tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-71603003760168662082024-03-05T15:01:09.435+00:00Please Feed the TrollMetling Faces, Healing, Rambling.mystichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15779886676286429342noreply@blogger.comBlogger72125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7160300376016866208.post-12119840384689321322011-07-21T16:18:00.000+01:002011-07-21T16:18:43.003+01:00Firing up for another daily grind<span style="font-family: Courier New; font-size: medium;">A look at the new shape of Firelands dailies </span><br />
<br />
<a href="http://lh3.ggpht.com/-_YEn8EMQd6g/TihCw-xzbWI/AAAAAAAAAMc/vKQhTKB3pOQ/s1600-h/daily-quest%25255B8%25255D.png"><img align="left" alt="daily-quest" height="253" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoORhF0tLbtTM-0kQJX_qsQrTUGprJIUhuGMdJsNbVanZA96OJi0vZdBIvJ35dEwucMPgoLz6QQ3pnn-vz2l4K_P6bGI4CAJz05vp2t8gaWE4MpfiaHT6SMDwgz0uN5BJBEpynfR-UQWw/?imgmax=800" style="display: inline; float: left;" title="daily-quest" width="199" /></a>Once again I’ve been struggling to find much time to play WOW over the past few weeks, when I’ve managed to get on, even if it’s just been for 10 minutes my first priority has been to carry on with my auction house experiment; my second task, time allowing, has been to work through the new Firelands dailies. I wrote a brief post just before the Firelands patch asking what the casual could expect from the new content, in particular looking at the more ‘personalised’ dailies.<br />
<br />
Firstly, the way the new dailies works is a little different to that of other ‘rep’ type dailies, you don’t directly gain rep by doing x, y and z, instead you collect tokens. Mark of the World Tree to be precise; in order to get anything from these dailies you need to collect 150 of the little buggers, at which point an NPC will become available from whom you can buy goodies from. Further NPCs turn up varying number more, according to Wowhead a total of 695 will currently unlock all of the available NPCs. Now I like this idea, in some respects, and hate it in others, as a casual you are at no more of a disadvantage than raiders (other than perhaps they have more time to play), as you can only get the marks from dailies, you can get a maximum of around 12 per day (it varies according to how many NPCs you’ve unlocked) after the initial introductory quests which give a few extra, so you’re going to be grinding for 33 days completing each quest to unlock everything (again according to Wowhead). There is no tabard so it’s not like you can hit a few instances over the course of a weekend to max your rep out like the others.<br />
<br />
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, it’s not all about the gear; gear is a means to and ends, my primary goal is enjoyment, so what about the quests? I’m not a big quester if I’m honest, they’ve been a means to getting to the top level over the years, and nothing more, yes there's been the occasional chain to get an item, or that <b><i>really are </i></b>fun, like the crucible type chains, and then the horrible Onyxia and molten core type key chains which are occasionally fun at first but a complete pain in the proverbial when you come to run alts. On the main part, I’m not one of the people who’ll just churn through them for the fun of it. I’m not interested in the lore, or the ‘story’ (I know it floats some peoples boats, just not mine.) in fact the second I discovered the macro to speed up quest text in Vanilla it was a permanent resident in my macro book; click the NPC, hammer accept, and jog on, that’s me. I’m not a fan of the cut scene for the same reason, but that’s a different story (pun intended).<br />
<br />
<br />
On the face of it the Firelands quests are a bit different from the norm; rather than, say, the Jewel crafting dailies, where if you need to inflict stardust on ten different people, <b><i>every other</i></b> jewel crafter on the server will be doing the same, the Firelands quests are randomised for you, there are a pool of quests from which you get a random selection to do each day (the numbers vary again depending on how many NPCs you’ve unlocked). One of the reasons I’ve never been so interested in the MMO story element is that they never felt that, well, epic. “you young Troll! Go kill MEGADRAGON the undefeatable beast that’s been stealing our carrots and has slayed every Troll before” only if you don’t mind waiting in line for the seventeen other peeps who got there first to finish killing him it’d be appreciated, ok, thanks, bye…. Not for me thanks. With the randomised aspect, you AND ONLY YOU, are on that particular quest chain. RIGHT! Wrong. Whilst the quests are essentially randomised from a pool of possible quests, there's so many people wading into the new content at the same time, that you’re still competing for the same mobs as everyone else. Yes there’s improvements, all of the <b><i>big</i></b> mobs are killable by the same people concurrently; they can’t be tapped, so you only have to hit it once before it dies to get credit, so there’s not as much of the listless hammering of the /target megadragon /cast <instant spell> macro to tap monster before that nasty Paladin gets there first. When it comes to punting bears onto trampolines, or reviving exhausted allies (who look shocked for a few seconds, before stumbling round a bit and then falling over again) you’re still essentially grinding stuff and competing with everyone else on the server.<br />
<br />
It’s a step in the right direction, don’t get me wrong, but so much more could be done. I’d like to see more in the ways of phasing being used so that when you kill MEGADRAGON, you and you alone are fighting it, you’re already zoning into Firelands for half the quests, which would suggest it could be on a different instance server, so why not ensure there’s only one character in each ‘instance’ on each particular quest, or at least only a few. I like the combination quests, the ones that aren’t party quests, but several people can kill the same hard mob. I like the ‘different’ quests of punting things into the water, although the stupid bear-up-a-tree quest is already doing my nut. Actually it would probably require far more quests to choose from in the random pool to make it viable, that and enough server power to accommodate the extra phases and instances. All of which means cost, and cost means less profit, so I doubt we’ll see anything like. For the moment I’ll continue grinding coins, at least until I get to 250, just so I can say I gave it a fair crack, doubt I’ll go much further though as chances are I’ll be ready to strangle the developers by then.mystichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15779886676286429342noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7160300376016866208.post-21457324559670246682011-07-14T13:07:00.000+01:002011-07-14T13:07:06.166+01:00Glyphs are back on the menu, ish.<span style="font-family: Courier New; font-size: medium;">How did the aggressive under-cutter fair?</span><br />
<br />
<a href="http://lh5.ggpht.com/-hBEpHVJcaUg/Th7bVsPkmCI/AAAAAAAAALc/KpAliOm0BhQ/s1600-h/menuicon%25255B3%25255D.gif"><img align="left" alt="menuicon" height="240" src="http://lh3.ggpht.com/-s07msGVqBKE/Th7bWFU0XTI/AAAAAAAAALg/NrhE5RhoOdo/menuicon_thumb%25255B1%25255D.gif?imgmax=800" style="display: inline; float: left;" title="menuicon" width="240" /></a>A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the bottom falling out of the Glyph market, this was entirely down to one individual who was selling just about every glyph possible at a knock down price of 25g. I managed to catch up with him via in game mail and he was kind enough to explain is reasoning; briefly he was trying to force new entrants out of the market by removing the profit for them, thus increasing his profit in the long run by reducing competition, the full post is <a href="http://pleasefeedthetroll.blogspot.com/2011/06/austerity-measures.html">here</a>. Anyway, it seems the day has come where the glyph embargo has been lifted, and to my surprise it seems to have worked! perhaps not as well as may have been intended, there’s still a fair bit of competition about, but the prices seem to be higher, or at least there seems to be more highly priced (200g+ glyphs) on the market. I have to admit, I was a little sceptical, mainly based on the fact that people can’t go bust in WOW, so they could simply stop selling for a while and come back to the table when the prices increase (I suspect they still might). <br />
<br />
For the moment the ‘lesser’ Northrend and older glyphs are generally going for around the 100g mark and the newer and more in demand ones for anything up to 300g. This is far above the prices seen before the undercutting, though there are still the glut of pointless or underused glyphs and the ones that are commonly used to level the skill that skulk around in the sub 30g category. I suspect the undercutting had some effect, and some of the sellers have taken a break from selling glyphs, as I did, and simply haven’t noticed the prices have gone back up yet; I also have a sneaking suspicion that the Firelands patch has something to do with the price increase - people suddenly realising, <a href="http://pleasefeedthetroll.blogspot.com/2011/07/gold-rush.html">as with flasks</a>, that they need a few glyphs and ‘panic’ buying. That said, the glyphs don’t seem to be flying off the shelf at the minute, trade is steady, I generally sell 1-2 per listing where as I used to sell 2-5. It may also be that the sellers prior to the patch had gotten bored of the raiding content and were spending their time crafting and selling, now there's new stuff to do they’ve dropped the crafting to wade into the new content. <br />
<br />
I’ll be mailing my friendly seller to see if I can get his take on proceedings, I’ll also be taking the time to relist all the cheap glyphs I accumulated over the last couple of weeks, having had 2 shots at listing so far, I reckon I’ve made about 1k of the 2-3k I spent having sold only 5 0r 6 of the 80-90 I bought.mystichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15779886676286429342noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7160300376016866208.post-68167117559068270342011-07-08T15:33:00.000+01:002011-07-08T15:33:36.645+01:00Gold Rush!<span style="font-family: Courier New; font-size: medium;">Has the patch breathed new life into the flask economy?</span><br />
<a href="http://lh4.ggpht.com/-8B55CjAjkec/ThcUPl9mAUI/AAAAAAAAALM/3JARdIvnz_k/s1600-h/gold_fever_miners%25255B3%25255D.jpg"><img align="left" alt="gold_fever_miners" height="240" src="http://lh3.ggpht.com/-fZ8vAu_r4dc/ThcUQfGqu-I/AAAAAAAAALQ/OKlDd_YoQVo/gold_fever_miners_thumb%25255B1%25255D.jpg?imgmax=800" style="display: inline; float: left;" title="gold_fever_miners" width="166" /></a>So with the Firelands patch about a week old, has it made a blind bit of difference to the Auction House prices? veterans of the AH will know the answer already; of course it has, as with every other content patch in WOWs history, consumable prices have shot up, and the items which used to be pretty pricey, like valour boots, (which are now justice boots) which are now more obtainable are now at rock bottom. <br />
<br />
My previous potion industry which was returning a modest profit at best, is now returning at least a 100% mark up on each pot, even ignoring the crafting procs, and taking into account the slight increase in the price of herbs. Its as if half the server had no idea the Firelands were coming and suddenly realised they were going to need to panic buy enough potions for the next decade. You can see from the graph below showing the price and volumes I’ve been shifting flasks of Steelskin in for the past few weeks, I was getting 40-70g, depending on the time of the week and the flask. In the last week I’m regularly getting 100-135g now, and selling in far larger numbers; you can see from the graph the lull which occurred just prior to the 4.2 patch and the explosion in sales and price as soon as it hit. I’ve also changed my selling strategy subtly, I now don’t always try to be the cheapest seller for flasks, instead I list at a rang I’m likely to sell at, yes I may sell a few less, but I’ll make a far bigger profit on those I do sell. I do this when there are a small number of ‘cheap’ flasks listed, but the bulk are at a higher price. The 4 or 5 lower priced flasks will obviously sell first, but I’ll also sell mine at a better profit. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGVP171sM-Xjdy5AuFlQT6WbjmbnmV6VhH4zmOxT6rDWg9ZBsgqooAspjiybFqpQQF5sNfOGa6u5ctUa3V3j2pgT2ZY_TbwKDj3SIm6dhFK1dAW3XoAu7ZDeECMJyrWnzA1e5O3mIImbM/s1600-h/image%25255B5%25255D.png"><img align="right" alt="image" height="412" src="http://lh5.ggpht.com/-2-GAz-ha5ys/ThcURNUN3RI/AAAAAAAAALY/4zhWS2xYQ8o/image_thumb%25255B3%25255D.png?imgmax=800" style="display: inline; float: right;" title="image" width="640" /></a>I sometimes will list some at a lower price and then some higher, that way I’m guaranteed to sell some and make some profit, and if there’s a buying spree then I’m positioned to take advantage; looking through my beancounter logs, there's a repeating pattern of people buying in bulk, yes there are a few instances of people buying singular pots, but of the 17 different buyers for this flask, 10 of them bough more than one, 6 of those bought 5 or more. This tells me that people tend to ‘panic’ buy of sorts, I’d guess someone gets tasked with sorting the pots pre-raid for cauldrons and then heads off to the AH to fill in the blanks to purchase on behalf of the raid.<br />
<br />
For the moment flasks are reasonably profitable, I doubt it will last, as people start to clear the content in Firelands, and get better gear the raiding attendance will wain and thus demand will drop lowering prices once again, but for the moment I’m planning on cashing in. I spent upwards of 10,000g last night buying herbs and volatile life making 25 ish of each flask so I can have a proper go at listing and get some more statistically significant figure to share with you.mystichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15779886676286429342noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7160300376016866208.post-66658722516917117362011-06-29T17:37:00.001+01:002011-07-01T13:27:03.367+01:00A big ‘F’ all in Firelands?<span style="font-family: Courier New; font-size: small;">Is there anything in the new content patch for us casuals?</span><br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNQpshov4oTAyrwcEoTH6VRKy1gfXxPTM1xbCkNvK4O9eSA9tmGa66gtx8N3o8qgazj9AGIemQ-OwaLUMNJ6G-sI9qz9lZCHSU4muhLWFqrcZ2X8_WtahVpLrj-8rwoOSOs8-EzAMR_Bw/s1600-h/frodo%25255B4%25255D.jpg"><img align="left" alt="LEISURE RINGS" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoQYAZuPsz0WKkC74-x32wViwZfhVRkUebJPqnqBywThGqr0nq2COXFiPR0E1eYhSO1fRH2ii6cFQMioj0KeH2eDvEHAgbhVzIaLMNnlc_rbJSgIWIEPbVrASUmoJLzFbJZQpb-6P7-04/?imgmax=800" style="display: inline; float: left;" title="LEISURE RINGS" width="195" /></a>With the much awaited release of the 4.2 patch today, Firelands has opened up a whole host of new content to the raiding level 85s amongst us, but is there anything in there for the casual gamer? On the face of it, not much, the Firelands is seemingly a raid area aimed at the harder core WOW players with no additions on the 5-man heroic front; whilst the prospect of once again being able to smash Ragnaros in the face is an alluring one, I simply don’t have the time (even less than I used to have) to get my act together and start raiding again. Pretty short post this then… the F in Firelands does seem to be a big F-all for the casual! Not so at all!<br />
<br />
If you skip through the content of the Firelands information pages on the Blizzard website you’ll see a section titled Content for the Casual 85, this links to one of the Dev Blogs where ‘Fargo’ talks about what's in store for the casual at 85. Clearly there’s a whole host of trade skills, and a good few heroics, but they get a bit stale after a while, there’s only so much trade-skilling one can take in a given session, and with the rise of the, errr, Rise of Zanzilar instances the ‘old’ heroics have very little draw as there’s very little reward in it.<br />
<br />
Quest, for me, have never had that much draw, even (especially?) the dailies, they’ve been a functional means to an end over the years, you chop your way through them, either to level up or to grind rep. Occasionally doing a quest chain to get an item, more so on the latter since the iLvl requirement. Occasionally there were some particularly enjoyable chains, like the various 5 man crucible type fights, that I’d go back to and do <i>even </i>if I had no reason to, but on the main I don’t quest purely for enjoyment, i don’t know why, it just seems a bit pointless, and repetitive if you breed alts; I suppose there just doesn’t seem to be much ‘questyness’ to it – the fact that every other player on the server is, has, or could do the exact same chain, in the exact same order doesn’t set my world on fire – how many of you went to the cinema and watched some short arsed hobbit wait patiently for three other short arsed hobbits in roughly the same clothes stab a few orcs before handing a ring in to get their reward? It just doesn’t happen like that outside of (I almost said fantasy) MMOs.<br />
<br />
Now once again I’ve wandered off into ramblings, and you might ask what the hell I’m on about, well here it is. Well here it is, the developers seem to have realised the same thing, and gone some way to try and introduce a little bit of randomness in there so tat there's more of a feel that you’re embarking on your own adventure, which comprise of your own quests, with their own challengers. And not that you’re just re-treading the footsteps of a thousand people before you the same day:<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: #4bacc6; font-family: Courier New;">There's also a story here, a chronicle of a vicious, knock-down, drag-out fight that begins in Hyjal and progresses -- over the course of weeks -- across the mountaintop and then into the Firelands themselves. Along the way, major characters are going to get rocked, you'll meet (and destroy) a few new villains, and you'll earn yourself a small heap of nice rewards. The druids are establishing a beachhead in a hostile world, starting with little more than a pile of rocks and ultimately erecting an enormous otherworldly base.<br />
</span><br />
<span style="color: #4bacc6; font-family: Courier New;">The progression is personal: you won’t see it happen until you make it happen.</span></blockquote>The whole post is linked <a href="http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/2913878">here</a>, and I’ve got to say I like the sound of it, I suppose at the end of the day, it’s just dailies, but the fact that people will be doing stuff along different ‘routes’ will mean that there’s less contention for particular quest items or mobs, there’s some better differentiation (at least in the early days) between characters and the gear they can achieve, and you’ll have less of a feeling that you’re just slogging through the same linier story in the same way as everyone else on the server. I’m keen to see how the party dynamic is maintained in this, hopefully it wont be a simple case of you go do your quests and I’ll help, then we’ll do mine.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8ihCNKDObiRlydKTqjNMjmZKNce2CF8x8_IRcIksL_0gNrU7rMtTiOQexvfzXJIGeN0oXaD9vYNRWoIlDoNKKKvhRRToYRFqj1g24SGB-xLVv4juSbBLBIG_wF6z4jlGCSrk_I6lv4KM/s1600-h/elementalgoo%25255B4%25255D.jpg"><img align="right" alt="elementalgoo" height="217" src="http://lh6.ggpht.com/-SZXufZLuFLI/TgtUEYahvsI/AAAAAAAAALI/vR0JyZIX-GA/elementalgoo_thumb%25255B2%25255D.jpg?imgmax=800" style="display: inline; float: right;" title="elementalgoo" width="335" /></a>I’d like to see these principles extended to the daily quests, Jewelcrafting in particular is a particular bugbear of mine, you have a selection of a handful of quests which may crop up as he daily, everyone else on the server gets the same daily, which simply means either the price of nightstone rockets for a day at a time, or the elementals in Mount Hyjal get beaten up and their dinner money stolen again. I’m currently on the train home and might get an hour or so this evening to try them out, that is as long as the patch downloader doesn’t take its usual half day to sort its shit out.mystichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15779886676286429342noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7160300376016866208.post-64637658137162133622011-06-28T22:39:00.000+01:002011-06-28T22:39:05.153+01:00Austerity Measures<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCOXRYMRCCrv_H9buftBw3_EwlWjjvhuU1f90RqioRyuef_FSbo5lM_kPlbptDBmFSWEsyUd4LDmiPZJva2LTO8-rfIXes23b1PC9xEwyO_rytsrN02smhe82Po6TzEuINQEvjU2yfa8w/s1600-h/economic-recession3.jpg"><img align="left" alt="economic-recession" height="178" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgksKCm1OVmw9lgXwyElJzuN1OyQnXekHcyulFfu_BKTU6qv9eOvr2iT0I0LLxiP27dehPR765C8aOpstY3jAo9WJghJwv2IpXyje_PCWKX54Kmd2LUiDR7Zb9r3nV5wu3ox9ufxVy3Ego/?imgmax=800" style="display: inline; float: left;" title="economic-recession" width="240" /></a>After penning a begging letter to my competitor who’s been artificially holding the glyph market so low for a while now that there’s no longer any profit to be made in it, as I set out <a href="http://pleasefeedthetroll.blogspot.com/2011/06/financial-crisis.html">in my last post</a>, more in hope of a reply than expectation; I received a reply! I’d like to report that my guess as to what he was up to was spot on, and I called it; but as it happens, I was half right. The glyph market has been dropping on my server a little recently, nothing substantial (since I got involved, but I can’t really comment on the prices before that) but I’ve noticed (now I think about it) that where glyphs would regularly go for around the 100g mark, I quite often see them slipping down to the 75g level, not all, just some. This when you consider I have around 100 to 150 glyphs listed at any one time, and (used to) sell up to 10 of those per listing session can equate to quite a drop in revenue.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2Uoo5h5bfOWEEgvS5sqlduTVLQO9KejbX05xK6vRP35TXvr6g9i6Ut39SLiSn8-0KbiQQBolKVbfpylhY_EpxsIf_oXEB3rFkPFXV8_dKqzEaFuovsMpgHQjEX2oXdz-gE2YOMEqNloU/s1600-h/glyph-letter4.jpg"><img align="right" alt="glyph letter" height="275" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqkTvXyGh4HxnybBWV37t18CB-ZXIFQr8ad7mRZPtma0D4HyXC3IOLBoJByUh8GcGjIIY-SWIkD7QwG4anocQD1WxUpZ3FexWtCFSNVAhLPj1CcIHXaTwpTI3yCM3kQJxXzgQ3swjrlPc/?imgmax=800" style="display: inline; float: right;" title="glyph letter" width="326" /></a>Now in my mail communication with the seller (I explained that I write a blog, and he’s specifically asked not to be named so I’m assuming he’s a ‘he’ and will be referring to him as ‘the seller’ from this point onwards) he set out the reasons why he’s doing what he’s doing. The full text of the letter is shown to the right, he talks about the glyph market being “hugely profitable for months” until recently when the “new guys” (do you think he means me?) have come along increasing competition and thus lowering the prices and the profit to be had. By setting the prices low, he’s trying to price the other sellers out of the market, by taking away the profit margins, hoping that he has deeper pockets (and more patience) than they do.<br />
This sort of competition is quite a common occurrence in real world economics; a new market comes along, lets say selling trolls tusks. Someone has spotted a niche for tusks, makes an investment in the R&D of developing a trolls tusk for the market, setting up a selling infrastructure and taking the tusks to market. All is fine, there's lots of profit to be made an no real competition to speak of, everything is going swimmingly. That is until one day someone else spots that you’re doing nicely for yourself with you big house and new car and decides they’d like a bit of that pie too. This isn’t a problem initially, yes your sales take a hit at first as customers can now chose your tusks or someone else's, in the long run the added competition has actually helped you as there are actually enough customers to go round, and you’ve taken another look at your operation and realised that you can save money by streamlining some of it, thus making more profit per tusk. Even though you sell less tusks, you make more profit per tusk. All is great until, over the months, ten more tusk sellers come into the market all wanting a their own slice of the shared troll tusk-pie; and what's more, they didn’t bother doing their own R&D, they just copied yours so saved on the costs, meaning that they can sell at a cheaper level that you to such an extent that there’s no longer any profit in the market for you because everyone is undercutting you. <br />
<br />
At this point, something called consolidation will normally happen, either companies will aggressively buy out their competitors or merge, chose to move into a different market, or go bust. This isn’t always enough to reduce the competition to a level to achieve a stable, sustainable, profit level for all involved. So other avenues need to be taken, either by differentiating yourself some way(adding tassels to your tusks for example) so that people will pay more for them even though they’re a higher price. The only other option is to compete on price alone, this is generally accepted to not be a nice place to be – someone will eventually fail if more than one seller attempts this as there can only ever be one lowest cost seller. Very occasionally, dirty or extremely aggressive tactics will be employed; smear campaigns, aggressive undercutting and much much more can happen, the aggressive undercutting is just what we’re seeing on the glyph market. In real world economies, the undercutting seller will generally sell their wares at an unsustainable level, either at a loss or at such an insignificant profit they may as well not bother. This is a brinkmanship game, hoping that their competitors go bust, go away, or sell up before they do. Once the competition is gone, the prices can be artificially inflated to far higher levels and more profit can be made than was previously possible as there is no longer any competition. The way this is normally stopped is through legislation by governments and regulation, the government specifically stops companies doing things which will harm competition unfairly, and ultimately raise prices or lower service levels for the end consumer.<br />
<br />
Winding our example back to the Auction House and my current predicament, there are a few differences between real world economics and the WOW economy; Primarily, you cant go bust, you can’t buy other peoples business, and there’s no regulation, and you can’t compete on anything else but price. People can go away, but not for the same reasons as you’d see in business; The only reason that others will stop selling, is that there is so little gold to be made, it’s not worth their time to play in that particular market. For example if I only make 1g per glyph in profit, but each glyph takes 2 minutes to create (picking herbs, milling, inscribing the scroll), I might chose to go and make potions at 10g profit per pot for a similar effort. Additionally, different people will have different thresholds, a school kid with an abundance of time on his hands might accept a relatively low profit, someone who has a full time job, family and drinking habit to sustain, on the other hand, may only have a few hours a week to play and decide their fun is better had elsewhere in the game.<br />
<br />
My friendly sellers strategy is brave, but I fear may be misplaced for the reasons I’ve set out above, we’ll see, and hopefully he’ll be kind enough to tell me how he thinks his endeavours in artificially revitalising his market have gone. I suspect some of the competition may disappear, but as soon as the market goes up they, or other new entrants, will reappear. He also may be creating a rod for his own back, glyphs are now at such a cheap level that it’s more profitable to farm something or quest for gold and buy them, instead of going out and picking herbs to make the glyphs yourself, potential customers may just buy up all of the glyphs they’ll ever need for them and their alts, and never need to buy a glyph again (until the next WOW expansion is released) thus decreasing the demand. I know this is happening, as it’s exactly what what I’ve done – it’s not worth my time grinding herbs and creating the glyphs at this price, so I’ve filled out all of my empty slots for every character over level 70. He’s also running the risk that the competition will simply buy the glyphs at 25g, wait it out and undercut him at the higher levels in a few weeks time; I know this is happening already, it’s exactly what I’ve done.<br />
<br />
As for my glyph selling antics, I’m pretty much waiting it out, as I say, I’ve bought a good few glyphs at the low levels, about 3k worth at 25g, which equates to 10-20k at previous prices (whether the market will ever recover to quite this level I’m not sure). I’m absolutely fascinated by the effect on the economy, I’ll be monitoring the sales closely, and I wish him every success in inflating the market, if it works, it’ll benefit my sales massively. I’ll also be monitoring the related item sales. I’ve noticed inferno ink sales, which previously sold like hot cakes, have been slow. I’ve also noticed that the price of potions has increased slightly, this may be coincidental, or it may be that he’s bought herbs for ink from the AH, pushing the price up. I’ll have to write and ask…mystichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15779886676286429342noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7160300376016866208.post-38120315362630068952011-06-22T20:00:00.001+01:002011-06-22T20:02:02.661+01:00Financial Crisis<p><font size="4" face="Courier New">What do you do when the bubble bursts and someone ruins your fun on the Auction House? – PANIC!</font></p> <p><a href="http://lh4.ggpht.com/-O2PSNAgUTQ4/TgI7yHYNfwI/AAAAAAAAAKY/SG4wTZhXLeo/s1600-h/black_tuesday_2%25255B3%25255D.jpg"><img style="display: inline; float: left" title="black_tuesday_2" alt="black_tuesday_2" align="left" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTPC1TpMc5fWxpwQD4UktEPYuULZfM7s8FBKkTbgyAqnJz7Ftl5Atuw5QubBhB2TWUFS33Pnh5VMGAngYdq8RH3zWtDAHB-13qltBTe6wRv32QLbCEylLi8X9Rt70NacQb2oz0BsJ9a8c/?imgmax=800" width="240" height="240"></a>Dealing with a competitive market environment on the Auction House is a topic which comes up a lot in the various blogs and sites which look at how to make gold in WOW. It’s something which I’ve had to deal with on numerous times over the past few weeks and poses a constant dilemma. Do you undercut other sellers, if so by how much, at what point is it not worth your while to undercut? do you undercut aggressively (i.e. by a large margin) or do you stick your items up for a few silver less. Or as I’ve been doing with potions do you go for the mid price, knowing that unorganised panicking raiders will probably buy them. Do you just back off and leave it for a few days if there are a lot of low priced items in your area, or do you go on the offensive and actively buy up low priced items and relist them at a higher price? The trouble with WOW is there’s no real way to differentiate your wares, its a fact that there can only ever be one, and no more than one, lowest cost operator in a (real world) economy, all the other operators operate, for whatever reason, at a higher cost level so, if competing on price alone, would either have to accept lower profit margins or go bust. What actually happens is people compete on other things, why are Audi’s more desirable than Volkswagens? which in turn are more desirable than Skoda’s – they’re all made by the same company, surely they’d sell for the same price? things like brand perception, value added services, addons which are over and above the basic needs; in WOW the only thing you can compete on is price. This means you’re valuing your time in terms of gold, how much gold is half an hour of your time worth? What’s the most profitable way of farming gold? If playing the Auction House becomes so unprofitable that you can make more gold per hour than grinding then why bother at all?</p> <p>Where am I going with all this I hear you ask? well, a strange thing happened on the AH last night, someone listed a job lot of glyphs for 24g99s, in stacks of 5, I don’t mean just a few of the cheaper levelling Glyphs, I mean pretty much <strong><em>every</em></strong> glyph possible. Now on my server the median average (i.e the most common) range for the higher end glyphs is 85-100g, the lesser glyphs tend to go for a bit less, some go for upwards of 200g all depending on the current supply. As a rule I don’t sell for less than 50g, I always undercut by 5s for anything less than 100g and always by 25g for anything over 100g up to 250g – on a rare occasion you’ll see a glyph listed for a silly amount, I won’t just undercut that by 25g because 5 minutes later someone will come along and undercut me. On a daily basis I sell between 5-10 glyphs and bring in between 500-1000g which isn’t too bad at all, I’d estimate about a 75% mark up if I were to have bought the mats, but as most of them are collected it’s pure profit. More often than not, the glyphs which don’t sell are the ones which someone has undercut you on, not a problem, you just relist them using the rules you’ve set for yourself when the auction expires.</p> <p>Now the same guy has listed hundreds of glyphs, all at 24g 99s, some will cost far more in terms of mats, so he or she would have been better off listing the raw mats on the AH and selling them. So I can only assume that they are farming the mats and listing them, so on the face of it they are making 25g profit per sale, but actually I could make far more from questing than they could possibly <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrXz1Vbo7fBQnCw6ryPVvhqDn5Ka2vV8Y-LiLW3IB9xCQ4TQUQhAyb_JuazF0fzDRZWDwJgt_RoA7_T3yyV2lKQLIPQcCuhfW8-Y9iF5pIoMr-iHO6ZUscSwq_Tcx1G2roKGOvHoxYTtI/s1600-h/ah%252520prices%25255B4%25255D.jpg"><img style="display: inline; float: right" title="ah prices" alt="ah prices" align="right" src="http://lh6.ggpht.com/-drgDBUAqXbQ/TgI70Wxy0YI/AAAAAAAAAKk/DwzUWlN2lgI/ah%252520prices_thumb%25255B2%25255D.jpg?imgmax=800" width="356" height="206"></a>make from grinding herbs, milling them, making the glyphs and listing them. This got me thinking, what are they trying to achieve? they’ve listed 5 x every glyph at the same price, in a normal (real) economy you might use this tactic to force the competition out of business (assuming your pockets are deeper than theirs) and then once they've gone bust, artificially inflate the price of your goods to make more profit in the long run. This is WOW, people don’t go bust, so it can’t be it. This has me puzzled, I can’t for the life of me think what they are trying to achieve. My only guesses are, they’re a Chinese gold farmer and have far too much time on their hands, but as their aim would be to make as much gold as possible, this doesn’t wash; they could be setting out in the glyph business and not understood how the market works, but again given they’ve clearly gone to a lot of trouble to build up the profession, used a decent addon to pick all the glyphs priced over 25g and listed their wares this doesn’t make sense to me either. The only plausible answer that I can think of is they’re happy with a reduced profit level and going for mass sales at a low mark-up rather than profitable sales. The only two remaining options which are less likely that I can think of are worrying; either it’s a fellow blogger doing an ‘experiment’ like myself and trying to steal my thunder, or they have more gold than sense and they’re just doing it to upset other sellers.</p> <p>I’m actually planning on mailing the guy tonight and asking what <strike>the hell he’s playing at </strike>he’s trying to achieve, I’m genuinely curious as to his motives, and it should make for an interesting blog post. I’ll let you know if I hear back (I suspect I wont) In the mean time, I’ve bought one of every glyph and banked them, I’m going to be largely retired from the glyph selling business for the foreseeable, until the market returns to normality that is.</p> mystichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15779886676286429342noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7160300376016866208.post-79829349295567263792011-06-21T17:07:00.000+01:002011-06-21T17:07:03.766+01:00Pot luck with flasks<span style="font-family: Courier New; font-size: medium;">Is there a profit to be had from selling flasks and potions on the AH?</span><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgR3ELkTRlIpljm8Mxzm8lgJLf8FSaf-SRVxFnjrYHZ6nssNVSM2dhK_sx_nXdDQCWXghdjUWuGq7eXwtvw1EdNU73asrnmyZeIFO79wZ9hbE9FwV2l9-NeonPufyj3ZLNdXTtNZIyyRR4/s1600-h/cauldron%25255B3%25255D.jpg"><img align="left" alt="cauldron" height="234" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnNPAr2HlzKh3EC322rtIt6p70h6aIATl-rtqee43V-vYyRwHXCfpcHNNKu5oohQOR2qzXugeEATQYKSkS6RbkISzSAkJ14v3YuGK905GqanIN_0jcQ_8Q3mzRICY6reRejRI61NKykq4/?imgmax=800" style="display: inline; float: left;" title="cauldron" width="215" /></a><br />
Two weeks into my Auction House experiment and I’m still pulling in the gold on the milling front, I’ve got more Blackfallow ink than I know what to do with, but the Inferno Ink is flying off the shelves. Whilst I’m selling the more Blackfallow ink by volume, it’s not as profitable as the red stuff and I get far more of it per stack of herbs. Currently I’ve 334 pots of it sat in my inventory and more on the Auction House. I’m considering going to the Ink Trader and swapping a load for Inferno Ink; it’s not as profitable as selling it, but gold tied up in stock is dead gold, I’d rather take the hit, and get a reasonable profit from trading it in and then be able to reinvest, I think. Anyway, enough of that, that's for another blog. Today we’re talking potions, and a little bit of enchantment, but mainly potions, well flasks actually, but you get my drift.<br />
<br />
Where as with Glyphs, your customer base is the whole server, flasks are a little more specialist. You won’t often see a random in a PUG flasked up, however you’ll invariably see them with a full compliment of glyphs. This means my target audience is restricted to raiders, and possibly the occasional PVPer. The introduction of the Guild Cauldrons and double durations, I suspect, has also had a detrimental effect on potion traders, as they have both lead to a reduced need for the vialled goodness. I also have an creeping suspicion that I chose a bit of a poor time to investigate selling potions on the Auction House on my server, most of the flasks on the, for whatever reason, most of the flasks on the AH were slightly below the 50g mark, some of them far lower and all of them pretty much at cost or selling at what seemed to be a loss.<br />
<br />
Not wishing to report back that I took a quick look, decided against it, and went down the pub instead; I decided to take a punt on the two best looking marked up flasks, which were Steelskin and Four Winds. I bought mats enough for 25 of each, and set my alchemist off crafting. Very quickly it became obvious that my initial assumption that I was only going to break even was a little flawed, the procs on alchemy basically account for the profit to be made – with 25 casts of each I mustered 27 Flasks of Four Winds and 30 Flasks of Steelskin. It’s worth noting that I’ve only made 50 flasks in total (plus procs) thus far, I’ll be expanding my range and making more in the coming week, a stag do got in the way of my investigations this weekend which understandably took priority.<br />
<br />
So how did I do? well, of the 57 flasks, I’ve sold 50 of them, the Steelskin ones going better. After a slow start at the beginning of the week, selling only a handful, things suddenly went crazy on Sunday and Monday evening (my auctions had expired on Saturday night and I was in no position or state to relist them..). As I suspected, it seems that potion sales are hugely raid dependant, I know a good number of the guilds on my server raid on Sunday and Monday evenings. Here’s the P&L for my efforts<br />
<span style="color: white;"> </span><br />
<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="border-collapse: collapse; width: 526px;"><colgroup></colgroup><colgroup><col style="mso-width-alt: 4461; mso-width-source: userset; width: 92pt;" width="122"></col> <col style="mso-width-alt: 1243; mso-width-source: userset; width: 26pt;" width="34"></col> <col style="mso-width-alt: 2450; mso-width-source: userset; width: 50pt;" width="67"></col> <col span="2" style="mso-width-alt: 2706; mso-width-source: userset; width: 56pt;" width="74"></col> <col style="mso-width-alt: 2633; mso-width-source: userset; width: 54pt;" width="72"></col> <col style="mso-width-alt: 2962; mso-width-source: userset; width: 61pt;" width="81"></col></colgroup> <tbody>
<tr height="133" style="height: 99.75pt;"> <td height="133" style="vertical-align: bottom;" width="122"></td> <td align="right" class="xl66" style="vertical-align: bottom;" width="34"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: white;">mats</span></span></td> <td align="right" class="xl66" style="vertical-align: bottom;" width="66"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: white;">Ave. cost per mat</span></span></td> <td align="right" class="xl67" style="vertical-align: bottom;" width="74"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: white;">total cost of mats</span></span></td> <td align="right" class="xl67" style="vertical-align: bottom;" width="74"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: white;">ave. selling price</span></span></td> <td align="right" class="xl66" style="vertical-align: bottom;" width="72"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: white;">Net Profit per flask</span></span></td> <td align="right" class="xl66" style="vertical-align: bottom;" width="81"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: white;">total profit inc procs</span></span></td></tr>
<tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"> <td height="20" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: white;">Flask of Steelskin</span></span></td> <td style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></td> <td style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></td> <td class="xl65" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></td> <td class="xl65" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></td> <td style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></td> <td style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></td></tr>
<tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"> <td height="20" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="" name="RANGE!A3"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white;">Volatile Life</span></span></a></span></td> <td align="right" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: white;">8</span></span></td> <td align="right" class="xl65" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: white;">2g 76s 67c</span></span></td> <td align="right" class="xl65" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: white;">22g 13s 33c</span></span></td> <td class="xl65" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="color: white; font-size: x-small;"></span></td> <td style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="color: white; font-size: x-small;"></span></td> <td style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="color: white; font-size: x-small;"></span></td></tr>
<tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"> <td height="20" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: white;">Cinderbloom</span></span></td> <td align="right" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: white;">8</span></span></td> <td align="right" class="xl65" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: white;">0g 85s 91c</span></span></td> <td align="right" class="xl65" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: white;">6g 87s 30c</span></span></td> <td class="xl65" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="color: white; font-size: x-small;"></span></td> <td style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="color: white; font-size: x-small;"></span></td> <td style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="color: white; font-size: x-small;"></span></td></tr>
<tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"> <td height="20" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: white;">Twilight Jasmine</span></span></td> <td align="right" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: white;">8</span></span></td> <td align="right" class="xl65" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: white;">3g 59s 00c</span></span></td> <td align="right" class="xl68" style="border-bottom: 0.5pt solid windowtext; vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: white;"><u>28g 72s 00c</u></span></span></td> <td class="xl65" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="color: white; font-size: x-small;"></span></td> <td style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="color: white; font-size: x-small;"></span></td> <td style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="color: white; font-size: x-small;"></span></td></tr>
<tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"> <td height="20" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="color: white; font-size: x-small;"></span></td> <td style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="color: white; font-size: x-small;"></span></td> <td class="xl65" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="color: white; font-size: x-small;"></span></td> <td align="right" class="xl65" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: white;"><b>57g 72s 63c</b></span></span></td> <td align="right" class="xl65" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: white;"><b>57g 33s 33c</b></span></span></td> <td align="right" class="xl65" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: white;"><b>0g 39s 30c</b></span></span></td> <td align="right" class="xl65" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: white;"><b>276g 84s 25c</b></span></span></td></tr>
<tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"> <td height="20" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: white;">Flask of the Winds</span></span></td> <td style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="color: white; font-size: x-small;"></span></td> <td class="xl65" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="color: white; font-size: x-small;"></span></td> <td class="xl65" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="color: white; font-size: x-small;"></span></td> <td class="xl65" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="color: white; font-size: x-small;"></span></td> <td class="xl65" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="color: white; font-size: x-small;"></span></td> <td class="xl65" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="color: white; font-size: x-small;"></span></td></tr>
<tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"> <td height="20" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: white;">Volatile Life</span></span></td> <td align="right" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: white;">8</span></span></td> <td align="right" class="xl65" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: white;">2g 76s 67c</span></span></td> <td align="right" class="xl65" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: white;">22g 13s 33c</span></span></td> <td class="xl65" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="color: white; font-size: x-small;"></span></td> <td class="xl65" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="color: white; font-size: x-small;"></span></td> <td class="xl65" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="color: white; font-size: x-small;"></span></td></tr>
<tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"> <td height="20" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: white;">Azshara's Veil</span></span></td> <td align="right" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: white;">8</span></span></td> <td align="right" class="xl65" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: white;">0g 98s 85c</span></span></td> <td align="right" class="xl65" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: white;">7g 90s 77c</span></span></td> <td class="xl65" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="color: white; font-size: x-small;"></span></td> <td class="xl65" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="color: white; font-size: x-small;"></span></td> <td class="xl65" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="color: white; font-size: x-small;"></span></td></tr>
<tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"> <td height="20" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: white;">Whiptail</span></span></td> <td align="right" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: white;">8</span></span></td> <td align="right" class="xl65" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: white;">2g 05s 92c</span></span></td> <td align="right" class="xl68" style="border-bottom: 0.5pt solid windowtext; vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: white;"><u>16g 47s 38c</u></span></span></td> <td class="xl65" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="color: white; font-size: x-small;"></span></td> <td class="xl65" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="color: white; font-size: x-small;"></span></td> <td class="xl65" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="color: white; font-size: x-small;"></span></td></tr>
<tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"> <td height="20" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="color: white; font-size: x-small;"></span></td> <td style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="color: white; font-size: x-small;"></span></td> <td style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="color: white; font-size: x-small;"></span></td> <td align="right" class="xl65" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: white;"><b>46g 51s 48c</b></span></span></td> <td align="right" class="xl65" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: white;"><b>48g 65s 00c</b></span></span></td> <td align="right" class="xl65" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: white;"><b>-2g 13s 52c</b></span></span></td> <td align="right" class="xl65" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: white;"><b>296g 62s 89c</b></span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
Not a bad return for my efforts, but not great either, I suspect making things in bulk will aid things as I can just set my trade skills mod off creating stuff and click on process queue every now and then. Clearly from my experience, there’s a little more going on than meets the eye, most of my sales were not one-offs, they were bulk purchases, so people coming into the AH and buying a job lot, whether this be enough for a guild cauldron for a raid, restocking their own flasks for the next weeks raids, or simply just spotting a good price and taking advantage. I’ve also noticed the number of flasks listed varies vastly, dependant on who’s come along and made a bulk purchase. This means that it’s not necessarily the best idea to be the cheapest vendor, if the cheapest (say) 50% of flasks listed always tend to sell, you simply need to make sure you’re in the cheapest half, rather than <b><i>the </i></b>lowest price. This is in stark contrast to Glyphs, where unless you’re the lowest priced, you’ll rarely if ever sell your wares.<br />
<br />
I suspect there is money to be made from flasks, I further suspect a good knowledge of the raiding times of the guilds on your server may have an influence on their price and sales. I’d also guess that the impending content introduction in 4.2 will boost the demand and thus price as people rush to do the new content. I’m not so sure about the Elixirs yet, I’m planning to have a dabble in the current week or two and will let you know, but as they’re low value and even less widely used than flasks, I doubt their viability. Next up for later this week / next week will be a look at enchanting, if I can work out how to automate the procedure of working out what each vellum will sell for before creating it.mystichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15779886676286429342noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7160300376016866208.post-37566198394066225282011-06-14T18:11:00.000+01:002011-06-14T18:11:58.831+01:00Milling around the Auction House<span style="font-family: Courier New; font-size: medium;">My first weeks profit and report from playing the WOW economy</span><br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiW9HkIVPaU2_lPDa40i8vUnnLpITdSA_108dl5s5ph1KvLKx-jF68q4_gRJk5yd95J9VGysokvWtsO7jitw7zISlfntYWlNltWYq43a1Ugx8o0ysmWcqAbdN9M00MGV5n5tId4a3_ioY0/s1600-h/auctionhouse%25255B4%25255D.jpg"><img align="left" alt="auctionhouse" height="135" src="http://lh5.ggpht.com/-Tdw5HNl8QTU/TfdvEiPjOdI/AAAAAAAAAKM/iTXUD663DW0/auctionhouse_thumb%25255B2%25255D.jpg?imgmax=800" style="display: inline; float: left;" title="auctionhouse" width="240" /></a>A week into my playing the auction house experiment and I can report I’m in profit! Not just a couple of bronze either, with no more than 2 hours total effort (To quickly recap, I’m buying items on the auction house and reselling them either as they are, or using trade skills of my alts only, no questing or grinding is involved.). I’ve made a 300% return on my initial 1000g stake, and that’s without taking into account the stuff I’ve still listed on the AH and in my inventory which are still to sell. In addition to my 3000g profit I reckon I’ve another 5000g worth of ‘stock’. <br />
In my week of playing the market, I’ve primarily stuck to buying Cinderbloom, converting it into ink, and relisting it. I’ve had a little foray into prospecting ore, and whilst there's a profit to be made there, its more time consuming and I’m not quite sure I’ve fully ‘got’ the most profitable means yet. I (just last night) had a look at buying herbs to make potions, but as yet haven’t sold any so that’ll be one for the next update, I’m also going to look at enchanting in the near future.<br />
<br />
So, for the results; we’ll concentrate on the main trade first up, inks. In total I bought 2598 Cinderbloom at an average price of 96s 80b, which I milled and turned into ink. On average (ish) one stack of 20 Cinderbloom will produce materials for half an Inferno Ink and 5 Blackfallow Ink. In total I’ve sold 33 Inferno Inks at a little over 43g each and 75 Blackfallow Inks at just over 10g each on average. I’ll also point out that I ‘bought’ quite a lot of the Blackfallow Ink with my mage as I was dry which could be considered as artificially skewing my results – in total I purchased 300 of them at 7.5g each (I chose a value under the average selling price so as not to artificially inflate my profits.<br />
Even when I ignore the stock of ink that is still on the AH unsold from the herbs I bought, I’ve made a healthy profit of just short of 2000g which is a mark up of 77%, a good return for a weeks work in anyone's money. To put this into context, in the ‘real world’ an economist could reasonably expect a return of around 100% <b>per</b> <b>year </b>on an investment for a commercial venture. I’ve pasted a breakdown of my P&L table below (note there are a couple of omissions of purchases I made before I installed Beancounter).<br />
<br />
With the prospecting, I chose to sell some uncut gems, generally the ones that are used for dailies. Cut some of the larger gems into various types which were going for a decent price on the AH and then create rings and necks out of the rest, selling the blue ones and disenchanting the green. As you can see from the table below I haven’t sold that many of the glyphs which I bought, there were a couple of additional sales before the Beancounter install, but for some reason the glyph sales have been quite slow in the past week, and I’ve been careful not to compete with my glyph factory alt, as that would be silly, which has restricted my options.<br />
<span style="color: white;"> </span><br />
<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="border-collapse: collapse; width: 540px;"><colgroup></colgroup><colgroup><col style="mso-width-alt: 7972; mso-width-source: userset; width: 164pt;" width="218"></col> <col style="mso-width-alt: 3218; mso-width-source: userset; width: 66pt;" width="88"></col> <col style="width: 48pt;" width="64"></col> <col style="mso-width-alt: 2962; mso-width-source: userset; width: 61pt;" width="81"></col> <col style="mso-width-alt: 3218; mso-width-source: userset; width: 66pt;" width="88"></col></colgroup> <tbody>
<tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"> <td class="xl65" height="20" style="vertical-align: bottom;" width="218"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;"><b>Selling</b></span></span></td> <td style="vertical-align: bottom;" width="88"><span style="color: white;"></span></td> <td style="vertical-align: bottom;" width="64"><span style="color: white;"></span></td> <td style="vertical-align: bottom;" width="81"><span style="color: white;"></span></td> <td style="vertical-align: bottom;" width="88"><span style="color: white;"></span></td></tr>
<tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"> <td height="20" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">Item name</span></span></td> <td style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">total</span></span></td> <td style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">number</span></span></td> <td colspan="2" style="mso-ignore: colspan; vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">average price</span></span></td></tr>
<tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"> <td height="20" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">Inferno Ink</span></span></td> <td align="right" class="xl66" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">1424g 70s 00c</span></span></td> <td align="right" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">33</span></span></td> <td align="right" class="xl66" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">43g 17s 27c</span></span></td> <td style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="color: white;"></span></td></tr>
<tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"> <td height="20" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">Zephyrite</span></span></td> <td align="right" class="xl66" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">89g 70s 00c</span></span></td> <td align="right" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">13</span></span></td> <td align="right" class="xl66" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">6g 90s 00c</span></span></td> <td style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="color: white;"></span></td></tr>
<tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"> <td height="20" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">Hypnotic Dust</span></span></td> <td align="right" class="xl66" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">102g 08s 00c</span></span></td> <td align="right" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">38</span></span></td> <td align="right" class="xl66" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">2g 68s 63c</span></span></td> <td style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="color: white;"></span></td></tr>
<tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"> <td height="20" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">Blackfallow Ink</span></span></td> <td align="right" class="xl66" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">778g 75s 00c</span></span></td> <td align="right" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">75</span></span></td> <td align="right" class="xl66" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">10g 38s 33c</span></span></td> <td style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="color: white;"></span></td></tr>
<tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"> <td height="20" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">Sovereign Demonseye</span></span></td> <td align="right" class="xl66" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">94g 00s 00c</span></span></td> <td align="right" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">1</span></span></td> <td align="right" class="xl66" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">94g 00s 00c</span></span></td> <td style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="color: white;"></span></td></tr>
<tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"> <td height="20" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">Brilliant Inferno Ruby</span></span></td> <td align="right" class="xl66" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">94g 60s 00c</span></span></td> <td align="right" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">1</span></span></td> <td align="right" class="xl66" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">94g 60s 00c</span></span></td> <td style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="color: white;"></span></td></tr>
<tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"> <td height="20" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">Sparkling Ocean Sapphire</span></span></td> <td align="right" class="xl66" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">38g 70s 00c</span></span></td> <td align="right" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">1</span></span></td> <td align="right" class="xl66" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">38g 70s 00c</span></span></td> <td style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="color: white;"></span></td></tr>
<tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"> <td height="20" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">Glyph of Blade Flurry</span></span></td> <td align="right" class="xl66" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">475g 00s 00c</span></span></td> <td align="right" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">3</span></span></td> <td align="right" class="xl66" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">158g 33s 33c</span></span></td> <td style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="color: white;"></span></td></tr>
<tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"> <td height="20" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">Carnelian</span></span></td> <td align="right" class="xl66" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">296g 65s 00c</span></span></td> <td align="right" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">17</span></span></td> <td align="right" class="xl66" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">17g 45s 00c</span></span></td> <td style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="color: white;"></span></td></tr>
<tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"> <td height="20" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">Glinting Demonseye</span></span></td> <td align="right" class="xl66" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">176g 50s 00c</span></span></td> <td align="right" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">3</span></span></td> <td align="right" class="xl66" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">58g 83s 33c</span></span></td> <td style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="color: white;"></span></td></tr>
<tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"> <td height="20" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">Hessonite</span></span></td> <td align="right" class="xl66" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">5g 95s 00c</span></span></td> <td align="right" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">1</span></span></td> <td align="right" class="xl66" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">5g 95s 00c</span></span></td> <td style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="color: white;"></span></td></tr>
<tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"> <td height="20" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="color: white;"></span></td> <td style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="color: white;"></span></td> <td style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="color: white;"></span></td> <td style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="color: white;"></span></td> <td align="right" class="xl67" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;"><b>5826g 63s 00c</b></span></span></td></tr>
<tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"> <td height="20" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="color: white;"></span></td> <td class="xl66" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="color: white;"></span></td> <td style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="color: white;"></span></td> <td style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="color: white;"></span></td> <td style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="color: white;"></span></td></tr>
<tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"> <td height="20" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="color: white;"></span></td> <td class="xl66" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="color: white;"></span></td> <td style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="color: white;"></span></td> <td style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="color: white;"></span></td> <td style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="color: white;"></span></td></tr>
<tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"> <td height="20" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="color: white;"></span></td> <td class="xl66" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="color: white;"></span></td> <td style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="color: white;"></span></td> <td style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="color: white;"></span></td> <td style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="color: white;"></span></td></tr>
<tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"> <td height="20" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="color: white;"></span></td> <td class="xl66" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="color: white;"></span></td> <td style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="color: white;"></span></td> <td style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="color: white;"></span></td> <td style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="color: white;"></span></td></tr>
<tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"> <td class="xl65" height="20" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;"><b>Purchasing</b></span></span></td> <td style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="color: white;"></span></td> <td style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="color: white;"></span></td> <td style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="color: white;"></span></td> <td style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="color: white;"></span></td></tr>
<tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"> <td height="20" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><a href="" name="RANGE!A20"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">Item Name</span></span></a></td> <td style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">total</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> </span></span></span></td> <td style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">number</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> </span></span></span></td> <td colspan="2" style="mso-ignore: colspan; vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">average price</span></span></td></tr>
<tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"> <td height="20" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">Whiptail</span></span></td> <td align="right" class="xl66" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">35g 00s 00c</span></span></td> <td align="right" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">20</span></span></td> <td align="right" class="xl66" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">1g 75s 00c</span></span></td> <td style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="color: white;"></span></td></tr>
<tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"> <td height="20" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">Cinderbloom</span></span></td> <td align="right" class="xl66" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">2514g 92s 02c</span></span></td> <td align="right" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">2598</span></span></td> <td align="right" class="xl66" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">0g 96s 80c</span></span></td> <td style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="color: white;"></span></td></tr>
<tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"> <td height="20" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">Goldclover</span></span></td> <td align="right" class="xl66" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">38g 66s 00c</span></span></td> <td align="right" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">40</span></span></td> <td align="right" class="xl66" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">0g 96s 65c</span></span></td> <td style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="color: white;"></span></td></tr>
<tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"> <td height="20" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">Bladefist Sword of the Mercenary</span></span></td> <td align="right" class="xl66" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">60g 00s 00c</span></span></td> <td align="right" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">1</span></span></td> <td align="right" class="xl66" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">60g 00s 00c</span></span></td> <td style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="color: white;"></span></td></tr>
<tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"> <td height="20" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">Glyph of Death Coil</span></span></td> <td align="right" class="xl66" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">56g 96s 99c</span></span></td> <td align="right" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">3</span></span></td> <td align="right" class="xl66" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">18g 99s 00c</span></span></td> <td style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="color: white;"></span></td></tr>
<tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"> <td height="20" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">Glyph of Death Grip</span></span></td> <td align="right" class="xl66" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">18g 99s 00c</span></span></td> <td align="right" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">1</span></span></td> <td align="right" class="xl66" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">18g 99s 00c</span></span></td> <td style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="color: white;"></span></td></tr>
<tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"> <td height="20" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">Elementium Ore</span></span></td> <td align="right" class="xl66" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">578g 10s 00c</span></span></td> <td align="right" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">335</span></span></td> <td align="right" class="xl66" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">1g 72s 57c</span></span></td> <td style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="color: white;"></span></td></tr>
<tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"> <td height="20" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">Glyph of Stormstrike</span></span></td> <td align="right" class="xl66" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">17g 95s 00c</span></span></td> <td align="right" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">1</span></span></td> <td align="right" class="xl66" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">17g 95s 00c</span></span></td> <td style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="color: white;"></span></td></tr>
<tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"> <td height="20" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">Glyph of Scourge Strike</span></span></td> <td align="right" class="xl66" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">20g 00s 00c</span></span></td> <td align="right" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">1</span></span></td> <td align="right" class="xl66" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">20g 00s 00c</span></span></td> <td style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="color: white;"></span></td></tr>
<tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"> <td height="20" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">Glyph of Gouge</span></span></td> <td align="right" class="xl66" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">40g 00s 00c</span></span></td> <td align="right" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">4</span></span></td> <td align="right" class="xl66" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">10g 00s 00c</span></span></td> <td style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="color: white;"></span></td></tr>
<tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"> <td height="20" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">Glyph of Pounce</span></span></td> <td align="right" class="xl66" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">36g 60s 00c</span></span></td> <td align="right" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">2</span></span></td> <td align="right" class="xl66" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">18g 30s 00c</span></span></td> <td style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="color: white;"></span></td></tr>
<tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"> <td height="20" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">Glyph of Voidwalker</span></span></td> <td align="right" class="xl66" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">0g 85s 00c</span></span></td> <td align="right" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">1</span></span></td> <td align="right" class="xl66" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;">0g 85s 00c</span></span></td> <td style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="color: white;"></span></td></tr>
<tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"> <td height="20" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="color: white;"></span></td> <td style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="color: white;"></span></td> <td style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="color: white;"></span></td> <td style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="color: white;"></span></td> <td align="right" class="xl68" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;"><b><u>3418g 04s 01c</u></b></span></span></td></tr>
<tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"> <td height="20" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="color: white;"></span></td> <td class="xl65" colspan="2" style="mso-ignore: colspan; vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;"><b>profit with ink purchase</b></span></span></td> <td style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="color: white;"></span></td> <td align="right" class="xl67" style="vertical-align: bottom;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11pt;"><b>2408g 58s 99c</b></span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
So what have I learnt with my exploits? Well quite a lot actually, firstly, automation is key to removing the tedium from making a profit, using the Advanced Trade Skills Window to bulk craft inks is key, unfortunately milling cannot be automated, however if you’re making one type of ink then you can set it off and go do something else. This means buying in bulk is key I’d recommend creating 300+ Blackfallow inks in one shot and then the associated Inferno Inks. I’ve used dead time to mill stuff, so waiting in the dungeon queue or while people are afk in dungeons where possible.<br />
<br />
The key for me to making profit is to understand the item, its rarity, its uses and its demand. This will vary from server to server and day to day. I tend to list items for 48 hours, but ideally you want to aim for 24 hours, or even 12 if you log on daily to ensure you’re always the most competitive. On the supply and demand front, don’t flood the market, if you’ve just made 300 Blackfallow Ink there's little point listing the lot, this will only serve to give the impression of high supply and you’re almost guaranteed not to sell them. I tend to list a few stacks of 20 and then another 20 or so singles at a time. For the Inferno Ink, because of it’s price and relative rarity I tend to only list singles in auction. On the glyph front they’re pretty slow shifting so I only ever have one of each type listed, the gems often go in spurts, i.e. when someone gets a new item or items with multiple slots and need to gem up. For the items used for dailies like the lesser gems, I list a few singles and the rest in triples (as you need 3 for the daily). If the price is crap, don’t list your item, this is especially pertinent for Glyphs on my server, there seems to be a glut of people who level inscription with no idea of the glyphs worth listing them for silly money just to get rid of them; I’ve made several hundred g (pre Beancounter) buying up Glyphs for ~10g and relisting them in the 100s.<br />
<br />
I’ve been using Auctionator to help me buy and list items, this has been invaluable in saving me time and making me the most competitively priced vendor of my items. I can’t stress highly enough how vital the addons have been to my efficiency, without them, I simple wouldn’t bother.<br />
<br />
My feeling is the ink is the most profitable, and my figures would back that up, even on the time front, simply due to the variation of items created from jewel crafting ink wins. That said, I’m kind of hitting my limit for the amount of ink I can sell so if I want to make more money per week then I’m going to be forced to diversify. I’ve had a brief foray into the gem and jewel crafting markets, but due to the variety involved it’s impossible to automate properly as each time you create a new item type it requires a manual interaction (this is a Blizzard constraint on trade skills). I suspect Enchanting might be very profitable, however it seems to be extremely difficult to tell how much an item will sell for prior to crafting it as the tooltip addon doesn’t work with enchants (this is because you’re hovering over the enchant, however you sell vellums).<br />
<br />
So in summary, I think a very successful week playing the market, I’ve made a few mistakes which have cost me money, but even with the mistakes I’ve made a healthy profit at a far greater rate of return than I could generally expect through grinding or questing. I’ll aim to stick an update up on my progress as I expand my operations this week however work has gone crazymadbusy so it might be a while.mystichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15779886676286429342noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7160300376016866208.post-61964540201916043812011-06-07T18:49:00.000+01:002011-06-07T18:49:46.704+01:00Becoming a wheeler-dealer<span style="font-family: Courier New; font-size: small;"><b>My little auction house experiment</b></span><br />
<a href="http://lh4.ggpht.com/-OUV8At5q0gg/Te5kfQ0sLLI/AAAAAAAAAJ8/m_XGFtZZ3hM/s1600-h/Only-Fools-and-Horses-001%25255B4%25255D.jpg"><img align="left" alt="Only-Fools-and-Horses-001" height="144" src="http://lh5.ggpht.com/-SAWEeMzu7rI/Te5kgQedSBI/AAAAAAAAAKA/MKRLMWeuvuM/Only-Fools-and-Horses-001_thumb%25255B2%25255D.jpg?imgmax=800" style="display: inline; float: left;" title="Only-Fools-and-Horses-001" width="240" /></a>You may have noticed my posts over the last few weeks have become more focussed on the economics of the game, this is partly in that nothing much has changed for my primary focus of the priest on the holy healing front or shadow DPS, and partly because I’ve had less ‘session’ time to actually do much in one shot rather than just pottering around and levelling alts. I’m even struggling to find the time to get 5 man heroics in.<br />
<br />
My regular reader will also know that I’ve been making a fair bit of cash from my auction house adventures, primarily as a result of selling glyphs on my mage. So I’ve decided to have a look at what a true wheeler dealer could do on the Auction House. I’m not really setting myself any rules for this, other than I’m using an alt that I haven’t played since TBC, I’ve cleared out it’s bags and bank and deposited the sum of 1000g with it. I considered starting off with a smaller sum of 1g or less, but that's already been done; 1000g strikes me as a reasonable amount you’d have ‘spare’ after levelling to 85 so why not.<br />
<br />
I will be allowing myself to use alts trade skills, so for instance, I might buy a job lot of herbs, send them to my priest and convert them into potions (whilst paying for the glass vials of course). But I wont be using any collection skills, questing or grinding; all the materials will be bought from the auction house or from vendors. All of my sales will be made on the Auction House, I won’t be ‘advertising’ stuff in trade, though I’ll reserve the right to sell stuff who happen to post a WTB advert in trade while I’m online.<br />
I’ll be posting my results over the coming weeks, I’ll be concentrating on one or two areas at a time, slowly expanding my horizons as I get more familiar. I’ll also be using this opportunity to investigate the addons available to aid a trader.<br />
<br />
I currently use auctionator rather than auctioneer, as it’s simply easier to get to grips with and use. I’ve just installed bean counter to help me keep track of what’s going on and I’ve got a couple of tooltip type addons to help me assess the value of items quickly, more details in my post <a href="http://pleasefeedthetroll.blogspot.com/2011/05/making-money-on-auction-house.html">here</a>.<br />
<br />
So first up, I’m going to stick with what I know, herbs and glyphs. Glyphs are my normal business, I’m making a steady 2-5k in gold per week depending on how much time I spend messing around making them and playing the AH. I’ve occasionally ‘gone aggressive’ and bought out glyphs that have been listed for stupidly low values and relisted them, but I haven’t made a habit of it. My first course of action was to use auctionator to run through all of the glyphs on the auction house, any which I spotted for less than 20g that were either the only one on, or the next lowest was over 100g I promptly bought and relisted, I’ll be doing this from time to time whilst being careful not to ‘eat my own dinner’ and compete with my mage. I’ll be looking to expand into the other areas of gems enchants and so on once I get a better idea of what sells and what doesn’t. 200g later and I’ve bought myself about 15 glyphs and relisted about 8 (some are duplicates and I figure there’s no point listing them yet).<br />
<br />
Next up its herbs; I’ve noticed for sometime that, due to its abundance and relative lack of use to alchemists, Cinderbloom is dirt cheap on my server, often down as low as 50s each generally more around the 75s – 1g25s level. Now ink goes for a lot more, per stack of 20 (including the guild level procs) I’d expect to get around one pot of Inferno ink and up to 6 pots of Blackfallowink plus any guild level ‘perk’ procs. Inferno ink is going at 45g or there abouts per pot, and Blackfallowink is listed at 14g (which I think is a bit high to shift in volume, I’ll give it a go undercutting it but I suspect I’ll need to drop it to sub 10g per pot).<br />
<br />
After spending around 500g on herbs, mailing them of to my miller and listing them I’ve got a few hundred gold left and payment waiting in my mail box for two of the glyphs that I listed earlier waiting for me. Not a bad start. Check back in the next few days and I’ll post my first set of results.mystichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15779886676286429342noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7160300376016866208.post-70507901507444868232011-05-31T10:58:00.000+01:002011-05-31T10:58:41.112+01:00Sounding the Death Knell for ‘Old Heroics’<span style="font-family: Courier New; font-size: medium;">Are the original Cata heroics dead and buried already?</span><br />
<br />
<a href="http://lh6.ggpht.com/-PrKRBRvCcPA/TeS64DrNgWI/AAAAAAAAAJ0/kdfdAZqPn7Q/s1600-h/gong%25255B4%25255D.jpg"><img align="left" alt="gong" height="240" src="http://lh3.ggpht.com/-lgjwoEvKU8c/TeS64hEMpTI/AAAAAAAAAJ4/B_k6N62mXmU/gong_thumb%25255B2%25255D.jpg?imgmax=800" style="display: inline; float: left;" title="gong" width="240" /></a>As my regular reader may have noted, I’ve not written much on here recently; this is due mainly to me sunning myself in various parts of Europe. Hope you all had fun while I was away… Having had a mini-break from WOW of just under 2 weeks (which I think I needed as I was becoming a little jaded anyways) I waded back into ZG and ZA with my priest. Oh how I was rusty, it’s amazing how you forget the subtleties of playing your class after a bit of a break. Anyway, after five minutes of flailing about aimlessly, I remembered how to cast Chakra and all was well. I completed a few runs on the priest, but as I’m pretty much as well geared on my priest as I’m going to be from the new heroics (although the damn 2h caster staff from ZG still eludes me) I thought I’d dust off the DK tank and the druid and do a few ‘old’ heroic runs. Now I know that they’re not technically that old, more middle aged, but that seems to be the way everyone seems to refer to all of the 5 man instances apart from ZA & ZG; far be it from me to fly in the face of convention.<br />
<br />
Firstly I dusted off the tank, now I haven’t actually done much tanking since the release of the 4.1 patch as I’ve been concentrating on the mage and the priest. My ilvl was 2 below the requirement for the Zanzilar instances so I’m pretty well geared as the old heroics go, but oh how I was rusty. I actually took some time to read up and refresh my memory on tanking with the DK before venturing into an instance. First off it was Grim Batol, oh the joy (my regular reader knows how I love this place, if you’re not him, have a read of <a href="http://pleasefeedthetroll.blogspot.com/2011/01/its-grim-in-batol.html">this</a>). Not only was it Grim Batol, it was a half complete Grim Batol, their previous tank had deserted them, give them a chance I though, ‘he may have just disconnected’. Oh how wrong I was. We were at General Umbriss the penultimate boss in there, it’s really not that difficult as DPS or healer (especially with a reasonably geared tank), its a simple matter of not getting too far away so the breath can be avoided, not standing in shit, and dpsing the adds which spawn. The healer, it seems, had a death wish, running at spawned adds, standing in the shit, and generally just jumping off cliffs as much as possible, but that’s not the worst of it, of the three DPS, only one of them managed over 5k, and him only just. Now I know DPS isn’t everything, but we had a druid, hunter and a mage, regardless of how bad their gear was they should be kicking out at least double that; hell on my fire mage I was getting close to 12k on some boss fights before getting a single piece of heroic gear.<br />
<br />
After five failed attempts, five failed attempts that weren’t even close and showed no signs of improvements, I decided enough was enough. Now I hate dumping groups like this, but it was clear this was really going nowhere. I took the time to apologise and politely (I hope)explained that I didn’t feel this groups DPS was anywhere near what was needed and left, I suppose I could have pointed out that their positioning sucked, and at least two of them didn't have a clue how to play their class, but I decided against it; to be fair, I’m not the greatest tank in the world and it would have felt a touch hypocritical.<br />
<br />
So I queued for another random, after a quick food break, back refreshed, we were off to the Lost City of Tol’vir. The first pull went badly, partly my fault I suppose, but not helped by someone breaking the crowd control at least twice and the groups inability to attack the marked targets. Before the fight was over, the mage who’s crowd control had been broken had left. Replacing the departed mage we cracked on, round to the first boss. Now this boss, lets face it, is pretty easy. Don’t stand on mines, avoid the charge (which is telegraphed well in advance of it happening), and blast away. As I was kiting xxx boss xxx round for about the tenth circuit, it struck me that things weren’t going to well, we finally killed it, and I had a cursory glance at the DPS meters; none of the DPS had more than 4k!! what on earth is going on?? ok, there’s a bit of movement which effects the numbers, but not <b><i>that </i></b>much. At this point I had a quick inspect of peoples gear, it was clear that at least one of the party had cheated the ilvl requirements, the rest of the party was in low to average quality gear, but you’d expect them to be able to manage the instance easily. Not long after the group fell apart.<br />
<br />
I ran a few further instances, both on the tank and the druid healing. I witnessed it all, tanks who don’t know how to tank (no not me, worse than that), healers who had no clue how to manage their mana pool, DPS who refuse to switch to adds on bosses, and my <b><i>favourite</i></b> of all, people who were new to instances (which is fine, we all had L plates once up on a time) who were asked directly “do you know what to do here” only to cause a wipe and say, “sorry this is my first heroic, I didn’t know what to do”.<br />
<br />
Not the most enjoyable afternoons play I’ve ever experienced, but it made for a new <strike>rant</strike> post, it got me thinking, why is it so bad in PUGs for old heroics? and it struck me, they’re basically training areas for people aspiring to the Zanzilar instances and 10 man raids. People are able to power level to 85 from scratch in a few days, either not touching an instance on the way or being so overpowered, their inability to play their class doesn’t matter. They hit 85, buy the gear they need to meet the ilvl, and then hack straight into the heroics. <br />
I’ve met a lot more new players also over the last few days in old heroics, either WOW is undergoing a resurgence in new subscriptions, or there are less experienced players doing the older content; I suspect the latter. It seems people plough through the old heroics, gathering the gear they need and then jump straight into the new content; why wouldn’t you? There’s very little reward for hanging around after you’ve met the ilvl, you’ll replace most of the gear in a few runs of the new stuff anyway.<br />
<br />
So you’re not going to get too many people hanging around with better than average gear, so those players with poor gear stand out far more, they can no longer expect to be carried by the players doing the better DPS. Those players who are ‘good’ players tend, in my experience of the last few days, to be far less forgiving, I’ve seen people drop out on inspecting other peoples gear before a shot had been fired, I’ve seen far more abuse from players, who weren’t that good themselves, and generally people treating PUGs as their means of getting to better things as quickly as possible, not really caring about who they trample over on the way. The one thing I haven’t seen (yet) is ninja looting of gear which is better suited to others in the party.<br />
It strikes me that the new ZA & ZG instances are where it’s at at the moment, and as everyone is clamouring to meet the requirements to get into those they expect to be handed the gear on a plate from the lesser instances, it seems to be fostering the kind of abhorrent behaviour which no one particularly likes to see, and also exposes the newer players to the game to an environment where they’re most certainly not going to learn, and more likely going to get turned off the game quickly.<br />
<br />
Now I’m not saying that I don’t want new content, I’m already starting to feel that I’ve done the two new heroics to death, but Blizzard need to be wary of releasing new content which walks all over the existing stuff, are we going to get to a stage where the next lot of dungeons are released, which means that ZA & ZG simply become gearing zergs? With patch 4.2 coming along sometime soon, T11 gear is going to be far more attainable, I suspect so. Blizzard have already proved they are capable of revitalising old content, in the changes they’ve made to the lower level zones, but as I’ve already mentioned in many of my other posts, the lower level instances, that is, the instances that aren’t the top level heroics, are just a joke. Without a bit of care, Blizzard could be nullifying most of the content they created for Cataclysm only half a year after it was released.mystichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15779886676286429342noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7160300376016866208.post-39918087573024922972011-05-15T17:16:00.001+01:002011-05-15T17:16:05.711+01:00Making money on the Auction House<p><font size="4" face="Courier New"><strong>Getting the best return for your trade skills</strong></font></p> <p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhf859SNy80pSL6B6al7PQ3medGqv3XZazrBfZpScdUjXKohxm0DJajm99OneWu2Uuz-RP76wFdwbguGa3GeBAOs03_99HLeyya93dlJYsILQCajLTcBEWprjvgkyiiblJWeQhCjNMuucM/s1600-h/GoldCoinDealers%5B3%5D.jpg"><img style="background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; display: inline; float: left; border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px" title="GoldCoinDealers" border="0" alt="GoldCoinDealers" align="left" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOwbKxkE9iGo4A07ulfH2M-6ehZO6Srs9Ao5bDee_Zzm_MuKBaIyieSwgfAqwXI2sjebFViVHdFY0QL4cK6yeUURFbN_Ct4NcZ8-srTzX9beHy5D6o4rkFRz8LdUBGcxLhWflulCwQmtk/?imgmax=800" width="240" height="154"></a>I’ve found myself spending more and more time recently pratting about with professions, and seeing what I can do on the Auction house, with a fair bit of success. In my <a href="http://pleasefeedthetroll.blogspot.com/2011/05/is-bigger-always-better.html">post</a> earlier this month, I talked about my brief investigation into the best methods of collecting ore and herbs, I’ve currently got five crafting professions maxed out on my characters, along with mining and herbing. Added to this there’s all that ‘junk’ that you collect throughout instances that’s of no use to you but is required by others for whatever crafting they’re doing. In this post I’ll take a look at what I’ve done over the past few weeks to make money on the Auction House with my hard earned spoils.</p> <p>My crafting professions are enchanting, alchemy, gemcraft, inscription and black smithing; I’ve been an enchanter on my mage since day 1 of wow it’s something I’ve always done and always will do, both for disenchanting the green crap you pick up along the way and providing enchants to my characters and other guildies. Alchemy came a bit later on my priest, for some bizarre reason the early (official) WOW guide recommended herbing to go with enchanting, so my mage ended up with millions of herbs and no spare bank space. I started alchemy on the priest to deal with this and get a few mana pots to boot. Gemcrafting came along later, I dropped tailoring in TBC for it, not sure why so lets just say ‘because’. I started inscribing on my mage recently for two reasons, I made the druid so could drop herbing, and I was getting hacked off with paying 100g per glyph on the AH. Black smithing I’ve levelled recently just to ‘have a look’. I’ve got all of the others in the pipe line, but I need to chose one and make a concerted effort to level it next, which will probably coincide with levelling another alt once I get bored of ZA and ZG.</p> <p>I’m going to ignore enchanting on the whole, with four lvl 85 toons to keep in enchants I never seem to have enough dust or shards to look to sell much. I will however mention that since vellums came into play, its far less costly to level enchanting, simply enchant scrolls and stick them on the AH, you cover a lot of the ‘cost’ of not vendoring green rubbish.</p> <p>Alchemy and Inscription are two competing professions to some extent, both use herbs as their main source of materials, alchemy specific herbs for specific pots, inscription isn’t fussed, it just needs lots of herbs to mill. Look to use the cheaper herbs (probably Cinderbloom) on your server for inscription and use the rest for alchemy. Gemcraft and Blacksmithing suffer a similar dilemma; do you prospect the ore or make something? I’ve tended to prospect stuff, mainly using it for my own gems but I'm starting to build up a stock of gems which is allowing me to look at selling some.</p> <p>So you’ve got a million and one items you can craft, you’ve probably got as much of the raw materials you’ve collected, you’ve also got the intermediary states of these materials (herbs milled to ink, ore refined to uncut gems or smelted to bars etc.) do you look to sell just finished items or is there more money to be made with the component materials. Well the answer, as with so many of my blog posts, is ‘it depends’. It depends on the time of day or week, it depends on the prevailing economy of your server (it’s quite fascinating how they develop differently but that’s another post), and it depends on your competition on the auction house. I’m going to concentrate on inscription for this post, as that’s the craft I’m currently focusing on making money with, but first lets take a step back and talk about addons. </p> <p>Addons are there to make your life easier, there are a number of addons which can significantly reduce the time taken to craft items and even decide which items to craft. I’m assuming you, like me, utilise a collecting alt to do your collecting of raw materials, so the first addon you’re going to need is <a href="http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/altoholic.aspx">altoholic</a> which collects detailed inventories of all of your alts and allows you to see who has raw components which you may need for a recipe simply by hovering the cursor over it.</p> <p>Next up, you’ll want the <a href="http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/advanced-trade-skill-window.aspx">advanced trade skills window</a>, this allows you to custom sort your trade skills, perform text searches, and queue multiple items to be crafted. It’ll even work out which crafted items can be made from raw materials and queue intermediary stuff, e.g. if a glyph needs 2x lion ink, and you don’t have any, but you do have 2 of the Golden Pigment needed to make the ink, it’ll queue the ink first, and then the glyph for you, genius. Sadly Blizzard removed the ability for ATSW to process multiple queued items automatically some time ago, so once you’ve finished making a particular type of item, you have to manually click on ‘process queue’ for it to move to the next item which is a bit of a bind but not the end of the world.</p> <p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVIBXGTTqgE38O5OenLDK7sgXho07_ktaRENDkcFSX5Nu3DYDsoDgMTRU2UmywO5yqSe6FTTzuI1GoYmg4ywpGiMLF9fY5Lrj8FvrM-FJPQz-ZTaElLh2-aji1F2rtt78Eelcrk13GnZU/s1600-h/SellTab4.jpg"><img style="display: inline; float: left" title="SellTab" alt="SellTab" align="left" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbiNU86xwBQpLOoe3o0_SZHjBZVNZpsL6splu6lmSaBktXvXbmvxiD28NbcJF3RCLF3iD8BXt9rwnTjGMeM25Ky_bKySct2PJDc8bJ1xDCnK8TPXahyqpIGg84LnqH4nbqcFBIY57Aa6A/?imgmax=800" width="240" height="132"></a>Last, and probably most important, is <a href="http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/auctionator.aspx">Auctionator</a>, Auctionator lets you scan the Auction House in its entirety and record prices for every item on there. It also modifies the buying and selling functions, when buying it’ll automatically list similar items by price, lets say you’re looking for Ink of the Sea as shown, it’ll group all of the same priced stacks together and allow you to buy them quickly, once you exhaust that price it’ll move on to the next. Most importantly from a selling point of view, it can be automatically configured to beat the price of the same items already listed, and allows you to list multiple stacks, or break stacks down into smaller numbers extremely quickly. </p> <p>All sounds very complicated doesn’t it? I suppose it is a bit when taken as a chunk, but as you work your way into selling you’ll build up your confidence with the adds and look to find more and more ways of saving time and automating stuff. There’s one final tool, which a guildie introduced me to over the weekend (the same guildie who introduced me to <a href="http://pleasefeedthetroll.blogspot.com/2011/03/gtfo-nub.html">GTFO</a>) it’s not an addon this time though, its a webpage <a title="http://wowpopular.com/" href="http://wowpopular.com/">http://wowpopular.com/</a> which lets you see what are the most popular enchants, glyphs, gems, talents and a whole host of other things across all of the WOW realms, not only that, but it does it by class and even by spec.</p> <p>You now have the supply, and you have a bloody good idea of what the demand will be; each class and spec has a list of pseudo-mandatory glyphs, this site allows you to quickly see which these are for every class and make them, since I started using it I’ve more than tripled my sales! and this is how:</p> <p>I’m assuming you have a stock of raw materials, if not, go read <a href="http://pleasefeedthetroll.blogspot.com/2011/05/is-bigger-always-better.html">this post</a>. First of all go to the AH and perform an Auctionator scan, this will make sure your database of prices is up to date and correct. Next load up <a title="http://wowpopular.com/" href="http://wowpopular.com/">http://wowpopular.com/</a> on a companion PC (or alt tab) and list off the first specs of the first class’ glyphs. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeBtxCgCN5zvEReKP0Q3i8N2SxUngPum_eopQgCvfvSO3Oy_C0PQtNj5IcSmunSSV5aAs6ZfybhExAyEtDtZmomvTglIH4ZLHuNpP3F0BZq3MCLFjnDYuTPh8IqQjOeCRorEwqe2wyMRE/s1600-h/WoWScrnShot_051211_205930%5B7%5D.jpg"><img style="background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; display: inline; float: left; border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px" title="WoWScrnShot_051211_205930" border="0" alt="WoWScrnShot_051211_205930" align="left" src="http://lh4.ggpht.com/_nqvzdkVQbdo/Tcw-z8cc_LI/AAAAAAAAAJg/ED5H-8ddV0g/WoWScrnShot_051211_205930_thumb%5B3%5D.jpg?imgmax=800" width="323" height="218"></a>Open up your trade skill window and hover over the glyph. My first question is: is it sold on the AH for more than 85g? if not, forget it and move on to the next glyph. The most used glyphs tend to go for about 100g on my server, some of the ‘levelling’ glyphs go for as little as 2g which doesn’t cover the materials, some for far more; this is a figure that I’ve chosen which means I’m making a reasonable profit on all the materials, it depends on your servers economy, pick a figure and stick by it (although you may want to adjust this over time). Assuming the value is fine, have a quick look at the component prices by hovering over them do all of the materials (if sold individually) come to less than glyphs auction price? does it allow for a reasonable profit? if so you can craft away, with one final check – do you already have any of the said glyph, hover over it again and have a look, I tend to only ever have 1 or 2 of any particular item o<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYG3irS4g8dxafYRgziKe3XSZ_zFYHBGsfKKZC0WMd46ejB168kh2i1IsQMohZLEvWqDcVBOixe2_SqlpTB0pH5kUJVeKwU_nUsfy_ynDQz-hSlDT6yUFjo1tpnPphJtRP47MaI0tGvDM/s1600-h/WoWScrnShot_051211_205946%5B4%5D.jpg"><img style="background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; display: inline; float: right; border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px" title="WoWScrnShot_051211_205946" border="0" alt="WoWScrnShot_051211_205946" align="right" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4ms8HRlWNIN3wNJBmDUpe3bindg9PtE2FHzwdmjYqplLNGT3ElIRn6-VMclPbbOo6VWDvD3NPc7hbKbTwPhLAmjIT7ZAnlKCy8tFmqL7PSz2ppAG1tYcOYxNVO7Yy2pHbpORuFtS7-X8/?imgmax=800" width="280" height="205"></a>n the AH at any one time, keep the perception of supply down to keep the prices and profits high! Rinse and repeat for all of the glyphs applicable to all of the classes, by the end of it you’ll find you have between 80 and 120 glyphs.</p> <p>Now its time to head over to the AH and list them, this is key, you need to beat the prices of competitors on there, but you also want to stay competitive for the duration of the auction, accept that you will be undercut sometimes, but try and do what you can ot avoid it. Chose your timeframe, I always go for 48 hours, as I can’t gaurentee to be on daily, if you’re on every day you may want to go for 24 hours. As a rule, any glyph priced at or below the 100g mark I use the auto undercut function in Auctionator and list the item for 5s less. For anything for anything 100-125 I list at 99g, for anything 125-200g its 125g, and for anything 200g+ I’ll go for 150g. for any items where there are no competition I go between 100 and 125 depending on historic sale success. This may sound a bit silly, why not simply beat the higher prices by 5s too and make more profit? From my experience, if you do this, somoene will simply come along and undercut you with a sensible price, you often see auction lists with one glyph at ~250g, a couple more in the two-hundreds a few more in the hundreds and then one in the 99g area, the higher priced items will never sell, so it’s a wasted auction. </p> <p>It’s then just a simple matter of collecting your winnings and restocking those glyphs that have sold, use altoholic to check if you have glyphs still as per the process listed above. It takes me about 20 minutes to do a full sweep of <a title="http://wowpopular.com/" href="http://wowpopular.com/">http://wowpopular.com/</a> craft, and list them, I’ve quite often sold two or three glyphs by the time I’ve finished listing and I reckon on a steady 1-2000g ish profit per set of listings, this goes up a little at weekends as there are more people online. </p> mystichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15779886676286429342noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7160300376016866208.post-52537419451438647752011-05-09T09:22:00.001+01:002011-05-09T09:22:39.901+01:00LFD<p><font size="3" face="Courier New"><strong>How do you find yours?</strong></font></p> <p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9CTmbJ6LW3RVRhYbPj1HsU6btiUq0MplyljLhjwUislVlZK985tnUfieIwDXRMwbJCnXEaQAwplDIYwrKXbvFCNsuBJ66Q6wU_r7-ApRl7bXiPkyIWfpfcKBLZWqqNKPDOlVEdU1KJRk/s1600-h/Dungeon-Finder%5B4%5D.jpg"><img style="display: inline; float: left" title="Dungeon-Finder" alt="Dungeon-Finder" align="left" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKnMjA0muCdHtDfYny6lg236vxN5ltjrujhbqb-aiXeN5UkqWBQGUaJfBaDP0LfofVTL7NiZtbyc9AQ_bNKq2mGV48p8-02tPgtLGfZ30OhRqzXIq1_9YwwUid_nAY_n8p0Hu6fsSvo2o/?imgmax=800" width="240" height="149"></a>Since the 4.1 Patch hit, and before, there’s been a lot of consternation in the blogging community about LFD. Has the new reward system made any difference to the queue? has the quality of tanking gone down as a result? are groups failing more? As it’s been done to death by the rest of the community, I’m not going to even talk about the Call to Arms reward system, instead I’m going to take a look at group makeups a little more generally since ZG and ZA hit.</p> <p>I’ve got two characters of the required level for the new dungeons, my priest and my mage, I’ve been concentrating on running these two primarily, but I’ve done a couple of the ‘old’ heroics on my DK and druid. Lets take the new heroics first, the first thing I noticed is that players, on the whole, seem to be far better geared; yes I know the ilvl requirement is higher, but actually a lot of the players I see in the new heroics are wearing primarily 10-man epics, where as your average LFD player pre 4.1 would be somewhere between the basic 328 and being kitted out in blues with the occasional rep and / or valour point item. I guess this is because the raider types were either bored of the old 5 man heroics, or were running less well geared alts through them; the new instances are new content and they’re there either purely to experience it, or to top the occasional bit of gear up that they haven’t gained from raiding. Secondly, and probably as a result of seeing more raider types, I’ve noticed the skill level has gone up significantly, players on the whole, and in the face of new unfamiliar content, perform far better than I’ve seen over the past three months in LFD. Take for example a guild tank who came along to a ZA run with me this week, he’d never even set foot in the instance before, let alone tanked it. We were able to clear it, almost managing a timed run, just by giving him a quick run down of what each bosses abilities were over vent. I’ve absolutely no doubt that a lesser skilled player would have had all sorts of trouble tanking ZA in such a scenario. On the negative side, I’ve noticed people are far less forgiving in the new instances, probably as a result of being used to higher performance in raids, the most pertinent example I’ve seen being “5k DPS in here? REALLY?” kick…. (to be fair the guy was abysmal, but I’d usually expect to see him asked why his DPS was so poor and have suggested he needed to improve it before being kicked). Chatting to people both from guild and randoms, I’ve seen a few comments along the lines of, “if you don’t know the strategies in here by now, you deserve to be kicked” which is a little elitist for my liking.</p> <p>The old heroics are a complete different kettle of fish to what they used to be, I’ve been running a couple of specific dungeons on my DK to get the items I need to unlock ZA & ZG, one of which being Stonecore, on the first three trash packs, where a little crowd control and DPS focus is essential for all but the best geared groups, I’ve seen DPS pulling before the tanks ready or in one case before the healer was even in the instance! The impatience of players that you typically see in the low end instances to level up and get ma gearz is creeping into the heroics where you really can’t afford to be so gung-ho. Added to this, the queue’s do seem to be shorter, so I’ve seen a lot of people simply leaving the group if the random instance turns out not to be one of their liking, or one pull doesn’t quite go to plan. </p> <p>Come on people! do it right first time, take a little bit of time to do stuff, with some consideration for the other four in your group, and you’ll get it done quicker in the long run <em>and </em>you might even have a bit of fun (ya know, the reason you play the game) in the process.</p> mystichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15779886676286429342noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7160300376016866208.post-8195007416587661282011-05-06T09:44:00.000+01:002011-05-06T09:44:52.261+01:00Is bigger always better?<span style="font-family: Courier New; font-size: small;"><b>How to maximise your mining and herbing returns in a troll-eat-troll world</b></span><br />
<br />
<a href="http://lh5.ggpht.com/_nqvzdkVQbdo/TcOz2p27hfI/AAAAAAAAAI4/wed17uKlL_Q/s1600-h/druid-trafalgar5.jpg"><img align="left" alt="druid-trafalgar" height="144" src="http://lh6.ggpht.com/_nqvzdkVQbdo/TcOz4s9EdmI/AAAAAAAAAI8/kUzCuMPRCjA/druid-trafalgar_thumb2.jpg?imgmax=800" style="display: inline; float: left;" title="druid-trafalgar" width="240" /></a>Collecting herb and ore has seen thousands of wow players over the years spending countless hours stooped over their computer into the long hours of the night filling their bags full of <strike>crap</strike> hard earned bounty. Whether you’re a hardcore raider, serious casual player or just like dabbling with trade skills, collection of these consumables is vital. there is an argument to say you <i>could</i> do anything which makes money and then use that money to buy these consumables, or the end products they’re used to craft from the AH, but where's the fun in that? (not apart from the fact that all professions offer their own unique soulbound items or buffs only to the characters which pursue them. <br />
<br />
This post takes a look at the finer art of collecting and I’ve gone to great lengths to research it, further than in any other post, and spent a whopping great eight hours compiling information for it, that’s more than a days work! why have I done this I hear you ask? Well firstly, I needed ore to level blacksmithing (just because, ok) and I needed to stock up on herbs to feed my alchemy and inscription habits. My regular reader will know about my druid herber / miner toon, created solely to pull up weeds and smash lumps of rock (ok, so I’ve since found I quite like healing with her too).<br />
<br />
So Why a (Tauren) druid? well firstly I got hacked off collecting herbs on my mage and being constantly beaten to the weed by some git druid who doesn’t have to dismount / remount to pick the herb, which also allows you to avoid a lot of time consuming combat with local mobs. Secondly the speed at which Taurens can pick herbs; considerably faster than other races. Thirdly the instant flight form shape shift, gives a considerable performance improvement (especially when you’re competing with other miners for the same veins who have to mount up). Fourthly, the feral abilities mean you can slap down any inconsiderate mob(s) who happen to pick a fight when you’re mining.<br />
<br />
There are a few other classes which I recon would be decent for collecting, mages for their blink & disappear abilities, rogues for vanish, hunters for fein death etc. but the instant cast flight form and not having to shape shift (i.e. dismount) for herbing sold it for me.<br />
I’ve also made a point of learning both collection (discounting skinning and enchanting as they're more killing and collecting), I’ve had individual miners and herbers for a long period, and it always struck me how much time i was wasting doing one at a time, so I bit the bullet and reorganised my professions between alts to accommodate this, and wow has it paid off!<br />
<br />
So you’ve got your collector toon up to level 85, and you’re about to set out on your first run, where should you go? good question, there are quite a few questions you need to ask yourself – firstly what is your priority item? are you collecting stuff to sell on the AH? are you looking to feed a fabricating profession (like blacksmithing or alchemy) habit? or are you looking to just collect raw materials for for of the ‘destructive’ professions like inscription or gem crafting where you don't care what the raw material is, you just want to mill or prospect it.<br />
<br />
If you don’t care about the type of material you’re collecting, you might be surprised at which areas may be the most profitable for you to use (by profitable I mean in terms of both AH value and item yield), more of that in a moment. If you’re looking to use specific items, such as Elementium or Pyrite, you’ll be restricted to specific zones. Items like Twilight Jasmine only grow in one zone, so if you must have that item for a specific potion you must go to the Twilight Highlands. You need to consider both the number of available ‘nodes’ in the zone, and the comparable difficulty (i.e. time) in getting between them, for example, Zone A might have 100 nodes, but be massive, Zone B having 80 nodes but being half the size of A would generally mean that the average distance between nodes is closer, thus you’ll get more reward for your time.<br />
<br />
Pick your primary aim(s), and head to the zone which offers the best reward for them, lets say for the sake of argument, my priorities are Obsidium and Cinderbloom, I’ve got a choice between Mount Hyjal and Deepholm, as both zones offer both in abundance. Ore tends to be harder to come by, in my experience, so I pick myself a route which takes my through the most populous areas for ore, stopping off for any herbs I see, one exception for this is whiptail in Uldum, which only really grows on river banks where there are few ore nodes, so I make a detour on my route to encompass the rivers. Use gatherer to plan your route, I always also have a secondary screen up with a map of the locations of my primary item type from wowhead.<br />
<br />
The last thing to look at is competition, the time of day you collect is key. If possible look to collect at off peak times when there are few others around to compete with, i tend to do a /who ‘zone name’ before heading out just to check how many other level 85s there are there (or if there are any other names which I recognise as being miners or herbers, or both, from previous outings). There are two ways to dealing with competition; passively - you either give up and wait till later or go somewhere else. Or you go on the offensive and beat your opponent forcing them to either give up themselves or accept a reduced reward. Both will generally lead to a reduced reward for yourself, it depends on how confident you are. If you are confident you can beat them, stay and fight, if not spend your time elsewhere.<br />
<br />
So you’re off collecting, is there anything more you can do to to aid collection? well yes, of course there is, or I wouldn’t of mentioned it would I? silly. If you’re a seasoned collector, you may notice that the little yellow dots sometimes appear on the mini map after you’ve passed them with alarming frequency, this isn’t due to you being the luckiest soul alive and seeing multiple node re-spawns, I’m pretty sure this is down to server lag (i.e. you’re moving so fast the map hasn’t updated from the server to your screen in time). I tend to fly in a slight zig zag, nothing to severe, this has both the effect of slowing your ‘map movement’ down a touch in order to give the nodes time to appear, and it means that you cover more ground in the candidate areas; veins tend to spawn on staggered ridges, simply flying straight along the edge of one of these will generally put you out of range of some of the spawns. Make sure you use your downtime wisely, you have a couple of seconds when you’re hitting a vein or picking a herb, use this to your advantage and plan your next move, take a look at your map and spin round to face the direction of your next move, you can do this without interrupting the collection. This is especially important when you can see several yellow dots, you want to get to them as soon as possible else someone else might beat you to them.<br />
<br />
If you do see multiple dots on the minimap, I tend to go for the herbs first if I’m <b>not </b>worried about competition, pick the herbs quickly, and then shape shift for the ore. If there is competition in the area, hit the high value ore targets first, if you have to lose something it should be the less valuable stuff, and from experience there tends to be more miners out there than herbers. If you do encounter competition, and you decide to ‘stay and fight’ make sure you know your route well, and make sure you know any little short cuts which you might be able to sacrifice in order to get in front of your opponent, who is more than likely on a similar route to you.<br />
<br />
So what about this extensive research? Well here it is! basically I spent a couple of days over the bank holiday, when I should have been drinking, but illness had other ideas, running different zones and recording the results to see which would actually be the best. I did a quick straw poll of my guild:<br />
<br />
“where’s the best place to mine?”<br />
<br />
“where’s the best place to herb?”<br />
<br />
I didn’t qualify either of the questions intentionally, I just wanted to see what peoples initial reaction was, unsurprisingly that Uldum and Deepholm came out on top, and Mount Hyjal got absolutely no votes. Looking at wowhead, I compiled this table of the number of nodes in each zone:<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0JQn4Gefc6_E_FbcrFhiF7Vh9vkCAinkdz7l4M1yg8mu86CQuaTVBYjvTW3Osk4Q9isvIVU1LavuIMtL-6PlRZu6rvmtnCyjJZQkwn1iWxg2Zzj4VK9dgtl1intOtV6QkHJgXJIzK-3Q/s1600-h/herbs5.jpg"><img align="left" alt="herbs" height="330" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjakcgIHTd63j9PQIBCrsv8WHDnEZnmSt2b5g2MYcpZhQjY1AnEy8nEh5-qBIWhQTCSO8O3L6KPUSsn7o0kvFGyQBvI5tjnNEb119U1HsLDuzMVsixYKW22xEUtbcDfZU1nBjrBFN0lUoA/?imgmax=800" style="display: inline; float: left;" title="herbs" width="233" /></a><br />
From this table you can see that Uldum has the most herbs, Deepholm the most ore, and Deepholm again for a combined total. So it’s simple right? never leave these two zones for mining and herbing right? wrong. These numbers, expose the problems with statistics, on the face of it they’re best, but these raw figures don’t take into consideration the size of the zone (i.e. the average distance between nodes) or the competition (I'm assuming respawn times are the same from zone to zone as I have no means of gathering evidence to the contrary).<br />
<br />
So how do we tell which is the best zone then? here’s what I did: I ‘sampled’ each zone, for a few runs of between 15 and 45 minutes and took the average yields of each, I also recorded the population of the zone from a /who before and after each run (this wont take into account alliance toons in the zone, so should be used as an indication only but given the ratio of characters from your server you can take an educated guess (or create a toon on the other faction and do a /who there too, I’m just not that anal… ok, I am, but I’ve only just thought of it). I recorded the contents of my bags at the end of each run, and also made notes of the number of nodes I lost to competition, and the number of times I was forced to kill aggrod mobs when mining. I actually abandoned an Uldum run after four or five minutes having seen three other miners and two herbers in that time, in hindsight I with I’d carried on to get some figures of how bad it can actually be with sustained competition, but I didn’t, so tough luck…<br />
<br />
<img alt="nodes collected" border="0" height="209" src="http://lh6.ggpht.com/_nqvzdkVQbdo/TcOz990DLBI/AAAAAAAAAJI/WtJGU7hqsVY/nodes-collected_thumb1.jpg?imgmax=800" style="background-image: none; border-width: 0px; display: inline; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;" title="nodes collected" width="544" /><br />
This is actually a cut down version for display as the full list is too wide to fit on a web page and still be able to read without something in the Hubble range of magnification, a full break down can be found in the spread sheet <a href="https://sites.google.com/site/wowpftt/pftt-files/collecting.xlsx?attredirects=0&d=1">here</a>.<br />
<br />
As you can see from the (full spread sheet) table, my best run was in Deepholm with a massive 13.27 ore & herbs per minute, but surprisingly the next best, and probably most consistently good (if looking at total yield) was Mount Hyjal! this is due in my view, to lack of competition from other collectors who assume its rubbish, the relative small size of the collecting areas, and the ease at which mobs can be dispatched or avoided due to their lower level. When you dig a little deeper (pun intended) due to the amount of Elementium and Pyrite available, Uldum would seem to be the best, if your primary aim is profit from the AH or Black Smithing. <br />
So which is <i>actually</i> the best then? well I’m afraid there isn’t an answer any more concrete than ‘it depends’. It depends on what you’re aiming to achieve, and the competition you’re facing. For pure blacksmithing, due to the pyrite content, I’d say it's got to be Uldum, if you’re focus is ore for prospecting, then Deepholm has to shade it because you get both Elementium and Obsidium. If you’re collecting herbs simply to mill (and thus you don’t care what they are) then Deepholm is also the place for you. If you’re looking to use the herbs for potions, then you need to target the zones which have the best yield of the brand of herb you need, clearly Whiptail and Twilight Jasmine only grow in Uldum and Twilight Highlands respectively, so you’re pretty restricted. the only zone I’d not bother with is Vashir, the swimming around is too slow, and, although it’s relatively small with absolutely no competition, the nodes are too sparse. My real top tip, is consider Mount Hyjal, my own assumptions and my quick straw poll completely overlooked it, but the lack of competition means it is actually pretty good. As a collector who is after stuff for Blacksmithing, Prospecting, Inscription and Alchemy, my general hunting grounds will be Uldum, Deepholm and Mount Hyjal, with an occasional forray into the Twilight Highlands when I need to stock up on Jasmine. If you’re collecting purely for profit and sticking everything on the AH, then it’s even more dependant on your servers economy, you need to have a look at what’s going for the best prices on the auction house and tailor your runs accordingly.<br />
<br />
One thing to note, I think I’ve probably done Uldum a little bit of a disservice on the herbing front, my feeling is that there are far more herbs, but I was primarily following a mining route with occasional trips down the river for whiptail, I pretty much ignored the other herb locations.<br />
Finally, my tips for more effective collecting<br />
<ul><li>roll a Tauren Druid<br />
</li>
<li>have both mining and herbing professions on the same character<br />
</li>
<li>invest in the fastest flying skill available<br />
</li>
<li>bind your shape shift to flight form to an easily accessibly key (I use the middle mouse button)<br />
</li>
<li>avoid combat wherever possible, it slows you down<br />
</li>
<li>install gatherer<br />
</li>
<li>plan your zones / rough route in advance<br />
</li>
<li>do a quick /who to check a zones population and for ‘usual suspects’ who are regular competitors<br />
</li>
<li>decide your tactics on competition, stay and compete, or give up / move to another zone<br />
</li>
<li>try and collect in off peak times if possible<br />
</li>
<li>when you’re actually collecting an item, quickly flick to the map to reorient yourself and plan your next hop<br />
</li>
<li>don’t dwell on the occasional nodes which you can’t get to or appear / disappear as you move, there are a few bugged nodes about due to clipping or phasing issues<br />
</li>
<li>make sure you have plenty of room in your bags<br />
</li>
<li>don’t be afraid to utilise the AH, if you need Cinderbloom and its 20s whilst Elementium is 20g, spend your time collecting Elementium, sell it and buy Cinderbloom</li>
</ul>One last note, the ‘druid’ pictured at the top was an Eagle which swooped past my face in the centre of London as I was mid way through writing this post, I can only assume he was trying to beat me to a node in the centre of Trafalgar Square and sat there mocking me as I walked away empty handed…<br />
It’s also worth noting that the time I’ve spent doing the ‘research’ is by no means statistically significant, do do a proper statistical study I’d probably need to make my own addon and get lots of people to use it over a period of time.mystichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15779886676286429342noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7160300376016866208.post-19323078678022141412011-05-04T13:47:00.001+01:002011-05-04T21:31:05.512+01:00WOW, Remote access<span style="font-family: Courier New; font-size: small;"><b>to your auctions, guild chat and more!</b></span><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJdYAm_izyz788A-2nXVzbxt9tZTgooVhPyeaxiXixvC8X7jr_LmwROIgBW_sb5JHjAB5YI8t2aQXUunvyJt9THp66_tIUJu2k8gmZOlpRYu3Ff2B53bsUPEN_IO2_dBqWGPQAJhHeQS0/s1600-h/auctionhouse-screen-01%5B5%5D.jpg"><img align="left" alt="auctionhouse-screen-01" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeFySzzapBcv5peTIYJudzOxwcNgsKqWldy-9t8noUb53XXc68M3pDnuCzkiswWSYlczjrLaRkgELLKrN49UmzlSajcQ6ky9K6Js2pEcX3PBSuSF0Lgp1UZ5KNNE0bVbticiEbEFMoxOg/?imgmax=800" style="display: inline; float: left;" title="auctionhouse-screen-01" width="160" /></a>I <a href="http://pleasefeedthetroll.blogspot.com/2011/04/can-warcraft-go-nomadic.html">recently talked</a> about the potential for WOW to be played on a mobile device, I referenced the WOW remote auction house application which was available for both iPhone and Android devices. Recently Blizzard have rebranded the application to WOW mobile and upgraded it’s functionality. I’m quite surprised, and delighted, to say that it was made available to Android at the same time as iPhone.<br />
<br />
The move towards a more generic ‘mobile’ name is well deserved, no longer is it just a method of viewing (or listing items for the premium version) on the auction house, you can now view your characters in a similar view to what you’ll be used to in the armoury, you can view your guild, and information on each of the members, but most impressively you can participate in guild chat and whispers with other online members. For the moment, all of the features, barring the ability to list new auctions and collect money is free. The Blizzard <a href="http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/services/wow-remote/">page</a> seems to indicate that the chat functionality is only free for the moment. I’m not sure I’d pay £2.49 for the pleasure of doing this, but for the moment while its free, it’s pretty good.<br />
<br />
There are a few bugs, you’re required to select which of your characters you want to log in as, in order to view their auctions, the app sometimes gets a little confused as to who you are and whether you’re authorised to do things. I’m currently getting errors trying to connect to guild chat, which would seem to be a server issue rather than an app fault, and occasionally I’ve had messages not send properly which has lead to a few ‘disjointed’ conversations as my comments arrive at the other end out of order.<br />
On the up side, I’ve been happily <strike>abusing</strike> conversing with my fellow guildies for a couple of days using both wifi and 3G connections with pretty good success, and, in a stroke of genius, if you;re logged on playing the game, you can log in as an alt and have a conversation with yourself; finally I have an intellectual equal to talk to!…<br />
<br />
All in all a good effort by Blizzard, a useful app for those of us who find themselves with time to spare while travelling or not sat in front of their gaming PC. There are a few issues with the battery use, my HTC Desire lasted about 90 minutes with Spotify and WOW mobile running on the train yesterday, it would normally last me the full day with 3-4 hours of music listening and normal calls etc.<br />
Hopefully this is a sign of things to come, and I'll be able to perform rudimentary profession actions such as milling or crafting, perhaps even the odd daily quest; something like the jewel crafting quests which simply require you to craft and hand over three gems would be good. I’d really like the ability to interact with some addons or other game features, like reforging, wardrobes and even loot lists from instances, all stuff that given 10 minutes to spare on the train you’d happily do, but sat in front of your PC you’d rather be playing the game.<br />
<br />
I’d also love to see web access to the features of this app, I generally always have internet access, but am unable to play WOW itself (stupid work…) having IRC like access to guild chat would be brilliant, the API hooks are obviously there so adding a standard HTTP interface should be easy. This would also enable players to link their WOW activities to more ‘internetty’ stuff, especially pushing the social aspects of the game, you could have a Facebook of sorts for trolls, linking profiles to social networking features. Enabling this might further enable web apps to do other ‘stuff’ in a similar vein to what you see with the crappy games on Facebook. Blizzard could develop whole mini games to support their main WOW application to further engage their subscribers.<br />
<br />
This is clearly a move by Blizzard to further monetise their product, for my money the £2.50 a month on top of the WOW subscription is too much, that’s 30% on top of a monthly subscription cost. This for me puts the premium app in a niche of people who have both money, are addicted to WOW and a life style which means they can’t play that much, I’m not sure the latter two go hand in hand in most cases. If I were blizzard, I’d aim lower, sub £1 per month perhaps, or even as a subscription ‘sweetner’, i.e. subscribe for 6 months (rather than your usual 1 month) and get free premium access to the app – Blizzard wins because they get 6 months money up front, the subscriber wins because they get ‘free’ access to an app that they’d otherwise have to shell out for, everyone's a winnermystichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15779886676286429342noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7160300376016866208.post-34994660305191012472011-04-15T10:23:00.000+01:002011-04-15T10:23:50.414+01:003D gaming, is there a WOW factor?<a href="http://lh4.ggpht.com/_nqvzdkVQbdo/TagNy68U52I/AAAAAAAAAIY/BcY3JovIWvM/s1600-h/3DTV%5B7%5D.jpg"><img align="left" alt="3DTV" height="231" src="http://lh3.ggpht.com/_nqvzdkVQbdo/TagNzakpBgI/AAAAAAAAAIc/aaodcBMU7o8/3DTV_thumb%5B4%5D.jpg?imgmax=800" style="display: inline; float: left;" title="3DTV" width="240" /></a>3D is one of the buzz words around the media industry, lead by the film industry, the big broadcasters are slowly starting to come on board as 3D TV sets become more affordable. In the UK Sky is regularly showing live sports events in 3D and has recently followed that with movies, entertainment and documentaries all in 3D. I’ve worked, until recently, leading a research team who’s remit was the ‘connected home’ focussing mainly on media & entertainment provision to the home. Clearly 3D is one of the topics on the agenda here so I’d like to hope I can claim to know a little about it.<br />
<br />
3D works, very basically, by tricking your brain into thinking a projection has got depth to it. In years gone by this was done through those hideous red and green tinted glasses. Unsurprisingly these never really took off. Fast forward a decade or two and you have two prominent types of 3D viewing sets available to consumers, those using passive techniques, using inexpensive ‘passive’ polarised lenses which is the one your probably more familiar with from cinemas, or the active alternative which utilises battery operated shutters in the lenses which fire faster than the eye can detect (and cost a fortune). It is possible to get a 3D viewing experience without glasses, I’ve seen and used a TV set which gives you 3D but these give no where near the depth of the alternatives which use glasses and there are a few oddities caused by the technology which mean at certain angles you can’t see a picture.<br />
<br />
I firmly believe that 3D has a place in entertainment, but until it’s without glasses, it’ll remain pretty niche, this will happen, but it’ll clearly take time. I can however see certain specialist areas taking advantage of 3D technology, gaming being one of those areas. Before I go into gaming specifically, I think it’s help to make a few observations about 3D technology, and point out a few pet hates.<br />
<br />
Firstly, I’m sceptical that the ‘customer’ is currently at the heart of the drive behind 3D, think of the one thing which terrifies the movie industry…. have you got it yet?… that's right, piracy. Now next time you go watch a 3D film, take the glasses off and take a look, blurry isn’t it? So anyone stood there with a conventional camcorder will get the same. Even if you get a physical disc with a 3D film on, you’d have a hard time copying it (and finding anyone with a 3D TV to watch it); this will become easier over time, but currently it’s a great way of foiling the pirates.<br />
<br />
My second complaint is the seemingly mandatory requirement for all films to be in 3D regardless of whether it adds anything to the experience (and the additional 3D ‘tax’ added to the already extortionate price of a cinema ticket). Yes there are some great 3D films, Avatar and, ahem, Piranha 3D…. ok, so perhaps just Avatar, but there are also some absolutely pointless 3D additions where 3D has been added as an afterthought for the simple reason of adding 20% extra to the entry fee. Clash of the Titans is one such film, there’s literally one 3D effect, a coin toss, in the whole film, which is completely and utterly pointless. Similarly with football (soccer to all you American types), I’m lucky enough to have a local boozer (bar to you American types..) which has a 3D TV and regularly shows 3D footy, this TV happens to be situated in between two normal TV’s so, purely by luck, the viewer gets a stark comparison of the ‘normal’ versus the 3D coverage, and I’ve got to say the 2D version is far better! More often than not, when you’re getting a replay of a crucial piece of gameplay, or some insightful analysis of the game on the 2D broadcast, the 3D TV is showing some non-descript tackle which happened by the corner flag for the sixth time because it ‘looks good’ in 3D; the coverage has lost the whole point of why people watch football or films – the entertainment of the subject matter, not the 3D experience, yes 3D can compliment that experience, but it shouldn’t be the focal point; until the media industry ‘grows up’ and realise this 3D is destined to be niche. This is really exemplified by the number of punters in my local who ditch the 3D glasses after a game or two and revert to watching the 2D broadcast (and I realise my American reader’s head has probably now exploded with the amount of colloquialisms I’ve used in this last paragraph).<br />
<br />
<br />
So, “what's this got to do with WOW then?” I hear you say…. well just this; is WOW something which is suited to 3D? on balance, I think it could be, you’re view of the world is centred around a focal point (your character) with players, monsters and all of the other ‘stuff’ spanning spanning out from there. Giving a depth to instances, for example, could really enhance gameplay. That is providing its used to enhance gameplay, and not replace it; we’ve already seen ‘uber’ graphics replace most of the actual gameplay time and time again as gaming power has improved over the years. I’d almost be excited about the prospect of 3D in WOW if the cynic inside me didn’t keep telling me that it would lead to a subscription hike (well 3D is more difficult you know, so cost more! yadda yadda yadda) and that because it’s more difficult to develop would almost certainly lead to less content.<br />
<br />
The thing about 3D which, in my experience, has really got the design geeks going isn’t the content at all, it’s the possibilities it exposes in the user interface design. Any of you who’ve ever seen Top Gun will know what a heads up display or HUD is, imagine the possibilities for your UI if you had multiple layers unfolding before your eyes in the same manor a fighter pilot has with their HUD. Even better if you’re able to interact with that display on a 3D level (clearly that's a long way off).<br />
<br />
Recently I <a href="http://pleasefeedthetroll.blogspot.com/2011/04/can-warcraft-go-nomadic.html">posted</a> about the possibility of truly mobile gaming, one of the barriers to using a mobile for WOW which I identified was the screen space available. If you suddenly have the ability to layer your UI in 3D it suddenly opens up a whole host of possibilities.<br />
<br />
Clearly there's a long way to go before 3D gaming comes to the masses, the Nintendo DS already manages it (kind of) by making use of it’s dual display, so there’s clearly already some development going on in the area. But how soon before we get a 3D WOW experience? your guess is as good as mine, I’d wager it’ll be later rather than sooner.mystichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15779886676286429342noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7160300376016866208.post-18820966139491531392011-04-11T13:31:00.001+01:002011-04-11T13:36:56.525+01:00Dispelling<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-fzDVSjw0WJ2o1_JvmSfQ2GTSBFCFSngAeV1MPMlYPmwkn8v9EKHiNynIKW3W4bzM4QLVmfxj5zCnsTo6mvhyWg1xAXbIHMG2t2QzgEVKX-BtTltM5YDNJv5QWb-XgEbE_jr-BnC5_vQ/s1600-h/lucifron%5B5%5D.jpg"><img align="left" alt="lucifron" height="192" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglCHw5sO38DVCq_YtHzBqM75yJjCxInTSnx1giCEU-hNvdOLsnMnh3I7CizVJWTd6guWUzBhYUzapkH-WYlO8csJpBNpjiOlQ_poKkEXLv_xcDkbwEfIRc9qchXwjM6ZvloBsCFd6nLXU/?imgmax=800" style="display: inline; float: left;" title="lucifron" width="240" /></a>I’ve been having a look back over my posts over the last few weeks and it struck me I’ve not mentioned my primary topic; priests, nothing, nada, not a drop. Possibly something to do with priestly ways being done to death by the blogsphere until the next patch drops, and possibly something to do with me playing alts more, and being generally slack…. so in an attempt to redress the balance a little, here we go, a post on dispelling for Shadow (and any other) Priests.<br />
<br />
Dispelling (and decursing or curing poison etc. I’ve decided I’m going to use dispel from now on to cover every generic kind of ‘remove something’ simply for my sanity, don’t come whining to me ok… deal with it) like interrupts have made a bit of a resurgence since Cata, yes they were used in previous versions of WOW, but I can’t ever remember an occasion when they were needed so heavily. Yes, back in the days of Molten Core and Lucifron as a mage(which I was at the time) you’d find yourself decursing 40 people. Back when decursive was ‘legal’ you simply mashed the button 40 times and carried on. Then it was outlawed and there was uproar; dispelling classes would have to do more than just mash keys, oh the pain!! to placate people (I assume, or perhapse they realised that, actually, selectively dispelling tens of people was quite hard, and actually VERY dull). Blizzard introduced mass descurse/spell/poison Prior to Cata there was the occasional boss fight which required this, but it was occasional, and it was generally restricted to raids, not 5 mans, and you’d generally have a designated mass dispeller who did nothing but dispel. In Cata, as a healing priest, I constantly find myself dispelling nasty crap, even on trash, to mitigate healing needs, there’s some quite nasty stuff which gets thrown about. In Grim Batol, Throngus really needs to be dispelled, the end boss, Asaad, in Vortex Pinacle is one example who requires the use of mass dispel, and a whole host of others.<br />
<br />
Gone are the days when dispelling was the sole responsibility of one unfortunate in a raid, and gone are the days when only the healers are responsible for dispelling. I still occasionally see the ‘we always used to do it that way’ from the DPS, but I’ve found more and more that when I’m shadow, I need to dispel to help my healer out. It’s quite polarising actually, the good DPS players tend to be those ones who know how to use their classes secondary abilities like interrupt, dispel, and to some extent crowd control (though most classes have had some form of crowd control for years so are generally quite comfortable with it).<br />
<br />
I use healbot when I’m healing, binding my most used healing spells to direct mouse clicks, my lesser used spells with a shift-click and my dispel abilities an alt-click. I replicate this across my alts, so on my druid my most usual heal is the left click, my ‘panic’ heal is shift right click, my dispel mechanic is alt-click and so on, this really helps (I find) with the muscle memory. I used to disable healbot when I was playing DPS to give me more screen space, but recently I’ve kept it active so I can see when people need dispelling; if the healer is doing it (and not struggling) I’ll ignore them and melt away. If we’re having problems then theres an easy indication both because the debuffs are highlighted and I can see peoples health bars more clearly. <br />
I’ve actually since re-skinned healbot so it’s not so big when I’m playing DPS, I still have all of the same keys bound so I can not only dispel, but also drop out of shadow form and start healing if I’m needed.<br />
More generally, I’m not a big fan of mass dispel (in heroics) there’s for the bosses like Asad in Vortex Pinnacle where several classes can get out themselves, and anyone with any nouse is able to jump to avoid the debuff in the first place so dispel is simply used to pick up the stragglers. In most other scenarios its simply a case of knowing the debufs that mobs dish out on knowing whether they’re worth getting rid of; for instance a melee speed debuf on a caster can be left. This has got me wondering if there's any intelligence built in to healbot (or any other mod) or any other add to tell you if you <i>really </i>need to dispel someone. I’ll have to break Google out when I get home. Clearly in raids it’s a different story, its a case of choosing the most efficient method, be it mass or point dispelling. <br />
<br />
I think my point is, as a class who can dispel, you should always look to dispel, if possible, (and beneficial) whether you’re the healer or DPS; don’t assume someone else will do it, they’re probably assuming you will. Know your debuffs too! know what might be coming, and be ready to deal with it. Oh and when some muppet spams the DPS meter at you, spam the interrupt / dispel count back at them.mystichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15779886676286429342noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7160300376016866208.post-19913460614032504012011-04-05T10:13:00.001+01:002011-05-06T12:26:06.422+01:00Can Warcraft go Nomadic?<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBYTqW0-p9b418Sk7etQ2A-ZD9K7i7dMa1RaNVqTBK0zyQTjG7zsTyuSuxROuW-9W6h675uHUGRsy7zeshNTPN35S7RyI474JDwCM0cL0OYI3sbAJ2dCOwIhw10s_plAGhSJgqJQD1hng/s1600-h/nomad4.jpg"><img align="left" alt="nomad" border="0" height="96" src="http://lh5.ggpht.com/_nqvzdkVQbdo/TZmpqa1e9eI/AAAAAAAAAIM/WbcHggFipK4/nomad_thumb2.jpg?imgmax=800" style="background-image: none; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; display: inline; float: left; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;" title="nomad" width="240" /></a>38 years ago today (well possibly yesterday, or the day before, depending on when I get round to finishing this post), the first ever public mobile phone call was made. A guy called Martin Cooper wandered the streets of New York with what is akin to a brick with an antenna sticking out of the top held to his ear. Unsurprisingly this caused a bit of a stir, people quite literally stopped in their tracks and pointed. Fast forward 38 years and you’d be hard pushed to find a single person walking the streets of New York, or any other city in the developed world, who <i>isn’t </i>carrying a mobile. They’re not just <i>mobile phones </i>now either, they’re cameras, GPS, web browsers, email clients, MP3 players, games platforms, RSS readers and much, much more. Even the plain old SMS, the text message, hadn’t even been conceived back 38 years ago, in 2010 6 trillion were sent globally.<br />
<br />
How people use mobiles has changed drastically over the years, those of you who had one of the earlier mobiles may have been lucky enough to have the ability to send texts, if you were like me, you could only store three at any time on the phone, and could only send to other phones on the same operators network. Mobiles have entered into almost every aspect of modern life. The advent of the smartphone has only increased this influence, roughly half of the phones sold in the UK is what I’d term a smartphone, this is only going to increase as users demand more and more functionality.<br />
<br />
So will you ever be sat on the train playing WOW on your phone? In a nutshell, I think the answer is ‘yes’ but with some caveats. Firstly lets have a look at how mobiles are <b><i>already </i></b>influence how you play the game. firstly, logging on to the game, the thing you do at least once every time you play WOW, most people (or at least those with any sense) use an authenticator; these come in two flavours; a specific hardware dongle which you can buy from Blizzard, or a mobile application. A pretty minimal influence on the face of it, but actually, I don’t want another RSA security dongle, its a to carry around, adding the ability to have the authentication done on my mobile makes me far more likely to use it. <br />
<br />
More recent releases from Blizzard have seen the armoury made available on your mobile, you can view do pretty much everything you can on the web based armoury from viewing your calendar to playing with your talent build. Going even further, the auction house application allows you to browse the AH, look at your bids, and if you buy the ‘premium’ version you can even create auctions, buy stuff and collect your mail. It all boils down to what your definition of ‘playing’ the game is, interaction with the auction house is something that you could only previously do in-game, there's no question that this is an integral part of the playing experience. Going forward there's potential for a similar application for trade skills, and any other ‘windowed’ type interface in your normal WOW UI.<br />
<br />
But what about <i>really </i>playing, I don’t mean messing around with the AH, I mean doing things like running around and hitting things, doing quests, and herbing. This is quite difficult to do on a mobile phone for a number of reasons, firstly raw processing power; mobile chips aren’t the same as your standard desktop machines processor, they are optimised to give a balance between power, battery usage, heat and cost. They are not generally intended for use in rendering graphics (nor are standard processors, hence why you’ve shelled out a small fortune for your graphics card). Screen size is an issue, I struggle for space on a 17 inch widescreen, on a 3 inch mobile screen you’re really going to suffer. The restrictions of the mobile network is also an issue, both bandwidth and latency, we’re already starting to see broadband providers limit gaming traffic, I talked about it <a href="http://pleasefeedthetroll.blogspot.com/2011/03/net-neutrality.html">here</a>, this happens widely in mobile contracts too, most mobile providers have realised that they’ve previously given away more data capacity than they can supply (if fully used by each customer) so have started limiting mobile contracts to 1Gb of data a month. Latency is the real killer however, even if you have a bank balance the size of the GDP of a small African country, and can afford the mobile data, with latency figures sometimes in the seconds for mobile data the game play experience will be abysmal when you’re needing something sub 100ms for optimum playing experience.<br />
<br />
Wifi could be he answer to this, most, if not all, smart phones have wifi built in, most come with free hotspot wifi access with the contract. So if you happen to be sat near a wifi hotspot you <i>could</i> be onto a winner. <b>However,</b> even if you have a super-duper mobile with a massive processor, graphics card and a decent wifi hotspot in your location (is anyone else remembering the brick sized original mobile?). Even given all of that, you’re still stuck with a 3 inch screen, no keyboard, and no mouse; I don’t know about you, but I have all my number buttons bound, plus a few other specials, plus movement keys, AND for healing I use a combination of alt, shift, ctrl and mouse clicks to cast particular spells. On a mobile, this simply isn’t going to happen. There may be a niche of gaming specific mobile phones, the Sony Xperia already aims to do that with PlayStation games, but for this to be included in mobiles as standard is a long way off. There’s potential for the use of accelerometers and other innovative control and UI developments to aid this, but the implications for user interaction will always put you at a disadvantage to players sat at a standard desktop. If you don;t believe me, imagine trying to play something like Counter Strike on an Xbox against someone using a keyboard and mouse; you wouldn’t stand a chance. There's no possibility of having mobile only realms, this removes the attraction of being able to do stuff with your main characters while on the move. There’s potential for the development in 3D screen technology to solve some of the UI, I’ve got a post in the pipelines around this, as it’s such a big topic, which will be coming along in due course.<br />
<br />
Even assuming someone can solve <b><i>all</i></b> of the above, any iPhone or Android user will still point out, that unless you’re less than 1m away from a power socket, you’re still screwed. This kind of defeats the object; unless you fancy carrying a car battery around on your back, you’re not going to last more than 20 minutes before your phone dies, I barely get 45 minutes of hardcore Angry Birding out of my phone as it is, and that’s relatively non-existent on the graphics load front compared to WOW.<br />
<br />
You can actually ‘<a href="http://wow-mobile.blogspot.com/">play</a>’ WOW now if you install a remote desktop app on your desktop which basically screen scrapes the desktop display and punts it to your mobile, but this is very clunky and adds even more latency to the link. I’m convinced gaming, and specifically WOW has a future on mobile, it almost certainly wont be the same experience as playing via your PC, things like pvp, raiding or instances strike me as being very difficult, but why not offer the ability to herb, mine, fish, possibly one or two quest zones aimed at mobile usage (i.e. areas which aren’t going to tax the processing load, or require every spell or ability in your kitbag. I’d certainly like to spend my train journeys collecting herbs or mining, it’d save you guys having to read this drivel…mystichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15779886676286429342noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7160300376016866208.post-22083200487345777162011-04-03T17:55:00.000+01:002011-04-03T17:55:52.078+01:00Levelling trade skills: pure, pure tedium.<a href="http://lh4.ggpht.com/_nqvzdkVQbdo/TZGuOfCNx1I/AAAAAAAAAHw/_he18yinl88/s1600-h/tedious%5B2%5D.jpg"><img align="left" alt="tedious" border="0" height="165" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2uPhjCz0Uv_prKIl4B0qSPh-wdFB6H3rZocv1yWVzfwm-aUpgFHeR93XJQllUGJ-wY-JwQm4KBQVi8ywDFWq2FI-iu9gEAOqhb222mwZHW6xYT-ev9R3yi6v_ytvROHVsHsBe8CZ7tqY/?imgmax=800" style="background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px; display: inline; float: left; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;" title="tedious" width="244" /></a>I’m sat here, sad as I am, trying to level blacksmithing from zero. It’s gash, I mean really gash, I’d derive more enjoyment from continually inserting hot needles into my left eye for three hours than the mindless grind it’s taken to level from zero to 250 in blacksmithing.<br />
<br />
<br />
Ok, rant over, on a serious note, why? WOW is supposed to be a fun game, the endgame is slanted towards various trade skills to maximise tanking / dps / healing output and the ;best’ trade skill for particular roles or classes tends to change now and then as new releases are a made which forces the more hardcore players to drop one skill and level another. should this really take the best part of 10 hours to do? (if you ignore the time spent gathering the materials).<br />
<br />
EDIT: I wrote this post almost a week ago but have been sitting on it as I published the GM interviews, in the mean time the <strike>gits </strike>insigtful people over at wow insider posted a similar article <a href="http://wow.joystiq.com/2011/03/31/gold-capped-milling-and-prospecting-changes-ahead/">here </a>which covers some similar topics, I didn't steal their ideas.... honest, I wrote my blog post first... :-)<br />
<br />
<br />
Added to the fact that with blacksmithing it takes roughly 8 seconds to create and item, you also need to smelt the ore, AND Blizzard in their wisdom removed the ability for addons such as the Advanced Trade Skill Window to queue multiple items (you now have to manually click ‘process queue’ to move to the next item type), so you cant even go away and make a cup of coffee, or do something slightly more interesting like admire the growth rate of your garden while your toon hammers his head against the anvil repeatedly. Whether it’s blacksmithing, or any other trade skill, the story is pretty much the same.<br />
<br />
Is there not an easier way? I think so. First up, I’d like to state that I don’t think trade skills should be given to players on a plate, there should be some effort involved in levelling a skill, but the top level has gotten so far beyond that of the original level that it’s just another tedious grind. Levelling to the top level in any profession takes an enormous amount of materials see <a href="http://www.wow-professions.com/wowguides/wow-blacksmithing-guide.html">here</a> for blacksmithing as an example; its fair to say that people levelling trade skills support the WOW economy in a number of ways, in increasing demand from purchasing materials from the auction house, in reducing supply, from not offering those materials they have collected for sale on the auction house (or making the herb and mining nodes more sparse). Now I’ve levelled two characters recently, both of which have been miners and herbalists, and I’ve banked everything I’ve collected for just such levelling as I’m trying to do with blacksmithing; even with all this banked ore, I still found myself buying stacks of the stuff from the auction house, or heading out to low level zones to collect the stuff. Now I’m not the type of player who can see a yellow dot on my screen and not go collect it, this would indicate the materials requirement is far over and above the amount a single character would collect in the course of levelling, even with the occasional trip out to grind metal veins or herbs.<br />
<br />
This may not necessarily be a bad thing, and may be by design; it keeps the the effort required to level a trade skill, and it keeps the older content useful (although barely in my opinion). However when you consider trade skills were meant to be levelled in the main part with characters, for those of you who started a character back in vanilla WOW who levelled their trades with their character it was a straight forward task of making stuff as you got the material; your trade level stayed roughly in check with your characters, with a little bit of extra effort here and there, and the final 50 points or so taking the additional effort once you hit 60. The trouble is, this final 50 points or so existed at the end of each expansion, so platos have developed at the headline skill level from each new release which are a complete pain, rather than just the end game final 20% of levels which <b><i>should</i></b> be difficult. Here are a few suggestions for Blizzard on what I’d like to see to improve things:<br />
<br />
Re-evaluate the amount of raw material required to level certain trade skills: blacksmithing seems far more difficult than alchemy for instance.<br />
<br />
Reinstate the ability to queue trade skill activities with addons such as the advanced trade skill window, I understand the reasoning for removing it, but it simply doesn’t do what it’s intended to, it just makes the task of levelling more arduous.<br />
<br />
Add the ability to queue multiple ‘breaking’ activities; disenchanting, milling and prospecting are even worse than crafting skills, at the very least let me mill by stack rather than per 5, but preferably add the ability to queue multiple stacks of material. I acknowledge this might be dangerous with disenchanting, so how about only allowing it for greens.<br />
<br />
Remove the levelling, platos which exist in the last 20% or so where, in previous releases, they where the top end of the trade skill level.<br />
<br />
Add more lower level ‘multiple level’ items; most of the crap which is made is simply vendored anyway, why not add more items which cost 5 times more to make, and add 5 levels. Or even better, taking into account my suggestion above, just up the level boost of a few items and leave the material requirement the same.<br />
<br />
Look at the possibility of buffing players ability to level trades from other tradeskills, how about an enchanted blacksmithing hammer which adds an x% chance to double the level gained, a potion of superior tailoring reducing the amount of cloth required to make a bolt for the next hour, or a scroll of mass disenchant which allows you to disenchant every green item in your inventory. etc. etc.<br />
<br />
Add the ability to ‘pay’ for bulk levelling at a trainer; rather than going away and self teaching the first (say) 300 levels in a crafting skill, why not turn up on the doorstep of your profession trainer with a set amount of materials, or a bag full of gold equivalent to the value of those materials which it would have taken you 6 hours to churn through and just exchange it for a level boost. This would still require the materials, or currency value of those materials, so wouldn’t harm the economy (and done right could be used to boost it). I’m not suggesting that this replace the whole levelling process, just a percentage of it – perhaps only available to accounts who have one character with a trade skill at it’s maximum level? This is exactly what happens in real world industry today, you can go to a library, read about stuff and practice yourself, you can learn on the job as an apprentice, or you can get a ‘boost’ by going on an intensive training course – the training course accelerates the learning curve for the easier, apprentice level stuff, but the artisan level skills only come with practice.<br />
<br />
Whatever is done, do <b><i>something</i></b> to make trade skills less tedious and more desirable, WOW is a game, it’s about entertainment, much of the recent development of WOW has been to make the game more accessible to the mass market, take the same principles and apply them to trade skills!mystichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15779886676286429342noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7160300376016866208.post-66050679088875827482011-03-31T09:40:00.000+01:002011-03-31T09:40:44.848+01:00Another day in the life of a Game Master<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1j3KrL-Q0FkxNbyikN4v64YaSh-HhepsXcgJns7btT_FXPvR37gBAfHYgBEACmN-Xfpk0Kn6ULPyaFPJfzseYNRpqAKXhNngAz8aUkJB8lRPfIvI0BaEIucgABDYW0nB0nJs1LqVYx2s/s1600-h/leprachaun2%5B2%5D.jpg"><img align="left" alt="leprachaun2" border="0" height="244" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhReN5Zc51TRcyFo0rGlsriwtmIgvurFxUX84yDbowqttnv6huV-sQ_-FFilObpaXuB8Kk3XZX8tlcMJLdABsh8xepIBPJYVo7Gxu7FuDRL3Ph3GcqGqEni257diJKV4sfGJmTPWDq4eT0/?imgmax=800" style="background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px; display: inline; float: left; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;" title="leprachaun2" width="181" /></a>A continuation of this <a href="http://pleasefeedthetroll.blogspot.com/2011/03/day-in-life-of-game-master.html">post</a> the second in the series of my friendly chat with one of those shadowy figures who occasionally appear and solve all of your problems, if only real life had a submit ticket button….<br />
<br />
<b>Mystic: We’ve talked a little about your interaction with players, do you, or your colleagues, ever receive much feedback from WOW players?</b> <br />
<br />
<b>GM:</b> Well I can't really comment on others but I know I have popped up on a few sites for either what I have said, what I have done, and in some cases just someone wanting to shoot me some praise to the bosses. You can never tell when someone will take a screenie and then you are [in]famous on WOWbash or the forums.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>Mystic: What’s the strangest, funniest, and most bizarre things you’ve had to deal with?</b> <br />
<br />
<b>GM:</b> Jees, where to start! I've seen it all from bosses who would not die, players stuck in things which boggles the mind as to how they got there, but the one that would stand out most from my time would be a Gnome who had a strange thing happen every time he logged in: I picked up a ticket which instantly made me go “ya right, no way, this could be going on!” <br />
The player was online so I popped in-game and asked him to show me what was going on...sure enough the player logged out and came back in quite fast; and there it was plain as day for even me to see! What was it you might ask...well the player would log out with brown hair and some facial hair....come back in with a pink mullet and his face would be totally new! EVERY time he did this he would have a new face / hair. We all laughed our asses off at that one, thankfully the player saw the funny side too. Anything can happen in this game and sometimes when it goes wrong it brings out a laugh or two. <br />
<br />
<b>Mystic: Enough about us mere mortals, lets talk about you; what are the best and worst points of being a GM?</b> <br />
<br />
<b>GM: </b>The best part would be getting to help someone who really needs it at the time. It's great to know you that someone who has come to you for help has gone away smiling and their issue sold. <br />
Worst parts come in as the opposite of above; when you have done all you can and things just don't pan out the way you wanted. Such things can ruin the customers day and also yours when you know there is just not enough there to help. [doesn’t it just make you sick – Mystic] <br />
<br />
<b>Mystic Are there any perks to the roll?</b> <br />
<br />
<b>GM: </b>There are a few yup! Some nice pets, early access to beta releases of games, Previews and the chance to meet some really cool figures who are high up like DEVs etc. <br />
<br />
<b>Mystic: Has being a GM had any impact on how you play the game, has it affected your enjoyment at all?</b> <br />
<br />
<b>GM: </b>Yes it has in a few ways. The main one is an inability to switch your brain off while in game [as a player]. Every chat line, every moan, sick joke or flippant remark is scanned and you are mentally taking action and planning what you will do. Coming home from a long shift and then logging in to relax and play is very hard. <br />
Now don't get me wrong, I still love the game and enjoy it but sometimes you just look at the screen, see some crap kicking off and you just say 'meh' and log right back out. <br />
<br />
<b>Mystic: Do you generally tell friends in game that you're a GM, and why do you / don't you?</b> <br />
<br />
<b>GM: </b>I do tell people what I do who are in the guild or close friends, <i>but</i> these are people I have played with for years and I know I can trust. The whole thing is it is a very touchy subject. <br />
I'll put it to your readers [reader, I still don’t think it’s plural – Mystic] this way. Guild <i>'Awesome Sauce'</i> is kicking ass in raids and is one of the best raiding guilds on the '<i>EU-WOWnub’ </i>server. Now, people get wind that there is a GM in that guild. People come up with the idea that the GM is giving them extra items and using his powers to kill the bosses fast for them. The guild begins to get a crappy name and then someone decides to name the GM. The GM then gets whisper upon whisper and is forced to leave the server and Blizz are forced to disband <i>'Awesome Sauce'</i> due to the GM being named. <br />
Telling people can be dangerous not only for the GM but also his guild. It only takes one spanner to ruin it for a large amount of people. This is why I only tell people I trust, as I know they will not screw me, or the guild over. And just in case people are wondering...no I am not in a guild called <i>Awesome Sauce, </i>I’ve made it up for the example, so don't bother looking. [I’ve just checked, there are loads of Awesome Sauce guilds out there, but not on the WOWnub server… I’m not even convinced it’s a real server…. Mystic] <br />
<br />
<b>Mystic, so we’ve talked about the players, we’ve talked about you, lets switch tack again and talk about me…. From personal experience, and it’s one of my little gripes, there seems to have been a big influx of gold sellers in game spamming trade and general channels recently. Why do Blizz see Gold sellers as a problem (I know the answer but I want you to tell me ) What is Blizz doing to stop this? Is there anything the community can do to help?</b> <br />
<br />
<b>GM: </b>Well the main issue with this is that it can destroy a servers economy. If everyone has 1000000g, you start to see hyper-inflation [ok I reworded the bit about hyperinflation – mystic] the simplest items begin to cost stupid amounts, which forces new or honest players out as they simply can not buy anything. Blizz are very active on putting the smack down on these guys. If they are in game, just right click the name and hit report spam. Once this happens it lets the GM team know and then they go bye bye via the ban hammer! <br />
As for what the community can do they can do the report spam action above and of course do not buy gold. Read this line carefully folks then read it again, WE SEE ALL. When we catch people doing this there is no mercy. You can have your account banned and the gold will be removed which means you can not buy that item you wanted, <b>plus </b>you are out of pocket on your real cash which you spent to buy the gold. Be smart and work for your money, it's better to work for your items and earn them fairly <br />
<br />
<b>Mystic: on a similar vein, as someone who’s suffered in the past from key loggers, account security seems to have been a big issue at points over the history of WOW, what tips can you give to people to avoid having their account compromised?</b> <br />
<br />
<b>GM: </b>Yes it is! Now I know a lot of people already know this but I’d like to stress account security is the<b> players responsibility</b>! It is up to you to secure your account, just as you can’t really blame the police when you get burgled if you’ve left the front door open with a big neon sign saying “out to lunch”, you can’t expect Blizzard pick up the pieces if you go posting your account password on Facebook. No one is going to hold your hand on this one! here are a few tips: <br />
1) DO NOT SHARE YOUR ACCOUNT! I can’t stress this highly enough, giving your personal login details to anyone is a security risk, even if you trust them, they are unlikely to hold your private data in as high esteem as you do. <br />
2) Get an authenticator – this makes the account 99.99% un-hackable. [ahem <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12784491">possibly</a> ahem – Mystic] <br />
3) Be smart and do not go to stupid sites such as www.blizz.freemount.dontbestupidcom.cn – this links to gold sellers, they often obtain gold through these means, and will have no qualms about taking your money from you and then stealing your account details to take gold off you 5 minutes later <br />
4) Same as number one <br />
5) Scan anything you download to avoid Key loggers...AVG free FTW!! [other virus guards are also available – Mystic] <br />
I've had my account for 5 years now and followed those steps. To date I've never any troubles. <br />
<br />
<b>Mystic: well that’s about it, I’d like to thank you for taking the time to answer my questions on behalf of me and my reader, is there anything else you’d like to mention? [hoping he doesn’t go off on another Blizz corporate-gush – Mystic] </b> <br />
<br />
<b>GM:</b>I guess what I would like anyone who maybe reading this to take away is GMs are here to help, are human, and are generally gamers too just like you. People think we are here to just thank for reports etc. but that is not the case. Every one of us on the other end of those in game whispers are players at heart, it's how we got the job! If we can help you in anyway we will, but if we can't it's not because we don't want to, it's more of case we are missing something vital. Treat us in the way you would want to be treated if the shoe were on the other foot [or hoof – Mystic] and we will all get along just fine! <br />
As a closing note I'd like to thank you for the questions and I hope this shines a bit of light on the subject. Have fun guys and I hope you all enjoy WOW for now and in years to come! <br />
<br />
<b>And that’s it for the moment, if you’ve any more questions for our friendly leprechaun then please let me know and I’ll pump him for information next time there’s a rainbow.</b>mystichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15779886676286429342noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7160300376016866208.post-20058361188877761112011-03-29T13:56:00.000+01:002011-03-29T13:56:03.176+01:00A day in the life of a Game Master<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCPJhtDBkTr6_p9I9v888jwMRoopsWkYl99SgT1LKSn_6x74jeJKTCk9b-v00UH_Bkdt2o4wEFYFa1uoeeHTrG198ZJRNoFqNhzePGXEPhS5SCAVAdXD8Brr4jfCaxOLi_1RuAuDPzpDc/s1600-h/leprachaun%5B2%5D.jpg"><img align="left" alt="leprachaun" border="0" height="185" src="http://lh6.ggpht.com/_nqvzdkVQbdo/TZHMlJCgn3I/AAAAAAAAAH8/N_ePLsCnIMo/leprachaun_thumb.jpg?imgmax=800" style="background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px; display: inline; float: left; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;" title="leprachaun" width="244" /></a>One of the downsides to any company offering a successful product or service is, as they gain popularity and grow, they start to lose that human face and interpersonal touch which local organisations such as a corner shop have. This is often the very thing that attracted people in the first place; the ability to know the supplier of your product or service by name, and interact with them personally should you as a customer desire. The games industry is no different, gone are the days where software houses, consisting of a couple of mates in someone's garage cranked out best selling video games for less than the price of a round of drinks at some swanky London wine bar; the gaming industry is a multi-billion dollar industry, WOW is one of the biggest, if not <b><i>the </i></b>biggest product of this industry. Being an MMORPG, WOW is in a strange juxtaposition of being a game whose very fabric lies in social interaction, being run by a seemingly faceless multinational corporation. Blizzard have gone to great lengths to retain their community spirit, encouraging, and in some cases actively supporting, fan-sites, blogs, forums. Providing their own conduit to developers through their own forums and introducing the thoughts of the developers with things like Ghostcrawler’s blog. But there’s one person, that every WOW player has, on occasion, spoken to and interacted with, but will almost certainly know nothing about; the Game Master. Who are they? what do they do all day? what makes them tick? I’ve managed to get access to the inner thoughts of one of these elusive leprechauns, and I’ll be attempting to bring a human face (or is that a troll face?) to the mysterious entity that is the GM. Over the course of my next two blogs will be asking some questions about exactly what goes on in the day to day life of a GM, and what makes them tick.<br />
<br />
<b>Mystic: Blizzard are keen to highlight the fact that their staff are keen gamers themselves, what initially attracted you to becoming a GM?</b><br />
<br />
<b>GM:</b> Well I suppose the thing that attracted us all at first was those stories you hear of GMs doing all this cool things like making mobs appear, turning everyone in to Gnomes etc. <br />
<br />
<b>Mystic: What comprises a typical working day or week for a GM?</b> <br />
<br />
<b>GM:</b> There’s no such thing as average... depending on what has gone on; patch days, server or network issues, or anything else which mean the queues can explode in untold number of ways. Typically we’d work a healthy 40 hours a week of non-stop pew-pew of the [support request] queue. There are several different shift patterns available to GM’s from a standard five-day 9 till 5 to 4 day shifts which cover other hours; whatever time of day there are always GMs sitting at computers waiting to help. <br />
<br />
<b>Mystic: </b><b>How does your workload change when there’s a major patch release, or network problem?</b> <br />
<br />
<b>GM:</b>Well with patches it's all new codes / fixes which, as with any other patch can either be very good and go smoothly, or occasionally be a horrible one where things go wrong and it goes south, quickly, after a 'fix'. In some cases we might see a NPC not die for instance....now you take into account how many people are dying to play this new content and suddenly nothing works. First thing they do...BOOM ticket! It can be as if a million voices cry out, but unlike Alderaan, can not be so suddenly silenced.<br />
Reports are handy though to show us what’s up and we can then spring into action. But you can't stop the flow once it starts hehe. <br />
<br />
<b>Mystic: Many technology companies, such as Blizzard, offer their employees the opportunity to work from home, are you able to do this or are you solely based in an office?</b> <br />
<br />
<b>GM: </b>Office all the way! There is so much that could go wrong if a PC at one of the GMs homes was key-logged, the office offers a far safer and more secure environment that it is simply not an option to work from home. <br />
<br />
<b>Mystic: What interface do you have into wow?</b> <br />
<br />
<b>GM:</b> The only thing I can say about this is we use the same base client players have but with a few additions to help us help you guys. Other than that..it's a secret! <br />
<br />
<b>Mystic: Being a GM strikes me as being quite a solitary role, you pick up a request, deal with it, move on to the next one, is this the case? or do you work in a close-knit team with the other GM’s?</b> <br />
<br />
<b>GM: </b>We are all in teams as it gives us access to more ideas, points of view, options etc. A second pair of eyes looking at what you may see as a hopeless case can yield another way to deal with the issue at hand which is a great thing! <br />
The teams are set like most others out there, we have a head guy who acts as the final word on issues then there is the rest of us ground troops, so to speak. Most teams would have about 10 people in them and the people on the team have different skill sets to assist players. We can work alone most of the time but when something pops up we can just ask for help <br />
Don't know if you want to plug another site (always – Mystic), but <a href="http://www.wowwiki.com/Game_Master">http://www.wowwiki.com/Game_Master</a>, has some other details people may not know! <br />
<br />
<b>Mystic: Do you all work on the same server? <br />
</b><br />
<br />
<b>GM:</b> No such thing for us really. We help everywhere when we are needed, being tied down to one server would be a pain if things get quiet! Any EU player that needs help will get it from any GM who is free to do so.<br />
<br />
<b>Mystic: Do you have any regular contact with the developers and testers of WOW?</b> <br />
<br />
<b>GM:</b> Not as much as some of us would like, but they are always there for us to give them a poke if the need is called for. As you can imagine these guys in the dev team are <b><i>very </i></b>busy guys and girls; trying to keep the game fresh and new while fixing bugs keeps them on their toes from the moment they set foot in work. <br />
<br />
<b>Mystic: Do you have any influence over what goes into the patches / future releases?</b> <br />
<br />
<b>GM: </b>Some yes, and I can already see people face palming after this, but the suggestions forums, or what used to be the suggestion forums, have done more for this game than any GM will ever do. We would mainly give feed back [to the developers] on bugs and other minor issues. A player with a well thought out idea for a game is king! I don’t mean the most common, ill thought through ‘suggestions’, which we encounter all the time, which are along the lines of “ NERF MAGES!!!11J!” and “DKS SUk BUFF EM OR I QUIT “. The suggestions which make a difference to the game are those which have been though through and well articulated. [DOES THAT MEAN THE ONES IN LOWER CASE? – mystic] So if you have an issue, <b><i>think </i></b>about it first, then act; post your comments on the forums, but don't be one of those NERF guys!<br />
<br />
<b>Mystic: Have you or any of your GM team (or anyone else you know) been referenced in-game with one of the items / characters? And why?</b><br />
<br />
<b>GM: </b>The devs are a bunch of smart asses when it comes to things going on in the world alright. I'm sure we have all come across Haris Pilton, Ophera Windfury etc. They love to throw these little Easter eggs in where they can. <br />
A lot of people who see these usually go ' LULZ at the name ' which kinda cheers people up sometimes. But for every joke they also tend to go out of their way to show respect to some people by including them in game or having something small dedicated to them; <br />
I'm not sure if anyone reading this(anyone? my regular reader is not just anyone! – mystic) remembers a young kid in the US called Ezra Chatterton. Ezra had a brain tumour and, through the Make-A-Wish foundation, was able to visit Blizzard headquarters. Here he spent the day as a dev and even made an in-game item and quest for the game up while he was there!<br />
Sadly in 2008 on the 20th of October Ezra passed away. The devs decided to give this young guy a spot in the history books buy making that quest active, creating the item to be used in game etc. The NPC he created, Ahab Wheathoof, still stands in Bloodhoof village today and they again then made him an Elder in Thunderbluff as part of the Lunar Festival.<br />
Again all these little things they have popped in game can be looked up! Just google WoW Easter eggs...you would be surprized at how cool the devs are.<br />
<br />
<b>I’m afraid that’s all you’re getting for now, if you like what you’ve read and want to hear more, check back in a few days time for the final part of the interview.</b>mystichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15779886676286429342noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7160300376016866208.post-33147697421756137382011-03-28T13:17:00.001+01:002011-03-28T13:19:05.210+01:00GTFO! nub.<p><a href="http://lh4.ggpht.com/_nqvzdkVQbdo/TZB8tqvZv4I/AAAAAAAAAHo/BIo-3M-5l98/s1600-h/gtfo%5B2%5D.gif"><img style="background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; display: inline; float: left; border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px" title="gtfo" border="0" alt="gtfo" align="left" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTfvMoFhAX1Z70OILmE9b-39FXEQyF-wyuNZp310I2FWUu9xljGxWMIbg0affsgbigbN1qY5nY-9aIAk8-FsQBKzM0lRwuKfr60rWd0dNGOszeqK2XXpGj_S3ljusRrkAf1HBEcVglFn8/?imgmax=800" width="240" height="240"></a>I got summoned into a guild 25 man last week, they were a touch short again, and in a clearly desperate attempt to scrape the bottom of the reservist barrel they asked me along. Cho’gall was the foe, a boss that has eluded the guild for longer than it should have done. This is a completely new fight to me, I’d not even read the strategy, other than a cursory glance over the BoT boss list a while ago, as I hadn’t planned on being here any time soon. I’d learnt from my previous mistake of unpreparedness, and had a stock of flasks, food and assorted other niff-naff to aid my performance. A quick run through the strategy text on the guild website and a few pointers from the raid leader over vent (fortunately we were waiting for one of the raid to reboot from a crash so I didn’t waste anyone's time) and we were off.</p> <p>I’ve, on several occasions in this blog, referred to my basic cookie cutter heroic strategy:</p> <p>"don't stand in the crap on the floor or you'll die" </p> <p>"sometimes the crap on the floor will keep you alive, stand in it"</p> <p>"kill the adds please" </p> <p>"if you can't kill it, kite it"</p> <p>Cho’gall, conforms nicely to these rules, with one slight addition on positioning; when there are no adds you need to stand <strong>RIGHT UP </strong>his chuff, I mean really close, the whole raid; this is for interrupting the worship ability. When the corrupting adherent add is summoned the raid disperses, nukes it and then forms back on the afore mentioned bosses chuff, burning down the rather nasty blood of the old gods adds which spawn from the corpse of the first add.</p> <p>This quite often leads to a smear of raid members behind the boss, rather than a nice close group. This makes interrupting rather difficult, but also means it’s particularly difficult to spot the assortment of nasty crap on the floor. there’s also an abundance of crap spawning as you move to kill the adds, and move back the the boss which must be avoided; given the speed movement must be complete to be in position, this is quite difficult, especially when you have a high “i don’t know what I’m doing coefficient” multiplier…</p> <p>After a couple of attempts, I was surviving till the wipe, or there about, but it was pointed out that I was getting hit by a bit too much of the crap on the floor, when one of the raid members pipes up “have you got GTFO?” I didn’t, nor did I even know what it was. turning to my trusty laptop I quickly looked it up, and decided it was something that I should definitely have a look at. A quick download and relog and I was up and running.</p> <p><a href="http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/gtfo.aspx">GTFO</a> is a very simple mod, if you’re familiar with the acronym, you’ll be able to guess what it’s about; very basically it’s an idiot saver… If you’ve not noticed you’re standing in crap, it alerts you to the fact that you need to move with a rather loud klaxon. Whether you’re the day dreamer type or the flustered not got a clue what's going on type being new to an encounter, or just need something as a backup just in case you miss some floor-crap GTFO is brilliant. </p> <p>Not only can it give you an audible alert, if you use power auras, you can get further visible “GET OUT” messages. And that's not all! as if that weren’t enough, it not only tells tells you that you’re in crap and need to move, it tells you if you’ve moved out of good crap and need to move back! It EVEN lets you configure it to give different audible warnings for <strong>must move now </strong>type AOE, or low priority, finish your cast and then move type damage. </p> <p>Pure, pure, genius, I don’t know how I ever managed without it. Clearly last week, my <strike>games room</strike> office was lit up with the sound of alarm bells which we more akin to what you’d expect to hear in a burning building; on my return last night, where I’d had time to digest what was going on and what I was doing, and compare that to what the strategy says, I was far better at avoiding the crap – I was generally in the right place at the right time, but even then there were a couple of reminder bells which saved our healers mana. The icing on the cake was downing Cho’gall, a guild first (and my second guild first boss kill) not bad for a slacker casual who ‘doesn’t raid’…. ahem</p> mystichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15779886676286429342noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7160300376016866208.post-63742666224993259482011-03-23T17:52:00.001+00:002011-03-23T17:52:25.649+00:0050 Not Out<p><a href="http://lh3.ggpht.com/_nqvzdkVQbdo/TYozVkzGKUI/AAAAAAAAAHY/3mc_0lre_fc/s1600-h/50%5B2%5D.jpg"><img style="background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; display: inline; float: left; border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px" title="50" border="0" alt="50" align="left" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3sEszMzDrEkGiTqIoeOtHZnpOw5bZY-Zy-RoHU0vUf1wzStvSp1XrG_h-dSDnjKrv9bQEPRjzru5FnKxOYUzjP9O0VWSSroVWHLf5vm2x-jNbj8OQbMjSZSZcnUl7cbNZbuH3_eyLac0/?imgmax=800" width="244" height="138"></a>Well this is my 50th post, who’d have thought it? After three months of toiling away, I’ve managed 50 (FIFTY) blog posts (and two guides). In that time, I’ve managed to nearly triple my regular reader, found out a hell of a lot about the WOW blog scene, frittered away countless otherwise dull hours on the train, and thoroughly enjoyed myself in the process.</p> <p>To celebrate this arbitrary milestone of insignificance, I thought I’d write a few words about the experiences I’ve had so far, what's gone well and not so well, and where I’m planning to go in the future. I’ve also got a little surprise under my hat about an upcoming article, more of that later.</p> <p>Lets start, as all good theorycrafters do, with some stats. As i mentioned, I’ve amassed 50 blog posts in my time as a blogger since the 13th Jan, that’s 50 posts in 69 days, not a bad waffle ratio if you ask me. I’m not sure what to say about my traffic levels, then again, I’m not sure what I expected. Its quite variable from day to day but I’m generally averaging in the several 10s of hits per day. having just scanned through the limited stats that blogger gives it seems my hits have more than doubled week on week since I started, at this rate,every person on the planet will be reading my blog on a weekly basis by the end of the year…. My top read posts have been one of my originals on <a href="http://pleasefeedthetroll.blogspot.com/2011/01/into-breach-well-stonecore.html">my first heroic</a> which generated quite a bit of early interest, the <a href="http://pleasefeedthetroll.blogspot.com/2011/02/idiots-guide-to-simulationcraft.html">idiots guide to simulationcraft</a>, an article on <a href="http://pleasefeedthetroll.blogspot.com/2011/01/hit-me.html">hit caps for shadow priests</a>, and quite surprisingly my blog not so long ago about <a href="http://pleasefeedthetroll.blogspot.com/2011/03/net-neutrality.html">net neutrality</a>; the latter has been up for the shortest period but seems to have attracted a lot of attention. </p> <p>I’ve had a little bit of attention from the blogging community as a whole, not much, but a bit, making it onto the blog roles of one or two other popular sites, and getting the occasional mention in peoples twitter feeds and the like. I’ve recently featured on the welcome wagon on twisted nether which provided a welcome boost to traffic. Looking down the referral sites on the stats, twitter features heavily (I advertise pretty much every blog post on there). Quite surprisingly (actually, not so surprising if you read the guides to blogging) my comments on others blog posts which provide a link back to my post are one of the main referral methods. Most pleasing is the fact I’m now starting to get random referrals from Google searches so i must be doing something right.</p> <p>On the critical side, and having wrote a blog about constructive criticism, I don’t think I could get away without this paragraph; I’d obviously like more hits, I’m not disappointed with the traffic levels by any means, but I suspect if you asked any blogger if they’d like more traffic they wouldn’t say no. My main disappointment is the number of comments I get, or lack there of. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve gotten a few, but I’d love to get more engaged with my regular reader and see what he / she thinks, not sure what I can do to remedy this other than keep on posting and hoping. I suppose I’d also like to wade into a few more unique posts, the trouble with unique, is it requires a lot of time and generally access to the game to test things; for example, if I was to compare the relative merits of shielding people over direct healing, it’s a pretty easy comparison on the face of it, but unless you can sit in front of the game and collect figures with different talent builds, it’s hard to back your thoughts up with facts. I don’t get the luxury of this in my normal journalistic pose (Coach C to London Liverpool Street…) and if I do it at home it cuts into my already constrained playing time.</p> <p>Where do I go from here then? well firstly its the bread and butter of a blogger, posting, I’ll be keeping up the posts. I’ve got a decent base now, so the regularity might drop slightly in favour of some of the more practical type posts outlined above. I think I’m going to try and whore myself out, if anyone will have me, and try a guest post on post on someone else's blog. I wont to do this for two reasons; firstly to engage a bit more with other bloggers who’ve been at it for far longer than me and see how they go about their business of blogging. Secondly, I’m intent of getting myself a mention on one of the bigger sites, such as wow insider, this is less important than my first objective, and might happen naturally without me doing anything, but a bit of self publicity can’t hurt.</p> <p>And finally, a mention to that little surprise, and a bit of uniqueness (as I’ve not read another blog on the subject), I’ve been working on an interview with a Game Master the last few days, that's right! a real, live, Game Master. I’ve asked him a whole host of questions and will be spending the next few days editing them down into something readable, possibly over two posts as there's so much information. I’ve been genuinely surprised by some of his answers so am hoping it’ll be a good way to mark the blogs big Five-O. Watch this space.</p> mystichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15779886676286429342noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7160300376016866208.post-84008397821427095132011-03-21T18:09:00.000+00:002011-03-21T18:09:57.667+00:00How I roll<p align="left"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVmE_atEvGzZ7Q04Vxdqdsbn5WpjFYZrblg47S969nC7vFnSBXwskAGCtAWU4ysCjQhiuTbKvV6niJqs5drqslkJTqLXfNDeLaZk0M09YrrtyxcV-Mi9Hx_jZ8OFygGl3mRxDlsPrFqQ8/s1600-h/image%5B2%5D.png"><img style="background-image: none; border-right-width: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; display: inline; float: left; border-top-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; padding-top: 0px" title="image" border="0" alt="image" align="left" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrHQo_VYsMXNNxK4YrGdRpfI679XG9i2f_hSoICfT94aXbaCHSHoJFCJJu-QCZWFJw6KSM4xPHrnWNSa9iaZ4wqBOhyirDhJdYZVOaNdEc9JeWzvy5-1zxilYzuStwG6Z8Y6uuc84EHHY/?imgmax=800" width="244" height="114"></a>I’ve finally got round to adding a blogroll, to the site (see the right hand menu), something I’ve been meaning to do for ages, but never quite got round to it until I was having a look at my referral stats over the weekend (you know I’m a stats whore..) and had my conscience pricked as I seem to be making it on to the blogrolls of the occasional other blogger (my regular reader need to take note: you’re no longer the only one).</p><p>I thought rather than just stick it up unannounced I’d <strike>prattle on</strike> talk a little about why some of them are on there. Firstly my main port of call, and probably the initial reason I started reading blogs; WOW Insider, it’s moved about a bit over the years as it’s become bigger and bigger (and possibly a tad more commercial), and is the only blog which I know about which can boast coverage of every class and every spec and a whole host of other regular columns. Fox Van Allen is the regular Shadow Priest author, Dawn Moore the Holy (and Disc) and both talk an enormous amount of sense (generally). Seriously, if you’re regularly reading WOW blogs and haven’t heard of these guys you’re not doing it right.</p><p>One of the first blogs I click on when catching up on the rss feed is Divine Aeigis, with two main authors, Lyria and Lilitharien with regular posts focusing on the pro’s and con’s and the use of specific priest abilities, raiding, up and coming developments and patches, its a must read for me. Next Comes the Stories of O, written by Oestrus, who until very recently had jumped ships and was authoring for Divine Aegis. Oestrus is now back on the one blog and covering similar types of topics to Divine Aegis but is often found branching out to druid (branching! geddit?? ), shaman, and paladin healing to take more of a generic look at all things healing.</p><p>The Greedy Goblin is a strange sort of blog, Gevlon strikes me as a pretty hardcore player of WOW and his views are often quite extreme, and polarise the blog community; just have a read of some of the comments on his more controversial posts if you don't believe me. The blog is extremely ‘elite’ player focussed and Gevlon spends a lot of time ‘helping’ morons and slackers ‘improve’. I’ve included a commentary on this blog specifically because it stands out as one of the prime reason why people <strong><em>should</em></strong> blog; Whilst his views aren’t always popular, or in line with my own, Gevlon generally makes good, well balanced arguments, comments are (understandably I suppose) pre vetted by Gevlon as I would imagine he gets a fair few abusive comments, but to his enormous credit, he always seem to post critical comments (by critical I mean “I don’t agree, and here’s why…” comments, not “this post is crap…” the latter I would consider abuse). I’ve seen some excellent debates go on in the comments of the posts here as a result, and I’ve taken inspiration for a number of my own posts as a result of reading posts or comments here.</p><p>Moving from the more niche focussed blogs to, well, random, we have Pugnacious Priest, I’m sure some time in the distant past this blog was more focussed around priests, now it’s at best loosely priest focussed, but is still an excellent and entertaining read. Larissa and her Pink Pigtail Inn is another one of these blogs that I wouldn’t class as having a specific focus, taking a look at wow from the perspective of a raider, gives an enthralling commentary on the thoughts of Larissa on WOW and the Blogsphere. with the added bonus that Tamarind, who was recently lost to the blogsphere, occasionally stops by with a guest post.</p><p>I also couldn’t write a post like this without mentioning two of the blogs and bloggers that have, for whatever reason, stopped blogging. Misery written by Merlot which was loosely based around his shadow priest but encompassed an excellently articulated commentary on WOW. And then there was Righteous Orbs, written by Tamarind, an excellent,well thought out, and thoroughly engaging blog. Both of these guys decided to hang up their pen about the time I stared putting my ramblings down in prose and I do hope both will have a change of heart soon (though as I mentioned above Tam does occasionally pop up else where, but its just not enough).</p><p>Well there's a seemingly random sample of the blogs I read, there are loads more, but I think I’ve prattled on for long enough. My blogroll will contain <strong><em>only</em></strong> blogs which I genuinely read and wont be an attempt to get more links. Rather topically I received an email from some random as I was half way through writing this post “I really like your blog ‘pleasefeedthetroll’ would you be willing to exchange blogroll inks….” yada yada yada. Looking at the ‘blog’ it was clearly nothing to do with WOW, or actually anything in particular and just survived on trading links with other spam blogs. I almost replied “certainly, if you can tell me one thing about the content of my blog”, but sensibly decided to consign it to the spam trap instead. Hey ho….</p>mystichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15779886676286429342noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7160300376016866208.post-35489153330637517812011-03-17T14:12:00.001+00:002011-03-17T14:12:15.483+00:00Holy Guide up and running<p>The standard blog posts have been a bit thin on the ground the last few days as I’ve been spending my lunch hours finishing off the holy guide which you can access via the menu bar across the top of the blog or direct through <a href="http://pleasefeedthetroll.blogspot.com/p/holy-priest-theorycraft.html">this link</a></p> mystichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15779886676286429342noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7160300376016866208.post-89660319238292911262011-03-16T21:22:00.003+00:002011-03-16T21:28:50.427+00:00Happy Monday’s<div style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img align="left" alt="monday" " height="173" src="http://lh3.ggpht.com/_nqvzdkVQbdo/TYEp_t8TMyI/AAAAAAAAAHM/EEMlcado4Jk/monday_thumb.jpg?imgmax=800" title="monday" width="244" />Another Monday night off badminton with the bloody wrist, on the up side another night playing WOW (yeah yeah, I know its Wednesday, I’m slack) and another night where I offer my services should they be needed and was taken up on the offer straight away. This was only my second 25 man experience, my first coming two weeks ago, exactly the same situation as my original <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://pleasefeedthetroll.blogspot.com/2011/03/night-of-firsts.html">post</a> then. Part way through the instance, stalling on Ascendant Council. This time I was a touch more prepared having read up on the strategy after the last fight out of curiosity; turns out i was doing everything right (thanks in the main part to an excellent explanation from the raid leader), but now I was confident I was doing it right, and knew the reasons why I was doing it. </div><br />
I was pleased with my performance in all, upping my DPS by 1k on the first attempt and by just over 2k by the 3rd and final one in which we were successful. Again, whilst my DPS output wasn’t close to the best guys in the raid, it was no where near the lowest, and I managed to survive each encounter through till we were about to wipe on the two failed attempts. As an added sweetener I picked up the <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.wowhead.com/item=59514">DPS trinket</a> as no one else fancied it<br />
Onwards and upwards to Cho’gal for a few learning attempts; most of the guild haven't seen this guy yet so it was a few attempts which went reasonably well to get to grips with the fight before the call. A thoroughly enjoyable night, even with my sub par gear it was a nice ego boost to realise I picked up the fight quicker than a lot of the more regular raiders, still trying desperately to avoid catching the raiding bug again. Destined to fail.<br />
One thing that I’ve decided as a result, I’m stopping slacking on the buffs front, I’ve been busy sorting the cooking out which I’ve been avoiding like the plague for the last few months, getting a stock of flasks so I don't have to rinse a guildie of their spares or raid the auction house, and start reforging for a bit more hit on my gear as the raid hit cap is higher than heroic cap. Still think I’d prefer to be healing in raids if I’m going to do it longer term, but not confident enough to have them relying on me yet.mystichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15779886676286429342noreply@blogger.com0