WoW....
I'm having a great deal of fun with WoW. It has something that CoH lacks -- an economy. Stuff. Stuff to manage in a game is fun -- I like comparing gear, equipping my guy with the best I can find and exchanging items with other people. I like getting good gear for friends, and handing it off. I'm a pack-rat of digital bits ;)
In the game, you can pick professions. You can select two from: Mining, Engineering, Blacksmithing, Herbalism, Alchemy, Enchanting, Tailoring, Skinning and Leatherworking. Some of these are 'gathering' professions -- Mining, Herbalism, Skinning. This means that while you're walking around, gold dots appear on your map to indicate that there's something you can gather at that location. Like Copper. Tin. Peacebloom (Herb). You use these 'raw' materials in production skills -- smithing, engineering, etc. Stuff to collect, and stuff to make. It's fun ;)
In addition to all this, they've basically set up an an e-bay like system built into the game. With games like Diablo 2, there wasn't a feature like this. So you had people ACTUALLY using ebay to sell in-game items. They were very smart with WoW, in that they built it into the game.
So, I'm having a lot of fun just dealing with the economy of the game. I've pretty much got the Auction thing figured out. You head to a city (Ironforge for us Human-type), and there's an Auction House in town. You talk to an auctioneer and you can browse items, search for items, bid on items and sell items. The sale system is pretty slick, you essentially remove the thing from your inventory and put it 'on deposit' at the auction house. (This is good because you're limited on inventory space in the game, and you can sell things without having to actually have it taking up your own space.) You can set a minimum bid and a buyout price. If the auction reaches the buyout price, it's automatically sold (like e-bay's buy-it-now). The Auction house uses the in-game mail system to send you items (it you win) or coin (if your auction sold). It's pretty bullet-proof -- I can't see a way to scam it. Not that I would, but I look for them so I don't get scammed.
Anyway, raw materials tend to sell pretty well. I can sell my stack of 20 linen at the merchants for 2 silver, or I can throw them up at the auction house (on the low end of the market, thanks) and get 25 silver for them. Weeee. Coin is good and neccesary in the game; Blizzard has constructed the game around Coin. You pay trainers to teach you new skills. You pay to travel quickly. You pay to get new gear. And the cost scales up as you get better skills, better gear, more places to travel to.
I'm guessing prices vary from server to server, but I've been getting the following:
23-28 silver for 20 linen
20-24 silver for 20 rough stones
Carla sent me a stack of 20 Peaceblooms (first level Herb), and DAMN! The auction buyouts were set at FIFTY silver for a stack. So I set mine at 40. We'll see if someone bites. If they don't, I don't get charged anything and it gets mailed back to me. So I can relist them for 35, and see if that sells. I haven't had an issue with selling anything when I undercut the market.
I've only dabbled a bit, but I've already made 2 gold. GOLD. :) 100 copper = 1 silver; 100 silver = 1 gold. Creatures at my level (18) are dropping about 30 copper per kill, so it'd take a lot of creature hunting to reach 1 gold.
Weeeee.
If only making money in the Earth were as east as making money is Azeroth.