Pay It Forward

A funny thing happened to me when I asked in /trade "WTH Tailor, my mats". It ranks very high on the "coolest thing ever" for me in WoW.My L18 Horde Hunter is working on making gold, as you may have read in other posts. Today he needed to upgrade bags. So off to the AH I went to find the going price for some upgrades.

The biggest non-starter bag I had was an 8 slot red bag that I purchased for 3s. My others were 6 slots each and I really wanted to find a deal on some 10s, or maybe a 12 if I was lucky. I view bag space as one of the biggest factors in leveling and earning gold--the fewer times you have to run back to sell stuff the faster you can quest, and the more you can earn.

Unfortunately the AH prices for 10s and 12s were ridiculously high. The cheapest 10 slot was 2.5g and the cheapest 12 slot was 4.5g. No way I'm going to spend that much on bags, especially since I only had 44g to my name. So I dejectedly decided to just scan the AH for any deals to flip and try to just focus on making gold.

A Netherweave bag came up as 6g, about 70% value. On a hunch I looked at Netherweave cloth and found two stacks for 2.5g each. I know one stack of cloth plus some thread = one bag, so I jumped on both stacks. I eagerly went to /trade and asked for a tailor. Very quickly, a L80 mage answered my ad.

I confessed my situation before any transaction took place. I simply said, "can you craft two bags for me?  I am a poor lowbie with little gold so will a 1g tip be sufficient? I totally understand if you say no". The answer surprised me--a quick "lol, idk if you tip at all, happy to help you out" and a /invite. 

I met the Undead mage (whos name I'm not using b/c I don't have permission), and followed him to the bank--he had the thread and told me not to buy it. He crafted some bags and hit trade--but instead of the two bags I expected, he put in 3 Netherweave bags and 1 Frostweave bag. I asked "you sure? looks like a mistake", and the reply came back, "they are yours, thanks for being honest about tips--love to help cool people".

As amazed as I was at this surprising development, what followed blew me away. "want a port to Dal?" he asked. "Sure, yeah, thanks!" was my answer. 

Not only did he port me to Dal, but then took about 10 minutes to take me on a tour--showed me every shop, all the vendors, where the inn was, etc. I didn't have the heart so say "yeah, I know" so I just followed along and expressed my gratitude. 

Suffice it to say this very cool mage is now on my friend list.

I often do things like this on my main toons. I have made free armor, weapons and scrolls to give to total strangers who I thought were cool. Around Winter Veil, I make potions, crafted blues and scrolls and then put them in Holiday Wrapping Paper and in-game mail them to players who I feel can use them. I used to just do it from my AH toon, sort of like advertising, but then expanded to doing it for guildies and now just players who I think could use an upgrade and act cool in some way.

Occasionally I will get a random mail with a tip in it, or some player will be very persistent in saying "I really want to pay you back". And I always say "no way, just pay it forward".

I guess Karma made the circuit and returned to me in some way. And to that nameless mage, props to you! You are exactly the reason why playing this game is enjoyable. Keep it up!