Not to drag this out too far, but I appreciate all of the perspectives people have offered. @Willowbloom I understand your discontents, but the reason I started using the software in the first place was because I missed a chance to /roll on the Infinite Timereaver. My friend got it instead after I jumped out of the dungeon too fast. So I installed, learned enough, and did a dungeon grind that week (301 bosses killed, for 1505 loot attempts in all). And, on the last night, I got the mount.
During lockdown, my focus with the 3rd party software shifted to raising an army of toons. A literal army, with the goal in mind of 5-manning the Crown Chemical Co. many times to get that Love Rocket. No queue waiting, and no demands that one or two other players who happen to join me put up with a multiboxer (I think the majority are fine, and see it as a curiosity, but a significant minority do not like finding themselves in a dungeon in that situation). To keep that problem at bay, I geared up all of the toons to what is now i100 or so, with good development in their Hearts of Azeroth for all those bonuses. I raised toons that can qualify as healers as well as tanks, and I have a giant spreadsheet to tell me which teams to put together, one after another, every night for two weeks. Most of these toons will just sit at level 50 through at least February, perhaps February 2022, fingers crossed that they are still eligible for a Heart Shaped Box but if past is prologue that will work.
Now, that was the majority of what I did with the software. Of course I made some gold along the way, but if I were to have just set out to make gold with an optimal number of characters (which is about five double gatherers, maybe ten others in various crafting professions), I estimate the opportunity cost of each of these teams at about 2 million apiece. I could have had tens of millions more gold by this time, but I chose to build an army for farming mounts. The existence of toons geared to a moderate degree, which I did not gear by AFKing LFR or Darkshore, doesn’t have any negative impact on the gameplay of others that I can tell. I will admit, in a couple of situations (like the Lich King Timewalking encounter a year ago), I went where I should not have, but I generally stayed away from queues unless I was confident that I could pull my weight.
Along the way, I farmed all of the Pandaria world boss mounts, as well as Ruhkmar’s Solar Spirehawk. The majority of them came rather quickly relative to reported drop rates, but I probably hit Oondasta at least 2k times and Nalak almost 7k times (including coin rolls) before I finally got him to give up the goods. It took more than a year, and by the time I got it I was hitting him on 125 toons a week (plus bonus rolls on all). A few weeks later, Nalak’s mount appeared on my home realm’s BMAH, and sold for just over a million. Coulda had it that way, but I did it with brute force.
In the meantime, there are some things I can do with the alts, like farming Rebuilt Mechanical Spiders and Gorillas, or Eyes of Observation, and I am basically setting the market on a number of the big realms. I may get back into Mechanical Pandaren Dragonlings, too, which is a mostly serial farming process (finding a wild golden lotus is a multiboxed activity, but after that it’s done one toon at a time). Even still, the impact of this is distributed. If you or anyone else want to compete in these markets I’m only reposting about once per day and the markets are not large so your chances of being in front are decent. I do intend to do some herbalism and mining at the outset of Shadowlands, but again the proceeds will be divided across two or three pretty big realms anyway.
As for Crown, I will need to rethink my approach without broadcasting, but I think my toons are geared enough that I can give each team one solid, agile DPS and let the rest soak the bosses’ random attacks (it’s not exactly a fight you tank). We’ll see, but I’ve got 150 shots per day to give it. And while I’m doing that, I certainly won’t be messing with the herbs market very much.
Take care, and happy hunting.