Goblin Mindset: The weekly WoW cycle

WoW follows a very predictable weekly cycle based on when players play the game and what they do. This is quite important to take advantage if you want to maximize the gold you make. 

Raid resets

One huge factor here is the raid reset system. Raids reset on Tuesday’s on NA and Wednesday’s on EU realms. This makes it the most popular raiding day. Raiding means more consumables get used and more gear is obtained. All gear enhancements and consumables typically sell much better on the reset day than the rest of the week. I’ve had reset days that make up half of my enchanting sales on retail. 

How can you take advantage of this

This one is pretty simple. Just make sure you have consumables, gems, enchants and anything else ready to go. Repost them as often as you can, with a focus on consumables before typical raid (17-19) times and enchants after raids typically end (22-24). Cancel scan and repost and enjoy raking in a lot of gold. 

On some realms and some weeks there are also items that spike up in price on the reset day if the realm has gotten closer to running ouot for some reason. There’s no way to predict this, you just need to keep a lot of different items in stock so you can catch the wave if you find it. 

Casual play time

The Weekend is when the proportion of casual players is highest. They may not play a lot, but they do during the weekend. This will typically mean a lot more stuff for sale and thus lower prices. Since these players don’t play as much they typically don’t know the value of their items, making them post at lower prices. They also typically care more about just getting their gold and going out questing again to really play the AH. 

How can you take advantage of this

Just do shopping scans. Make sure you shop for whichever materials or items you use a lot of during the weekend. Shop as often as you can to build inventory and find deals. You won’t always find great deals, but it’s always worth looking. 

The price cycle

Based on these two behaviour patterns we get the typical weekly wow price cycle which affects most current expansion materials. Prices peak around the raid reset, then they start trending down as the week goes on. The low point happens during the weekend and then on Monday prices start trending slightly up before usually getting a jump on the raid reset day. The jump can be small or large and will vary from week to week and between items. On some realms you might not really see price increase, but just a huge increase in sales volume, which is still great.

The cycle still always happens and will most likely always do as it’s based on very fundamental human behavioural patterns. More casuals play when they have time off. More players do end-game content around the raid reset. 

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2 thoughts on “Goblin Mindset: The weekly WoW cycle

  1. Just started following your website & got into the AH. Only last week I started to notice this pattern aswell, sick that you decide to post about it today.

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