Changed's Blog on World of Warcraft (WoW)

Taking a Break

2009-05-18T21:10:00.003-04:00

Last week I stepped down from the raid roster. It was a tough decision, but I realized that the time and effort I put into raiding twice a week (Wed, Sun) were not paying off. Our guild, like most casual raiding guilds, didn't have the mechanism or culture to enforce skill requirements, so that significantly held back our progression. Despite those drawbacks, Naxx-25 went smoothly over the course of 1 month as follows:

2/12 Finish Arachnid and Plague Quarters
2/19 Finish Military Quarter
2/23 Finish Construct Quarter, Sapphiron
3/2 Downed Kel'Thuzad-25, complete Naxxramas
3/30 Downed Malygos-25

Ulduar is significantly harder, though, and we lack the people to keep trying on 25-man. Too many skilled players had left the game for us to make real progress on Ulduar-25. Hence too much remaining work for too little reward, and time to finally leave raiding.

Cheskie and Babka hit 76. They can go to Sholozar Basin (which I've never seen), or they can do more instances, five of which are still new to them. By now the crafted blue Saronite set is mostly available to Babka, so he is rocking out in them. Plus, I used Emblems of Heroism to buy the +10% exp shoulders for both Cheskie and Babka to help them in their leveling.

In the meantime, I'm trying out Free Realms and having a good time with the ultracasual mini-games.

2.5 Months into WotLK

2009-02-03T16:20:00.003-05:00

11/11 Get a copy of WotLK early at a 7-11 where the store salesman doesn't know any better. Email Mike to tell him to do the same. He tries 4 stores in Pasadena before he finds one, and gets the last copy there.

11/12 Opening night. I have it installed and patched up, ready to go. Servers open at midnight EST, 9PM PST. I plan to play from 9-2AM. But first I go to Fry's to interview people standing in line. At 7PM there are about 50 people. I interview people for an hour. When I leave at 8, there are over 200 people there.

11/15 Took a few days off leveling to hit realm-first grandmaster enchanter (450). If I ever do that again, I'll more carefully research all the crafting interdependencies. Enchanting needed a rod made by a blacksmith, which needed titanium transmuted by an alchemist...

11/27 Thanksgiving -- hit 80. All the focused playtime has aggravated my sinuses, giving me a perpetually stuffy nose which lasts into mid-January. :( Play less over the next month, as we try living in SF during December.

12/3 Ghostcrawler from Blizzard posts on the official WoW forums: "If you're 80 already, you are a relatively hardcore player. Most WoW players are not 80 yet."

12/21 Escapism begins raiding Naxx-10.

1/8 Beat the Arachnid Quarter.
1/15 Beat the Military Quarter.
1/22 Beat the Plague Quarter.
1/29 Beat the Construct Quarter. Escapism begins plans for Naxx-25.

Hitting the Gold Cap in WoW

2008-10-29T13:47:00.002-04:00

This morning, 10/29/08, I hit the WoW gold limit: 214,748. That limit exists because Blizzard records money as a 32-bit signed integer. So the largest possible number of copper pieces is 2^31. Since there are 100 copper to a silver, and 100 silver to a gold, the gold cap is 2^31 / 10,000 = 214,748.

[screenshot]

Actually, I hit the gold cap with over 9k gold to spare on a different character. When I sent some extra gold back to my main character, and tried to open the mail, I got an "Internal Database Error." When I killed mobs, I would pick up money, but it would not be added to my gold total. Similarly, if I sold items to a vendor, the items would disappear, but my gold total would remain the same.

The past few weeks, ever since patch 3.0.2 where these statistics were recorded, I have been making about 10k gold per day. Apparently people are still buying the most expensive enchants and gems even though in two weeks, the expansion will make them obsolete. (The worst gems in the expansion are better than the best and most expensive gems now.) Why do people spend so much on things which don't last? [cue in Sunday School lesson here]

Some people -- including my spouse -- might wonder if I could sell my gold for real-world cash. A quick Google search will show that the going market price / exchange rate is about $20 per 1000g. I could sell my stash for $4,000. Even more importantly, I could sell my daily intake of 10,000g for $200. Which works out to $70k/year for income. Not bad! There are a few problems with this scheme:

1) It is against Blizzard's Terms-of-Use. If they catch me, they will delete my gold and my character, and ban me from the game.
2) It is not sustainable. I can only make that much money now because we are in a pre-expansion transitional phase. Who knows how the markets will behave in 2 weeks?
3) Once I turn the gold into real money, the IRS will tax it. Not reporting it = tax evasion.

So what do I do now? I still have plenty of gems and enchants in my inventory and queued up for sale in the Auction House. I guess in-game I will drop Skinning on an alt and pick up Blacksmithing instead. The gathering professions (Skinning, Herbalism, and Mining) are only useful for making money. And then I'll retire from money-making. Outside of the game, I'd like to spend some time thinking about the lessons I've learned from this experience, and how it could apply to the real world.

Lesson 1: Find a market of impatient wastrels. This is a difficult mindset because most of my friends are patient tightwads like me.

Lesson 2: Avoid personal interaction. The last thing you want to do is waste time haggling with impatient wastrels. Put your product up for sale, and let them buy it -- that's it. Think vending machines.

Lesson 3: Sell a product which is easy to manage in terms of production, storage, sales, and shipping. That is: minimize your logistics costs.

Lesson 4: Avoid intelligent competition. Smart people, upon seeing your product, should say, "Who in their right mind would buy this crap?"

Someday I would like to make a follow-up post titled, "Hitting the Money Cap in E*Trade".

I was not prepared (for patch 3.0)

2008-10-24T19:57:00.002-04:00

I had saved up 700 bank slots full of herbs, but I had neglected to update my addons with beta-ready ones. As a result, my OneBag and OneBank were broken, as well as my Auctioneer, making it very difficult to organize and sell items while powerleveling Inscription. I stayed up till 3 doing it. I leveled Inscription on my bank alt Adze to partake in Minor Inscription research and learn more minor glyphs, since they are only available on a 20h cooldown.

It was a perfect storm of broken addons, wanting to sell at the AH, wanting to powerlevel Inscription, and wanting to play with the new talents in 3.0 I just didn't have enough time to do it all!. I won't make that mistake going into WotLK on 11/13. To eliminate spending time on the AH, I am not going to have any items going into wotlk, just gold. I am hoping to hit the gold cap (214.7k) by the expansion date. That will close one chapter in my play so I can cleanly move to another.

The pre-WotLK zombie invasion event this week had an interesting side effect of allowing trade across factions. That allowed me to bring my entire Horde treasury to the Alliance side, bringing my Alliance total to 198k.

My last gold update was on 7/11, in which I had 90k gold total. Since then I've earned nearly 110k gold over 3+ months, about 30k/month or 1k/day. At this rate, I will hit gold cap in 16 days, just a few days before WotLK. There is no more herb arbitrage to be done, but with Inscription I can now sell high-end enchants with a 100g markup. Oddly, epic gems are still selling well even though they will quickly become obsolete in the expansion. I am buying them for 200 and selling cut ones for 290 (with about a 15g AH fee).

I have an alt, Calvinn (69 enhancement shaman), in Knights of Good. That's the guild with players from the web show "The Guild." I'm hoping to raid Karazhan with them tonight. :)

The Evolution of WoW

2008-10-02T14:55:00.000-04:00

(posted as a comment on Tobold's blog)

To me, WoW went through *fundamental* changes when TBC was released. The general trend has been towards more reward of skill. For example, vanilla WoW raiding was gathering 25 skilled raiders and 15 no-skill raiders for mid-level (Tier 2) content. I healed through AQ20/BWL/Ony as a clueless feral druid in greens. :-) As another example, the old honor rank system was purely time-based: how many hours/day can you spend in AV? The new arena system has flaws but is infinitely better than the Marshal/Warlord grind.

The trend towards skill will continue in WotLK. By making raid-wide and more homogenous class buffs, player skill will become more important than class. (No more need to stack shamans.) And PvP gear will move away from "welfare epics" to a combination of honor points, arena points, and arena rating.

Casual players get "10 more levels", a new class and tradeskill, and pretty pictures along the way. Serious players get changes to the game mechanics and reward system. By emphasizing and rewarding skill, WoW is moving towards an e-sport model, which is a lot easier to do in a themepark environment rather than a sandbox.

Predicting the WotLK release date

2008-09-15T16:58:00.005-04:00

Blizzard announced the release date of WotLK as 11/13/08. I put together a spreadsheet comparing the TBC rollout with WotLK.

The Alpha and the Beta both took about twice as long to move to the next stage, but the 2-month length between announcement and release are about the same.

My guild has stopped raiding, as has the loose association of guilds and most of the server. I'm at about 130k in cash, with maybe 300 slots of herbs (12k conservatively). I was slow in collecting herbs, being caught off-guard by the announcement that Inscription will come in patch 3.0, before the expansion.

Babka and Cheskie are both 66, but I am waiting for the increased leveling rate in patch 3.0 before playing them further. Babka will pick up Inscription as his second profession then.

Update on past 1.5 years of WoW

2008-07-11T16:47:00.004-04:00

I bet Blogger will be around for a long time, so I'd like to do a quick update snapshot of my WoW life.

1/07 - The Burning Crusade expansion is released. I level to 300 jewelcrafting in the first 3 hours (12:30AM - 3:30AM) and go on to turn in quests until 9AM, hitting level 60.7.

2/07 - Hit level 70. Finish unloading all of my stockpiled jewelcrafting materials, ending with a cash position of 9k gold. http://www.xanga.com/changed/569106666/item.html

3/07 - Begin working on Karazhan. My guild, Conquest, begins falling apart because of a difference in officers' and hardcore raiders' opinions on when to start Karazhan.

4/07 - I leave Kalecgos to go to Zangarmarsh and join Tony's guild, Chosen of Valhalla. I become physical DPS lead, and eventually raid leader and tank class lead.

8/07 - I main-tank a Prince kill. Mike Lee transfers servers to join CoV.

10/07 - Begin leveling Babka (paladin) and Cheskie (priest) with June.

3/08 - CoV dissolves, around the time June and I take our Pacific big trip. The raiders go to Driven in 3/08, short-lived because of friction on both sides and a lack of raids.

5/08 - A few raiders including myself go to Escapism. We begin raiding Tier5 instances (SSC and TK). Because of the 3x/week raid schedule, I take a break from PvP.

6/08 - Arena season 4 finally begins. Begin selling off hoarded gems.

7/08 - After 2 months of trying T5 bosses (3/5 TK, 3/5 SSC), we decide to try Mount Hyjal (T6). Because of PvP and badge gear, much of the T5 gear is disenchanted anyway. Cheskie and Babka hit level 60. Buy a guild with 3 bank tabs for my alts. Cash position is around 75k on Alliance, 15k on Horde. Closing in on Blizzard's gold cap: 214,748 (2^31).

There are 4 activities I am trying to balance, always striking where the iron is hot:
1) Main PvE advancement (raiding)
2) Main PvP advancement
3) Making money on the Auction House
4) Playing alts with June or other friends

Right now #1 is hot, as our guild is willing to push towards harder content. But if we stop raiding, I may go back to #2. I might do more #2 just for fun with Mike.

Tier5 vs Tier6 weapon costs (hours played)

2008-04-17T21:41:00.001-04:00

During Arena Season 2, getting your S2 2H weapon (equivalent to Tier5) cost 3750 points. If you were on a casual team, playing 10 games a week and holding a 1400 rating, that would net you 300 points a week, so it take you about 12 weeks. And only 1 hour per week to play those 10 games, so a total of 12 hours.

Blizzard thought that was too easy, so they added the 1850 personal rating requirement for S3 / Tier6 weapons. No more overpowered weapons for us scrubs! But with the Sunwell Armory badge vendor now open in early patch 2.4, you can buy a Tier6 2H for 150 badges. A pickup scrub team farming Kara will do it in about 7 hours. 22 badges, which means 3 badges per hour. So now it takes 50 hours of farming Kara to get those 150 badges. Or, if you organize a high-powered Tier4 team with perfect class balance, you could clear Kara in 4 hours. That's 5 badges/hour, or 30 hours for your Tier6 2-hander.

In either case, it's a lot harder now to get your top-of-the-line weapon. I wouldn't be surprised if Blizzard makes badges purchasable with gold, just before the release of WoTLK. It will revive casuals' interest in farming gold for their Tier6 weapon, since no one will be raiding at that point (similar to the month before TBC came out). Then casuals can run around with their Tier6 weapon, only to replace it with a level 75 blue quest reward in a few months.

What a BRD run!

2006-08-08T15:45:00.000-04:00

Last night I ran BRD (Blackrock Depths) with 4 guildmates: Cinabunz, Malene, Nightbreeze, Syrana, and me (Adze). All from the Saga guild on Kalecgos, a PvP server. Our guild had been dominating the 40-49 BG's for a while before we decided to level out a few weeks ago.

This was my second BRD run ever, the first also being with people in the guild. My previous level-60 characters didn't group enough to run high-level instances. In this run, we made it through about 80% of the dungeon in the course of four hours -- it's supposedly one of the largest dungeons in WoW.

I learned a lot about tanking, which I'm writing in a separate post. I've decided to learn to tank more effectively, since our guild is short on warriors. So I'm going to respec to move some talents out of cat form into bear form. Specifically, I am switching Blood Frenzy (+1 combo point on crits) with Primal Fury (+5 rage per crit). Also, I am dropping Improved Shred and reducing Natural Weapons by 3 in order to get 5/5 Thick Hide. That will boost my armor gain factor from 460% to 506%.

I won 6 blue items! These are the items, and what they replaced for me, and the enchants I need for them:

1) Chest: Mixologist Tunic (50), 158 AC, +18 Str, +11 Agi, +18 Sta
replaces: Pratt's Handcrafted Tunic, 129 AC, +6 Str, +7 Agi, +15 Sta
need enchant: +100HP, = 6 Illusion Dust, Small Brilliant Shard, ench 275

2) Shoulders: Dark Warder's Pauldrons (52), 122 AC, +11 Str, +17 Agi, +7 Sta
replaces: Fleshhide Shoulders (37), 95 AC, +5 Str, +6 Agi, +15 Sta
no enchant possible

3) Idol of Ferocity (52): reduces energy cost of Claw and Rake by 3
replaces: none! But only useful for cat form, which I am gimping in favor of bear form.
no enchant possible

4) Ring: Magma Forged Band (52), +7 Str, +12 Agi, +7 Sta
replaces: Lorekeeper's Ring (48, caster), +6 Sta, +12 magic/heal, +4 mana/5s
Somehow, in my experimenting with the DruidFunc addon, I lost my 48 Protectors Band, and was wearing the 38 one! Need to go to Ashenvale to get it replaced (and sell the 38 one for good), (48: 10, 9, 6)
no enchant possible

5) Feet (fire resist): Coal Miner Boots (52), 112 AC, +9 Str, +17 Sta, +10 FR
replaces: Serpentskin Boots, 94 AC, +7 Str, +8 Sta, +10 Agi (enchant +7 Sta)
need enchant: +7 Sta = 10 Dream Dust, ench 260

6) Chest (caster, fire resist): Flamestrider Robes (48), 153 AC, +5 Sta, +6 Int, +16 Spi, +10 FR, +20 magic/heal
replaces: Forest's Embrace (caster, need to get in ST): 151 AC, +8 Int, +7 Spi, +55 heal
both need enchant if want to be usable: +100HP

59 is the funnest level, again

2006-02-27T09:56:00.000-05:00

7 months after hitting level 59 with my original toon (human paladin), I finally got another one (undead warlock) to the same level. In between I had played a few others (dwarf priest to 30, NE hunter to 46). But I stayed with this character for the long haul because I played mostly with a friend who leveled his undead rogue at the same rate.

59 is still the funnest level. Last night I went from 59.0 to 59.7 by completing quests all over the world: a few turn-ins at Burning Steppes, an interesting set of kills at Blasted Lands, hearth back to Org, a turn-in at Felwood, a few kills and turn-in at Winterspring, hearth back to Org, a long flight to Tanaris, some killing in UC, and finally a few turn-ins at Silithus. Whew!

Now that I've played both factions and all of the professions, I'm ready to try something new. That would be a PvP server, where my friend wants to try out a NE hunter. I think I'll roll a NE druid for the following reasons:

1) tank/heal/DPS as needed, since the hunter doesn't really specialize in any of the above.
2) the awesome MOTW buff
3) Prowl in cat form for stealth (handy for PvP server)
4) being a healer will help us group for instances, which we largely avoided with these characters while soloing/duoing

A Generous Tip

2005-08-05T17:20:00.000-04:00

I hit level 60 a few nights ago, and it was anticlimactic, just finishing up some quests in WPL. I guess I'll start doing the big raids now?

What was exciting was that someone in IF was asking in tradechat for an engineer who could make an arcanite dragonling. I recently bought the recipe for 75g (a steal), so I messaged him saying I could. He didn't have mats, so he came to IF looking for them. It's not so easy to collect 8 arcanite bars on the spur of the moment, because each transmute has a 2-day cooldown, and arcane crystals go for about 18g a pop. So we said we'd be in contact after he collected the mats.

I log in the next night and he's mailed me saying he has mats. I mail him back saying sorry I missed him, and I'll try to be on at 11:15PM the next night.

Last night I log on at 11, and he msgs me right away. I meet him at the forge, and he asks if I'd ever made one myself. "No, I'm not that rich yet." He says, "Well, if you want to sell them for profit, you can't equip one ever." After a while I understand: each dragonling is BoE (soulbound) and unique, so if I have one equipped, then I cannot make another one, and I can't sell the one I have! I'd have to vendor-trash it (losing like 200g in the process) before I could make and sell more.

So he gives me mats to make the arcanite dragonling, using the soulbound mithril dragonling I already own. Evidently this is no problem. So I make it, and give it to him. Then he gives me mats to remake the mithril dragonling I used up. Then I remake and equip it. Then he gives me a tip of 50g!!!

He asks if we want to duel to try it out. I go ok, and we head outside the steps of Ironforge. But as he tries to equip it, he learns that it has a lev50 requirement! He is only level 46. So it'll take a while, but now he has something to look forward to. :-)

My Favorite Ways to Make Money

2005-08-02T15:57:00.000-04:00

I play on Bloodhoof, a PvE server. If anyone is on that server and starts using these tips, it will probably cut into my income. Oh, well. I like to write in the interest of free information and hope people will comment to help me refine my ideas. On to the moneymaking schemes.

1) Goblin Jumper Cables XL
I got the recipe for free when a Gnomish Engineer guildie asked me to create a set for him. Since then I made some more and noticed that people will pay a lot at the AH for them. Guess they're either Gnomish or don't have the time to collect the mats. People even see my handiwork in the AH and whisper me to make some for them if they have mats. One guy had partial mats so I charged him for the remaining mats, too. I have an Excel spreadsheet showing the prices of each of the mats and components, and the upcharge I build into each one. The biggest profit is made from selling the complete cables at the AH. Right now I'm selling for 30g bid, 35g buyout, but I may raise prices further. The best part is that there is usually no competition. One other person recently put up a pair for 15g buyout, so I snatched it up right away. The most expensive components are the two Fused Wiring, which goes for about 4g each right now. For a while I made Target Dummies and killed them over and over again in IF, but I never found any. I figure that it's faster for me to just play normally and collect gold and buy the Fused Wiring rather than literally farm (plant and harvest) dummies. I also soloed Gnomeregan once for the humor value and also the chance of Fused Wiring, but came up with none.

2) Horizon Choker
There seems to be a wide variance on the price of these at AH. I'll buy them for 30g buyout and sell them for 60g buyout. So far I've done that to about 3 sets. One I pulled off the auction to sell to a friend at cost: 30g.

3) Mithril Mechanical Dragonling Schematic
Since I have to fly through Aerie Peak on my way from IF to EPL, I stop by the engineer vendor nestled in the mountains (just a few minutes from town) and pick up a recipe for less than 1g, often selling for 3g. 2 quick gold.

4) Random Questing in EPL and WPL
Mobs there have been dropping blue cards for Darkmoon Fair, and the cards go for 30-40g at the AH. I picked up both the Two of Portals and Three of Portals one night.

59 is the funnest level

2005-07-28T16:32:00.000-04:00

I keep a real-life blog at www.xanga.com/changed, but this space will devoted to my World of Warcraft adventures. I picked blogspot because of two reasons:

Tobold writes an excellent WoW blog here.
Google owns blogspot/blogger.

My main is a human paladin, level 59, retri speced. I play on the Bloodhoof server (PvE) and am in the Dire Watch guild. I'm having so much fun with my paladin now because all of my quests are green, or at most yellow, and I can solve them with ease. I just run around lands asking, "Who's next to get their axe kicked?" I am the Big Swinging Dirk of the jungle.

Once I hit 60, life will be less fun since exp will become meaningless. I don't like PvP dueling, and I don't look forward to disorganized large raid groups. Maybe I'll join my guidies in some raid groups occasionally. But mostly I'll try to make money by crafting and arbitrage at the AH. I'll try to avoid farming because it's boring and pisses off real players. My profits will go into the Epic Mount Fund, or to building alts.

At lunch today I ran through Felwood and finished off three quests during lunch: killing the elementals (guarded by a wandering elite infernal), and two in Shadow Hold. The latter was interesting because I ran into a 59 Tauren Druid, and we informally paired up. Since he was Horde, we couldn't party, buff each other, or even speak the same language. I gained his trust by beating up on one of two mobs that he was fighting, and then bowed to him. He thanked me, and we went through alternating first-hits to get loot. In no time we had finished Dousing the Flames and Retribution of the Light (killing the succubus). But I had to leave early because my extended lunch hour was over. I /thanked him, /apologized, and hearthed back to Auberdine.