The market place on Aszune-Eu

Aszune EU is where I am these days and as posted previously, I dusted off my inks, quills and parchments and set up the glyph shop after a hiatus of several months. First couple of weeks were nicely profitable with 10k+ gold each week, with little else to do but open the mailbox and collect the shinies. Its got a bit more interesting since then though.
At first I had only 3 active competitors and I reckon we all did very nicely although I suspect they weren’t exactly pleased to see me. Now however there are about a dozen or so all posting glyphs and at least one of them is posting on two different alts. It’s quite amusing to see as soon one logs off another one appears straight away for the next round of cancel and repost.
The main effect of this is where glyphs were averaging at about 20g each previously they are now averaging half that and a load at under my 3g45s threshold. I even lowered my threshold from 4g15s to 3g34s simply because of the number of glyphs selling in this band. Its good news if you are buying glyphs, but as I’m not it’s hardly ideal. In fact I’m regularly seeing reasonable selling glyphs going for sub 2g, which barely covers the costs and frankly I’m not interested in that kind of mark up. At least one of the original competitors seems to be taking a break (or posting on a different character  regularly and his usual bank character only seldom).

It is however all good fun and while my earning have been forced down I’m still good for about 6-8k a week so while the glyph sellers are out in force, it’s still profitable for all concerned just a bit more work involved. The main thing will be seeing who has the patience to stick it out.

So this is where we are up to now:

For a quick who’s who:

Perren – Gem and anything else trader

Arleff – Paladin and current levelling work in progress (lvl 75) Will also need to level enchanting on this one.

Misera – Shadow priest and Glyph maker

Vitari – DK and JC

Cimetiere – Rogue and transmute alchemist

Phugly – name reserved for Goblin

Phuggly – Glyph trader

So Between them all 115k – not bad going and should see me nicely into Cataclysm allowing for whatever gold sinks are required. Misera, Cimetiere, Arleff and Vitari have epic flying and mounts so no major expenses anticipated.

I try not to be solely reliant on glyphs although they remain the biggest earner. Gems give a smaller income overall but are far less work due to higher profits per item. I’ve been limiting this to metagems and the daily transmute just for ease. Perren also sells off-hands, vellums, snowfall ink and anything else that comes his way, although these items tend to be much slower sellers and I really just consider them by-products.

One of the main influences on glyphs for me is mark up and the price of herbs is fundamental to that. Normally  I go for stacks of Tiger Lily and Dead Neattle plus anything else that is cheap, my general rule is to avoid paying more than 10g per stack. Herb prices fluctuate wildly and can rise by 300%+ overnight, so grabbing them at good prices whenever the chance arises is my way to go. Seeing sellers with high buyouts but low bid prices are always worth a punt and I picked up a few stacks recently for 60s or so per stack – very nice. I also buy big when the opportunity arises. I bought 200 stacks of Adder’s Tongue for 7g a stack when they appeared on the AH about 2 weeks ago, that helps keeps profits at a reasonable level even amongst  heavy competition.

I haven’t got any clear figure in mind of how much gold is enough. Gold cap is easily manageable, it just takes patience – whether I have that or not is debatable. I’ll keep going for the time being, with option of being able to kit out the paladin in i264 crafted goods as soon as he gets to 80 but aside from that I have no major expenditure plans.

I’m  curious to see what will happen to the various glyphs which will be changed in Cataclsym, never mind the new ones. Beta information on Inscription remains limited. The new races should allow for a fair number of re-rollers right from the start of the expansion and they’ll all be looking for glyphs as they level. So the outlook for Inscription remains rosy into the expansion, whether it remains the gold generator it has been up to now remains to be seen, but so far its looking ok. Meanwhile, back to the AH….

Making Gold on the New Server

I’ve now moved my main characters from Nordrassil (EU) to Aszune (EU). Having some time away from work I decided to get the gold making endeavours back into practise. At the start of the week I was sitting with about 45k across the characters.
This was the order of events:

1. Check out the AH prices and the level of competition. There seems to be about 3-4 glyph makers with none of them really ‘owning’ the market. The usual market antics of glyphs selling for 40g one then selling for 2g the next. Aside from the ‘levelling’ glyphs, the general prices are in the region of 2.5g to about 40g.
2. Make the glyph seller and get kitted out with 4 big glyph bags. I’ve set my threshold at just over 4g, anything less then this is more effort than the reward justifies. It does mean I’m missing out about 1/4 of the market and that market sector is most certainly active but there just isn’t enough reward.
3. Getting mats is the biggest problem. Herbs are not cheap here. In Nordrassil I wouldn’t pay over 10g a stack , here there is little below that (lichbloom at 60g a stack? I mean seriously????). There have been times when I have had to gather the damned things myself, which while tedious will also be out of the question when back at work. There are still some bargains to be had with some herbs being listed with massively inflated buyout and very low minimum bids, I got a few stacks for under 1g each, but its not enough for full production. The net result on this will mean paying more for herbs than I’d like but I don’t have a lot of choice. Where are all these Chinese farmers and bots when you need them?

I’ve also been trying my hand at selling some gem. This is quite different from the mass production of glyphs. Aside from my daily transmute, I’ve been focussing on Meta gems. I currently have 3 main cuts which sell at reasonable prices Chaotic Skyflare, Relentless Earthsiege and Austere Earthsiege. This market is very different to what I’m used to. There don’t seem to be any main players and there quantities on the AH are always small, usually between 2-8. They do however get relisted often and I reckon aiming for sales of 2-3 of each gem is going to be the maximum potential.

The big advantage here is to have a transmute master (although I have yet to see a x5 proc) but the free gems on the back of this really add to the profit.

I’ve set up a second trader alt for gems and everything else:

• velums – slowish sales at 8-12g each.
• Nobles deck – which didn’t sell, even though the Darkmoon Faire was about.
• Sapphire Spellthread – very profitable but only sold a couple in the past week and had to relist 3 times per day).
• Some 16 and 20 slot bags – sold quickly for average if not outstanding return.

For gems the problem is still the mats. I don’t like paying 30g+ for an Eternal Fire. So I have been grinding these myself – which due to the lack of bots and farmers is fairly easy. I got 11 in less than 30 mins with about another 100g of vendor trash and greens at the same time. That gives an 800g+/hour ratio which isn’t too shabby for farming. DK with glyph of death grip is a real favourite for me for farming.

By the end of a week I’m up to about 60k, so 15k in a week is pretty good for me. I have also got the paladin to lvl 72 and have replaced engineering with enchanting although this is only at about 120. Levelling enchanting will either be a very expensive process or a very slow one, I’ll probably end up being somewhere between the two.

I’ll be curious to see what kind of target I can reach before Cataclysm comes out.

Gamers Anonymous

This week Blizzard revealed they were implementing a new system whereby in the future posting on the Official WoW forums would show the battlenet account holders name and not a character’s name from the player’s portfolio. This has followed the RealID friends system which was implemented in the last patch.

Much wailing, gnashing of teeth and threats to cancel everything from accounts to Christmas and Blizzard have changed their collective minds and decided it’s not such a good idea to have people posting under their real names. It was mana from heaven to Bloggers and various worded the pros and cons far better than I ever could. The most interesting find I managed was this one. My first thought on this is one less gnome in WoW can only be classed as progress and hopefully others would follow suit. But there is more to this case than meets the eye… (even if the eyes are standing at waist-height to a normal character….)

The real thing for me here is the claims of persecution at work for being a WoW gamer.  In particular these caught my eye:

“Now when I am sick I either need to go to work, or provide a doctors certificate (even though that is not the company policy), because as a known WoW player it is assumed that I at at home playing WoW.

When I work from home (as my role permits) I am required to provide an detailed timeline of my activities (unlike other non-WoW (or declared WoW) players.”

This spawned a debate at the Noisy Rogue. I don’t know what the laws are like in Australia but in the UK no company could get away treating two employees in the same role differently – providing the performance level is the same. Any that tried could easily be taken to an Industrial Tribunal and duly slapped down with a sizable payment going to the claimant on the basis of such behaviour being Constructive Dismissal. That suggests there may be more to the gnome’s situation than first meets the eye, but that’s just speculation.

What also came out of this was a whole bunch of people saying they would not admit to being a gamer if applying for a job or if  already in a job they would be keeping their nasty little gaming habit secret from their boss or co-workers so it couldn’t be used against them.

Its confession time: I’m a gamer and have been playing wow for years. My boss knows, the guys I work with know. I don’t advertise it but if someone asks what I was doing at the weekend and the answer is playing WoW then that’s what I tell them. I’d be shocked if it made a difference to how I was treated at work, and to be honest I’ve never seen any evidence to suggest it has caused me problems at work. I can accept there are people who don’t see the attraction to playing computer games, but then I don’t see the attraction to nightclubs with dance music or going hill walking which some of my colleagues do. I don’t think less of them for their hobbies so why would they think less of me for mine? I’ve always found in the workplace you get judged more by your performance than anything else.

In my job I manage a team of about 12 people. If one doesn’t show on a Monday because he went to the pub the previous day after the football and now has ‘food poisoning’, then I’m pissed off. Not because he went to the pub, but because he can’t perform his duties the following day as a result. The reason doesn’t matter, just the problems that it causes that the rest of the team and I have to pick up because s/he is too hungover to work. If some one arrives late on a regular basis and is too tired to work properly because they have stayed up late raiding then I don’t have a problem with them raiding, but I do have a problem with them not being able to do what they are paid to the following day. It would be completely wrong in this last example for the raider to claim he was getting a hard time at work because he was a gamer,  s/he is getting a hard time due to poor performance.

I’m really curious to find out what other people think on this subject. Are you a closet gamer, who keeps their gaming hidden from those you work with? Why, what do you think will happen if you admit it? If you are putting in a good performance at work do you believe this will be overshadowed simply by being a gamer? I’d welcome any opinions on this one.

PS. The final score on the gnome is he has resubscribed due to Blizzard backing down on the RealID thing.  Just when we thought we had got rid of one of the critters too.

2 weeks later….

The good news is I have 2 weeks  on holiday starting as of right now. No exotic foreign travels planned, instead it will be days out here and there, possibly even some time to play WoW and I may even manage the odd blog post here and there too.

On the WoW front there has been a few things happening, lets see….

• Paladin to level 70, Northrend here I come. Still not sorted out the professions dilemma but I do think Enchanting over engineering is the likely one.
• Hunter still at 78. I’m bored with the hunter, it just doesn’t grab me the way some other classes do. The last couple of levels will be a grind for me.
• Shadowpriest. I finally took the plunge and moved him to the new server to join the rest of them. I’ve left a rogue behind as a placeholder in the old guild as there are a couple of people I’d like to stay in touch with.  That there are only a couple explains why its time for a change. Transferred the character and I’m in my worst nightmare – this. My shadowpriest has been my longest played character and has had the same name throughout those years, now he has to get a new name due to some imposter.  So what craven ne’er-do-well has got my name on this server? Here’s the culprit. Some alliance priest with bad facial hair and a tendency to heal. The entire episode leaves a sour taste. I’m sure he’s really an alt of some female gnome with pink ponytails.

So I’m in the situation where I require a new name for the shadowpriest and I need it, like NOW! My mind goes blank and I can only think of names already taken or really crap ones. In a moment of panic I go for Archlector which is the senior rank in the Inquisition in Joe Abercrombie’s books. The following day I hate it and promptly spend the £6 to change it. I’ve gone for Misera. Its based mostly on the Shadowpriest Talent Misery, I also like gold collecting so there is a bit of a pun in the use of ‘Miser’. The ‘A’ at the end was just to make it sound a bit better. My guild character already has the note ‘Cheer up’ attached.

On the blog update I have removed the Wasmemon link. Its  been inactive for 3 months so I reckon they aren’t coming back. It’s a pity as I quite liked the way it was written. The character still seems to be playing just not blogging. If the blog resurrects I’ll add it back in. I’ve also added Bible of Dreams to the links list.

Also time for a change on the music front. As Devo have just realeased their first album of new material in about 20 years, its time to revisit a classic – Gut Feeling.

Update

I’m still depressingly busy in Real Life (managed 5  budgets for 5 different locations last week and didn’t even get an achievement, meh) and finding I’m only playing WoW sporadically at best. Still, there has been some progress. The hunter has reached 78 and the Paladin 69. What I have learned is I don’t really like playing a hunter. They sure level quickly enough, but I just can’t quite get into it. I can see me levelling the hunter to 80 and then not doing an awful lot with him thereafter.

Paladin is more fun, but I’m undecided whether to keep on with Engineering or go for Enchanting, which does seem more useful to have when building a group of characters with a commercial venture in mind. My instinct is to go with Enchanting and have Engineering on the Goblin when Cataclysm comes out. I know that sounds a tad predictable, but I mean it is a Goblin afterall.

On the rogue side of things, I managed to get a couple of 232 daggers for Cimetiere and also some 226 bracers from the Flame Leviathan from the weekly. I also finally bit the bullet last night and got everything enchanted. Nothing else for it, at some point the troll will have to raid. I still want to be proficient in the Rogue ways and while gear isn’t everything, it sure helps. Looks like ICC is beckoning and I may just manage to get in at some point.

The DK continues on doing the odd daily Heroic and trying to get JC recipes.

Leaving me the Shadow Priest dilemma. After not playing him for a while I donned Shadowform and set out in a couple of HCs and thoroughly enjoyed it.  All well and good, but what next? The Shadow Priest lurks in what has been my guild for sometime, which has a large number of people I just don’t connect with and a small number I get on very well with. I have no qualms dumping the former, but I would miss the latter greatly. The guild has too many cliques but at the same time it is my clique I would miss. The option is transfer him to Aszune and play in the new guild where there is very little in the way of cliques, but also I lose the close playing friends. It’s probably a healthier playing atmosphere without cliques. I can always leave the 2nd rogue there to catch up with the friends as and when. Most are in some form of hibernation just now awaiting Cataclysm.

I’ve added a music section to the links. I always play Warcraft with music on unless I need vent.  So in a display of  complete selfishness I have decided to share (or inflict – delete as you see fit)  the sort of thing I listen to. I’ll be changing this randomly to whatever grabs my attention at the time. First up is Joy Division and their classic Love Will Tear Us Apart. It’s almost exactly 30 years since the singer Ian Curtis took his own life, and with that act one of the brightest lights in music went out. The influence of this band is still massive, even 30 years on. If you aren’t familiar with them, they are well worth looking up.

I’ve also added a couple more links to some blogs and resources I use myself.

Lastly, this will never get old. Truly a nation cheered.

Cataclysm Preparation and Caprioskas

Damn, 2 weeks since my last post. Work is taking its toll on my free time. May-June is always a particularly hectic time for me (budgets – oh the joy!). Combined with the new role and more away from home time is not making posting easy. Hell, it’s not even making playing easy. However, I have found time to think about my favourite subject when it comes to idle WoW speculation “What should I do next?”

Up to recently, I had a Rogue and a Shadow Priest as the main characters, supported by a second rogue and a DK at level 80 and a hunter, druid and paladin who are between 60-70. Between the lot of them there are different servers, different guilds, some duplicated professions and a general lack of organisation. It’s really time to get things tidied up so:

• Level hunter and paladin to 80 and max out professions.
• Decide on a home server and guild. Transfer the characters to there and operate with a base of 5 different classes and professions.
• Once the above, is completed add in the druid and re-do his professions, as those are the duplicated ones (skinning and LW, same as hunter).
• Decide on a ‘Main’ character between them all once they are together. When the expansion arrives the new level cap will make such changes easier as they will all need geared up anyway.

There has been some progress. Hunter is at 76 and Paladin at 67, which isn’t bad considering lack of playing time. Did some research on servers, so I’m not far from a final decision on that front, but I’ll confirm that once I’m 100% sure.

So that’s the master plan and Expansion route map for me. Which has absolutely nothing to do with the fair one and I deciding to go out last night, in theory to celebrate the new job, but any excuse really. We decided to do cocktails, which up till now has been something we have pretty much avoided (Unless you include Black Russians served in half pint glasses in student union bars many years ago). Nice Italian restaurant, arrived 45 mins before our table would be free to give ample time to peruse the cocktail menu. I went for a Strawberry Caprioska (I’d never heard of this before). Despite being someone who doesn’t even particularly like vodka, this is one of the nicest drink I have ever tasted. It was purchased in true amateur style. I saw the barman making a couple for some other patrons and promptly decided to have what they were having based on looks alone.  Crushed ice, strawberry, lime with vodka – absolutely delicious although does have a bit of a kick. As stated, nothing to do with WoW, but if you are ever looking for a cocktail its a fine starting point!

How to Opt in Like a Pro

While idly perusing MMO-Champion I came across this and promptly succumbed to dilemma overload. When TBC and WotLK beta options came out, I just ignored them. I decided to wait and just see the new content with everyone else. Turned out it wasn’t ‘everyone else’ though. Just about everyone and their dog had a beta key – well it felt like that anyway. I promptly got fed up hearing about how good the new content was from those who got the beta keys – “I’ll send you some screenshots too”. Oh yes, please do, I’d be lost without knowing how much fun you are having in every last graphic and pixellated detail….

The other side of it was people I was playing online with at the time (especially TBC) disappeared from the usual server we played on to the Hip-Kid Club server where only the Chosen Few (well it seemed like Chosen Many to me) were allowed to go. So the social side of idly chatting while playing died a bit too. Of course when they did show up it was ‘you wouldn’t believe how good the new zones are, let me tell you about…..’ Well that’s great, I’m really happy for you, would you now just please shut the f*ck up about the new expansion. How do you tell a friend, who is obviously excited and very positive about something, that you are tired of hearing about it? The answer has to be extremely bluntly or not at all. I’m pretty sure I did both at times.

Once the expansions shipped, those who had the beta keys became gurus. “Oh the quest  item? Yeah, its round about X,Y next to the dead ice wombat. (Thanks) And watch out for the ice wombats (Its fine, co-ords were great) they have this really nasty attack that paralyses you with tedium (OK, I’ll find the rest out when I get there) but they drop good amounts of gold (That’s enough now) and have a 4.75% chance to drop a green (Shut Up), a 0.35% chance to drop a blue (Please shut up) and a 1% chance to drop Eternal Components  (I hate you) and they’re skinnable (arghhhhhhh, what’s that f*cker’s home address, where is my axe and how soon can I get there?) Every last detail given in a helpful manner, whether you wanted it or not. Scratch that, especially when you did not want it.

Third time round and its the Cataclysm beta. Send in your details to Blizzard and if you are lucky a beta key will be yours. So along with getting access to the shiny new content first, the real deal about having a beta key is the ability to show off.  You also  have the chance to ostracize your close friends in the short-term and seriously piss off what remaining friends you have further down the line when you decide to be helpful. This should be and can be avoided. It just needs to be managed properly.

There is no point in having a beta key if no one else knows how you are one of the privileged and select few, elevated by Blizzard to a lofty position above the common masses. To be fair you probably already suspected this was the case, but its nice to see it finally confirmed by Blizzard.

First thing is immediately place a post on your guild forums giving your name on the hip-kid server, so you can ‘meet up with friends who are also there’. This ensures the common masses in the guild immediately appreciate your lofty new position.

Second up is reinforcement. When someone asks you if you want to join for any sort of group, do point out how you were just about to go off to the beta servers, but you don’t mind helping out, you’ll just go to the beta servers later. This reminds them of your lofty position, demonstrates you remain a benevolent type offering help and guidance when you would rather be doing something else and allows you store a favour in the bank for later manipulation.

Thirdly, when absent for a while log back on and announce in guild chat how you are sorry you haven’t been about much, but you have been busy with the beta and ask what’s been happening, ignore the answers,  what you are looking for is some poor schmuck to ask you “So what’s it like?” You can now hold court while they hang onto to your every word, grateful for the scraps of knowledge you generously bestow.

Next is keep them hanging on. Don’t give out all the info at once, milk the situation for all you can. Maintain an air of mystery, be the enigma. If anyone asks you something you don’t know or can’t be bothered explaining, just remind them under the terms of the NDA you aren’t allowed to tell. Make sure you say NDA a few times, it always sounds cool and professional.

Lastly is bow out like a pro. When the game does ship to the masses its time to prepare your exit. You will have a couple of  weeks while the rank and file play catch up, but catch up they will. You will need to compose an air of boredom. You’ve been there, seen that, done it all already and having done so its time to move onto the next big thing. Complain about the servers being too busy, and all these people in the same zones causing lag, no one can play properly like that. Besides, you can mention you have just received a key to the new LOTRO expansion beta so you’ll do that while things calm down with the noobs in the new zones and you’ll let people know how its going.

So in the face of all this, there is only really one question: Did I sign up for the beta key? Of course I did, I’m just not proud of it.

PS Work intervenes again, wont be about much for most of the next week.

That ain’t no rogue, boy…

For a few years my main was a Shadowpriest and he’s been getting ignored a bit for the past few months while I have been rogue-ing it. I decided to dust him off and take him out for a spin. Lets have a look at the purple one. Note firstly how he is not purple. I took a few pictures with him in shadowform and  they all looked awful. So here we have a shadowpriest ‘sans shadow’. I have always liked shadowpriests, but no matter what, they always look terrible. And as soon as you get a great looking mount (no matter which one it is) it looks awful too.

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The mounts in order were: Polar Bear, Cenarion War Hippogryph and Frostwolf Howler (just in case all you saw were three variations of the random purple blob mount). The Polar Bear was a particular woe of mine. Three  months doing crappy daily quests in Storm Peaks for a random quets reward, when I finally get it… its a purple Polar Bear. Lets get one thing straight, I don’t mind the colour purple. In fact I actually quite like it (especially for gear if you get my meaning), but it would be nice to have something that wasn’t turned entirely purple the minute I get it. Anyway I digress…

Having dusted down the Shadow Priest I tried an heroic or two and while I thoroughly enjoyed it, it was fair to say my gear sucked mightily. So I have embarked on a bit of a crusade to get him some better gear. If you look at the RSS feed from my Armory its all Tarsis this and Tarsis that. That’s likely to be the way of things for the next couple of weeks while I try for badge gear. I’m not giving up on the rogues, but they will be taking a back seat for a short while.

Last week, I was hanging around waiting for the dungeon finder to inflict me on some poor souls who deserved better when some one in the Guild decided to organise an Onyxia 10 player. I haven’t done Onyxia since it was a 40 player event so I decided to give it a go. I know this is a bit close to raiding, but hey ho, sometimes I do give it a shot. Having dealt with Onyxia (after a few silly wipes and lots of cries of ‘more dots’ and ‘-50 dkp’ (a bit close to the bone when you remeber this)) I decided I was on a roll and when they said lets go for a Trial of the Crusader 10 player event I agreed to tag along. “Tarsis, can you switch to healing spec for this one?” ehmmm that would be a ‘no’ – I haven’t healed since pre-TBC and have very much adopted the atitude of can’t heal, won’t heal and don’t heal since then. If its a question of me healing or you dying I just hope you have exalted rep with the repair merchant of your choice. Anyway, we tracked down a real healer and went for ToC(10). We struggled on the beasts and were all set to call it a night when we managed to down them. We 2 shottled the worms and one shotted everything else.I bagged a few upgrades seeing as nobody else would sully themselves with mere i232 gear and besides, we were somewhat caster light that night.

The main reason I got fed up with the Shadow Priest was that for a dps class the dps was kind of low. That’s been addressed to a fair bit and Mind Sear makes the class a lot more fun to play on trash mobs too. In the past I got somewhat fed up with having low dps as the mobs were dead by the time I’d finished casting my dots and they had hardly ticked at all. That seems to have much improved by having Mind Sear for multiple trash and a proper rotation for boss fights, With a few improvements in gear I should be verging on reasonable.

I’ll probably add some Shadow Priest flavour to the blog on an ongoing basis (unless I get bored with the class again!) and we’ll see how it goes from there. So meantime it will be Rogues and Shadow Priests. For any purists out there…. tough!

Spring Cleaning

I hoard all kinds of rubbish in my bank slots. ‘Its bound to be useful at some point, better hold onto it’ is my mantra, resulting in finding 3 characters and a bank alt all had full banks and full bags. I went over it last week and finally admitted it was probably in all likelihood just crap. I was carefully holding onto such useful things as a stack of Peacebloom, 1 Nightmare vine, 3 motes of Earth, 1 mote of Water, 7 linen cloth etc etc. With Cataclysm on the horizon it really was time for a clean out. I started listing it in the AH last week and I’m about 1k gold up already. Turns out there are people out there prepared to buy up rubbish. The big gain isn’t so much the extra gold, but the freed up bag space. I’ll be able to start off Cataclysm with the plenty of space and I’ll just have to make sure I don’t fill it up with more rubbish. Although I’m sure I remember saying the same thing when both BC and WotLK came out too. But I’ll stick to it this time, I promise. Honestly. Well, possibly anyway.

My rule on this kind of transaction is sell it off cheap. There aren’t going to be that many people out looking for motes of Earth so I try to make sure mine is the one that sells. If something hasn’t sold in 3 listings its time to vendor it. So there are people out there who can probably sell for more if they persevere long enough, but my aim is more about clearing off bag space than anything else. If I make a small profit at the same time that all to the good. I’m also not an AH Goblin so the time spent listing and relisting has more value to me than the few extra gold I could make by hanging out a bit longer before vendoring. I’m sitting with about 50k currently between my 3 main characters so that should be plenty going into the expansion. I may try to push it a bit more closer to the time but just now I’m happy where I am.

I’d recommend others start clearing out the bags too. Other people will have accumulated equivalent rubbish over the time and will probably try to AH dump in the near future which will drive the prices down lower. So if you need to clear the bank space I’d recommend now being a good time to sell. Good luck with it!

Raid Changes for the less active Raider

Shamelessly lifted from MMO-Champion as usual:

We’re continuing to refine the raid progression paths in Cataclysm, and we’d like to share some of those changes with you today. Please enjoy!

The first of the refinements being made is that we’re combining all raid sizes and difficulties into a single lockout. Unlike today, 10- and 25-player modes of a single raid will share the same lockout. You can defeat each raid boss once per week per character. In other words, if you wanted to do both a 10- and 25-person raid in a single week, you’d need to do so on two different characters. Normal versus Heroic mode will be chosen on a per-boss basis in Cataclysm raids, the same way it works in Icecrown Citadel. Obviously the raid lockout change doesn’t apply in pure Icecrown terms though, as this change goes hand-in-hand with a few other changes to raid progression in Cataclysm.
I’ve already seen this described as the ‘death of raiding’ on a guild forum, but I feel that is a bit of knee-jerk reaction rather than a duly considered one. To me its more of a levelling of the playing field between the larger and smaller guilds. The smaller guilds who can only run 10 man raids will no longer be disadvantaged by 1 lockout per week, where the larger ones managing a 10 and a 25 get the benefit of 2.  I believe most of these changes are designed to ensure there is as little requirement as possible to be in a large guild.

We’re designing and balancing raids so that the difficulty between 10- and 25-player versions of each difficulty will be as close as possible to each other as we can achieve. That closeness in difficulty also means that we’ll have bosses dropping the same items in 10- and 25-player raids of each difficulty. They’ll have the same name and same stats; they are in fact the exact same items. Choosing Heroic mode will drop a scaled-up version of those items. Our hope is that players will be able to associate bosses with their loot tables and even associate specific artwork with specific item names to a far greater extent than today.
This just adds to what I have already said, not even any major loot advantages for being in a 25 man raid over a 10 man one.

Dungeon Difficulty and Rewards

• 10 and 25-player (Normal difficulty) — Very similar to one another in difficulty; drop the exact same items as each other.
• 10 and 25-player (Heroic difficulty) — Very similar to one another in difficulty; drop more powerful versions of the normal-difficulty items.

We of course recognize the logistical realities of organizing larger groups of people, so while the loot quality will not change, 25-player versions will drop a higher quantity of loot per player (items, but also badges, and even gold), making it a more efficient route if you’re able to gather the people. The raid designers are designing encounters with these changes in mind, and the class designers are making class changes to help make 10-person groups easier to build. Running 25-player raids will be a bit more lucrative, as should be expected, but if for a week or two you need to do 10s because half the guild is away on vacation, you can do that and not suffer a dramatic loss to your ability to get the items you want.

“A bit more lucrative” – that’s as good as it gets for 25 man raiding. Greater drop rate, badges and gold – when they have to start mentioning the rewards will be in gold we know they are getting desperate to sugar coat the pill. With all the mentions of guild levelling and guild rewards, being in a guild is going to be important. My concern was the guilds achieving  25 man raiding success would have a major advantage over the guilds managing only 10 man raiding. That the 10 man guilds would end up feeding the 25 man guilds, not just for the raiding rewards but because this guild would be a higher level guild because it was managing 25 man raiding. Blizzard seem to be trying to make being in a 10 man guild every bit as desirable as being in a 25, or at the very least not majorly disadvantaged by being in a 10 as opposed to a 25. Overall I think this is a smart move.

We recognize that very long raids can be a barrier for some players, but we also want to provide enough encounters for the experience to feel epic. For the first few raid tiers, our plan is to provide multiple smaller raids. Instead of one raid with eleven bosses, you might have a five-boss raid as well as a six-boss raid. All of these bosses would drop the same item level gear, but the dungeons themselves being different environments will provide some variety in location and visual style, as well as separate raid lockouts. Think of how you could raid Serpentshrine Cavern and Tempest Keep separately, but you might still want to hit both every week.
Sounds reasonable, and still trying to give something for everyone.

We do like how gating bosses over time allows the community to focus on individual encounters instead of just racing to the end boss, so we’re likely to keep that design moving forward. We don’t plan to impose attempt limitations again though, except maybe in cases of rare optional bosses (like Algalon). Heroic mode may not be open from day one, but will become available after defeating normal mode perhaps as little as once or twice.

In terms of tuning, we want groups to be able to jump into the first raids pretty quickly, but we also don’t want them to overshadow the Heroic 5-player dungeons and more powerful quest rewards. We’ll be designing the first few raid zones assuming that players have accumulated some blue gear from dungeons, crafted equipment, or quest rewards. In general, we want you and your guild members to participate in and enjoy the level up experience.

We design our raids to be accessible to a broad spectrum of players, so we want groups to be able to make the decision about whether to attempt the normal or Heroic versions of raids pretty quickly. The goal with all of these changes is to make it as much of a choice or effect of circumstance whether you raid as a group of 10 or as a group of 25 as possible. Whether you’re a big guild or a small guild the choice won’t be dependent on what items drop, but instead on what you enjoy the most.

The big guilds may howl at this, but only because they are losing some of their advantage. I think these are good changes, but we will see properly once they are implemented. I don’t often say this, but ‘Well Done Blizzard’.

We realize that with any changes to progression pathways there are going to be questions. We’re eagerly awaiting any that we may have left unanswered. To the comments!