Studying the WoW Tribe: Gamasutra asks "Is there life after World of Warcraft?"

Gamasutra has an in-depth interview with several academics asking "Is there life after World of Warcraft?" Neils Clark suggests that the majority of of MMO players don't spread themselves out over multiple MMO games, but instead migrate like a flock of birds or a "gamer tribe".

I do think that the same chunk of players went from EQ to Galaxies to WoW with some dabbling in games like AO, DAOC and CoH inbetween. Obviously, Blizzard attracted about 8 million extra people to our "tribe", however, so I wonder if our tribe just got a lot bigger or if we are now just one tribe of many.

Clark interviews 5 academics about how gamers will move from WoW to other games and what what has made WoW the powerhouse that it is. The discussions of social networks, lures of new fantasies and the ramifications of a WoW collapse are very interesting.

Clark also says that he thinks WoW is the "king of the mountain" not because it is the best game out there but because it attracted the "right people". I say the "right people" are playing because it's currently the best game out there. What do you think?

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A'dal is prepared

Some of you longtime readers may remember a while back when we posted video of A'dal (the big floaty Naaru in Shattrath's center) getting the crap beat out of him. In fact, that was the post where I coined the Lord British Postulate, which stated that if anything existed as a live creature in an MMO, someone, somewhere would try to kill it. Why hasn't that caught on by now?

But apparently A'dal is a pushover no more. When someone kited a Fel Reaver into Shattrath (that's the big tangle of lifeless metal in the upper left of the picture above), A'dal laid the smack down with a 114,952 hit. Naaru please! He ain't playin', son.

A sharp increase in the strength of the Naaru, or just a sign that Blizzard really doesn't want anyone messing around with beings made of energy? You decide.

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"The Karazhan mistake"

AFK Gamer's got a great post up about what he calls "The Karazhan Mistake." At BlizzCon, and now in Leipzeig, Blizzard has been patting themselves on the back for the 10man raid of Karazhan-- it's clearly the most popular raid in the expansion (does that have anything to do with the fact that it's the first raid most guilds do?), and so they say the 10man raid idea of theirs is the bomb. Along with the new Zul'Aman, we can expect to see more 10mans in Wrath of the Lich King.

But AFK says they've learned the wrong lesson. While Karazhan is definitely popular, creating a 10man raid in the guild progression path (remember, UBRS didn't start as a 10man, and it wasn't really a progression instance) was a mistake. It's more or less where all the guild drama and frustration in the expansion has come from-- guilds with only 10 people are rare and far between, and so most guilds have to schedule and run multiple raid IDs just to get everyone through there. And now (eight months after the expansion has dropped), while most guilds have finally got Karazhan (and all that raid coordination) down pat, they're dealing with another problem: beefing back up to 25 for the rest of the raids. Blizzard's making guilds jump through all these hoops, and deal with all of this group A/B drama, and they're citing Karazhan as a success?

AFK's solution is a simple one: lower the cooldown on raid IDs. (His other solution is to have raid IDs be guildwide, but letting only 10 people in a guild run Karazhan weekly is a terrible idea.) That would more or less take the raid out of progression (in essence, turn it into UBRS), and let you go there whenever you had 10 people ready and willing, leaving the real raiding to the 25 mans.

Personally, I love Karazhan. It's a great dungeon with some cool bosses and lore, and Blizzard's right: it's how raids should be done. It's just too bad that, by creating a great 10 man in a world full of 25 man raids, they caused guilds (especially guilds just starting to raid) so much trouble.

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Patch 2.2 may take "weeks" longer

MMO Champion's about right-- patch 2.2 is likely not coming for a matter of weeks. Since background downloading started a little while ago, we all figured this Tuesday or next was looking pretty good for a patch update, but Hortus on the forums alludes to new PTR patches "several times in the upcoming weeks," which is a good indication that we've got a while to go on the PTR.

It doesn't necessarily mean that we're looking at a November patch-- it could be that the PTR updates are for 2.3, or that 2.2 will drop with hotfixes coming later, or that Hortus just doesn't have the information from the devs right. But take a deep breath-- even if it takes a few more weeks for a new patch, odds are we'd all rather have it "right" than "right now."

And Boubouille says that if it takes this long for 2.2, he doesn't see how they'll release the expansion by next January, which is just plain laughable. Sorry Bou, we love you and all, but WotLK isn't dropping anytime before July 2008, and I wouldn't be surprised at all if we didn't see it until early 2009. It's not that we won't have content until then-- Zul'Aman is coming, and a new arena season will show up before then (maybe even two), as well as guild banks, a new CoT instance, and of course the Sunwell. But if you're still thinking we'll see Arthas as soon as January, time to stop holding your breath.

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A case of Murky envy

Wandering Goblin's got Murky envy-- Elvyra was lucky enough to go to BlizzCon 2005 and get the special Murky pet while there, but she redeemed it on the EU servers, and now plays on the US servers, so no Murky pet for her. Despite pleading with ingame GMs and even the higher-ups, she hasn't been able to get the Murky back. And while she did go to BlizzCon 2007 and get a Murloc suit, it's no comparison-- not only does it break on combat, but it just doesn't fit. That doesn't mean it's not fun, though-- if you're waiting to hear about yours from the podcast on Saturday, wait just a little longer-- we'll be contacting the winner tomorrow.

Still, Elvyra's problem isn't the biggest one with the Murky suit-- most people have the problem of not getting one at all. Yes, it's special that Blizzard gave it out only at that convention, but people who now want the pet can't currently ever get it again. Blizzard did give it out once more-- they gave Lurky out to folks who had problems with the CE of Burning Crusade-- and so why can't they do that again? Even if we never see Murky given out, what about Gurky? Or Turky (a Thanksgiving item, obviously)? Or Jerky, who's a little meaner than the other Murlocs?

Doesn't matter much to me-- as I said before, I'm not a huge fan of Murky. But there are some good ways to let people in on the fun while still keeping the original pet exclusive.

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Forum Post of the Day: Frost magi in Northrend

Nayami over on Area 52 makes a good point in a recent thread on the official Mage forums about how magi must usually respec depending on which raid they're running:

"So I was talking with a few random raiders on my server, and I was informed that SSC and TK has a large amount of frost immunities?

I mean, I can accept the fact that fire does more damage than frost overall. That is the way it is and ever shall be. But I liked Frost because of the pvp viability and utility it brough [sic] outside of raid bosses and still managed to hold its own in terms of DPS. You weren't going to top any meters but you didnt suck. But Immunities? I dread to see how many things will be frost immune in Northrend."

Magi switching their spec depending on what they're raiding is nothing new -- back in the old days of Molten Core, you had to spec into Frost or Arcane. Other raid instances such as BWL, ZG and Naxx did allow Fire spec magi to raid, but it seems like raid mobs having immunity to certain schools of magic is a step in the wrong direction.

Nayami (and others in that thread) also point out something I hadn't thought about before -- what will Frost spec magi do when they get to Northrend? There are bound to be many mobs immune to Frost spells in the icy roof of the world. Is it fair to make a certain class respec this often in order to DPS efficiently? And when was the last time anyone saw a mob that was immune to Shadow spells? Warlocks and shadow priests certainly haven't found any, as far as I can tell.

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Totem Talk: Shamans are awesome

Another week, another Totem Talk, a column by and for shamans and those that love us. Well, okay, you don't have to love us to read it, but why wouldn't you? Look how cuddly we are! We even provide Bloodlust or Heroism for your 5 mans and raids. Don't you want to adopt one of us and take us home right now? No? What do you mean, no? Matthew Rossi is disappointed that you haven't already made a shaman plushie and cuddled it upon finishing this paragraph.

Okay, so my introductory column for Totem Talk went about like I expected, with most folks disagreeing with the idea that shamans need help. This isn't a new problem, of course, and it's not likely to go away for a while. Most players have enshrined the concept of shamans as OP and either deliberately or unknowingly exaggerate certain abilities (as an example, complaining that Grounding Totem, an ability which has a 15 second cast cooldown and which dies in one hit, is eating half of their frostbolts. How is that mathematically possible? Frostbolt has a max casting time of three seconds. You can cast five of them in the time it takes to cast one Grounding. It's just not possible for it to be eating half of your frostbolts, even assuming a one on one mage vs. shaman battle) but this happens to everyone. When I play my warrior, I see people complaining about 6k executes, and I'm sure every single class in the game has a similar ability or two that everyone complains about far more than it is actually capable of.

But this week there will be no complaining. No, this week we're going to celebrate shamans and what they're capable of and try and sell a really interesting and fun class to everyone in WoW. So read on for tales of high adventure! Or at least tales of stuff that would be good to have along on an adventure, anyway.
First up, let's take about Bloodlust. Ah, it's a shame we only get it at level 70. The alliance version is called Heroism, but it's essentially the same ability: it increases melee, ranged and spell casting speed by 30% for 40 seconds for the entire party. I think you can see the attraction right up front. It's really a smashingly good ability and the ten minute cooldown, while long, means you'll probably be able to use it on a couple of bosses in a 5 man. I pop Bloodlust at the 50% mark on every single boss in Kara and one of the hunters I run with (Hi, Vice!) says that it makes him fire like a machine gun. The duration in particular is very sweet, as a 40 second burst of increased speed has a significant effect. It's a well balanced, powerful and most importantly cool addition to the shaman arsenal. Sick and tired of that smirk on Murmur's skull-shark face? Pop this badboy off and watch him drop.

Next, let's talk about a few totems. There are some significant buffs in the totem kit bag that you may or may not know about. Shamans have totems for cleansing disease and poison, totems for regenerating mana and health, totems for buffing spell damage and adding strength and agility to a party, and of course there's the infamous Windfury totems that has positive and negative effects for melee. On the one hand, it's a great totem with a really powerful effect (20% chance of the effect of an extra attack with an additional 445 AP at level 70), but it also cleanses other enhancements off of everyone's main hand weapon, so if your rogue is trying for Wounding and Mind-Numbing poison on a boss, you may prefer to drop Grace of Air instead. Either are fine choices for the right situation... how can you say anything bad about an extra 77 agility? Of course, as a healbot I primarily drop my Wrath of Air totem in groups to get an additional 101 to my healing, plus the casters don't seem to mind it either. But I don't mind dropping another totem if asked - I generally use Windfury on the Maiden, in-between dropping Groundings every time the cooldown's up to keep from eating her nasty fire damage.

There are a lot more totems to talk about, but I don't want to swamp the post with just totems as if that's all we shamans can bring to the party. We're also walking soulstones! Okay, it's not quite that good, but Reincarnation can save a group in a couple of ways. For starters it can be used in the same manner as a soulstone, to res after a wipe, but a far more amusing use of the ability is to pop after death but while the fighting's still going on. Granted, you don't pop with full health or mana, but if you time it right and get the right totems down you can regenerate enough mana to throw heals off or resume ranged DPS, possibly turning the tide of a tight battle. I've even done both, using reincarnate to get up during a fight, dying again, and using my soulstone to get up after the fight to res and loot. Having a warlock and a shaman in your run means it's extremely hard to kill you off.

Let's not forget the healing spells... even an enhancement shaman can throw a few of these around to help with tough fights, especially my favorite heal, Chain Heal. Oh, how I love chain heal. Back when I was enhancement I would often use chain heal, self-targeted, to heal myself and 2 other melee in the middle of cleaves or AoE, since a meleeing shaman has various other ways to regenerate mana and can afford to throw a few heals around. And as a main healer it's an invaluable tool. I personally love a nice downranked chain heal to help keep the melee on their feet when fighting annoying bosses who love to cleave... just fire a few ch's into the main tank and watch the rogue's health stay up without you having to do much at all. It's a very mana efficient spell if you manage to heal three with it (it's also good for keeping up hunter pets and warlock minions for the same reason) and seems to benefit the most from sensible downranking, in my opinion.

Time to discuss an ability that enhancement brings to the party, the ever popular Unleashed Rage. If you don't love unleashed rage then you're obviously not melee. A 10% boost to everyone's AP for 10 seconds when the shammy crits? With the right buffs this could well be up for half a fight, and that means solid gains in DPS. You have to be within 20 yards of the shaman to get the benefit, admittedly, but that's usually not a problem when you're all crowding under someone's giant legs doing the old slice and dice anyway. For casters, there's the elemental talent Totem of Wrath, which adds to crit and spell hit and uses up a fire totem (which, to be honest, is often not used in an instance as most fire totems are like Searing Totem or Magma Totem, likely to break CC) but most elemental shammies I know tell me it's not that great. Still, combined with Wrath of Air it seems like it would have a nice synergy.
This is just a sample of what's good about shamans. I encourage you to run out and group with one immediately! And if you happen to be a shaman and you think I left out your favorite ability, please comment, we want to present as much positivity about our class as we can today.

Note - I edited my reference to the warrior ability Execute, as I could not find a way to make it clearer than I did, and it was making people focus more on it than on shamans. Comment #7 in this post spells out what I meant as well as I am able to do so, and it is out of the scope of the post.

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Your Perfect Swing

"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I... I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference." - Robert Frost

Who knew that Robert Frost played World of Warcraft and goblin . He didn't? Well, he should have. I think he would have played a survival hunter (maybe even a melee hunter) who did tailoringengineering. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages, I am going to take this time to vent (or rant, if you prefer) in as polite a manner as I can about something that really bugs me. It gets under my skin. It sometimes upsets me to the point that it affects the quality of my performance in-game. Before you continue reading this article, maybe you should go to the fridge and get yourself some comfort food, perhaps some of that meat loaf from a couple of nights ago and a nice glass of milk. There you go. All comfy? Ready for the jaw-dropping news that is going to change your perception of World of Warcraft?

There is no magic formula.

I see people looking for this magic formula in chat channels all the time. "What is the best profession for a..." or "What is the best spec for a..." or "What is the best weapon for a..." are all ways that sentences in these conversations start. Folks, you're missing the most crucial part of the equation: the human variable.

You should play what feels good for you. I think one of the biggest reasons some guilds are so frustrated in end-game content is because all their characters are photocopies of each other, or builds that they picked up off the forums. Do you think maybe that Blizzard reads these forums too? They know with mathematical precision what the most popular builds are. So do you think when they were designing the instances and raids for The Burning Crusade that they took this data into consideration? They would be foolish not to.

I'm not saying there is no benefit in using a tried and true configuration as a benchmark, and I'm not invalidating the benefit of our Build Shop series of articles. What I'm doing in this editorial-style piece is encouraging you, the player population, and especially the younger population, to experiment. So what if every mage in your guild is frost spec? If you want to roll arcane (or a mix of all three) then more power to you! If it makes you happy, do it! Be an individual! One of the most addictive qualities of World of Warcraft is the number of choices that Blizzard has offered us to personalize the abilities of our characters.

Six years ago Will Smith was in a movie called The Legend of Bagger Vance and one of the things his character said was "Yep... Inside each and every one of us is one true authentic swing... Somethin' we was born with... Somethin' that's ours and ours alone..." and this wisdom applies to World of Warcraft today. Please. I'm begging you. Our characters were not made to be all the same. Go out and discover your true authentic swing.

[With special thanks to Scott and Randy at The Instance for planting the seed a few weeks ago that blossomed into this article...]

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The ganking challenge: Deathwing edition

We've already reported this week on new and exciting ways that players are coming up with to PvP, and it looks like another interesting and possibly unique challenge is taking place over on the Deathwing server. Ruzai, the creator of this thread over on the Deathwing forums that explains the details, calls it "The Ganking Challenge."

It seems to have generated lots of interest, and sounds very fun! It's world PvP based, obviously, but it provides enough structure and basic rules to turn ganking into a game. Here's a quick overview:

• There are 3 targets at a time.
• Post a screenshot of your kill, and then pick 3 new targets from your own faction.
• All targets must be level 70 and not in a BG.
• You can't tell the targets that they're being hunted.
• Playing dirty is encouraged.
• Example: Targets are now Narkan, Pacsan, and Mitsuomi. If Volarun was to come into Orgrimmar and gank Narkan and post a SS proving the kill, the Horde hunt would end and Volarun would get to choose 3 new alliance targets.

There are further details in the thread if you're interested, but I would love to have this challenge come to my server! I especially like that the active targets switch from Horde to Alliance after every kill, as it gives each side a chance at being the predator and the prey.

[ Thanks, Craver! ]

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Know Your Lore: Zul'jin

If you may recall, back in the ancient days of yore two weeks ago, Know Your Lore did a report on the history of the trolls and promised to get to Zul'jin the following week. Then Know Your Lore got strep throat, which is a ridiculous thing to get at the age of 24. So I broke my promise and humbly apologize. Here is a monkey befriending a kitten.

Who: Zul'jin.

What: Leader of the Forest Trolls.

History: As stated in the previous article, all trolls came from one original species, but divided into several sub-groups based on their values. After they fought and lost a war with the night elves and the world got Sundered, they were tossed around to all different places. The forest trolls of the Amani Empire were sent back to northern Lordaeron, where they managed to rebuild a pretty extensive empire. Then the silly night elves showed up again, in the form of the arcane-addicted high elves, who put up magical runestones and built their city on sacred troll land.

The trolls attacked a couple of times, but were scared off by the arcane magic. There was an uneasy stalemate for several thousand years, but one day, the trolls launched their full forces at the elves. The elves called upon the humans of Arathor for help and agreed to teach them the secrets of magic. The humans and the elves routed the trolls in the Alterac Mountains, and the Amani Empire was beaten into submission. (Yes, I know I'm repeating myself but it's important, because ...) This is where Zul'jin comes in.

Zul'jin was a young male troll of the Amani tribe, the main leaders of the Amani Empire. There's no information on whether or not he fought in the Troll Wars (as the conflict between the Amani and the elves and humans was called by the victors), but it's highly unlikely, since it happened two thousand years before the First War and I'm not sure trolls are that long-lived. What is known is that when he became leader, after the Troll Wars, he led some daring raids on the outskirts of Quel'thalas and managed to unite all the forest trolls together into a rebuilt Amani Empire. The forest trolls were still pretty bitter about their loss in the Troll Wars, and harbored a deep grudge towards the humans and the high elves. Or maybe they were just racist against anyone without green skin, I don't know.

Zul'jin was kind of a visionary leader, and made grandiose plans to unite ALL the troll tribes. But the invasion of the Horde into Azeroth put the kibosh on those plans. The jungle trolls were down there in the thick of the invasion, near STV, but the forest trolls were largely left alone in their disunited and battered state. The troll tribes stayed out of the conflict , watching from the sidelines with a keen eye.

After the First War "ended" with Gul'dan's submission, the destruction of Stormwind, and Orgrim Doomhammer's ascension to chief, the remains of the battered human kingdom of Stormwind moved up to Lordaeron to ask for help. All the humans and some of the dwarves united to form the Alliance of Lordaeron. They were quickly followed by the Old Horde, which began launching naval offensives and ground attacks that led them up to Silvermoon. At that point, Zul'jin and the forest trolls came out to meet the Horde and basically tell them to stop messing up the lawn.

Doomhammer thought the trolls' hatred of the humans could be a great asset, and formally invited them to join the Horde, which sounds like a contradiction in terms. Zul'jin refused at first, but when the elves of Quel'thalas joined the Alliance, he realized that the trolls were going to be between a rock and a hard place if the Alliance won, and would probably get wiped out in the resulting clean-up operation. This opinion was confirmed when the elves captured Zul'jin. He was rescued by orcish forces, and in gratitude, he and the forest trolls joined the Old Horde. The orcs also promised the trolls their sacred ground once Quel'thalas was destroyed, which seems like a nice bonus.

Zul'jin and the trolls fought fiercely for the Horde, attacking and burning the forests of Silvermoon. Hey, that must be why they're all reddish today! Well, probably not, but it's a nice thought. This caused the elves to throw their full strength into the war effort, driving the Horde back to the Hillsbrad Foothills with much ganking and corpse-camping, and eventually to the shores of the Wetlands.

As the Alliance retook Khaz Modan and headed towards Blackrock Spire, Orgrim Doomhammer prepared a daring last stand. But it would have to be done without the trolls, because as soon as it became clear the Horde wasn't going to come out on top, the trolls did a runner back to the north. Did they think they were just going to hide until it was all over? Zul'jin was very upset by this turn of events, which meant he could never get the ancestral lands back, and he disappeared. Rumors spread that he had been killed by Alleria Windrunner or had become a mercenary. He became a hero and a symbol of hope and resistance to all the troll tribes, which is why the jungle trolls of the current Horde still say "For Zul'jin!"

Years passed, and the Horde reformed under the leadership of Thrall. The forest trolls were too savage and barbaric to join up with their Darkspear brothers in the new, clean Horde. One small, weak tribe of forest trolls, the Revantusks, did take up Thrall's offer to become part of the Horde, and they provided some clues to Zul'jin's location. He has gone missing, and all the forest trolls wait patiently for his return.

Where he is now: Zul'jin's failure in the Second War seems to have given him a renewed desire to destroy the high elves. He still leads the Amani tribe from inside the forest fortress of Zul'Aman, where he is aided by four animal loa spirits and the Hexlord Jin'zakk. It seems that he will be a killable enemy.

Wait, what? I'm a troll member of the Horde, and we revere Zul'jin! Why would we want to kill him?: Sorry, trolls, your reverence for your leader has been eclipsed by political necessity. The trolls of Zul'Aman have been attacking the blood elves of Quel'thalas, and as new members of the Horde, they're entitled to call upon Thrall for protection. Zul'jin is a member of the Old Horde, not the New Horde, so Thrall and company owe him nothing. Your worship of Zul'jin is misguided, anyway, since the forest trolls hate jungle trolls. In conclusion, find a new hero.

Fine, fine. While we're here, what's the deal with troll names?: Straight from the Warcraft RPG book: Zul is a troll prefix meaning "voodoo" or "voodoo master", and "jin" means tribal chief. Zul'Aman, Zul'Farrak, Zul'Gurub and Zul'jin are all thus named because of their roots in Voodoo, and Zul'jin, Sen'jin, and Vol'jin rhyme because they're tribal chiefs.

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The twink experience (and toggling XP)

If you listened to the latest episode of Titan over on WoW Radio (and did you hear that we're teaming up with them to do a new show, starting Saturday? You did? Good), you heard Totalbiscuit and Eriyanna talk all about twinks-- alts who are created just to rule a certain battleground bracket. Most players aren't real big on twinks, and Jonaleth straight out wonders why people do it. Is it just for fun, or do the people who stay at that level just want to deal with simpler strategies and less abilities (since lower level characters don't have as many tools to play around with as higher level characters)?

The bad answer is, of course, that people just like spending gold and time to rule the battlegrounds with an enchanted, blue-geared fist. But the "good" answer is probably that yes, there's a lot of strategy in squeezing as much power you can out of a lower level character. Totalbiscuit, in the podcast, actually says that what twinks do at 19 and 29 is really what all players do at 70-- work hard on gear and enchants to get every little drop out of a character with a limited level, and that's very true.

So here's an interested idea from Brook on Garithos: how about an XP toggle, where players can actually switch off XP gain if they so choose. That would bring twinking to a whole new level, and allow players who twink to go into instances and run groups over and over again just to get the gear they want.

Predictably, players aren't thrilled with that idea-- most people have enough trouble with twinks in the BGs already for Blizzard to more or less officially sanction the practice with an official feature like that. Sure, it would definitely bring a whole new aspect to twinking. But most players, it seems, think twinking has too many aspects in the game already.

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Another class issue post gets a blue response

After Druids got a blue's attention last week with a well-written class issues list, the Shaman have done the same. Danemoth of Blade's Edge server has posted a short, concise list of Shaman issues. And already got a blue response. The response was just a tag by a CM, but it shows they are listening.

Here is a summary:

1) Shaman specs outside of Restoration lack survivability.
2) No pushback resistance for Lightning Spells put a hamper on solo grinding / farming as well as in PvP.
3) Totems immobility and short range need to be buffed.
4) Other classes got new skills/spells in TBC that changed their playstyle, Shamans did not.
5) Enhancement shaman lack significant ranged combat abilities as well a way to chase down fleeing opponents.
6) Threat management is a bigger issue than ever with the TBC talents boosting shaman dps.
7) Shaman have issues handling an assist train. (When someone gets zerged by multiple opponents).
8) Lack of a way to deal with other classes' crowd control abilities put shaman at a distinct disadvantage in PvP.
9) Off-spec Shaman itemization is poor in Karazhan and beyond.
10) Flametongue and Frostbrand Weapon both scale poorly.
11) Windfury and Stormstrike demand the shaman using the slowest weapon for maximum dps gain, but that concept is counter to the weapon normalization introduced in patch 1.8.
12) Shamans need more control over their fire-and-forget Totems to direct them at a specific target or to stop them from breaking cc.
13) The large global cool down associated with dropping four Totems in combat makes it difficult for the Shaman to be responsive to changes in combat.

Read the whole list through the link. If I've misinterpreted something, list it below.

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WoW Rookie: Money-making 101

Once a week, WoW Rookie attempts to bring new players useful tips and tricks on improving their game.

My first character rarely managed to keep more than a gold to her name until after she hit level 60, and I imagine the story is similar for most new players. There are plenty of skills to buy, so many professions to learn about, and always the lure of the auction house attempting to part you from your hard-earned coin. If I only knew then what I know now, mount money at 40 wouldn't have given me such grief -- instead of being frustrated over my lack of funding, I could have been frolicking through Azeroth on a brand new pony. But for new players struggling with money right now, I'm going to offer a few reasonable financial suggestions to help you on the road to your first big purchase.

Choose your professions wisely.

When you first hit level 5, you have a choice of ten primary professions. While all of them offer a variety of benefits, some of them will cost money to train up, whereas others will help you make some coin. If you're primarily interested in money-making, the best advice is to pick up two gathering professions. With a gathering profession, you needn't worry about the cost of materials for your next skill point and you have very few associated training costs. (5c to 75 skill, 5s to 150 skill, 50s to 225 skill, 5g to 300 skill, and 10g to 375 skill -- this might sound like a lot, but for a crafting profession you'll pay these same costs plus the cost of patterns or recipes needed in order to craft items. These costs are not always high, but they add up over time.)

In our recent professions overview, we went into a full discussion of all the profession options, but I'm going to keep things simple here. Your options for gathering professions (which are the only ones I advise taking if you aim to make money) are:

• Mining
• Skinning
• Herbalism

Mining is an easy recommendation as a first profession. Because the ore you acquire through mining is used by three different crafting professions (blacksmithing, engineering, and jewelcrafting), ore and gems tend to be a big seller. There are always players attempting to raise crafting skills without the associated gathering skill, not to mention the fact that buying off the auction house is faster and easier for them than gathering.

The next profession is your call. Higher level herbs and skins both sell reasonably, but neither are as in demand as ore tends to be. (Of course, your realm's economy may vary, but this is typical.) I tend to recommend skinning as the best option, because it doesn't have an associated tracking skill like mining and herbalism. (Since you can only have one "tracking" ability active at a time, you can only be looking either for ore or herbs, but not both at once. Skinning, on the other hand, can simply be performed on any corpse which provides leather -- hunting for ore veins or flowers required.)

A final profession option to consider is enchanting. I'm not suggesting enchanting to actually enchant gear -- enchanting is both time-consuming and costly to train, which goes against the goals of our guide -- but instead to disenchant gear. The enchanting profession also allows you to disenchant magical items back to their base components: dusts, shards, and essences that are used to enchant other items. These materials sell very well, however, to disenchant higher level gear, you need higher levels of enchanting, which means you won't be able to do so without some training -- and to train it, you'll probably need to use rather than sell materials you disenchant. In my opinion, it would be a wash at best. At times, you'd be able to disenchant and sell and make a good profit from it, but eventually you'll reach a point where you need to train in order to disenchant items, which will cost you money. However, your mileage may vary.

Save everything, sell everything!

You may be tempted not to even pick up items that are useless to you, but trust me, nearly every item in the game is useful to someone. All of the game's items are color-coded to give you an idea of how important they are, and it's important to know what's what:

• Grey: Boring everyday items with no special properties. These items are of no particular use to players, though some enjoy collecting full sets of grey armor (which usually has a unique look). However, even a grey item will have a value to an NPC vendor, and they're worth picking up just to resell. They may not sell for much, but those bits of coin add up!
• White: These items have no special properties, either, but they are used as components in tradeskills or reagents for spells. These are certainly useful to other players, and can sell reasonably well on the auction house, depending. (And even if they don't sell like hotcakes on the AH, they can still be sold to an NPC vendor for coin.)
• Green: These are uncommon items with magical properties. They'll often sell well on the auction house, though how well they sell depends on the specific stats they have. (For example, something with strength and spirit won't sell as well as something with strength and agility -- the latter stat pairing is more useful to a melee combat class, while most looking at the former will see those points in spirit as wasted itemization.)
• Blue: Rare items with magical properties. These are higher quality than green items and are always worth some gold on the auction house -- at least if they aren't bind on pick-up
• Purple: Epic items with magical properties. These are higher quality again than blue items and are certainly worth a good bit of gold at the auction house.
  
• Orange: A legendary item! You aren't terribly likely to see one of these just drop from a mob...
  

So how do you know what's valuable and what's a waste of inventory space? I say, so long as you have inventory space to spare (and the biggest bags you can afford are always an excellent investment), you just shouldn't care about it. Fill your inventory to the brim -- you can always run back to town to sell when you're full-up. However, in the case of an inventory crisis, sacrifice grey before white, white before green, etc.

Play the auction house!

Now that your inventory is overflowing with ore and items, you need something to do with it, don't you? This is where the auction house comes in. There's an auction house where you can buy and sell goods in every major city (the town guards should be able to direct you), so whenever you have a full inventory of potentially worthwhile stuff, hit up your nearest capitol city.

The tricky part of this operation is knowing what to put items up for. It can required detailed attention to your local economy to have a concept of what anything you might pick up could be worth to others - and this is usually the daunting part that keeps people from bothering with the auction house. But help is just an addon away! For this purpose, I advise picking up Auctioneer. Auctioneer is an excellent addon that scans the auction house for you and keeps track of what everything is selling for so you don't have to. Install it and do a full scan of your local auction house every time you stop by (a full scan can take from five to ten minutes, but it's collecting invaluable information that's worth the wait). Then when you ride into town wanting to auction off a stack of random white items, Auctioneer tell you what those items usually sell for and suggest the best price. And now the seemingly worthless junk you picked up while you were out leveling is converted to gold and silver coins for your use.

Another way to play the system is to check vendors wherever you go -- some vendors around the world will offer limited quantities of crafting patterns which sometimes sell well. (The first aid books seem to do good business on all the realms I've played on, though you'll have to check prices on other patterns. Your local economy may vary.) Why would someone buy from you what they could go out and buy themselves? Well, they may not have the time or inclination to go out and find where it's sold, but if you happen across a limited quantity pattern while you're out questing, it's no loss of time to you to pick it up and resell it as soon as you hit town.

That's all I have for you today -- if you've been having money problems, give a few of these tips a try and see how they work. And if you have any of your own suggestions for new players struggling to earn their first gold, tell us about it in the comments!

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Death Knight tidbits from Neth

In a silly thread in the Druid forums asking whether the druids would get a "dark form" to go along with the Death Knight being a dark version of the Paladin (which it...sort of is, I guess), US CM Nethaera dropped a few interesting pieces of DK information.

[when asked if DKs will start at level 55, instead of 60 or 70] That is the current thinking. It could still be subject to change though and is not concrete. We're still toying with ideas of how we want to make it all work. We want people to feel like they are learning not only the how's of becoming a Death Knight from the lore perspective, but also how to play one.

[More character slots?] Undetermined as of yet. We'll let people know when we know more.

[...the current feeling is that a player with any class over 55 (or whatever the level ends up being) will be able to unlock Death Knight? ] yes. That is our current thinking.

[asked about balance] It is going to be balanced against other classes and will not be able to stomp everyone else just because it's a Death Knight. Yes, they will be powerful but in their own unique way. What makes it a Hero class is that it is from Warcraft lore as a Hero class and also you will get access to it at a higher level. Any race can be a Death Knight in our current thinking as well since the path to corruption can be founded with good intentions much like what happened to Arthas.

[How many abilities will DKs start with?] Undetermined as of yet. We're still fleshing a lot of things out. This is another reason we caution people about the perception that the expansion is coming out 'too soon'. We have only shown people the tip of the iceberg and have a lot more that we are still working out and planning for. Once we have more details, we'll be sharing them so people can discuss it more and plan for the future.

So there's a lot of "not sure yet" in that post, but there's also some good information, notably that they currently think DKs will start at level 55. That's a bit lower than I would have expected. 58 or 60 would make more sense, in my opinion, in order to be able to start out in Outland (but then again, does that make sense lore-wise?). So how excited are you about Death Knights? Are they your main reason to buy Wrath? The change that will kill WoW?

[thanks, Natulcien]

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Arena season 1 set to be purchasable with honor

Apparently, this was mentioned at BlizzCon, but even reading all the marvelous coverage of BlizzCon here at WoW Insider, I managed to miss it. Drysc tells us that "as arena sets fall off they would make their way to the honor system. So when a season 3 set is released, season 1 would fall off the arena vendors and onto the honor vendors, but this may not include weapons."

So! Have you been hoarding up your honor points for that one great day when you'd be able to buy something epic with them? Are you prepared for hours and hours of hanging out in battlegrounds in order to get your desired set without having to do well in the arenas? If your answer to any of those questions is yes, you may be in luck. No official word on when Season three will come along however.

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Death Knights' "rune" system might take some skill

"Oh my frikkin dog, everybody and their second cousin is gonna wanna be Death Knights!" was the cry heard throughout Outland when the new Hero Class was announced. WoW players everywhere had visions of dungeons and raids filled with only Death Knights; as well as Alliance and Horde cities alike all filled wall-to-wall with thousands of players who abandoned their original class to become Death Knights, only to discover (along with rogues and hunters) that it ain't so easy being uber-cool and powerful when everyone else is uber-cool and powerful too -- because everyone else is taking your raid spot.

Well Drysc has a ray of light to shed on this despair... or, in the case of Death Knights, perhaps that should be a big tank of unholy frozen blood to spill on it (assuming that would help):

I expect just about everyone is going to want to try one, but is everyone going to want to drop their long-time proffered class for one? I seriously doubt it. Also there's some amount of self regulation that will really be required to keep group composition equalized.

Not only will the other 9 classes still be needed to succeed in any group effort, but the tactics involved in playing a Death Knight might be too hard for the average Stanley Noobsauce to master. In response to one player who felt that the rune system Death Knights will be using seemed "clunky and not fun," Drysc responded:

In its current design, at least as far as I've seen, it's like having three different energy pools that can be made smaller or bigger before each fight for what you think you may need. I would kind of also liken it to some systems used in space sims where you throw more power into your shields, weapons, hull, etc. While the rune system is designed to be a pre-combat setup, there's the possibility of there being some on-the-fly swapping abilities for re-proportioning your rune distribution.

It's definitely going to be more complex. I think there's going to be a clear definition (more so than other classes) of a good death knight player that manages and controls their runes and cooldowns well, and someone who doesn't.

So the official word is that Death Knights won't be able to do everything by themselves, and may in fact be pretty hard to play. Is this enough to allay fears of Death Knight overpopulation? Will we still have to hire Death Knight exterminators from the opposite faction to clear out our own cities?

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The joy of grinding

I've never cared for grinding, myself. I just can't do it. I'm easily distracted and I quickly get bored of repetitive tasks. (Don't ask me how I ever managed to kill enough Furbolg to pick up that +15 agiity enchant from the Timbermaw way back when -- I'm really not sure how I managed to kill that many of the same creature in a row without starting to tear out my hair.) However, some people relish in the grinding game, like our own BigRedKitty's friend TJ. BRK seems to have an ongoing challenge with TJ to complete some of the toughest grinds in the game. After conquoring the firefly pet they've moved on to the Wintersaber mount. I've got to say -- I tried that grind for about a day before moving on with my life. However, I have no doubt that TJ will rise to the challenge, because after picking up that firefly, this is nuthin'. What about all of you? Are you grinders who would find these challenges no problem -- or more like me, who wouldn't last seconds?

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Tempest Keep and SSC loots buffed on PTR

According to our friends at MMO-Champion, several items that drop in Tempest Keep and Serpentshrine Caverns have been upgraded on the PTR. In addition, there's apparently a new shield added to the loot table in either Mount Hyjal or Black Temple based on its item level. Speculation abounds as to whether this is the first of many new items or not.

I personally have no idea if this is being done to balance TK and SSC with Arena Season 3, if this means that Season 3 is coming with the patch or not, and what that means as to how good Season 3 items will be. None of the upgrades is so enormous as to make or break having a weapon, but they are nice little bumps if you happen to already have, say, World Breaker or the Twinblade of the Phoenix.

Void Reaver over there is just thrilled that his loots are getting a boost. Look at how happy he is. That great big smile in no way is caused by panic at hordes (or alliances) of adventurers coming to crack him open for the succulent treats inside.

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Trick taming in Shadowmoon Village

Pretty funny-- Mania's Arcania issued a challenge to Alliance Hunters a few days ago to do something that might be impossible: tame the Shadowmoon Village stablemaster's pet wolf, Detrafila. The wolf is level 60, and according to Beast Lore, is actually tameable. But he's also surrounded by level 70 Horde, of course, so taming is not easy. Plus, some "pets" of NPCs are actually summoned pets, and therefore not tameable.

But two Hunters were able to pull it off. Dezar on Black Dragonflight and Gettokiwi on Stormreaver were both able to kite the stablemaster away from Shadowmoon Village, take him out, and then tame the wolf after he'd dropped. Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, the wolf doesn't have a special, identifiable look, and he doesn't actually come with any abilities, so there's not much reason to do it except for the experience.

But it would be exceedingly cool for Blizzard to "hide" special tameable pets like this for expert Hunters to go after. I know there are a few other "special" tames around-- Spot in Menethil Harbor is one, as is Stanley, the dog the Horde poisons in Hillsbrad. But it would be cool to see a few more secret, more select tames for Hunters in Northrend. What d'ya say, Blizz?

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Pet Wars and other minigame ideas

If the response to new hairstyles at BlizzCon means anything to the developers (Frank Pierce told me that he almost didn't even bother mentioning the new hairstyles at the keynote, and was amazed that it got one of the biggest cheers), it's that you can't ignore the little changes. New raid bosses, and bigtime lore storylines are cool, but sometimes people just want to relax and have a little fun with their characters.

So Karvoth has a great idea: turn noncombat pets into combat pets (of a sort), and make them into a fun little minigame. Just like the Tonk wars (and doggone it, if anyone on Thunderhorn's Horde side has a Tonk left, come see my Shaman, because he has one and no one to fight with!), setting up a little mode for dueling minipets would create endless fun, and fill in all those hours of group waiting and guild setup pretty easily.

Of course, that's not the only game they could implement-- ever since the Darkmoon cards were implemented, I always thought it would be awesome to have an ingame card game. I probably doubled my time playing FFIX just because of Tetra Master, and putting a simple but addictive card game inside of WoW would give me a whole new reason to play even more.

Unfortunately, neither of these ideas are likely, because Blizzard has made it pretty clear with WotLK that WoW is some serious high-level business. But just like the new hairstyles, players will always jump at the chance to have more simple fun with all the time they spend in Azeroth.

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