Almost Epic

Kill 50,000 Rats

2010-12-19T14:48:00.004-05:00

I once heard on a podcast, the specific one escapes me, that if there was a quest to throw a sack of kittens off a cliff players would gleefully do it if it rewarded a companion pet. Critter Kill Sqad, the guild achievement which awards the Armadillo is proof of just how true that is. I have never killed a critter for amusement before. . . I’m up to about 20,000 now. In the spirit of mercilessly slaughtering critters in the name of cuddly pets I’ve got a few great tips for you.

Cheesing It

The only thing that keeps this achievement within reach in a short amount of time is that if you are in a group with guildies and near each other each guildie will count towards the achievement. So if you have 5 guildies in a party within close proximity to each other 1 dead squirrel will count for 5 critters killed towards the achievement.

Instant Respawn=Win

The best place that I have found to kill critters is the Ironforge side of the Deeprun Tram. The respawn here is instant. For maximum rat pwnage positioning is important. In the above picture I am standing in the best spot that I have found. It is on the far platform of the tram, slightly to the right of center as you face the entrance and about one floor tile away from the wall. I found that this spot allows you to hit all 3 spawn points and almost never will cause you to be out of line of sight. If you recruit guildies into helping, as you should, you can have them on the other side or on the middle platform, or just afk if they are lazy, as every guildie present makes for more kills.

Macro-ing for Success

I’m useless with macros, but even I can make a macro for this. Before you make your macro you will need to consider what spell to use. The best spell to use is one that is instant cast, on no cooldown, not a DoT, and costs as little mana, if applicable, as possible. As a warlock I used Fel Flame. The reason a DoT is not ideal is that your macro won’t switch to a new target until the DoT actually ticks and kills your target, making it a bit slower. You can also just have your pet attack them, although this will be a bit slower as you have to wait until your pet can run to the target. My macro looks like this:

/tar Deeprun Rat

/cast Fel Flame

Just insert the name of the spell you will be using or /petattack if you are going that route. Wanding, throwing, or auto-shotting are also good choices for a spell if you are unfortunate enough not to be a warlock. If you are a mana user bring drinks, but once again this only applies to our non-warlock friends (lifetap ftw). The only thing left to do is guilt your guildies into coming and find a good TV show to watch as you spam your macro. Using this method, with me as the main rat killer and anywhere from 1 to 6 other guildies in the group at various times, we managed to earn 20,000 kills towards the achievement in an hour.

Other Places

I also tested two other locations suggested by wowhead commentors. The respawn rate is very good but both areas have a variety of kinds of critters, thus preventing a targeting macro, and require me to aoe, which ran me out of mana so fast that it wasn’t very efficient. However I suspect that these places might be very good for other classes, mages and priests in particular, who have an instant aoe that can be used on the move.

Zul Gurub – Coordinates 83, 35. No longer a raid, a variety of snakes here have instant respawn.

Eastern Plaguelands Cave – Coordinates 4,36. All sort of critters line this cave and the entire cave respawns within a couple minutes. Especially if you have a group of guildies this place could rack up the kills quite easily.

The best part of all of these places; the critters are gross creepy crawlies, not cute, fluffy bunnies so there is no guilt involved.

WHALE SHARK!

2010-12-09T11:54:00.004-05:00

This is the crazy huge demi-god thingy-ma-bobber in Vashj'ir. I was inside it. Gross right?

This is a whale shark, and no, I did not go up and poke it, contrary to appearances I am not an idiot.

The Final Checklist

2010-12-05T15:22:00.004-05:00

Here is my final checklist for Cataclysm. I am not going for a server first, but I do want to do some efficient leveling. Your mileage may vary depending on class/spec, leveling goals, wealth, or just how much of a planner you are.

Professions

Do as many of the daily cooking quests on as many characters as possible to provide recipes and meat for my main cook.

Have Wrath materials for the first few skill ups. Park my characters next to profession trainers so that I don’t forget to train professions in my excitement.

Obtain relevant enchants. Gatherer Angler Leather Herbing Gloves

To Pack

These are merely suggestions and all items, depending on your class/spec , professions, or play style certainly will not apply to everyone.

*denotes items that will give a few skill ups. If you have this profession you might wish to have the materials on hand and wait to craft them.

Flasks*

Runic Mana Potions

Runic Health Potions

Situational Potions (I’ll be taking Wild Magic)

Heavy Frostweave Bandages

New food and water

Buff Food

Fish Feasts* (Great if you plan on doing dungeons, worth it even if you don’t to get a few cooking skill ups, even if you end up eating the feast yourself.)

Drums of Forgotten Kings*

Runescrolls of Fortitude*

Your fishing outfit plus lures if you plan on doing a bit of fishing for leveling or profit.

Any relevant reagents

Bots/mailboxes if you are an engineer

Herb/skin/ore bag if you will be gathering a lot.

Enchanting rod/skinning knife/mining pick/etc…it would be bad if you accidently forgot these things in your bank.

Miscellaneous

Final Bank/Bag clean out

Organize bank alt’s guild bank tabs

Post auctions the night before for levelers/rerollers

Clean out quest log

Clean out mailboxes

Finish any crafting of items you are planning on selling (I’m looking at you damn netherweave bags)

Complete 25 dailies if you are hardcore like that.

Respec/Reglyph – it might be advantageous to take a look at your spec and move a few points around to form a more leveling oriented build rather than a raiding build. Glyphs are also a great thing to change when going from raiding to leveling.

Put all of the consumables I’ve packed on my bars so that I don’t forget that I have them.

The Recipe Lottery

2010-12-04T15:41:00.002-05:00

With the slew of new levelers, both now with new class and race combinations and next week with goblins and worgen, there will be a unique opportunity out there. I am talking about recipes, specifically recipes that are world drops. If you fanatically collect recipes for no particular reason, like I do, then you know how frustrating it can be to collect those low level green recipes that have a minuscule chance of dropping of any mob in Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor, I’m looking at you Lesser Block and Star Belt. But with so many more people leveling, world drop recipes will actually start appearing on the Auction House. In fact I recently acquired the Shadow Hood pattern for 1 gold, I would have paid thousands.

For Collectors

Collectors like me should always be on the lookout. Check the Usable box and search the recipe section often. You might even want to advertise in trade that you will pay for any recipe you don’t have and link your tradeskill, although this may cause you to pay more because you have tipped them off that these are of some value, at least to you.

For Auctioneers

Familiarize yourself with what recipes are world drops. Either add them to you snatch list or take a look at Ackis Recipe List mentioned below. Most world drops you find will be posted for a pittance by people who don’t know what they are worth. You can flip this for a nice profit, although only to collectors so it might take a bit to find a buyer.

For Everyone

If you aren’t looking to collect yourself or profit off of others collective tendencies the one thing you should do is do your research. If you happen upon a recipe take a minute and look it up so that you know what you’ve got. I do a literal face palm when I think about all of the things I vendored when I was but a nub, don't make the mistake of throwing these potentially valuable recipes away.

Ackis Recipe List

I've raved about this addon before, but I'll mention it again. This great addon will give you a menu of all the recipes you don't know and where to get it. Even if you are not a collector you can use it to determine what recipes are world drops.

The End Draws Near!

2010-11-18T12:55:00.003-05:00

With the elemental invasion in full force and the release of patch 4.0.3 the reality of the end of the world as we know it has really hit home for me, forcing me to kick it into high gear as far as the nitty gritty of Cataclysm preparations go.

/Shakes Fist

WTF people! The other day for the first time since I began to call myself an auctioneer I didn't sell a single auction. I would guess that this is because everyone just standing around in Stormwind or Ironforge waiting for the next invasion, something I myself am guilty of, but come on people, not a single auction?

Anyway, while I've been camping the city for the elemental invasion I've taken the opportunity to get some of the mindless chores done that I need to do in preparation. Remember patch 4.0.3a is coming either this week or next in my estimation. When that drops you will be able to roll the new class/race combinations and the world will go BOOM! When that happens you aren't going to want to waste your time emptying out your bank or crafting countless bags. So stop trolling trade and get cracking! Here is my list of things I've been getting done while chilling with Varian, hopefully it will remind you of some things you had planned on doing before the apocalypse is upon us.

Crafting - I've been turning my massive stock of netherweave and frostweave bolts into bags in preparation for the impending onslaught of re-rolls.
Cold Storage - I've moved some of the items that I've been stockpiling for later resale in the expansion (Wrath pets, pimp staffs, etc) into the bank of shelved alts for cold storage and moved items that I will be sending to new alts or selling right away to my bank toon's guild, thus trying to make things as organized and accessible as possible.
Crafting/Organizing Leveling Consumables - I've been pre-crafting items I will want for leveling that will not provide any skill ups like Runic Mana and Runic Health potions and Firecracker Salmon. For items that can get me a few skill ups once the new profession levels become trainable, like fish feasts and flasks, I have been sending the right materials to the right characters so I can quickly craft and go.
Winter Cleaning - I've been getting rid of anything which I don't have a specific use for, especially on my main's bank. Likewise my two 80's that I will be taking to 85 have had their bags cleaned out so that vanity items and the like which I tend to carry around have been banked in order to have as much room for leveling as possible.
Winter's Veil Preparation - When Winter's veil comes around you are going to want to be out experiencing the new content, not farming Small Eggs. If you plan on profiting on Winter's Veil get your stockpile of Small Eggs, Winter Clothes, and Winter boots ready to go.
Lurking on the AH - I've developed an unhealthy addiction to compulsively checking the AH for any goods that are getting dumped at low prices, usually by someone cleaning out their banks for Cataclysm. It's not healthy, but it can net you some sweet deals.
Stockades - It started as a way to get some wool cloth for Winter Clothes. Now I just randomly farm Stocks while waiting for the invasion. It takes a grand total of 7 mins and wool cloth goes for a nice price on my server so it might be worth a shot if you are bored.

Get it Now!

2010-11-16T11:08:00.004-05:00

Mount collectors everywhere are frantically farming Zul Gurub for a last chance at the coveted Tiger and Raptor mounts, but there are a few other mounts while not officially going away (at least not that I’ve heard) will become either much harder or much more annoying to get once Cataclysm comes.

The Blue Drake

This is the one mount that I suspect will in fact become impossible to obtain, but not because it will be technically removed from the game. The Blue Drake is a reward from the extra bag of goodies that you receive from completing Heroic Oculus. However you only get this bag and a chance at the mount if you are RANDOMED into Oculus. You do not get the bag if you enter the instance through the physical portal or if you select Oculus in the dungeon finder, it must be completely random. Considering that I cannot queue for a random BC heroic, I don’t expect that you will be able to queue for a random Wrath heroic, and thus the Blue Drake will become unobtainable. The only way to farm this mount is to queue for random heroics over and over again until you get Oculus. Wowhead lists the drop rate at 5%, but in my personal experience it doesn’t seem quite that rare.

The Blue Protodrake

This has a very small chance of dropping from Skadi the Ruthless in Heroic Utgarde Pinnacle. Depending upon stat inflation in Cataclysm and your class you might very well be able to solo this on heroic at 85, but if you are a clothie your best bet might be queuing for Heroic Utgarde Pinnacle everyday and crossing your fingers.

The Black Drake (10) and The Twilight Drake (25)

While at 85 you will probably be able to down Sarth 3D with fewer than 10 people, getting a group together maybe difficult and this seems like a mount that might be at risk for removal although there is no official word. With ICC gear Sarth 3D is very doable, but I would still recommend going with a guild group and avoid pugs.

The Polar Bear

White This mount is the bane of my existence. While this mount will still have the same 1% drop rate from the bag rewarded by the crazy blue ladies’ daily quest after Cataclysm, if I don’t get it now I don’t see myself going back to Northrend every day to get a shot at it.

Argent Tournament Mounts

Like the White Polar Bear nothing is really changing to make this more difficult to obtain except for the fact that post Cataclysm you are unlikely to want to spend your time doing Wrath dailies on a continent you never visit anymore. Besides most people are searching for something to do in Wrath’s closing weeks and the ample gold the Argent quests reward doesn’t hurt either.

10 Things You Forgot Are Awesome

2010-10-27T12:05:00.004-04:00

(I saw the Lich King! He hurt my face :( )

With the recent patch we got new system and quality of life changes like improved raid frames, overhauled character, profession, and guild panes, and fancy new water textures. This made me think about other past updates that have now become so common place that I have almost forgotten what it was like not to have them. So while you are struggling with bugs or class imbalance as a result of the latest patch just remember what it used to be like.

The Dungeon Finder - perhaps the single greatest addition to WoW ever. Do you remember having to spam trade everyday, fly there, summon, only to have to go back to town when your healer drops group? Good times...

Mounts and pets are spells - Collectors rejoice! In the pre-Wrath patch we no longer had to use up precious bag space storing our mounts and pets. Now where is that tabard ring?

Built in quest helper - This is a godsend to noobs. I remember thinking how strange it was that my boyfriend insisted on install this addon called Quest Helper. Why wouldn't the game just tell me where to go? Well now it does.

30 min hearthstone - If you are Alliance and not a mage I'm sure you've been stuck on godforsaken Kalimdor waiting for your heartstone cooldown to be up.

Achievements - Love them or hate them, achievements are here to stay. Achievements not only give neat vanity rewards but they provide motivation and rewards for all of us completionists.

Barber Shop - Character customization in WoW still is unbelievably sucky, but this makes it suck slightly less.

Enchanting Vellums - Whether you are an enchanter or not you have to love vellums. Enchanters get to put their wares on the AH and make actual profits instead of relying on tips and our customers don't have to shout in trade and hope they don't get ripped off when they need an enchant.

The Calendar - What did guilds do before you could schedule events on the calendar. No, seriously, that's not a rhetorical question. What did they do?

Linkable Tradeskills - So, simple and yet so awesome.

Dual Specs - Hybrids rejoice! Dual specs make for personal variety and raid composition flexibility.

Now when all the newbies show up with Cataclysm you can tell them how tough you had it, "back in the day."

Millionare To Be: Go Forth and Conquer!

2010-10-25T15:55:00.003-04:00

This is the last in my short series about how to prepare to become an Auction House master for Cataclysm. We have covered bank alts, proffessions, identifying markets, and buying and selling. My last bit of advice is two-fold. First I want to address addons. In my opinion the only addon you need is a good inventory management addon. Arkinventory is my preferance. However most auctioneers will disagree with me and make use of things like Quick Auctions, Postal, Auctioneer, Auctionator, and many more. These are great addons that can automate your buying and selling process and provide you with great information, however you can easily be fooled. It is actually a gold making strategy to post items for ridicously high prices in order to distort other people's Auctioneer values then lower the price which some sucker will snap up thinking its a great deal because Auctioneer told them so. The only other thing that I will say is that it doesn't matter what the price is historically, it matters what the price is now and if you don't understand this addons can sometimes lead you astray. With all that said, if you are a person who likes addons by all means go ahead and experiment. Just be sure that you understand what the addon is telling you and avoid potential pitfalls by being overly reliant upon them. If you want to know what addons to use or how to configure them go visist Marcko at Just My Two Copper, and take a look at his posts. This leads me to my second point...Read! While at JMTC read the posts, read old posts, read the forums, visit the sites on his gold blog roll. Read constently. While you can pick up great practical tips to try yourself (although with the expansion on the horizon many may be out of date) the most important part isn't the specific tips, but to learn how an Auction House master thinks. Once you understand the mentality you'll be sending in your own gold making tips in no time. Good luck and good profits!

Its The Little Things

2010-10-13T11:56:00.004-04:00

(Also... Ulduar is awesome.)

So patch 4.0.1 hit me like a ton of bricks last night. My addons are broken, I have to relearn my key bindings, being near the fancy new water causes me to literally see double, and I have to fight the loading screen boss every time I log. But instead of bitching I want to talk about the tiny little changes that made me smile.

The character selection screen now has animations. Scared the crap out of the first time I saw it it, but a very nice addition.
Druid herb picking appears fixed. It used to be that often even if you were right next to the ground when you tried to pick an herb it would say you can't do that while flying. After about 10 laps around Sholazar I haven't had that problem once.
Earthquakes! Earthquakes are everywhere. It makes me giggle with excitement every time.
My minions now have a special fly-out menu. Its fancy.
You can now track more than one thing on your minimap at a time. It is awesome sauce.
When you talk to a flight master the map that comes up is now bigger. I don't have to go grab my bifocals when trying to pick a flight point anymore.
The guild interface is sexy. Seriously, its so sexy its almost inappropriate.
Reforging. Technically this isn't a little thing but I originally wasn't very interested in it. Turns out that it was very useful for reaching the new hit cap. It is a much better idea than I thought.

Millionaire To Be: Assignment 2.... Also, /Squee!

2010-10-04T11:45:00.003-04:00

Cataclysm release date is officially set for December 7th /happy dance. And now on to preparing to take over the Auction House when December 7th finally comes. Now that you have a stylish bank alt named something clever like MoneyPenny and a guild bank to store your wares we are going to move on to professions and how to evaluate and utilize them. There is no more sure fire way to make gold than to have max level professions, but you need to know what and how to sell your goods in order to cash in. This exercise is designed to help you evaluate, understand, and maximize the professions you do have. I will use tailoring as an example as it is a profession I know well.

First take your professions and make two lists for each. The first list is those items that max level characters will want or need. These are typically items that have high demand as well as high supply. Generally these items will give a medium to low margin. For tailoring my list looks like this:

Starter Epics - these are the item level 200 chest and back pieces that all tailors can make
Raid Epics - by raid epics I mean those epics with item levels higher than 200 which are learned either by a recipe drop in a raid, like Merlin's Robe, or from having Ashen Verdict reputation, like Deathfrost Boots
Spellthread - spellthreads include both the expensive ones made with eternals as well as the less expensive ones made with crystallized fire or life. Both levels will sell to max level characters.
Frostweave Bags - while these can technically be used by a character of any level most alts typically get netherweave bags to begin with and frostweave bags also use top end crafting materials so I've placed them under max level sellers.
Glacial Bags/Specialty Bags - some people will pay a premium for the 4 extra slots offered by glacial bags and many people use things like herb bags, enchanting bags, etc.
Moonshroud/Ebonweave/Spellweave - these specialty cloths are typically boughten by non-tailors in order to make the epics above.
Starter PvP Gear - In Wrath all armor crafting professions can make a set of item level 187 blue quality pvp gear. This was very profitable at the beginning of the expansion. In Cataclysm we will be able to make a new level of pvp gear each arena season, prolonging the profitability of selling crafted pvp gear.

Next make a list of items you think there may be a market for that are for low level characters or are part of niche markets. These are items that typically use BC or vanilla materials. Generally there is low to moderate demand and low supply, with margins ranging from medium to astronomical. Using tailoring as an example:

Shirts - playing to vanity can be a huge money maker. I sell every kind of shirt you can think of. An average shirt costs me about 1 gold worth of materials and I sell for between 25 and 55 gold depending upon the desirability of the shirt.
Tuxedo Pieces/Wedding Dresses etc - just like shirts these vanity items are nice sellers, particularly to other bank alts. I like to inspect bank alts to keep up with the latest bank alt fashion and sell accordingly.
Netherweave Bags - practically ever new toon out there will buy four of these.
Select Crafted Blues - Blue armor can be a very tricky market, but with a bit of experimentation you can find those pieces that do sell to characters seeking to upgrade a piece of gear that is lagging behind the rest of their gear.
Robes of Arcana - This is used for a warlock quest chain which results in a blue quality quest reward. Knowing little tricks like this can provide steady income.

Now that you have done this for all of your max level professions its time to apply some critical thinking.

Time – Obviously as Cataclysm becomes imminent this affects the value of certain items. Starter epics for example are not likely to sell when people can pick up much better gear through badge farming. However once the new expansion drops people will spend thousands on the new starter epics. Always be aware of how the lifecycle of expansions and patches will affect what you should be selling.

Server – Consider your server. Are you on a high, low, or medium population server? Is your server an RP or PvP server? These things will affect what and how much you sell. On an RP server there will be a bigger market for vanity items. On a quality raiding server raiding consumables, item enhancements, and gear will be more popular.

Profit Margin – How much are the materials for an item on your server and are these materials readily available? What can you sell the item for and how much compettion will you have versus demand. Also consider the deposit price. Things with low or no deposits you can afford to relist if you are undercut or you are selling rarer items that might expire a few times before they sell. For example, on many servers the flask market, once a powerhouse, is close to zero profit with increased supply, the rise of the price of materials, and vicious undercutting combined with a relatively high deposit cost. You would be better off selling herbs than making flasks on many servers.

The first step in using professions to make gold is understanding your professions. I hope that this exercise has helped you to think about what items you can sell and what items you should sell. Identify a few markets you wish to try, start off with two or three, and experiment. Be sure to track your costs and profit. Next week I'm going to talk about addons and resources.

Shopping Spree

2010-10-01T16:33:00.002-04:00

I have a dirty secret. My bank is full of items for all the new Cataclysm characters which I plan to sell at absolutely outrageous prices to meet the enormous demand of new levelers. But don't worry, I'll take everyone else's gold and tell you how to avoid getting gouged by people like me. The answer is simple; buy now. For the most part its a buyers market out there and most things that alts need for leveling and professions will skyrocket along with demand come Cataclysm. Depending on how committed you are to a good bargain you can do this several ways. You can just buy out any reasonably priced item you will need for your planned alts, items that you think will rise in price once the expansion releases or you can do what I do and make use of bidding. I will never understand people who list a stack of gems for 30g buyout but 50 silver starting bid, but people do it and you can take advantage. If you are not using an Auction House addon that finds bargains for you just follow this two step process. First search for the items you want and sort by lowest bid. Bid on anything which would be a steal should you win the auction. Second sort by time left on auction. I go through all auctions labeled short and medium because it is likely that you will win these auctions. I bid everyday but the best times to do this is on Monday night because many auctions will expire over maintenance day, allowing you to win the auction without competition, or Sunday night. Sunday night is good because the high volume of weekend players will mean more auctions, which will be expiring as the weekend comes to a close. Here are some things to pick up for your new alts.

Bags - every character needs bags and these will undoubtedly rise in price once the expansion comes out.
Profession Bags - if you want a Mammoth Mining Bag or the like keep an eye out and you can usually find someone dumping some of these profession bags for cheap.
Enchants - Pick up scrolls for any heirlooms that your new characters will have, alternatively you can keep an eye out for cheap mats and have a friend create them for free.
Profession Leveling Mats - this is the biggest one. If you already know what professions your toon will have, look up a profession leveling guide and look for bargains on the mats you will need to level from at least 1-300. It may be that the exact details of the leveling guide will be out of date with the changes to professions, but it will still be well worth it. Even if you are planning on taking a complementary gathering and crafting profession its still worth it to look for materials because nodes will likely have fierce competition with all the levelers (not to mention high level characters farming for their alts with 310% flying) and the worst thing that happens is you have extra materials which you can resell, in all likelihood for more than you paid for them.

Millionaire To Be: Assignment 1

2010-09-28T11:15:00.003-04:00

As promised I am going to attempt to help those of you who are interested into getting into the mini-game of gold making and Auction House pvp. The approach that I am taking to this is to get you started on the right path so that when Cataclysm launches you can truly begin to rake in the gold. This is not to say that you cannot start now, but as the expansion winds down it is more difficult for everyone, even AH masters, to make gold so I want to lay the ground work in the weeks/months leading up to Cataclysm to get you prepared to be rolling in it later.

Your assignment for this week is to get a bank alt and a guild bank. If you already have both of these things then good for you, come back next week. Are you gone? Good. I cannot stress enough the importance of having a bank alt with a guild bank. Buying, posting, and storing all of your items in one place will greatly increase your efficiency. First things first, what class is your bank alt going to be? Some things to consider;

for the widest variety of fashion choices a dk is best as he/she can wear a wider level range of items and can wear all armor classifications
If you are willing to level your bank toon a bit Shaman, hunters, mages, and druids all have low level abilities to help you run from the AH, bank, and mailbox faster (ghost wolf, aspect of the cheetah, blink, and travel form)
While you can certainly get your low level toon to any major city with death runs or ports, you might want to consider dwarf, gnome, or human simply because of the proximity to the best cities to park your bank toon in.
When naming your bank toon you might want to avoid naming it something that can easily be identified with your main characters, as you generally don't want your bank toon's AH reputation mixing with your raiding reputation.

Once you have your bank toon made you need to get a guild for it. Even if you cannot afford to purchase the bank slots right now, still make your guild right away as I predict it will get even harder to get guild signatures once guilds become a much bigger deal in Cataclysm. Go to the starting areas or the major cities and advertise for guild charter signatures. Make it clear that this is your own personal bank and that people will be removed once the guild is formed. Between 5 and 10 gold is typical to offer for a character signature, but the more you offer the faster you can get it done.

Next get bags for you bank toon, including their personal banks (frostweave if you can afford it, netherweave if you can't) and purchase as many guild tabs as you need/can afford. Finally we get to the best part of a bank alt, fashion! Didn't you know that the cooler you look the more gold you make? If you really want to get into customizing your bank toon a quick google search for bank alt fashions will show you what items others like for looking stylish. The final step for this week is to mail all the items currently on your other toons that you plan on selling or storing long-term to your bank alt. Then mail the majority of your gold to the bank alt, leaving each character enough to cover their normal expenses of course, and you are set. Come back next week for assignment 2.

Nerdgasm!

2010-09-27T15:26:00.003-04:00

Fear not, I'm still steadily working on some gold guides for the aspiring Auction House mastermind, but I just had to share my new favorite addon, Ackis Recipe List. This is an example of an addon that does one thing, and does is beautifully. Ackis Recipe List will scan your professions and generate a list of recipes that you have not yet learned. It sorts those unknown recipes by either the zone they are obtainable in, or the way you obtain them; drop, vendor, trainer, reputation, etc. It will even provide coordinates. And for those of you who do all your shopping on an Auction House alt, you can view the professions of all of your toons that the addon is enabled for.

A word of warning however, for the completionist super nerds (like me) this addon could cause some unhealthy obsession. Imagine my dismay when I discovered that I only knew about 60% of the available recipes of both my main's professions. There used to be a famous enchanter on my server who had every single enchanting recipe in the game. That feat, combined with his catchy advertising slogan, made him the most famous person on my server. He has since left, but he inspired in me the notion that it would be very satisfying to have my professions 100% complete. However I've never put this plan into action 1) because it would be hard to figure out which recipes I was missing (a problem which this addon solved) and 2) because there was no real reward for doing so. If there was just 10 achievement points at stake for 100% profession completion I would so do it. The beauty and the problem with Ackis Recipe List is that it gives you a nice little bar showing your recipe collection progress, and as evidenced by my ridiculous reputation grinding, I can't resist filling up a bar. So if you are looking for an excuse to never go outside again, pick up Ackis Recipe List.

I Can't Make Gold! /faceplam

2010-09-20T16:25:00.003-04:00

No Gnome Haters Allowed!

Blogging about acquiring gold in WoW and auction house pvp is all the rage these days. One of the best WoW communities on the net, Just My Two Copper, is all about amassing astronomically amounts of gold to feed your little goblin soul. As I’ve mentioned before I dabble in gold making. Right now I’m sitting on 80k liquid and a large stockpile of materials to sell come Cataclysm. I really enjoy being a minor force on the Auction House and of course never having to worry about gold is a plus too. However, inevitably when guildies find out that I’m realatively loaded they bemoan how they are always broke and ask how they can make gold. While I have developed my own gold making strategies I find it difficult to communicate them to others, but I’m going to give it a shot. This post is going to be about making gold for the truly gold impaired. This is not a post on how to become gold capped or how to become a master of the Auction House. Instead this is for those who are continually broke and can’t fathom how anyone can even have 10k gold. Therefore some of the strategies I am going to suggest are not necessarily the most gold per hour and will be poo-pooed by serious gold makers. However they are effective and can get you your epic flying with a bit of breathing room if all you are interested in is living comfortably and not becoming an Auction House mastermind.

Addons – I have a secret. I don’t use Auction House addons. This is a source of great shame for anyone who considers themselves a gold maker. I used to have the ubiquitous Auctioneer, but I hated scanning and I didn’t utilize most of the functionality, so one day it broke and I just dumped it. Now things like Auctioneer, Auctionator, or Quick Auctions are absolutely great addons that can really aid your gold making process, however they are not necessary, especially not for the casual gold maker. So my suggestion is this; if you consider yourself an “addon person,” that is you have a fair number of addons, you enjoy them, and are not intimidated by addon set up then go ahead and pick up Auctioneer or Auctioneer Lite. If you like to keep addons to a minimum, skip the Auction House addons.

The White Rule – The first step to making gold is not to vender valuable items you have picked up out of ignorance. A simple rule is that if it is of white quality or better, look it up on wowhead. The average price that wowhead gives is semi-useful, but also read the comments. Many things are more valuable than people realize. For example, did you know that Dreadfang Venom Sacs are used when you want to change from Scyers to Aldor? Or did you know that the recipe Enchant Shield: Lesser Block while functionally useless is one of the rarest enchanting recipes in game and a profession completionists will pay thousands for it. Unfortunately what usually happens with these items is that some unwitting person will either vendor it or put it on the AH for a pittance of what it is really worth. So if an item is of white quality or better make sure you are informed about its possible uses before getting rid of it.

The Lazy/Stupid Rule – Many people in WoW, as in life, are either lazy or stupid and you can take advantage of this. The easiest way to do so is to visit your friendly npc vender, buy the things they sell for a pittance and resell for up to 1000% profit. The two main categories for this are pets and recipes. Pets that are sold by a vender, either in your local cities, Dalaran, or out in the world, will absolutely sell on the Auction House for more than you paid for them from the vender. The only catch to this is that this is a fairly popular technique, so start with just a few pets and see how the market is on your server. Another way to exploit venders is to resell rare spawn recipes. Most will easily double your money and some like Frost Oil or Large Prismatic Shard with sell for 5-10 times what you paid for it. So have a look through Wowhead and pick out some venders to exploit. You can also sell recipes that are not rare spawns, although your margin will typically be less. Other applications of the lazy/stupid rule include selling items needed for holiday achievement, reputation items, and quest items.

Farm Smart – Markco of Just My Two Copper frequently says that crafting is more gold per hour than farming and he is right. However for those without access to capital, multiple crafting proffessions, and knowledge it can be hard to capitalize on this. Therefore if you have the patience to farm do it, just farm smart. By farming smart I mean don't just randomly go out and collect things. Consider your proffessions, any achievements you are going for, and the value of the items relative to how difficult they are to obtain. For example, many people farm Northrend herbs. However low level herbs, pretty much mageroyal and higher, often sell for more than Northrend herbs at this point in the expansion. So you smartly decide to go farm low level herbs, but there are many places you can go to do this. If you are farming smart it means that you will go farm herbs in the Barrens because all mobs in that zone have a chance to drop Recipe: Deviate Delight, which sells for 1000g on my server. Another example of farming smart is say you want to farm some runecloth, either for yourself or to sell. Stratholme is a great place to farm this however you want to farm it with your toon who is a tailor/enchanter instead of the one who is an herber/miner in order to disenchant and sell all of the drops.

Opportunity Cost - Opportunity Cost sounds complicated, but its not. It is however essential to maximizing your profit. For example you have an herbalist/alchemist. You gather herbs, make them into flasks, and think that minus the cost of the vials you have made pure profit because you farmed the herbs yourself. Wrong. Instead you need to see how much gold you could have made had you sold the herbs instead of using them to make flasks. Depending on the market, raw material can sell for more than the finished product. Basically opportunity cost boils down to this; how can I get the most possible gold for the materials I have?

These are just a few thoughts designed to help the chronically broke. If, however, you are interested in making gold becoming a real part of your game play, but aren't sure how to start check back later as I am currently putting together some posts designed to prep a novice auctioneer for becoming an AH mastermind come Cataclysm.

Wrath Retrospective - Factions Part 1

2010-09-06T16:20:00.005-04:00

Random body is random, just like this screenshot.

I love faction reputations. I must fill all those little bars! Wrath had a host of factions and ways to gain reputation with them, some good, some not so much. So without further ado lets get started. (note: As always, this is from the Alliance perspective)

The Kalu'ak - This is by far my favorite faction of Wrath. These little guys manage to be cute and venerable at the same time. In my opinion this is the way a reputation grind should be done. There is an initial quest chain that tells you the story of the Kalu'ak and gets you started on your reputation grind. The daily quests are quick and relatively engaging and even spread out across different zones. For me these guys are a joy to rep up with.

Sons of Hodir - Sons of Hodir is a close second for my favorite faction of Wrath. The quest chain to become friendly with Sons of Hodir is just plain fun, full of flavor, lore, and crazy blue ladies. The dailies are numerous and varied, not to mention bordering on pornographic. I mean who doesn't giggle when completing quests named Blowing Hodir's Horn, Thrusting Hodir's Spear, or Polishing Hodir's Helm? For those who want to power through them with gold there is also the option of turning in relics or everfrost chips. A great change that they made half way through the expansion is that the shoulder enchants are BoA so that if you don't want to you don't have to repeat the grind for your alts.

The Oracles/ Frenyheart Tribe - These guys are truly hysterical. They could have just given you the daily quests, but the addition of your oracle/frenzyheart helper who likes to insult you while completing your dailies is genius. I also like how the quests vary from day to day. The only thing that sucks about them is that the Oracles get all the good rewards. It seems impossible that Blizzard didn't realize this, but I can't figure out why they would do this. However its worth doing both of them just for the entertainment value.

The Alliance Vanguard - This is a type of meta-faction under which are four individual reputations; Explorer's League, The Frostborn, The Silver Covenant, and The Valiance Expedition. Running heroics without a tabard that grants reputation will give reputation through exalted with these factions.

The Frostborn/The Taunka - Other than the fact that the Taunka are the counterpart to the Frostborn I know nothing about them, so on the Frostborn. These guys have a great opening quest line with a big lore reveal upon completion. Unfortunately the awesome sauce stops there. They offer no daily quests or turn in opportunities. The only way to get exalted with them is to run Heroics without a reputation tabard equipped. That is lame.

The Explorer's League - There is so much potential with this faction, its sad that they did nothing with it. Some quests will grant reputation with the Explorer's League, but they have no rewards or daily quests. It's probably not going to happen but I would love to see the Explorer's League tied into archeology in Cataclysm.

The Silver Covenant - These guys have absolutely zero personality and I have no idea what they are even for. However the quests you do for them through the Argent Tournament aren't too bad and the rewards are good.

The Valiance Expedition - This faction is sort of the default faction of Northrend. Not too exciting, although most quests grant reputation with them.

Next time Part 2.

Wrath Retrospective - Raiding

2010-08-30T17:16:00.003-04:00

I'm going to start this post with a big fat disclaimer. I am not really qualified to comment on the entirety of Wrath raiding and I am definitely not qualified to discuss how it measured up to vanilla or BC raiding, as I was but a nub in the BC days. To give you some perspective on my raiding experience; my first ever boss kill was Onyxia (the level 80 version), I finished about half of Ulduar before we completely out geared it, I completed ToC although much later than most guilds, and I am currently 8 of 12 on ten man (although my guild is 10 of 12) and 6 of 12 on my occasional 25 man.

Now that that is over I'll get on to what I do have to say about Wrath raiding. Ulduar was is by far my favorite raid. The setting and lore behind it was incredibly epic. The fights were varied, and even when you out gear it, a wide variety of entertaining and challenging achievements can help to beef up the difficulty level. As for Naxx, I don't really have feelings either way. I know that some people were upset at Blizzard's re-purposing of this raid, but if it allowed them more time for the developers to focus on other things than I am fine with it. It also was a good starting raid for new raiders in that the difficulty level wasn't too high on most bosses, but there was a wide variety of mechanics to help indocrinate new raiders. Moving on to ToC, I think most everyone agrees that this was a bit of a failure as a raid. From the no trash, one room style to the four different raid lock outs ToC left many feeling bored and burned out. The fights themselves were actually quite interesting with Lord Jaraxxus being the only boring boss. I have to admit that when ICC first came out I thought I would never down a single boss in the place. Eventually, about the time of the 5% buff, my guild began to make slow and steady progress in ICC. The so called "pity buff" is a bit controversial, but I firmly support the buff. Blizzard learned from BC and buffed players instead of nerfing the raid and did it gradually. The pity buff helps a greater percentage of players experience if not finish the raid that culminates all of the expansion's story lines. And while the buff is certainly very helpful, it does not make things "easy mode" as some people allege. Anyone who has been in a pug who can't seem to CC Lady D's mind control, or where the melee attack the blood beasts knows this. Finally we come to the red headed step child of Wrath raiding, Ruby Sanctum. I love the idea of bridging the story in Wrath with the upcoming Cataclysm in the form of a raid, but for whatever reason no one, at least on my server seems to give a crap about RS. My guild attempted it once, and I haven't seen a single person getting together a group for it in trade. It seems to have slipped entirely under the radar for reasons I don't quite understand.

Having successfully become "a raider" in Wrath I am looking forward to Cataclysm raiding. Changes to lockouts and the way that 10 and 25 man loot works have been talked about to death so I will leave that alone, except to say that I generally am in favor of the change, but I understand why some people are upset. Instead what I want to talk about is the relatively newly released detail that raiding in Cataclysm is returning to the BC style in that raids will be in the 4-7 boss range, with the first tier of raiding consisting of 3 medium size raids. In my opinion this is a great change. For non-hardcore progression guilds like mine it is difficult to nigh-on impossible to finish a 12 boss raid. While we do have a core group of raiders the remaining spots are filled with more casual raiders and therefore we almost never save raid lock outs making it extremely hard to progress through long raids like Ulduar and ICC. One raid in Cataclysm will be about the perfect amount of raiding for one night for most guilds. In addition it will provide much need variety. So thats my 2 cents, happy raiding!

Achievements and Pavlov's Dogs

2010-08-24T15:54:00.003-04:00

(Today's screenshot is actually slightly relevant to today's post, /cheer! It was taken while getting my recent Karazhan Achievement.)

The other day I stumbled across a new (to me) blog called The Underachiever where the author is documenting his efforts to earn every single achievement in the World of Warcraft in a single year. It seems like an impossible task, but he is doing well so far and I wish him the best of luck. After reading all of his back entries it got me thinking about the relatively new achievement system in WoW.

The achievement system was implemented with the 3.0 pre-Wrath patch, along with things like UI updates to get everyone ready for the new expansion. Some people went crazy with it, becoming the quintessential achievement-whore. Others enjoyed mocking the achievement system and anyone who would stoop to /hugging someone before they release just to get 10 virtual points that you can do absolutely nothing with, except perhaps stroke your epeen. I was somewhere in the middle. I enjoyed browsing through them, and going out of my way to pick up the occasional achievement, but I as time went on, I switched mains, began raiding, and pvp-ing I have grown more and more addicted to that magical dinging noise and flash of light when you get an achievement. It doesn't matter if its something as ridiculous as My Sack is "Gigantique", as time consuming as Guardian of Cenarius, or as difficult as The Champion of Ulduar, the feeling when I get my achievement is addicting.

Of my lengthy list of things to do before Cataclysm I'd estimate that about 75% of them have something to do with achievements. The question is, why are fake points so alluring. Outside of the occasional vanity reward, there is no tangible reason to pursue them. To answer this question, let's go to my favorite blogging format; The List, with Bullet Points!

Part of it is all in our heads. First of all its called an "achievement," the name itself makes it desirable. And I know I'm not the only one who craves the beautiful noise and graphic an achievement brings.

Achievements also allow us to distinguish ourselves from the crowd by going after a particularly difficult/rare achieve or title.

Another great feature is that it allows a certain level of character systemization. Whether you play on an rp realm or not, the kind of achievements and titles that your character earns can help to define what the character is all about.

While raiding is usually considered the end game activity of choice. Many players can't or don't want to raid. Achievements give them something to pursue and earn at end game, instead of killing internet dragons for their purples every week.

The last reason, and most important for me, is that achievements provide an incentive, however small, to do something I've always wanted to do. Before achievements I always wanted to become exalted with random, mostly useless factions like Timbermaw hold, or complete all of the Classic Dungeons I missed while leveling. Achievements make pursuing those activities go from waste of time to worthwhile. Isn't it amazing what fake points in a virtual world can do?

Random Pimpage

2010-08-17T10:08:00.003-04:00

(As always, screenshot unrelated)

Today I want to draw your attention to two awesome, yet not really related things. The first is the awesome videos of Jesse Cox, or OMFGCATA, over on Youtube. He makes great Cataclysm beta videos with real time voice overs that are laugh out loud hilarious. He real life job is that of a voice actor and it shows in the voices he provides for the characters. He has a series on the beginning worgen, goblin, troll, and gnome starting areas, and he is currently filming his way through all of Mount Hyjal. Other videos of note include the "Don Quoixte" quests in Un'goro, Garrosh's "You are Dismissed" storyline, and of course the most bad ass quest of all time, Punching Deathwing in the Face! He also posts mash-ups of random requests he receives. Unless you are some sort of anti-spoiler goof-ball, go subscribe!

The second pimpage I have today is an addon called GupPet. It's a simple addon that calls and randomizes (if you want) your mounts and non-combat pets. When you first set it up a button will come up that you can click to call mounts/pets, unfortunately its hideous. However you can turn the button off and easily bind call/dismiss pet or mount to a key. In the mount pane you can choose which mounts you want it to use and which ones you never want to see again (I'm looking at you felsteed). If you really want to get into it you can select which mount or mounts you want to use for cities, battlegrounds, or zones. When you press the key you bound mount to it will automatically call an appropriate mount; flying mount if you can fly, ground mount if you can't, and even the turtle mount if you have it and are in water.

Non-combat pets have a similar functionality. I choose which pets I want to use and which ones I don't and it will automatically call me a pet whenever I don't have one out, no button required. This is the feature I got this addon for as it's a shame to spend all the time and gold collecting pets that you never bring out. You can choose how long you want a pet out before calling a new one, and set limits on pet calling for when you are in a raid or battleground.

This addon also comes with a great little feature called "Collect Me" for both mounts and pets. In the Collect Me tab of the interface it shows all the pets or mounts you haven't collected yet. There is even a filter option off to the side so you can hide pets or mounts that are no longer attainable, require loot cards, require pvp, etc. The absolute best feature however is that when you mouse over a vender that sells a pet or mount, or a creature that has a chance to drop a pet or mount, it will display it on the tooltip. There have been several times since I've installed this addon that I've discovered a vendor or creature that dropped a pet that I would have had no idea about if it wasn't for the addition to the tooltip. The only downside is that I now feel compelled to kill any whelpings or oozelings I ride by, convinced that this time they will drop their damn pets.

Making Gold for the AH Impaired

2010-08-05T17:20:00.004-04:00

As we gear up for a new expansion many people are squirreling away a gold supply in preparation for whatever gold sink the developers throw our way, or just to ensure you can pick up the fanciest, shiniest, new things in the expansion right away. Playing the Auction House has become quite an elaborate mini game for many, and even a majority of the fun of WoW for some. I enjoy the game of gold making quite a bit myself, but I know that many of you just don’t have the time or interest in seriously playing the auction house for maximum profit. For you I offer some ideas for picking up some pre-Cataclysm gold that anyone can do without any special knowledge of markets and the Auction House. Many of these methods I’ve paired with achievements to keep things fun.

Turtles All the Way Down – I just recently picked up this achievement myself, and along with my shiny turtle mount I also easily netted over 1,000g. The elusive turtle has a very small chance to be caught in pools of fish in Northrend. Even if you have never fished before you can do this because you will never catch junk when fishing from a pool. In order to better locate these pools its best you go get Fish Don’t Leave Footprints first. Generally the most profitable fish are Glacial Salmon and Dragonfin Angelfish so these are the pools you should be fishing in. Selling your catch until you find that adorable turtle mount will earn you a tidy sum.

The Argent Tournament – Remember that place in Icecrown, with the ponies and the jousting where all of your server was everyday 2 patches ago? Well get your butt back there. If you aren’t a Crusader, get working on it. If you are a Crusader, go do your dailies. The plethora of dailies in close proximity, plus the option to choose more gold as a reward for some quests make this an easy and garunteed way to pad your bank account. Additionally you will be earning all those Argent Crusades badges which you can either turn into gold by buying the pets and selling them or pick up things like the argent pony, heirlooms, and mounts if you want.

The Soul-Crushing Grind – If you are prone to psychological self mutilation go farm up one of those ridiculously rare companion pets and sell it. While this can be mind numbing it’s not too bad if you are watching T.V. or listening to a podcast. Prices will vary widely but some very rare pets that sell for big bucks are the Captured Firefly, Hyacinth Macaw, Disgusting Oozeling, and the various Whelplings.

Loremaster of Northrend – If you have a lot of unfinished quests in Northrend you might want to go back and finish those up. I could give you a huge list of nerdy reasons why you should be a quest completionist, but I’ll just stick with the one; it’s a gold mine. Let’s do some rough math for a second looking at only the Icecrown zone. In order to earn Icecrown: The Final Goal you must complete 140 quests. We’ll say that each of these quest reward 13 gold at level 80. 140 x 13 = 1820. Then let’s just guess that half of these quests also give an item of gear as a reward. The vendor price of these gear rewards varies, but I’ll assign it a conservative average of 10g each. 70 x 10 = 700. That’s an estimate of about 2500 gold from the zone of Icecrown alone! Add to that quests in other Northrend zones and any herbs, ore, gems, or leather you gather along the way and you’re looking at a very nice chunk of change.

P. U. G. –ing – That’s right, I said pugging. Running random heroics, especially at the breakneck speed a well geared group will run them these days can earn a nice sum of gold. Obviously tanks or healers can just chain them. Dps-ers can sit in the queue while you work on one of the other gold making strategies above. Running your first random of the day will get you 26g and 2 frost badges, all additional dungeons that day will earn 13 gold and 2 triumph badges. The gold for completing the dungeons can add up quickly especially if have tank or healer queues. The disenchanted mats, or vendor price if you’re unlucky, will add to your gold gain. Add in vender junk and any leather, cloth, herbs, or ore you gather and the gold per hour starts to look pretty nice. On top of that you will accumulate a slew of badges, and assuming you don’t need the gear, those badges can be turned into heirlooms and or epic gems to sell.

Wrath Retrospective - Quests

2010-07-27T15:45:00.001-04:00

In Wrath the overall questing experience was greatly improved. The addition of two starting zones not only helped to handle the initial wave of people leveling, but also provided choice and variety. One of the biggest, though often overlooked accomplishments, was quest flow. Each zone had several quest hubs that lead you neatly from one to the other. This not only makes questing less annoying and more efficient, but it also helps the zone stay fresh longer as you uncover it bit by bit. There were also practically zero quests that had you traipsing around the world. For the most part this is a welcome change as spending half your questing time on flight paths is not fun. However I do enjoy the occasional change that leads you across the world. Admittedly this might have been somewhat impossible considering that we were supposed to be isolated up in Northrend, but I hope that some nice long continent crossing chains filled with lore will be making a return in Cataclysm.

Phasing also make its first appearance in Wrath. For the most part it is a great technology, allowing you to feel as if you are really making an impact. My favorite use of this is the very tiny use of phasing in Sholazar Basin that creates a flight point at the Nesingwary outpost once you help a gnome repair his plane. The downside of phasing, most notably in Icecrown is that after the initial wave of leveling it is almost impossible to find someone in the same phase as you to help with the numerous 3 and 5 person quests. This also makes completing the Icecrown part of Loremaster a huge pain. I hope they learn from this in Cataclysm and do not make difficult to complete group quests part of phasing.

Vehicles quests were also utilized in Wrath. For the most part I feel like they got the amount of vehicle quests just right. Enough to spice up the leveling experience, but not so many that you feel like you’re never using your own abilities. From the information I have seen coming out of the Cataclysm Beta I am a little concerned that they are going overboard with vehicle quests but all we can do is wait and see about that.

Overall questing was a great experience in Wrath. Each zone had great flavor and story lines. Easily the best quests as far as story goes were in Icecrown. Unfortunately many people, I would guess a majority, never came close to completely the zone due to the fact that they were 80 before even finishing The Storm Peaks. It’s a shame that such a great zone flew under the radar.

Here is a list of my favorite quest chains in Wrath, Alliance side of course.

10.Finding the Ashbringer - Rescue the Ashbringer and return it to a disguised Tirion.

9.Sholazar Reclamation - Work with the Avatar of Freya to beat back the Scourge.

8.Frost Dwarves - Gain the trust of the Frostborn and uncover the identity of their king.

7.Paladin/naruu questline - A touching quest line in which you attempt to rescue a paladin on death's door.

6.Discovering where humans came from - Witness history and the birth of humanity... or get wtfpwned by the Lich King if you wander too close.

5.Guru of Drakku - Do an evil troll's bidding and see the Lich King again.

4.Wrathgate - This is obviously the most universally memorable moment, but the quests that lead up to it, including observing the past events of Arthas and his men when they arrive in Northrend also stand out.

3.Being a crazy blue lady - Fighting for the love of a giant creation of the Titans while throwing any other blue bitch who tries to take your man off her drake = win.

2.Oracle/Frenyheart - The comic relief of Wrath of the Lich King. I can't tell you the number of times I have laughed out loud while questing for these guys.

1.The Heart of Arthas - I'm not going to spoil it, just go do it. Terrifying and heartbreaking all at the same time.

Real ID, What You Can Do

2010-07-08T15:22:00.003-04:00

I'm against the changes that will make our real names, first and last, available when we post on the official forums. I won't dive into the reasons as I have already enumerated them on the forums. Instead I would encourage you to spread the word as we wait for Blizzard to finally respond to the record breaking amount of feedback they have received (over 40,000 on the U.S. forums alone replies plus the thousands they have deleted as of right now). The best chance we have to really make a difference is to grab mainstream media attention. Here are some ideas:

1. File a complaint with the ESRB, this is the easiest, quickest thing you can do

2. Contact your senators, representatives, governors, etc. A quick google search will give you an easy to complete form in which to voice your concerns

3. Contact federal agencies in your country in charge of things like privacy, commerce, and internet regulations.

4. File a complaint with the Better Business Bureau.

5. Submit a news tip to national news organizations. Include a brief explanation and an outline of your concerns along with a link to the thread in the official forums.

6. Write letters to the editor of newspapers, local and national

7. Comment, digg, tweet, and email articles already out there including those posted on blogs as well as major news sources.

8. Talk to your guildies and in-game friends. Make sure they are aware of the situation, the consequences, and what they can do about it.

8. Share these ideas on the forums. I've suggested these things twice already, once it was deleted, but people still saw it before it was removed.

9. Most importantly, don't give up. The worst thing we can do is let it fizzle out. Continue to spread the word and make sure that your voice is heard.

Heirloom Enchanting

2010-07-06T11:00:00.002-04:00

This screenshot is of the islands off the southern coast of Tanaris. It has nothing to do with today's post. I just wanted to show it off. Now, onto creating an heirloom enchanting empire.

What Are Heirloom Enchants?

Heirloom enchants are the best enchants that can be placed on a level 1 item, most people leveling alts with heirloom gear, which is soon to be everyone come Cataclysm, pick up these enchants to enhance their heirloom weapons and chest pieces. Depending upon the materials, the desireablity of the enchant, the rarity of the recipe, and the amount of competition you have on your server selling these enchants can be quite profitable and the prices will only rise during the weeks before and after the launch of the expansion.

Preparation

Currently heirloom enchants sell fairly well. I generally sell 3-6 a day on my medium population server. However, if you really want to capitalize on the huge wave of incoming alts you need to start working on a stockpile of the enchants you plan to sell. To do this the first thing that you need is a scribe. If you don’t have an inscriptionist then get your bank alt to at least level 5 and pick up inscription. At skill level 75 you can learn to make Weapon Vellum I. It is very important that you have your own supply of scrolls as Weapon Vellum I is often scarce to nonexistent on the AH, and when it is available it is often expensive. Depending on the price of low level herbs you may also want to farm your own herbs to make your scrolls. Armor Vellum I is less expensive on the AH, but you might as well make your own anyway.

Secondly you need to decide what recipes you will be picking up. Keep an eye on the AH for what each enchant is selling for and if you have any regular competitors. Some recipes are easy to pick up, while some of the best ones are very difficult, involving very low drop rates and in some cases, reputation grinds. Everyday check to see if anyone is selling any of the BOE recipes, you could get lucky and pick one up from someone who doesn’t realize how much it is worth. Other than that, pick your poison and get grinding.

Thirdly, if you plan to stockpile you are going to need a huge quantity of materials. For the sake of your sanity do not farm every single material you will need. Get to know the AH, buy cheaper and readily available materials and farm those that are expensive or have limited supplies.

The Best Enchants

The following are the most popular/ best in slot enchants for heirlooms. They sell for the most money, this also means the recipes are a pain to get, but having at least a few of them is essential to building an heirloom enchanting empire.

Enchant Weapon Crusader – Very popular enchant, although righteous orbs can be a bit expensive/illusive. This is a pain in the butt to get although with some patience or some luck very doable for anyone. Low drop rate off Scarlet Archmages and Scarlet Spellbinders in Eastern Plaguelands around 54, 23. 4 Large Brilliant Shards 2 Righteous Orbs

Enchant Weapon Fiery Weapon – Melee who don’t get crusader will probably be picking this up. 15-20% drop off Pyromancer Loregrain in Blackrock Depths, fairly easy to farm, but often readily available from the AH. 4 small radiant shards 1 essence of fire

Enchant Weapon Spellpower – very low drop rate off bosses in Molten Core. 4 large brilliant shards 6 greater eternal essence, 2 golden pearls

Enchant Weapon Healing Power – Drops off the same mobs as the Spellpower Enchant although this enchant has 1 less spellpower. However, due to the rarity of these recipes, consider yourself lucky no matter which one you get. Unless you are extremely lucky, or really love Molten Core your best bet is to find it on the AH. If you do manage to get either Spellpower or Healing Power however you will make yourself a boat load of money due to its extreme desirability and rarity. 4 large brilliant shard 4 Greater Eternal Essence 4 Essence of Water

Enchant Chest- Greater Stats – very low drop rate off many outland mobs as well as elite old world mobs, not really farmable, best to get from AH. 2 large brilliant shards 6 illusion dust

Enchant Chest Major Mana – trainable 8 illusion dust

Enchant Chest Major Health – limited stock from Qia in Everlook. 2 small brilliant shards

Slightly Less Popular Enchants

These enchants won’t sell in the same volume as the above ones but they will sell, especially if you advertise them (more on that later). The advantage of these is that you often have less competition.

Enchant Weapon Lifestealing – 10% drop off Spectral researchers in Scholomance 4 large brilliant shard 4 essence of undeath 4 living essence

Enchant Weapon Icy Chill – 4% drop off of Anguished Highborne in Winterspring 4 Small Brilliant Shards Essence of Water Essence of Air Icecap

Enchant Weapon Agility- Requires Timbermaw Hold Honored. 4 large Brilliant Shards 4 essence of air

Enchant 2H Weapon Agility – Requires friendly with Timebermaw Hold. 8 large brilliant shards 4 essence of air

Enchant Weapon Mighty Intellect – Requires revered with Thorium Brotherhood, rare but good, probably better with stat changes coming in Cataclysm. 6 large brilliant shards 5 greater eternal essence 20 illusion dust

Enchant Chest- Stats - trained, this is worse than Greater Stats but many people will take this enchant because it is cheaper and more readily available. 1 large radiant shard 3 dream dust 2 greater nether essence

Materials

As I stated above, pick and choose what to buy and what to farm in accordance with availability, price, and your own mental health.

Large Brilliant Shard- 56-65 blues

Small Brilliant Shard- 51-60 blues

Small Radiant Shard- 40-45 blues

Greater Eternal Essence - 56-65 green weapons

Greater Nether Essence – 46-50 greens

Illusion Dust – 56-65 green armor

Dream Dust – 46-55 green armor

Righteous Orb- Stratholme

Golden Pearl – these really suck to get and are usually exspensive on the AH although it’s a good idea to check for any deals frequently. Low drop rate from Big Mouth Clams which can be farmed from Naga in Feathermoon Stronghold or Dustwallow Marsh.

Essence of Undeath – Eastern Plaguelands or Stratholme

Living Essence – Dire Maul or Felwood

Essence of Fire – many places, Burning Steppes, Un’Goro Crater, and Blackrock Depths to name a few

Essence of Water – Eastern Plaguelands by the lakes, or fished from Patch of Elemental Water in Azshara

Essence of Air – Elementals in Silithus

Icecap- an herb found in Winterspring

Making The Sale

Reminding people that you can enchant your heirloom items can significantly increase your sales. 1-2 weeks before Cataclysm comes out, make a macro that tells people what heirloom enchants are and includes links to the ones that you have for sale on the Auction House. This can be especially helpful if you are selling some of the less popular ones since you can alert them that they are viable heirloom enchants and are now available on the Auction House, for a fee of course.

Bye, Bye NDA

2010-07-01T14:01:00.003-04:00

Last night I screamed like a little girl as I saw the Cataclysm NDA was lifted. I then stayed up until the wee hours of the morning reading through all the juicy tidbits, frantically pressing refresh on MMO Champion. Like many people my endgame activities have been reduced to a weekly ICC raid and some occasional pvp as I eagerly await Cataclysm's release date which finally seems within view. However, strangely the impending expansion has made farming, grinding, and doing generally repetitive, dull tasks exciting. I've already detailed my ongoing quest for Loremaster and The Seeker, which I am still enjoying immensely, but I've recently added such seemingly worthless goals of being exalted with Timbermaw hold and Thorium Brotherhood, farming rare pets, and creating a stockpile of 100 enchanting scrolls of each type of heirloom enchant to my To Do Before Cataclysm list.

Now the question is why does the coming of an expansion make these time consuming and less than rewarding tasks seem so appealing? I think the answer is that these are things that I've always wanted to do, but always felt they were too time consuming to fit into my play time. Now with less things I have to do to participate in endgame I don't feel guilty about spending my playtime farming Molten Core for Thorium Brotherhood reputation drops. The implementation of achievements is also a big part of it as well. I'm not doing these things for the 10 achievement points, although that achievement whoosh sound is very satisfying. Instead achievements, combined with the time to complete them, are just the excuse or justification that I need to do some of the things I've always wanted to do. I'm currently compiling an in-depth list of all the things I want to accomplish before Cataclysm along with detailed notes about how to go about it. Yes, I know, I am a giant nerd. I'm sure that many of you have similar lists, so you know, glass houses, stones, etc.

Speaking of lists, I also have a giant list of Cataclysm and pre-Cataclysm blog topics that I want to do, but I've been holding myself back, trying to wait until we are closer to the release date. With the NDA drop, I'll hold back no more. Prepare yourself for a slew of prepping for Cataclysm posts. For next time I'm planning an honest to goodness guide about preparing for the rush of heirloom enchant demand that is fast approaching.

Tips for the Aspiring Loremaster

2010-06-15T12:05:00.003-04:00

The picture above is where you collect the letter than begins the obscure yet touching quest line that anyone interested in either achieving Loremaster or The Seeker or just exploring the classic WoW before it goes the way of the dodo should do. As I've mentioned previously I recently have reinvigorated my quest to get the Loremaster and Seeker achievements before Cataclysm comes and I am having the most fun I've had in game in a long time along the way. If you're interested in completing these kinds of achievements or simply taking a farewell tour of Azeroth I have a few tips that might come in handy.

1. Wait for Inspiration - I would really encourage you not to just start plowing through quests because you feel that you have to. Instead let a moment of boredom, raiding burnout, or nostalgia give you the jump start you need to get started. While there will certainly be grindy and painful moments along the way the experience should be largely enjoyable. If you find you hate it, or dread the thought of working on it, don't. I know many people feel like they need to get this achievement before Cataclysm, but the fact is you don't need to do anything. Its a game, only pursue things you enjoy.

2. Choosing a Zone- There are two good options for where to go first. The first is to go to a starting area that you haven't done. While not the most exciting of areas, staring areas are great because the quests are quick and generally don't send you all over the continent. You can knock out a whole zone in one easy sitting and get the ball rolling. The second idea is to pick a zone that you haven't spent much or any time in while leveling any of your characters. It will give you a sense of adventure and discovery that the achievements are all about. Zones I found that I have barely touched in all my WoW time (alliance side) are; Feralas, The Badlands, The Burning Steppes, Blasted Lands, Searing Gorge, Eastern Plaguelands, Western Plaguelands, Desolace, Azshara, and Silithus.

3. Preparing - Before you set out for a session of questing be prepared. If you look up the zone you are going to on Wowwiki there will be a link to an article just about the quests you will find in that zone. In that article there is often a list of materials that you will need to complete certain quests as some quests require things that are not dropped by the mobs in the area. Its a good idea to hit the AH and pick those up before you go. Cleaning out your bags is another important step. Put extra gear sets, consumables, mats, etc in you bank and vendor any junk. One thing to keep in your bags is your fishing pole, more on that later. Remember to turn on 'track low level quest givers ' on your minimap. Finally make sure your quest log is mostly empty.

4. Questing - I'm sure you know how to quest efficiently. I'll just say two things. First, many old world quests send you all over the world. If you get a quest that requires you to go to some far off place its a good idea to just continue working on the quests you can complete in the zone and then journey to that far off place either at the end of your session or at the beginning of the next. Secondly, and most importantly, READ THE QUESTS! Yes, it will slow you down at bit, but the reward is worth it. These achievements are about learning about and exploring the world. You can't do that without reading the quests. Its fun, I promise, just try it.

5. Profiting - A great bonus of doing these achievements is that they can net you a nice amount of gold. In Outland and Northrend the quest reward gold alone will add up quickly. I heard somewhere that by just completing the Icecrown zone if you combine quest rewards and vendoring the items you receive you can make somewhere around 1,500 -2,000 gold! As far as old world goes the money comes from all of the various crap you will be collecting. If you take the time to loot all of your bodies you will collect a crap ton of old world cloth that you can either sell or save for your Cataclysm alts. If you have an enchanter old world enchanting mats go for quite a nice sum. If you are a skinner, herbalist, or miner prepare to hit the jackpot. Collect any nodes you see and you will find that many of these old world mats go for obscene prices. I sell rugged leather for 50g a stack. Pretty much if an item is of white quality or better check the price on the AH before you vendor it. Things like pearls or old world meat can sell for much more than you think. Additionally, check vendors for any recipes you might be able to sell and if you don't mind a little fishing, some old world fish are quite lucrative. I'd suggest that you have a bank alt set up so that you can mail all of your finds to that toon and continue questing uninterrupted.

6. Understanding the Difference Between Loremaster and The Seeker - Loremaster requires you to complete a certain number of quests in each area whereas The Seeker requires a flat 3000 quests completed. Although the number of quests needed for Loremaster is less than the number needed for the Seeker most people complete the Seeker first. This is because the quests that 'count' towards The Seeker don't always count towards Loremaster. The general rule is this, quests that take place in a dungeon, are a daily quest, or are a holiday quest count for The Seeker but do not count for Loremaster. Daily quests only count towards The Seeker the first time you complete them.

7. Tools - Many people use EveryQuest in combination with LightHeaded to make sure they are getting all of the quests in an area. Personally I haven't installed these yet, although I'm sure I will when it gets down to the nitty gritty of collecting those last few quests. If you like to be very organized and methodical though I'd suggest them. If you haven't already, search through the user interface options and turn on a feature that will put an exclamation point over an item in your bags that starts a quest. Also visiting the Wowhead comments or other like sites can provide great information and encouragement.

8. Being An Achievement Whore - If you are so inclined you can get a mountain of other achievements along the way. I'd encourage you not to get bogged down in this however unless you are really enjoying it. Do it if its convenient or fun, don't do it if its sucking the fun out of the experience for you. I'm not going to link every achievement that you can do along the way because it might make be burst into tears. Instead here are some suggestions for categories of achievements; Exploring Achievements, Fishing Achievements, Cooking Achievements, Reputation Achievements, Classic Dungeon Achievements, Pet Achievements, Loving/Killing Critters, The Key Achievement, The Well Read Achievement, and I'm sure there are more.

Finally remember to stop and smell the virtual roses while taking a screenshot or two before the world is torn asunder in Cataclysm.

New Computer, New UI

2010-06-09T10:35:00.003-04:00

I was forced into buying a new computer the other day when mine died an abrupt and tragic death. With a new computer comes hours of UI set up and I took advantage of the opportunity to tweak a few things. Here is my affliction warlock's UI as it is now.

First off you know you love my little gnome artwork. You might not think you do, but if you think about it you will come to the realization that it is indeed the best thing you have ever seen.

Visible Addons:

Sunn Viewport Art- allows the the panel at the bottom, providing a dedicated space for addons.

Sexy Map - My minimap is now movable and sexy!

Omen- duh

Recount- double duh

Dominos- easy to use bar addon. Things like professions and consumables are on bars that are faded out until I mouse over them, a feature I enjoy.

Class Timers- every warlock needs a Dot Timer. The little icons in middle of my screen count down the time left on my dots. You can have bars, but I like the way the icons take up so little space. This addon is extremely easy to use, works well, and works great for all classes.

Other Addons:

Arkinventory- I love this addon. I allows you to set custom categories for organizing your bags. It can be a pain to set up, but it is well worth it.

GupPet- my newest addon, it puts out a companion and summons a random mount. It also includes a nice feature for collectors that will list every mount or pet that you don't currently have.

Deadly Boss Mods- If you don't have it, get it, right now, I'll wait. Got it? Good.

I am no UI wizard, but I think I've achieved a very functional UI with a decent look with relatively few addons. Perhaps I'll post the tree's UI soon.

Look, A Screenshot!

2010-06-05T09:01:00.002-04:00

I finally figured out how to take and post a screenshot, so this blog might be getting better looking soon. My first screenshot is my warlock with her new Sprite Darter Hatchling. This adorable new pet is the result of my new found drive to actually start working on the things I want to accomplish before Cataclysm. This week I found myself with the time and the desire to play, but as my druid now has all the gear she can from chaining heroics I didn't have much to actually do in game, or so I thought.

The inspiration to actually get stared on my Seeker title actually came from looking up videos about the creepy children of Goldshire. From there I somehow ended up looking up hidden places in Azeroth like the islands south of Tanaris, Old Ironforge, and the dancing troll village. One person on the forums suggested visiting the top of the Twin Colossus in Feralas. Feralas, I thought, I've never really been there. Oh, I went once, when my very first character was the appropriate level. I proceeded to try to run through the Horde outpost that sits on the road, and of course, was repeatedly owned until I gave up and never went back. Ah, the days of being a noob.

So, my ICC geared warlock set out to kick some Feralas butt. And you know what? It was awesome. I had so much fun discovering this little corner of Azeroth. I even read all of the quest texts, took time to fish in every pool I saw, and of course, tested out my new found screenshot skills. One of the quest chains netted me the awesome pet above. It was such a nice change of pace to get out of Dalaran. I really enjoy questing, but this late in the expansion, when my alts are leveled, my reputation up, and no real reason to do dailies anymore my playtime usually consists of trolling the action house and raiding. I would really encourage anyone who has even the faintest desire to either tour the old world before it goes the way of the Dodo in Cataclysm, or who wants the Loremaster or Seeker titles to pick a zone that you are not very familiar with and get started!

My 25 Favorite Virtual Possessions

2010-06-02T10:08:00.005-04:00

Over at Blog Azeroth this week's Shared Topic is to create a top 25 list of some kind. So without further ado...

My 25 Favorite WoW Possessions

25. Fantasy Portrait - You can pick this up by completing the fishing daily. It's a Pandaren monk picture. Looks like Blizzard is telling you to keep dreaming about that playable Pandaren race.

24. Faded Photograph - Apparently this is some sort of reference to the Legend of Zelda, but I know nothing about that. I just love having a picture of gnomes in my virtual pocket.

23. Silver Covenant Hippogryph -This is one of the few Hippogryphs in the game and it is just plain gorgeous.

22. The Frostwolf Artichoke- Great for two reasons; 1) it actually gives the strategy for winning Alterac Valley (no, the answer is not zerg) and 2) provides tasty suggestions for consuming artichokes.

21.Arthas' Gold Coin - "Already, I've a kingdom in my prospects, a land to rule What to ask for? Perhaps a frozen scone..." Win!

20.Unusual Compass- because I like the unusual.

19. Firemane Leggings - The sluttiest pants in game, a must for every Night Elf bank alt.

18.Blue Drake- The only good thing I ever got from Oculus

17. Kel'Thuzad's Gold Coin- "Sometimes...I wish someone would come along and just give me a big, long hug." I loled irl.

16. Strand Crawler - My own personal Ghostcrawler. Isn't he cute!

15.For the Light! - A bit of lore for my very own.

14.Mirren's Drinking Hat - WoW's equivalent of a beer hat.

13. Core Hound Pup - I never actually take this pet out, but the authenticator that it represents is priceless.

12. Give to the Church and The Light Will Provide - Who doesn't enjoy a little shameless brainwashing?

11.Blue Qiraji Battle Tank - These things are so cool its a shame you can't ride them outside of AQ. As a side note, getting the various colors is a great way to knock out a few mounts for the mount achievements if you can get a few friends together. In my experience they drop quite frequently.

10.Romantic Picnic Basket - Great for setting the mood in outdoor raids.

9.Mr. Pinchy - One of my favorite pets simply because I enjoy bragging that I fished him up in less than 20 mins of trying (ya, I know, you hate me). Good luck to the rest of you!

8.Steamy Romance Novels - I paid obscene amounts of gold to get my hands on all of them. Don't judge me!

7.Exotic Cookbook- Great if you are thinking about getting into cannibalism.

6. Quel'Delar - my trusty sword, which I won with an epic roll of 42! Both the weapon and the quest chain to get it are epic.

5. Frosty Flying Carpet - I doubt my warlock will ever use another mount. You just can't get better than a gnome on a flying carpet.

4. Sea Turtle - Another great reason to hate me; I got this on the first day it was available and I wasn't even trying to get it.

3. Plump Turkey - My favorite thing to do while waiting for buffs in a raid is to pull this guy out, build a basic campfire, and watch as he throws himself into the fire, all for my enjoyment.

2. Familiar Kirin Tor - I love this little guy, he was a pain to get but not many people have him and I get quite a few questions about him. Plus, the fact that he is taller than my gnome self amuses me.

1. Deed to the Thandol Span - You know that broken bridge? Ya I own it. Best 1 gold I ever spent.

Buggy

2010-05-27T11:34:00.003-04:00

I haven’t posted in a while due to real life obligations but now I’m back. I have recently had to kill myself multiple times in order to reset Scourgelord Tyrannus, the last boss in the Pit of Saron due to a bug where if you attack or taunt him before he hits you he goes back up onto Rimfang and proceeds to fly around out of reach while shooting down ice form the sky. This got me thinking about other bugs I’ve experienced in WoW that, while less annoying than this one, are stranger and sometimes hilarious.

Once I was eagerly awaiting the servers to come back up after Tuesday maintenance by continuously attempting to log in. I kept getting stuck at the full loading bar, but after a few tries I was in. I logged into Stormwind, visited the bank, and then was running to the mailbox when without warning my camera started spinning out of control. It whirled around and around in a circle at a high speed. It was really quite nauseating. I tried to stop it by adjusting the camera with my mouse but it didn’t make any difference. I then attempted to ask in Trade chat if anyone else was experiencing this bug when I noticed that none of my keys were working. No matter what I pressed or clicked nothing happened except that my camera continued to spin at a dizzying pace. I ended up having to do a hard shut down of my computer to get out of WoW.

Another memorable bug happened one day at the Argent Tournament grounds. I had finished all that ridiculous jousting and used my hearthstone to send me back to Dalaran. Expect I did not end up in Dalaran. I ended up in the middle of the ocean somewhere and promptly died from exhaustion. I was then sent to the spirit healer in Westfall of all places. My guild had a good laugh over my unplanned adventure and the next time I hearthed I ended up in Dalaran like normal, but I thought that the bug was so bizarre that Blizzard should know about it so I sent in a ticket telling them what happened. I bet you can guess the reply I got back. Yep, the standard please disable your addons. Somehow I don’t think it was my addons that landed me in the middle of the ocean by Westfall.

The final bug of note I experienced quite recently. I logged in and my entire screen was covered with what appeared to be a two dimensional version of Dalaran. I freaked out. I thought my graphics card had broken or something. I couldn't see my character or move. None of my action bars or addons were showing. It was just a giant, flat, and very pink version of Dalaran. I tried logging out and back in, but no luck. However I logged into another character and everything was fine, but as soon as I went back to the warlock all I could see was 2D Dalaran again. Then I noticed that this 2D Dalaran looks an awful lot like a map. I logged out, disabled sexy map and, voila! Strangely once I enabled it again I didn't have anymore problems, but it was certainly a memorable and very alarming bug.

Alpha Drama

2010-05-12T08:25:00.003-04:00

Since the Friends and Family Alpha began I have occasionally wandered over to MMO-champion to have a look at the slew of alpha pictures posted. Boubouille, the owner of the site, said that the Alpha was now "slightly less private" and so he would be posting information from the alpha. I had no idea what "slightly less private" means, but I assumed that he felt that Blizzard wouldn't do anything about the information he was posting or he wouldn't be posting it. That assumption was wrong. Yesterday Boubouille announced that he was removing all alpha content from the site at the request of Blizzard. In addition all forum posts discussing content still under NDA will be removed.

I have to say I am a bit shocked at this turn of events. It was my assumption, now obviously an erroneous assumption, that Blizzard was fully aware that leaks like this were going to occur in the Cataclysm alpha just as they did in Wrath. I thought that not only were they aware that leaks were going to happen, but that they didn't really care or even were happy about it despite the official company line. Please stay with me as I try to explain my thinking. When the Friends and Family alpha was announced myself and many others eagerly awaited the leaks we knew would come and sure enough they started to show up. No one, not even Blizzard themselves, can say they were surprised that the NDA was being violated. It would have been shocking if no information had leaked out. I thought that if Blizzard really wanted to keep the information from the general community they would have learned from previous alphas and either been much more stringent with who they let into the alpha and level real legal penalties on anyone who violated the NDA, or forgone the friends and family phase all together. In my mind it was going to be impossible to keep the alpha client under wraps and therefore Blizzard was not too put out about leaks. In fact I would argue that it helps to keep the Cataclysm hype going and is actually beneficial.

Obviously all these assumptions I made are dead wrong. Blizzard does seem to care about the NDA and is intent on enforcing it. That is perfectly within their right, but I have to say that I just don't understand why they feel that it is beneficial to keep the alpha out of the public eye. The only reason I can come up with is that they don't want people jumping to conclusions and starting to QQ about things that are only half done, but in my mind the hype benefits surrounded leaked information would out way the downsides.

Finally in regards to MMO-champion and sites like it, I do not support personally violating the NDA. If by some miracle I was in the Friends and Family Alpha I would honor my legal agreement and not disclose anything. I have no idea how Boubouille got his information. If he was a part of the alpha and extracted the information himself I don't support that kind of behavior but I am not surprised by it. However if he got the information from others who leaked it and he himself is not under NDA he has every right to post it in my mind. If he personally did not violate the NDA I would support him if he refused Blizzard's request to take the content down, but I also respect his discussion to honor Blizzard's request. The one thing I can say for sure about this whole situation is that I hope the Beta arrives soon to satisfy my lust for Cataclysm information.

Ding!

2010-05-08T10:31:00.002-04:00

I haven't posted in awhile because I've been busy gearing my brand new 80 restoration druid. Even though I have two other 80s, one of which raids ICC, this is the first time I actually made a concerted effort to gear a character quickly and methodically. When I hit 80 I found that I had to purchase a few blue pieces on the auction house to even be able to queue for random heroics, although this was probably because the heirlooms I was wearing count as item level 1. So with my brand new gear equipped I hit that random button and off I went to Old Kingdom. And guess what...nobody died! I was very proud but, I quickly found that my heals were disturbingly weak in heroics as compared to regulars. At 80 I got the new spell Nourish which I had been eagerly anticipating, I glyphed it like I am supposed to and I was expecting big things from it. Not so much. It seems like it heals for less than my direct heal from Regrowth even when I have 3 HoTs rolling on the target. I'm going to chalk that up to my terrible gear though, hopefully soon I'll have more throughput. The next two dungeons I did the tank didn't die, but I did. Remembering to heal my squishy self has so far been the hardest part. I haven't been vote kicked yet, which is a nice surprise considering my dismal 2K something gear score. I even got a nice whisper at the end of a random saying I did a good job healing by someone who obviously noticed my noobish state. That made me smile. I did quit on one group after we wiped on the first boss of Violet Hold. Nub healer + tank under defense cap = fail.

So far I have 3 piece tier 9 and and a few ilevel 200 pieces from heroic drops. I've also been hitting up the regular toc 5 man to fill in some of the gaps in my gear. In the next week or so I hope to be geared enough to participate in the 2nd ICC ten man my guild runs. I have to say that it has been an adventure being just geared enough for heroics. Even though I am frequently healing over geared tanks it can get very dicey sometimes. Its such a different experience from running heroics with my uber geared warlock, but so far I'm really enjoying it.

Ode to Sholazar

2010-05-01T08:31:00.002-04:00

I've just finished leveling my third character, a night elf druid, through Sholazar Basin. Of all the new zones in Wrath Sholazar isn't the most epic, doesn't have the best quests, run ins with the Lich King, or any of that fancy phasing technology, but it is my favorite zone in the expansion. I remember when Wrath first came out and people liked to knock Sholazar, saying that it was just a new version of Stranglethorn Vale or Un'Goro Crater. Hey, I like those zones, they are some of my favorite old world zones. Sholazar has all the elements for a perfect atmosphere that makes it just plain fun to quest through.

First of all I love the music. All of the zone music in Wrath is great, but Sholazar has great replay value that I never tire of. The look and feel of the zone is also amazing. It's not unique or breathtaking, but its pretty and inviting. Every once in a while its nice to take a break from the frozen tundra of Northrend. I especially love the River's Heart area. The layout of the zone is one of the reasons that I think I enjoy questing in Sholazar so much. The other zones in Wrath have many different quest hubs and the zones themselves are huge, which are great features in their own right, but Sholazar just feels more intimate.

While I all of Wrath's questing experience was greatly improved and other zones housed the more famous chains of Wrath, my absolute favorite quest line is in Sholazar. By speaking to the Avatar of Freya you learn that Sholazar was the lab of the Titans, where they experimented with different life forms. The chain leads you to activate switches in the Maker's Terraces and eventually through a Waygate into Un'Goro Crater of all places to retrieve a guardian that you control to wipe out the encroaching Scourge. I also love the Hemet Nesingwary quest line and the quests to save the Oracles of Mosswalker village are heartbreaking. Of course the Oracle/Frenzy heart quests are also favorites and are laugh out loud funny. Even though my main is already exalted with the Oracles I sometimes go back to do the dailies just to laugh at their flavor text sayings.

On the practical side, Sholazar is a great place for a leveling or new 80 character to make some easy gold. Its a great zone to farm herbs, skins, or ore. Pro tip: killing all of the beasts for experience or skinning will also net you stacks upon stacks of chilled meat and rhino meat which are used for the cooking dailies and usually sell very well. In addition to the great farming potential you can hit up the dailies in the zone and net yourself a nice chunk of change.

I Didn't See This Coming

2010-04-26T14:24:00.002-04:00

If you haven't read it already go here and read the blue post before going any further.

Read it? Good.

My first reaction is holy shit! I recall that a few months ago WoW.com did a post where they speculated about this happening, but I for one thought that Blizzard would never do it. I am sure that this is going to cause the forums to go up in flames, but I want to discuss this in a somewhat calm manner.

In the interest of full disclosure the vast majority of my raiding is done in 10 man mode. They only 25 mans I participate in is the occasional pug. Personally I find 10 mans much more fun. In 25s I tend to feel like I don't really matter and its much harder to get to know 24 other people than 9 other people. I also like the feeling of importance that 10 man gives each member of the raid. In 25 I rarely feel like my specific performance effects whether the raid will succeed or fail. In 10s I know that at times I have singlehandedly given us the extra boost we need and at other times I have personally caused a wipe. However these are my personal feelings and I know that there are many people who enjoy 25 mans. I think the real question is whether this move will destroy 25 man raiding for those who do enjoy it.

I think that the concern people are raising that this will make no one run 25s is legitimate. I don't think that this will happen, but it is not a trivial concern. In the post Blizzard specifies that while 10s and 25s will drop the same loot 25s will drop more badges and loot per person than 10s, hopefully ensuring that those who enjoy 25s will still run them because it will be the most efficient way to gear up. I also suspect that 25s will retain its position of prestige in the raiding community, along with awarding 25 man specific achievements and titles which will encourage continued participation in 25s. I would suspect that come Cataclysm, if Blizzard sees a precipitous drop off in 25 man participation they might make adjustments to compensate, so lets all try not to get our panties in a bunch before we try it out.

So why did Blizzard decide to implement these changes? While I am sure there will be enormous QQ over these changes, lets also remember that there is significant QQ from 10 man only guilds that their achievements in raiding are always considered less significant. A prime example is that 10 man raiders cannot get the Invincible mount from defeating the Lich King. In the current situation a 10 man strict guild can never compete for a spot among the world's best guilds because the loot they receive is always inferior. I think other factor of the change is to help eliminate the grindy feeling of raiding. Serious guilds run 10 and 25 each week, forcing you to go through the same dungeon twice every week, significantly cutting down on the fun after you have been doing this for several weeks. This move is also a way to assure smaller guilds that they won't be at such a severe disadvantage come Cataclysm when guild leveling and achievements come out. A big benefit that people might be overlooking is that this will help cut down on the run away gear inflation that trivializes earlier content. Currently each tier of raiding has many different item levels for 10 man normal, 10 man heroic, 25 man normal, and 25 heroic, but with the change we will only have two tiers of item levels per raid tier. Ultimately what it really comes down to is that Blizzard doesn't want to punish smaller guilds and those, like me, who just enjoy 10 mans.

Well that's my two cents on the topic, I am looking forward to the blogosphere exploding and reading the many posts that will be sure to come.

PvP Shame

2010-04-25T17:13:00.003-04:00

Recently I've been working on improving my PvP skills. I've collected a decent set of PvP gear, picked up a dedicated PvP spec, and have been dutifully running my random battlegrounds. Despite my good intentions I am still pretty terrible, but the shameful part is that I know exactly why I suck. It's not lack of gear, knowledge, or practice. It's my own habits that I just can't summon up the effort to change. I do things like keyboard turning (gasp!) and clicking the spells that are part of my normal PvE rotation because I can't be bothered to memorize new key bindings. I also am fond of doing the biggest no-no in all of battlegrounds; fighting in the middle. In the beginning I usually start off playing the battleground correctly, but once it becomes clear that we are going to lose, a frequent occurrence on my battle group, I gleefully run to the middle and see how many people I can kill before I get taken out. I also like running my little squishy self haphazardly into the middle of a crowd and seeing how much destruction I can cause before my suicide mission comes to its natural end. I do this because I am lazy, but the current battleground experience lends itself to this kind of laziness. Unless you are a PvP god I think that most players feel like there is little they can do to actually affect the outcome of the battle. Hopefully Cataclysm and the new rated battlegrounds will fix this. I would love to care as much about my performance in battlegrounds as I care about my performance in raids. In the meantime however I guess I should probably actually try to cap a flag once in awhile, or not.

Adventures in (and out) of Azeroth: Podcast Hunting

2010-04-22T20:33:00.003-04:00

Podcasts are a great way to entertain yourself while farming or running that random dungeon that you have done fifty times before. The first podcast I ever listened to was the good old standby, The Instance. Come to think of it, once I got into listening to WoW podcasts I became much more informed not only about WoW in general but about the existence of the wider WoW community. I have since expanded my podcast repertoire, adding and replacing along the way. This week I decided to try some new WoW podcasts and give a little mini review. If they sound interesting head over to Itunes and give them a try.

Rawrcast - I realize I'm a bit late to the party on this one. I've heard about it plenty of times before but never checked it out until now. After only 15 minutes into it I realized that I have been missing out. It combines good production value with articulate, knowledgeable, and hilarious hosts. The discussion straddles the line between informative and entertaining perfectly. This is one that will not only be added into my regular listening routine, but I also plan to download back episodes and listen to them. I can't recommend it enough. In a ripoff of The Movielicious I give it a Woot! (this podcast does have an explicit rating, but as far as I can tell it is just for judicious use of expletives)

Ctrl Alt WoW - I'm a bit on the fence on this one. The upsides are that it is deliciously long, all their episodes are in the 2 to 2 1/2 hour area and I am of the opinion that longer is better. I also think that the combination of hosts provides a variety of perspectives as a couple of them are hardcore raiders and one is an avid altaholic and multi-boxer who has mastered the leveling game, but doesn't really have a clue about end game. While there was discussion of news items they spent a long time just discussing what they were doing in game. I think that this is a show that you listen to more for the personalities than the content. The fact that I only listened to one episode combined with the sheer amount of hosts that they have makes it so that I feel that I don't really have a firm grasp on what I like or don't like about the hosts. This falls under the category of wait and see. I will stay subscribed for a couple of weeks and sees if it grows on me.

CASTaclysm - This podcast, while only 8 episodes old, is enormously entertaining. It focuses on Cataclysm information and speculation. The hosts had me laughing out loud which is always a good sign. Once the beta comes out I predict that this will be great place to hear and discuss all the information coming out of the beta if you are not lucky enough to get a beta key. I will definitely be subscribing and listening to all the back episodes to hold me over until a new one is released.

The above are the new podcasts that I tried out but I'll also give a quick rundown of what was already on my itunes feed in case you want to check them out too. Some are WoW related and some aren't.

The Instance - probably the most successful WoW podcast. It's not my favorite anymore, but its still a must listen in my opinion.
Call To Auction - a fairly new find for me, this podcast talks about making gold in WoW. Even if your not a gold capping kind of person you can still learn a few things and the hosts are pretty entertaining too.
WoW Insider Show - most people are probably aware of the shake up they have had recently. The podcast has definitely gone down in quality since Sacco and Turpster left, but they do seem aware of the problem and are making some changes to improve it. I'm holding out hope that these newest changes will be for the best and haven't dropped them yet.
Twisted Nether Blogcast! - I can't express how much I love this show. Great interviews that inspire me to keep blogging + great hosts + wonderfully long = EPIC!
Polygamerous - A general gaming podcast. I'm a one game kind of woman but its generally entertaining and fills the void when I run out of podcasts to listen to.
The Incredible Podcast of Amazing Awesomeness - Honestly I have no idea what this podcast is supposed to be about and neither do the hosts, but it doesn't matter. I listen to get my fix of Sacco and Turpster. It's good to hear them podcasting again.
The Movielicious - A movie review podcast. I actually have no interest in movies at all, but I get very excited when an new episode is put out. It features Turpster, Nichole Spag, and most importantly, Patrick from France. The WoW community misses Patrick but you can get your fix here.

I had such a great time doing this Adventures in Azeroth that I might pick it up again and review some more podcasts in a week or two. Happy listening!

Trying Desperately to Hold on to the Nerd Rage

2010-04-18T17:48:00.003-04:00

This weekend Blizzard had another developer Twitter chat. Like its previous incarnations it was mostly things we already knew, with a few shiny new tidbits thrown in. One of these tidbits was the news that the new tree cooldown form, which we all know that I have raged against (save the trees!), will be similar to the Ancient models. Now every since I saw these lumbering through Darnassus on my very first toon (a night elf hunter of course) I have been in love with them. Since I started playing a druid and new models were introduced for cat and bear form I have dreamed of the day when I could turn into an Ancient. However I never thought that it would happen and that if trees ever did get new models I would have to be satisfied with significantly less epic models. The lure of turning into a giant ass-kicking Ancient tree is almost, almost, enough to overcome my outrage at removing tree form as a permanent ability. But all I have to do is think about the disappointment I will experience once I have my hands on this epic new tree form and I can't see it in all its glorious awesomeness all the time to rekindle my tree form passion.

So note to Blizzard; I refuse to be bribed by this incredibly awesome, wet dream inducing, drool worthy, new tree form. Instead I demand even more earnestly that you save the trees. After all, if I am fighting for the right to look like a rotting piece of broccoli, just imagine how much more hell I will raise in order to be an awesome Ancient tree.

P.S. Don't worry Ghostcrawler, I still want to have your babies. Now if only you would answer my calls.

My Two Cents on The Celestial Steed

2010-04-16T15:38:00.003-04:00

As I am sure everyone is now aware of, Blizzard just introduced the Celestial Steed mount for $25 and the Lil' XT non-combat pet for $10 on the Blizzard store. As always happens when they release a paid non-combat item many flock to the store to give Blizzard their money and others head to the forums to declare that the gaming apocalypse is upon us. They say that this is the slippery slope that will lead us to paying for things like weapons, gear, extra talent points, and the like.

Personally I have no interest in buying these items. Would I take them if you would like to give them to me for free, hell yes, but obviously there are plenty of others who think differently. When I logged on the day of its release I immediately saw four My Little Ponies crossed with Algalon, uhh, I mean four Celestial Steeds, hanging out in Dalaran. I think that this is a brilliant move by Blizzard and on the whole is well received by the community. I do understand the slippery slope concerns but I'm not going to start QQ-ing about it until they ever, god forbid, do sell things like gear for real money.

My only gripe with it is that everything they sell on the store so far is bordering on the ridiculous. Pandaren monks and celestial flying horses, while cool, really jolt me out of the immersion experience. To be fair there are items in game that could be said to break the so called fourth wall, like the little bombling pet for example, but it is the obnoxious quality of the items being sold coupled with the fact that I am completely aware that that person purchased that pet or mount that really breaks the immersion for me. Don't misunderstand, I am not against Blizzard making a quick couple million bucks on these things, hey its more money to put into Cataclysm development. I just am pointing out that the items really make me think about business and money when I see them, rather than about Warcraft. Do any of you feel the same?

Spring Cleaning

2010-04-14T14:34:00.002-04:00

I always have plenty of gold without trying too hard, but I recently stumbled across quite a lot of free money while cleaning out all of my characters' banks and bags. I made over 3,000 gold selling all of the accumulated crap I had collected. Take a look through your bags and bank, especially that of characters you don't play too often, and see what you have hanging around. I found that the best sellers are old world crafting materials, specifically those that you would usually collect in the 30-60 range. I sold rugged leather for 70g a stack and stacks of dreamfoil for 40g. Other things I made a nice profit off of were:

elementals; motes, eternals, crystallized, primals, etc
low level gems
pearls of all kinds used in crafting
meat and fish, presumably used by people leveling cooking for alts who can't be bothered to farm it
low level cloth
recipes
items that can be turned in for reputation with various factions
Northrend herbs that I never used in my alchemy, to my surprise I was able to sell Talandra's Rose, which I never have a use for, for 40g a stack

Even if you find things that you think are crap wait and see what it is going for on the AH before you toss it. Particularly lower level items can go for surprising amounts of gold as 1) not many people are in that content right now so supply is low and 2) people would rather pay obscene amounts for things their alts need rather than farm it themselves. Even if you don't make the kind of bank I did you'll at least free up some storage space.

Cataclysm Class Changes (minus Tree QQ)

2010-04-12T09:11:00.002-04:00

After sitting in a corner and crying over the loss of Tree of Life form I now feel ready to talk about the rest of the class changes that were announced last week. As there are plenty of other places you can go for an in-depth analysis of your specific class changes I am going to talk about some of the major themes we have seen emerge in what Blizzard has planned for Cataclysm.

Haste and Crit

Currently HoTs and DoTs are only affected by haste if you choose to use a glyph that applies haste to a particular spell. This glyph then causes your haste to decrease the time between ticks, thus doing more damage or healing in a shorter amount of time, but causing it to fall off more quickly. Now all Hots and Dots will always be affected by haste, but the spell will always last its full duration, haste will instead add additional ticks within the original duration of the spell. This will make haste an even more desirable stat.

Along with the haste changes all HoTs and DoTs will no longer be able to be clipped. I think there is a lot of confusion about this change. How I believe it will work is this; say you have a HoT/DoT that lasts 20 seconds, there is currently 4 seconds left on its duration and you recast the spell. The HoT/DoT now adds 20-4 seconds (16) to the duration, resetting it to 20 seconds, not 24 seconds thus preventing spamming a spell at the beginning of the fight and having it last for a ridiculous duration which is how many were reading the explanation.

Crit will now innately be applicable to all HoTs and DoTs, previously you had to take talents to allow your HoTs and Dots to crit. This is a very welcome change and should make Crit more appealing to all classes, Restoration druids especially.

The Low Level Experience

Blizzard is planning some very welcome tweaks to the low level experience. Among them is hunters will start at level 1 with a pet and have some melee abilities removed. Enhancement shamans will get a new weapon based attack, letting them feel less like bad elemental shaman while at low levels. Shadow priests will be getting some strange floating shadowy orbs things which is particularly to allow shadow priests to feel like shadow priests before they get shadow form. I really applaud these changes, playing your character should be fun from the beginning, not only after you have ground through the crap levels. These changes combined with redesigned zones has me very excited to roll a new character and really enjoy the leveling experience again.

Buffs and Debuffs

There are many changes to buffs, and a fair amount of class homogenization going on, like mages getting Heroism/Bloodlust like skill. There is some QQ about this, but in the grand scheme of things I think it will be good. All spirit buffs are also being removed as spirit is a healer only stat. The biggest change is that all buffs or debuffs that increase your party's chance to hit are being removed. I welcome this change as it will mean that you always know what your hit cap is as it is not dependent on your group composition. I also anticipate having to spend significant more effort reaching the hit cap, which we might expect will help to keep runaway dps down at higher gear levels.

Crowd Control

Many classes, like the hunter's ability to set traps at range, make it clear that Blizzard is intent of bringing back CC. Good luck with that. It doesn't matter how many tools we have to CC, we won't do it unless we are going to wipe if we don't. I will be very interested to see if Blizzard can manage to put crowd control back in the game.

All this information overload has had the effect of making me positively giddy with anticipation of the beta when we can dive headlong into even more wild speculation about how game play will change come Cataclysm.

Oh ya, SAVE THE TREES!

Save The Trees!

2010-04-10T10:47:00.003-04:00

As I am sure you are all aware Blizzard has been offering us previews of class changes coming in Cataclysm and as of today all but the Paladin previews are out. I originally planned to do a post where I expressed my excitement for the changes and criticize all the people needlessly QQ-ing, but then the druid changes happened. The changes, or rather one particular change, actually possessed me to make my first ever post on the official forums. If you are somehow not aware the big news is that they are making Tree of Life form a cooldown ability, something you can only pop once in a while for extra benefits. I encourage you to read the post and Ghostcrawler's subsequent replies but the basic reason they gave for the change is that druids give up too much utility in Tree form to be just as good of healers as other classes. This may be true, but as many posters have stated there are other ways to resolve this problem. They could remove the restrictions the Tree form has or they could provide us with an ability that temporarily allows us to cast any spell in Tree form. I'd even be happy with a minor glyph that allowed us to use the form for cosmetics only.

Ghostcrawler goes on to say that Tree form just doesn't seem to really do anything besides change your art, the buffs it provides to healing can easily be rebalanced and put in other places. My response is, so what? Moonkin form simply provides buffs and changes your art. The same for cat and bear form, a cat is rogue except its not, precisely because it is a cat. Druids are shape shifters. Period. The end. SAVE THE TREES!

If you feel similarly please head over to the forums and post a well written, well thought out, and polite post to encourage Blizzard to change their minds. I promise that this is my last QQ for a while. Next time I'll talk about all the things that were awesome in the class previews.

Shared Topic: Gold Selling

2010-04-07T12:37:00.003-04:00

This week's Shared Topic at Blog Azeroth is about raising awareness about account security, hacking, and gold selling. I have never been hacked and I am the proud owner of an authenticator, but I know several guildies who are hacked over and over again. To address this topic I just want to share a little story from my guild chat that took place not too long ago. One of our members, a very nice guy and an officer, brought up the topic of buying gold. He said that he had a friend who would buy gold because he looked at it as a time saver. He wanted to spend time playing the game, not farming for gold. Some guildies agreed that that made sense. While I am usually pretty quite in guild chat I just had to say something. I let anyone who would pay attention know that gold buying is wrong for 3 reasons;

1). It is against the Terms of Service.

2). Accumulating gold is part of the challenge of the game. Buying gold is like using a bot to level, somehow inventing roll hacks, or taking advantage of an exploit that makes the game easier. Plus gold is not hard to get, seriously people, how lazy/stupid can you be?

3). The most important reason not to buy gold is that the gold you are getting BELONGS TO SOMEONE ELSE. Your bought gold was stolen from someone who got thier account hacked, someone whom presumably earned it legitimately.

Aside from this you can get your account banned and then your gold won't do you a lot of good. If getting gold is such a burden then you probably really don't enjoy playing WoW anyway. I'm sorry if this comes off as a bit of a rant, but this topic really makes my blood boil. So the lessons are buy an authenticator and don't buy gold!

Munchie Monday: Go Bulldogs!

2010-04-05T12:05:00.002-04:00

First off I just have to brag and divulge to the Internet that I attend Butler University who is playing for the NCAA National Championship. While I will be watching the game at Hinkle Fieldhouse because I sadly do not have tickets you too should shut off your computer and cheer for the Bulldogs and while you're doing it chow down on a delicious pasta with bacon, that's right I said bacon.

Ingredients:

1 box penne pasta (really anything you have around is fine)
40-60 frozen pre-cooked shrimp
1 lb smoked bacon
1 large red onion
3 cloves garlic
1 cup frozen peas
3/4 cup white wine
1 egg yolk
1 cup Parmesan cheese
Cajun seasoning to taste

Cook pasta according to package directions. Chop up bacon and fry in large skillet, when done remove bacon with a slotted spoon leaving the grease in the pan. Saute chopped onion and shrimp (make sure to take the tails off) in bacon fat and add minced garlic just as the onions are finishing, be careful burned garlic tastes disgusting. Deglaze pan with wine making sure to stir up all the bits on the bottom then add frozen peas and keep over low heat until cooked, just a couple of minutes.
Put one egg yolk in a small bowl. Take a ladle full of the boiling pasta water and slowly pour it into your egg yolk bowl, beating continuously, this process is called tempering so your egg isn't scrambled. Drain pasta, return it to the hot pot, then pour egg mixture over it, followed by your shrimp mixture, add the bacon, and seasoning, and finally the Parmesan. Hold off on adding salt until you add the cheese as cheese is naturally salty. Enjoy! and did I mention Go Bulldogs!

Thinking Ahead

2010-04-02T09:54:00.002-04:00

While it is a little early to start stockpiling mats and Mountain Dew for Cataclysm if, like me, you are anxious for its arrival there are some long term goals you can start working towards now in preparation for Cataclysm.

Purchase a Kirin Tor ring. You don't have to upgrade it the latest version, but just having it will allow you to teleport to Dalaran, giving you instant access to the city portals and allowing you to set your hearthstone where you are currently questing.
Purchase a Traveler's Tundra Mammoth. The ability to be able to repair and vendor items anywhere will give you a leg up while leveling.
Obtain a pony for your argent squire, this will cost you 150 champions seals from the Argent Tournament dailies (remember them?). This will allow you remote access to either a vendor, your mail, or your bank once every 8 hours, something else that is useful for effective leveling.
Purchase a personal guild bank for space to store all those new mats.
Get all of your 80 characters secondary professions up. In Wrath cooking and fishing were very lucrative, especially in the beginning of the expansion. Make sure all of you characters are in a position to take advantage of this. Also picking up a Mastercraft Kalu'ak Fishing Pole will make leveling easier. While Chef's Hat is nice fun item to pick up.
Pick up heirloom gear for any alts you plan to roll come Cataclysm.
If you are unlucky like me keep trying to get your Green Proto-Drake and Polar Bear as you probably will never go back and try to get them once Cataclysm hits.
Finish any achievements you have had your eye on, particularly Loremaster.

There are some things that you might want to hold out on until we get PTR data. For example, I'm not purchasing my Traveler's Tundra Mammoth until the PTR is out in case there is a new, awesomer, similar mount coming in Cataclysm.

Shared Topic: Starting Over

2010-03-31T08:58:00.003-04:00

This week's Shared Topic at Blog Azeroth is starting over. What would you do if you were forced to start WoW over? When I read this question I immediately knew what the answer would be. I would roll a Troll shaman. Rolling and leveling a Troll shaman would be to succeed at alot of things I have failed at in my current WoW career. I have repeatedly tried to roll Horde because I feel like I'm missing half of the game by only playing Alliance, but I have never made it past level 10. I've missed the easy support of my wealthy main and the green text of my beloved guild chat too much to be able to stick with Horde in the past.

I also have attempted to roll a Troll several times because, in my opinion, they are the coolest race in the game. One of the reasons I've never gotten very far on my various Trolls, in addition to the fact that they are Horde, is that Troll females only have one acceptable face and one acceptable hair style. To fix this problem, unless the overlords at Blizzard decide to answer my prayers and introduce new models, I would roll a male Troll. I wonder how my game play experience would change playing a male toon. It probably wouldn't change all that much while out in the world questing or in a PUG, but it would be an exciting/amusing moment when my new guildies first heard my voice over vent. I might become guild famous as the sexually confused Troll :)

Finally, my male Troll would be a shaman. I've never actually played a shaman, for the sole reason that Alliance side only Draenei can be shamans and while I have nothing against space goats in general I just can't stand their darn space totems. They look like something out of a bad science fiction movie and don't embody what I imagine shamanism to be. Trolls and shaman just seem to fit together.

If you have thoughts about what you would do if forced to start WoW over again head over to Blog Azeroth to share your thoughts and read what others have to say.

Adventures in (and out) of Azeroth: Fan Fiction Part 2

2010-03-30T17:58:00.002-04:00

I dared to go were no gnome (at least this gnome) has gone before; into the realm of World of Warcraft fanfiction. I emerged mostly unscathed and am ready to report the results of my first adventure. I previously posted that I would be reading a story in each of three categories; 1) A story where the main characters are lore figures 2) a story where the main characters are player characters 3) NC-17 Thrall/Jaina fanfiction (don't judge me!). Now without further ado...

Hail
This is a short vignette about Med'an being welcomed into the ranks of the Alliance by King Varian Wrynn. Now I admit that I had no idea who Med'an was so I looked him up. The brief version is that Med'an is the Gaurdian of Tirisfal and is one quarter orc, one quarter draenei, and one half human. WoWWiki suggests that his father is Medhiv, but in the story it is Varian's father, King Llane Wrynn, making Varian and Med'an half brothers. The story is short and just depicts the solemn ceremony of Varian bringing Med'an into the alliance forces with a whisper reserved just for the two of them, acknowledging their shared heritage. I actually found this story moderately interesting, but mostly because it prompted me to look into a lore figure that I didn't know about before.

The Beginning
This is a three chapter story that is the background story for the author's female Forsaken warlock character. I actually really enjoyed this story. It begins with her character as a human child who finds an abandoned troll baby whom here family adopts. It follows her conversion into a Forsaken even as she manages to save her troll sister the same fate. The last chapter is her as a Forsaken, traveling Azeroth in search of her lost sister. If you want to know the ending I won't spoil it for you, you can go read it yourself. Not only is the story well written, but it seems strangely believable. The character is heroic, but not the savior of all of Azeroth. She has strengths, flaws, fears, and motivations. This has actually inspired me to think of a more concrete background for my characters even though I do not role play.

Strength (not for kiddies!)
Here we come to the stereotypical Thrall/Jaina explicit story that us non-fanfiction readers use to mock those who write fanfiction. Ultimately, when I finished reading it I was much less emotionally scarred that I thought I would be. The writing is actually quite good and the actual intercourse was handled well, without needlessly gratuitous details, since I really am not interested in the mechanics of orc/human sex I was grateful for the tact used. The most interesting part comes after they do the proverbial deed and life and politics intrude. The moment that made me laugh out loud was when Jaina used a polymorph spell to turn would be attackers into a sheep. Now mages turning people into sheep in game I don't have a problem with, but in a story it just struck me as odd. It does seem perfectly legitimate to use a spell in game in a story based on said game, but for me it was just a bit too weird. While I don't think I'll be reading anymore inter-species sex scenes in the future, I must say that this story makes the idea, and the entire genre, feel less creepy.

The stories I read were more enjoyable than I expected them to be. Ultimately, I still find it difficult to take a story seriously when it is based in game world where trade chat trolls, and naked Night Elf mail box dancers abound, but it has stimulated my interest in lore and the story of my own characters.

Munchie Monday: A Fast Food Ripoff

2010-03-29T08:11:00.003-04:00

This is a little invention I enjoyed just last week while sitting in the dps queue. Its a ripoff of those KFC bowls, only cheaper. Its so simple that it doesn't really qualify as cooking, but it is still tasty.

Ingredients:

Frozen chicken nuggets
Instant Potatoes (or you can make real ones if you are feeling fancy)
Shredded Cheddar Cheese
Canned Kernels or Creamed Corn, your choice

Make potatoes and chicken nuggets according to package directions. Heat corn until warm in microwave. Pour warmed corn and cheese over hot potatoes then top with chicken nuggets and enjoy your fast food ripoff.

Later today I'll post the conclusion to my adventures in WoW fanfiction.

Adventures in (and out) of Azeroth: Fan Fiction Part 1

2010-03-26T12:30:00.003-04:00

When thinking about starting a WOW blog I thought it might be fun to do a reoccurring series where I try something new that is somehow related to WOW either in game or out of game and record what happens. I’ve decided my first little adventure will be to try reading some World of Warcraft fan fiction.

I mean no offense to anyone, but to be honest the idea that people actually write fictional stories about Azeroth and its inhabitants kind of freaks me out. However I write a blog about said fictional world so perhaps I shouldn’t talk. Perhaps my horizons will be expanded by this exercise or maybe not. Who knows, I guess you will all have to wait and see.

Now, lets get down to the details. I’m going to read stories in at least three categories:

1) Stories concerning actual lore, or in game figures
2) Stories that center around a player’s character and his or her adventures in Azeroth
3) NC-17 rated Jaina and Thrall story, just because I can’t resist checking it out and it’s the stereotypical joke that everyone always makes about WoW fan fiction. I mean come on, how could I not click on it? I don’t have that kind of self restraint!

I will post the results of my adventure in the next few days (read: when I get done writing my religion paper). In the mean time consider going here or here and give it a shot yourself. Beware, some of these stories are not for kiddies!

Shared Topic: World of Awecraft

2010-03-24T22:12:00.003-04:00

This week's shared topic over at Blog Azeroth is moments when you were filled with a sense of awe when you first started playing WoW. The very first thing that jumps to mind was seeing the huge, lumbering Ancient Protectors in Darnassus. As I walked into Darnassus for the first time and saw them I was actually terrified. It took me a while to figure out that they were on our side and that they weren't going to smash me like a bug. I actually think something similar to this would be nice for new Night Elf tree form models, but that is probably unlikely. An equally awe-inspiring moment was when I was promptly one-shotted by a ?? level dragon in Ashenvale. I was so surprised I went back for more, getting killed just as quickly the second time as the first. I also felt a different sort of awe when I turned on all 8 of the default UI bars, and thought that one day I would have enough spells to fill all those bars.

While the moments of awe and wonder we experience when first beginning the game are undoubtedly the most memorable I still get those moments that jar me out of my 80 mindset and bring me back to being just a lowly noob again. Taking the boat to Howling Fjord the first time was the most epic virtual boat ride of my life. The Wrath Gate quest line was also memorable and I don't think that my heart has ever beaten as fast as it did when I ran across Loque'nahak on my hunter. It was a wonder that I didn't have a stroke before I managed to tame him. If you have moments of WoW awe that you would like to share head over to Blog Azeroth and check out the shared topics post.

3.3.3 First Impressions

2010-03-24T08:12:00.003-04:00

The biggest addition of 3.3.3 was the Random Battleground Finder. After crafting my frozen carpet I queued up and was assigned to Eye of the Storm within 10 seconds. My first thought was, that was fast. My second, crap, I don't remember how this battleground works. I think I've only been in Eye of the Storm once or twice in my life. It wasn't until half way through that I remembered the flag component, until then I was just holding bases Arathi Basin style. We ended up losing so I queued up for another to get my daily arena points and extra honor. Again I waited less than 10 seconds before popping into Alterac Valley, which brought a smile to my face. I don't think I've been in AV since I've been 80. Apparently others felt the same. The BG chat was filled with exclamations of "Oh, I forgot about this place." We even had a strat and what's more we actually followed it! We blitzed, not stopping to take down any towers or hold any graveyards. Everyone made a run straight for Drek and we took him down with his six or so adds earning the achievement Alterac Blitz in the process.

I did a few others just for fun. All of the wait times were well under a minute and I got Strand of the Ancients, Eye of the Storm again, and Warsong Gulch. Overall it was a lot of fun, quick queue times combined with the surprise of a random battleground that you might not usually pick made for a good time, even if I spent half the time dead :)

While the Random BG Finder was the biggest addition there were lots of small, quality of life changes that I really appreciate. The first is that if you have an authenticator, and you should, the login page provides a box to put your number in on the same screen with your user name and password. The map now has an option to view different layers for example, when in Dalaran you can choose to view either the main city map, or the Sewer map no matter which portion you are currently in. The Greed only option of Frozen orbs is certainly also nice. I have yet to witness the changes to the Random Dungeon Finder; the deserter debuff is now 30mins, you can now kick a player without waiting 15 minutes, and you are now prompted to give a reason for initiating a vote to kick option. These changes seem positive, but I have some concerns and will have to wait and see.

My favorite little change is the change to auction house functionality. Now you might not have even noticed if you run Auctioneer, but I dumped Auctioneer a while ago, partly because it was broken I didn't feel like fixing it and partly because I just didn't make use of its functionality. If you use Auctioneer for tracking prices you definitely won't be dumping it for the standard UI. However if the only reason you use Auctioneer is for more convenient ways to list auctions you might want to disable you Auctioneer and see if you can get along without it.

Patch Day

2010-03-23T09:40:00.003-04:00

Patch day is here everyone. Luckily I have class to preoccupy me until the servers come back up and I can dive into patch 3.3.3. The first thing I'm going to do is hit up Frozo the frozen orb vendor to get the pattern for my brand new flying carpet. I don't care what awesome mount I get, Ashes of Alar excepted of course, there is still nothing cooler than a gnome on a flying carpet. Hopefully after diving into a few random battlegrounds and taking my carpet for a test drive I'll be able to tear myself away for long enough to do a little write up about my first impressions. Until then, happy patch day!

Munchie Monday: Taco Pie

2010-03-22T15:03:00.003-04:00

Assuming you have some compressed air nearby to get the crumbs out of your keyboard its nice to enjoy a little snack while pwning some noobs or downing Loken for the 100th time. So hopefully every Monday I’ll be offering a recipe to try out. Since I suck at music and drawing cooking has always been my creative outlet. For my first Munchie Monday I present to you my most brilliant invention to date; behold, Taco Pie! The great thing about this recipe is that it is delicious and impossible to screw up.

Ingredients:

1 lb ground beef
1 can plain tomato paste
1 medium onion
2 T Worchestershire sauce (optional)
1 can black beans (well drained)
1 can corn (well drained)
1 can diced tomatoes (well drained, I particularly like the Red Gold brand Chile Verde version but any brand will do)
Fresh cilantro
Shredded cheese (any kind you like)
3 Flour tortillas, the big ones
Sour cream (optional)

Dice onion and cook in skillet with ground beef, drain off fat and stir in the tomato paste, salt and pepper, and Worchestershire sauce if you like. Place a tortilla on the bottom of a either a deep dish pie dish or a round casserole dish, really anything round that is as close as possible to the size of your tortilla. Spoon half of the meat mixture on tortilla and then add half of your beans, tomatoes, and corn. Sprinkle with roughly chopped cilantro. I like a lot of cilantro, I think it has a great, bright flavor that really makes the dish, but use your own discretion. Sprinkle with cheese. Use your hands to press down your pie to pack everything together and ensure that it is even. Lay down another tortilla and repeat all of you previous layers. Put your last tortilla on top. Cover with foil and bake at 350 for 30 mins. I take the foil off the last five minutes and sprinkle a bit more cheese on top to make for a nicer presentation. LET STAND 10 MINUTES. If you are patient and let it stand you can cut it in pie slices and it will hold together very nicely. Top with a dollop of sour cream if you like.

Travel Azeroth: Teldrassil

2010-03-21T19:39:00.002-04:00

Too many of us, myself included, blaze our way through Azeroth zone by zone killing 10 harpies, collecting 15 feathers, delivering mysterious bundles from continent to continent, but do we really know why we are doing what we are doing? I am currently working my way through the Loremaster and The Seeker titles as well as leveling an alt and as I do quests that I have done several times before I find that I don’t really have any idea why exactly those 10 harpies need to die or what in the world we are going to use their feathers for. So hopefully by the time Cataclysm comes out I will have profiled every zone in the game, a bit of a travel guide to the World of Warcraft in the mode of Rick Steves. I will try to provide a little insight into the background and lore of each zone as well as the major story lines that you can participate in through questing. Today I’m going to start with Teldrassil, the very first zone I ever leveled through.

Where: Off the western shore of Kalimdor
Faction: Alliance
Level range: 1-10, night elf starting zone

History: Teldrassil is actually an enormous tree. It is the second World Tree, the first World Tree, Nordrassil, was severely damaged during the Battle of Mount Hyjal, the damage done to this first World Tree robbed the Night Elves of their immortality. In an effort to regain their immortality the Night Elves, lead by Fandral Staghelm planted Nordrassil, but Nozdormu, the leader of the Bronze Dragonflight, refused to bless this tree and thus although the tree grew it did not restore the Night Elves immortality.

Story lines: Adventurers in Teldrassil will come across several quests to kill corrupted beasts, Timberlings, and Furbolgs. There appears to be several sources for corruption spreading through the boughs of Teldrassil, there are hints that the Burning Legion and the Emerald Nightmare have something to do with the spreading taint.

Interesting Quest Chains

Tenaron’s Summons- This quest chain will send you to collect samples of the water of different from different Moonwells, along the way read the quest text and you will learn a bit about the history of the Night Elves and Teldrassil.

Zenn’s Bidding- Begins a small chain where you unwittingly help the antagonist and then make up for your mistake in a rather amusing form of payback.

A Troubling Breeze- This starts a quest chain in which you must acquire relics in order to wake the sleeping druids who are in danger of being slaughtered in their sleep by the Gnarlpine tribe.

Denalen’s Earth- Begins a chain where help Denalen cleanse the corruption of the local Timberling population.

The Temple of the Moon- begins a short, but beautiful little quest line. I won’t spoil it, but be sure to watch for the animation when you finish the chain in The Temple of the Moon.
In the next few days I will be covering a Horde starting zone, although I haven’t decided which one yet.

Disclaimer: I am not a lore expert. I am putting together this guides through a combination of my own experience and a bit of research. This not meant to be a comprehensive guide to either lore or quests, but rather a place to start to get a feel of the role each zone plays in Azeroth.

The Random Battleground Finder And Why You Should Care

2010-03-21T13:29:00.003-04:00

Soon the Random Battleground Finder will be upon us when patch 3.3.3 is released. Like its predecessor, the Random Dungeon Finder, it will be a huge change to how we experience the game. First a quick recap of its features:

The first random battleground you WIN will award an additional 30 honorable kills worth of honor and 25 area points.
Any additional wins in a random battleground will award an additional 15 honorable kills worth of honor.
A loss in a random battleground will award an additional 5 honorable kills worth of honor.
Honor awarded per honorable kill is being increased by 100%
Honor awarded by Wintergrasp weekly quests will be reduced by 50%

For all of the upcoming PvP changes read the blue post here.

If you are a hardcore PvP-er then I don’t have to convince you to be excited about this. If however, you are like me and enjoy PvPing occasionally or you are not into PvP at all this is still something to pay attention to. First off the Random Battleground Finder should make getting into a battleground almost instantly. The only thing the system has to do in order to get you into a battleground is have enough Horde and Alliance players queued up and off to your mystery battleground you will go. You might anticipate wait times however if your battlegroup is imbalanced and you play on the more populous faction.

Secondly, you will be gaining honor much more quickly in battlegrounds and those Wintergrasp weekly quests will no longer be so lucrative. Therefore random BGs are where it will be at to gain honor. Now all this is great for just some plain old PvP fun, but for those of us that haven’t really gotten into PvP I have some reasons for you that it might be a very good idea to get some PvP experience and gear in preparation for Cataclysm.

Rated Battlegrounds are coming in Cataclysm and the new Random BG Finder is a great way to get some practice in so you can sky rocket in the ratings come expansion time. Besides just gaining general PvP knowledge you can fine tune you strategies in each individual BG. Get to know the best tactics and the terrain for each battleground and you will be wiping the floor with your opponents come Cataclysm.
Tol Barad, a Wintergrasp like zone, is coming in Cataclysm. Holding Tol Barad will give you access to a daily quest hub. Don’t be a scrub. Brush up on your PvP skills to help your faction maintain an iron grip on Tol Barad.
Even just with honor you can get some really nice PvP gear and if you are like me and have triumph or even frost badges lying around you can also pick up some great PvP gear with those. I mention this because just as Blizz has said that our tier 9 and 10 should be good enough to get us through the first raid of Cataclysm I suspect that with a nice PvP set, that you will soon be able to get more easily with the Random BG finder and increased honor gains, you will do really well in those first few months of the expansion in either Tol Barad or the new battlegrounds we have been promised. All those people in their questing greens and blues won’t stand a chance against you in 1000+ resilience gear.
Guild leveling and achievements are coming. You will be able to better contribute to PvP guild achievements and earn more guild experience if you practice being a kick ass PvP-er now.
Finally if you are no fun and just want to use the Random BG finder for profit then all that easy honor can be turned into easy gold by purchasing epic gems for 10k honor each.

Since I just need to keep grinding away at those frost badges to improve my PvE gear, I’m too rich to care about selling gems, and I already have heirlooms set aside for my dwarf shaman that I will be rolling come Cataclysm I have recently set my sights on collecting a good PvP set and can’t wait for 3.3.3 to make it a bit easier. So even if you suck at PvP like me take the Random Battleground Finder as an opportunity to brush up on your skills and collect some gear. And if practice doesn’t make perfect and no amount of resilience can keep your squishy self alive, so what, have some fun anyway.

Gateway Drugs

2010-03-21T13:18:00.004-04:00

Growing up my parents would never buy me or my sister a video game console, so my sole exposure to Mario and the like came from going over to my male friend's house and getting owned by his little brother every single time. Today I would still get owned by a 7 year old in console gaming. But despite my parents best efforts to get me to go outside and play instead of sitting in front of the computer I soon picked up PC games like The Sims, SimCity, and Rollercoaster Tycoon.

During high school I some how wind up with this nerdy boyfriend who talks endlessly about all kinds of video games and uses words I don’t understand like tank, stats, and dps. Eventually he somehow convinces me to try out a game called Ragnarok Online, its free he tells me, free is good. And I can play it on dial up which is the only thing we had at the time. So I get this Ragnarok Online and start playing. It’s a cute little Korean 2D sprite based game with almost no quests and a constant grind, but I don’t know any better and I started to love it. I become a forum troll, constantly reading so I can get better and before you know it I’m far higher level and much richer than my poor boyfriend. I’m not going to lie, I think beating him probably increased my sense of enjoyment.

So off to college I go and now said BF starts going on and on about this game called World of Warcraft. Well it sounds pretty cool, but it costs money and I’m none too keen on this. Finally I agree to make a test character on his account. I rolled a gnome mage, and I died a lot. It was a horrible experience really. I didn’t like it at all. Reluctantly I took the official World of Warcraft guide books my boyfriend had laying around and flipped through them. Ultimately it was those guides that convinced me that I had to play World of Warcraft.

I know that they are hopelessly outdated almost immediately after an expansion and that all the tables of quests, gear, and recipes are useless when you can get easier access to better information on Wowhead, but damn it those pictures are pretty. I enjoyed reading the little bios of each class and race and pouring over the ability listings. I never gave those guides back to the BF, shhh don’t tell, and I bought the Wrath of the Lich King Guide and will definitely be buying the Cataclysm guide. So I was lured into the World of Warcrack by a crappy Korean game and pretty pictures. My first toon on my own account was, what else, a night elf hunter, who is now my level 80 bank alt and I haven’t looked back since. The moral to this little story is guys, don’t give up, your significant other can be lured into WoW playing, but beware, she might pwn your face someday :)

Welcome To Almost Epic!

2010-03-21T13:02:00.002-04:00

Welcome to Almost Epic with me, Alamara. I’ve toyed around with the idea of writing a World of Warcraft blog for a long while now, but it was only after listening to a few episodes of the Twisted Nether Blogcast, my newest WoW podcast subscription, that I decided to get my butt off the proverbial couch and give it a shot. So thanks to the Twisted Nether Blogcast and all you awesome bloggers in the WoW community for giving me some inspiration. For my first post I figured I’d tell a bit about the real life me before I dive into the wow/gamer/ridiculously nerdy me next time. Hopefully you’ll learn just enough about me to be intrigued and add Almost Epic to your feed reader, but not so much that you become my stalker.

For starters I am a college student at a Midwestern university. I am a double History and Religion major. What am I going to do with that, you ask. Excellent question! Now if only I had an answer for you. If you have any ideas on how I cannot be homeless in a little over a year let me know. Outside of the World of Warcraft, my interests include cooking, reading, all things science fiction, obsessive sports watching (Go Colts!) and dabbling in writing. While I plan to keep most of my posts on Almost Epic WoW related, I may occasionally ramble on about my other nerdy pursuits.

I started playing WoW under the influence of my boyfriend. Sadly I’m not one of those people who have been playing since beta. I started towards the end of the Burning Crusade, only hitting level 60 on my first character the day Wrath of the Lich King came out. I still remember doing a /who as I leveled through Hellfire Peninsula and seeing that it was me and 49 death knights in the zone. Today my main is an 80 gnome affliction warlock and I am a regular, if not hardcore, raider. I also have a level 80 hunter, but she has turned into a glorified bank alt in a dress. Here and there I also find time to level my baby druid as Resto entirely through the dungeon finder tool (its way more fun than it sounds, I promise).

So that’s a bit about me. Next time I’ll go into a bit more in depth into my gaming background. I hope you’ll add me to your feed reader or come back to visit from time to time. If you have any comments or questions you can contact me at almostepicwow@gmail.com.