#97 Preparing for Pandaria: Liquidating all my Leather

With the Mists of Pandaria release date finally being…well…released. It gave me the jump-start I needed to start playing Warcraft again to start getting ready for the next expansion.

To start, I want to begin a mini series once a week on this blog that gets me ready for the expansion I call “Preparing for Pandaria”

The posts will be about what I will be doing during this last few weeks of Cataclysm to be prepared for when Mists hits.

 

Here’s my one Illidan Stormrage joke.

 

Today I’m going to talk about what I did for the majority of the weekend, liquidating all of my warcraft assets on the Auction House.

I’ve been selling everything in my banks that will lose value in the player economy come the end of September, disenchanted Items, gems and espically the leather I get through my skinning profession.

To optimize the leather that I gather through skinning, I realized that the price of goods are increased when you craft it into the next tier of materials.

There’s the price of  regular Savage leather

3.75

The price of leather is 3.75 gold each

Then if you search the average price of Heavy Savage Leather…

3.75*6=22.5 (usually Heavy Leather sells more than this…but during the middle of the night when I took this picture, the AH wanted to make a fool out of me)

…it ends up selling more than the regular leather.

 

Then look at the Pristine Hide, something you can buy with Heavy Leather at Twilight Highlands.

The price goes up to: 240g which is, again, more than if you just sold ten Heavy Savage Leather separately.

 

21*10=/=240

 

With a little effort I was able to make a <15 more gold than if I didn’t play a little bit of the Auction House. (3.75*6)*10= 225

For the next two months I will be farming and transforming leather that I gather from the Molten Front’s never ending supply of Spiders.

Also I will be using this method to reap in the gold from the Leatherworking on the Auction House the first few months of the expansion

But I want to know, What are you selling in your inventory to prepare your in-game money for the Mists of Pandaria? and Do you have any secret little tricks for earning more money from the profession stuff you make for the AH?

 

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Be MOP focuses on the lead up to the next World of Warcraft expansion with my own reflections about the last dying moments of the Catalysm’s Twilight Hour as we look into the Mist of the new day. Updates Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays

#96 The Release Date

 

I firmly believe that there is a gaming blogging curse. Whenever you write a blog post the night before because you have something planned all day, there is bound to be a big announcement about the game you are writing about.

Last Wednesday I was busy all day helping at my internship for Bill Clinton’s speech that night

 

Picture by Marcn

 

 

Today would be the day that Blizzard would tell the world the Mists of Pandaria’s release date, September 25th. That’s only a mere two months away (this was better than my launch prediction while placed it late October)

 

This was excellent timing, because I was planning to have this post to bring up the point of how I, and countless other players, are still experiencing WoW burnout and we need more content soon. It does seem that Blizzard has other plans for me and the other players.

 

That post would have many comparisons between WoW burnout and the FIrelands

 

Now heres the fun part, this blog was founded about the expansion (Don’t worry, I will still continuing blogging afterwards) so this blog will have moments about how I am preparing myself when the Pandaria goes live.

 

Later today I will be hunting all around town to try to get a preorder the Collector’s Edition of the Mists of Pandaria.

 

That epic loot will be mine!

 

Find me on Google+ for updates on this blog

I’m also on Twitter

Be MOP focuses on the lead up to the next World of Warcraft expansion with my own reflections about the last dying moments of the Catalysm’s Twilight Hour as we look into the Mist of the new day. Updates Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays

#95 Shared topic: Introducing RL friends to WoW

This week’s Blog Azeroth’s Shared Topic is:

“Have you ever tried to introduce real life friends to WoW? If yes, how did it go? If you never have, why not?”

While I was introduced to WoW from a Highschool Friend, I never had luck introducing my friends to WoW.  It took me and two other friends to get one of my friends to play WoW, simply because we would not stop talking about and he wanted to understand what we were discussing every day.

I do have a unncanny ability of bringing retired Warcraft players back into the game.  The strange thing is that the three friends that I brought back, I  did without actively doing anything.

By just playing WoW  and mentioning it in some gaming conversations I got them back to WoW.

I’m like a Warcraft enabler….

One friend came back two years ago when Catalysm was about to hit the shelves, the other one was my last year’s college roommate when he was all the raids I was apart of that year, and the third was when I was talking about how Cataclysm was in a lull and the players were all waiting for the next content. (He really liked Cataclysm but was not looking forward to the chances in Mists of Pandaria)

I may not be good introducing friends to WoW, but it seems that I can bring back ex-Azerothians, and every I forget to send them a scroll of Resurrection to reap the rewards for recruiting a friend back to the game.

Oh will I ever get you, Spectral Gryphon mount?

 

Find me on Google+ for updates on this blog

I’m also on Twitter

Be MOP focuses on the lead up to the next World of Warcraft expansion with my own reflections about the last dying moments of the Catalysm’s Twilight Hour as we look into the Mist of the new day. Updates Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays

#94 Pet Battles as seen through the eyes of a Pokemon Master

Alright, I can finally get to talk about the Pet Battles. On this blog I have talked about the parallels between the Pet Battles and the Pokemon games. (Be MOP #44 and #67)

Over the weekends I was able to update the beta client and jumped head first into the Pet Battles….only to find out that all of my pets were gone.

 

A quick trip to the crazy old cat lady and I’m ready for battle.

 

As I was playing the battles, I was not looking at the battles with new eyes, but with eyes of a long time and hardened Pokemon fan.

After playing a few matches against wild pets, I can definitely state, “Yup it’s a lesser version of a Pokemon game.”

 

The first Wild Pet I came across in the tall grass

 

I mentioned before that I was worried about the Pet Battles would be too complex, that it would force players to find the few best cookie-cutter combinations of pets and movesets.

From looking at all the gaming aspects (Pet type, their passives, and the primary and secondary effects of all the battle moves)I realizes that Blizzard designed the Pet Battles to hit that sweet spot where it’s a mindless time sink and having enough strategy that if you play the game smart enough to have an edge over the opponent.

Don’t get me wrong, me saying that the Pet Battle system does not enough complexity is not a bad thing. One of my fears of the Pet Battles was that it was going to have too much strategy that one lucky combination that would break the mini-game and then Blizzard would spend more time and resources to fix this problem resulting in major patch notes and overhaul of the Pet Battles.

Now the only question that remains is will I actually use this function of Mists of Pandaria? To that I reply, “ehhh?” I’m not looking forward to this service, as much as I am looking forward to the new quests, raids, rep and content.

The Pet battles will probably be the Transmog of this expansion for me. I won’t pay it too much of my mind, but I’ll use it if I ever get bored between lull times of game play.

 

If I do play the Pet Battles, it will be for the achievements.

 

Find me on Google+ for updates on this blog

I’m also on Twitter

Be MOP focuses on the lead up to the next World of Warcraft expansion with my own reflections about the last dying moments of the Catalysm’s Twilight Hour as we look into the Mist of the new day. Updates Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays

#93 Thoughts of Recovery

Thoughts  and Prayers go out to all those families in Aurora, Colorado who have suffered unimaginable pain as a result of the Dark Knight movie shooting.

What  happened in the theater was a true tragedy, and I send wishes of strength to the families and survivors.

 

#92 Sidequests are terrible to Adventurers

I am still in full Steam Summer Sale mode. So far I bought a total of eight games. But my prize catch is the Batman Arkham City game with all the DLCs.

“I’m Batman”

While living out my fantasy of being a billionaire, crime fighting Orphan, I realized one disturbing, fourth wall breaking fact, “Sidequests makes the protagonist into a terrible, terrible hero.”

For all those who do not know, Arkham City is a openworld game where not only is there the main Supervillain enrich main story, but there are also dozens and dozens of sidequests that not only adds to the game play time, but introduces lesser know characters from the Batman mythos.

Not only did remembered that Barbra is now Oracle, but they even mentioned the city of Blüdhaven!

It does bring up an odd scenario that occurred multiple times as I was playing the game, I would have just finished a main story quest boss, on my way to the next chapter of the main story when suddenly two sidequests would appear on my map.

Each of those sidequests would have two or three installments and then I would stumble upon a few of Riddler’s trophies and then I would find a group of thugs and somewhere along the way 15 mins would pass me by with no plot advancement.

Then it hits me, I am a terrible Batman.

The real Batman would have gone after the main villains who are threatening Gotham City, and call in Robin, Nightwing, Batwomen, and the Red Hood to run around the city dealing with the petty crimes.

Now this man has an excellent story to tell

I have a feeling that this is going to happen in Mists of Pandaria.

(Ha! I knew I was able to connect Batman with WoW in this post)

With more of a non-linear story questing style, we might have an incident where a hero of Azeroth trekked though the region gathering their resources and recruits to wage war on the evils of Pandaria.

With everything in place, ready for the big fight of the zone, everyone is looking at the hero to lead the attack, when the player opens up the map, and puts everything on hold because he just realized that there was some cooking quests in the previous village that just showed up.

While I am glad that sidequests are a part of any game, I just found myself chuckling at if I became the Dark knight would rather spend more time solving trivial riddles than saving the innocent.

 

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Be MOP focuses on the lead up to the next World of Warcraft expansion with my own reflections about the last dying moments of the Catalysm’s Twilight Hour as we look into the Mist of the new day. Updates Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays

#91 Shared Topic: Single Realm

Today’s post comes from Blog Azeroth’s weekly shared topic:

If it were possible, would you want Blizzard to put all characters in a single realm/game world by realm type — PvP vs PvE vs RP? Why or why not?

This question is one that many people has been thinking at one time or another since blizzard introduced the LFG service in Wrath, having everyone on one world.

I was either going to reference Crisis on Infinite Earths OR have this post draw similarities to how a country’s society and economy would react when they enter into the world of Globalism.

Ideally I would want to have just three realms, one for each type of player, PvE, PvP, and the RP. I doubt that Blizzard will make that move anytime soon (between now and the very last content patch of Mist of Pandaria) because of the  unintentional reactions that would be the result of the merging of the many servers.

The people

With everyone moving to two or three realms,  Blizzard would have to make your computer show all the other players around you.

Lets do the math, if World of Warcraft has 10 million subscribers and they are divided up 40-40-20 for a PvE, PvP and RP realms respectively,that would mean that Blizzard’s computers would have to  keep track of 4 million players, all making their own separate actions in the world.

If you thought that the capital cities was bad with the lag now, try imagining it with 2,000,000 members of your factions with their dragons all siting around waiting for their raids to start.

Just try to imagine the trade chat….

(to the counter argument of “Then why don’t Blizzard phase the cities for less stress on your computer” how is that any different from just keeping everyone on separate realms?)

The Economy

If everyone was to share one world, that would mean that they would have to share the same resources and services, like the Auction House.

Each server has reached an equilibrium in their economy, with prices that reflexes the about of gold the players earn and how much they are willing to spend on reagents. That equilibrium is not the same everywhere, there might be people who farm gold more in one Azeroth than other Azeroths, which would justify higher prices.

If we had a merged realm, the economies would be in shock, and possibly break for a few weeks or months from the sudden increase of both Supply and Demand.

I knew that Economics course would help me out one day

Now we have top auction house users and top material farmers competing with each other for best prices and could hurt players who just casually uses the AH, something that Blizzard does not want to do when Mists is on the horizon.

My prediction is that if Blizzard want to combine the servers, the best time would be during the last patch, at first day of the expansion’s dying days. To ensure that the shock of the merge would encourage players to continue and that the economy would calm down when patch 6.0 hits.

Find me on Google+ for updates on this blog

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Be MOP focuses on the lead up to the next World of Warcraft expansion with my own reflections about the last dying moments of the Catalysm’s Twilight Hour as we look into the Mist of the new day. Updates Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays

#90 Steam Summer Sales and Giveaway

((Warning, I am using my once a month Get-Out-of-writing-a-WoW-post-on-my-WoW-blog card. This is post is just about Steam, their sales, and the two different contests that I have right now))

Yesterday Steam released their Steam Summer Sales. For those who do not know, Steam is a creation of Valve, and they sell and distribute PC games exclusively thought the internet.

The Summer Sales are when a whole bunch of games go on sale at a ridiculous price.

WOW!, Just look at those prices!

While I was unpacking the other day I found some PAX EAST goodies that I was planned to give away on this blog.

Today I will be giving away two copies of  the game Magicka and two tauntaun Fawn pets from the Star Wars the Old Republic.

Magicka is a Steam game where you play as a wizard off to destroy the evil in the land. The gimmick with the game is that there are several spells that you can mix and match for hundreds of different combinations. Almost all of these spells are over-powered, this is the game you want to play if you really want to do damage when you throw a fireball

This game is usually priced at $9.99

The Tauntaun is an exclusive mini-pet that follows your avatar  around the galaxy in SWTOR.

Note: Do NOT leave in alone in the company of the Mini-Luke and Mini-Han Solo minipets

To win enter for your choice of these prizes, leave a comment on this post with what you want to win, with your email address to contact you. (These can be for you or your friend, I don’t care. I just want them gone)

The contest will close Saturday 14th at 11:59pm EST.

For those who want to add me, my Steam name is Noahdeer

Find me on Google+ for updates on this blog

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Be MOP focuses on the lead up to the next World of Warcraft expansion with my own reflections about the last dying moments of the Catalysm’s Twilight Hour as we look into the Mist of the new day. Updates Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays

#89 Shared topic: Starstruck by someone in the WoW community

This week’s Shared Topic from Blog Azeroth asked us,

“Are you starstruck by anyone? Does someone in the community respond to a post or a tweet and get you all speechless because they actually responded? Is there anyone you are waiting to have respond directly to you? Is there someone that you would like to chat to, but are too chicken? Am I the only one who puts other bloggers on a pedestal?”

I could go on about all the non-blogger celebrities that I have met. There is a hilarious story about the time where I misspoke in front of President Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton and my family

This is an old picture of me and yes, I did end up getting that book signed

And to keep this blog bipartisan here’s a picture of me approaching Newt Gingrich

One of the best things about living in NH is that all the presidential candidates personally visit you to get your vote.

Because this is WoW blog, I do have a story of being starstruck from someone within the Warcraft/blogging community. Earlier in the year my dad, my brother, and I all went down to Boston to be a part of the PAX EAST.

One of the events that I was personally looking forward to was the WoW Insider Live Podcast.

I got to see Mike Sacco, Mat McCurley, Fox Van Allen, and Alex Ziebart

The one thing I wanted this panel was to ask a question to the podcasters and bloggers who helped me inspired me to start this blog.

I went through all of the steps to make sure that everything would go off perfectly, I spent night before choosing the right word to say, even writing it down for reference if I got tongue-tied (I learned A LOT from being a part of Political rallies, and how to properly ask a qustion).

I even sat in the front row, making sure I would be visible to the hosts when they asked the audience for questions.

I did get my question asked and received an answer  by everyone and won a great new mouse as a reward for my effort. After the podcast I was able to talk to a few of them afterward, and got their autographs.

You should have seen me  afterwards, I was bouncing off the walls…but that might be because I took a 5 Hour energy .

Thank you 5-Hour, because of you I got through PAX East and my college finals

I also get starstruck when ever anybody sets up a link to my site on their blog. To have these people who I follow recommend me to their readers, it always makes my day.

Here’s looking at you Sunnier , Mushan, and JD Kenada.

Find me on Google+ for updates on this blog

I’m also on Twitter

Be MOP focuses on the lead up to the next World of Warcraft expansion with my own reflections about the last dying moments of the Catalysm’s Twilight Hour as we look into the Mist of the new day. Updates Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays

#88 Transmogolmpics

A two weeks ago Amateur Azerothian created a post that challenged everyone to create their own custom transmog set in the spirit of the Summer Olympics that are just around the corner.

So I decide to enter my mage under the Freestyle category.

I call this, “What-is-this-Im-not-really-good-at-transmog”

Front

Side

 

As you might have noticed that I do not use the transmog feature to create creative new armor designs, I just use to collect the Mage sets of older patches. When I look at other bloggers posts about their cool transmog outfit they created, I envy them.

 

As a mage I am limited to only cloth armor to wear, where as Palains, Warriors, and Deathknights can all wear not only their plate armor, but every other type of armor. It’s not just that they can wear different types of armor, but their intended armor gives them more variety than a cloth wearer.

 

As a Deathknight, you can transmog an armor set that makes you look like you are the protector of a group (any tank designed armor) you could transmog yourself to look like either a Spellcaster or a melee attacker or your could go find craftable healing armor and transmog a deathkinght to look like a healing paladin.

 

As a spellcaster, I am stuck wearing a cloth gear, and the game designers only design armor that looks like I can cast damage spells or cast healing spell, not much variety for me to work with.

 

But that’s ok, I have been working on an alt. maybe I make that one as a tranmog collector. It would be cool to see her in fighting with different looks when fighting in raids. Lets me just refresh my memory on who she is and what’s her preferred spec….

 

…Oh a Feral Druid

 

Maybe I’m just not suppose to use the transmog feature in World of Warcraft.

 

Find me on Google+ for updates on this blog

I’m also on Twitter

Be MOP focuses on the lead up to the next World of Warcraft expansion with my own reflections about the last dying moments of the Catalysm’s Twilight Hour as we look into the Mist of the new day. Updates Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays