Introduction
Hello! Todays host will be Bema, although my account says I'm a new member to Ownedcore I have ready the forums for a while and I feel that it is my time to contribute and give back to the community. This guide will be kept relatively short, concise, easy to read and ultimately help you make some extra gold easily. The basis that this guide uses to make gold is relatively similar to another guide that can be found here (Get the name you want. *Involves GM/CS, Not Theory, Exploit Kinda*) but the execution and method at which potential buyers is different so please do not say this is a repost as I did not read another guide to devise this money making method.
Requirements
To make gold using this guide you need a slight amount of patience and a good attitude. If you are the sort of person that thinks you will make 50k overnight or are just plain rude to other players then this really will not work out. When talking to other players you need to have the right attitude to sell them a name which effectively is worthless and convince them that it has personal value at least to them. You must also realise that you will not get a continuously supply of people willing to buy names, you will have high and low points and occasionally rude players. You are also required to either open a GM ticket or talk to a GM to obtain these names so once again, being polite always helps, if your ticket to customer support resembles something an 8 year old has written then you will be treated like an 8 year old.
Preparation
Many people seem to have the misconception that selling names for in game gold is against the ToS. The best blizzard response I found to this was.
Good evening Spongle,
Technically, there isn’t anything to say that you can’t make an in-game agreement to ‘sell’ the use of a character name for in-game gold, as the others have suggested.
This does come with a heavy warning though, and in blue this time(!) – this would not be an officially supported transaction, and would have to take place entirely at your own risk (as with planned item transfer via the Neutral Auction House, and other unintended ‘trades’).
Whilst checking into this, we were also unsure how you’d go about freeing up the name in question in a reliable way, but please don’t forget about the name being locked if you did decide to make use of the PCNC server and also don’t forget that an outsider could indeed poach the name while it was free and you’d unfortunately have no recourse to appeal for help.
All this being said, good luck if you do decide to go ahead with it!
I highly advise you also create at least 2 trial edition accounts, these accounts will be used to store the level 1 characters with the names you own and want to sell. It does not take long to create the starter accounts and allows you to store many names.
Obtaining Names
The method to obtain names is very simple, you message a GM to unlock an inactive accounts character name. Although this relies on the account that owns the name you want being inactive. For an account to be inactive no character on the account must not have been played for at least 6 months and it must not have an active subscription running. If you armoury an inactive character name the character will be blacked out and when you click on it will say
Oops
Character Not Available
This character profile could not be displayed, possibly for one of the following reasons:
• The character has been inactive for an extended period of time.
• The character name or realm was spelled incorrectly.
• The profile is temporarily unavailable while the character is in the midst of a process such as a realm transfer or faction change.
• Characters that have been deleted are no longer available.
If you click the character which is under level 10 which many of the names will be stored on it will say
Oops
Only characters level 10 or higher can be viewed.
Then you cannot determine if the name is eligible to take so you will have to try.
Now you should research what sort of names you want to sell. You should be aiming for the 'rare' names, ones that stand out. Personally I've always liked 2 letter names which have a somewhat catchy combination, other class-specific names or famously player names will probably sell to the right people. Do not try and get a vast variety of names straight away just try focusing on a sub-category before expanding.
Tips On Picking Names To Sell
• Do not pick names with accents in, they are worthless.
• Class specific names such as Nature, Holy, Healer are good.
• Names of famous players such as Swifty will probably sell.
• 2 Letter names sell surprisingly quickly for low amounts, these were my best sellers.
• Ability names such as Vanish will probably sell to the respective classes eventually.
• Be creative when you think of names which would sell.
Now begins the core part of collecting the names you want to sell, I from now on will just use 2 letter names as an example for convenience on my own realm. You must open a ticket to a GM and politely request the names you want unlocking and provide a reason why. I have provided a template below.
Hello, I would like the character names Rs, Cs, Ts unlocking on the server Ravencrest as they are currently held by inactive accounts and I would like to use these names for my alts.
Best wishes,
Bema
Depending on the ticket queue time you should be able to have these names within 1 day ready to sell, that was roughly my turnaround time.
Pricing Names
Pricing the names of the characters is arguably the hardest part of this guide as there is no definitive value for a character name, in essence they are worthless. As a rough approximation I sold my 2 letter names for 2-3k each and these sold very fast. I also sold my more rare names such as Nature for 5k each, these do not sell as quickly as the 2 letter names however.
Selling The Names
The main way you will be selling names is through either forums or trade chat, I sold mine entirely through macros made in trade chat. You should look at creating a macro along the lines of the one I made below
/2 Looking to sell Rare character names such as <Name 1>, <Name 1>, <Name 1>, among many more for gold. Message me to see If I have a rare name you want!
People will start messaging you asking what names you have, most of the time you will not have the name they want but this is where it gets interesting. Say you have names Rs, Cs, Ts but a player wants the name Ps. You can tell them your friend is holding lots of your names and hes back tomorrow so you will see if you can get that name for them possibly. At this point you create a list of names people want, add the players to your friends list and create another GM ticket requesting specifically the names people want. The beautiful thing about this method is that you can charge even more gold by making out that it was hard to get said name. My normal 2 letter name price went up from 3k to 5k purely from requested names. These requested names not only sell for more but also sell better than random ones.
Completing The Trade
As requested I have been asked to outline a typical transaction.
1) Customer messages you asking for a name.
2) You both agree on a name you have to sell that he wants to buy.
3) You open up a second WoW and log onto your name bank account to prove you own it.
4) The customer pays 50% gold up front.
5) You delete the character freeing up the name in the process and allow him to claim it.
6) Once the customer has returned you get paid the remaining 50% gold.
Final Thoughts
I understand this is not everybody’s preferred method of gold making, it involves no exploits, a slight amount of luck however it did make me over 20k in a very short period of time, on a heavily populated realms finding customers should be no issue and it will be accessible for almost everyone so I highly suggest people make the most of it while you can.