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!