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?

Gothic Lolita in a videogame?

While I was looking at the updates on the latest fighting games at Fighters-Generation I found this very interesting character design from recent ARC Systems Fighting game BlazBlue, which appears to me at first glance to be very similar to Gothic Lolita fashion style. It's unlike a typical Maid or Nun design that you would usually see with a young girl Anime character, I wonder if this means that Gothic Lolita is starting to become more widely known? But then again this is a very niche Japanese fighting game series that has not even been released in the West. I do like the character design though!

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?

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?

My New Shiny PC!

Sorry for the late post, I've been playing so many games since I upgraded my PC. Well maybe 'Upgraded' isn't really the right word, since the only thing left thats original is the case.

I've been having so much fun in Fallout 3, Street Fighter 4, and Batman: Arkham Asylum. But what really surprised me is how World of Warcraft looked! So THIS is what people are usually seeing when they see me cast spells? Kewl!

In other news, at the end of this week I'll be visiting GenCon to see what geek coventions that aren't Supanova look like. Apparently the guys from OzHadou have decided to put together a little tournament and casual SF4 play, so I might actually get some time to play the game competitively!

Speaking of Street Fighter 4, I've come to realise how closely it resembles SF2, the speed and many of the pokes are the same, links are almost essential to know, but I can understand why the game is as slow as it is. People complained about the speed, but when you are inputting Special Move Dash Cancels into Target Combos into Dash cancel Supers, things get very hectic.

Perhaps its just that I've played SF3 for so long, but I miss some of the familiar things from that game. But I do have to admit, it does look damn good.

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.