In Conclusion

I started this blog on a dare, and am ending it out of apathy.  It was fun to write my thoughts for a few years, but then I realized one day that I don’t even care anymore.  Honestly, given the line of work I am in, I would like to reboot this blog and dedicate it to making people’s financial lives better.  It’s a thought, because I’m damned good at what I do.

Since this was dedicated to the WoW universe and gold making and not thinking like the millions of talking monkeys that play this game, it’s become dated.  Sort of like anything you see anymore to gold making out there, it just doesn’t matter.  Blizzard essentially removed the need to really be a cut above the rest.  And people react more to streams than they do anything else, because lazy and no reading.

Today, you probably, no matter who you are with the exception of people just starting the game, have about 100k in your pockets.  During Classic, having that sort of wealth would have put you in the top 0.01% of players in the world.  It’s nothing today to have several million, because everything that is known is known, and everything that used to gate wealth from the player base has been removed.  If you want to snag a quick 10k, go hit up all the old raid content, vendor everything, you’ll be flush with cash.  Or go do WQs for an hour, target only the gold rewards, you’ll land thousands.

Inflation is the enemy of gold making and most every economy.  It puts most things out of reach for players, and causes people to have to work harder for their play time.  The token system was an interesting idea, it allowed players with the means to buy the gold, while those who chose to invest their time in gold making a means to pay for the subscription.  That’s win-win-win.  Blizz ultimately won, and given the reaction to D3’s AH, I was always surprised they even went that direction.

Today’s game is inflated like never before, and that’s not going to change.  Realistically there’s not a reason to up gold rewards, vendor prices, or anything else in the game.  They could have depleted the value of old world vendor prices with ease, stripping the value of a Cata Dragon Soul trinket to 1g per (you get 45g per on those things, just saying), but they didn’t.  But with this expansion, they did just the opposite.  You have vendor trash today selling for the price of epics from Wrath.  Game requirements don’t ask you to do anything beyond what we had to do 12 years ago – which was flask, use potions, and carry foods.  Yet prices for items is 2000% higher than back then.  They’re perfectly fine with it.  And I know why, you have so many options today to make gold to buy things, chief among them being the ability to buy or sell your gold.

Add to this, professions today are insanely more time intensive than ever before. This crap really kicked into high gear with MoP release.  Unless you’re part of the crowd that has this sort of time, or part of the crew that is just insane, it’s not a ton of fun.  Of course there’s the other crowd that does nothing but reprice stuff.  And then you have the transmog crowd.  None of it is fun for me, so that’s why I’ve parted ways with it.

What’s next?  Well, I moved on with my life nearly 2 years ago.  This time sink is simply entertainment for me when I have the time.  I got the notice the renewal was up on the website, and I’m not going to bother with it.  The gamer community today strikes me as a larger crowd of people in need of solid jobs than it was 15 years ago when I really got into it.  The answer for me was to move to Arizona back in 2015, get back into my old career, and dedicate myself to not taking shit from anyone anymore.  This last month I was again one of the highest paid sales reps on the West Coast.  For me, the only question is how much house I should buy in the coming months?  Life’s good, I suggest you get one, too!

Zerohour was my alter ego online, but the things I really took away from my blog was to reprogram myself back to what I always was and become Zerohour again.  For 7 very long years I struggled due to the financial markets in the US.  From damn near homeless to a 5 figure monthly income again.  I learned a ton about myself in that time, I learned to not give respect where it wasn’t earned, stop wasting time on those that those that waste mine, and the best thing I ever did was to act on my personal beliefs and not bother with the little things.  Charge forward, worry about things like feelings and emotions later.  Man, I like being home again.  I like the person I’ve resurrected.

In closing, I wish the best for you, and if you can see the brass ring in your life, don’t let anyone (including yourself) get in your way.

This site will expire and self immolate by February 23, 2017.

Warcraft: My Take

In the documentary The People vs. George Lucas there was a statement that nerds compete with each other generally by promoting their hatred for something they love.  Star Wars fans go apeshit with every release, and no I didn’t care for Phantom Menace and my favorite of all time is still Empire Strikes Back (I saw that in the theater when I was a kid).  Warcraft is pretty much like this, everyone reading this who plays the freaking game is a nerd, whether you like it or not, and we can all agree that WoW today is not what it used to be and Legacy servers should be the next release.  Or can we?

So today on the advice and reviews I saw online I decided to give Warcraft a go.  Since I work 6 days a week like a maniac I checked out of work early on Saturday and caught the 2pm showing.  I really wanted to splurge on this one and see it in 3D – and spoiler alerts here I would not do 3D again.  Especially since I wear transitions lenses and it ALWAYS messes with my eyes.  I will eventually learn.

Either way, I didn’t read anything or see anything about the storyline.  I promised myself I wasn’t going to see this movie because I’m still pouting over the closure of Nostalrius and damn Blizzard for their ways.  I’ve also promised myself I’m not going to buy Legion, and I think I know myself – I’ll end up buying 2-3 copies of the fucker just like every other expansion.  But I will NOT read anything about it before I buy it because I don’t want to spoil any surprises that I’ve promised I would not enjoy because I am not buying Legion.  So see you August 30th in Azeroth because I’m a weak willed loser.

The Whole Enchilada

So here’s my take on it, this part being spoiler free.

I’m a big fan of high fantasy.  I can sit through all LOTR movies in one sitting, including the Hobbit trilogy the same day.  No problem.  If there’s orcs or swords, I’m pretty well sold.  My gaming experience goes back to the old turn based games on the Commie 64, so high fantasy has always been a big part of my escapism.

I sat through Warcraft from opening credits to the copyright warning in the closing credits.  The cleaning staff had to wait on me.  I will encourage you to sit through the credits at the end, just to hear the brief fan service with the music.

The theater wasn’t crowded at all either.  Maybe 7 people in a large theater?  I even went to one of the bigger venues here in Phoenix to watch it because I prefer nice theaters.  My only question when the curtain went up was – “Where the hell are the fans?”  Certainly not everyone saw it yesterday.  Us greybeards were in full representation mode though, 5 of us were all easily over 40.  Yes, original fans!

I sat and chomped on nachos for the first few minutes of the movie, just totally waiting to bust the inconsistencies like any good nerd would do.  This being set in pre-First War era, this was a Challenge Accepted moment for me.  I’m huge on the world’s lore pre-Wrath.  What I found?

I was more interested in meeting the characters and watching the pretty CGI.  They didn’t have the best development of the characters, as this is almost exactly like any video game movie or comic book movie – it is assumed that you know who the main characters are prior to seeing it.  Ok, fine.  Overall you’re going to be seeing a movie meant for the average viewer, not something completely developed for fan-service.  If you want fan-service, then you aren’t going to get a big budget movie, they just aren’t going to make them.  You have to compress thousands of pages of lore into 2 hours, and you have to make it make sense as a story.

But this wasn’t Mortal Kombat and it wasn’t like the vast majority of video game to cinema conversions.  They were absolutely faithful to the names and people you meet, with the exception of a few new characters.  You get to see how the world was when humans ruled the EK.  Not enough Ironforge, and after seeing the way Stormwind looks it makes me wish they could make a game world just like that given we have the technology, just not the budget.

The places they visit are awesome and incredibly well captured.  Visually the movie is stunning for CGI.  They did not spare the eye popcorn.  The orcs looked badass with the exception of the human like faces, Elwynn Forest looks awesome, and I found myself looking in the background most often trying to peg the neighboring game zones.

I would recommend seeing it if you are a fan of the franchise, but definitely turn your brain off and slip out of lore nerd mode.  Red Shirt Guy’s head didn’t explode, so neither should yours.

When I go to the theater (which is rarely during the year), I look for the following things to keep me from saying I wasted my time:

1. Was it entertaining?  Are you not entertained!?
2. Did I believe the story?
3. Was it delivered in a way that made sense?
4. Could I root for the good guy or bad guy or both?
5. Was it loaded down with filler and garbage tangents that didn’t complete the story?
6. When I left, was I happy or depressed about it?
7. (for modern movies) Was it just eye candy or was it just CGI?

Overall I’m giving this a 9.5/10.  It didn’t suck.  Like Cata.  Thank goodness.

Some Spoiler Action Below

Don’t read this part unless you want to know what to expect.  You have been warned.  Skip to the Conclusion.  Stop by again after you’ve seen the movie, see if you disagree with me.

There is some major retcon action going on with the primary characters.  Not going to say exactly but if you know anything about this period of Azeroth lore you should expect things to not fall into place as you know them.  In other words, this movie is about 20-30% faithful to the things you know.

I complained about character development earlier.  They should definitely have gone about this for many of the character actions or explained it better.  For example, we all know that Sargeras was instrumental in corrupting Medivh to assist Gul’dan, everyone who’s run Black Morass knows he was the culprit.  It is more or less implied in this movie that he fell sick with fel corruption due to almost cursory exposure.  So I guess no Burning Legion sequel because those guys are essentially not present – just fel energy did it like the Dark Side of the Force.  Thank goodness they didn’t make someone else the fall guy for this at least, like Khadgar.

You’re going to meet Thrall’s parents, King Llane and his family (Chess Event!), Garona, Medivh, most of the orc clans, and you’re only going to see about 4 of the classes represented in the movie.  They are faithful to the different races that were active.  For obvious reasons you’re not going to be seeing any squishable gnomes, loveable tauren, or night elves dancing on mailboxes.  I was sorta hoping for some fan service with at least one class breaking out in /dance.  I also had no idea that blood elves were mostly Asians.  At least the eye coloring of everyone was spot on.

The deaths of the various major characters were absolutely not faithful.  The alliances between certain characters were not faithful as well.  Certain characters were supposed to be friends but weren’t.  In other words, this was a reboot of the lore somewhat.  Oh yeah, I had no idea that the Green Jesus was actually Moses.  That made me laugh out loud in the theater when it happened.  But he’s incredibly cuddly and he’s awesome, looking forward to the plushie.  Even if he and his family aren’t supposed to be anywhere near Azeroth at this point.

You will recognize some game sound files playing in the movie.  And I really liked sitting through the closing credits to hear the Classic login musical score.  That was actually awesome.

I would very much like Kara to be redone in the image we are presented with in this movie.  And Dalaran is absolutely faithful to the general look.  But it’s floating.  And it still looks awesome.

Sadly, the current playerbase is going to be thinking lots of things are the way they are because they saw it in the movie.  It is definitely going to be like Star Wars where things happened in the books and then you see the movies and ask WTF is going on here?  Even the game has inconsistencies with the books, and we’re just going to have to dismiss this as entertainment and not canon.  Perfectly fine with that.

As a player of the game, I think my favorite part was seeing Black Morass on the big screen.  It was amusing to see how the Dark Portal functioned since I spent hours and hours grinding exalted in that thing back when I was competitively raiding a priest just so I could have the epic bracers.  I think they were bracers.  Amazing what you forget in 10 years.  Further, I immediately thought “Drop your damned enchant” when I saw one particular character.

Spells from the mages and warlocks were executed with visual splendor, I felt like I was watching the original cinematic to the game.  Except I’m trying to figure out why air spells were being cast when mages clearly have no access to those and we have an infernal-ish monster under the control of a mage.  Maybe the fel influence?  And melting faces is real!

Conclusion

Of course, we can nitpick all we want and so can everyone else on the internet.  I remember in 2006 when South Park did their parody of the game and they stuck so much anti-fan service into the show that the players were up in arms for weeks.  Frostwolf tabard on an Alliance!?  What were they thinking!?  Mages can’t summon scorpions!  Shut up nerds, enjoy it for what it is, not what you want it to be.  If you went to the theater just to see what you know played out for you in perfect execution, that would be a pretty dull movie, wouldn’t it?  I think they executed it very well.

Go see the movie, so they can make some money on it and we can have more.  And maybe there will be an interest in old Azeroth again.  Hint, hint.

Thanks for stopping in!

 

August 30, 2016! Hooray!

Good news everyone!  Our long international nightmare is nearly at an end!

This is even more awesome news for everyone who obviously played on Classic servers because WoD was getting tiresome!  I know I was; I was absolutely forced to seek old content and with Legion coming I look forward to a MAXIMUM of 2 weeks of entertainment that I’ll never forget!  And Blizzard is releasing Legion in just over 4 months!  Just in time for everyone to have gotten back and leveled all their characters to 100 and raid the content for all that wonderful epic gear.  There’s plenty of things to do because everyone has had the raid content on farm since last summer, so get on back there and remember the good times!  (Disclaimer: There were no good times, only the first 2 weeks)

Why did Nostalrius go from 0 to 800k accounts from February 2015 (a full 3 months after release of WoD) through closure?  Of course 500k of them were banned Chinese gold farmers and hackers, but more obviously because WoD had such riveting content and new content never before seen in… oh wait.  Maybe it was the lack of new pet battles?  Garrisons were awesome content, totally optional for everyone because there was so much to do out in the game world.  If you didn’t truly get into them then you just aren’t a true WoW player!  And Ash-can, the “Heart of PvP” was DOA after Blizz saw people were having too much fun with it.  Raid content was totally built for everyone, not a single world guild fell apart this expansion.  At least we can still only count them on 2 hands, haven’t gotten to the toes yet.

This company has been the original Zin’Rokh since 2010.  Name a title in their IP that’s engrossing that’s not RTS.  Cataclysm started us off with an aptly named title, and then they had to go through an expansion to fix Diablo 3.  They listened to the playerbase, and the playerbase said we wanted to pay another $60 to get a game worth playing.  I’m sour grapes, because dammit I liked their video games, but anymore I feel like I’m digging a grave of broken titles $60 at a time.  And then the company has the balls to shut down a popular tribute server without so much as launching a lawyer bomb.  No apologies, censorship everywhere in their forums, and possibly the most heavy-handed-shove-it-up-your-ass-fans move a company can make.  At least we know they don’t invest a dime into PR.

This is probably why the only thing I really enjoy in current WoW is pet battles.  Because it is the last part of the entire game that’s actually somewhat interesting, and FFS it’s turn-based RTS.  Gold making isn’t even enjoyable anymore because it’s basically the metagame within the game for everyone.  I remember when goldmaking was considered the oddest thing you could do in WoW, and now everyone (with more than 2 brain cells) is basically doing it.

The reason people were playing on Nost wasn’t because they were bored with WoD, they were bored with WoW’s new mechanics and gameplay in general.  Some of us actually like long, tedious, meticulously designed games that take months and even years to complete.  Diablo 2 was built around this type of design, you would have to log weeks of play time to get the gear you wanted, and then months to years to perfect it.  Classic Warcraft was especially this way, with 40 man raids designed to take months to gear up in.  PvP grinding that took several hundred hours of play to get your pieces and ranks.  Drop rates and farming that didn’t come fast.  You could spend the next two months leveling a character and still not hit level cap.  No boosts or shortcuts, just that thrill when you could leave one zone and go into another after spending several hours every night for a week getting 40 to 45.  Hell, level 1 to 20 took a full day of play if you were doing it right.  There was a true feeling of accomplishment.  Sort of like being given a 1st place ribbon in a contest of thousands, as opposed to a participation trophy for everyone involved.

Enter today’s WoW:  Level 1-100 in a few days played, build a garrison, raid or PvP.  The only fun part about WoD was the questing experience, which seemed to go splat when you hit 100.  And then content releases that were hardly content releases – new raid tiers and one new daily zone.  Oh, and the boat game.  Tanaan Jungle wasn’t even a good attempt at a Timeless Isle, which was actually about the last time they hit paydirt with some content.

Why did I seem to have more fun in Classic?  Or TBC?  Probably because the carrot was always out there.  You were always collecting something between raids, you were always wanting to get better but there was a clearly defined line between average player and excellent.  You had to be SOCIAL in a MMO to get anywhere, and you know what I enjoyed most on Nost?  Finding groups to do most EVERYTHING and making new friends that weren’t on some server I never heard of and could be counted on to help you with things.  Today everyone is rewarded with purples for showing up, everyone has access to gear, there’s no incentive to really try harder.  You can’t unwind this.  As my daddy used to say, “Son, you just can’t put the shit back in the horse.”  We can never truly go home again, because Blizzard won’t let it happen.

Of course I could go nuts and try to find people to do dungeons, but the only people that do that are people interested in speed running and not enjoying the ride to get to the destination.  And of course, there’s no CC required, which is a huge downer.  CC was great because it required you to think about your pulls vs. your group’s makeup.  One of the first things you learned how to do in an MMO was pull properly, to take your time, and not wipe the fucking group because you could get labeled as a bad and never get invited to any reindeer games in the future.  LFG dominates because hurt feelings are bad, and our new generation of gamers cannot be anything but epic looting heroes.  I hate LFG most of all because I cannot kick people anymore.  I think I’ve been on perma-cooldown for Vote-To-Kick because I used to initiate more kicks than anyone else in the US.  As least the ignore feature still works, but then you end up with a full ignore list after a night of playing.  Thank you crossrealm.

Will Legion offer anything up beyond what we have in play today?  Without the obvious clickbaiter kings and queens whose very narcissistic existence relies upon the anonymous attention of thousands of people, and possibly their incomes as well, is there anything that will make this future release last beyond the shelf life of a jar of mayonnaise in the hot sun?  Maybe, but I’m not going to buy into any hype.  I only know one thing about Legion – it’s made by the same people that brought us Cata, MoP, and WoD.

I’m going to call it – by the time Blizzcon comes out you will hear the grumblings of people tired of Legion.  It’s unfortunate that a world I called home 10-12 years ago has devolved into something I don’t recognize anymore.  I also predict that within a month of release, they will nerf/change everything that people find interesting or wildly overpowered in the game.

Actually, that’s too easy, they do that in every single expansion.  As long as they don’t fuck with pet battles.  Then it’s war.  Because I’ll probably only buy the silly expansion for one reason – weekend pet battles.  I sure as hell am not buying it for the content, because we all know what they do with old content.  They burn it, deny it, and tell us we don’t want it.  And the “legion” of real fans tell us the same.

Thanks for stopping in!  – Zerohour

EDIT:  I’m definitely not alone.  Mark Kern of original WoW commenting on the state of the game.

Wait, this wasn’t legit?

Blizz put the kibosh on Nostalrius.org, and as of this writing we’re just hours from it leaving us forever.  I guess it’s time to take your hats off (or whatever you kids wear) out of respect, this was the best run Classic WoW experience of all the different servers that have arisen over the years, mostly because it was operated by real fans of the game that were intent on giving the public the experience that Blizzard long ago said they would never do, and to paraphrase Blizzard’s official position which went something like this: “Fuck you”, and then a mic was dropped.

And while this was not my only Warcraft, I personally flipped and flopped between Classic and Retail WoW, because I have (or had) that option.  Last July I landed my dream job, so anything beyond 4-5 hours of gaming per week is completely out of the question.  To be honest, 1-2 hours per week is more like it.  I work 70+ hours a week because I can, and I love doing what I do, and my income is getting close to what it was pre-financial-world-meltdown.  Coincidentally, it was Warcraft that helped me get through that mess, back when I wasn’t thinking about walking in front of a speeding bus, I was busy raiding.

But now they’re taking it all away, and now we’re left with the other hundreds of private servers like Feenix and Twilight and other pay-to-win style servers.  Seriously, why would they go after the free one?  Simple: It was too fucking good.

Blizzard has long maintained a laissez-faire attitude with the private servers, provided they don’t do something stupid like host their server here in the United States.  Hell, even the bot makers know you have to do that shit in Germany, or at least go to someplace remote where they don’t give two shits and a doorbell chime about intellectual property like say, China?  I’m pretty sure however the government would storm the place and turn it into something like “Place of Happy Fun Goodtimes” and redo all the artwork and give rights to one of their party leaders who would then become another billionaire in the knockoff community.  But, the gang at Nostalrius made the lethal mistake of believing France wasn’t a friendly country when it came to having one of their employer’s backs – I mean Blizzard has brick and mortar operations in that country, I’m shocked they didn’t nuke it down after it started.

But provided you aren’t going into hiding just to rub out your nostalgia, the Nostalrius server made one HELL of a clone to the original, with scripted raids and even original Alterac-fucking-Valley PvP.  Sure I got 200ms latency on the left coast of the USA, but it was worth every second I had to play it.  I took a mage all the way to 60 in about 3 weeks played – my first character ever in the game when I started playing, why not really relive it except choosing the proper race this time (gnome with Chromie appearance).  And then I began leveling rogues and everything else that I missed.  I finished by getting an undead rogue to Level 22 in 24 hours played with another 13 hours dedicated to professions because that’s just the kind of nostalgia whore I am.  Of course given my schedule, this rogue was started at the beginning of February 2016…

The experience was everything I remembered.

1. Frustratingly trying to remember where to go to get new quests while visiting about every town/city at random levels or otherwise missing out on a giant chain quest worth thousands of XP.
2. Getting my shit pushed in by level 60s in STV while trying to collect Nessingwary kills.
3. Having to run all the way to 40, and then run a little more because mounts are not going to buy themselves when the economy is focused primarily on high end mats.
4. Running into old Org and SW and just taking in the music and sights.
5. Freaking elite quests scattered in almost every zone requiring social skills that consist of typing in chat to locate others to help.  Outside dungeons we used to call them.
6. Thousand trolls event that lasted longer than 10 seconds and one AOE blast.
7. Running through Barrens to the Great Lift and realizing I forgot to pick up a quest.
8. Standing on the great dam in Loch Modan and watching water spit from the dwarves.
9. Checking out what WAS at Karazhan prior to the release of TBC.  Just a hint:  Just a bunch of angry ghosts, though I remember wisps.
10. Actual weekly PVP ranks given for random battleground action and not having to coordinate Rated Battleground groups.  Anyone could see how high they could get through their own efforts.
11. Being very fearful of opposing faction mounts with glowing eyes.
12. Being able to gank someone 12 levels below you and still get honor at 60.  Sigh.
13. Freaking Un’Goro Tyranosaurs patting around eating you at random.
14. No flying mounts and gank marathons in questing zones.  I loved being hated.
15. Being able to charge for level 55 water because you couldn’t buy it anywhere else.  Oh man, the coin.
16. It exposes retail Warcraft’s evolution in a way that makes me sick to my stomach.

Outside of some of these fun memories, I actually got to see them on other servers however.  Private servers are everywhere.  Just Google them for fucks sakes (a favorite saying of my old Classic GM).  So why was Nostalrius different?

Easy.

1. Quests weren’t broken in random points making the experience frustrating as shit.  You could expect scripting to work correctly.
2. They had working raids on par with the original.
3. Twinking was actually a thing.
4. They offered a PvP and PvE experience and was entirely on par with the original.
5. They enforced the ever living shit out of hacking, botting, dual boxing, gold buying, and cheating.  Seriously, they made Blizzard GMs look weak by today’s standards.
6. They actually cared about the community experience, you could tell it was run by fans who were just helping other fans.
7. Your leveling experience was exactly how it was in the good ol’ days with no cheats or speed levels.  Drops were 99% accurate to the way it was.  You actually were playing Classic.
8. Allegiance to immersion and good play.

 

And this is exactly what broke it.

 

They thumbed their noses at retail and offered a place for us fogies who enjoyed 2 month leveling experiences a place to remember home, even if the game was over 10 years ago.  The experience was so good that it became the most popular private server in the history of private servers.  Word spread like wildfire that this was the best place to enjoy the game the way it was, and we can’t have that competing with the piece of shit we currently call Warcraft today.  This was the game that actually put Blizzard on the map and having someone outright copy everything down to the most minute detail is bad for business.  Ultimately they showed that a handful of programmers could emulate something Blizzard has been resisting for a decade now… an awesome experience with bugs and all… for free.

You have to remember 12 years ago that prior to WoW, you had 3 IPs over at Blizz – Starcraft, Warcraft, and Diablo.  Of the 3, 2 were their own brainchildren, with Diablo being designed by a subsidiary that came to them to get published.  Otherwise, they were busy making RTS games.  MMOs were gaining steam, and Blizzard even stated that if they got 1 million subs for WoW they were going to be happy.  They ended up quadrupling that and crashing servers due to lag and bad forecasting.  Blizzcon developed out of this monster.  Licensed merchandise.  And now a big budget film due out this summer.  An entire gaming culture with tens of millions of alumni.  Outside of Wrath, this was the game that really put them on the map of the gaming world.

Now this server is illegal of course (by most First World Intellectual Property laws), but as J. Allan Brack stated several years ago – “You think you want to do that, but you don’t”.  I guess he was wrong, tens of thousands of players joined in on the hype and kept playing daily because his game was out of content and it was getting bigger and bigger.  And competing with him and his crew is not going to happen because they’ll tell you how you’re going to be delivered your WoW fix, not you.  Fine, you don’t care about your own title other than the money, why not license it to someone that cares more than you and might make it work?  I mean, it’s not like it’s Star Wars Galaxies or anything, this is a game beloved by fans (note: JAB oversaw SWG before coming to wreak havoc at Blizzard).  Hell I’m sure crowdfunding it would even work.

What a sad end for the best tribute to the granddaddy of the franchise – Blizzard sicking their attack dogs on something they’ve really never given a shit about in 10 years.  There’s something in this world called good politics and doing what’s right by your base.  This just made a legion of fans realize that it’s now no longer about the game, it’s about what’s up Blizzard’s ass.  Of course, they should zealously protect their trademarks, but after seeing WHAT IS possible, you would think they would maybe approach these guys and see if they could make it work for everyone…  including the fans.

When the Lich King died, WoW died with him

So sayeth my friend Vargas.  But MMOs are dying in general, they are too big budget, take too much time to develop, and ultimately they cost a fortune to sustain.  Everyone that’s tried after Warcraft hasn’t made it big, they’ve merely kept the servers going and gone the way of microtransactions.  Even Blizzard has gone both ways – a monthly sub and micros.  It’s gotten so grim at Blizz they aren’t releasing sub numbers anymore, and probably because they’ve gotten to sub Classic numbers.  The only thing keeping the lights on and the people employed anymore are the micros which make for nice infusions of cash every other month.

And who are the real fans of the game?  The ones that pay for it all or the ones that play it just to play it regardless?  A gamer is someone who enjoys gaming, not worrying about patches and expansions and new content – these are modern day developments.  I play Classic because this is the game I enjoy.  Since Blizzard won’t do it, I’ll seek it out.  I’ll still support their retail version and keep buying into Diablo 3 (which is now bordering on ridiculous; release another expansion please FFS).  But ultimately, what I want are choices, not a story.  The way they release content today is entirely too fast, and since I really lack any time to get anywhere in my favorite title, I enjoy leveling characters and going through the old backstory.

The story was interesting up until Deathwing came along, and MoP was somewhat whimsical even though I wasn’t invested in the plight of the pandas.  We’re playing Time Warp now, which has been a snoozefest for me since about February 2015.  Legion is probably going to end up being the same.  I guarantee that within 6 months of release nobody is going to care anymore except the hardcores and the no-lifers.  Everyone loves the leaks from MMO Champion and is busy buying the expansion in pre-sales, but I just cannot see myself having the same experience because the story is getting stale.  Stop rebooting content and release the trusted content.

Of course I’m probably wrong in everyone’s eyes and a bad person because I enjoy nostalgia.  Guess what, that’s how I like to play my game, I’ll choose to be left behind…  in Classic, or Vanilla, or Old School, or whatever you want to call it.  Just don’t call me a bad person for wanting something that was fun and enjoyable and would give me hundreds of hours of entertainment.  Hopefully one day Blizzard will realize the error of their ways one day.

Thanks for stopping in!

– Zerohour

10 Things You Will Be Able To Do With Flying In Draenor

With the recent news from Blizzard today, apparently you WILL be able to fly around Draenor in a minor patch after 6.2, but only after completing a rather lengthy meta achievement which consists entirely of PvE content.  Don’t worry, no raiding required, no gold dumps, and it applies to your entire account.

As an aside, the debate was a virtual storming of the Bastille and cost tens of thousands of productive hours of lives that will never be refunded.  We all owe these Flying Justice Warriors (FJW) a debt of gratitude, because without their passion and sacrifice, we may not have won the day that will probably result in resubs of about zero.  For my part, I contributed nothing towards the debate, I was busy manning my lawnchair keeping FJWs off my lawn with my rocksalt and bucket of ice cold beer.  Back on track.

People are posting guides right now how to get those achievements done, but I, being the forward thinker that I am, am giving you a guide of things you will be able to do with that newfound flight ability, which will probably only cost you about 5-7 days of your life to retain.

1. Hover above your garrison AFK rather than in front of the mission table.
2. Sit AFK on top of the mountains between the zones.
3. Sit AFK on top of the various houses, huts, inns, and domiciles at the various quest hubs
4. Fly around completing all those puzzles that required leet jumping and walking skills.
5. PvP Servers Only: Camp noobs without flying until they log out.
6. Fly into your raid instances rather than walk into them.  This may destroy the World PvP scene single handedly.
7. Level alts with flying. Goodbye immersion, hello Pan Am express!
8. Actually use all those expensive store mounts in Draenor, which were always flyers, but not in Draenor. /confused
9. Gather Herbs and Minerals faster.
10. Finally complete Archeology to 700!

Everyone get pumped!

Thanks for stopping in!

My Lil’ Classic Warcraft Survival Guide

Given there’s so much interest in getting on a Vanilla/Classic Warcraft server today (not unusual, the content sucks so people always run for the hills when that happens) and playing the way we used to play in 2006, I figured a little information about my discoveries and findings would be of help to the community at large.  Not the retail fanboys, because they deserve what they get and what they have.

So You’ve Decided To Go Back In Time

I’ve already mentioned in the previous post my favorite server.  I like Feenix servers, which are GMT+2 and hosted somewhere in Eastern Europe the last I heard.  Click HERE to go to the website which requires you to set up an account in order to play.  For whatever reason, the website blocks most traffic originating from the USA, so US users will need to use a proxy.  Don’t have one or know what it is?  Google it.  I’m using Europroxy which I’ve found to be highly responsive and quick.  If you don’t want to play on Feenix, you can also play on the other sites like Vanilla Gaming or Nostalrius.

Revision (June 8, 2015):   Since first writing this article I have also rolled a character on Nostalrius to the teens and taken a look around.  For comparison’s sake, the population on this server would be equivalent to a Medium to High pop realm in retail.  The server was just opened this last February (2015) and doesn’t offer most of the end game like other servers.  Given time I’m sure they’ll work that out.  Questing is a little different from a Low-pop private server, since you have such a large population you will sometimes have to camp for spawns of lootable items and NPCs.  I did experience some latency issues, which is a little strange given I am not that far from the server compared to others.  Attractions include 1x Blizzlike experience, old-school AV, PvP ranking system in effect, and first tier raids are opening as well as Classic high level dungeons.  What I liked most?  Running into Ironforge and seeing the sheer number of level 60s hanging out like the old days, which sort of flies in the face of Classic interest deniers.  I’m coining that.  I also rate this server 4.5/5 stars for the immersion experience.

I personally like Feenix because it supports the game in several different ways.  This server originally started in 2005.  I’m really big on the old questing experience, and like my quests to be working.  Every so often I discover a bug, but it’s usually nothing gamebreaking.  They offer instant 60s, 12 times experience, and the good ol’ 1x Blizzlike experience.  I am currently beating my way through the 1x server known as Emerald Dream, but am converting over to Nostalrius.  If I was interested in actually raiding the content, I would play on one of the other servers they offer as raiding is supported better on them.  Emerald Dream is more a server that supports leveling and lots of PvP.  And since we miss the olden days, 1x it is.  The population of the server has unfortunately waned, as there are only a handful of progressed raiding guilds.  It also sports a large Chinese guild, filled with nice people who always party with you rather than tag-steal the named quest NPCs.  I give them 4/5 stars for the immersion experience, with that missing star because several of the major quest chains are buggy or broken entirely.  I say several, which means about 1 on average per zone cannot be completed.  If you want a leveling experience that is devoid of fighting for mobs and potential world pvp camping, this is the server for you.

I do have experience with Vanilla Gaming, and it’s a rather well run community.  They host a mirrored version of Wowhead from that time (see below).  It’s one of the older servers, started in 2009.  Questing on the server is a bit messed up for my tastes (loads of bugs) and loot tables from mobs are weird.  They tend to drop their entire normal loot table of gear with each kill.  Because this site offers 15 times leveling experience, a full loot table makes sense so you can always get gear off mobs that you might need.  This 15 times speed can be set to 1x speed with a simple command, and reverted.  As for immersion in the Classic experience, I would rate it 3/5 stars because the drops are buggy and quests are commonly broken.  You will often have to swap to 15x experience to make up for quests you cannot complete, and I don’t care for that.

Things to Remember

These servers are moderated and bad behavior is slapped down far better than on Blizzard’s servers.  They’re free to play, but that also doesn’t mean you are free to berate others.  From what I’ve found on my server, the game is populated by people that absolutely love the game for what it was, so prepare to be treated like a pariah if you’re a jackass.  Hey, just like the old days, nobody will want to play with you and you can’t just click a button to join dungeon queues. To make it easy on the eyes, I’ll put the rest into bullet points.

• Loot ninjas get reported, shamed and actioned, unlike retail.  Toxic behavior generally results in outright bans.  Screenshots are your friends, otherwise it never happened.
• You should expect people to be rather outgoing and interested in leveling with you if they see you on a quest or in a zone they are in.
• Server residents are typically older players with experience going back 10+ years, but there are lots of interested people who have never seen this content before.
• Many people also play retail, but many have left that world behind.
• These people are serious fans of the game, so be prepared to see lots of people rattling off patches of the game they liked.
• I’ve forgotten more about the game than you’ll probably ever know, but even I need reminding that certain classes lost an ability or certain things were used more often back then than today.
• On most servers, the channel World is used as a catch-all general chat and can be read everywhere. This is how you will find groups for most everything.
• The capital cities are generally vacant for a reason, people are busy leveling.  You won’t find much to do in the cities anyhow.  For Alliance, Ironforge is generally the hangout.  For Horde, Orgrimmar.
• Questing is NOT linear (more on this in a bit), you will enter and exit the different zones multiple times while leveling.
• Hit rating is in effect.  If the mob is +4 your level, expect to miss and have spells resisted commonly.
• You have to level weapon skills along with defense skills again. Defense will level with you while level, but swapping from Axes to Two-Handed Swords will prove interesting.
• Further, in 2006 we specced talent trees from level 10 in order to hit higher level mobs and bosses.  Perusing your server’s general forums is a great place to get build ideas.  While leveling, go with what you believe would work for you.  Since you will be doing quests with mobs that are +2 or +3 your level, getting hit rating is paramount.
• Every 2 levels you will need to train new ranks of your skills.  Every level will award you a new talent point.
• Gold doesn’t rain down from the sky.  Grinding for gold was common, and these Auction Houses are similar to a low population retail server.  Best advice – take up mining and herbalism first.  Don’t waste your money on silly things.
• Join a leveling guild.  On my server, we have a few and in my guild generally we have 40-60 people on at any given time.  These will come in very handy when you need to do Elite quests.  Did I say Elite quests!?  Oh yeah, Hogger’s there.  Further, posting in world chat is off limits to you until you get to 20 (Feenix) so lowbie dungeons will be harder to form.
• Back in the day, getting a level beyond about 20 was considered a moment to let people know.  DING!  This is commonly yelled and spammed in chats.  Common courtesy it to “grats” them.
• Most every class comes with some form of crowd control.  Be prepared to use it while leveling because mobs are usually grouped together.  They usually leash within about 100-150 yards, but not always!
• There are no heirlooms, glyphs, experience nerfs, and leveling will take you about 14 days played to get to 60.  Expect to see levels like 24-25 or 38-39 take you 3-4 hours to complete.  Your only buff is Rested XP.
• Remember some classes will need to purchase reagents in order to perform buffs or cast some spells.
• If you play melee – you have sharpening stones back.  If you are a caster, wizard and mana oil are available.  Hunters use different grades of arrows again!  These can help greatly while waiting on gear upgrades or boosting your character.
• Share and share alike.  Don’t be selfish.  This was a game about making friends.  If you don’t need a particularly nice green for yourself, give to your friends or offer it to the guildies.  What comes around, goes around.
• Aggro radii will seem ridiculous.  You’ll pull gray level mobs from 20 yards away.  Watch where you’re going.
• Respawning mobs are going to drive you nuts. Clear to the center of a cave, only to have everything back up when you need to exit.  Kill quickly, but don’t pull too much because that is often deadly.
• Drinking and eating will slow you down greatly.  Always have the best possible foods you can find on hand and afford without going broke.  Learn Cooking and Fishing to save on food costs and get stamina food buffs.  Alchemy is great for potions (2 minute cooldowns even in combat yay!).  First Aid should be one of your first professions.
• When you die, be prepared for runbacks from the other side of the zone.  Flight points are not where you remember them, there is almost always only one flight point per zone, and in some cases NONE.
• You have to treat this experience with a grain of salt.  It’s “like” playing the old game, it’s not exact.  There are bugs, mobs may act strangely, the server may crash for a minute, and you may not be able to complete all the quest lines as you remembered.  This is free to play, supported by someone else’s time and money.  Please respect that always.
• While Blizzard currently turns a blind eye to private servers, take steps to try not to have their client running along side these programs.  Just fair warning, playing this way IS against the terms of use.  Odds of getting into trouble?  Pretty low, but one never knows if they’ll get cranky with the way their game is going today.

Addons

Many people think addons are the devil because they interfere with the experience.  The way I remember Classic, I had addons installed from the beginning because they make certain activities easier and you can monitor things better, like durability.  You’re going to die.  A LOT.

I’m not going to give you a complete addon installation guide, but you want to know where the game looks for them so you can use them.  Simply stated, the game looks in the WoWFolder/Interface/AddOns directory for the addons, and then populates them from there.  If there are no addons recognized, then you won’t get the “Addons” button on the login screen.

This should be self explanatory. (o.O)

Back in the time before everyone relied on Curse.com, we actually had to install our addons by hand.  You had to track updates yourself or at least have guildies let you know.  Thankfully, since the game is essentially frozen in time, there aren’t any updated addons to keep up with, and I’ve taken the liberty of hosting the vast majority of them HERE.

Go through and look for your favorite addons from today, they probably didn’t exist back then.  Many of them did exist, but are in states that you probably won’t recognize.  Getting them to function to your liking also required a little bit more knowledge.

Unzip the file, pick your favorite addons, and drop their folders into the Addons directory.  For reference, you should look at your retail addon directory structure if you are unsure how this works.  If you can’t get it working, then ask a friend.  And if neither of you can get them working, then addons aren’t for you!

Keep in mind that addons generally didn’t have fancy bells, buttons, or whistles.  You had to usually type /addonname to configure them.  And most addons came with a Readme.txt file.  Read them.

Questing and You: Can You Handle It?

Outside of the Level 1-5 Starter zones, the quests are scattered all over Azeroth.  The different zones may be familiar, but if you haven’t leveled a character since Wrath this may appear very confusing.  Questing relied on a person to be very inquisitive and curious, so you did a lot of exploration looking for the “!”, and they aren’t going to appear on your mini-map.  Turning them in will also require you to look for the yellow-dot on the mini-map, as the turn-in location is not always obvious.

If you’re going to wing it, my best advice is to go to the various zones and look for mobs to be within your range.  Cataclysm completely changed the playground, but here are the two maps showing you suggested character level maps.

Eastern Kingdoms

Kalimdor

While these show “70” in some zones, realize that locating anything from Classic Warcraft is just nigh impossible anymore, so just use your imagination.

But what if you get stuck on a quest?  Wowhead doesn’t support this content anymore, they’ve long since moved on (besides only getting started towards the close of Classic WoW anyhow).  Don’t worry, I’ve got you covered.  A while ago, all that Wowhead data was dumped (or ripped) to another server database, which maintains everything (even the silly comments from back then) to this day.  This can be found at AoWoW, sponsored by Vanilla Gaming.  Pay no attention to the Wowhead graphics.  =)

Years ago, one of the best leveling guides in the game was published by Brian Kopp for Alliance, and Joana for Horde.  Just an aside here, but today’s guides and fansites all owe Brian Kopp a huge debt.  He was the first to take Blizzard on when they sued him over his guide, prevailed, and opened the door for others to publish things about the game at a profit.  The lawsuit was over copyright infringement, and I believe it was because he used photos from the game in his guide.  Could you imagine a world where Blizzard would have won?  No more sites with game graphics, no more anything.  Ahh, our favorite gamemaker.

Anyhow, thankfully I still remember his name, because I can Google it.  For those of you who are looking for a solid walkthrough of the quests and want to experience almost everything in the game from 1-60 without losing all your hair, Valkyrie-WoW published an in-game addon for leveling based on both Kopp’s and Joana’s guide.  In the first link it will lead you to the site you can get it, and you want version 1.04.2.  The guides back then bounce you back and forth between multiple zones, but that’s how the game was played.

At release of Classic, there weren’t even enough quests to level you to 60, they had to be added later!  So finding the best path to get there often took you between (for Alliance) Darkshore, Wetlands, Redridge, Duskwood, and Ashenvale one level after the other and back again.  Unlike today, where you will spend about 5 straight levels in each of those zones before leaving them.  It seemed crazy, but you had to watch whether a quest was actually orange, red, yellow, green or gray.  Stay within the yellows, and you’ll be just fine.

While questing is great and all, often times you will flat out have to grind for your levels.  There aren’t enough quests to get you far enough, or you may encounter a bugged quest (or worse a quest line).  You will just simply need to pick a yellow mob type, and kill them until you hit the next level.  Everyone remembers the parts they liked, but once you encounter little problems like these, you sort of realize why they changed the questing in Azeroth.

Playing In Groups

Outdoor dungeons are a reality for you again.  Elite quests are all over Azeroth, meaning you need to finish long quest chains so you can participate in them. Outdoor dungeons were elite mobs that were available to anyone in the world, and you will not be able to complete them solo.

They offer some of the better rewards and best experience so keep questing.  You will have to be social and locate groups, many times lowbies in your guild will want to knock out all the elite quests in a zone, so that’s the time to do them.  You have to kill quickly, drink quickly, and keep moving because the respawn rate for these mobs is very fast.  They are some of the most fun you’ll have in the game while leveling.

Unlike current Warcraft, CC is hardly ever needed.  So here’s what you need to know so you aren’t screwing up the groups!

Mage Sheep – Half-Moon

Warlock Seduce/Banish/Enslave – Diamond

Rogue Sap – Star

Hunter Trap – Blue Square (be prepared to kite the target, traps aren’t launched nubby)

Druid Root, Shaman Hex – Green Triangle

Priest Mind Control/Shackle – Orange Circle (lovingly called the condom)

Make sure all raid buffs go out.  If you are the lead, make sure you mark so everyone knows their jobs.  If noone is marking, you’re odds of success diminish.  These require coordination.  They’re very challenging because generally the group is always lacking a tank and it’s 4 or 5 dps, and a healer if you’re touched.

Reputation Is Actually Important

Blizzard took mercy on the poor in later expansions, but if you’re playing Classic, your wealth is almost determined by your reputation with the various factions.  You have to buy water, food, reagents, crafting goods, and most importantly your mounts.  The mounts are NOT cheap in this content.

At level 40, your mount training will cost you 90g.  The mount will be another 9g.

At level 60, your epic mount training will cost you 600g.

All of these items can be reduced in cost by reputation.

• 5% off for Friendly
• 10% off for Honored
• 15% off for Revered
• 20% off for Exalted

About every 15 levels you will have the opportunity to turn in Wool Cloth, Silk Cloth, Mageweave, and Runecloth to each faction.  Best advice:  Turn the cloth in to your racial faction to get your mount out of the way, everything else can wait.

Good Luck, Have Fun

Everyone who plays Classic/Vanilla Warcraft has their reasons.  Some just want to get shoulder deep in nostalgia, some want to see the changes they’ve made to the game, some just want to be ported back to when the game made sense to them, and others are just chasing that free play time.  Whatever the reason, everyone’s choice is their own.  The most important thing is that you have fun while paying homage to one of the greatest releases in the game’s history.

You should now be armed and ready to re-experience, or experience if you’re a newbie to Classic, everything that you’ve forgotten about the unforgiving Classic World of Warcaft.  If you decide to take up the old ways, feel free to send me a PM on Consortium if you’re headed to Feenix.  I may not be here forever, but I’m always up to try to help.

Thanks for stopping in!

How To Tell They Aren’t Really Trying

6.2 PTR is out and while things are still in flux, one glaring change is there for those of you who are actively in the market.

Felblood was changed to Felblight.

Earthshattering, yes?  MMOC said the name was changed, but upon inspection of the tooltip, it was more than that.

Felblood was to be produced with barns, making it the continuation for those with barns and crafting mat needs.  But the new tooltip says that it will be retained instead by mining, herbalism, skinning, and fishing.  Sounds like fun, right?  Let me illustrate the effects of this for those of you who were asleep during 6.1.

At release of 6.1, the big winner was crafting token upgrades for BOEs.  The bigger winner were those that spent an hour farming up about a month of cooldowns in Nagrand from the elite dire wolves for each character.  I put together 13 barns and I can tell you the output per work order yielded one Savage Blood 50% of the time.  So for 36 Work Orders (6 days of orders with storehouses) I would net 18 Savage Bloods on average per week PER BARN, plus an insane amount of fur.  For those reaching for their calculators, that’s 234 Bloods every six days.  I have so much fur right now I can’t get rid of it fast enough.  5 Tailors can’t burn it fast enough, the Fur Trader has nearly cut me off, and Primal Spirits are all over the place.  I also have a backlog of Savage Bloods in stock, at last count over 700.  The biggest issue was getting the reagents for the various professions, which was easily rectified by trading those bonus furs in every five days for extra Primal Spirits for crafting extra reagents, netting me more output every week and hundreds of thousands in profits.  Yes, this was my strategy for 6.1.

Lots of people just farmed those bloods up for sale on the AH, which made lots of gold for people.  The real gold however was the markup I received on my tokens, which essentially protected my Savage Blood value.  In some cases my bloods were worth over 600g when the market for them was under 250g.  No other aspect of the AH paid like a slot machine during 6.1 than Savage Bloods, barns, and doing a little grunt work yourself for a few hours to fill up with traps.  And it was really fun, thanks to the group finder.  I clocked about 100 traps per half hour when in a decent group.

(Total Tangent Here) I liked trapping so much, I could be caught doing it real life in my backyard.  Here I caught this (WARNING: Don’t click this if you are squeamish and nauseated easily or are an elephant) Level 103 Mighty Beast who’s been routinely cleaning out my birdfeeder because my neighbor is a hillbilly who refuses to pick up his backyard garrison.  Old dog poop, grass clippings, rotting brush and wood from failed deck projects, just a disgusting asshole. I love animals, but I don’t like disease ridden beasts that my dog might eat.  Them or us, man.

Ok, back on topic here.

At issue is that the change from barns to gathering makes barns irrelevant except for those still rolling alts and wanting to get quick pieces for upgrades.  Dupers had their way with this market because, well, Blizzard has zero intention of eliminating the issue with these people.  They’ve repeatedly demonstrated that they don’t give a care about the economic abuses and destruction caused by these people, but are more concerned with spammers and botters, which they ultimately don’t do anything about either.  All while promoting “strict anti-cheat” stances from the likes of Bashiok and Lore, both paid liar shills specializing in covering up the problems they refuse to address and misdirecting the issue.  I was talking about assholes earlier, Blizzard is a gaping dirty one and employs some finer ones to boot.

If people are tasked with gathering them, then that means they will be really easy to get.  And even if they aren’t easy to get, players will do what they’ve done for the past decade when it comes to gathering raw materials in the world.  You guessed it, we’re going to see Tanaan Jungle infested with bots.  Mining/Herb bots, Skinning bots, Fishing bots.  So we’ve traded one issue for another and can add yet another to the list of “Things Blizzard Will Never Fix Because They Punched Out For The Expansion”.

This further means that the value of these items and most every raw material gathered will drop into the black hole of surplus.  Upgrade tokens will maintain a value based on the raw materials needed to produce the cooldowns, because people are that stupid and can’t be asked to do simple math before posting them.  Oh, and traders will be in business spitting out the Primal Spirits so we can keep up with the demand and keep generating the reagents to make these things.  If the end product is cheap, people are going to not think twice about upgrading.  20k to upgrade a ring is one thing, but 1k to upgrade a ring to i700 is another.  Mythic level items for cheap.  As it stands right now, it’s a partial gear reset.

I guess the good news is that dupers won’t be bothering with duping the Felblights.  While I hate dupers with a passion, I dislike vast quantities of easily retained materials for upgrades even more.  No real work will be involved in order to work the market, ergo the barrier to entry will hardly exist.  That’s what makes people rich.

Barriers to entry exist for a reason.  It protects markets, and insures that those that want to be in the market are serious and dedicated to it.  This happens in the real world – people see a mountain to climb and say forget it, too much work.  We call these people losers, lamers, carries and whiners.  But there are those elites that are willing to do what it takes no matter the asking price to make it happen.  We call these people winners.  Doing what it takes when you have to no matter how you feel is the hallmark of a winner.  Bars are raised to accommodate these people.  But if you ask me, Blizzard loves to lower bars and barriers so that, as Ghostcrawler put it, someone’s grandma will be able to understand and play the game.

Ghostcrawler – who knew he was such a hardass against Gammies everywhere?

It’s a shame I’m paid up through the end of next year on my accounts.  The consequences of playing for free, thank goodness I’m not having to pay for this shit.

Resolution

The best thing that they can do, while this is still PTR, is reconsider this action.  More than likely this move is intended because gatherers have been whining their asses off since the beginning of the expansion.  Really, who the hell has gatherers?  Botters.  Ban them, thanks.  But ultimately, I want to see a good balance of exclusive items only for the very well off, rather than just giving it away.

Thanks for stopping in!

I’m Free to Change My Mind, and So Are You

I have purchased, to date, 36 total months of gametime between 2 linked accounts.  That was apparently the maximum I was allowed to buy, and if I could buy more I would.  I also cancelled both accounts shortly after doing so, since I don’t like the idea of Blizzard having my CC information on file with all of this hacking going around.  As Daeity wrote in his blog several years back, Blizzard is good at covering up data breaches, and frankly I’ve had enough identity theft in my life to last a lifetime.  What can I say, I have good credit, money, and am an ample target and hackers like me.

I know I came out against the idea of spending my gold on tokens when I said I wasn’t going to do it, so let me explain the rationale.  I want to also point out that the new determination of wealth now includes “How much gametime you got?” in addition to your inventory, liquid gold amount, and the DE value of what your characters are wearing.  Someone make a mod.

My reason for skipping tokens was I said I have a gold dump already in place for my gold and that I needed to keep reserves.  Primarily I blow my load in GDKP runs retaining really solid gear.  These runs are my raids, you have to play well or the bosses don’t die, and nobody is able to be carried mostly because of mechanics and dps/healing requirements thanks to elastic raids, except for maybe one or two people that are always instructed to die in a corner after touching the boss.  For instance, we’re still 9/10 Heroic and the raid is 80-90% Tier 1 raiders who have all downed Mythic Blackhand.  For some reason people are playing like shit when we get to him, but no matter, it’s mostly because the characters are not Mythic geared and steamrolling content while also trying to play a different role.  Also bombs…

Lately, I’ve been missing only a piece or two off the characters I’ve taken to the runs.  I could bring more in, but this is the first tier of content and only 2 characters keep my interest right now.  I’m only interested in gearing because I enjoy playing with these guys, and I’ve had my fill of actual hardcore raiding.  3-4 nights a week of correcting stupidity of players and their boy/girlfriends is just not in the cards anymore for me.  Then watching gear go to said stupid players who will immediately take the gear and no-show the next week or two and then file a reason on the forums that “RL got in the way, BBL LOL”…  well you probably understand the logic.  I’m rich, I don’t wait in line.  When I raided, I was also rich in DKP because I showed up all the time and wiped for days and weeks on bosses just to get one silly piece that I needed.  And it wasn’t fun for me.  What is fun is playing my way, when I want, and having people enjoy seeing me show up, even if it is to get the crumbs off my table.

I also hate that loot council seems to be the way things work anymore when years ago that was only reserved for the very best guilds who actually understood that they were giving a BIS to someone that wasn’t going to replaced on the next boss drop.  “Oooh boots!  I’m a warrior and those have Haste/Mastery on them!  I need!”  Raid leaders and other players haven’t played warriors so they assume JoeyBooBoo knows what he’s talking about so they give them to him because they like him, and then Crit/Multi boots drop the next night and he’s changed his mind and needs again because he can.  Then doesn’t show up for weeks after.  Extreme example, but I’ve seen it, and I know LC fails when they give the wrong piece out to someone.  Further, why are all these guilds recruiting all the time with LC in place?  Because people are looter-scooters.  I say, earn the piece, don’t gib the guild.  It’s just laziness, nobody today wants to have to keep up with things, back in my day and get off my lawn.

For my money, I liked Suicide Kings loot.  You make a decision on loot when you want it, you get the piece and you live with your decision because you know you aren’t getting another piece for a while.  New comers can’t just throw down some previous tier piece and get priority with in a LC, there’s less crying, bias and DKP wars.

Ok, where was I here?  Oh right.

So I took another look at it, and decided that I could easily afford to spend the gold on the gametime because, hell, why not?  My GPH at the AH (thanks to my addons) is rated just above 52,000 for the month.  It’s actually much higher because I tend to post and forget, and go back to what I was doing thanks to my second account handling the AH for me while my main account is playing the freaking game. I could be in an LFR, hunting bloods, in my GDKP run or anything else that I enjoy doing and I’m still working the AH.  The only real time I’m staring at the AH is during a posting or when I’m making buys.  Make sense?  Realistically, I’m not really in front of the AH camping.

I’m not a huge fan of GPH, but when you’re equating time and money to gold here, it works, ok?  If tokens are at 22k, then that means I’m a fool not to snap them up because I’m not just saving 15 bucks, I’m more or less saving $35 because of the multiplier.  In my mind, this works for me.  So I spent somewhere in the ballpark of 800,000 gold for 36 months of gametime, meaning in the end I can keep $538 (plus sales tax) of my hard earned after tax money.  What would you do with that extra money and still get to play your (today) favorite game?  Why, I’d throw a party.  If I was still a kid.  Instead I’ll probably put the money (partly) into a set of tires for my truck, since we’re fast approaching that time.

The funny thing is the first Tuesday of those tokens I recouped 195,000g into my coffers and the very next night another 129,000g.  Of course this doesn’t take into account Cost of Goods Sold which is minimal, but another force was at work in the decision.  My ego and my logical side kicked in and here’s what entered into my equation.

My GDKP runs have a lifespan of 14 item slots per character per tier.  Once those slots are filled I can come along to help the run or choose to take time off and wait for the next tier because my outgoing becomes zero and I start making profits off the runs, which was actually the case for 2 weeks leading up to the token drop. I went in for very specific slots and also for Warforged pieces (which tend to drop mostly for the god damned hunters and never for plate wearers, and then they go for less money than one of my normal items because the mail wearers are cheap as shit and I’m getting off on a rant so I’ll stop here) so I tend to walk out with a very decent cut.  I tend to buy the BOEs that drop if they’re appropriately priced because alts need love, too.

However.  During that time off I’ll probably recoup 2-4 times the gold I spent on the tokens.  So what’s the point of gold to me?  I make it so quickly that there is no real gold dump for me except GDKP and tokens become merely a speedbump.  I’m the guy who usually pisses away all their gold in each expansion (I learned this from Stockpile) and then makes it all back.  I started WoD with around 400k between all my characters, and quickly parlayed that into several million before Highmaul was over.  I am a millionaire every 2-3 weeks in good times, and that means 1 million gold in profit comes my way in less than a month.  Most people suffer for months getting their first million, but because I know how it works and have the knowledge and staying power, I do it far faster than anyone else and repeat it over and over.

Besides all that, I don’t have to revisit tokens until late next year.  That means I have 18 months between each account to make all the gold I want and not have to pay a sub.  Think about 18 months for a second, that’s 3/4s of an entire expansion anymore.  If my accounts weren’t linked, I would have taken this out to 72 months, which would have landed me into late 2018. That’s a TON of time to make all the gold back regardless of time involved.

I also can come and go as I wish and not worry about shutting down the sub and restarting it, reentering credit card information, and maybe find other games to enjoy in this time.  Diablo 3 has a new season out, and I am able to look at it without guilt that I’m wasting actual money on WoW when I have no desire to play it while I’m focused on Diablo 3.  Let’s not discuss wasted time, because we’re gamers here.  People waste how many hours a week watching TV?  I waste about the same time playing interactive video games that keep my brain thinking as opposed to the bubble gum for the eyes.  Of course, there’s that article I read years ago, so maybe I should mix in some exercise, too.  Still better than parking in front of a TV, and all 20-somethings should read that article.

Thanks for stopping in!

Welcome to the New Site

Zerohour’s Abuse of the Economy

For certain this is what I do every week in Warcraft, and ironically this was the name offered to me by Stede over at LNWS.net (thanks to him for the name). There’s no other word for it, I take advantage of online gamers financially like no other on the planet.  Others have come and gone, tired of the boloney thrown their way by constant game changes that don’t match their easy gold making ways, but there’s only me standing.

No doubt the traffic’s gonna suffer with a name change, but let me be the first to welcome you to the renamed ZHNameless blog, now known as

AbuseoftheEconomy.com

Be sure to update your bookmarks, update your RSS, and go with the greatest goldmaker in Warcraft today.

Nothing has changed here.  The intention of the site is to maintain my ever present informative posts, while offering the right amount of humor, nostalgia, egotism and contempt for other players that’s earned several thousand readers every month.  You’re dealing with the pinnacle of gold making when you deal with me, which is strange because I never really tell you what to do other than think.  But as Napoleon Hill discovered years ago, I hope that you too will continue to think and grow rich.

Updated posts continue shortly!

Thanks for stopping in!

Who Doesn’t Love a Good Alchemist Army?

Since I gave up on Alchemy being worth a damn, well, most every profession for that matter…

Just kidding, everything is worth having.  Some moreso than others.  My breakdown across my characters right now:

Engineer – 2
Blacksmith -4
Tailor – 4
Leatherworking – 5
Enchanting – 11
Jewelcrafter – 6
Inscription – 2
Double-Gatherer – 1, yes a Tauren Druid

and….

Alchemy – 8

3 of them have been powerleveled since the 6.1 announcement, because cooldowns.  The logic being that if they aren’t busy making bloods, they’ll be busy transmuting elements, and at the very least crafting catalysts every single day.

Let’s do the math here.

Alchemy is by far the easiest profession in the whole damned game to level, regardless of racial.
Alchemy produces 10 catalysts from the daily cooldown.
Alchemy produces 6 catalysts from workorders per day, double that with the follower.
Alchemy’s powerleveling produces items that are readily purchased for full market value plus profit every single day of the week (on my server, if not on yours then I’m sorry for your loss).
Since Draenor’s removal of the stupid flask procs, the profession is again profitable.
It’s the only profession where you could stockpile 3000 of each item and not be considered stupid for doing so.

QED – Alchemy is one of the top professions in the game, again.  Back in Classic, this was THE profession to level because you were stacking every single elixir in raids.  It is nice to see since it’s been basically screwed up since Tier 6 of The Burning Crusade.  By screwed, I mean it was only good for one thing.  Now it’s essentially coming back to where all 3 disciplines of the profession are actually worth crafting again, just like the good ol’ days where you made potions and flasks for raiding, and transmuted items on cooldown.

For those keeping up with the news, we have new transmutes in the works, and I’m happy for it.  Finally, the game is released in it’s entirely, and not like some group project that didn’t get finished on time.  Sorry Blizzard, but the game’s professions felt unfinished.  I know, interns.

We haven’t seen the cooldown on this (if there is one), and what makes me a little nervous about plunging head-long into this glorious change is so deep seeded and involves years of getting fucked over by our host.  Reason?  Well two.

1)  Dupers have been screwing this item up for weeks now and Blizzard has done jack and shit about it.  How hard is it to answer a report, then track what the character was doing, or follow the chain of ownership of the items and review the logs and close the loophole?  It must require elite skills to review these logs, better than anything the dipshits managing the show will throw money at.  I would guess they’re too busy having meetings about upcoming fart and poop jokes in the next expansion.

How hard is it to spot them?  It must be extremely hard, because they usually sit in Org on level 1’s for days spamming SB’s in batches of 100.  Sure, I did some business with them because I’m forced to if I don’t want my SB’s to get screwed in value and these dupe events will usually screw the price of bloods for a week or more.  Raid quality armor crafting has always suffered when these guys make an appearance.

People don’t think about this – their costs are zero.  You cannot compete with them.  They can ride the value of an item all the way to zero if they wish.  Of course they won’t, but they’ll contribute heavily because this is how they eat in whatever backwater country they live in.

And as always, if you don’t believe in dupes, then fuck you and the Easter Bunny you rode in on.  Hacked accounts, bots, and overzealous farmers are bullshit lies, these are outright hackers subverting the game’s code on throwaway and invisible accounts.   Try /who on a mass seller if you see one and see if they even show up, pretty soon you’ll get the drift.

2) Alchemy will allow you to collect a maximum of 154 Cats per week without any rush orders (which are nothing more than another daily CD at max skill).  So someone like me will be making 1,232 per week.  Half of which will go to flasks, the other half probably ending up as bloods.  The cost to make each catalyst will still be attached to the value of Frostweed and Blackrock Ore, both of which will probably get a small bump from all of this.

So let’s say everyone dusts off their alchemists or rerolls them after taking Blizzard’s name in vain for making them do something other than alchemy (perish the thought), and you’ll get thousands of players making catalysts every single day.  Having a rather extensive knowledge of flask crafting this expansion, there’s going to be a flood.  It wouldn’t surprise me to see flasks either take a huge hit from the glut of catalysts available or rise in value tremendously because the cooldown to make the bloods never goes live.  I’m guessing the latter, because everyone is either going to grow the shit out of frostweed in their gardens putting extreme pressure on the price of other herbs.  If people do not grow it, then they’ll have to buy it, which means others will see that selling frostweed will be more profitable than selling catalysts (or waiting around for 50 cats to stack).

The price of bloods versus the price of catalysts is a huge concern of mine.  Part of me hopes the price collapses in these so the hacking gold farming dupers all need to kill themselves, but I know that market pressure will push it to something reasonable.  Neglecting the value of Crescent Oils:

700/50 = 14g
600/50 = 12g
500/50 = 10g
400/50 = 8g
300/50 = 6g
200/50 = 4g

You get the idea I hope.  This is the cost you have to beat to craft one Alchemical Catalyst at a profit given pricing of Savage Blood.  Currently 20 Frostweeds and 10 Blackrock Ore will net you 10 cats, meaning that the cost of Frostweed and Blackrock Ore MUST be proportional, or else people will be operating at a loss.  I know the AH audience is not necessarily the sharpest knife in the drawer, but roll with me here.  If Frostweed today costs 2g per and BRO costs 75s per, then it’s 47.5g per 10 Catalysts at 700 skill.  1 Catalyst would cost 4.75 gold to make, which means that there’s a floor in this scenario of roughly 250g before AH fees.  Remember that there IS NO TRANSMUTE PROC, can’t believe people still believe there are.

Now, how low can we go?  Well, I farmed it so it’s free!  Farmers will not do this level of accounting, so as long as their crap is selling and they can make more free herbs and ore from level 3 gardens and mines that cost them over 5000g each to build, then it’s all good, right!?  Everybody in the pool!  I’m putting on my stupid hat here to imagine what’s going to happen, because this is what usually happens.  What I’m describing here is a total crash in the price of these, regardless of a cooldown.

If Scenario:Stupid comes to fruition, then I can almost guarantee that the next mass duped item will be Temporal Crystals, because those things are still competitive in price with Savage Bloods on my server and they require as many materials to craft weapon enchants which everyone needs.  Upgrading epics at this point is just a luxury, whereas enchanting your weapon with something besides a bleed is required reading if you’re doing any sort of serious raiding.

Time will tell, I’m normally an optimist but with professions and the release of Attack of the Interns this expansion, I really have gotten good at playing it by ear.

This is Fun

I used to always post weekly results in my blog showing you my sales volume for the week.  This last week I did some massive spreadsheeting (not a word) and found that my profitability was actually an average of 48% on everything that I’ve been selling outside of armors, which still carry ROIs in the 1000+% range.  Additionally, I’ve discovered 2 new markets this last week, still not participating in inScrubption.  Below are my numbers from my primary posting account, my other account sells the armors so it doesn’t show here, but they were only 80k.

As always, the top number is the total sales revenue for 7 days and the bottom is the daily from TSM.  If I had a goal to make a million gold per month, that would require 33,333g per day in profit.  If I’m sitting at 48%, just using ballpark numbers here, I’m at 38,196g per day profit.  Sure beats the shit out of dailies.

Having a blast, wish you were here!

Thanks for stopping in!