Andrew Busey: My Musings

Speaking of WoW (as in World of Warcraft), I’ve quit playing.  I’m having more fun playing (and working on Duels) and I just haven’t had time for WoW.  I was getting tired of it even before Duels fully consumed me.

Here are my issues:

1. Takes too long to do anything.  2-6 hours to do any dungeon?  And for anything good, it was closer to the high end.
2. To get any good gear takes 10 people and that’s Karazhan.  Got everything from there.  Which leads to:
3. Nothing to do.  I’m in a top guild, but I’m a social member.  So I don’t get to raid much.  I don’t want to join another guild or raid every night, so there is pretty much nothing left to do.  Except:
4. PVP…  I’m a hunter.  No one likes hunters in Arena.  It’s hard to find a good team as a hunter.  And I’m sure not starting over.

Many of the reasons I started Duels are encapsulated in that list.  I love Duels because:

1. I can jump in and out.
2. Play when I want across whatever time increment I want.
3. I can keep it open in the background while I’m working (which in my case is on Duels, but still - there is a lot of work to do.)

I have two things I’m curious about with regards to the iPhone and what will happen after release:

• Why isn’t Flash on it?  How long will it be before Flash is on it?  Is this some licensing issue (Apple doesn’t want to pay Adobe) or a technical issue (seems like if the iPhone is running Mac OS X this wouldn’t be the case)?
• How long will it take someone to hack World of Warcraft to work on it?  It’s got 8 GB, if you don’t care about music you might be able to get WoW to run on it.  WoWPhone or the WoW iPhone….. The iPhone is 320×480 resolution and the lowest WoW setting I have is 800×600 - so that may be an issue. 

See iPhone Tech Specs for more info - they say it is running Mac OS X there.

I think there are some pros and cons to each.  I know a ton of people that just stay logged into ventrilo (a common voice server) all day.   I’m not that enamored with the voice chat, but it is definitely useful in World of Warcraft.  Certainly for action and socialization, voice chat is pretty cool.  Text chat is kind of a nice way to retain anonymity and casualness.  Anyway, this article from wired.com is pretty interesting:

Voice Chat Can Really Kill the Mood on WoW

Should be exciting new season 2 rewards (and you can carry 5,000 arena points with you into season 2).   The new armor is nearly identical (slight color changes) to the Tier 5 armor for each class.  I guess this is because it’s similar in stats/power to Tier 5 armor.  (That and creating a ton of new visuals is expensive.)

All the ratings get reset so it’s off to the races again for unknown rewards.  This seasons top .5% got super-fast armored netherdrake mounts as rewards - that’s pretty cool.  So I’m assuming season 2 will have really cool rewards for the top players as well.

When the stats for the new armor and weapons gets posted somewhere I’ll link to it.

Does anyone know when Season 2 starts?

I’ve heard its 90 days per season, but now I can’t find when the Arena stuff started.  I’m guessing that arenas started in late February or early March which means Arena Season 2 should be starting either the end of this month or early next month.

If anyone know when Arenas went live that would be really good to know!

Thanks!

Oh:  You will be able to carry 5,000 Arena Points into Season 2.  So I hope it has better stuff!

It looks like this patch is coming Tuesday (May 15) and that it is big.  Lot’s of changes here, especially in itemization.  It looks like virtually every level 70 epic (purple!) item is getting a significant buff in stats.  Especially items from Karazhan and the later instances (Serpentshrine Caverns, etc.).   Tier 4 and better armor is also getting bumped up.  Weapons are also getting a huge buff. 

For example, Sunfury Bow of the Phoenix, shown here in it’s post 2.1 stat (83.3 DPS +19 Agility +34 Attack Power) is currently 77.4 DPS, +16 Agility, +30 Attack Power.  This is a pretty big bump.  As a hunter I really appreciate it! 

I’ve been looking at posts on MMO Champion because they’ve been keeping a pretty good running update on what is happening on the PTR (Public Test Realm) with changes in 2.1.   Many of the updates are on WoWHead and Thottbot now too.  So if you want to see a specific change they might be better.  But MMO Champion is the easiest way to see what the latest news is.

They have also substantially reduced the honor costs of many PVP rewards items.  The epic PVP gems have been reduced in cost by 50% or more.   So if you’ve got some honor saved up, don’t spend it until 2.1!

The remaining question I have:  When is Arena Season 1 over?  I can’t seem to find this anywhere.  I can find references in blue posts (Blizzard / WoW employees on the official forums) that say Arena Season 2 is coming and will have new rewards.  They also say you can carry 5,000 Arena points forward into the new season.  So I’m curious to see how the rewards change.  (And hey, I currently have well over 2,000 points to spend and I don’t want anything that’s available right now.)  

So my guess is Arena Season 2 starts with Patch 2.1, but I can’t find anything definitive.  Anyone know?

 

You know a game is crazy when bots login every few minutes and spam everyone with messages like:

1000g for only $99.  We powerlevel 1-60, $200. 

Etc.  They have URLs, but no need to help them out by posting them here.  It’s annoying. 

I guess it’s a sign of success that so many people want to buy gold and power-leveling services.  But the spam is really starting to get overwhelming.  I’m curious to see how Blizzard handles this. 

I’m actually in the camp that says buying gold and in-game stuff is ok.  I know a lot of people disagree, but I’m sure we all agree that in game spam sucks. 

 

 WARNING:  If you receive a letter from the Argent Dawn telling you thanks for all your service to them and saying they’ve attached the present as a reward or a token of their gratitude.  This reward appears as a gift-wrapped item (commonly available in many places in WoW, probably the easiest is the reward for cleaning a grime encrusted object in Gnomeragon).   Anyway, it turns out this is a high price COD (100-300g typically) so do not accept it.  Hit return and send it back.

 So this Argent Dawn scam is not the first scam of this type, but appears to be the most prolific.  I’ve received multiple of these letters (on my main and one of my alts).  I know lots of people that have.  I assume it is hitting other servers as well.  If you’ve been hit by this scam, please post a comment preferably with what server you are on.  I’d like to try to get a feel for how wide spread this is.

I’ve seen another scam, this one got me a long time ago, popping up a lot recently.  I call it the Auction House Gotcha.  It’s simple and it also falls in more of a gray area.  It’s probably not a technical rules violation but it is evil.  Basically, there are many trade items (ores, bars, leathers, herbs, cloth, etc.) that have tons of the same item listed.  Because of market efficiencies these tend to fall roughly around the same price point.  Often you will need many of these items, especially if you are leveling up a tradeskill, and you will just click to buy them.  Click, click, click.  The auction house pops-up a buyout notice with the price, but if you’re buying more than 4 or 5 you start to ignore this.  And then boom, you hit the one from the jackass who put it in at ten or hundred times the normal price and you just bought a stack of something for 100g.   Anyway, watchout for that one when you are buying a lot of stuff in the AH.

 

Well News.com has written a story:  Outsourcing your ‘Warcraft’ skills

I think the point is kind of missed in many places in this story, especially by the “long-time Warcraft player” quoted in the story.  People say this is lame and misses the point of the game, but I disagree.  MMORPG’s have an inherent problem:  they have to throttle forward progress.  There are always a group of people who can play almost 24/7 and get ahead.  So much of the stuff, including leveling up and especially making gold, are repeatative and often boring undertakings. 

I’ll admit I had fun leveling from 60->70 and that was generally fun.  Kudos to Blizzard for putting in enough quests and fun stuff to make it not feel like a hellacious mind-numbing grind.  But earning gold is.  Grinding for reputation is in many cases.  These things are just not fun, but they are throttles within the game.

If you have a job and a life, you cannot necessarily do these things at the frequency level necessary to be at the top of the game.  This is in no way a reflection of your skills and it in no way makes you lame.  If you like the game and you want to stay at the top I think it’s fine to outsource. 

It’s not like you’re having these services run instances for you - they typically are not capable of that.  But if during downtime you have them make gold for you (cheaper, but possible riskier than buying it), grind reputation, or level up an alt (alternate or second) character (so you can try something different), I say do it if you have the money.  Spending money on this is cheaper than a lot of other hobbies. 

I’ve done it.  I admit it.  I think it was worth it.  Anyway, there you have it. 

In World of Warcraft’s expansion The Burning Crusade you can buy flying mounts.  They are really cool and are also a requirement for many level 70 activities.  So if you play, you’ll eventually have to buy one.  There are two types:

• Normal:  60% faster than walking and they can fly.
• Epic:  280% faster and they fly really fast.

The epics are really cool.  I highly recommend them.  So here is what they cost:

Normal:

• Riding skill training to 225:  800g
• Basic flying mount:  100g
• Total price:  900g

Epic:

• Riding skill training to 225:  800g
• Riding skill training to 300:  5,000g  (requires that your riding already be 225)
• Basic epic flying mount:  200g
• Total cost:  6,000g (assuming you didn’t also buy the basic mount in the meantime for an additional 100g)

So for an epic flying mount (you’ll definitely want one) you’re in for 6,000g.  What is that in real money?  Well, I’m glad you asked.  So I looked it up today and found gold (on my server) going for $188/1000g - down substantially from a week ago when it was about $300/1000g.

At the new, lower gold price of $188 per 1000g the epic mount would cost $1,128. (Over a thousand dollars of real money!)

So your glorious new flying vehicle (which Blizzard declares that it own) is almost as expensive as a real vehicle.

Oh and if you want to know how much it costs in time, it is even worse.  My guess is that you can earn 1000g in 20-40 hours depending on how hard you try.  So figuring 30, it will take you 180 hours of gold farming (what fun) to get enough for your epic mount.  If you make over $30/hr in reality land that means the epic mount IS costing as much as a real vehicle at $5,000+.  Of course the fallacy of this argument is that you choose to spend your time here, so what is your leisure time worth?  I don’t know but this seems like it’s starting to get pretty expensive.