21. pet swap

I love my vanity pets! My old main has 100+ and is still collecting. Not having all my furry, scaly, feathered, shelled, gaseous, globulous friends on my new main is quite regrettable.

What can I say, I think the little guys are fun and I love to go quest for something new to bond with. This in mind it won’t come as a surprise to your folk that one thing I have not done and will not do is buy the micro-transaction pets.

In all there are eight micro-transaction pets I could purchase at this time. Had I grabbed them all Blizz would be $110 better off and I would have eight new shinies (and two freaky furry toys for the kids). It’s better this way though, cause these guys would only made me angry. WoW pet collecting from the outset has always been about venturing into the world to find your new friends. There are guides to read and websites to survey; devotees take the quest for acquisition very seriously indeed.

So along with sparkle ponies and disco lions, no pretend pets for me…

In direct contradiction to the above then here's an idea.  One thing I might buy from Blizz as a microtransaction, one purchase I’d strongly consider making would be a bulk pet xfer. All my pets from my old main xferred to my new main so that I could enjoy them. Those old buddies that ventured with me in the past could now gain a new lease on life accompanying another member of my crew.

That would be cool!

But what do you think? Would you pay to xfer your pets en masse to a new toon, or would depriving your old main of all those pets they worked so hard for seem somehow unfair?

: )


M.

20. have choppers will travel

Hey guess what – my Alliance Vanguard rep grind is almost over. Soon I’ll be making choppers as part of my server exit strategy. Thing is they’re resource-hungry buggers.

For 1 chopper:
12 titansteel bars – (3 titanium bars + eternal shad/fire/earth)
40 handfuls of cobalt bolts
2 arctic fur
1 salvaged iron golem parts
8 goblin machined pistons
1 elementium-plated exhaust pipe

For 10 choppers:
120 titansteel Bars which is 120/120/120 eternal shad/earth/fire and 360 titanium bars
400 handfuls of cobalt bolts
20 arctic fur
10 salvaged iron golem parts (vendor Roxi Ramrocket – K3 – 3000g) 30000g
80 goblin machined pistons (vendor Roxi Ramrocket – K3 – 1000g) 80000g
10 elementium-plated exhaust pipes (Roxi Ramrocket – K3 – 1500g) 15000g

I have enough of saronite ore to make 178 bars of titanium (yes, I did indeed have 2800 saronite ore - been holding it in one of the gbanks since the end of Wrath) and I have another 120 or so actual bars (again, someone offloaded very cheap titanium stacks at that time) so likely about 60 to find there. I’m short on the shadow eternals by about 40 but have heaps of Earth bought for JC/DEing. Fire is also good.

2 cobalt bars give 1-3 bolts so conservatively it’s about 3 stacks of bars per chopper or 30 stacks which I almost have. It’s an easy farm though as no one is looking for these materials any more so the rest shouldn’t be a problem.
I have about 8 Arctic furs and they’re tradeable for borean leather so and I’ve got more than enough to meet the requirement.
Then I’m down to the cost of 10 choppers worth of vendor mats which is 125000g.

I’ll keep one for Shortcut of course, he’s earned it. : )

It will be strange to see the stockpile I’ve held from Wrath for so long disappear to be replaced by shiny choppers. I’ll have so much room!

Stay liquid folks,


Mogul.

19. transmogrifying, epic gems and the long awaited punchline

Olla compadres!

Blizz has been spouting off about the goodness that will be 4.3 and I for one am excited! The option of transmogrifying my lock’s appearance is something I’m looking forward to with great anticipation. I have a feeling it’s only going to be tier gear we’ll be able to refashion to, which will be a shame, but I’ll still take that as a great step forward. I wonder whether you’ll only be able to transmogrify to gear you officially have the levels to wear or whether we’ll see level-one mages in T11?! I hafta say I’d be interested in starting at T1 and working my way up. : )

A side note: will this new age of transmogrification usher in druid forms with armour? I think not. bearform druid sitting in a field here>

Now, if 4.3 really does represent the ultimate or even the penultimate content patch before an xpac release next year then epic gems must surely be just around the corner. Either this patch or the next.

In Wrath epic recipes were available via the same tokens blue recipes were purchasable with. JCers everywhere have been saving up their tokens in the hope that the model will repeat itself. The previous model to Wrath was the placement of recipes within a large new quest hub. As we’ve just had one of those (a large new quest hub that is) I think there’s a likeliness that the hording of tokens we’ve all been doing may come to fruition.

Personally I’ve got over three Gbank tabs loaded with pyrite ore stacks so you can bet I’ll be glued to the patch notes as they appear in more detail. Many of those stacks were bought at about 100g each but many also were purchased for as low as 40g a stack (thanks be to you O now-banned-AH-stacking botters). So I’ve got an investment there of around 25K which conservatively, when epics drop, could garner around 100K.

This is of course the punchline. Pyrite is commonly known in RL as Fool’s Gold. So if this is really a gigantic joke perpetrated by Blizz to catch AH-players out then we’re in for a laugh soon I think.

Time will tell my friends.

; )


M.

18. Didn't you see the sign that said...

 "DO NOT PUSH THIS BUTTON!?"

When I was younger and at the beginning of my gaming journey I played AD&D. Those are my roots. Myself and a Group of guys (usually about five of us including the DM) would spend our Saturday nights rolling dice and living in a fantasy world populated by intrigue, danger and fast food. The rest of the weeknights would be spend thinking furiously about what our characters might get up to on Saturday next. It was wonderful!

When I was older I found WoW. During BC there was limited automation. Guild members talked over chat but then moved through the world together to meet at the summoning stone. Trade chat was full of people putting together PUGs or looking for crafters. Guilds were smaller then, your Tribe knew each other pretty well and cooperated to get things done. The intimacy of a Group was not there but so many other things were: community, shared vision, shared fortunes, a sense of identity, the thrill of venturing out into the world together to accomplish tasks. Good times.

WoW has now entered a more Global era. Players queue randomly (and anonymously) for greater rewards in 5-mans and PVP; portals whip us around the world without us ever having to touch down. It’s definitely easier. In this Global phase guilds have morphed into bulky entities as the guild XP-chase necessitates larger player pools to build levels quickly. This has produced an ennui in casual players, a certain dulling of focus and lack of connectedness. These current times are a little directionless, but with the ramping up of dailies and achievements a little too led, consequently… not so much fun.

This post sounds like a lament but it isn’t meant to be. I still enjoy this game but I’m finding there are fewer ‘reasons’ for me to play. I think this is down to simply not feeling I’m actually achieving anything. We appear to have moved from an environment where just getting around the world represented an achievement in itself to one where things have been made so easy that activities feel like pointless busy work.

What’s your take on this evolution? Time for Blizz to take a few steps back to create something not quite so easy?

Oh and… Hi! Nice to be back.

: )

Mogul.