Gold Making the Basics - How To Understand your Server Economy

So you read in many Places - Go Research your Servers Economy  - But How ? 

For me I would start with the Following Key Questions :

• Server Age 
• Population 
• PVE or PVP ? 
• Progression or Casual ? 
• Server Forums

Server Age - 
How do you find how old your sever is ?
There is a site Called Warcraft Realms that has the information on Server live Dates Check Here for yours  .

But what does Server age tell us ? 
You would expect that on a older Server there will be more money and more established players . So on a old Server I would expect the market to be stronger with a few Established Auctioneers .Also With a old Server I would expect Established and old Guilds .

There have been many population moved and combining of servers so do your Research well.


Population - 
Population is a major Factor on the market but what's your Server population ?

High -
On a high Population Server I would expect the market to be Very active and there will be a larger volume of sales , I would Be looking to sell high volume low profit items here as a standard way of making gold  but Expect tough competition .

Also There will be a lot of gold on the Server and With that the possibility of Farmers ad Gold Sellers. Dealing in Rare items will also be good as with a high Population the Supply will be much less then the demand.

Medium
On a medium population Server I would expect a  balanced market with good volume of sales and Rare items going at a fair price but not a high as a High Population Server as the demand Will be less and Less players will need them . I would also expect a strong Supply of mats on a medium population Server.

Low
A Low Population Server with have its own issue Less mats to keep the market flowing but also less demand, so I would expect to see a overall higher prices but rare items selling  at a much slower rate


PVE , PVP or RP ? 

PVP - ( Player Vs Player)
As its a PVP server you would expect a higher demand for PVP gear, gems,enchants and PVP focused Potions . So selling Gear aimed at this community works well .

PVE  ( Player Vs Environment)
As the server is not PVP focused expect to sell items and Gear aimed at Raiders and People levelling alts .

RP ( Role Play ) 
On a RP server there is a demand for Cosmetic items Like Ruby shades or the many different types of cosmetic shirts .



Progression or Casual 
To find out if you server is a Progressive or Casual Server Check out Wow Progress - Click Here

Progressive - 
When you look the information about your server look at the top guilds have they cleared all the Raid content and when did they get there kill ?

If you can understand the raiding nature of your server then you can work out the need to supply Epic gear and Buff food and Potions .

Server Forums -

Recruitment is always a key sign or expansion or progression so also have a look here and see how busy the forums are and how many guilds are recruiting . This can give you a good idea of what happening across the guilds and you can see who is doing what  . Another point here is to see how organised the Guild are do they post ever day ?


Summary 
Overall it take time to understand a servers economy but if you can answer the above questions then you can enter the market in a more informed position

• So how old is your Server ? 
• What the Population ? 
• PVP or PVE ? 
• Progressive or Casual ? 
• What happening behind the scenes

Resources to look at 

http://www.wowprogress.com

http://www.warcraftrealms.com/census.php

Zoxy