden Blade] has a median value of 195k in the E.U. Region. Draenor’s (a high-populated realm) current price is 89k, averaging 98k gold. Alternatively, the same item on Khadgar (a low-populated realm) is priced at 250k, averaging 250k! As you can see, there is a vast difference between the two!
But this is only two realms and one item; imagine how many potential bargains await you.
Conclusion:
Please bear in mind that I wrote this article during Christmas in 2023 and delayed publishing it due to administrative issues with renewing my website subscription. Since then, Blizzard has released Classic: Cataclysm, MoP Remix, and now the pre-patch to The War Within. I’ve added additional information following the release of Warband Banks.
With players playing other versions of the game and taking a well-earned break in preparation for The War Within, the player population at the Auction House will fluctuate, ultimately affecting the Supply and Demand of items we look to buy and sell.
The cusp of a new expansion is a great time to purchase cheap items and stock up on undervalued items to sell later when the population increases again. Players often farm due to a content drought and look to earn quick gold ready for the new expansion. For Gold-makers, this is a time to invest your gold, bypassing inflation, which periodically occurs upon a new expansion!
Players looking at quick sales often ignore the going rate for items, thus giving us (the gold-maker) an opportunity for a bargain. However, be vigilant; there’s merit in flipping immediately if the market dictates it.
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