Serious Daily Business Incoming in WOD

I remember back in The Burning Crusade when they introduced dailies.  10 dailies allowed per day, and you would gain rep and a bunch of gold for your trouble.  It gave people a reason to log in and play everyday, as if raiding at the time wasn't a full time sport and sucked up a ton of your time in TK, BT, MH or Sunwell.  Then you had dailies AND raiding to do everyday.  But casual players needed content as well, otherwise those casuals would become unsubscribed casuals.

This was the gold that everyone who had no idea how to work the Auction House reaped, and they were damned happy.  So happy, they put more of them into Wrath and Cataclysm, and by the time MoP rolled around they really got out of control.  Today, you can do every single daily in the game and not have any cap on how many you can do.  As of the expansion patch, however, the gold rewards were basically cut by 45%.

The big complaint about dailies was always that they felt grindy, and that the content lost it's luster over time.  Usually the first week they were introduced, everyone was doing them.  By about week three you weren't competing for mobs or resources as heavily.  And by month two only the holdouts were still doing them.  Go do MoP dailies today, I'll bet dollars to donuts the only ones doing them are fresh 90s who were probably boosted, or bot assisted.  TL;DR - This is low attention span content for gold.  But many, many players relied on them for their gold income.

Do you know what's waiting for casual players in Warlords?  Give you a hint - Warlords of Garrison-ville.  As if Tillers farming wasn't boring enough, we now have that on steroids and almost complete removal of dailies.  I know I went over the new method of casual gold making via legacy raids in my last post, call this a follow-up.  Dailies are going away, being substituted by point and click Garrison missions that will become as exciting as Tillers ever was, which was never.

Years ago, my mother was convinced to hear an Amway presentation through some former friends.  So one night, the rep shows up to the house and talks with my mom and dad about all the money they could be making.  All they had to do was recruit more people and have them recruit more people for them.  Everyone makes millions!  But my mom, obviously demonstrating the critical thinking power she passed along to me via the genetic lottery, asked the most important question over and over, and the rep brushed it off....

Who sells the soap?

In any pyramid scheme, the name of the game is not to be the sucker holding the bag and selling the soap.  Your mission is to get more people to buy in, and buy the product for their own use that nobody will ever sell.  The ones at the top make all the money.

This is Garrison-ville.  Casuals will earn gold from garrison missions, but someone is going to have to sell the items those things make, and someone is going to have to buy.  Log in, talk to followers, spend money on massive Tier 3 upgrades, and then hope like hell someone out there buys the product that will come with the joy of random mods so you can eventually break even.  Rinse and repeat this across all your toons and you too will be a fucking millionaire!

Who is going to make the soap?  It costs about 16k per Tier 3 upgrade and these are character specific, not account wide.  Blizzard released data not too long ago showing that the average account has 2 max level characters, and thanks to the boost they now have 3.  So let's say you have the standard average 3 characters who will qualify for Garrisons, that's going to be a shitload of gold just to be able to go into massive production.  The average player, per Blizzard's own statements, barely has 50,000 gold.  These people could barely be relied upon to complete dailies because they were so boring but were some of the first to scream that dailies were mandatory content so they ... weren't... worth ... even... attempting.  Basically, the game is made up of 99% poor people who have dreams of being rich, but aren't willing to do what it takes to get rich.  Of that 99%, I would venture to guess 20% of them will try for a little while.  Right now they're looking at Garrisons as the answer, but the answer is they simply won't have enough characters or gold to compete with psychos like myself, so they'll be run off to Grinding-land in between major content patches when Garrisons will be upgraded for "new" content.

Even if these people were to grind legacy raids every single week, which per character offers a few thousand per week across all instances, it would take them about a year to put together about 100,000g assuming about 2k in vendorables and gold drops.  They'll never be rich, unless they themselves sell the soap. In a world where some of us throw down nearly half a million on a GDKP drop, these people don't stand a chance when it comes to market domination.  If they aren't somewhat wealthy going into this expansion, they're going to be really behind, and that's not fun.

The old adage of "it takes money to make money" aptly applies here.

If you're some average broke stiff playing this game, you're going to do your Garrisons, spend the outlay to upgrade them, and then find that the gear being offered is really directed at other casual players.  The raid gear immediately drops better than or equal to the crap you're making in comparison to crafted quality, and people can only equip three pieces of crafted gear.  Remember in MoP that this was also the case.  To add fuel to the fire, the undercutting is going to be fierce because this is nearly forced Auction House play.  Everytime cooldowns hit their peak, you'll see 2 dozen of each item pop up on the Auction House.  The average person is not going to know how to compete, because they never learned how.  And then the sharks in the water like myself will eat them alive.  Remember this:  The gear being offered at release is targeted at casual players, not cutting edge progression minded raiders.

Surely, the other casuals with gold to spend will buy the gear, but they will have a very hard time replacing their gold unless they themselves participate in either Garrison-craft or gold drop grinds.  Gold sellers are going to have a field day with this, because if there's one thing I've learned in all my years of gaming, people are happy to Mastercard their way through it.  People are busy, they can't be asked to log in and do this crap day in and day out.  Even if you can queue things ahead, there are working professionals that play this game who have real responsibilities, and those responsibilities are not playing nanny to a bunch of followers in some fantasy kingdom. 

"But Zerohour, you're fecking nuts, eh.  People will just do old dailies for gold.  Get a grip, yo!"  Will they?  The rewards for doing them isn't as hot as they used to be.  11g40s for a turn-in in Pandaria, down from 19g80s, and this was changed at the patch.  That's an enormous drop.  The amount you make from leveling will be more than a month of dailies at this point, and I guess I should explain myself further.

Someone not only has to sell and make the soap, someone has to buy the soap.  These buyers are people that are NOT in the AH gold game.  These are the people who use the AH to buy your goods and have little desire to do anything to acquire it outside of passive gold farming.  Thanks to inflation from dailies and quest rewards in each expansion, we've seen the gold get spread around to more of these players.  That perk of inflation is now gone.  There is no WoW welfare office that sends a check subsidizing your purchasing power, unless I missed that in the patch notes.  These people, more so than any other, determine the end price of your overpriced epics because their loose change is what goes into your pockets.  They are the buyers, the customers, the deadheads.  Today it takes 173 dailies to give you the same rewards as what 100 used to give you.  And dailies in the Garrison will offer sizable rewards, but they will also cost gold to be able to complete.  I doubt these people will be able to stomach doing Garrisons for their gold for very long.

To top it off, there IS NO MANUAL FOR GARRISONS.  I and my fellow like minded players over in the Stormspire at The Consortium have been wracking our brains about this new game changer, and we're absolutely at a loss for words.  While Wowhead and MMOC have been faithful in trying to explain it and many guides have been produced...


Do you think the average player is going to stick with it very long if some of the best minds at this crap are having trouble making simple heads or tails as to the best routes to go, I'd say the big world is in a bit of trouble.

Of course, many will have trouble seeing the forest for the truck lights headed their way:

"Fuck garrisons, I'm just going to make glyphs and gems and enchants," you say.  "This gold game is easy, there's no reason to bust my ass in Garrisons when I have always made extreme gold through leet ninja skills with TSM's post/cancel and camping."  If you haven't heard, this is going to be a painful expansion for you.

Why I have no faith in the system as it is being issued

Mumper, aka Cory Stockton, designed this system.  Not that he's a bad designer, I just think he's been tweeting too many beer drinking achievements since patch during the week and not enough about why this feature isn't going to feel like a repetitive grind and why his baby is going to be a game changing piece of win.  He's always been the most vague designer on board, generally at Blizzcon he's been the least vocal among them.  We can't get any answers either way of what's hard and fast, and reports from beta have been wanting at best.  How many hotfixes have we seen since patch?  We got a mini-patch?  When was the last time that happened?  Like never?  To clue you in, this has been the most unpolished patch release of all time.  Cataclysm changed the world and it didn't have near the trouble of this thing.

Flash forward to actual release.  Since the game was already patched with dungeons being broken as hell, experience rewards being imbalanced like they threw darts at a board, and classes have been wonky at best, we have yet to really stress test the Garrisons.  What problems are we going to encounter with this thing?  Sure there are people in the beta, but they drew those names out of a hat.  Case in point?  A friend of mine who asks me questions like she's a new player, but she's played for 10 years.  You have people that got into beta who didn't even level 1-90 and try it out, but the errors made their way into live.  Good system there.  I think I liked the pay to play idea last time better.

Everything has felt arbitrary.  We have no freaking idea the problems in store for us, and nobody can tell me otherwise because everything reported in beta was probably shelved for a future release by Blizz.  QA on this game has lacked hardcore, and I'm just hoping they didn't make these suggestions and they didn't bother addressing them, but then again I've worked for big companies before and these communication issues commonly arise.

I think a new class of working poor is on the horizon.  I however, believe I have found an answer to stay rich, and it's there if you look hard enough.

The Question I Would Ask At Blizzcon

If I could be at Blizzcon and be in line for the panels, I'd be the guy who probably gets security called on him.  I have little respect for what Blizz did to Warcraft, which basically drove off all my friends who I played with for years.  I spent 2 hours talking to an old friend who came to see the game after getting 7 days free.  Bugs everywhere, he couldn't believe they issued the sampler pass when the expansion patch was still unfinished.  We reminisced about how we're getting too old for today's games, because in our world rewards weren't given to those who didn't know how to push buttons correctly.  He couldn't understand why I still sub not on one but two accounts.  Zerohour, don't you demand better of things?

He logged out and never logged back in again. 

So my question for the panels which comes in two parts:

* Why the hell do I still play this game?  Is it some form of psychosis?  Am I lost forever?


Have fun at your "con".

Thanks for stopping in!


Zerohour is a leading gold maker, having made and pissed away millions of gold. If you don't like him, don't worry, he doesn't like you either. Everyone is probably smarter than him, anyhow.

The future of casual goldmaking

Before I begin, I can't believe nearly 65,000 people have filled their time reading this blog.  A small percentage have also filled their time writing me hate mail.  Both are appreciated!

With all this talk of garrisons, expansions, easy-bake materials (thanks Stede), cataclysmic changes to professions, and the end of the world as we know it for shuffling, it's been forgotten just how anyone can make gold in the future while actually playing the game!

I'm a big grinder, I love visiting old content, bosses, trash packs, and killing them for old time's sake. When I swapped mains in Wrath to my paladin, I actually went back and redid the 40+ reputations to exalted just because.  Today I'm approaching 80 reps at exalted and look forward to hitting them in WoD.  There's very few things in Warcraft that I really enjoy:

• Leveling battle pets
• Grinding reputations
• Collecting gold
• Getting achievements without even trying and having people get jelly about my score
• Collecting mounts
• Collecting toys - this is now a recent addiction, er addition
• Quick GDKP runs with awesome raiders
• Wondering why certain people completely redirect their lives for this game
• Complaining about changes
• Complaining about Blizzard's decisions
• Complaining
• Doing public BGs so I can join in the melee of bitching about bads in boost gear
• Pissing people off who are poor and just don't get it
• ...This list is getting pretty long, looks like I enjoy more than a few things

But what I love to do is find where things drop in the best quantity and build the better mousetrap.  I often visited Naxx for Frostweave, or Scarlet Cathedral for silk.  I'm currently found in Sunwell and BT just messing around looking for my monk and death knight tier.  I used to kill the trolls in The Hinterlands back in Classic for their prizes.  Every now and again I run over to AQ10 even though I don't need anything. 

I think this is sort of my comfort food.  Since I've been around the game and can officially call myself one of the last men standing from Classic, these things bring back great memories and feelings of nostalgia.  Like warlocks not being able to banish when told, when the casual we used to carry on Archimonde would wipe us, and making people cry over gear (literally, I have that feather in my cap).  I really like old content, so it's with great happiness that the majority of old raids are now completely soloable.  Too bad I already have the 200k Mind on your Money.

Since they're essentially removing dailies, there's going to be a limited number of ways people will be able to get any gold to buy our overpriced items in the auction house.  And really, garrisons are a nice idea, but check back with all the players in about a month.  I assure you, just like Tillers, I will be another of the last men standing.  Why?  Because I have a high tolerance for boring and painful bad content (what one of my old Classic/TBC friends used to say about me).

Raid content I've now been able to solo with ease:

Cataclysm - Dragon Solo is soloable up to Spine.  You need 2-3 more to really get Spine to work right, unless you're a DDR champion and can do more than one thing at a time.  Firelands is a joke in Heroic and Normal.  Tier 11 has lots of painful memories, like the elevator boss and people getting lost on the way back to Cho'gall, but offers some really fast coin and trash.  25M Heroic is just not in the cards but for the average person, 10M Normal or Heroic will be the way to go for these.

Wrath of the Lich King - Naxx and Ulduar were already soloable, but now you can easily pound out No Lights.  I liked it so much I saved an alt for future farming of him.  Lich King, too!  I've scored several kills on 25M Heroic LK, which is kinda sad when you recall people worked for months on him.  I spent about 5 pulls trying to remember the mechanics, and no Invincible yet.  It's amazing that you forget a boss or ten after several years when you used to spend entire evenings doing pulls for nothing.

The average run through Heroic Cataclysm content is going to score you about 150-200g per boss kill, and about 25g in Normal and take about 20-30 minutes depending on you and how fast you can click the RP NPCs.  You can expect to see 2-3 pieces drop per boss, with a value that's all over the map.  Tokens go for nothing, so it's worth exchanging them for the piece when they pop for your class.  Everything should be vendored.

ICC 25 man is going to net you about 500g for the run.  Ulduar will be about the same amount.  And this is at 90.  Best to keep moving because these are going to take a while to get through.

So the future of casual goldmaking?  Old raids, mount farming, and vendoring everything.  I sorta think that this is justice.

Thanks for stopping in!

Patch 6.0.2 - Three Shards and a Sha

This isn't about gold, this is just me being the cynical old guy I've come to be... and be loved for.

When you reach that point in life when you expect things to be phoned in, you know you're reaching mediocrity.

No, I don't hate the game, nor the changes, but I do still hate the players.  I do dislike being robbed again of a lead-in and some immersion.

Anyone that's done the expansion pre-release "event" knows that we're dealing with 2nd tier in the world of build ups and hype.  2nd may just be a little generous, this was a bit half-assed.  And I know I'll get some hate comments and STFU Zero comments for this, but seriously, I've been playing their games now for 15 years and one thing Blizz usually never does is phone things in.  They troll the shit out of their customers (Diablo 3, Lich King event), they charge the shit out of them (Every expansion with bonus subscription, "Free 90", Blizzard Shop button in the damned game), they put us on all the time (Reward for Shen'dralar rep besides achievement, PvP will be put into Diablo 3, we have more people working on WoW than ever before but magically things are still broken/overlooked), but one thing they usually don't do is do something not very exciting.

Enter... Warlords of Draenor Patch 6.0.2.  If I didn't follow the lore and the game developments, I would have been utterly confused as to why the portal turned red.  Additionally, how did Garrosh escape?  Who's to blame for this?  Which faction was actually holding him prisoner and which Panda's ass do we kick for falling down on the job?  How did he get from Pandaria all the way back to Draenor 35 years ago?  What's with the green shit that one green orc asked the red long haired orc to drink, and who the hell are they?  If you can answer these questions, then you seriously followed it closely, and more closely than me and I actually follow the lore story unlike most people.

And say what you like about Garrosh.  The guy made the slip and we didn't hear squat about it.  If I'm ever locked up, I want to be cell mates with this guy.  No reporters were assigned to the story, no interviews with guards and how they were underpaid and overworked and it was the fault of the unions, no "uh-oh, Garrosh is loose again, round up the posse" story leading up to the cinematic.  Just a "here you go" beautifully done cinematic.  Sort of like watching a movie for the first time and selecting Chapter 6 on the DVD without watching 1-5.  I felt like I usually do on a movie date when I go to get popcorn refilled sometime in the middle and I come back and need a primer on WTF happened the 30 minutes I was gone and a primer on the 5 minutes I wasn't paying attention while hearing about the previous 30 minutes during the primer.  My life is one big jumble.

I write that through the eyes of a casual player, of course I recognized the homage to WC3 and the major players and didn't confuse Manno for Magtheridon, because pit lords.  But what about everyone else who can barely push the right buttons off cooldown?  And us lore nerds who were actually thirsty for more?  Kudos to anyone who gets in line at the lore panel and throws that shit down on Metzen at BC14.  How about the lead-in for that?

What I learned from Three Shards and a Sha (my personal name for the 'event' because that's what my main got from it) was that there's a bunch of Red Orcs running through the portal and they must be bad because the color is now red.  Thrall was out there telling me to kill things.  I looked through a telescope and assumed they were bads because they were on flying mounts bought from the Blizzard store.  There was a mini-boss at the end that Thrall had no problem tanking, and I had to tell our new Warchief that shit was going down, and he was so happy he gave me a purple trinket and a little iron ball.  Sort of reminded me of that movie about The Madness of King George. 

Me:  They're coming, Vol'jin!
Vol'Jin:  Thanks, have a toy and this choice of good trinket or shitty trinket.
Me:  You da man, Vol'jin!


And then he just stands there looking Vol'jin'ish. 

I hated this event so much I've only done it 8 times so far, still have another 14 to go because it's mandatory.

I rather liked the Mists of Pandaria event.  Hold the phone, there wasn't one.  Wait, they had that demonstration of a scenario where Garrosh bombed the shit out of Theramore and pissed off some people to where their hair turned white and passed it off as an event until people called them on it and they admitted there was no event.  But at least that was a full working scenario.  And this brings me to part two.

Upper Blackrock Spire.  My favorite memory of the place was at 60 when I snagged my Tier 0 mage robes from some jackass in the guild that nobody liked after crafting the epic robes.  Of course, he QQ'd his ass off.  And of course, he was a warlock wanting mage tier.  Caused so much drama, he Gquit that night and good times were had by all and I got lots of thank you tells.  Where was I?  Oh yeah.

I queued for this hot mess.  After putting up 75% of the dps through the place and tanking on my ret paladin because apparently AOE threat no longer exists for warrior tanks (it doesn't anymore, right, they removed it I came to understand), dying several times because when you don't know how to AOE tank the best thing you can do is pull half the room leading up to Nef's old spot while standing in slams, we got to what used to be the least liked place in the joint because people would invariably run into the cage way back when and cause the game to turn upside down and bug.  No problem, dead boss.

The back door to Awbee opens and I run in assuming the same map, and it's locked.  After 5-10 minutes of looking around for levers, jumping against walls and trying to get over those new jaws on the floor, we all decided to look it up on Wowhead.  And there it was, buried in one of the last comments about the place, it ends after that event and the rest is available after you hit 100.

I wanted to scream.

And I did!

At my monitor.

And it looked back at me laughing.  Seriously, it did.


And then I realized, this was phoned in and there's nothing else to do for a month.  Except maybe old raids for mounts, because holy crap have you seen your dps against those old bosses!?

Epilogue

I jest a bit here, because really what we need is to set circa-2008 expectations again.  Blizzard always wow'ed us with WoW.  There were always mementos and fond memories from the events, and those of us that were there probably consider the Wrath event the greatest event of all time, probably even better than most of the raids in the expansion except for Ulduar.  In Classic we walked away with a tabard that you can show your grandkids, but it was repeated in TBC dammit.  Cataclysm had 2 different storylines and an assload of new quests with the revision of the zones.  They also gave us a glimpse of Cho and the Twilight Hammer over a period of time.

I know people worked really hard on that quest series in Blasted Lands.  But didn't anyone ask "is that all there is?" in the meetings?  10-15 minutes of questing without a real backstory...  And I know there are those out there that have drank the Kool-Aid and it could be flavored poop and you'd still ask for more, but is this all?  Did this satisfy?

Unless they have some build-up story, I think a lot of people forked over $15 this month just to see less entertainment than you would see in 90 minutes at the movies.  And it probably explains why the lag on Illidan went away inside of a day.

Unfortunately, outside of a pet that I'll treasure (until I sell the other 21 of them) forever, and three shards and a sha, I didn't feel satisfied.  Anyone?  Anyone at all.

Goldmaking types

For some reason I thought of this while in traffic today.  What else would I think about?  (I wrote this a month or so ago, thanks to Stede I'm publishing it because fun posts are fun).

1)  The Grinder - If there's a "best" ore path, or top place to get skins, or a set of dailies rewarding the most gold you'll find this person.  They made their gold the old fashioned way, they mined/herbed/skinned/quested for it.  Friend of the Jeweler and Paper Pusher, you can count on them needing to move a truckload of something quick, but not for too low a price.

2) The Flipper - Dedicating their lives to full scan searches via Auctioneer/TUJ Sniper, these are the people looking for the bargains they can turn for more.  They are the ones screaming for auctionhouse apps for their phones so they can scan and scam in their cars.  Ranging from coppers to tens of thousands of gold to hundreds of thousands for the most exclusive items, they comb the realms looking for deals to pile it up.  Someone forgot to tell them to spend some on themselves, but one never knows when they'll need that 10/20/40 million to make a deal happen.

3) The Arms Dealer - Profession kings.  Who needs 9 Blacksmiths for the next patch?  They do, and extra accounts because 11 slots isn't enough to handle their little pixelated sweatshop.  Apple and Martha have nothing on these people for forced labor camps, with 3, 4, and 10 accounts just so they can make the gear to get you ahead - for the lowest cost and the best price because dammit you aren't paying more and you've forced it to this!

4) The Chemist/Crack Dealers - Somehow between TBC and Wrath these people got lost at a wrong turn at Albuquerque and still make their money slinging potions and flasks.  They're out there, waiting on those procs just so they can brag to their friends about the 5 proc on the strength flasks, so everyone will forget about the string of no-procs they threw down the past week.  Yes friends, it's worth it in the end.  If anyone hasn't made a profit in the game in the past 3 expansions, it's these guys.  They'll tell you they made a profit, they farmed the mats so they were free!

5) The Jeweler - Close relative of the Paper Pusher, these guys are adept at pushing a single button once every 4.26 seconds to bust up those rocks the rest of the server is too lazy to prospect.  They'll typically need guild banks and extra mail slots to hold all their ores and minerals, because one day they'll get around to handling the load.  Their entire focus is Tuesday.  Because on that day friends, they get to hock their wares and then return to the shadowy confines of some whisked away abode in who-knows-where while they prep for the next week.  Commonly complains about the price of ore; any ore, pick one.

6) The Gambler - Ever wonder who falls for those "presents in a box, 1 has a mount" spams in trade?  Or even the highest roll wins spam?  Do you know a guild where certain addons for trash pulls are required so you can roll for gold?  How about the people that religiously farm for MFCs, or those that even buy them?  You've met the gambler, these are the guys who won't work the auctionhouse or do a daily to save their bank account, but throw down 1000 gold for a 10% chance at doubling it?  They're in!   Probably the most close association to people you actually know in real life, we all have these types in the family.

7) The Paper Pusher - These guys are your scribes.  They need a new name, because scribe is going on 6 years old and this is really all they do.  Make glyphs, post, cancel, repost, recraft, repeat.  They push paper better than a government bureaucrat and thanks to addons with more efficiency.  That's all they do, too.  JC?  Nah.  Enchanting?  Too much cost.  Alchemy? Blacksmith? Tailor?  Who has the time!?  Commonly seen preparing for monthly Darkmoon trips.

8)  Prada/Coco - as in Chanel.  Making lots of custom bags and for every occasion, these people are cloth fiends.  They still make Mooncloth bags because they look better than Netherweave.  If you need a 28 slot enchanting bag, they'll hook you up.  Outdated since TBC?  They have it and are probably posting it.

What do you think?  Know any other types?  As we roll into the conclusion of mass goldmaking (WoD) I'm wondering if there's anyone I missed.

Battle Pets: Daily Tamer Experience

For those of you unaware, one of my favorite aspects of the game today aside from gold and GDKP raiding is pet battles.  I got into it last year and like most things I ended up documenting certain things.  Maybe this will be of use to you in case you're trying to figure out how the tamers work and why people do the quests everyday.

The reason is simple:  You get a lot of experience depending on the level of pet you are carrying.  I had a theory when I first started that the experience had some sort of diminishing return, so this led to me actually performing battles with every single variety and documenting the results.

As you can see from the chart below, the yellow highlight shows you the spot where you will earn the most experience, and it's a mirror.  This is why it is bad to use a level 3 against a 25, your best return will be a 10 or 11.

Note that the chart assumes you are wearing the safari hat.  If you aren't, then you net 10% off that amount.  If you are using the pet treats, obviously you'll account for the extra boost of 25%.  More or less I use this as a guide so I don't waste experience on pets that are too high or too low.  The difference between 25N and 25P here:  25P are Pandaria trainers, Ns are Northrend and Cata.

Additionally, I put together something for 1-25 Wild Pet battles, and since 1-19 is mostly boring for folks I'm only showing the returns you see when fighting level 20 to 25s.

Again, yellow shows the sweet spot and assumes the safari hat is worn.  Where I placed the "x" means I never got to those levels, but you get the idea.

I figure that since we're about 2.5 months out, I can share this little nugget with you in case you're looking for something to do.  I'm presently trying to get all the pets I have to 25 (or at least most of them) prior to the release.  I have 550ish pets, 170ish at 25, and the vast, vast majority are between 16 and 24 right now.  Only greens are 11-15.  I figure if I get this out of the way, I won't need to bother with my OCD for about another year.

Hope you have a great day and thanks for stopping in!

November 13th is no longer just for Wrath of the Lich King

So at midnight, November 13, 2008 I was standing in line at Wal-muerto (it's the Wal of the Dead), huddled with all my fellow geeks.  I had arrived an hour early because I knew that would guarantee me a Collector's Edition, and the ire of my guildmaster at the time who was freaking out about the dragons.  I still never understood that, he played because of dragons, of which there hadn't been one since Onyxia.  Prior to all of this, the game had been an absolute blast and was inhabited by the old school MMO/gamer community that understood "shit is s'poseda be hard" and not everyone would walk away a winner.

I bought the game, went home all excited, installed it while trolling my GM, completed the first quest, found an inn, and went to bed.  It took me a week to hit my first 80 because, well, I work and 10 levels at 3 hours a night was quite a commitment.  I don't take time off for video games, I take time off for sunny places that serve drinks with umbrellas.  Or places that have snow capped mountains and craps tables, and I bring my own drink umbrellas to those.

Now, 6 years later, we see that same number come up again.  I'm thinking it was a Freudian nod to their most successful release in the history of the franchise, Blizz loves to pay homage.

As I said in my last entry, Warcraft is all social marketing nowadays, and the people who had the access were glued to their screens watching the announcement party for the release date.  Yes, a big party for the announcement of the release date.  It was advertised in the launcher, a countdown clock was all over MMOC and other fan sites...  all to hear the announcement and watch the cinematic for the expansion of a 10 year old game.  I think that means the franchise is going to go on for a while longer.

Just a note for those concerned about the longevity - Blizzard expected maybe 1 million subscribers when Warcraft originally launched.  Don't believe it?  Check out how many original servers they had at launch.  Prior to November 2004, Blizzard was not the behemoth that World of Warcraft built.  Blizzard was known for making RTS games, and their subsidiary Blizzard North handled Diablo.  Today they have an enormous marketing budget and cash flow thanks to the little engine that took the best parts of the MMO industry and improved on them.

I'll tell you how you'll know it's dead:  When they no longer make expansions and merely deliver patch events.  See other MMOs out there for a guide.

It's still interesting.  I play because it is a giant puzzle, and I like puzzles.  I've been playing Diablo 3 like a fiend since March 25, and that's only because someone somewhere buried their foot in the ass of the development team and made it something of quality and something resembling the best franchise Blizzard has. 

What is the first thing I'm doing November 13?  Getting a good night's rest, I have work in the morning.  I still haven't bought the expansion, and I'll probably make that decision in November.

Have a fantastic Fall people!  Thanks for stopping in.

Wake me when it's November...

I think we'll see the next expansion drop by mid to late November, probably even first week of December (a la Cata).  They won't be releasing it prior to Blizzcon because Blizzcon is a giant advertisement, which is the 7th-8th of November.  There will be a ton of buzz and everyone will go home and tell their friends, their guildies, their little brother/sister that the game is so awesome and they should buy it.  The whole idea behind the beta invites, Blizzcon (which is not at a loss, this is advertising folks), and the fansites that have direct links (and are totally allowed to datamine against the TOS) is to sell the game.  Social media is how massive games sell, and while I'm perfectly fine with that, I'm more into being entertained.

As with all expansions since the first (TBC), I will not be participating in any betas, I won't be speculating about how to make a mint the first week, and when I buy the game I will be getting a good night's rest for work in the morning and then trying to log on when I get home from work that Tuesday the Xth, whatever month it is.  I'll no doubt be days behind the first week, but like the tortoise and the hare, the hare unsubbed the next month because he got bored.  And in the end, I'll put together my mint within the first month - once I figure out what's what of course.

Note:  I don't like doing beta because 1) It's not live, everything is still up for change 2) it spoils the story for me and I love new toys and adventures 3) there is no dessert when it goes live, you get to do everything all over again 4) I absolutely love experimenting with game mechanics when they're live, and not so much when there are loads of bugs.  I don't even mess with PTRs.

So where does this leave me?  I've done about everything I cared to do in MoP, I've got the Heroic gear on multiple characters, I've got my gold tmog on 4 of my toons, I got all the reps, I made and pissed away millions of gold, and my guild is dead still.  For some reason the AH is still buzzing, I'm guessing people still leveling alts or doing PvP in that last preparation for Orcland. 

If there's one thing you learn from expansion to expansion, it's what the keep and what to dump.  This past week, after spending all my free time slaughtering demons over in D3RoS since 3/25, I decided to finally get rid of the crap in my bags and pass it off on the good people of Illidan.  No more buying, no more snatching, no more mailboxes rotating thousands of stacks of ores/bars/cloth/herbs.  Just sell it off.  I haven't been doing squat in months anyhow, so put that banker to bed.  What I've come to the conclusion of is simple:

Dump almost everything

I am going to hold onto my Windwool Collection however.  And some items are going to be quite valuable for leveling in the future, so I wouldn't get rid of those just yet.   I'm not going to tell you what to keep however, that's the job of the hoarders who stay home all day.  Here's a short list of some of the trash I've pawned off, and how I snagged a clean 117k in gold with about 1200g in AH costs in the past week doing nothing but posting once per day, going back to Diablo, and repeating in 24 hours.

Note that all materials/items are assumed to be Mists of Pandaria, not previous content.

* All epic BOE crafted armors and weapons.  This includes all the blacksmith, leatherworking and tailoring purples that take 21/28 days each to make.  If they are BOE purples that dropped off a mob, you may want to hold onto that for leveling/twink purposes later.  Further, the PvP blues are not worth holding onto, unless you're going to engage in some weird transmog idea later (I don't bother with it) then lock and load.

* Gems.  If it comes from Kyp/GI/Trill ores, it's going to be useless.  Leveling greens and blues will not have sockets in them, and people will be going for the new gems for their epics.  You may consider holding onto metas however, as there is a small demand for those.  Personally, I'm dumping them all.  Professions are going to be streamlined, so it may not be worth holding onto anything except blue uncommon and rare gems

* Enchanting materials.  I think 'server first enchanting profession' was generally scored within 30 minutes at release.  Tell you anything?  Hypnotic Dust was incredibly high in demand throughout MoP, and stacks of it prior to MoP could be traded for magewater.  But after the Miners and JCs moved onward, the best way to make it became through embercloth, which was going for a fortune and was time consuming to farm.  This caused prices of it to skyrocket because enchanting required a lot of it and they didn't have easymode shortcuts to gain 2-5 levels off very little dust.  MoP offered this.  Hasta la vista, baby. 

Shas, well, we all know the score on these things.  Ask the Maelstrom hoarders how that worked out.  Make Dancing and Jade and be done with them.  If you need Shas, check your enchanter's bank.  I went through my 4 enchanters and DE'd everything they weren't equipping or going to be using.  I scored about 6 scrolls just from that alone.


* LW Leg and Shoulder enchants.  What better use for Mag hide and your SoH?  Or leftover junk for darkmoon cards.  I hate darkmoon cards of course, too much time involved, but I do like shoulder enchants.  I wouldn't craft the Mag hides the old fashioned way (50 leathers), just burn cooldowns because you'll probably want to keep the hides around for next expansion when people aren't skinning MoP.  (I know, I said I wasn't going to say what to keep).  Sell those damned scales, too.  If you got em, off they go.

* Herbs.  I sell these in their glyphed version.  Alchemy was so damned bad for elixirs, pots, and flasks this expansion, unless it was the time following patches.  I heard from somewhere that milling won't be happening anymore, so there's no time like the present.

* Leftover raid materials.  This is a bigger list actually.  This includes all foods, fish, veggies, elixirs/pots/flasks, Spirits of War, Haunted Spirits, etc.  I personally craft my SoW into belts.  Nobody is going to care about these items, unless you want to keep some back for leveling come Orcland.  I usually don't care about anything for leveling except maybe flasks.  Cooking is generally one of my first activities to level, and the day MoP released I got home from work and went to 600 fishing prior to leveling.  I'm not even joking.

* Anything you've crafted with Living Steel that isn't a mount or a pet.  Belt Buckles and Weapon Chains.  I had dozens of these things laying around, and I used to make 10:1 buckles to chains.

* Engineer scopes.  My engineers were always guilty of having too many SoH in their banks, and I used to love screwing hunters every Tuesday by buying out all the LBSoDs and reposting at 5 to 10 times the price I paid.  Yeah, did this, I sold them all usually, and fuck hunters.  Because they required SoH, you couldn't just turn around and craft 2 dozen of the things, so I used to love getting all my money back with a sale a two, and then reaping it in off the worst fucking people in the game!  That's right, your bullshit of whining because you couldn't have the healing mace for your stupid pet healing has stuck with me for this long.  So, suck it!  Where was I?  Oh yeah, sell the scopes before they have no more value and are replaced by the first green recipe scope in Orcland.

So that's what I'm doing.  Am I going to be dead wrong on things?  Maybe.  Who cares, it's not like I'll be poor.  But I damned sure won't be getting stuck with anything I don't want to be selling.  It's bad enough having to redo TSM groups for a new expansion again, and I relish the thought of removing most of these categories only to replace them with new ones.

For now, I'm going back to Diablo again.  The game's actually a lot of fun, and feels very similar to the way we used to do it in D2.  Of course, the original abomination was horrid, but they're under new management now and it looks like they're going the right way.  I for one am glad, because the franchise looked like they were going to be happy putting a bullet in it.

Thanks for stopping in!