Category: Warcraft

The Final Night Raiders Club

Posted on by Gazimoff

I’ve been neglecting my guild over the last month, only managing to sign up for a couple of raids. I don’t know what my schedule’s going to be like from one day to the next, which makes it planning pretty impossible. It means that I end up scratching around for raids whenever I’m online instead of planning my week in advance. It also means that I’m spending a lot of time in pugs.

Don’t get me wrong, pugs can be fine. For a lot of content like your standard 5-mans and VoA, a pug is pretty much all you need. Even completing things like the weekly raid quest are easily handled in a pug. I’s only when you start getting into places like Icecrown where things start to fall down.

The spooky thing is, I think I’m starting to see a trend. There’s a pattern or cycle that seems to be going on every single week, starting once the servers are up from maintenance. I don’t think that I’m the only person – the messages I see on Twitter usually say the same thing. Let me describe it to you and see if you recognise any of this.

  • The evening after server maintenance (Tuesday in US, Wednesday in EU), you usually see a flood of pugs forming. They’re crying out to form ICC raids, with the full gearscore and achievement checks involved. They’ll usually get going, wipe a lot and maybe take down Lord Marrowgar. As soon as the first boss is down, the group dissolves. You’ve just wasted your lockout getting two frost badges. Yay.
  • Once the raidgroups and raidguilds know that the servers are stable, they start their runs. Most of the raiding population is either with their group or on standby. The few pugs that start to form are usually looking for people for three or four hours. If you manage to fill your group and get to the instance, you’re doing well. That said, you’ll probably wipe a few times then fall apart. But hey, at least you’re not saved!
  • Later on in the week the guilds are on progression runs. Now’s the time when players start hiding from their guilds on alts. The idea of an evening of repair bills fills them with dread, so they go looking for fun elsewhere. Pugs start to fill up better, and at least these guys know the fights, but the lack of gear is a handicap. You might get the chance to say Hi to Saurfang, but that’ll be where your evening ends.
  • On the last night before reset the raiders emerge. Those who focus on 25-man content but want to pick up some frost badges from 10-man. Those who’ve been benched all week and are desperate to use their lockout. Those who’ve suddenly realised the server resets tomorrow. Find one of these groups and you’ll be getting between 4 and 8 bosses down, a couple of hardmodes and a sackful of loot.

Despite this being what I see, I can’t be sure that my ideas for what causes it are the right ones. I mean, it might be that there’s something else that makes mid-week pug raids an absolute abomination. All I do know is that at the end of the week, if I can find a group to Icecrown it’ll usually be a great raid.

This is where you come in. Does my pug experience match yours, or have you seen something else entirely? Do you have your own theories about why this phenomenon? Have you ever been part of the Final Night Raiders Club, playing alongside people who don’t know eachother but who can just click and pull it through?

As always, feel free to share in the comments.

A Snipe at the Socials

Posted on by Gazimoff

I was out at a bar recently with a few friends, discussing the many trials and difficulties endured by Warcraft players today… Heck, who am I trying to kid – my fiancee and her sister were trying to tie fairy lights to each other, while I tried to work out if a Havana Zombie wanted to be friends with me. All in all the night was a bit of a blur, punctuated by aggressive singing in Welsh and mourning over the lack of a kebab.

In one of those rare moments of clarity that you get when drinking heavily in a strange location, I remember realising that there were different types of groups there. You had the guys at the bar who were trying to drink as much cheap stuff as possible before heading on to a nightclub. You had a small group round a table, trying to make their rum and Coke last as long as humanly possible. And you had us lot, being as rowdy as hell and making sure we had fun whatever we were doing.

Fast-forward 24 hours and I’m nursing the hangover from hell. I’m drinking coffee and Mountain Dew Throwback in order to persuade some neurons in my skull to get off their arses and start firing. I’m eating fried everything between two slices of bread because my stomach didn’t get it’s promised kebab the night before and it’s sure as hell going to remind me about it now. I’m fidgeting with a biro like it’s a cigarette, subconsciously forgetting that I quit four years ago and that sucking on a pen lid isn’t going to help.

I fire up my laptop, click away and find myself on one of the Realm Forums. My eyes are immediately drawn to the top post of the day. “Get rid of RP Guilds” it proclaims. I’m thinking that maybe it’s one of those ‘strong headline to make a point’ kind of posts. I’m wrong.

It goes on to say how we should get rid of all guilds unless they’re dedicated to PvE or PvP progression. After all, the new Guild Levelling system means that unless you’ve got twenty raiders earning points for your guild every night, you’re just going to be left behind. Progress or die, that’s what the new system means.

Only it doesn’t.

I do some digging to see if I can validate this forum poster’s point and I find this excellent series of articles on what guild levelling will involve. There’s surprisingly little that actually involves endgame raiding. I can gain XP for my guild from a number of different sources including daily quests, battlegrounds and regular dungeons. Even levelling my professions helps out!

Now I might be a little slow here, but I thought that there were a number of reasons that you might join a guild. It might be because of the endgame raiding they offer you, or because they help put together arena or battleground teams. It might even be because you’ve played with them in other games or know them from other places and appreciate their company. It might even be because you like to just hang out and have fun, and it beats trekking across the country to see them.

I mean, imagine if someone came up to you in a bar and told you that your group were drinking wrong. That you should be in a larger group in order to take full advantage of the discounts on offer. That you should only drink certain spirits so that you spend as little as possible before you get plastered? If it were me, I’d try to strangle them with a strand of twinkly fairy lights.

The point is that just like with bars, we all play Warcraft for different reasons and get different things out of it. Some of us want to ensure that we don’t waste any time, that we go in there to do what we want to do as quickly as possible then leave. Some want to use it to meet new people, while others just want to kick back, relax and have a bit of fun with friends. It’s different strokes for different folks, with no right or wrong way about it.

The social players might not have a level-capped guild immediately, but they’ll get one in their own time. And they’ll be sure to have a ton of fun on the way.

The Colour of Money

Posted on by Gazimoff

During the weekend the Celestial Steed appeared on the Blizzard store. I’m not against the idea of paying real cash for in-game stuff as long as they’re “fluff items” that don’t give any real benefit. I’m floored by the  reaction the Celestial Steed got – by most accounts the digital horse made Blizzard millions of dollars in sales. I’m also surprised by the spectrum of reactions, from those who love the sparkly to those who think it’s a replacement for GearScore. It’s like the Marmite of products – people either love it or loathe it.

I love the reaction it’s been getting in-game as well:

“Are we still slapping and laughing at people on that stupid horse?”

“I don’t know, why?”

“Because it’s a stupid horse”

“So say the horse was a rare drop from some endgame raid boss in hard mode, would you still do it?”

“Nope”

“Right, so you basically slap people who spend money on something?”

“Yep”

Now call me strange, but you don’t see me hanging around outside a Ferrari showroom slapping people who buy a new car. I mean, why bother? You can get a perfectly good car for a fraction of the price, why pay for something that’s just cosmetically different? It’s just stupid, right?

Likewise you don’t see people who’ve picked up items from the Trading Card Game loot cards getting slapped. Some people have sunk hundreds of dollars into picking these cards up from eBay or dedicated retailers like Wootloots. Yet it’s almost seen like a status symbol – an accolade that you’re either damned lucky or deeply committed to the game to want to buy such a thing.

I wonder what the reaction would have been if it had been priced differently. Imagine if Blizzard stuck a $100 tag on the shiny horse. They’d have still shifted a few, sure. There would also have been outcry on the forums from people who couldn’t afford it. I can see the wails now.

The Price effect causes far too much aggro from the Wife boss. Standard distraction techniques like Flowers and Chocolates are having no effect. Misdirect isn’t working either – the Shoestore target dummy isn’t holding threat. I demand that Price is nerfed in order to make the encounter playable.

I think in this case Blizzard got it spot on. They set the price at a level that made it clear hat it was something special, yet was within the reach of most of the playerbase. The ability to gift redemption codes to others was also a smart move – you can always choose to give a mount or pet to a guildmate or fellow player as a special reward or token of thanks.

The fiancee also really loves the plushies that come with an in-game pet. For her the plushies are something she can add to her collection, while the in-game pet is a nice bonus. I’ve seem something similar being done with the Warhammer Online steins, where your character gets an in-game stein to use alongside your Real Life one. This kind of dual-world merchandising, where you get an in-game and physical item that are somehow related, really appeals to me.

That’s not to say I’m cool with all forms of exchanging real cash for virtual items. My line in the sand is with game-changing shortcuts that can be paid for with cash. If you’ve ever played a game fron Zynga like Farmville or Mafia Wars you’ll know what I’m talking about – being able spend real cash on gold or credits ange for cash which you can then use to buy in-game items that improve how the game plays. To me these games aren’t about fun – in fact I’ve seen barriers to fun that exist soley to make you spend money. It’s like a comedian setting up a joke, only to charge you fifty bucks to hear the punchline.

Don’t get me started on the Lil’XT pet though – the loud yells you can here from the other side of Dalaran are enough to put me right off getting it. Nothing so far has made me reach for the mute button faster than that infernal contraption. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great pet, but you know you got something wrong when addons like this one start coming out. It’s the in-game equivalent of driving around town with your car stereo on full blast just to show to everyone how crap your taste in music is.

Mage Playstyles in Cataclysm

Posted on by Gazimoff

The dust is beginning to settle following the almighty stack of class changes that came out last week. While Paladins are still waiting for theirs, the rest of the Warcraft population has been trying to work out what the changes mean for them. Mages are no exception – I wrote up an initial assesment shortly after the changes came out. There are a whole bucketload of opinions out there though that are worth digging through.

  • Euripedes starts off with a squee over the changes, following it up with a rant about the loss of Wards, the crappiness of Mana Shield and the Shaman hate.
  • Arioch has a desire to dance the Time Warp everywhere, but hates the Arcane Missiles changes.
  • Gnomeageddon is trying to be inspired by the changes, but struggling.
  • Krizzlybear is also doing the Time Warp and savouring the flavour of the changes.
  • Tarinae thinks the gains are pretty positive for mages.
  • Aurdon got crit by the wall of text and is still trying to recover.
  • ArcaneTinkerTank says the changes make him go hmmmmm.
  • Archaius thinks it’s Christmas with all the presents mages are getting.
  • Empowered Fire are excited by the changes.
  • WoW.Com has some initial reactions from their resident mage.
  • River is still waiting for more teleports. Oh, and he wants Blink fixed.

Now that the changes are out and the initial analysis done, what do the they actually mean? Can we start to work out how the typical mage will play, how the talent trees will play out and what each spec will bring to the table? Based on the information we currently have, I’ve done a rough sketch-out of how the three mage types will work.

Frost

The Deathfrost mechanic is probably the most interesting – cast Frostbolt on a mob and gain a damage buff. Now you could just carry on spamming Frostbolt, but then you wouldn’t take advantage of the Deathfrost bonus. Remember though that you’ll get random free Arcane Missiles procs, which will take advantage of Deathfrost.

But hang on – we’ve already got a spell that will make use of most of our Frost talents and it’ll take advantage of the Deathfrost bonus. Yes, Frostfire Bolt will live again in endgame raiding. In fact, as you gain more gear with the Mastery stat, this spell will do even more damage. Add into the mix talents like Brain Freeze and you have a setup that will allow you to cast high-damage spells that are instant cast, have no mana cost and benefit from Mastery.

The crucial bit is how Deathfrost will work. Is it a stacking buff that you ramp up, or a buff that sticks at the same level after you’ve cast Frostbolt once? Either way, you’ll end up with a rotation that has Frostbolt, Frostfire Bolt and the occasional Arcane Missiles proc. As the Deathfrost mastery bonus ramps up, you might even switch from one rotation to another, depending on how much bonus Frostfire Bolt gets. It could easily come out on top as the raiding spec of choice purely on the strength of Mastery

PVP as a Frost mage will be similar, except I’m expecting a lot more battleground play. There are bound to be talents that give you a boost to Wall of Fog, which are going to be incredible in rated battlegrounds. What I’d like to see though are two Wall of Fog bonuses – one in Fire and the other in Frost. The Frost one increases snaring duration, while the Fire one would increase the damage component of the Wall. Freezing Fog/Choking Fog.

I think there’s also a lot of chance for elemental mages to double-team as Frost and Fire, the Frost mage uses Wall of Fog, while the Fire mage uses Flame Orbs to send fiery death down the line from one end to the other. Depending on setup, it could easily hurt a whole group of players depending on how many get snared by the wall. A couple of classical AoEs and it’s all over.

Fire

It’s already been said that Fire Mages will play like Affliction Warlocks in Cataclysm, and the Ignite Mastery mechanic will make this even moreso. A Fire mage’s rotation is likely to shift from Living-Bomb-Scorch-Fireball then Pyroblast on Hot Streak, and change into something that focuses on maintaining DoTs and only casting Fireball or Pyroblast when you’re not reapplying a DoT or a debuff. Again, I think we’ll see a shift from one rotation to another as you accumulate Mastery bonus and the DoT element of the spell becomes more significant.

Burnout’s going to be a boon for Fire mages in raiding scenarios, as it’ll mean that they can continue casting even when out of mana. I’d like to see how this dynamic works – will it be a Life-tap style health to mana conversion, or will spells start consuming HP instead of MP? It’s also another way Mages can kill themselves, as if spell reflection and standing in the bad weren’t enough.

A Fire mage in PvP will be largely the same as it is now – great in battlegrounds where there is a chance to ramp up some serious damage against a single target or small groups. There’s also going to be comedy gold available when applying Living Bomb to multiple targets, triggering the haste buff from Pyromaniac and laying down some very quck cast Flamestrikes. I would like to see some kind of talent that will either cause Living Bomb to infect nearby targets, or that pushes all fire DoTs on additional targets.

In Arenas I expect the Fire mage to struggle. There’s no burst damage and little utility there, areas that the Arcane and Frost trees have always been good at. Let’s be honest though – Fire mages will play fine, I’d just be surprised to see them in the very top brackets of PvP. I don’t think the new Playing with Fire mechanic will help that much either – with Rogues able to stunlock a player completely, being able to AoE knockback, snare and get away is going to be tough to perform.

Arcane

I think that the Arcane spec is going to be possibly the only one that gets more annoying to play as the Mastery bonus becomes more relevant. The Mana Adept bonus basically means that in order to do the most damage you need a full mana pool. Great if you only need a short burst of damage to nuke someone down (arenas) or where you’re doing relatively short fights (solo or 5-man work). As soon as you have fights that stretch out and require you to start playing around with Mana gems and similar, it’s going to become more of a pain. Trying to keep your mana pool as full as possible when you’re in the last 30% of a bossfight is going to become a pain.

In fact, the only time I think Arcane is going to be reasonable is when you’re still gearing up at 85 and you still miss regularly in boss fights. A miss means that Arcane Focus triggers and you’ll get a small amount of mana back. With this mechanic it might make the mana management game easier, but it’s only going to be until you have enough good quality gear to hit bosses on a regular basis.

The other loss is in the three different rotations that Arcane has in Wrath. Currently there are three traditional rotations that are swapped when mana conservation, overall DPS or burst damage are required. I think that the Mana Adept bonus will upset this balance, meaning that just a single rotation becomes usable.

That said they may yet pull it back, particularly if there are talents that adjust the new Time Warp spell in some way. Currently the Exhaustion debuf lasts 10 minutes, meaning that you can’t fire off both a Heroism and a Time Warp in the same fight. If the Arcane mage is able to talent a way around this, either by reducing the duration of Exhaustion or increasing the duration of the warp, they may become much more useful.

The final kick-them-when-they’re-down for Arcane Mages is the final nerf of Incanter’s Absorption with the removal of the fire and frost wards. Euripedes pointed out on his rant (see link at the top) that Mana Shield is just not useful to mages at the moment – we have other ways of getting out of the bad stuff or avoiding damage. I agree that it really needs serious work to become useful again in order for this mechanic to become useful.

PvP as Arcane will still be doable – all the burst damage you know and love will still be there. As that fuel gauge moves from Full to Empty though the damage output will drop. It goes back to the old Three Minute Mage back from vanilla, where an arcane mage would pop Zandalarian Hero Charm and Talisman of Ephemereal Power along with your other cooldowns to do an obscene amount of damage for a whole fifteen seconds. They might rock in Arenas, but battlegrounds might be more of a sniper rather than Gatling gun affair.

Overall

If there’s one thing that’s clear from this arrangement of talents, it’s that mages will need to work with eachother and other classes moreso than ever in order to optimise their abilities. This isn’t just the Focus Magic round-robin that we currently have going, this is about syncing our crowd control and AoE together in order to deliver the best result. It’s about making sure that there’s a Scorch on the boss so that the Frostfire-bolt casting frostmage can take advantage of it as well as the fire mage. It’s about hitting Time Warp when it’s needed for the raid, and not when you need the 40% speed boost to Get Out Of The Bad.

It’s going to take some raw numbers to see how these stack up, followed by a bunch of people coding some spreadsheets, but you can see how the principles will pan out. It’s also early, but my feel is that it’ll be a close battle between Fire and Frost, with Arcane losing out as the spec of choice. It’s partly because of the mastery bonus being hard to take advantage of, but also because of the change to Arcane Missiles and how it’ll affect the spec’s rotation.

I’m also struggling to see how Time Warp will help that much. Don’t get me wrong, it means that a Shaman no longer has an automatic spot in a raid, but it also means that you’ll have a lot of Heroism shaped abilities and a huge cooldown in which to use them. Without reducing the duration of Exhaustion or allowing more than one to be used during a boss fight, there seems to be little practical purpose in spreading the ability around more.

For now though it’s a case of pulling up a chair and waiting until Beta is announced. When it opens, you can be sure that a lot of questions about the Mage mechanics will be answered by those with access to it. I think there’s something for all mages to look forward to, either in terms of how the Mastery bonuses will actually play out or in terms of how the new rotations will shape up. Either way, it’s a good time to be playing.

In the meantime, if you have your own insight into how the mechanics will play out, or want to share your own insights, feel free to sound off in the comments.

(Image Source: Poster for the stage magician Alexander Conlin)

Injecting Chaos

Posted on by Gazimoff

I’m a big fan of Lego. I like to buy the big Technic sets – the ones with pneumatics and gears and motors and so on. When I buy a set, I open the box and meticulously follow the instructions, sorting the pieces by size and colour before assembling whatever was on the front of the box. It gives me a sense of satisfaction, building a machine that does something.

Point is though, it’d probably be a bit boring to blog about. You can imagine what it would be like – going through the same motions and doing the same kind of things week in, week out. It would get old, fast.

It becomes much more fun when you throw away the instruction book, take a hammer to the car or whatever it was you made and inject a little bit of chaos. Doesn’t matter what it is. Just the mere act of playing around and making something new from the pile of bricks you have is enough. It’s a lot more fun as well – the challenge moves from being “what set of bricks do I buy next” to “what do I want to make that’s fun?”

It’s even better when you get feedback. Other ideas pop up – people suggest ways of improving the model, of other things that you could build, or share what they did that was similar. It’s also a bit of a loop – ideas create ideas.

So why am I talking about Lego on this blog? Well, it comes from Anea’s idea for this week’s Shared Topic. Would having no comments at all make us better bloggers? Would it leave us free to pursue our whimsies and desires? Or do we rely on the comments and feedback – are they integral to the creative process?

Just like buying a box of Lego, I could write about Warcraft in exactly the same way. But wouldn’t it be a boring, just reading about what quests I’d done or how my raidgroup was doing? Wouldn’t it be better if I talked about the quirky things I’d got up to with other people, what opinions I held about aspects of the game and where I’m heading next? Wouldn’t it be even cooler if it started a discussion, where we bounced ideas and thoughts around, and I used them as the basis for new topics every so often?

It’s why I write – I like to think that a new post that I write is the start of a discussion, not the end of it. I don’t like to provide the definitive answer or the conclusive proof in a blogpost, just an opinion of what’s worked for me.

For me, getting feedback on what I write is essential to this process. It might be about a problem that I’m facing, in which case I might be given a solution. It might be about an idea, in which which case others might chime in with theirs. It might be about something I’ve experienced, which might encourage people to share theirs. All of this creates positive responses, which in turn generate new posts, which generate new responses, and so on.

Besides, a little bit of chaos is a good thing.

UI Quest: Cast Bars and Cool Downs

Posted on by Gazimoff

In previous episodes of my UI quest, I’ve covered how to configure your own action bars and set up your own target frames. For this instalment I wanted to focus on two areas that are crucial to caster classes – casting bars and cooldown trackers. When used well, both of these will help to maximise your performance without needing any equipment improvements.

To start off with I’m going to cover how to replace the default cast bar. The cast bar is the small rectangle that appears on the screen whenever you cast as spell. When you use a spell like Arcane Blast it slowly fills up, with the spell being cast once the bar is full. For channelled spells like Arcane Missiles or Blizzard, the spell has a continual effect until the bar is empty. As a side note, the mana cost of a channelled spell is spent immediately, while the cost of a cast spell is only deducted when the spell goes off.

Although there are several cast bar replacements, the one I tend to use is Quartz. It’s a fairly lightweight addon that provides a range of functions that are useful to different classes. For mages, the main thing we’re interested in is how our spells are casting, what our target or focus is casting in case we want to counterspell, and what our pet is casting in case you’re frost specced. The configuration window can be found by typing in /quartz in the chatbox or by selecting it from the addons part of the interface menu.

There are four main cast bars: the Player bar, the Target bar, the Focus bar and the Pet bar. If they’re not already present, you can make them visible by unticking the Lock option on each bar’s configuration pane. You can then move them around the screen and position them where you’d like them. I’ve stacked mine, my target’s and my pet’s cast bars in the centre of the screen, while my focus target’s cast bar is above the focus frame on the far left. You can play around with the scaling and transparency of each bar so that they blend in with the surrounding frames.

I’ve also disabled the Buff bars from showing via the Buffs section of the menu on the left. I’ve already got buffs covered by the way Shadowed Unit Frames is configured, and I’ll also get alerts to key buffs or debuffs through raid warning addons like Deadly Boss Mods. Mage-specific addons like MageAlert also provide audio cues on when buffs are ready to use, but I’ll be covering these in more detail later in the series.

To get the most from Quarts it’s worth spending a little bit of time looking at how the new cast bar works. With Quartz, the latency between yourself and the server is already factored in. There’s also a sweet-spot just before the latency cushion that you can use to cast your next spell. By queueing up spells in this way, you can daisy-chain them without having to wait for the server latency between each cast. An even better method is to press the key down early, but then release it just before the cast bar hits that red cushion. Once you get used to it, it’ll increase your DPS because you’re working around whatever server latency you normally face.

The second part of this guide is about tracking cooldowns. In previous episodes I talked about using OmniCC to show the cooldown of spells on your action bars. It’s also possible to add to this by showing trinkets, procs and other effects that have an internal cooldown that’s not always visible. Again there are a number of addons that do this, but for lightweight performance I prefer Sexycooldown.

You can see a configured Sexycooldown bar configured between the two unitframes. It’s showing the internal cooldown of my cloak enchantment and a trinket I’m using, as well as how long before I can use another mana gem. It also helps to track long cooldown spells such as Mirror Image.

Configuring Sexycooldown is pretty simple. Type /sexycooldown to bring up the config window, with which you can move the bar around and adjust the size. You can also give it a skin and change the colour as I’ve done.

If you want to track separate cooldowns on separate bars, Sexycooldown does support this but needs to be configured to add it. Similar addons like ForteXorcist do all this as standard, but also use more resources. If all you need is a simple cooldown tracker, you’ll probably find that this will do the job.Mages will probably be fine with the default configuration, while Warlocks and Shadow Priests will probably want to break out a separate bar to track their debuffs on their current target.

The reason tracking cooldowns – even internal ones – is important is because it means that you can pop your trinkets and abilities at the same time. If you know the internal cooldown on your trinket is over soon, you can time it so that your trinket procs at roughly the same time as the rest of your abilities. This can result in an even higher surge in DPS when you need it.

The UI Quest Series (in progress):

Starting the Engine

Posted on by Gazimoff

I finally managed to get the Mekgineer’s Chopper made on Curio. I’m really pleased with it – he finally has the mount that suits him. It’s taken a while, but it’s definitely worth it. So to celebrate, I’ve been doing laps round Ironforge, laps round Dalaran, even laps round Mirage Raceway.

Thing is, doing laps round anything gets a bit mundane. I needed something more extreme. Something more dangerous. Something… with Dinosaurs. Like some grotesque hybrid of Mad Max and Jurrasic Park, I went to Un’Goro.

To make it even more interesting, I brought along a friend of mine called Theo. She’s been roleplaying a gnome locked at level 1 in anticipation of Gnome priests becoming available in Cataclysm. She was interested in getting the Noblegarden achievement Hard Boiled, so I figure it’s an ideal time. Besides, with a level 1 character in a jungle full of raptors what could possibly go wrong…

First, it was the raptors that spotted us…

Then the dimetetrons and these fiery elementals start trying to gang up on us. They think that they can corner us, but I manage to slip around them with inches to spare.

We finally made it to the hot springs and pick up the achievements. The area seems quiet. Almost a little too quiet…

With moments to spare, we realise why the area’s devoid of life –  there’s a devilsaur roaming around! There’s nothing I can do but drive!

Luckily we made it back to the flight point unscathed, with only a few minor scratches on the bike. Theo seemed to enjoy the trip too, although I’m not sure she’ll be heading back there in a hurry.

The Flow of Gold

Posted on by Gazimoff

Gold is something that we pretty much take for granted. We get rewarded when we turn in quests, we loot it from our fallen enemies. We spend it when we want to buy something from the auction house or when we want to get our equipment repaired. It’s all automatic – a few mouse clicks and we’ve either earned or spent thousands of coins. But do you ever think about where the gold you have comes from, or where it goes to?

I started writing this as a response to Tarinae’s Shared Topic, about how Blizzard is pushing account security and how it seems to be matched by the efforts of gold sellers. But in order to explain why gold selling is wrong, it’s worth explaining the problems it causes in the first place. Before getting into the meat of the topic, there’s a few things you should consider:

  • If you are a Guild Master or Officer, you owe it to your guild to ensure that you have an authenticator registered to your account. You should also ensure that anyone with access to anything of value in the guild bank also has an authenticator. If there is anyone in these positions that does not, you should revoke their guild bank access immediately.
  • You should ensure you practice good computer hygiene. Ensure that you have a virus checker installed on your computer and make sure you keep it up to date. If you use FireFox, install the NoScript addon. If you do click on a dodgy link by mistake, NoScript will make sure that the site cannot install anything onto your computer.
  • If you are a Guild Master or Officer and see one of your members get repeatedly hacked, question their computer hygiene practices. If they don’t do anything about it, you may want to consider suspending them. Do your best to help them, but ensure that they take responsibility for their situation.
  • If you use an email address for your World of Warcraft account, don’t use the same one when posting on blogs, registering on Warcraft-related/Guild forums signing up for other game betas and so on. Hackers harvest these sites for addresses to send scam emails to. Keep your Warcraft email address to as small a number of people as possible.
  • Get an authenticator. Seriously. Either get the key-ring, the free iPhone app or the cheap mobile phone app.

In almost any MMO there are two economies working in parallel. The server economy is designed to regulate the flow of gold into and out of the game. Gold enters the game when you vendor an item, when you loot gold from a creature or when you get rewarded for completing a quest. It also exits the system in much the same way, in repair bills, food/water purchases and so on. By contrast the player economy is based on the trade of gathered materials and finished items, either via the auction house or a fee/tip for crafting. The theory is that the server economy should provide a steady inward trickle of gold, while the player economy should ensure a constant circulation of gold in exchange for goods and services.

The theory is that the two economies work at an even pace to keep the player economy relatively constant. The price of materials stays relatively static from one day to the next, meaning that the price of crafted items is fairly easy to predict. Although the price of goods would tend to decline as demand gradually dries up, the constant of influx of gold from the server economy provides a steady rate of price inflation.

All well and good you might think, but what happens when you start to disrupt the economy by introducing gold farmers and hackers? It’s worth splitting out the two here, as they have a subtly different effect on the economy.

A gold farmer is interested in maximising the amount of gold they accumulate while spending as little as possible on armour repairs and consumables. Although this might mean that they don’t consume much (if anything) from the player economy, they do want to make sure that their auctions sell for the best possible price. They’re unlikely to severely undercut existing server prices, instead making sure that their materials are competitive. Of course if gold farming gets out of control then it heavily deflates prices, meaning that players can’t compete against the gold farmers.

It may also mean that players struggle to gather materials themselves as they’re forced to compete with gold farmers. As resources are limited, a high number of gold farmers means that there are fewer resources available for players to harvest. It can become so problematic that players are forced to buy materials from the gold farmers at the auction house purely because they are unable to gather them themselves.

A hacker by contrast wants to sell everything as quickly as possible before the account owner regains control. Anything that they sell at auction will be priced up to shift quickly, and can often crash a market. Think of the times when you’ve seen titanium ore or eternal elements being sold at a very low price – chances are they were being offered by a hacker. On a server where hacking is a regular occurrence the market can be continually flooded by “fire sale” items.

You might think that this isn’t really a big deal. You probably play the game in a specific way – you might be a pure-bred raider or a determined PvP’er. You barely touch the economy – only picking up the occasional flask or uncut gem from the auction house. But by the same token, you want to be able to make sure that the cost of what you’re doing stays roughly the same. It’s great to know that 50g this week will buy the same number of flasks as 50g next week, or that the gem you need for your latest gear upgrade will cost roughly the same. If you need a quick bit of cash you’d like to know that your spare herbs or ores will sell for roughly the same amount, week in and week-out.

Why do the gold sellers bother to hack at all? Surely they know that they’re damaging their own reputations and annoying the very people that they hope to sell their services to? It’s true that some gold sellers do take their reputations seriously, but not all of them. Eurogamer recently ran a series of articles on gold trading, explaining how the industry was structured.

A hacker or gold farmer will sell accumulated gold to a Collector. The gold collector might employ farmers or hackers directly, or they might subcontract or freelance it, paying the agent a fixed value for the gold they provide. The collector then passes the gold on to the Seller, again at a fixed value. Once the seller has the gold, they then offer it to the player by running a website through which gold can be bought, as well as customer support. As a result the person you see spamming trade chat might work for a completely different company to the gold farmer or hacker.

The increase of account hacking guides on the internet means that the person stealing your account could come from San Francisco instead of Shanghai. Either way the effect on the economy of an account hack is the same – freefall prices, guild disruption and loss of an account for several days. The gold might not end up being sent to a gold seller, but might just as easily end up in the coffers of a rival guild on another server.

Finally, hacking a computer is a crime. In the UK the Computer Misuse Act covers everything from unlawful access to obtaining information. From there it becomes a grey area – the gold you buy from a seller may have been partly obtained through illegal channels. There’s the potential of being in receipt of stolen goods, or of complacency or conspiracy to commit a crime. It’s not been tested in court, but in these litigation-happy times it probably won’t be long until we see the first account-hack related lawsuit arrive. By buying gold, you run the risk of leaving yourself open to being sued later down the line. Regardless of the legal risks, it also perpetuates and endorses the damage to the economy, degrading the game experience for both yourself and other players.

So there you have it: why gold selling damages the game, why hacking increases the problem and why buying gold is legally dubious. I’ve also covered what you can do to ensure than your guild and it’s members are protected, and what you should do to maintain their trust in you.

Still feel the shortcut is worth it?

The Impossible Saronite

Posted on by Gazimoff

I’ve been setting myself goals for my characters recently in order to give me more of a reason to play them. For Curio I’ve decided to go for the Mekgineer’s Chopper, as it’s the only character I have that would suit it. As a result I’ve started this long grind of mining ores, making titansteel and selling anything I can on the auctionhouse.

I sometimes wonder if I’m strange by saying that Curio should have the motorbike, Shaemus should have all the pets and my other characters should have stuff relevant to them. It’s as if I have a picture of them in my mind about how they go about their lives and the kind of things they would obtain given half a chance. I see Curio as being in a workshop surrounded by gadgets and always having something to tinker on, so the bike is a natural fit for him.

Managing the auctionhouse is proving to be a bit of a slog. Price things too low and they get bought and relisted by someone else, while pricing things too high means that they never shift. I’ve seen the price of Frozen orbs drop from about 70g each when 3.3.3 came out to about 14g now. It’s got to the stage where I can by the orbs, exchange them for Frost Lotuses and sell them at auction for about 10g profit a time. Crazy.

In order to get stuff to sell, I’ve been mining. It started off as a way to gather enough Titansteel to make the chopper, but it’s now been a way for me to gather items to then sell at auction. I’m getting a fair supply of Saronite and various types of Eternals. Gems and titanium ore go to my fiancée’s jewelcrafter for prospecting, with any epic gems being sold. It means she gets to keep the blues and greens, as well as any titanium powder.

So far it’s not been a bad process. I’ve made about 3,000 gold so far with which to buy the remaining parts I need. It’s something I’m able to work on when things are slow, as well as being one of those gentle activities that provides a balance to pugging or raiding. I also feel like I’m achieving something with every gold coin that gets me closer to my goal.

It has got me thinking though about the overall crafting process within Warcraft. I’m not so sure what it’s like in other MMOs, but in order to be able to craft in this game you also need to be a sufficiently high level to gather the materials needed. Items that are difficult to craft require special patterns or plans that commonly require a reputation grind or raid instance farm in order to obtain.

I’m beginning to wonder if it would be viable in an MMO to have crafting as a different levelling path that would work independently of character level. Is it feasible to allow players to focus on adventuring, PVP or crafting as a way of increasing skill and providing different taught skills for each path. I’m sure something like this has been tried before in other MMOs, but I’d be interested to know if it worked or fell flat.

And why the Impossible Saronite? On my mining route around Icecrown, there are a couple of ore nodes that are impossible to harvest safely. Most of them can be cleared away without too much trouble. There’s the odd one though that pings up on my map, only for me to leave it as soon as I see what’s surrounding it. Having to battle four 80-elites just for a scrap of saronite just isn’t worth it.

I’ve always been a fan of crafting in MMOs, as I love to create items that are useful to my character and others. I ended up maxing out Tailoring back in vanilla before I hit the level cap as I was that keen on getting all the patterns I could. I’m still a collectionist, trying to get as many recipies, patterns etc on as many characters as possible. I just find it a touch irritating when my professions are made useless either because far better gear can be collected in dungeons or because the best patterns are rare drops from raid dungeon bosses.

Still, at least I can make a chopper. You can’t say that isn’t cool…

The Campaign for Cheese Sculpting

Posted on by Gazimoff

Tired of finding your bags full of Stormwind Brie? Desperate to find a use for your Darnassian Bleu? How about invoking the magical properties of Dalaran Sharp? How about making these overlooked consumables useful? Read on and discover how Cheese Sculpting could be the profession for you.

Since time immemorial players have been confused by the cheese they’ve looted. Some believe that it’s a conspiracy by the Tauren to invade their diet with this perplexing produce. Others feel that the diminutive delicacy has no place in their bags. With the announcement of Cheese Sculpting as the new Secondary Profession in Cataclysm these items will finally have a use.

Unlocking the mysteries of the fascinating fromage is something that all players with the new expansion will be able to pick up, with the ability to cut and chisel the cheese being skilled up in much the same way as other professions. Uncut cheeses will be available from vendors and creatures in the same way that they are now, with the rarer (and more potent varieties) only being available from specific creatures.

Cheese sculptors will also be able to use a variety of different milks in order to prepare their own crafting materials. These milks, once suitably prepared by being left in your personal or guild bank for a period of time, may even evolve into rare cheeses that give further modifiers when sculpted.

But what can cheese sculpting do? A number of carvings have already been unveiled, each with their own formidable powers:

  • Proudmore’s Potent Sharp: Increases spell power by 150 when washed down with a Flask of Port.
  • Fermented Brie of Horror: When exposed to the air, causes all beasts and humanoids to flee for 5 seconds. Any undead within 50 yards will be drawn to the smell.
  • Battle-ready Darnassian Bleu: Fortifies you and your allies, increasing stamina by 50. May cause monsters to flee when attacked due to halitosis.

More carvings are promised, with the ability to combine two or more cheeses making more intricate carvings possible.

Sitting alongside Fish Feasts and Flasks, Cheese Sculptures are sure to be a key part of both heroics and raids as we reach the endgame phase of Cataclysm. Although the thought of skilling up another profession from scratch is daunting, the idea of going through the revamped game world as I go should make it worthwhile.

I’m not sure if I’ll ever get used to my raid leader shouting “DEPLOY THE CHEESE” over vent though…