Making Money Day Two

I spent about three hours running around Dun Morogue, leveled up at least once maybe twice, things are a little fuzzy, had some breaks. Did some more corpse runs. This time though, I did manage to farm up some herbs and ore, but nearly what I would have liked, I think I am letting quests distract me from the goal.

Instead of farming the whole time, I spent a lot of time killing stuff and running between towns to sell stuff to vendors. I am level nine and still have not bought any bags yet. Although I have taken Gevlon's tip and not bothered to purchase skills yet either.

I swapped some more old inventory around and had my main craft some copper mail gear then sent it to my enchanter for some enchants, then finally sent it to my money maker. Things die much better now.

Put up some more bronze bars.

I am not doing this as Gevlon would. I am shuffling and selling old inventory along with the new, so the numbers are not as "honest" as they might otherwise be.

However, if the bronze sells, I can give back some of the "borrowed" gold to my other alts and still come out ahead. From this mornings Auction House sales she was given 55g, the remainder was left with an alt whom she "borrowed" from.

But, again, that was old inventory. Technically, this character has not yet made any money at all while at the end of day one or day two Gevlon had made at least 10g.

I am thinking that I might invest my main's 2k instead. But I should probably stick with this low-level/low-risk endeavor for a while longer to get the hang of things. Otherwise I could lose my entire financial "wealth" within 48hrs.

Making Money, Day One

Day one was a bust.

However, I did accomplish a few things: Made a new character, picked up herbalism and mining, went to Dun Morogue and promptly began spending a lot of time corpse-running.

In Gevlon's blog, he claims to have entered Stormwind at level 5, picked up his professions then jumped on the tram and promptly spent an hour farming herbs in Dun Morogue. According to his blog, he came up with several stacks of herbs within that first hour.

But how? Did he avoid the mobs somehow? How did he not die?

Maybe I'm missing something or maybe he is just that much better than I am.

Anyway, I picked up a few copper ores and some herbs and sent them off to another bank alt that is parked in Stormwind. That alt stored the herbs and copper, but took out some old rough stone and bronze bars. Most of that sold and this morning I was greeted with about 70g waiting for me in my mailbox.

I had my main buy a green two-hand sword and some decent pants and sent them to my money maker.

Otherwise, last night was rather uneventful, logged off at level six or seven.

Where to Go From Here?

As they say in World of Warcraft, the game does not really start until you have reached the level cap.

The first thing I did after logging off after dinging 80 last night was to look up Blacksmith gear to see what I might be able to use. I thought that maybe I could smelt my own ore that I have been gathering for the past 10 levels and then just buy the rest of my ingredients and have some other blacksmith put it all together for me.

Well, not so fast.

I found six pcs of epic dps gear for my warrior that can be crafted. There might be more but this was just a quick "peek". I looked up my server's auction house cost for the completed gear and also the individual materials:

Titanium Razorplate...2500g
Titanium Spikeguards...2200g
Legplates of Painful Death...16,000g
Hell Frozen Bonegrinders...not listed
Belt of the Titans...2200
Spiked Titansteel Helm...not listed

Total of listed gear...over 23,000g

This might actually be a bargain thought, because here is what the ingredients came out to be:

Titansteel Bar...47x100g...4700g
Crusader Orb...12x150-200g...2400g
Primordial Saronite...13x1200g...15,600g
Runed Orb...6x150-200g...1200g
Frozen Orb...1x30g...30g
Deadly Saronite Dirk...4x30g...120g
Vengeance Bindings...1...unlisted
Assorted Eternals...32...Have in Bank
Saronite Bar...4...Have in Bank

Total of listed items...approx. 24,050g

So, the materials versus the crafted gear is actually pretty close. But wow, I was not expecting this cost. I can see now why Larisa from the Pink Pigtail Inn was concerned. Although, this is a little different than being "raid ready" for the introductory raid instance upon dinging level cap. In this case, I waited so long that some of this gear can only be crafted with end-game materials. We are talking about items that might drop 2-3 times a week in Ulduar or Ice Crown Citadel.

On the other hand, being a new 80 near the end of the current expansion story is no picnic. If actually wanted to raid, I would need this gear at the least to be considered, and probably other badge gear. But to get into heroics to get the badges, again, I would need this gear at the least.

I do not play the auction house market and it is not really feasible to grind out 25k gold worth of farmed materials, assuming anyone was buying that stuff at this point anyway. Really, anything that anyone needs at this time is dropping in Ulduar and Ice Crown, kind of hard to farm that stuff solo.

I can see now why someone might be tempted to buy in-game gold.

Tobold has written more than once about how the leveling experience is a solo one that suddenly drops players into a group game with little or no warning.

So, I think I am going to try something I would not normally do. I think I am going to use Gevlon's experiences chronicled on his blog to start a new alt, and see if I can play some of that auction house game. I do not need to reach the gold cap, or anything near it, just need a tiny fraction of it to get me into that epic gear. Could take a few weeks, but honestly, other than doing Argent Tournament dailies, I have absolutely nothing else to do at this point.

Finally!

I finally received my level 80 achievement this evening. Approximately fourteen months of on/off effort and lack-luster motivation. I still am using some Karazhan gear and level 70 dps gear. I have only grouped up once during this expansion: Utguard Keep, and it fell apart before we ever made it to the first boss. I did not even bother training or distributing points during the past six levels. I have not advanced my Blacksmithing or First Aid professions. While I did learn a new First Aid skill at level 78 or 79, I have yet to make any Frost Weave bandages, I am still using the Netherweave ones that I brought with me.

A buddy of mine in my guild asked if I wanted to do my first heroic and I was like, "Are you insane? Have you seen my gear? No one has that kind of patience any more, dude!"

You think I'm exaggerating? I happened to be fighting some mobs near another level 80 player this evening while I was still 79. He was killing his mobs in 2-3 swings. My average is about six or seven swings, when all of my goodies are lit up.

One thing that has not changed for me through the four years or so that I've been playing: I hate group quests. Do you know how difficult it is to get a group together this late in the game? I did a quest chain that took me most of the evening to get through and after a dozen or so quests it suddenly turned into three 5-man quests. you're killing me, Blizzard! It's like reading a story and you're moving along then suddenly you find yourself at the end and it says "To be continued" but you know that the next installment is not for at least six months, assuming the author does not get sick. Or worse yet, you rent a DVD and it freezes up at the climax...

Anyway...

So now I'm an 80. I think I will try to do the normal 5-mans. Maybe I can get some blue gear. Does anyone still do those?

My Hero!

Larisa inspires me again to write on something that I might not have thought to on my own. She herself was inspired by other bloggers as well: Copra and Tobold sort of jump-started the dialogue.

The basic question boils down to, what makes a hero? Or, more specifically, what makes your character heroic in an MMORPG when everyone else is playing the same role of hero as yourself?

So, here it goes:

My warrior began her journey in the green grasses of Northshire in Elwyn Forest. A monastery of sorts was being over-run on all sides by various threats from an over-population of wolves and kobolds over-running the local mine, to brigands causing havoc in the nearby farm. Once my warrior brought a measure of order to the walled-off bastion of peace and meditation, she was asked to visit the nearby town of Goldshire where someone might be able to put her blossoming skills to good use.

Goldshire was both peaceful and busy all at once. It was a good place to rest after a completing various tasks laid out by the local residents and over-worked authorities, but soon proved to be too small. My warrior desired to see more exotic locales and see what more there was to learn.

So, it was off to Stormwind, and nothing would ever be the same. From the flowering nation of the elves to the hot furnaces of the dwarves, my warrior would be tasked to venture to ever more exotic and dangerous places. The fiery mountain, the tropics, the parched deserts at the bottom to the icy mountains at the top of the world, and even beyond! My warrior found the swirling gate of another, broken world where beings of light and of the pits of Hell itself struggle for dominance. Even the icy realm of the fabled, and feared, Lich King himself was not left untouched by the passing my warrior.

Friends were met and fell beside her in the heat of combat. Some went off to other heroic adventures while some were lured by dark designs.

My warrior has battled dragons and demons, saved burning villages and cured diseases and plagues. Countless battles were fought, countless wrongs were made right, and still my warrior found time to assist the young orphans of war and devastation.

She only wanted to see the world and learn its knowledge, but she became so much more than an explorer and scholar. My warrior, my hero!

New Product Leaks and NDAs

I do not care about any of it in the least.

It is fun to follow the drama from time to time, but I really just do not care.

If the leaks are there, I am glad to take a peak, but if they are not there, I will not miss them.

All the fuss over who gets to receive internet traffic for posting illegal pictures is just ridiculous.

If you want the traffic, then post the pics! Sure, you will get a cease and desist letter and maybe have to deal with some lawyers and maybe even get sued, but if you really want the traffic, that is what you have to risk.

MMO Champion took the risk. All of the "legitimate" websites that wanted to run the pics but feared the NDA cried tears of misery and rage (which shows more about the spirit of those sites than the owners might have wanted to reveal) over the "lost" traffic that they would not have had to begin with.

Anyway...

Let the criminals be criminals and the saints be saints. It'll all balance out in the shuffle.

Professions Update

Well, the Blizzard Blues have shared an update for what we can expect to see with professions in Cataclysm.

I am not overly impressed. That is to say, I am not impressed at all. Every expansion sees a few changes but many players would like to see a complete overhall of the creation mechanic.

Instead, we are getting such things as: more daily jewel crafting and fishing and cooking quests, more fun engineering stuff, four more minerals...more of the same, really. Oh, but wait, some of the gem stats are changing colors! Oh, and blacksmithing will have a new "feature" where if you have an item that requires three times the normal amount of materials, then you will get three times the normal skill-ups.

They are removing the specialization mechanic so that we are even less unique. Somehow that is for the best...

They are adding entry level PVP gear to the crafting professions and intend to update the patterns each season. That is nice and all, but it's just more gear. Sure, more is nice, but it certainly does not change anything about the crafting mechanic.

Gear will have a few random stats appear to "shake things up" so to speak. Just think, a warrior tank asks you to please craft some tank gear for him and he gives you 2k gold worth of materials and the gear that pops up is full of spell power...better believe that will shake things up for sure!

Yeah, thanks for all the "effort". We will still be collecting thousands of materials to cap out the professions and watching the progress bar as we create dozens of the same items every...single...time, just to hit the auction house and maybe get a little bit of profit out of the endeavor.

So far we get to keep the little stat bonuses that they included with professions in Lich King *yawn*...just one more thing they will have to continue to balance around: they give it in the professions so they have to take it from somewhere else.

Honestly, I did not expect them to get radical, but I had hoped they might. Crafting in World of Warcraft is utterly boring.

Anyway, it is what it is, as an acquaintance of mine is want to say.