Not Impressed

12/15/11

It's time for the Feast of Winter Veil once again, but with a twist. For long-time players, we're used to the Greench in the Alterac Mountains being a level 40ish elite, and a pushover. Do it once to get the achievement, and don't bother with it again.

This year, however, Blizzard decided to make the Greench into a mini-boss, but, and here's the kicker, not in its own mini-dungeon that you can queue for. Instead, you pick up the daily quest in Org, then take a zeppelin or get a port to Eastern Kingdoms (I'd advise getting one to SMC, since it's really close to the portal to the UC courtyard in the throne room). Once you're over there, go to the Alterac Mountains, where you find a revamped Greench, boss level with over 3.5 million hitpoints. I suppose you could probably solo it, if you use some strategy, but as of right now, there's usually people killing him already, so you can usually just leech off their kills, and get the credit for the daily without firing off a spell. What I'm worried about is if/when people get tired of this extra hassle, and stop going over there, making it a lot harder for altoholics to get this done.

If you're an altoholic, and plan on coming back daily, set your hearth really close to the Alterac mountains (Tarren Mill for Horde), so you can skip a lot of travel time on your alts. Since you have to be level 80 for the daily anyway, you can get a Dalaran Ring, or a teleport cloak to quickly zip you back to....Orgrimmar. Aargh, this would suck if I had high level Alliance toons, since their teleport cloaks and Ring would only bring them quickly to Stormwind, not Ironforge.

Here's what I don't get. I've logged on faithfully for at least 4 years now to get my Winter Veil present from under the tree, which I later received a Feat of Strength for. Feats of Strength are achievements which are damn near impossible to get later on. Like the events that led to the Shattering, with the elemental invasions going on every few hours non-stop, it gives you a sense of history in your character. To have that given out to a player that only started playing a few months ago kinda defeats the purpose, don't ya think?

I guess I'm just annoyed at the multitude of backward changes to the holiday, and the lack of a present that I'd actually WANT (c'mon, a sweater, REALLY?).

Gone Fishin'

12/6/11


The Darkmoon Fair Island is awesome!!! Not just because of the rewards from the vendors, not only for the chance to gain rep with the faction easily, but because of the fishing opportunities. You can literally just fish the Shipwreck Debris pools to farm mats for all professions. Embersilk cloth drops a ton, plus Heavy Savage Leather, Pyrite, Obsidium, and Elementium ore. You even get Cataclysm herbs from them too. And btw, don't bother buying the items needed for the eating/drinking Achievement, you'll get more than plenty from the Sealed Crates. Clicky clicky, check the drop rates....34% chance to get 8-12 Embersilk Cloth per Crate? Yes please!

Hey, if you try your luck at open water fishing, you still might come away a winner. Ghostcrawler promised me a pony is not only an achievement, it's the literal truth. Just steps away from from the petting stables, you come to open water. While you'll mainly catch Oily Blackmouth, Firefin Snapper, and other vanilla fish, you have a verrry slight chance of getting an adorable pet, the Sea Pony.

If you are fishing from the pools of Shipwreck Debris, be aware that they ring the entire island, as well as being located at each of the smaller islands shown on the map. Elixir of Water Walking, Path of Frost (DK), Water Walking (Shaman), will help you make fast circuits of all the pool locations. BTW, the Elixirs of Water Walking will sell extremely well on the AH, at least 20 gold for a 5 stack.


Edit: I got my Pony, and the Menagerie achievement along with it!! I was mistaken, apparently you can get them in the pools of Shipwreck Debris too.

I was Affirmed against my will!

11-10-11



I'm taking a Humanities course for my pre-req's, and as a part of a warm-up for our test, we were supposed to tell a little bit about what we think about creativity/art/imagination and what it means to us. I was starting to share that I possess no imagination whatsoever, when all of a sudden people started speaking up for me. "On the first day of class, we were supposed to make name tags by tearing up pieces of paper, and he made an origami frog." "He's shared some very interesting stuff in class."

I wasn't trolling for compliments, but it was nice to hear. What I wanted to convey was that I don't really have much of what is considered classical "artistic talent." I can't really picture anyone's face in my mind, even people I've known all my life. Also, my stick figures are crooked, and my handwriting is atrocious. No hope for painting for me. :)
While I took piano for 6 years growing up, I had to memorize each piece before playing it, unlike my sisters, who could just look at a hymn, see that it was in the key of B minor, and play it perfectly for church.

However, I do have some talents in writing, and definitely am talented in video games and video game economics. I'm comfortable admitting my shortcomings, instead of trying to mask or cover them up. I'd rather concentrate on what I do have talent for instead.

We also learned there are two definitions for Artists. The narrow sense is that they are professional artists who get paid for what they do. The broader view is that we are all artists, living creatively each day. As long as you put all of yourself into what you're doing, you're creating art.

You can create art by having a beautiful tackle, preparing a tasty meal, or having such a connection to a game that it becomes an extension of your own body. I'm reminded of seeing an arena match between my Rogue partner (Vicious geared) against a Blood DK who was Conquest geared. They were both so familiar with their classes that it went on for 30 minutes before the Blood DK finally won. I'm sure the DK's partner was bored outta his mind, but I was fascinated. Having so many alts means that often I forget some of my classes skills, but seeing someone utilize all of them so effectively is like seeing a master at work.

So get out there and make some art in your life!



P.S. By request, here's a pic of the frog. :)

Glyphing 101

9-20-2011
Originally, this was gonna be called "Scribbling fer fun an profits," done entirely in the style of Ratshag, just for the hell of it.

7-14-2011
Inscriptionist....scripter.....inscriber.....scriber...scrivener....shriner....bugger it, I calls meself a scribbler. The scribblin' perfession be a diffrent beast altogethers, far from the more genteel craftifications of blacksmithies, tailorerers, an them buggers what smush leather together and calls it armor.

And then I discovered he had done it already, in his own inimitable style. So, scratch that, I'll just do in my own way.













That's 6 full 32 slot inscription bags, with an additional 12 slots on the 7th. 6x32=192+12=204 different Northrend inscription research/Books of Glyph Mastery, Techniques, and minor inscription research glyphs.

Now, you've done all your research, learned the techniques, and read the books.....but what you haven't done is actually make gold with your profession. You've tried, but never seem to make a lot of sales. It's confusing, because you always give the customers a great discount, compared to those other scribes who only undercut each other by 1 freakin' copper, just to get their glyphs at the top of the list.

Sit back, while I illuminate the situation.
Ur doeing it wrong!
The thing about glyphs and enchanting scrolls is that they have NO sales price to vendors. Therefore, their posting cost to the Auction House is only 1 silver. 12 hours, 24 hours, 48 hours.....only 1 silver. This allows you to post, then cancel and re-post any time you get undercut by a competitor, at a very minimal cost to you. Compare that to Blacksmithing, where the vendor price of the armor and weapons you make are so high that the deposit cost at the AH, even for 12 hours, is still over 1-2 gold apiece. Contrast that to 4 gold TOTAL for posting 400 glyphs, and you'll start to realize that the margins are higher, and the overhead costs are a lot more lenient than the other crafting professions (not including enchanting).






Like the Industrial Revolutions effects on industry, so too is the effects of addons and macros on crafting and making gold in WoW. Even having a macro that does "/Cast milling /use Stormvine /use Whiptail..../use etc" can save you a lot of time, just by not having to click on each stack that you want to mill, as long as they're in stacks of at least 5. If the macro follows its script, and encounters a stack of less than 5 herbs, it won't allow you to mill, even though there are full stacks of a herb further down the macro list.

But, I digress. The macros will only save you time, the addon(s) will make you money. The two main ones I use are TSM and Auctionator. Edit - I also remember I use Millhelp and Millhelp_Glyphs, which I guess is included in Millhelp. If you look at the first image, you can see it displaying the inks/pigments needed to make the glyph, which is very useful.

TSM (TradeSkillMaster) is probably under-utilized by me, as I only use it for posting and cancelling auctions, not the crafting queues that Mysscia has told me about. But.....for posting and cancelling, it's unrivaled. Set up your groups of items, with posting time, undercut amount, minimum price you'll sell at, and maximum posting amount (for when nobody else is in that market, heh!).

Auctionator is the addon I use for storing my search lists. It searches for what you have specified, then displays them in descending order of price per 1 unit, whether it's a single or full stack. The great part of this is the ability to quickly buy out auctions, without the annoying confirmation that you'd have with the standard Blizzard UI. The drawback is that it doesn't show the bid amount, only the buyout. Also, it doesn't show the time left, which could save you gold if you saw the item only had a short time left. Cancelling and re-posting with Auctionator....I wouldn't. The anonymity of Auctionator doesn't let you know who you're going against in that particular market, which can be verrrry important.

Dealing with Competition
There are a few types of competitors.
1) Power-levelers.
These people are leveling inscription to get to the max level, primarily with trainer taught recipes. If you decide to sell trainer taught glyphs, these are the guys that will mess you up. If you post glyphs in an open market at 250 gold each, these guys will come along and post at 10 gold each, even though the mats cost more than that.
2)"Happy, freinly peoples" - as Gevlon would say.
These people want to supply glyphs at a cost only slightly high than the material cost. They'll sell research/book taught glyphs at a much lower price than you would prefer, and mess up glyphs markets for a long time, as the next guy will post lower than them.
3) The One-percenter.
When I first started posting (manually, took me forever to post a hundred glyphs), I hated the people that would undercut me by 1 copper. "It's not fair, they'd post higher if they could." - is how I felt.
But in actuality, these are the scribes you want to be in competition with. With a 1 copper undercut, it would take 1000 undercuts to drop the market price by 1 gold. With the first 2 types, their drastic undercuts affect the market for a long time, until either a scribe buys all the glyphs to reset the market, or people stop posting, leaving the market empty for the next scribe to post at their preferred price point.

One last thing about 1-percenters. They are the ONLY safe bet to buy out when you want to reset the market. Since they're almost chained to using their set discount with using an addon, they will rarely if never undercut by the huge amounts the other classes of scribes do. And that's why I like TSM, since it shows me the other people in the market. If I have to buy out 3 glyphs at 50 gold each from a percenter, to reset the market up to 300 gold, so be it. But I'll be damned at buying 6 glyphs at 35 gold each from powerleveler who did 1 northrend research on his way up to max level, he'll just post again at the same ridiculous price point. Buyout percenters when it's feasible, undercut the noobs, and you'll gain power over a ton of markets.

Shoot, this is turning into a wall of text, but....
Stalking the Competition
Add everyone you see posting in your glyph markets to your friends list. If they do huge undercuts, add a note to that person like "idiot glypher." One-percenters would be "glypher." If you notice them come on when you're posting, do another posting scan to see if you need to undercut them when they're done. Scribes that are serious competition could also be added to your alts friends list, just so you'd know if you might want to jump back and re-post. This is another reason to favor TSM over Auctionator, since the auctions shown in Auctionator are anonymous.

Supplies and Demand
I'm trying to keep around 6-10 of each of the 204 glyphs, so I don't run out, and cause a hole in my bags. This allows me to quickly post when I get on, then run a cancel scan to clean up the remnants of my last post. It's a lot better to get your stuff to the front of the market, rather than cancelling when you first get on, waiting for the 8-10 minutes for your 400+ glyphs (I usually only post 2 of each glyph) to dribble in at 50 items per one minute mail scan, then posting for the first time that day.


Yup, it's a lot of info, but it can pay off.

1 MILLION DOLLARS!!!! I mean, gold.

8/30/2011


It's been a while since my last post. I just haven't really felt like I had anything noteworthy to talk about. However, this happened.....








So, as to the title of the post, yup, I dinged 1 million gold on 8/18, despite paying out a crapload of gold to my guild members in Wraith Flight (lvl 12). As a matter of fact, I'm at about 1,075,000 gold right now, only a few days later.

In contrast, Warshrike on Daggerspine just dinged level 8, and I've gone from about 230k gold there, down to about 125 k. I'm not as vigilant about posting, usually only once every couple of days with glyphs and enchanting scrolls. Plus, my scribe Doomslinger is only level 60, so I haven't gotten to the Northrend Research recipes.

Psychrometrics on Darrowmere is level 3, at 160k gold. I'm usually burnt out after doing Horde stuff on Demon Soul, so unless the fishing or cooking daily is something I need for their respective achievements, I don't bother.

BTW, there are several members in all three guilds at between 6 to 12 million guild xp. At my ratio of 1 gold per 1k guild xp, that's between 6 to 12 thousand gold that I've paid to each of those members (excluding Mysscia, who has adamantly refused payment).

So, now what? What would YOU do with a million gold? My main Bloodshrike is a 525 alchemist and 525 Archaeologist, and after a mind-melting 40 hours of digging up fragments, he haz the Sandstone Drake recipe. I already made one for myself, and am saving it for my 100th mount, since I'm currently at 98.

Buying weapons/armor? Since my warrior Bullkathos is level 85 with 525 Blacksmithing, why would I pay for weapons when I can make them myself if I stop being a lazy altoholic and actually run dungeons for Chaos Orbs?

I already buy all my non-mage alts the Dalaran Teleport rings when they ding level 80, but since Burizadokyan just got to 80, I only have 3 more alts on Demon Soul to get it for. I don't buy the rings for the achievement, I get them for the ability of traveling back to Dalaran, then to Orgrimmar, while allowing me to set my hearth someplace else.

I could buy them all the Mammoth vendor mount, for the ease of selling and repair when running dungeons back to back. However, the Guild Page is a pretty cheap pet AND vendor at 300 gold, AND you can summon them inside dungeons if needed.

Seriously, I am looking for opinions on what you would do with the gold. Give huge chunks of it away to low levels? Make up contests in your guild with cash prizes? Offer a prize in Trade Chat to the person with the highest total engineering recipes learned for their level range? (I've already done something similar to that when cleaning out AH alts on other servers).

Midsummer Fire Festival 2011

6-22-11

Wowinsider has a great write-up on the achievement, so I'm not gonna add much to it.

All I have to add is that it's wayyyy easier to do the daily torch juggling in Thunder Bluff for Horde, and either Exodar or Ironforge for Alliance. My computer is decent, and I've done the juggling daily at least 100 times, but a tiny bit of lag in Orgrimmar will mess you up big time. Not to mention, Thunder Bluff has a smaller area in which to juggle, so you usually have high arcs, not wimpy 30 degree arcs like in Org. The contrast between the torch shadow and ground is also superior in those cities too, Orgrimmar and Stormwind will have you lose sight of the shadow sometimes.

I figure it's also a good time to contrast my progress (or lack thereof) in a full year, since I had a checkpoint of it last year too.

Then (2010) and Now (2011)

Demon Soul
Bloodshrike - 80 now 85
Bullkathos - 73 now 85
Thrillkiller -68 now 85
Bonescourge - 53 now 73
Banesidhe - 73 now 85
Kukoshakaku - 51 now 66
Clockwrknyt - 58 now 85
Burizadokyan- 41 now 67
Morticide - 34 now 61
Pallormortis -80 now 85

Daggerspine
Clockwrkmage -60 now 74
Preyonyou - 37 now 55
Tsuris - 52 now 64
Aosdanasaoi - 50 now 63
Hangfire - 42 now 60
Panzergishi - 49 now 63
Kishigishi - 50 now 63
Ryoushigishi -52 now 63
Gwiddonyn - 46 now 62
Doomslinger - 39 now 55

Darrowmere
Bloodshrike - 49 now 67
Clockwrkmage -31 now 57
Psilentkill - 37 now 51
Didactylos - 27 now 42
Gavelofpain - 29 now 45
Wartraveler - 28 now 44
Misericorde - 30 now 45
Ghostflame - 25 now 43
Gimmershred - 29 now 43
Annihilus - 26 now 42

Hide yo wife, hide yo kids, they robbin' everybody out here!

Blaaargh.......that's how I feel. I don't check the log on my guild tabs that often, because only the officers (me) and GM (me again) have access to the guild bank. Or so I thought. Apparently, over the past week, 2 members of the guild took advantage of a glitch that must have happened. I know I double and triple-checked access for each rank on the guild tabs before I first started inviting people into the guild, but I just found out that Veteran rank had access to all tabs, and were able to withdraw 2 stacks a day. Dasoidon and Demolisher exploited that to the fullest, taking out whatever they pleased. The gold cost of it all doesn't worry me that much, it's the availability of the quest items that is fucking annoying.

I scanned the AH for a long period of time for deals on some of those items, especially the Arcane Tomes, and for someone to just blatantly take them ALL? There's no excuse for it. You'd only need about 60 of them to go from neutral to exalted, I believe, so they just took them to sell.

I can't explain what happened. I know I AM a forgetful person, so I cope by checking and re-checking things that are important to me. I can't believe I would do something so stupid as to leave one rank with open access. Besides, as I recall, I think you'd have to actively enable that, and I know I didn't do that. All I can think is that they either found out a hack to get in, or there was a glitch in one of the patches that enabled that rank to have guild access.

Demolisher had earned over 1.75 million guild xp, and had been paid 1,750 gold for doing that. Dasoidon had earned 250 k guild xp, and had been paid 250 gold for that. Not only that, but since Dasoidon had invited Demolisher into the guild, another little bonus I offer is that if you recruit someone, and they get 1 million gxp, you get a 500 gold bonus. Dasoidon had been paid that.

I just feel betrayed, and angry. It's like inviting neighborhood kids to your house to do work for you, paying them triple what they would normally get, and then you find out that they stole your coin collection to go buy some Mountain Dew. They have no idea what you went through to get it, what it's even worth, they only know that it will get them a little bit of satisfaction.

UPDATE: I talked to Demolisher in-game about it, and he said he was planning on surprising us by putting epic items back into the guild bank, since he had used the items he got out to level his Blacksmithing. I've never asked for ANYTHING from guild members though. You keep your items, and I keep mine, and everyones's happy.
In retrospect, I see he took out stuff that he could use for his profession, but like Mysscia said, he should have known to ask before taking out the truesilver bars and tons of volatiles. I wish him luck in his next guild, and am sorry that this episode happened.

I GOT MY STUFF BACK!!!















As for Dasoidon, in my mind, there's no excuse for what he did.

Apparently, I'm the Asshole

5-24-2011

One of the funniest things about WoW is how people behave in the game. You can troll trade chat all day, and you'll have at least some people lol'ing at what you say. But dare to correct them on grammar or spelling, and they'll fly into a frothing rage, hell-bent on making you pay for opening your mouth.

My comment was innocous enough, just a minor correction. Hell, I wasn't even doing the regular "It's ROGUE, not rouge" thing. But I'm the insensitive person in this minor drama, I realize now. By rectifying what the first person said, I made them look foolish, and that's an unforgiveable insult to some of these people. After all, WoW rep is almost like real life reputation. Gotta represent!
Oh, if anyone is interested, remember this site? You'll identify many of your fellow players there.

Children's Week 2011 wrap-up

5-8-2011

Don't forget to check WowInsider for the actual achievements of the holiday. Well, this year kind of sucked. I meant to get all the pets that my toons were able to get, but procrastinated, and ran out of time. I got all 10 of my toons on Darrowmere an Orgrimmar pet, and Bloodshrike got a Shattrath pet. Doomslinger and Tsuris on Daggerspine got a Stormwind pet, and Tsuris also got one of the Shattrath pets. On Demon Soul, Bloodshrike/Bullkathos/Thrillkiller/Bonescourge/Banesidhe did all the orphan quests (Bone is only 69, so he couldn't do the Dalaran quest-line). So 17 toons out of 30 did do the quests, and I got 28 new pets. Being an altoholic is a bit exhausting sometimes.

For the Orgrimmar/Stormwind quests, you have a vehicle ride quest, a visit to a fallen leader in another city (TB/IF), and then you have to continent hop to visit a faction leader (Sylvanas, Malfurion). When you're done with those, you come back to Org/SW, and have to get ice cream and fly a kite with your orphan before you buy a sword rack and turn it in to be able to pick your pet. Unless you have a mage traveling with you, this will probably take you at least 45 minutes to an hour to accomplish.

For the Shattrath quests, Horde goes to the Dark Portal/Sporeggar/Throne of Elements/Caverns of Time/Silvermoon City. Alliance goes to the Dark Portal/Auchindoun/Aeris Landing in Nagrand/Caverns of Time/Exodar.

(Set your Hearth to Orgrimmar).
Horde route doing both Orgrimmar and Shatt orphans together. Azshara for riding the rocket/Org/portal in Cleft of Shadows to Dark Portal in Blasted Lands/Shattrath, pick up the Orphan quests there/portal in Shatt to Org, get back to the Dark Portal in Hellfire/take a windrider to Zabra'jin in Zangarmarsh to get to Sporeggar for Hch'uu/then fly to the Throne of Elements. After that, use your Dalaran teleport ring or Gadgetzan teleport to get to Tanaris to visit the Caverns of Time (if you don't have either of those, take the portal in Shatt back to Orgrimmar to get a port from a mage to Dalaran). Hearth to Orgrimmar, and either get a port, or use the zeppelin to get to Brill so you can go to Silvermoon City to rock out with the Elite Tauren Chieftains. Ride back north to the teleport to UC, then go visit Sylvanas. Go back to the Mage quarter to the portal to Blasted Lands, go through the Dark Portal, fly to Shattrath, and go turn in your Blood Elf orphan. Take the portal in Shatt to Org, then either get a port or fly to Thunderbluff. Ride east to Red Rocks to honor Cairne Bloodhoof, then take the nearest windrider back to Orgrimmar (for those with flying, you can fly over the mountains to your east to the Hunter's Hill flightpoint). Go get Ice Cream, fly a kite, pick up the sword rack, get your choice of pets.

(Set your Hearth to Stormwind).
Alliance route doing both Stormwind and Shatt orphans together. Fly to Westfall for your Chopper ride, then come back to Stormwind. Fly or get a port to Ironforge to visit King Magni Bronzebeard, then take the portal in the Mystic Ward to Blasted Lands, go through the Dark Portal, and fly to Shattrath. Pick up your Draenai orphan, then go through the portal in Shatt to Stormwind. Walk down the mage tower to the portal to Blasted Lands, and go to the Dark Portal in Hellfire. Take a windrider to Allerian Stronghold in Terrokar Forest, then fly to the middle of Auchindoun. Fly back to Allerian Stronghold, then take a windrider to Telaar in Nagrand. Fly to Aeris Landing (the Consortium guys), and talk to Jheel. After that, use your Dalaran teleport ring or Gadgetzan teleport to get to Tanaris to visit the Caverns of Time(if you don't have either of those, take the portal in Shatt back to Stormwind to get a port from a mage to Dalaran). (Edit)Hearth back to Stormwind after Caverns of Time. Following all that, it's time to take a boat or get a port to Darnassus to visit Malfurion Stormrage. Don't leave the Temple of the Moon, just take the portal there directly to the Exodar, then follow the spiral walkway all the way down to visit O'ros. He gives you a follow-up quest to visit the Farseer in the Exodar. Go to the mage/portal trainers in the Exodar, and take the portal to Blasted Lands/Dark Portal to take a windrider to Shattrath. Turn in your Draenai Orphan for your pet. Take the portal in Shattrath back to Stormwind, get ice cream, fly a kite, pick up a sword rack, and finally turn in the orphan for your pet.
______________________________________________________________________________
(Disclaimer - Be very, VERY careful in picking your orphan in Dalaran. Check through your pets to see if you have either the Curious Wolvar Pup, or the Curious Oracle Hatchling. Don't pick up the whistle for an orphan that you already have, or all you have to look forward to is an awesome 5 (five) gold reward.)

For the Dalaran quests, there's no variance between Horde or Alliance. I usually went through this route. For the Oracle orphan - Dalaran to Grizzlemaw in Grizzly Hills/Bronze Dragonshrine in Dragonblight/then Winterfin Retreat in Borean Tundra. After that, the Oracle Orphan sends you to Shaper's Terrace through Sholazar Basin, then Alexstrasza in Dragonblight.

For the Wolvar Orphan - Dalaran to Grizzlemaw in Grizzly Hills/Bronze Dragonshrine in Dragonblight/then Snowfall Glade in Dragonblight. After that, go back to Alexstrasza in Dragonblight, and THEN go to Sholozar Basin to meet Hemet Nessingwary .

When those quests are done, it's back to Dalaran to fly a kite at the Wonderworks, and you finally get to turn in the orphan. You recieve your pet through the mail in a few moments, so don't worry about not getting it from the Matron.

Noblegarden Slacker

4-25-11

I did a write-up for altoholics doing Noblegarden last year, so I'll just link that post.

Even though I had a whole year to do Desert Rose on 6 toons on Darrowmere, I only recently got Clockwrkmage and Psilentkill the titles. I guess I just haven't cared to run them around to the different zones.

But if you want a title for your characters, this is THE 2nd easiest one to get, other than "The Patient." Be glad to get it while you can, because next week is Children's Week, which has the dreaded achievement "School of Hard Knocks." I'll take the orphans out on all 30 of my toons to work toward Veteran Nanny, but I'll only concentrate on the toons that are high enough for Utgarde Pinnacle to do the School of Hard Knocks.

Weapons make the Man (or Woman)

Ever since Bloodshrike (hunter), Pallormortis (DK), and Banesidhe (mage) hit 85, I started doing the Tol Barad dailies. Bloodshrike got a pole-arm, Pallormortis got a sword, and Banesidhe got a kick-ass staff. Most of the weapons from the quartermaster are ilevel 346 versions of the ilevel 333 weapons given from this quest in Twilight Highlands.

When I first started doing them, I was totally excited about the rewards. Heroic level weapons, without having to step foot in dungeons? Sweet! Then, my paladin Clockworknyt, my warrior Bullkathos, and my rogue Thrillkiller hit 85, and started questing there, and I realized, "what the hell am I doing?"

Here's the breakdown on getting commendations to buy stuff from the quartermasters. There's the weekly PvP quest, which gives 3 commendations and 200 honor once a week.

In the Northern part, there's 6 daily quests that you can complete for 6 commendations (for the most part). You can usually pick up another 3 commendations if you log in at 3 AM (after having done the 6 dailies earlier than 3 am), when they have quest givers switch their dailies, before the daily quest reset at 4 AM.

In the Southern area, if your faction wins the battle, you can pick up 3 static daily quests, and then 3 rotating dailies that involve collecting quest items, killing mobs, and killing a boss mob. The thing is, the rotating dailies CAN change each time your faction wins TB that day, so you can check back each time to see if you can complete more quests.

However, it takes a while to do some of the quests, especially the ones that have a high mob kill count. If you figure a half hour each for Northern and Southern, that would be an hour for each toon. Figure 12 commendations for a toon on normal days, 1 hour spent. With 85 needed for a ilevel 346 weapon, that's at LEAST 1 solid week of dailies, with 6 to 7 hours spent.
With 6 85's, that's not happening. Especially if you want to get the 200 commendation Drake, you'll hate yourself for wasting the 85 commendations.

Enter Blacksmithing. As long as you have the mats, all you have to do is pay the BS for the Chaos Orbs, and you get instant high-level weapons. The reason I'm going on about weapons is because without them, it feels like your fighting monsters with a dull butter knife. My rogue Thrillkiller had dual level 81 blues, and trying to take on even one mob in Tol Barad would take me down to 1/4 health. Even my mage had more killing power and survivability when he first started doing those dailies.

So I'm going to change my tactics.
1)No more saving for the weapons, just the mount.
2)Take any quest that only asks you to kill a named mob.
3)Avoid almost any quest that has a high kill count. The only exception would be the kill count quests in the Southern Peninsula that are coupled with going into the caves for the named bosses. Avoid the infantry kills, take the crocolisk quest.

This should reduce the amount of time spent on each toon from 1 hour to probably 25 minutes, with only a small loss of commendations.

A Dirty Little Secret

3-22-11

Don't tell anyone, ok? (looks around nervously)

I actually like questing in WoW. Unlike about 95% of the population, I quest to level up. On each of the 3 servers that I have guilds on, it feels like I have to beg, plead, cajole, or even threaten to get people to get quests done to get guild xp. Since a lot of them don't bother trying to group together to do BG's or dungeons, questing is their only option to actually contribute to the guild, and get paid for doing so.

I've even dropped the requirements to get paid, from 250 gold each 250k gxp, to 50 gold per 50k gxp. This allows lower level toons to get paid much more regularly.

Despite all that, on Demon Soul, with my level 4, 80 member guild, probably about 20 of the members are still at 0 gxp. One dear little frost mage logs in daily to do a few solo BG's, doesn't say anything, then bounces.

To me, leveling solo thru dungeons or battlegrounds is boring. Yes, questing can be boring too, but every so often you'll stumble across a quest that makes you laugh, or makes you sad, but in a good way (Little Pamela's quests in Darrowshire for example).

The original thought for this post was questing. I have kept all my toons in Orgrimmar or Stormwind for the past 3-4 months now, with only sporadic forays by select toons to actually go questing in zones, just so I could level them all slowly with the daily cooking and fishing quests. Yup, of the 3 85's, and 3 84's on Demon Soul, none of them except Pallormortis has done any serious questing in Cataclysm zones, and Pallor only did Mount Hyjal and Uldum by the time he dinged. I think it's time for a change.

I'm going to make a point to enjoy the game again, instead of just having each day be about the same dailies x20 for each server.

Surprisingly, I'm not going to drop my policy of paying guild members for their contributions to the guild. I have way too much gold, won't ever spend it all, and despite being jaded from being constantly exposed to the trollish behaviour of immature people (see Penny Arcade link), I......still like helping people.

However, I don't like being used. When a guildy will constantly ask for a port, and I'm playing my warrior, that's kind of annoying. Or begging for gold/bags, that stuff drives me up a wall. But I love explaining how to do a quest, how to make gold, how to grind rep, where to find a difficult NPC, or where to go to find how to spec their class.

All I ask for is appreciation, just a simple thank you. I stopped answering questions in Trade long ago, those little attention-deficit moon units will spam a question, ask why nobody answers it after 30 seconds, then won't even say "thanks" after you do give them an answer. WE DON'T GET PAID TO HOLD YOUR HAND, WE'RE TRYING TO ENJOY OURSELVES TOO!

What do YOU call it? Part One

3-14-11

So, I'm taking a night Economics class, and as an exercise for myself, I wanted to share some terms that I've learned, and how they can relate to WoW. The first definition is the textbook one, the second is the Warcraft equivalent.

Scarcity -
1. The limited nature of society's resources.
2. The limit of a server's materials.

Economics -
1. The study of how society manages its scarce resources.
2. The study of how servers use or sell the materials that are farmed.

Efficiency -
1. The property of society getting the most it can from its scarce resources.
2. This is shown by the "invisible hand" of the Auction House regulating prices. If materials are easy to get, the price will steadily drop from the initially high price. If the material is rare, but the AH price gets too high from gold-gouging Goblins, players won't buy it, and the price will fall to a lower equilibrium so the seller doesn't keep wasting deposit fees.

Equality -
1. The property of distributing economic property uniformly among members of society.
2. No WoW equivalent.

Opportunity Cost -
1. Whatever must be given up to obtain some item.
2. Grinding rep, gold, winning battlegrounds.....mainly it equals time.

Rational People -
1. People who systematically and purposefully do the best they can to achieve their objectives.
2. Playing the Auction House, doing dailies every day to get rep with a faction, and those who research to find the best rotation/spec/gems/glyphs/equipment for playing. Players who aren't Morons & Slackers, as Gevlon would say.

Social, gold, and drama

3-8-11

I recently found the magic word to recruiting people was "social." I know I'm not as anti-social or introverted as Gevlon seems to be, but I had thought that just talking about how much gold they could make by leveling alts through my guild would be enough to get people to join. Boy, was I wrong.

People in trade chat talk about how broke they are, but will do nothing to change that. You can tell them to take up dual-gathering, do more quests, or even to loot everything and sell it to the vendor, and they will just continue on as they have been, ignoring everything that you've told them.

You can tell them that they'd make 10,000 gold from leveling from 60 to 85 in your guild, based on the 40 million plus xp that they'd need to get them to 85, and they would only be interested in your guild level.

You will find very few people in the game who are actually, truly interested in making gold. In most cases, not because they need it, but because it's almost a mini-game within WoW itself. Mysscia in my baby Horde guild on Darrowmere is one of the exceptions. I've had fun talking to her since the moment she joined, and she will try out any of the ideas I suggest to her. I told her about the pools of fire in Mt. Hyjal that you could fish for Volatile Fire, and she went and fished there for quite a long stretch of time. I recently told her about the Darkmoon Fair selling herbs from old world, Outlands, and Northrend, and she camped that vendor for the next couple of hours.

I have always stressed that my guild Wraith Flight on Demon Soul was a leveling guild. I made no promises that it was a PvP or raiding guild, but apparently the guild no longer fit 2 members today. One of them left after he had made a very off-color remark, and I had said that this wasn't trade chat. He said "Oh, I didn't know this was one of 'those' guilds," and /gquit.

Another one, Indorath, had been with the guild for a while. He was almost to a million gxp, but apparently he wasn't having fun questing anymore, and wanted to do dungeons. He had also /gquit the guild a few days before based on some drama with another guild member, but because of another member stepping in and mediating, he re-joined.

I had/have no problems with members doing whatever they want, but I'm also going to do what I want, which is to do dailies, post stuff on the AH, and whatever else I feel like doing. I don't want to be pressured into doing dungeons with other guild members, just because they're bored of questing. I've also stayed away from the Cataclysm dungeons because I have heard they take wayyyyy longer than Wrath dungeons, and I can't have another time sink that my OCD mind will be compulsively drawn to do.

I want this guild to be a fun, friendly, mature place to be, with members stepping out to join other guilds after they've gotten to 85 and outgrown questing. I also want it to be an amiable split, no harm, no foul, with them wanting to recommend us to anyone still leveling to 85.

The state of the Guild(s)....or, apparently I'm autistic

3-2-11

Wraith Flight on Demon Soul recently dinged level 3, helped by my relentless recruiting in trade chat.

/2 Want to earn some extra gold while leveling? I would appreciate the guild xp for my personal guild. I pay 250 gold per 250k gxp. I also pay for all repairs from the guild bank.

I've gotten about 29 members who AREN'T me now, with several high levels who I have paid about 2k gold each during their leveling through Cataclysm zones. I've had quite a few lower level members quit suddenly, when they realized they couldn't just level in dungeons AND get guild xp at the same time, not to mention the low amounts of xp/gxp you get from lower level quests.

I've been greeted with a lot of skepticism, some puzzling questions (see pics), and a general dawning of comprehension about how people level nowadays. Even though Blizzard re-designed all of Azeroth, most low levels seem to level primarily through dungeons, foregoing questing entirely. How do I know this?

Guild xp. Hit your guild icon, select the Roster Tab, and View All Guild Activity. Most low levels that briefly visit my guilds will get a few thousand xp, then stop. They'll still level up, but get no more xp. That means they are either leveling in battlegrounds, or in dungeons, neither of which grants gxp unless they were grouped with 2 other guild members from my guild (as far as I know).

Warshrike on Daggerspine and Psychrometrics on Darrowmere are proving to be a bit harder. On Daggerspine, I think we just have a small Alliance population, so they've already settled into the mega-guilds, and don't want to leave. It could also be that I usually don't log into Daggerspine until late at night, and post my recruitment macro while I'm doing the cooking and fishing dailies.

Psychrometrics on Darrowmere.....despite the fantastic efforts of my one high-level member Mysscia, it's slow-going. I haven't been able to attract any other people willing to grind xp for my guild. Again, I should probably try recruiting earlier in the day.

I've come up with a new macro that I'll be trying out.
/2 Want to earn some extra gold while leveling? I would appreciate the guild xp for my personal guild. I pay 250 gold per 250k gxp. Guild repairs. BTW, you could earn over 10k gold from me while questing from 60-85.

How do I know that? Google "how much experience from 80 to 85," 2nd site, scroll down to the table.

You need 4,722,000 xp to level from 60 to 69, another 17,651,500 xp to get from 70 to 80, and 20,494,000 xp to level 5 levels from 80 to 85. Total is 42,867,500 xp
If you divide by 4 to get guild xp = 10,716,875 gxp. 1000 gold per 1 million gxp, minus losses of xp earned by killing mobs/gathering......it would still be a hefty chunk of gold.

Hopefully that will spark some discussions in trade chat, which will lead to more members for me, once people realize what other guilds aren't doing for them.

Waaaahh!

2-20-11

I had already talked about some quests getting marked obsolete, but I found some more that are even more of a bummer. It appears that any quest that would make you travel the world was ruthlessly eliminated. In general, I agree with the decision. It wasn't fun picking up a quest in Stranglethorn that told you to go to the Hinterlands, when you had so many more quests left to do in STV. Then, if you put it off until you finished STV, it was already gray, making it next to worthless.

However, in particular.... I for one enjoyed doing 2 particular quest lines, especially since they both shared a couple of zones. The "A Yeti of Your Own" and the quest line that ends with "It's Dangerous to Go Alone" are now marked obsolete, and cannot be completed.

Edit: On further digging, you can still get the Yeti schematic for engineering, and complete the "A Yeti of Your Own" by following the quest line from Lilith the Lithe.

But the Linken quests are gone, which does suck. My girlfriend's 16-year old sister Molly is starting to get into WoW thru seeing her friend play it, and was intensely wanting to see the Linken quests after I had told her about them. She had grown up playing the more recent Zelda games, and was anxious to see Blizzard's homage to them in the game. While they have additional references to other games now, like the Atari Joust! game that you play in Mount Hyjal, nothing comes close to beating Blazerunner to get the Tri-force, and getting the Master Sword and boomerang as quest rewards.

Ding! I leveled my guild!

Yup, on January 29th, on Demon Soul, I leveled my stand-alone guild. The release date of Cataclysm was December 7th, so after a month and a half, I had accumulated the 16.6 million of guild xp needed to advance to level 2. That's not easy, btw. Here's a link to Wowwiki's guild advancement tracker.

Unless you're a level 85, it feels like any quest you do is a drop in the bucket. My 2 level 85's (Bloodshrike and Pallormortis) get 17,350 guild xp for each of the daily fishing and cooking quests in Orgrimmar and Dalaran, so logging on to them for about 15 minutes to do the quests is usually one of my first concerns.

Granted, I don't spend too long on each character, and since a few of them had recently gotten to 80 before Cataclysm, they were still working on their Crusader titles from the Argent Tournament, which, no matter how high of a level you are, only reward about 5k guild rep.

I am considering outsourcing, though. Basically, advertising in trade "Looking to hire leveling mercenaries, 500 gold per 1 million guild xp, repairs fully covered by the guild." That way, they get to do whatever they like, be it PvP, heroics, or just questing, and as long as it gets guild xp, I'm happy.

I think I'll skip graduation this year

1-24-11

I was reading J's Cache's archives, and I was struck by something interesting. In Mount Hyjal, the last quest chain you start actually LOCKS you out of gathering in the south-east corner of the zone. The second quest in the chain is Graduation Speech, and for any toon that's a gatherer, you DO NOT WANT to complete it.

There were at least 10 nodes of Obsidium ore there that my DK Pallormortis can no longer obtain, since he did all the quests in the zone. The only benefit you get from doing the rest of the quests in the chain would be XP and gold (duh), and some ilevel 272 green armor from Might of the Firelord. The quest rep isn't enough to tip you over to exalted, you'll still have to run dungeons wearing the Hyjal tabard to get to exalted.

I've only done Hyjal and Uldum with my DK, but I believe I noticed something similar in Uldum. When I was just going there to gather, I seemed to find a lot more nodes on the north side of the Obelisk of the Sun mountain. My memory sucks, so I couldn't tell you when that stopped. Probably after I did most of the Brann quests, but don't quote me on that.

What I'm wondering is......wtf? Why punish people for completing quest chains? I'm all for phasing, and seeing the landscape and structures change as you progress through a zone. I even would like to see more nodes open up as you help clean up a zone, as a reward for doing what you're supposed to do in the game. This basically rewards you for being a half-ass who leaves zones as soon as they ding high enough to go to the next one.

If you think about it, it even rewards gold farmers (the real ones) who powerlevel to the max level as quickly and cheaply as possible, then spend their time gathering to be able to sell to players and the AH.

Didja know?

1-22-11














Waaaay back when, I had written some posts about faction specific recipes, notably the Kaldorei Spider Kabob recipe quest. I just wanted to inform you that those hard to obtain faction-specific recipes are essentially GONE.
Tasty Lion Steak from a level 30 Alliance quest and the Kaldorei Spider Kabob recipe from a level 1 Night Elf quest have been deemed obsolete, and can no longer be gotten. However, the Moongraze Tenderloin recipe, from a level 4 Draenai quest, can still be gotten, it would just take more time to level a throw-away toon to level 4.

However, if you do happen to have the Spider Kabob or Tasty Lion recipe sitting around in your bank, they will sell very well on the AH. I just recently sold a Tasty recipe for 1,500 gold, with another one priced at 22k-25k to make it look more attractive. And on Wowhead, a commenter said that he sold it for 10k gold, with no advertising.

On Horde side, my main items for grabbing off the AH and selling on Alliance side had their drop rate jacked wayyy up, making it very hard to sell them reliably for a decent amount of gold. Yup, Elixir of Giant Growth and Savory Deviate Delight would probably not be worth bringing over to Ally side anymore if you're on a high-pop server, since there will be so many other Allies leveling up alts in the Barrens now. On a low-pop PvP server though, there's not as much competition, so if you bring them over, have one alt post a few at lower price, and have another alt post them at a much higher price, and they'll sell....eventually.

On a different note, 2 pets are no longer available post-Shattering. The Smolderweb Hatchling from the quest En-Ay-Es-Tee-Why(Nasty), and the Worg Pup from Kibler's Exotic Pets can no longer be obtained. This doesn't have anything to do with making gold, since the pets were BOP, but for all pet collectors out there, it's kind of annoying.

Guild....Alone

1-18-11

Back in Wrath, I wasn't just a one-man army on 3 servers, I was also about 4 guilds on each server. Whenever someone advertised they were giving a guild away, or selling it very cheaply, I'd snap it up with a low level toon, which was usually a shaman (LW), warrior (BS), or whatever toon had Jewelcrafting on that server.

I like planning ahead, so when I found recipes for the 350-450 range for my crafters, I stockpiled them. LW/BS/JC recipes are usually the most prolific in my opinion, and so a guild bank was a perfect place to store those recipes until I could level the toons up to be able to learn them.

Fast-forward to Cataclysm, and guild perks. I hate waste, and having my quests/looting/kills/crafting count for a guild that I don't care about is just wrong. Besides, it's much nicer to have any of my toons being able to access all of the mats in the main guild bank.

So, I'm trying to consolidate my toons back into my original guilds - Wraith Flight on Demon Soul, Warshrike on Daggerspine, and Psychrometrics on Darrowmere. I've cleaned out or learned recipes in those guild banks, and then sold them for a profit, or at least took a slight loss on what I paid for the tabs. My Ally guild on Daggerspine is 10/10 again, and the 2 Horde guilds on Demon Soul and Darrowmere are almost re-united, with only a couple of toons on each server with a TON of mats and recipes stuffed in their stand-alone banks.

I guess I was inspired to write this because of another solo Wow'er. In it, Skaut was talking about the impression she got that if you're not in a huge guild, you're not going to get anywhere. I respectfully disagree.

After about a month, I'm not level 2 on any of my guilds, but I'm not at 1% either. On Demon Soul, with all my 80+'s, I'm at about 80% to level 2, with an average of 300k experience added the total each day. It could be more, it should be more, but again, my dogged persistence in avoiding waste. I wanted several of my toons to finish out getting the "Crusader" title from the Argent Tournament, the tabard for teleportation, along with the most interesting of the Argent mounts (at least to me), the Dragonhawk.

On Daggerspine, JUST from doing the cooking/fishing dailies, with 10 level 45-60's, I believe I'm around 10% or more.

On Darrowmere, JUST from doing the dailies, with 8 level 30-50's, I believe I'm at 18%. Granted, this belies the title of the post, since I'm not alone in the guild. A very nice person joined the guild after we had a long conversation about how Cataclysm got rid of unnecessary quest items, and they have been graciously allowing me to gain the benefit of their questing XP. Thank you!

Where the HELL are my bombs?!!!

1/7/2011

Ever since my main Bloodshrike on Demon Soul started out, I have been in love with engineering. I dabbled a little bit with mining, skinning, herbalism as secondary professions to his Alchemy, but once I realized the true power of engineering, I made almost every toon after that have Engineering as one of their professions.

Engineering does 2 things.
One, it gives you limited access to abilities other professions have, if only for a limited amount of time, with a cooldown.
Two, it gives you explosives! I had been seduced to WoW from Diablo 2, where I had developed a build for characters to give any class Zeal, which was a multi-hit or AOE (crap, I can't even remember what AOE stands for anymore, whatevers, it hits any monster standing close to you) build.
I figured out that bombs would shave off at least 10% of a monsters hit points in one blast, more if you powerleveled engineering to the max whenever you hit the level caps to advance the profession.











Of course I'm not going to rage-quit over this, but it does seem like they neglected a major portion of both specialities of engineering. Goblin engineering is about bombs, they go boom! Gnomish engineering is about trinkets, they go snap-fizzle-zap-aaaaargh aaargh it burns!

Basically, we got a modified mote extractor in the Electrostatic Condenser, but it only works for gatherer/engineers, not just any engineer.

The Dragonling is a generic trinket that any class can use since it adds mastery, and the combat pet bonus aspect of it is pretty nice.

The Bolt Gun is a useful interupt and damage dealer, but it's single target only and requires 1 Handful of Obsidium Bolts each time it's fired.

The belt upgrades are awesome,you might want to put them on different belts to keep in your inventory. Target Dummy, Nigh-Invulnerability Belt, and the Gnomish Cloaking Device.

The glove enchants are ehhhh, again being ideas from Wrath. Armor, Runic Healing Injector, Runic Mana Injector, moar Intellect/spellpower, and a combo of the Gnomish Lightning Generator Trinket/Hand-Mounted Pyro Rocket in the Tazik Shocker. I'm not much of a fan of tying up a glove enchant on an average of 50% more healing/mana from potions though.

The Loot-a-rang is awesome, being an original idea that could definitely be useful if you kill an enemy that's fleeing, or on a hillside. I love the fun items in engineering.

Bigger Bags - Toolbox and Tacklebox. Really? There's people out there that go fishing enough to warrant needing a 36 slot bag for it? I just hate being forced to make 3-4 of these to level up engineering, because all other engineers have to make 3-4 of these as well, making them useless to sell on the AH. I only usually need 1 engineering bag with me, and maybe 1 in the bank to use for extra mats or bombs.

Scopes - Hit rating and Haste. Heh, just glanced at the Safety Catch buyout price in Wowhead, which said it was about 2 gold. That's 100 gold or so worth of mats that you're just giving away. I hate being MADE to make stuff that I'll never use. I probably won't be able to use all the scopes I've made on my hunter, not to mention my Rogue/Warrior/Paladin/Death Knight that soon will be maxing engineering as well. Granted, I should probably be just selling the mats right now, and wait until prices come down before maxing professions, I'm just kinda bitter that you're forced into making extra stuff for no benefit. Remember the Gnomish Army Knife? An awesome item that should have sold well, but made worthless by making it the most economical way of skilling up engineering.

Guns and Crossbows - Throat Needler and Volatile Thunderstick. Sell them at a loss, yay!

Pets - Actually, I might take back what I said about the toolboxes and guns. If you make sure to visit your appropriate specialization trainer at 475, the 2 new pets might actually give you a profit (it looks like they stop giving skillups by 500 though). From Gnomish trainers - the mechanical rabbit. From Goblin trainers - the Fel REAVER!!

Food and lures - Even though Kaliopes guide says to do the lures from 510-521, I'm looking at the guild achievement of putting out 5,000 feasts or whatever, and thinking that the BBQ might be a better option.

edit - Oh yeah, remembered later that AOE means Area of Effect.