Tuesday, September 29, 2009

What I really want.


Wraith has been out for a while, and all of us serious players have many 80s (I have 5). All are at least naxx10 geared, and pretty much all I do for group content is heroics with maybe a raid every week if I am lucky. Now, what I mean to say is that I've done alot of group content, and its safe to say 'why bother'. Why bother, because most of my toons will not see TOC or any hard raid. Why bother, because our guild doesn't really do TOC. Why bother, when I can only raid one night a week for specific content. And I'm not alone. Many in the guild have no interest in raids. Why bother doing heroics getting useless tokens when they can clear the heroic just fine with their dps (say its 1500 to 2000). THe point of the game at level cap is to provide enough challenges so that you are continually looking for the next tier of gear. But if you are not raiding, and dont do arena, really why would you bother with this whole progression? The whole end-game falls flat, and you have two choices. Reroll, or quit.

And I totally agree that the gear increase does two things. It encourages sloppy play and allows someone to be fodder for others amusement. 'dear god that guy is doing X with gear score Y'. I would actually like it if Blizz said, you know what, we are going to impliment gear score requirements for raids. You need to have full naxx10 or beyond (average iLvl 200) for Uluduar 10. And so forth. So I could stop hear the pissing and moaning about how person X sucks and and their gear sucks and they must the be spawn of satan and can't do anything good because they are noobs with shitty gear and jesus why are you even playing the game speced like that. You know, you hear this crap all the time. And I'm so tired. Its not the person's fault really, I put the blame on the RL. If they let people in knowing that they are dropping the average dps by 500 points, and thus wiping the raid because of enrage timers...its a problem. But so often, so so often, is that people do have skill and do have what it takes, but nobody will take them, or people will bitch 'it would be so much easier if you were in gear a full tier better'. And yeah it would, but that's not what we have.

Our guild has alot of talented, skilled people, who don't make gear their live's crusade. And we do hTOC all the freaking time with people who would just be laughed out of PUGs, you know the guys with 1500-1800 dps. Totally adequate, if barely, assuming the tank is good and the healer is good, and everyone knows how to play. And we do, and the bosses go down. But that gets to the main point, which is, what do we do when the most challenging level of content is a quick jousting/3 boss pull that everyone has run a zillion times, and thats it. Now I hear that in 3.3 we are getting new dungeons and I bet they will be of an even higher iLvl than hTOC, and that's cool.

But the really problem is that its just not good enough to design 10 and 25 man raid content; no, by and large, the shit that is run every single fraking day a million times, is heroics. We need more dungeons for each tier of content, and the dungeon should be a tier up. If you look at my handy-dandy chart above, you'll see gaping holes above ilvl 219 for 5 mans. For example I expect to see Uld 25 drops in heroic modes of the new dungeon, and stuff dropping in Icecrown to be tier 10, so that there is a upgrade path for guilds that can't get more than a handful of well-geared people together, so we can actually do some other things besides 10% of us doing ulduar every week. That's what I really want.

Monday, September 28, 2009

Making money

Well seemingly I haven't made as much as I thought; I invested heavily in raw materials (eternals -> rings -> enchants + dust), and took a risk on the orb markets. I'm only at 9.5k now, 1.5 k profit in the last few days is really nice but I expected a bit more. What i've been doing is the usual enchants and gems, but I found that people really undervalue the crusader and runed orb market. I made a quick 500g profit off runed orbs in trade and another 1000g profit off crusader orbs in the AH. Big risk, but big payoff. Right now there are only going to be a handful of crusaders floating around because the guilds really need them.

At least everything is still selling well, indicative that people are still interestd in the top end raid content.

I would have thought per WOWeconomics that the new drums would sell...not much luck selling them alliance side, and the potential profit margin is small.

Also the BOE ilvl 200 epics are selling well, as are the inscription offhands. That's 100g profit pretty easily. Honestly I am really surprised that people are still interested in endgame, when I can't get a raid PUG to save my life.

Thursday, September 24, 2009

What's selling

Just a short note.

What's selling. Well horde side I have a scribe, a jewelcrafter, an enchanter, a tailor, and leatherworker. That's alot of maxed professions! I've been trying inscription but in small volumes it just doesn't sell. I think to do Gevlons idea you need to be posting hundreds of glyphs.

What I found nowadays is that there is a huge market for gems and enchanment, but only specific enchants/gems. For example all the red cuts for epic and rare gems have only a 10-20g profit margin, while the yellows have a 50g or so profit margin. And they sell like hotcakes.

Enchants are the same way. Some wont sell ever (boots +spirit, bracers +expertese). These are the sucker enchants that people use to level up and throw away. The good ones are expensive though, and you need to be able to burn through 500g in materials to get a few sold.

Anyway I'm up to about 8000g on the bank char and definately making money. I only do the argent tourney dailies, but I could probably make another 1000g (for 4 hours of work, blah) every day if i wanted to do alot of dailies.

Still need one epic mount. Then there is teh raid gear that I probably wont be getting (5000g for a ilvl 245 item? No thanks).

Inscription.. I honestly dont know if it's selling or not. I still have residual poor selling inscriptions, but I can't be bothered with 1-2g profit per inscription.

Anyway now that the new raids are here it is def. time to be selling all sorts of raid-level items.

Also note that eternals will become oversold for a period as people like me burn through the last 10 points in leatherworking to make the new 3.2.2 items.

New raids

Well the raids are now coming pretty quickly. Just a few weeks ago we were celebrating the opening of TOC, the 3rd tier content of Wraith. Now we have Onyxia back and ready for more DEEP BREATHES.

This creates a challenge for the raid leader. We now finally have a rich assortment of raids to do.

Here they are in order of challenge.

Sarth - Still drops ilvl 200 stuff and T7 shoulders. One drake up is ilvl213 I think. Sarth remains a good investment of time and effort if anyone actually needs T7 gear. You get 4 conquest badges.

Naxx10 - iLvl 200 except KT who is iLvl 219. Naxx is a pretty bad investment unless you have a bunch of newer raiders who want to get geared quickly. A full clear should be enough loot if half of the raid is in BOE/heroic gear. If the full raid is in the state, keep going until you have a full clear or two under your belt. Naxx is a very good introductary raid

Eye of Eternity - a very challenging boss with ilvl of 213 I think. Need to kill KT in naxx to get to her. A very difficult encounter and one most will only do a few times.

Ulduar10 - iLvl 219 - the second tier of raids. Most guilds are still cutting their teeth on Ulduar and it's hard modes. Doable in full naxx10 gear (or even full blues as Gevlon has shown). The key is knowing the fights, knowing how to squeeze the most from your class, and proper consumables and raid mix. Most of the bosses only have a handful of gimmicks, making this an excellent second tier raid.

TOC10 - Third tier of raids. Drops Triumph badges. Dont know much about it, except that the first boss is really a wave of 3 different bosses. I understand the PVP boss is very challenging. Access to Tier 9 tokens. There are two unique modes to this raid instance for each 10 and 25 man.

Onyxia - Tier 9 raid, retuned, same as last time. Drops Tier 9 level goodies. Not sure about the badge type.

Vault - now with tier 7, 8 and 9. This can be worthwhile for the raid to run if you have WG when you are doing raids. Very much a gear dependant fight.

Here's our problem. We've done naxx. Over and over. We're now going into ulduar. Without throwing too many raids into the mix, we now have to prioritize scheduling. Ulduar is and should be first priority. However, everyone wants to see the new Onyxia, and we are starting 25 mans with another guild (just naxx, but still).

So now our schedule looks like this:

Ulduar 2x a week
1x a week 25 mans??
1x a week a random raid. This week it's TOC. Next week maybe onyxia. In this one slot we have to fit in Vault, Sarth, Eye of Eternity, TOC, and onyxia! So...yeah too many choices. Better than just doing naxx10, but we still need to make some decisions.

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Hating the raid leader part 2

So.... much drama ensues if the RL and GL don't get along. After a month of hardly playing horde-side, we decided on a compromise. I would along with another officer lead the raids of content which we have on 'farm status', which in my mind means we only wipe maybe once on the content, and we've done it successfully several times before. The other raid leader would do the 'advanced' content.

Saturday was a forey into a virgin naxx10, w/o said antagonist, and I think we all had a good time. Perhaps we should not have wiped so much on the trash, but we got through all spider and plague up to Haigan, at which point we ran out of time. On monday, the antagonist was there, and there was a slightly different group comp. Anyway we had a bunch of healers, actually 4, so one went dps the whole time. We finished up plague and did all of military, and I think only wiped once or twice. Pretty smooth, but was it fun? No way. Vent was like a desert, and people had their "Game faces" on the whole night. Now, I understand when it's time to focus and what not, but when everyone is just going through the motions it strikes me as not fun. My main rule for WoW. If it's not fun, WHY THE HELL AM I PLAYING? I could mow the yard, or rake leaves, or go fishing, or whatever. Something else. But, I choose to have fun with my guildmates.

My feverant hope is that the antagonist will get the picture and not come to the farm content. We don't really need him, he's getting in the way, and the runs are decidedly unfun with him.

I also remembered I can still kick him since i have toons at a higher officer level than his. This fills me with glee.

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