Going from Super-Rich to broke :(

The other day I finally realised several goals for my character. Obtaining a Tundra Traveller's Mammoth costing 16000 gold. And finally getting the final book to recieve my Kirin Tor Familiar Elemental Pet! Now I feel I can relax and not spend every spare moment grinding for gold! Unfortunately now I'm low on funds, but the dailies should help me with that over time.

In other news, Patch 3.3 will be hitting within the next two weeks I suppose. Which is probably why a lot of raiders have slowed down their raiding quite a bit, to the chagrin of many a Guild Leader. Everyone is just eager to stock up on those emblems of Triumph and get their gear easily methinks.

I've also revised my idea of when Cataclysm is going to drop, based on the news that happened last week in which a Las Vegas convention centre mistakenly pinned Blizzcon at their place in July, which I think probably means Cataclysm will be released sometime in April or May, which will allow Blizz to use the new Icecrown Citadel content coming in Patch 3.3 to be gated to its full extent.

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?

Will there be a WoW Patch 3.4 ???

My guess is that Patch 3.3 will drop sometime in November. Now, if you recall, Blizzard said that 3.3 is going to be the final content patch for WOTLK. But Blizzard also said at the time that during BC, patch 2.3 would be the final major patch of that expansion. But as we all saw, the players ran out of content faster than Blizzard expected, and the 2.4 Sunwell patch was released with a lock out system to drag out the content before WOTLK was ready for release.

So let's make a rough guess and say Cataclysm will be released next year in say... June or July, to be cautiously optimistic. Now if that's correct, then that would mean that the space between the last Major content patch and the Cataclysm expansion will be about 7-8 months. If we feel like Blizzard will wait till "the game is done", this wait becomes longer.

Now to put things into perspective, Patch 2.3 in Burning crusade dropped on Live servers in November 2007. Now if Patch 2.4 did not get developed before the pre-release patch for WOTLK, then WoW would be without a major content patch for, wait for it.... 10-11 months.

With 2.4 added to the roster however, this drops back to a more modest 5-6 months.

Will the 3.3 patch be able to drag out content for that long? Will Blizzard rely on small additions to the Argent Tournament in order to keep people playing? What can Blizzard do to keep people interested until the middle of next year?

Will Blizzard even try and rush things out the door in order to hold on to the player base? Or do they already have this content lull planned to allow people to go to the competition and get the other games "out of their system" before we come back to Cataclysm? Nah, that sounds just crazy... .... or is it?

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.

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.

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!