My Grandpappy used to say – “Fucking Goblins keep stealing my lucky underwear!” He also used to say, “When life hands you lemons, kick him in the bollocks.”

Grandpappy was a unique duck.

Still, if you sifted through the madness you could salvage a kernel of wisdom. Like the lemon thing. Make the most of a situation, or something like that.

My work schedule last week was atrocious. I was covering for a co-worker, so I ended up working six nights in a row. That meant that not only was I a barely functioning zombie with blood consisting of 20% coffee, but I wouldn’t have very much time to play World of Warcraft. My non-work waking hours, few as they were, would be spent with actual people doing actual things.  Life can be busy like that.

Last Monday before I started work, I was at the gym trying to sweat some life back into me while running on the treadmill. Soaked in my sweaty shame, I came across this Youtube video from Bellular – How to use the Order Hall to make some easy gold. Like, a lot of gold.

I was intrigued. Most of my Order Halls were functional enough to run like the video suggested. I did use the catchup mechanic and bought the armor tokens for a few of my Order Hall Champions. Once everyone was sitting at 880 iLevel, I spread some resources around to everyone and set things in motion. I decided I’d try this for a week, from server reset to server reset. I’d do this with the five characters I had on my Horde server, using the mobile app to check on their missions while I was at work. I would only run gold missions, or armor missions to boost any Champion who was not yet at 900 iLevel. When resources ran low, I would log into the game for a few minutes to redistribute bloods to resources. I’d pop in, snap a few screenshots, and log out. I didn’t farm, didn’t sell on the auction house at all. I also didn’t pay attention to how much gold was on each character until the week of testing was done.

Today was the magic day. I would see just how much gold my five characters made with almost next to no playtime.  I logged in and transferred all the gold to one character so I could see the results.

The grand total: 75,092 gold.

I was a little shocked, and a little more impressed. Granted, the gold missions were more plentiful on the two characters with more epic followers. But even the characters who has mostly blue level followers still managed to make anywhere from 5-8k each. Prior to this, I was making my gold by selling Hexweave Bags on the AH. But the Order Hall seemed much more lucrative without sinking a whole bunch of time into it.

Naturally it’s not as easy as it sounds. Like Warlords of Draenor’s Garrison gold factories, it took a great deal of setup before they became profitable. Order Halls are much the same. You need the Champions, the gear, and the missions for it to pay off. Maybe this past week was just a run of good luck. Maybe I couldn’t repeat those results.

So I decided to try it again.

I wanted to compare the Order Hall results with my previous passive gold-making technique with Hexweave Bags. I have four tailors on my Alliance server, and one character  with a fleshed out Order Hall. On the Horde side, I will run the Order Halls again. In another week, I will compare the results and see what the results are. Will the old lazy style bring in more gold? Will the Order Hall method pay off again? I will find out in a week!

In any case, I think I’ll have a WoW Token waiting for me at the end of this.