Making money with Inscription without Glyphs

Before I start, let me say that this post could also be called: "Making money from what people want instead of what people need".

A little bit of backstory
I have been trying to break into the Glyph industry for a while now.  Using my DK, I power-level his inscription up to 400, and started to to the daily research, creating 5 of every new glyph, which normally listed for about 20-30g each.
I'm up to 435 skill points now, and I have quite a few glyphs listed on the AH any given time. I also try to check if I've been undercut 2 or 3 times a day, and relist everything if I have.

The end result? Almost nothing, not even 100g a day. I'm still hoping that once I get more and more new glyphs, I'll start making money eventually, but this post is not about that, actually, it's about making money without the glyphs.

How?


I have to admit, I actually stumbled upon this miniature gold mine by accident, you see, I started inscription on my DK, not for the gold making opportunity, but for a specific item that I wanted to craft. That's right, a long time ago, I started inscription because I wanted to craft this. The thing is, I eventually forgot about it, and abandoned my DK's profession for a while, until the other day I remembered that I wanted this item, so I leveled him up, soon to realize that the technique required to craft it, was a drop from a specific part of Grizzly Hills.

Lucky for me, my DK is lvl 74 (has been for a long while), the exact same level as the mobs I had to kill, so I went there and killed humans for almost 30 minutes until the item dropped.
Once I was back, I decided to check the AH, since now I'm all about making gold with this toon, I thought I would see if this was actually a gold making opportunity. As it turned out, there were 4 other books listed on the AH, 3 of them were listed at 500g buyout, and the last one was listed at 1000g buyout.

When I saw that, I thought about listing mine (I had only enough money to make one, since I have been trying to make Northrend Cards aswell, and they are expensive to make), but something stopped me. Something I read somewhere around internet about using the Trade channel to sell your items.

So I gave it a try:
When using the trade channel, things change, for starters, you're offering a product, and specially in this case, one that not many people know about or even care about, so your message to the channel has to catch the readers attention.

You can't do something like this:
/2 WTS [Rituals of the New Moon], 500g

Simply because:
a- Some people will see you listing an unknown blue item at a relatively high price and won't care to look again.
b- You're actually setting the price, limiting yourself to only people who have 500g to spend on a luxury item, and leaving those who are willing to negotiate with you, out.

So, I choose the following message (wich produced nice results actually):
/2 WTS [Rituals of the New Moon], pst me and GET YOUR WOLF ON!

There are some key points we should be looking at on that text:
a- No price, this normally makes the initial whisper something like: "how much?", or even, people giving it a prices already. I haven't had the luck of having someone offering me an initial amount higher than what I normally ask, but still, it's a nice open door for that kind of opportunity.
b- The last part: "pst me and GET YOUR WOLF ON!" actually catches the readers eye. It will make them wonder: "why the hell a blue item will get my wolf on?" and subsequently, makes them click and read the tool tip. This way, you get people interested in what you're selling instead of waiting for those interested in it to go and look for it on the AH.
c- Negotiation: This relates to point "a" actually. My normal initial price for this item is 500g, so, when people say "how much?" I answer with: "500g", to wich sometimes I get a "ok, i'll get it", sometimes I get a "lowlz no" and sometimes, I get a "100g and I'll take it off your hands".

This last one is the most interesting one. You see, making the item (in my realm), costs about 80g on a bad day, so selling it at 500g is a super profit, one that allows me to actually lower the prices as much as I like. I normally take it down to 250g at most (which also makes for a killing profit if you ask me).

So, back to the negotiation part, if you happen to get a possible buyer who wants to save himself a few bucks, you can actually arrive at a middle point, where you feel comfortable with the profit, and he/she is happy thinking what a great deal they just made (a win-win situation :) ).


There are two important points here:
1- Instead of listing your known-to-few-players item in the AH and wait for them to go look it up and pay and overpriced amount of money, you offer it in Trade, making it posible for them to buy it and also letting everyone else know about it, which increases your customer number.
2- You are free to choose the price you want to sell the item for a specific customer, instead of having the strict and cold system that the AH has.

In my experience, I have to spend between 20-30 minutes offering the item and chatting with users until I sell it for a nice price.
I have had luck on some cases and I've sold it 2 minutes after my first post on Trade, at 500g.
One thing to notice about my experience, is that even though it's an item that requires lvl70 to use, most of my buyers are lvl80s, who want it exclusively for the use effect.
What does this tell us? Well, to me, it tells me that I'm not selling a standar item, and as such, I can't charge it at a standar price, no matter what some people might say.

Hopefully, you'll get lucky and in your server this item will sell for a nice profit aswell :)

Have fun making money!

My take on the new Hunter Class

These past few days, the WoW community has been a bit edgy with all the news about changes to every single class. And we're still waiting on the pally changes..., they've taken so long to publish them that I fear/hope they will be major ones....

Even though Blizzard has already published all other class changes, I feel like I can't give me honest opinion about all of them, since I haven't played all classes, and yes, the only class I've taken up to 80 is my pally, but I feel like I'm getting to know the hunter class pretty good, so I thought I would post my own take on what I think the new changes mean for us hunters.

And here we go, the changes:

We've all read them at this point, but if you haven't, here is the complete list, and here is the short story:

1. No more mana, focus is our thing now.
2. No more ammo. Don't ask where the ammo comes from... 
3. Three pets to carry around, even more to store at the stables.
4. A pet at level 1
5. Several talents changed
6. Mastery system for every tree announced
7. Three new abilities:
1. Cobra Shot
2. Trap launcher
3. Camouflage

So, lets go over this points one by one, and see how they will affect us:

1- No more mana. I consider this one a major change, for several reasons. For starters, it's one of our two main resources, we consume mana like it's the air we breath. Our dps is actually very dependent of our mana pool (at least while leveling) and now it's all going to disappear. All things considered...., I think it's a great change. One thing all mana users have in common (again, at least while leveling) is the downtime it produces. We can't kill if we have no mana, so while questing (or even dungeoning - that's right, I just invented that word - ) how fast we go from one kill to the next one depends almost entirely on how much mana we have left.  Yes, eventually we learn a new aspect that helps us in that front, giving us super fast mana recuperation, but still, we have to suffer a damage penalty, which makes us kill everything slower, which in turn, makes us wonder wether we were better off stopping for a drink instead of killing doing half our normal damage. 

Now that problem is going away, since our main resource (the other one being removed - ammo - ) is turning into focus, which we know so well, from watching it under our pets health bar. It basically works like the Rogue's energy although Blizzard hasn't said much about any actual difference with said resource.

In the end, I don't think focus is going to be a magical solution, since they're not taking away Aspect of the Viper, which makes me think, we'll still have situations where we'll need it. Still, I consider this  a big blow on the downtime problem.

2- No more ammo: This change right here, I really don't know how I feel about it. I know a lot of hunters out there hate the fact that we're the only class that needs to shot money (almost literally) in order to kill things.  We need to buy our ammo, which at first is not that expensive, but once you hit 80 and depend on every little upgrade you can get to maximize your dps, this expense becomes one of your major ones. But then again, I actually enjoyed that, to me, having to buy my own ammo (or make it if you're an engineer) makes the hunter a unique class, it sets it appart from all others. Yes it can be a pain, but I've always seen it as a small price to pay for being unique, now that's going away, I guess I'll have to wait and see what it feels.

3- Three pets to carry around, even more to store at the stables: This change really comes in handy. I won't lie to you, I do feel like with every change, the hunter is becoming more and more like a Pokemon Master, running around the world, collecting exotic creatures and training them to fight, now also having the possibility to swap them between combats? That just sounds too familiar, doesn't it?

Leaving the jokes aside, I do like this change. It does break the suspension of disbelief just a bit, I mean, where am I getting my other pets from? Errr..., lets keep that a retorical question, shall we?

Gameplay wise, it does give the hunter even more flexibility in the battle field, be it on a PVP encounter or a PVE situation, you are now pretty much covered (at least, pet wise).

4- A pet at level 1:  This one, right here, is a smart change. Blizzard probably got all his database admins and ask them, what class gets deleted the most or abandoned the first few levels? And they all went to their database consoles and started typing in queries until they all came to the same freaking conclusion: The hunter. Why? Because it's a class that's designed to be played alongside with a pet and for the first 10 freaking levels you don't get one! It's really frustrating..., really. Why the hell would I play a pokemon mas... hunter if I can't have a bloody pet to send and die for me!? Uh?! Well, that's all being taken care now, even if you can't really tame the one you want until level 10, at least now you get a pet to run around with you and help you kill things.

So, what am I trying to say with this? I approve of this change.

5- Several talents changed: This has been a common scenario for all classes so far (and I expect nothing less for the Paladins), since they're changing so many things around, some of the old talents are pointless now, and others are being improved. Lets see what we hunters can expect:

- Beast Masters: This guys appear to be the ones who get the new stuff, since Blizzard intends to make Cobra Shot their signature shot. So they get a couple of talents to improve it:

• Beast Mastery hunters will also have talents that make Cobra Shot superior to Steady Shot, such as Longevity reducing the cast time of Cobra Shot to 1.5 seconds.
• Beast Mastery hunters will have a new talent called Careful Aim, which increases the damage of the next Steady Shot or Cobra Shot, but also increases the cast time of these abilities. The intention is to make the combination of spells into a decent damage opener, especially in conjunction with the new ability Camouflage.

- Marksman: Nothing too fancy here, just a rework of the old Rapid Fire to grant focus immediately and will cause Rapid Killing to generate 3 Focus per second.

Also, Efficiency will reduce the Focus cost of abilities, instead of the mana cost.

- Survival: Same as MM:

• Thrill of the Hunt grants Focus when you land a critical strike.
• Hunter vs. Wild increases the hunter's Focus generation when his or her pet is snared, stunned, or rooted.

6- Mastery system for every tree announced: Same as the talent rework, this has been announced for every talent tree on every class. And in our case, there is not much to be surprised about, they're basically using the masteries to differenciate hunters of different trees (which is basically what the whole Mastery system was meant to do.. so.. they're doing it). Lets see what bonuses we're getting:

Beast Mastery 
Ranged Damage
Haste
Pet Damage 

Big surprise here, if you go BM you get a Pet Damage bonus! 

Marksmanship 
Ranged Damage
Armor Penetration
Double Shot 

If you go MM, dammage is your thing, not your pet's, so you get and extra Shot, for 50% damage and off the GCD.

Survival 
Ranged Damage
Ranged Critical Damage
Elemental Damage

Hunter abilities such as traps, Black Arrow, and Explosive Shot will do elemental damage of the following types: Arcane, Fire, Frost, Nature, and Shadow.

7- Three new abilities: And for the final point in my list, the thing that probably most of us were waiting..., new abilities!

Lets see:

• Cobra Shot: Woohoo! A new shot! As if you didn't have enough already >.<. But is not bad at all, lets break it down:
• Does nature damage: So, as they said, it's great for targets with a lot of armor.
• It does share a CD with Steady Shot, but then again, it's meant as an alternative to the latter.
• Beast Masters are expected to make this their signature shot, so they'll have talents to improve it.
• Trap Launcher: Interesting ability. It will allow you to launch any of your current traps. I see this as a great oportunity to lay out some havok in the mist of a great pvp battle, and throw from far away our explosive trap, or even our snake trap and see our enemies cower in fear! I also see it as a great oportunity for an extra AoE from out AoE traps in PVE situations, when we're far away on those big pulls and all we can do is volley them down, now we have one more shot/trap to use. The only problem with this, is that it will replace our Freezing Arrow, but 3 levels later, so what exactly is going to be our new lvl80 ability? They didn't say....
• Camouflage: Lets read the whole post about it, because it does seem interesting:

The hunter enters an obscured state that prevents him or her from taking ranged damage. The character would still be subject to melee or area-of-effect attacks, and dealing or taking damage will break the Camouflage effect. The hunter can move and set traps when under Camouflage, and will receive a damage bonus when attacking while under Camouflage (which will then break the effect).

First things first..., where exactly do we take direct ranged damage? Not on PVE right? That's the tank's job..., so that part I see it being really useful on PVP situations, when you're hiding from other casters or even other hunters.
Still, the bonus damage from being camouflaged will be useful anywhere, no matter what it is that you're killing, so basically I see this ability being used in conjunction with our opener shot (since after shooting we lose our camouflage), to give it a little extra juice.
All in all, not the uber/super/hyper new ability one would hope to learn at the new level cap, but then again, neither was Freezing Arrow at first and then they all wanted us to start CCing with it :) So fingers crossed.


And here ends my take at the new and upcoming changes to this great and fun to play class. Lets stay tunned and see what changes between now and release date, because you know, some things will change once they hit the PTR and all the QQ starts coming down :)

Anyways, in the mid time, have fun and keep playing! :)

So, what's up with Gamon?

You know him right? Gamon?

You've probably heard him yelling like a mad man when Wrath kicked in, and all those new Death Knights were entering Orgrimar? He likes a good yell that Gamon :) That's why I always kille him whenever I can >.<

So, what's the deal with him? 

Well, for starters, for those of you who actually don't know who the heck I'm talking about, there is a NPC called Gamon inside the Inn at Orgrimar. If you can't find him, that's probably because someone has already killed him, just wait a bit, he has a 5min respawn timer... he'll be back.

Why can we hordies kill a fellow hordie?
Yes, that's right, we can kill Gamon..., he's just a lvl12 npc, so he won't probably put much of a fight, unless ofcourse, you're a lvl1 or something.
Anyways, the thing with Gamon is that he's part of a rogue quest in which you have to pick-pocket him in order to obtain a specific key, and according to game mechanics, if a mob is to be pick-pocketed then he has to be killable.

Gamon has other uses too, asides from being a punching bag for high levels (counting myself, yes :) ), he's is the only NPC who actually comfronts newly arrived Death Knights in Orgrimar. On that final quest, when you have to go and speak to Thrall, if you happen to pass close enough to the Inn, he'll come out running and attack you..., obviously, he can't really hurt a DK, but he has a special ability called Pride Breaker, it can knock back players, and dismount them if they're mounted, but that's it.

According to my sources, Gamon can be mind controlled by priests, which turn out to be really funny if used right.

In the end, next time you're strolling around Org and happen to see him inside the Inn, think twice before killing him, you might be messing with the quest objective of a poor lowie rouge.

Aaaand, that's about it for today, I wanted to talk about something different, so I chose dear old Gamon there, who keeps me smiling every time I see him and kill him ^^


Cya later!

Tips for the poor: Selling vendor stuff

Yes! As amazing as it might sound, I have yet another tip for those of you out there, who struggle for a living in the World of Azeroth.  If I keep this up, I might have to make a whole section on the blog dedicated to this topic!

Today's tip: Selling vendor stuff.

What is that you say? How can you make any money at all, selling stuff from vendors? Well, let me elaborate a bit more on that:

First of all, I'm not talking about any kind of stuff, I'm not talking about buying Fine Aged Cheddar and then posting it at the AH... no... I'm basically talking about profession recipes, plans, designs, and the whole enchilada. 
You see, profession trainers are not the only way to learn recipes, some can only be bought from specific vendors around the 2 worlds (Azeroth and Outlands... duh!) and some, can only be obtained through rare drops. We'll cover the easy ones to obtain today, the ones you can buy.

Now that we've cleared that out, how can you make money out of those items? Well, some of those items are really usefull to some professions.
Lets see an example here:

• Recipe: Blackened Basilisk
• Recipe: Warp Burger

Those two items are cooking recipes, they're sold by Innkeeper Grilka (horde side) or Supply Officer Mills (alliance side) on Terokkar Forest at 3g each. They are excelent for leveling your skills as a cook. And the most amazing thing? Almost no one knows where to get them. Since you don't learn these on the cooking trainer, people forget to go looking for them.

The only good thing that we can do for these poor people in order to help them is, yes you guessed it, fly/run up to Terokkar Forest, buy a bunch of them, and them put them on the AH.

Now, here is the tricky part, since we're trying to make a gold out of a market that not many people realizes it exists, we have to keep it simple, dont fill the AH with 10 or 20 recipes of Blackened Basilisk.., someone is going to realize sooner or later and then undercut us (the horror!), so... try to post them one at a time. I used to sell them at 40g each. That's right, 40 gold per recipe, that's a big profit if you ask me. 

Eventually, some less-than-smart player realized that he too, could make a buck out of those recipes and started to list them at 17g each..., needless to say, I had to put my stock down for a while, until that person had ran out of recipes, probably a leveling toon, who saw the oportunity and took it.

Yes, I could've listed mine a bit lower, and still would've made a killing profit, but I chose to wait, and time proved me right :) I have to go back and restock now.

Ofcourse, those two recipes are not the only ones that you can use. Like almost every tip for gold-making around here, your realm is going to dictated what you sould sell and what not to sell, you just have try and err. That's how I've learned.

A few more recommendations that have served me well in the past:

• Formula: Enchant Cloak - Superior Defense If you got a druid, this one and the next one, will net you some pretty good gold, since you have a free port to the only place where they're sold.
• Formula: Runed Arcanite Rod Excelent for making some fast and easy cash. I've sold this formula for up to 50g. Only one at the time, and if someone else is selling it, I'd wait, since I don't want everyone to know how easy it is to get.
• Pattern: Imbued Netherweave Bag Bought this on the AH the other day at 30g, then realized that I could buy it for much.. MUCH less at Shatt, so I now, every once in a while, I go there, and buy some, I've been selling them at 35g each. Pretty they sell better than the actual bag... wierd uh?
• Pattern: Dress Shoes This one right here, net me a few golds a while ago, I bought them since it was one of those items that once you buy them from the merchant, you have to wait to buy it again. And since the vendor is so out of the way, I thought it would be an interesting experiment. I honestly don't remember how much money I made with it, since after selling a few, I was out of the zone and didn't care to go back. (Shame on me!)

Anyways, that's a very simple list of formulas/patterns to buy low and sell extra high :). They can be a great money maker, specially for the first few hundred gold.

Now, go on, search the AH for them, and see if anyone is selling them, if not, then get out there, and try it out :) You'll probably be pleased with the results....

Cya around!

A week without posting

Yes, I spent a whole week without posting..., not that many people noticed... I think I'm the only reader of my blog, but hopefully, that will eventually change (here is hoping :).
Anyways, a lot has happened in a week, a very special week actually, since it didn't only affected real world, but the World of Warcraft as well since Noblegarden started.
I personally don't really get into this kind of world events..., going around getting eggs and whatnot... it's not what I want to do if I can avoid it (there is always those sick days, when you don't really feel like raiding or pvping, when a good old fashion world event comes in handy though :P).

Ok, so.. what's happened this past week? Well, lets see....

Martuuf (my leveling hunter) got to 70! (71 now actually!). Thanks to this, now I'm doing northrend instances Utgarde Keep every time I can (for some reason, lady RNG wants me to keep killing Ignvar and won't let me get into a random Nexus or AN >.<).
I've also proved my theory wrong thanks to this incursion into so fucking many runs of UK. People doing Northrend instances are dicks too >.<. I was really, I mean really hoping that once I got to 68 and went north, all my PUGs problem would go away...., well, ,guess what? They didn't! I don't want this to become a whiny post, but I gotta whine a bit... I can't help it... Why do people get into a group to just leave it the moment we zone in? Uh? Why do pallys with holy gear think they can tank? Uh? And why... OH GOD WHY is it that no one is breaking the freaking ice blocks but me?!?! >.<
Oh well, moving on to greener pastures... even though I'm tired of doing so many random UKs, I've gotten some nice XP from it, and emblems as well, I can't use them yet mind you, but I will.. soon enough...which is very disturbing actually... getting to 80, and already having emblems to buy gear that's better than heroics 5man...this is good AND bad at the same time, but I shall write about it another time.
Another good thing that happened to Martuuf, is that he can now fly on the cold! Yes I've bought him the tome... I really missed flying when I got to Vengance Landing, so after a bit of questing and running on my raptor, I decided it was about time. Now I only need like another 4k gold to get him to fly fast enough .... I hate flying at 60% >.<.

That's about it for Mart... I'll have to get back to him soon enough, but since I got this past week off work, my wife and I decided to play a bit of our alts, so I took my lvl46 drood up to 54! And she took her lvl47 Shadow Priest up to lvl 55...
I gotta admit it, I'm really enjoying playing a balance druid even though a bit undergeared, since I went from feral to balance at 45, but still, it's really cool being a supersized chicken who can shoot laser beams :)

So.. all in all, a good week.

Cya around!

I play W.O.W

I just wanted to post this video on yet another place, in order to give it as much exposure as I could, since I find it incredible...

Just watch it :)



Have fun play WoW!

Tips for the poor, working the AH

Today, I wanted to elaborate a bit more on the subject of making money inside the game. Sadly we're not all blessed with the brains and times necessary to hit the goldcap like others do, but we can still make some gold out of nothing if we pay a little attention at the market and ofcourse, have our trusty Auctioneer addon installed (there are alternatives to this addon, but since I've never used them, I can't really recommend them.. can I?).

Today's tip: Bags

This might not work on your server, or even on your side of the server, but since EVERYONE needs bags, I think most realms will allow this tip to work.
Since this all comes from personal experience, lets put this into perspective:

Char: Verasshen
Level: 60
Professions: Tailoring (340), Enchanting (287)

As you can probably imagine, I'll be using the amazing 340 points on tailoring to make some gold.
So, lets start at the begining shall we?

Can one really get rich from selling bags?
Let me remind you, my intention is not to make you reach, but to teach you how to earn a few extra golds here and there, so really? I don't know how much money one can get from this things, but I've done my share...


Which bags are we talking about?
The first bags that are semi-usefull to an experienced player, are (in my opinion) Netherweave Bags. This bags have a capacity for 16 items and are really not that expensive to buy/make, which makes them a perfect starter bag.
Leaving Netherwave bags aside, anyting bigger than this babies will work for our case, so if you can make or know a tailor who can me 18 or maybe 20 slots bags, try to extrapolate and see what happens :)

Lets talk about money, how much can gold can I make from this?
Ok, before getting to the revenue part, we gotta think about costs, so lets get to it:
Note: prices were taken from my realm, horde side (Alliances were different, and not really profitable for this kind of bags imho).

Materials needed for one bag:

• 4 Bolts of netherweave
• 1 Rune Thread

For those 4 bolts of cloth, we need a full stack (20 items) of Netherweave cloth.
In my realm's AH (again, horde side), the stack of Netherweave cloth sells for 4 - 5 g each.
The rune thread is vendor bought, and goes for about 50 silver each.

So, doing some really basic math, we can assume that making one bag will costs us:

5g from cloth

50 silver from thread

_________________________

5g 50s total

Again we ask.. how much money can we make from 1 bag alone? After studying the AH for a couple of days, I've seen the prices of Netherweave bags go from 10g up to 12g each. 

So, considering our worst case scenario (which you should always consider when making a decision like this), we have 5g 50s of expenses and we're selling them at 10g each, so we're making 4g 50s profit!

You're not just getting your money back, but you're also getting almost enough money to make another one (specially if you grind the netherweave cloth instead of buying it from the AH). Not too bad.. now multiply this by.. I don't know.. 10? And you've got 45g profit.

Bags sell, specially this ones, smaller bags are harder to sell, since experienced players will find them inadecuate for their needs, and the netherweave ones are really cheap.

So, is that it?

No, not really, let me share another related experience with you...

Here I was, a few hours ago, on my toon, making a few bags to sell, from the cloth my hunter (who's leveling in outlands right now) sent him... I've just put 4 bags a few minutes ago for sale.. there weren't many, and mine were selling at 11g each. When I suddendly get the beloved "A buyer has been found for your..." message :)

I had just sold all my bags, to the same person... great! So I was about to post my new batch when I suddenly had an inspiration. There weren't many bags left on the AH from other people (always talking about the same kind of bag.. netherweave), and they were listing them at 12g each (probably 5 or 6 bags left),so I went ahead and bought the whole lot, and reposted all of them at 20g each....

Sold 4 before login 30 minutes later.

So, that was 80g of gold incoming, just because I had the oportunity to take the prices a bit heigher.. this is what I mean when I say: you've got to pay attention to the market.

Pick an item, and study it.. check the prices regularly and when you see the oportunity.. take it! Buy it low  and sell it high! 

That's the basic idea behind this rant :)

Hopefully, it'll enlighten some  of you out there!

For now, catcha around...

Finally! All the 3.3.3 goodness is upon us!

Yes! On this sunny (at least over here where I live) tuesday's maintenance, we are getting patch 3.3.3 live on the servers.


Personally, I have to admit I've been expecting this patch for a while now, specially since I heard about the abolition of battleground marks. Exchanging them for 2k honor points each, that's just awesome.. 185 honor points each.. it's .. you know.. good, now I just have to find something good to get for my hunter...


There are a lot of things changing in this patch, most of them minor things mind you, but still, they all add up to a great amount, lest see the ones that caught my eyes:


- Changes on the AH

• If the Auction House on a realm is unavailable for any reason, an alert will pop up informing players who attempt to access it.
• Players can now Right-Click to place an item in the Auction frame.
• Entire stacks of a specific item type can be placed in the Auction frame and several options have been added for choosing how to list auctions.
• Stack Size: If a stack of items has been added to the Auction frame, players can select the size of the stack they wish to sell. If an invalid stack size is entered (i.e. a stack of 21 Saronite Ore), the Create Auction button will be grayed out.
• Number of Stacks: In addition to selecting the size of a stack, players can select how many stacks of an item they wish to sell (i.e. if a player has a total of 43 Saronite Ore in the Auction frame, they can choose to list 2 stacks of 20, 4 stacks of 10, 8 stacks of 5, 43 stacks of 1, etc. If the number and amount of stacks listed results in a remainder, the left-over items will be placed back in the player's bags automatically).
• Stack Size and Number of Stacks are linked mathematically so that altering the variables of one may automatically calculate the amount of the other (i.e. if a player puts 20 in the Stack Size field and 43 Saronite Ore are in the Auction frame, the Number of Stacks field will change to 2 by default. If a player only wishes to sell one stack of 20 Saronite Ore, the Number of Stacks field can be manually changed to 1).
• Price: Players can now choose to input the price of an item Per Stack or Per Item by selecting either option from a pull-down. If Per Item is selected and a player is selling a stack of that item, the Auction House will multiply the selected Per Item price by the amount of that item in the stack. If Per Stack is selected, the player can enter the total price he or she wishes to charge for each stack of that item being listed.
• Auction Post Completion Bar: If multiple items or stacks of items are being listed at once by a player, a Posting completion bar will appear showing the total progress of each individual auction being listed once the Create Auction button is selected. The greater the number of individual listings being made in a single press of the Create Auction button, the longer this process will take. Players can still browse the Auction House while the Posting completion bar is in progress, but moving around will interrupt the progress, similar to moving while attempting to create multiple bandages with First Aid. Just as with creating bandages, auctions that were completed prior to the character moving or otherwise canceling the action will successfully be listed.

So, the big new thing here, is the change to the AH's interface. They've re-worked the posting section, to make it easy for you. All I can think about when reading this is... Auctioneer *cough*. It's true, it's not the first time blizzard takes a great addon and incorporates it's functionalities into the game. Don't get me wrong, it's great that they do this, at least for the end-user. Personally, I'm going to keep using Auctioneer, since it still provides a lot more features than the in-game AH naturally does.

- Dungeon Finder

The changes to this revolutionary and controvertial system are meant to improve the gamer experience. 

For instance:

• The Deserter debuff's duration is now 30 minutes, up from 15. This right here, is a direct attempt at solving the most common issue with the new pugs form using the new LFG. Group forms, group pulls, group falls apart because people start leaving. With a 15 minute debuff, if you were the original deserter, then you'd just keep minding your busissnes and before you knew it, the debuff would be gone and you'd be ready to queue up again and mess with another group! Now it's a bit harder, 30 minutes is a bit more time, hopefully, it'll help to diminish the rate at which this happens. Personally, I think it'll help, but not that much.
• A reason for the kick: I see this as a minor but helpfull change. Normally, when a kick vote was initiated, everyone almost everyone would know why. Now there is a change to let all know why is it that you want to kick that good for nothing tank!
• More generous level requirements when creating a random group: I don't fully understand this. Does it mean you'll also look into the gear or achievements of a player when creating a group? Or does it mean that if you have 3 80's and 2 73's you'll take those 73's into a lvl 80 dungeon? Because if it's the latter, then this is not really good. Actually, it can pretty much undo everything the 1st point is accomplishing by getting lower-than-recommended lvl healers/tanks into higher instances. Let's hope i'm mistaken though.

There are other minor changes, which I chose to ignore, but they stay within the same general guide line: improving user experience, wether through changes in the UI or through obstacles to keep bad players from doing bad things.

- Changes to the economy

I'm not one to talk about WoW's economy, really, I'm not really a rich player or anything, but I try to keep an eye open for good business when I can.

With the coming of 3.3.3, a new vendor will be available at Dalaran, Frozo the Renowned. He will sell materials, used for some profesions in exchange of Frozen Orbs, here is a list, take from the official forums:

Note: They all cost 1 Frozen Orb, unless stated otherwise in parenthesis.

• Crusader Orb (6) 
• Runed Orb (4) 
• Eternal Fire 
• Eternal Earth 
• Eternal Water 
• Eternal Air 
• Eternal Life 
• Eternal Shadow 
• Frost Lotus 
• Pattern: Frosty Flying Carpet [Tailors Only] (6)

Also, recipes which required Frozen Orbs have had their materials reduced: This is meant, I guess, to cope with the extra use for the orbs. 

This will also impact, I'm guessing on a negative way, the prices of these items, since Frozen orbs are relatively easy to obtain nowadays. You can pug a few heroics and you'll eventually have enough of them or you can actually buy them for 10 Emblems of Heroism, which you should have, since you've been farming heroics for the orbs anyways :) In the end I predict (don't take my word for it though), that the price for these materials will drop quite a bit. If you were getting your money from all the Frost Lotus you've been farming, I would recommend to start looking for something else to sell.

- New Random Battleground option

Here is one of the few mayor changes into the game in this patch and, at the same time, not really. Let me elaborate:

Yes, it's mayor, since you have the whole PVP change, in which honor points for every HK will be increased by 100%, and if you queue for a random BG, you'll get more honor as a reward (amongst other things), but it's not new when it comes to assembling the group.

Yes, I know that right now it's just for lvl80's, still, I'm guessing next patch they'll let everyone queue, I see no reason for this restriction, really.

Anyways, as I was saying, random battleground is.. well, just that... queue up, and let the system chose which BG you'll be doing. There is no real change at the group assembly part. There is no gear score checks, or anything like that, groups won't be more balanced. Right now, groups are as random as they can be, and that is not going to change.

What I see here, is just an attempt at making players do all BG's not just the one they like the most, which normally, are the same ones for almost everyone else (same thing happened when they introduced the Weekly Raid quests.. giving players a reason to visit forgotten content.. this is the same thing!).

Now, thanks to this change, the daily BG quests have been removed. I'm guessing this will affect only the lvl80 quests, since all other players can't queue for a random bg just yet. 

There is also the whole "no more honorable marks" thing. This is cool, really, just give me the honor points, makes the system simpler and my life less complicated :) Making me lose 30 Warsong Gulchs so I can get my freaking pvp mount was not cool blizz and will never be >.<

Anyway, this was a minor overview of what we can expect after the patch is done, and our maintenance there are ofcourse a lot more things coming with the patch, for a complete list, go check it out here.

Have fun reading!

It came from the PUG

Today, something extraordinary happened to me... I got into LFG, the group assembled and finished without anyone leaving!

Like I said before, the new LFG system had a tremendous problem: the people using it! Those jack-asses who leave half the time because they don't like the healer/tank...suck it up dudes! We all want to get the dungeon done and move on with our day...

Anyways, incredibly enough, today a group formed, we said our hello's and started the run. I was on my hunter, so it was an outland's instance (Blood Furnace to be precise).

Tank said pretty much nothing during the whole run, he was a pally, so after requesting my might buff a couple of times (I'm beginning to think he didn't speak much english) we were on our way. This guy, even though was quite, was a great tank, he knew how to pull, how to AoE tank (yes, pallys are natural AoE tanks, but still, I've seen pretty bad ones.. trust me), and was one of our top dps aswell... excelent job.

The healer, a belf priest... excellent heals, didn't say much during the whole run either, but still, kept us alive on those small-groups-turned-into-huge-groups pull. No-one died during the whole thing, which amazingly enough, happens to me almost every time nowadays.

The DPS'ers, well, they were great, nothing special to say about them..., the freaking mage was toping the Damage done metters, thanks to her AoE's >.<, still, all in all, we all did good.

So, in the end, I entered a dungeon afraid of what I was going to find, and left it feeling sorry about the fact that I couldn't run another one (lunch break was over...*sigh*). I wish all my pugs were like this one.

Sadly, I couldn't get any loot, since the new loot system won't let me need leather pieces >.<, but then again, my new pet Ghanima leveled, so that's cool :)

Ok, here ends my rant for today, and here is hoping this experience actually repeats for me :)

Cya around.

Chimera shot, understading the tooltip

My hunter finally got to 60, so now I have a new shot! Hurray! More shots! (after dinging 60 and learning all I had to learn from the trainer, I had to spend literally 20 minutes reworking  my entire UI >.< so many damn buttons! Sometimes I miss facerolling playing my Pally)

The thing with this particular new shot, is that I really didn't understand the whole tooltip, so lets see what it says:

You deal 125% weapon damage, refreshing the current Sting on your target and triggering an effect:

Serpent Sting - Instantly deals 40% of the damage done by your Serpent Sting.

Viper Sting - Instantly restores mana to you equal to 60% of the total amount drained by your Viper Sting.

Scorpid Sting - Attempts to Disarm the target for 10 sec. This effect cannot occur more than once per 1 minute.

So, the first part is pretty straight forward, 125% of your white damage is being done, what it doesn't say (and I don't know why), is that this damage is actually Nature damage, so it ignores our enemy's armor unless our target's got some kind of nature resists buff on him.

Ok, so far so good.., it does extra damage (in the form of magical damage) and it also refreshes the duration of your sting (meaning that if you pay attention, you won't have to recast your sting on that target during the whole fight!).

Now, on to the effect:

The ones that concerned me the most, where the first two, since I never use Scorpid Sting. My main concern was: when exactly did I have to cast my shot to maximize the damage or benefit of the particular effect?
And the answer was actually simplier than I though: As soon as the shot is off cooldown.

But wait, what if the serpent sting just ticked 3 times?.. it still have more ticks to do, which logically would mean more damage done and that 40% should increase, right? RIGHT?

Well, no, your problem is that your miss interpreting the wording on the tooltip, the truth behind chimera shot, is that when it hits the target, the effect does a 40% (in the case of serpent sting) of the total damage it would do. So, when you cast chimera, it doesn't matter where the clock of the sting is right now, the effect triggered is going to be always the same! That's excelent news!

Note that the same thing happens when Viper Sting is on the target, you get 60% of the total mana the sting would drain.

So, how do I increase the damage it does? 
Well, since it is nature damage, ArPen won't do you much help. What you should be looking into, is for instance, the Serpent Sting Glyph. That glyph increases the damage done by the sting, so effectibly you're increasing the damage done by the shot! Must have for every MM hunter.

What else?
Well, right now, the other  things I can think about, that would actually increase the damage of your chimera shot, are the following talents (which you should've already picked up btw):

• Rapid Killing 
• Improved Stings 
• Improved Steady Shot 
• Marked for Death 

Those talents will increase, directly or indirectly the damage you do with your chimera shot, so you should make sure to take them on your wait to 60! :)

Once I understood all this, my DPS in 5 man dungeons actually increased, and now chimera shot is an important part of my DPS (according to recount), which at first wasn't.

Hopefully, this little review is going to be as helpfull to other new MM hunters as it was for me.

Catcha around!

Retaking Echo Islands...

With the coming of Cataclysm, Blizzard is starting to sleep bits of information about what we can expect on this new expantion pack.
Leaving aside the new baddy, and the whole lore behind that particular subject,  there is another subject that has clouded the minds of many players over the years:
How come the Trolls (and the gnomes, but I don't care about them) don't have their own city?

That question can actually be expanded as to: How come, being such a rich and powerfull race, they are stuck sharing everyhing (starting zone, mayor city and what not) with the Orcs?

Outlands.. finally!

So.. I'm leveling a hunter.
Fun times.

I read before starting that the way to go was BM, with a nice tanking pet..., so I went MM with a cat. That's right.. I'm a bad boy! (not really).
Took me forever to find the pet  I wanted, but in the end I did, and Milena (for some reason, I decided to name all my pets as female.. don't ask me why) and I began our journey together.

Doing the old content was fun, I got to visit some of my favorite areas, and even got to explore some new ones (had never quested on Azhara, or Felwood before). The new Battleground XP and the LFG system also helped..., even though I had to put up with the classic drama of people leaving for no aparent reason, I got to finish some instances that were new to me.
All fun and games so far, and last night I finally got to 58 (thanks AV for that last bit of XP ^^). As soon as I hit 58, went straight to Org, and to the portal to the blasted lands. Grabbed the quest just before entering and 5 seconds later, there I was, The Dark Portal, outland's side.

Now the fun really begins, for some weird reason, I feel more exited about TBC content than the Wrath one..., don't ask me why, I don't really know. It was late last night when I leveled, but I couldn't go to bed without at least doing something here, so I went ahead, took the initial quests and queued up for the first instance!

Ten minutes later, I was half way through those quests and in  a failed soon to be failed group for Hellfire Ramps. Luckly the "bad people" (lets not call them for their real names, there could be kids reading this!) left and we got to finish it! No real drop for a lvl58 hunter, but still, it was fun, and did something like 40% of the level just with that run! So all in all, great fun!

Anyways, I'm really looking forward to leveling here and hopefully, find a nice group of people to do some of the more advance content of TBC with (I would love to see Kara "on-level", and some of the heroics aswell...).

So, catcha around Azeroth....

The new LFG system, a few month after...

When Blizzard announced the new LFG system, I thought to myself... "what do you think myself? Is it going to be great or what?!" and myself actually answered me (how wired is that!? :S), he said: "you know what? It has a lot of potential, both to be good and bad".

Myself is always speaking like that..., never giving a straight answer >.<, but still, he was right.

The potential for good:
So, forget about spamming trade/general/gchat to find yourself a group they said..., just click here and queue up they said. What a great idea, forget about the problem of finding your own group, just let the systema do it for you, forget about running/flying to the instance, you'll get teleported... EXCELENT!

The new LFG system had the potential to ease up the leveling process, allowing a lot of players who enjoy the PVE aspect of the game to level up doing a lot of instances. You could just keep questing and get in the queue for your favorite instance or a random one even,  and just wait for it. Efficiency all over the place if you ask me. Then why am I complaining?

The potential for bad:
The problem with random groups is that.. well, they're random.. you really don't know who is going to end up in your group. If you're lucky, they'll be good players, who enjoy having fun and working inside a dungeon, but if you're not lucky (which we both know you're not), you'll get between 1-4 dumb asses, who at the sight of a small problema, they'll just quit the group, and try to find themselves a new one. This leaves you stranded inside a dungeon, most times, waiting for the group to fill up again. Sadly this scenario can repeat several times in a row, which makes finishing the instances a real pain, and therefore, crippling your leveling experience by making it harder to gain XP (less people in the party, less mobs killed inside the dungeon...). Blizzard has tried to solve this problem by giving the players who leave a debuff, which won't allow them to queue up again for a minor period of time, the problem with this is that some people (specially those who enjoy messing around with this random groups) don't mind the debuff, and in the end, you end up losing anyways.

From my personal experience, I've come to the conclusion that this new LFG is not the holy grial it promissed it would be. Even though it might help the leveling process, it cannot shouldn't be your single source of XP, because in the end, it ends up being far more ineficient than questing.

To me, leveling is all about eficiency, getting as much XP as you can, as fast as you can, it doesn't really matter where that XP comes from, and I've found that a healthy combination of questing, LFG (on those lucky nights when you get a couple of "good" runs) and doing some BG now that they give XP aswell (AV specially, once you're high enough ) will get the job done.
But then again, that's my personal opinion... how about you?

The random Epic

Today, I wanted to write about that lucky kill, when you're leveling up, say mid 40's, maybe mid 50's... you're doing your basic "kill a bizillion mobs" quest, and suddendly, you right click your dead target and for a split second, the autoloot feature lets you see something odd..., one of the items you looted didn't seem quite right.
That's when you go and look on the chat window, and realize there is a purple name on the list of items  you looted! What!? Purple!? That can't be!
Open your bags and there it is..., a (sometimes) really cool looking Epic for you low level toon, how cool is that?

The problem with this scenario? It happens really rarely and not to everyone, so you are better off specting your first epic once you get to 80, on ToC 5man or something like that. Nevertheless, it can happen, and in fact it has happened to me on the past (several times actually).

Ofcourse, finding an epic while leveling is such a beatifull surprise, that one tends to remember each and everyone one of them, for me, here is the list:

1.  [Boots of Avoidance] : That was my very first epic, on my paladin. I was leveling and found the item was  an upgrade, so I equipped them right away..., I still have them, on my bank.. I can't trough those away, so many fun memories :)
2. [Taran Icebreaker]: Second low level epic, came in a bit later on the same pally, I was so trhilled I almost equiped it, but luckly I realized it wasn't really an upgrade, so I decided to AH it. Went for 300g.
3. [Bloodrazor]: This was the last one, droped for me a couple of days ago, high up on Felwood while killing infected bears. I was on my hunter, and for a couple of seconds was really pissed that I could't equip it (not really a hunter's weapon), because it looked so cool. After a bit of research, found out it's a great weapon for rogue twinks, so I decided against stashing it and headed to the AH. Went for 580g, best sell ever for me :)

I think I'm pretty lucky to have seen this world random epic drops actually... drop for me, and even more lucky to have found someone out there rich enough to buy 2 of them.

Good luck finding yours!

Catcha around!

Check it out!: Pitbull Unit Frames 4 - Beginners guide

As an effort to keep giving my personal and most humble opinion about WoW related issues, today I want to write about this addon: Pitbull Unit Frames 4.0

The name says it all, it's basically a unit frame replacement for the ones blizzard provides. I won't go on about why would you want to replace the default unit frames, when they look so cool, and are (maybe for you) so usefull and well placed. This is a basic overview of the addon itself, so here we go:

Downloading & Installing

This is basically the same for every addon, it should be no biggy, just go to Pitbull's main site , click on the Download link and then unzip the file into your Interface/Addons folder. Then restart WoW and there you go! Now it's all caos!

Configuring

One thing that this addon can be, is: a pain to configure! Why? Because the average user won't try to read a tutorial or a guide on how to configurate an addon before installing it! That's right! I'm looking at you buddy!

They normaly just install it,and start tinkering with the configuration menu..., well, this is not going to cut it here, this bad boy needs a bit of time, but once you get the hang of it, you'll love it!

"How to make some gold" for Dummies

First real post.. here we go:

This may not be really usefull for someone with a lvl80 main already, since they have access to things like Daily Quests (so many that tends to be boring...), other might have capped professions able to make some of the best crafted epics around, etc, etc...

The idea behind this post, is to list some basic tips for you, the newbie, the guy who's just starting out and has no idea how other players run around with their mounts at lvl 20, and have all this cool gear, when you have barely made it out alive, running by foot and with a few silver coins on your pockets :( (Been there, done that... everyone's gotta start somewhere right?).

So, this tips are all server dependent of course, since the economy behind every realm is incredibly independent from the others (which is logical, once you think about it..., different players, different needs..), but they should be good enough to guide you in the right direction.

This is all based on my own personal experience after almost two years of play, but there is really no big fansy economic analisis behind any of this.., it's just a start.

In the begining...

Hello and welcome everyone, this is my very first attempt at blogging..., I chose WoW as my topic, since it's a very important part of my life, and hopefully, if you're actually reading this (yay you! ) yours too ^^

So, lets us begin..., I'll try to cover most of the "important" things going around with the game, and at the same time, I'll try to put my 2 cents on those subject.

For now, this is it, I'll see what I come up with next.

Catcha around!