Squeezles the gnome logged on at six o'clock, and played World Of Warcraft until after eleven p.m. During that time, he never left the city of Stormwind.
"I'm just trying to get some gold together," Squeezles said. "Repair bills have gotten very expensive."
Squeezles has to pay a vendor as much as sixty gold every seven or eight times he dies. He said those bills can really add up, since players can frequently die as many as fifty times in the course of attempting a heroic dungeon.
"It's hard to hang on to enough gold to even afford to go out into the world to farm gold," he said.
In order to make ends meet, Squeezles offers his jewelcrafting services in Stormwind trade chat.
"I link my jewelcrafting recipes in trade chat, so people can see the cuts I can do," he explained. "If they want a gem cut, they can bring me the uncut gem, and then I will open my jewelcrafting tab, push the button to cut it, and give the cut gem back to me. Most people give me five gold for doing this, but sometimes I get ten."
Unfortunately, his selection of gem-cuts is relatively paltry. In order to learn a new pattern, he must complete three jewelcrafting daily-quests. But those quests can be difficult to complete.
"This one keeps popping up, where I have to cut three Timeless Nightstones. But where am I supposed to get a nightstone? Do they think I just have extra gold lying around to buy stuff like that?"
Only one of the daily quests is reasonable for a casual player like Squeezles to complete. It involves using a quest item to tag ten humanoid players. It is only available twice a week, so Squeezles has only a limited repertoire of patterns.
"Green is my favorite color, so I am trying to learn all the cuts for Dream Emeralds," he said. Most of his gear is green, as well.
On a recent evening, Punchins the Night Elf Death Knight walked right past Squeezles to buy three Puissant Dream Emeralds on the auction house for forty gold each. Uncut Dream Emeralds cost nine gold each, so, even after giving Squeezles a customary tip, the elf could have saved seventy-five gold by getting the gnome to cut his gems for him.
"Who cares?" Punchins said, when informed of this. "It's not like gold matters in this game."
He further explained that he was completely unaware of Squeezles's jewelcrafting service, because he has disabled trade chat.
"I cut three, maybe four gems an hour," Squeezles said. "If I'm lucky, one person will need a bunch of gems cut, and will tip really well for cutting all of them. But that doesn't happen a lot."
Punchins the death knight said he was on his way to the Molten Front daily quest hub. The zone's fifteen quests would take him twenty-five minutes, total, and the quests reward sixteen gold each.
"People who have gold must play, like, nonstop," Squeezles said, as he spammed his trade-chat macro.
Ossland the human warrior sold the three gems that Punchins bought on the Auction House. "I raid two nights a week, and I check in for about twenty minutes on most off nights, to re-list my auctions."
He said he had twenty five gem-cuts, and he'll list between two and five of each kind per night, depending on how popular a particular kind of gem is.
"The auction house is for suckers," Squeezles said, shaking his head at Ossland. "You have to pay a deposit to list an item, and then it takes a cut of the sale price. Plus, you have to front the items to list it. I use trade chat, and only do gem-cuts with my customers' mats, so my take is pure profit."
He then excused himself to explain to another player that he didn't know how to cut a Brilliant Inferno Ruby. Meanwhile, Ossland looted 4000 gold from his mailbox and logged off to go watch "True Blood" with his wife.
