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reblogged from justwarlordthings

Nostalgia

With us approaching a decade of World of Warcraft I find myself engaging in some nostalgia. I found the folder where I backed up the screenshot folder back from the frist years of me playing World of Warcraft. The game was much different than it is today, in some ways more hardcore. Mostly it was simply less accessible for new players as there were not the in-game resouces we have now. Outside of the game had Thotbot and not much else. I remember getting my first blue item from Scholomance, a hunter’s belt. The lead hunter in my guild passed it to me as I did not have any Dungeon Blues as of yet. He is the GuildMaster that took over during my hiatus from Warcraft. The tank for most of our guild dungeon runs back then was one of my real life friend, Pend. He would often play late at night, periodically being pulled away to see to his newborn baby. If the tank when on follow, we all knew to hold still and not pull anything as he was either changing a diaper or administering a bottle. I know it is silly to feel nostalgic about the game as it was back then, in so many ways I get more enjoyment out of the current game with the advent of Raid Finder and Dungeon finder.

My friend Pend, back when you could tank in Arms

Mr Thunder King

At this point I need to apologize to the Raiding community, the other night I let my six year old queue up for LFR.  Yes I am that guy.  

In my defense he actually did not do that bad.  I admonished him to "not stand in the poo" as Scott Johnson says on The Instance Podcast.  Amazingly he did well enough for his DPS numbers to actually show up on the chart, which was not bad since it was one of the first times he played an Enhancement Shaman.  He got all the way up until the Thunder King without dying.  

Eventually he walked out into the other room and said, "your shaman died for no reason."  I pointed out that the raid would likely rez him after the battle, excitedly he ran back to the PC to finish.  

 

For the next week he kept asking to listen to Letomi's Mr Thunder King while in the car: 

WORLD OF WARCRAFT SURPASSES 10 MILLION SUBSCRIBERS

Despite the chaos of the launch of Warlords of Draenor, DDoS attack, queues and issues with realm stability it was very evident that my server was much more populated than it had been even a few short weeks ago. The volume of auctions that are selling has picked up as well.

Blizzard announced that they sold over 3 million boxes within 24 hours of Warlords of Draenor's release. Mike Morhaime, CEO and co-founder of Blizzard Entertainment said:

“We’re thrilled that so many players jumped in to play Warlords of Draenor on day one and are having a great time with the new content, We poured a lot of hard work and passion into this expansion, and we appreciate all the kind words from players and the overwhelming support they continue to show for World of Warcraft.”

Bravo Blizzard on reaching the 10 Million mark.  Here is to another 10 years of World of Warcraft.  

Sharm - All About My Base (World Of Warcraft Parody)

Listen to this while working through your garrison tasks.  

MC raiders

For all the Level 100's raiding Molten Core during the 10 Year Anniversary celebration:

You Tank It

The other night my oldest son successfully tanked his first dungeon at the age of nine years. He has a level 60 Blood DeathKnight equipped in quest greens and blues acquired in Outands. We discussed the basics of threat generation and agro management prior to him queuing up as a tank. At first he listened intently but soon I could tell he was itching to try it out.

During Wrath of the Liche King I tanked on my Prot Paladin. With the inclusion of the Dungeon Finder I ended up running tons of heroic dungeons on a weekly and often daily basis. When I am tanking I take my role very seriously, acting as the group’s shield protecting the party from damage as much as is possible.

My son takes a little different approach. His approach is summed up by this song’s refrain, “you pull it you tank it.” I watched him move through the dungeon, being more cautious than I had ever seen him, pulling mobs holding them while his party burned them down. Eventually a DPS ran ahead, and pulled some mobs. Where I would have collected the mob off of the DPS, at least the first time it happened in a dungeon run, my son just let the DPS handle it on its own.

Eventually he finished the dungeon and with a big grin on his face re-queued up to tank another dungeon.

Dance Studio

Jim Younkin of Power Word: Gold ‏@PowerWordGold shared:

"Blizzard snuck long-rumored "dance studio" into Warlords of Draenor expansion."

I have not had this Garrison quest pop up yet.  I do love the nod to the abandoned game feature.  Thank you to Jim for sharing this.  Check out his blog at Power Word: Gold

Misogyny Witnessed in Game

Last week while getting one more LFR run of Siege of Orgrimmar in the raid was on Siegecrafter Blackfuse and the raid leader was calling for a ranged DPS to take belt duty. For almost half of the group it was their first time on this boss. It was only my third time taking down this boss, since I came back to WOW so late in Pandaria. While the raid leader was trying to get someone to volunteer I witnessed some of the worse misogynist comments I had ever seen in game.

One player started saying in Raid Chat that a mage with a female avatar would take Belts. The mage did not immediate respond so the obnoxious player started saying it was her duty. Then he went on to graphically describe that it was her duty to engage in intercourse. He threw out a few more slurs to cement everyone’s impression that he was a misogynist jerk. Everyone was shocked into silence for a moment.

Even though it was only a LFR group the Raid Leader called him on it and told him to shut up. Several other characters called him on his comments and I immediately reported him for language. I really hope others took this step to report players who engage in such harassment. Nearly half of the WOW players I know in real life are women. Everyone should be able to enjoy playing the game without having to fear being harassed.



This brought to mind all the discussion on Twitter and across the rest of the internet concerning “Gamergate”. "Gamergate" claims to be about ethics in gaming journalism, but it also provided an excuse for a number of unidentified social media trolls to spew hatred toward women. A subset of gamers feel threatened by the changing demographics of gaming.

“Gaming is fast becoming more diverse than ever. Women now make up nearly half of all video-gamers, and that makes some gamers upset that their boy's club will never look the same.” – Susan Rohwer, LA Times

All gamers should stand united in support of our shared hobby and make the culture we build in game to be welcoming of all players.

New faces for old characters

I am still taken aback by the improvement in the character models.  Above is my first character I rolled when the game launched.  He is named Groshnak, in beta I had a Warrior named Grishnak which references an Orc in the Lord of the Rings.  With Cataclysm I changed his hair to white due to this being my oldest character in game.

Garrisons!

On Warlords of Draenor launch day I was able to level my Shaman up to level 91 and started setting up my garrison before the game servers started having trouble.  First the instance server that hosts the Garrisons started glitching then the DDoS attack made it almost impossible for anyone to log back into the game.  This gave me time to look into Garrisons.  As I admitted earlier, I did not take my obsessive approach to expansion launch. 

I did my normal stockpiling of Netherweave bags.  Which are selling despite there being storage improvements being added to the game such as the Reagent bank and tradeskill items stacking to 200.  It is remarkable that they are selling as well as they are considering the fact that boosted characters get decent sized bags to start. 

I still do not know what to make of Garrisons, I am hoping I can use them to fill in for the few tradeskills I do not currently have a high level crafter for.  I am reviewing these two resources to educate myself on garrisons while the game is offline for extended maintenance. 

 Wowhead’s Bite Sized Garrison Guide (by Serrinn)  and The Consortium's Guide to Garrisons for the Goblin (by UtesDad) Serrinn's Guide on Wowhead is a great introduction and UtesDad's Guide on The Consortium is focused on gold-making via the Garrison.  If you read the further comments on The Consortium, there is a lot of speculation going on and not a lot of consensus on how to best use the Garrisons.  

Regardless I am excited to see how this plays out.  I am much more excited about Garrisons than I ever was about farms.  

First view of my Garrison

Evening at the Beach

Sometimes a rest is in order

Queues Queues Queues

Saw this over on Ember Isolte's blog:  A Jackal’s Tail

Griefing on a global scale

World of Warcraft hit by DDoS attack on expansion launch day

Due to heavy snow I was home and able to play yesterday morning, but I was unable to logon in the evening.  It just hung at connecting to server.  So I watched the World of Warcraft: Looking for Group Documentary again on the TV in the living room.
This morning I was checking Twitter and saw the reason why I could not get logged into my server.  I thought it was just a huge number of returning players.  It reminded me of the original launch of Vanilla, where Blizzard was scrambling to put up servers as the game grew exponentially in popularity.    
If you are unable to log into WOW do what I did and watch World of Warcraft: Looking for Group Documentary and enjoy the nostalgia.

Visual of the DDoS that hit Blizzard

Patch 6.0

I have to admit I am taking a much more relaxed approach to gold making this time around. In past years when a major patch was on the horizon I would spend time reading beta patch notes and reviewing forums to determine what changes were coming. This time I just kept the gold making engine running, albeit fairly conservatively. Part of this is due to a change in the culture of my server. My server is one of the original launch day servers, with a medium sized population for years it seems. It was merged with a lower population server which I also had an auctioneer on. The interesting thing about the lower pop server is it always had this incredibly nice vibe, even in trade chat. On the low pop server I did not receive hate mail when resetting transmog prices; instead people asked if they could buy items sometimes at a discount. It was so refreshing after the experience I had on my higher population server that I sometimes gave gear away to those who sent friendly mails in game to me.


When 6.0 dropped I logged in to my glyph selling auctioneer and found tons of burned glyphs in my mail. Initially it was disheartening; luckily I noticed that they could be sold to a vendor so it was not a complete loss.


The biggest bonus was the change allowing crafting items to stack up to 200 rather than 20. As someone who has four guild banks each with at least three tabs, this was a boon. That and the auto organize your bags button still make me stupidly happy. The crafting tab on the character banks also makes me happy. I just wish TSM 2.0 could grind herbs in the bank to inks.


After a fairly quite month of auctioning, I am seeing an increase in sales across the board since 6.0 dropped. I am not sure if it is from the merging of the Auction Houses or from people coming back to the game. My glyphs are selling and my Netherweave bags are again flying off the shelves.


I am excited for the future of the game, and look forward to the next expansion coming soon. 

 

Boost!

On top of lost stock I also lost access to a second account. I used to actively dual box WOW quite regularly. I challenged myself to two-man dungeons while playing both characters and I used to post auctions on two accounts at the same time, which was an incredible time savings that I still miss. Along with the loss of that second account I also lost two max level professions, Blacksmithing and Inscription. I have characters with each of these skills on my account but both are far from being max level and one was my transmog auctioneer.


Then when logging into WOW I saw the offer of a free character boost if you pre-ordered the next expansion. Having a Druid at level 75 meant that his professions would automatically be maxed out at 600. He originally was an Alchemist and Herbalist, providing an extra daily cool down in Cataclysm. A quick swap to Inscription and submitted the boost, instant max level Scribe. Next was regularly logging in on this character to do his daily research cool downs. Previously I had all of the glyph patterns, now I had only a small number but that was growing daily.


The two severs that I actively play on had been merged into one. That left me with two auctioneer characters dedicated to Transmog, and very little stock to split between them. I reassigned one to selling glyphs and the other to Transmog.



Having auctioneers dedicated to specific markets allows me to set up custom mailing rules in TSM 2.0. For example I buy herbs on the toon that I use to post glyphs, and then I auto mail them to my Scribe. My scribe turns the herbs into inks, and makes glyphs to restock my auctions. Once complete I auto mail the finished glyphs back to the auctioneer who posts them to the Auction House. All in all it is a very simple system that keeps thing organized.

World of Warcraft: Looking for Group Documentary

As someone who has played WOW since the Open Beta but has never been able to attend Blizzcon, this was incredible to watch.

Griefing in the DK starting zone

The other night I witnessed some of the worst case of ganking I had seen in years. My oldest was playing a new Worgen Deathknight, doing the quest where you pick up your runeblade for the first time when he got jumped by three Horde Deathknights. Needless to say they made quick work of him, and each time he rezzed they finished him off.

With the starting zone being phased he was effectively trapped with his tormentors, so I suggested he log out and play another character. Offering that he could raid on my shaman if he wished.

While I enjoy PVP, I play on PVE servers to avoid unwanted PVP and griefing behavior such as this. It has been a long long time since I actually saw anyone in game behaving like this and had forgotten about it. But it got me thinking about what sort of individual likes griefing.

The next day I read a really good article by Chris Mooney published on Slate titled Internet Trolls Really Are Horrible People

Chris Mooney references a study conducted by Erin E. Buckels, Paul D. Trapnell and Delroy L. Paulhus of the University of Manitoba that found the following:

“people who engage in trolling are characterized by personality traits that fall in the so-called Dark Tetrad: Machiavellianism (willingness to manipulate and deceive others), narcissism (egotism and self-obsession), psychopathy (the lack of remorse and empathy), and sadism (pleasure in the suffering of others)." - Trolls just want to have fun

While I am sure there are other studies out there on the topic, this one seemed to really support the behavior I had observed. That said, I admit I might be a little biased.

TSM 2.0

When I first got back into the game all I updated was my button bars and unit frames, ignoring my Tradeskill addons.  My first goal was to start enjoying the questing experience of Pandaria before the next expansion was released.  While I was experiencing Pandaria on my Paladin I mined a lot of Ghost ore and leveled up his Jewel crafting.  I must say I really like how Blizzard handled recipe research in Mists of Pandaria.  This felt much more natural than running daily quests to get tokens to buy patterns. 

Once I got past my initial buzz from just playing WOW again I started to think about my gold making operation.  First was to update Tradeskill Master to TSM 2.0.  Updating the addon was easy as always, but setting up the groups and actions was a bit of challenge.  TSM 2.0 is a departure from the early version, allowing for more flexibility in creating actions.  Actions define how the addon will behave, such as Auctioning actions, mailing actions, shopping actions, crafting actions.    Think of them as controlled scripts for various crafting and auctioneering based events in game.  Of course nothing is automated as that would break the T&C. 

While setting up TSM I discovered the Underground Journal was shuttering.  I used to frequent the page daily, checking my standing amongst my rivals on the server.  I also used it to look for underpriced items that I could quickly snatch up.  And most importantly I used it as an external price comparison.  I now use WOWUction for that last function.  Using the TSM application to automatically export pricing data from WOWuction has streamlined my daily posting process and sped it up dramatically.  

http://www.wowuction.com/

https://www.tradeskillmaster.com/

New Level-90 Crash Course Videos

Not entirely sure how to play your newly boosted character?  Blizzard on their blog has posted a number of videos to YouTube that give you a crash course on how to play your new level-90 character.  These quick videos are really helpful not only for newly boosted characters, but also for players who have come back to World of Warcraft. 

Oh that is what I am supposed to do...

More videos are available at the Blizzard Blog: New Level-90 Crash Course Videos