HI! I'm BACK! I've taken a break from WoW for the past few months because well... nothing much is happening if you aren't just raiding ICC, and the orphanage quests were bugged this year so there was no way to get the minipets for that event this year! :(

So I recently logged back in to attend the Flame Festival Event and try to achieve the [40 exalted reputations] achievement that I've slowly been working on for about six months. And finally completed it yesterday! Hooray!

In other news, Cataclysm has dropped a few features, which you probably know about if you read mmo-champion.com which makes me think Blizz may have over-promised at last years Blizzcon, telling us about all these big plans and how the next WoW was going to come out before the next Blizzcon. It looks quite doubtful now...

So I guess for the next few months it will be just about tieing up loose ends in-game and working on stockpiling a decent amount of gold for the expansion. I'll elaborate more on this later. But for now, have a good week!

Alchemy after patch 3.3.3

Well, the first thing you'll notice as a Grand Master Alchemist after patch 3.3.3 is that now that Frozen Orbs can be exchanged for Eternals and most importantly Frost Lotus, is that the Elixir market may take a hit as peoples stockpile of frozen orbs are making Frost Lotus extrememely cheap.

However due to this change, demand for regular high lvl Herbs will go up, and you'll find yourself going from 11g per stack of 20 lichbloom, to being able to get 25g per stack, or maybe more.

We should see a price correction as the market settles down and we'll probably get back to around pre patch prices as the flood of frozen orbs drys up.

The fact that the Mining ability Smelt Titansteel is off cooldown is a big boon for alchemists however, especially if you are able to get large amounts of Saronite Bars cheaply, a mining alt or mining as a secondary may work even better. However check prices on the AH as Saronite Bars have almost doubled in price after this change, as miners realise the demand goes up.

All in all, try to focus on Goldclover, Adder's Tongue, and Icethorn until the crazy Frost Lotus prices get back to normal, and pick some bargains up while the fire is hot!

About the Faction change.

So a short time ago I decided I was bored with Horde side and decided to transfer over to the Alliance side to see what I had been missing. So I went and used the Faction transfer service.

The surprising thing I found about the faction transfer service is after you pay for it and wait a short while, you character is available for transfer at any time just by clicking the button on the character selection screen. So in theory you can pay for a faction transfer and just wait til you want to switch your character over.

Interestingly, after I chose my race my Mage showed up still wearing the Horde equipment as you can see, but they all change to faction specific items once you log on. Also all faction specific quests will be reset, HOWEVER almost all items from the other faction that were linked to that quest will be swapped over.

So oddly enough now I have the 3000 quest achievement, but I have only finished 1600 quests now. And I have the Wintersaber mount in exchange from my ravasaur mount, but I am only neutral with the Wintersaber trainers, weeird.

I've been working on a few other things since I switched over, so I'll be going on about that soon.

Valentines day wheee!

Okay, Valentines day has come and gone. Things are moving a bit slow for me in WoW, partly because I haven't been raiding much, and partly because Mass Effect 2 came out. And I just HAD to import my save game to try out my character.

Mass Effect 2 has a great storyline, and is a great game within itself. But after you finish the game, you don't feel like the side missions are all there, and the dumbing down of the equipment screens makes the game have a bit less replayablity than the first game did.

However Bioware have said from the start they have a lot of DLC planned, which is good because the game is a very strong 'base' to be expanded upon. Especially with side missions and extra characters. A Hover tank is also planned to be coming as well.

In WoW most of my time has been taken up with trying to get the Exalted achievement, so I've been grinding and buying off the Auction House in order to increase my reputation with various factions. Its actually nice to log in to WoW and take it easy. Instead of always raiding.

In other news the local arcade is adding another floor, so hopefully they will have installed a Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike machine, and I can get some games with people just like in the old days hehe.

Is the new WoW pet shop just a Gold buying store?

Everyone knows about the new Pet Shop that Blizzard has implemented, where you can buy a Lil' KT or Pandaren Monk. While Total Biscuit has been talking about how this sets the precident within Blizzard to sell completely Virtual goods, and possibly the beginning of a slippery slope, I have a different view of things.

While I agree with him that Virtual goods being sold within Blizzard is new, the WoW Trading Card game and the other MMO's which completely subsist on Virtual Goods, has kind of lessened the shock value of this decision.

However, despite the fact that the Pet Shop is encouraging future games to attempt a Subscription+Microtransaction model, I believe the Shop was also created to curb Gold Farmers.

Gold Farming has been a problem for WoW for years, and there has, and always will be a market for it. Therefore the best way Blizz could combat the problem is by making a Gold Service of their own.

Take my Lil' KT pet above in the screenshot. I never paid real money for him, I traded the Pet Code from another player, in exchange for WoW Gold. Now I know what some will say "It's against the Terms of Service! That's not allowed!" But before you go and report me, take a look at this thread. http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=19820322858&postId=198185696216&sid=1#4

There are others like this one, but basically it's confirming that Pets Bought with money can be traded for gold. The pet is a virtual item, and so is the gold, and is therefore not against the Terms of Service, which prohibits Real world items for Virtual Items and vice versa.

If you still don't believe me, or are doubtful about the stance Blizzard seems to be taking on this ATM, take a look at this in game mail I recieved from the support department after recieving my Lil' KT pet.



Blizzard Customer Service sends me a mail telling me I am breaking the Terms of Service by: "Advertising non-WoW related businesses or Websites."
Obviously the Trade message I sent was misunderstood, I assume they thought that I was offering repeated Gold for Pet and Pet for Gold services, when I just wanted to buy the two pets.

But no mention of an illegal exchange of goods, no mention of breaking the ToS for buying a pet with gold. An oversight? Or a passive confirmation?

Yes, I'm here!

Well I've been mucking about in all these different games for the past few weeks, Batman : Arkham Asylum, Fallout 3, Dungeons and Dragons Online, Street Fighter IV, and of course; World of Warcraft.

Batman seems like just a very good mish mash of ideas you always would like for a Batman action game, and executes it almost perfectly. It doesn't try to pretend to be something its not, its a straight, linear no-holds barred Batman adventure with a good story supported with great voice acting. I think you can really see the love that was put into this game by the developers.

Fallout 3 makes great use of the Oblivion engine and although it seems like some of the mechanics are a bit dated the world and characters really pull you in. It's a great immersive game and I only had one problem in that I couldn't have my character specialised as much as I'd like to. Much like how Fable ended where your character was kind of good at everything at the highest level part of the game so you really didn't feel like a distinct character.

D&D Online was a lovely game, but I feel like something like Neverwinter Nights Online servers can still easily give this type of game a very good run for its money.

Street Fighter 4 just keeps reminding me how much like Street Fighter 2 it is like, and I'm starting to miss my old Dudley and Urien from Street Fighter 3. I hear Super Street Fighter 4 is now in development, so I hope they hopefully add a few more features that will please SF3 players. :)

Finally WoW, sigh.... I've decided to stick with Strangewayes my Mage, and he's now my main, he's now got 98 Mini pets, and I'm nearing the final goal of obtaining the extremely rare [Hyacinth Macaw]. Apart from him and 2 others, I only have some holiday pets to obtain. I hope there is an achievement for 100 pets.... but I suppose they will award me with another pet. Sigh.

And soon the Lich King will be released from within the Icecrown Citadel! I wonder if it will take a while to take down, like Yogg Saron?

Kewl new stuff

Me and my friend had an arguement yesterday about how the new faction transfers should be handled by Blizzard. He was of the opinion that you should be able to do a huge grind of rep to allow your Undead Horde to become an Undead Alliance and so on and so forth.

I agreed that it was a great idea, but it would mean a lot of the story and basis of WoW would be thrown to the sidewalk by introducing something like that. He responded by saying the only reason WoW doesn't use his idea is because faction swap payments make Blizz more money.

Well I think he's bonkers anyway...


Blizz continues the tempting of the players to roll alts by introducing Sons of Hodir Rep increases on Daily Dungeon quests. I don't think anything will tempt people at this point until Cataclysm comes out with it's revamped world levelling experience now.

Also, I wonder if other races will be able to enter the Goblin and Worgen starter areas when the xpac comes out? By the look of the DK start zone though, non-Goblin and non-Worgen players are going to be shut out from ever seeing the content unless they roll the race eh?

And talking about Goblins and Worgen, what about those crazy racials? Unless Blizz has just blanket banned Racials from Arena in the xpac, their will be crazy stuff happening.

Blizzcon is over! 3.22 now approaching!

So Blizzcon is over, most of what was leaked about the expansion ended up being true, although if you ask the lore nerds, they'll say that Blizz stole their ideas or the leaks were dead wrong. /rolleyes

To be honest I was surprised at the fact Worgen were actually getting an ability that allowed them to change from human to Worgen at will, with no bonuses. I was mildly shocked. Simply because I never expected Blizzard to do something that was almost completely for RP and Lore reasons and nothing else.

Coming up with the new patch is a revamped level 80 Onyxia Raid, which should be fun, and starts us off on the road to Cataclysm, with mostly revamped old content instead of new shiny content.

Some people might say that because its not new content its a waste of money and not worth it, but to me it shows that Blizz actually recognises that the Old World needs a spit and polish to compete in the current MMO marketplace. It also comes to light that Blizz can always think up a reason to either do one thing, and then change their minds and think up a perfectly reasonable reason to the opposite.

My Mage has been at level 80 for some time now. I've slowly been working away at increasing my guild rank in order to access some of the higher tiered raids on offer at the moment. But at the moment I'm stuck doing runs of Nax 25 with my guild, which is actually not so bad since I haven't been in there in about 3-4 months or so now.

What started off as a side project has now expanded, I now have 86 minipets and 65 Mounts ATM. My favourites at the moment is my Ravasaur Hatchling and my Ammen Vale Lashling.

I have to say though that despite all the whining and predictions of doom, patch 3.2 has been quite healthy for the game. It kinda gives me a bit of the BC vibe, except much, much easier lol

Enough ranting for now, I should post more often to avoid the wall of textyness.

Dur MMO-Champion was trolled by SA Forums?!

So, I'm sure most of you by now have heard the news about the new WoW expansion leak and are, like many people, wondering if its true, and what it means for WoW in the future?

In my honest opinion I think that it's true. Why? Because if it was a fake leak, and just a red herring, it would probably be a let down for a lot of people. Secondly, it's probably the best idea Blizzard have ever had for WoW, I mean it just makes sense on a marketing point of view and a business point of view.

For example, you have a large amount of game content that is going completely unused by the general playerbase for the moment. Why not put a lot of those old art assets to good use? You have entire zones that can be reworked, flight will now be allowable in the old world, update the older questlines to reflect how far Blizzard has come with the game.

And at the same time you are encouraging new and old players to join to see if the game from 1-60 has improved, possibly gaining even more customers. So I think it's simply a great idea, and basically the only option they had considering the next gen MMO's such as Champions, APB, and Star Wars are boasting far more interesting gaming systems from day one, while WoW still had its 2004 Lvl 1-60 grind.

Another point is, previous WoW creator interviews have backed up what the leak is saying: "Garrosh will be the new leader of the Horde and Thrall will leave"? That reflects a comment I recall hearing during a WoW interview, with the creators wishing for an end to the peace that seemed to exist between Alliance and Horde, and wishing for Thrall to disappear from the scene.

Community Managers on the WoW forums have repeatedly stated they would be interested in revisiting the Old World of Azeroth over the past year, never hinting that they are working on it, nor that they had no plans to do it. Many lore buffs have already figured that Maelstrom and the Emerald dream will probably be the focus of the next expansion. Even Goblin and Worgen have been confirmed by several sources over the past few weeks.

Anyone who has read MMO-Champion before knows that the Webmaster does not simply post random rumours, and he has already stated that his information has been confirmed by several separate anonymous sources.

So if you are still not convinced by this, then I would simply say to you that I would like to hear what you have to say about it this time, next week. :)

3.2 Hits! And Strangewayes moves servers!

Time for a new Update! I've been back on my Mage in the past week finally reaching the goal of 75 minipets! I also decided to switch from my old Skinning/Tailoring professions over to Alchemy/Herbalism. It took a few days to grind up but I am very happy with my self heal DoT I have available for myself, as well as the Endless Mana/Health/Flask I have with me now. It makes things quite helpful while speed running instances or fighting in Battlegrounds!

As for the 3.2 patch itself, I thought it was quite interesting to tell you the truth, on one hand you have all this new exciting content to go through, but on the other hand you see Blizz has made the whole system of how character can gear once they hit 80 completely streamlined.

Simply put, back before 3.2, once you hit level 80, you were to run Heroics in order to gain your item level 200 gear in order to be considered viable for Naxxramas, the first Raid instance of Wrath of the Lich King. With Heroics now dropping Emblems of Conquest, and the new Normal 5-man having ALL Item Level 200 Purple gear dropping, the entire progression line for WOTLK is turned on its head.

New 80's will now be immediately start gearing for Ulduar and the new 3.2 Raid Instance. Possibly being able to skip Naxxramas altogether! On one hand it's good, but on the other, it just starts to reek of patch 3.1 when Blizz was constantly nerfing Ulduar til people could get through it, the progression loses it's value because you think that if you wait long enough you could just get the top level gear eventually mailed to your inbox.

But enough about that rant. Strangewayes(my Mage) has moved from a PVP to a PVE server, and I must say I am pleasantly surprised, I never realised how much World PVP ganking erodes players basic Instance skills. After doing several PuG's I have found almost all players have a decent understanding of their class in instance situations; something that was poorly lacking on my old server. But perhaps I am just having a run of good luck at the moment. The guild I've joined is very supportive and I'm hoping to have a lot of fun with them and this new "Casual Friendly" version of WoW Blizz is going for.

Fearing the Endgame.

I caved in today and decided to go back to my Mage, after levelling my Lock up to 74. I realised as I approached 80, just how much work I had put into the Mage at endgame in Wrath. Due to the introduction of achievements, my Mage has 74 mini-pets, and something like 64 mounts ATM. Some of those mounts and pets took quite an amount of time and in-game gold to obtain.

Additionally, I realised that my Warlock would likely not get into too many groups, simply due to things like having weak gear, having no achievements to allow entry into PuG runs, and being DPS meaning that I will be competing with others better geared and with better achievements.

Plus with the new 3.2 patch fast approaching, I'll be having a lot of trouble actually trying to play my Warlock through the endgame content, especially content I have already done on my Mage almost hundreds of times.

So in retrospect, even though Blizzard is trying to encourage people to roll new characters with the Heirloom items and experience boosts, I find that unless you are a chronic reroller, or are planning to make a character simply for gathering at 80, the reasons for trying to roll a new character are rather few.

Goblin and Worgen in WoW expansion? Hmm...

There has been a lot of interest and blogging and such about Worgen and Goblins being the new playable races to be introduced in the next World of Warcraft expansion. Of course, several people have been theorising about this, and I have a similar view.

Perhaps dropping in the textures for Worgen and Goblin masks and thereby stirring controversy is
a marketing tactic by Blizzard to raise awareness for the upcoming Blizzcon, or it could be a ploy. Obviously it doesn't take too much effort to create 4 facial textures to use for masks.

But on the other hand, if I recall correctly. The races for the Burning Crusade expansion were correctly guessed a good time before they were revealed. I am pretty confident that these guesses are quite on the mark.

To be honest, I was hoping that Arakkoa and Ethereals were going to be in the next expansion, but with the Maelstrom very likely being the setting, I am thinking bird people, and people comprised of nothing but energy and mummy wraps wouldn't fit so well in an underwater setting....

The only thing I am wondering at the moment, is will they remodel and reskin the races? Both models have been around since launch of the original game, and could use a spit and polish.

Game Start!

Hi! Welcome to my blog! I'm not going to bother with useless banter (For the moment anyway)
Basically I'm just going to be posting things I think are interesting. Unfortunately for some people this will mostly be gaming, WoW, Street Fighter, Star Wars, Star Trek, and most things related to 80's pop culture.

OK the first bit of news, I have a new Level 70 Orc Warlock in World of Warcraft that I rushed in about 4-5 days (in play time). Before that, I had a Moonkin and then a Mage. The reason I dropped my Moonkin is because I think they are boring looking although they are incredibly versatile, and I dropped my Mage because I feel they are far too specialised and 'narrowly focused' compared to Warlocks.

Hopefully I can show some more screenshots chronicling my trip from 70 to 80 and have some commentary on exactly how a character that was not made during Wrath of the King launch is able to get through the endgame experiences.

I'm hoping to make regular posts, although I may just end up spamming with posts and then stop at intervals. I'll just add a screenshot of a row of Mammoth mounts in Dalaran, and everything should be complete!