07.07.09
Posted in Legion, WoW at 3:02 am by Middea
So much for our grand plan of storming through the Ulduar 10 man raiding scene.
It seems it is over as quickly as it began, all the work to formulate policies and get rules up and established, all for naught less than a month later. The bank is divvied up and the money is split.
It’s one thing to not be able to recruit players during the summer, but to lose the initial “team” that made you want to try and start something new and different… Too disheartening to keep trudging along. Best to cut our losses and move along.
Back to 25 man raiding we shall go.
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07.06.09
Posted in Legion, Rant, WoW at 4:46 pm by Middea
Do you even like playing World of Warcraft anymore? Step back and evaluate.
Do you log in with the zeal, that “wee, it’s time to go kill something and get something new and shiny” mentality that you used to? Do you log in wondering what will happen next? Do you spend the majority of your time trying to find a way to clear a raid more efficiently and still tackle the harder modes in order to improve your guild?
Personally, it’s all a grind these days. Recruiting players to raid even in a 10 man setting is difficult. When I get in, it’s the same old bosses the same old way. And what do I have to look forward too? The same instance with two different settings? Yay? Just what I want to do, raid like we can our 5 man dungeons. Boring!
And why keep raiding now? To get more badges that will be obsolete in the next patch? Perhaps obtain gear that has eluded my grasp so far? WoW is getting to be just too repetitive; the grind is not even fun anymore. Before, I could raid, say Black Temple, for months and although it might have gotten a little wearing, at least it was fun to raid it with my guild. Healing had some challenges and tested different skill sets, from mana conservation to balls to the wall spam healing, while even adding in mobility to the mix while healing. It had a bit of everything. Now I dps because healing was too easy and boring, and it’s still not fun. It’s the same old every night, and boss names are just about the only thing that are different.
I spent this weekend away from the computer and internet, I did not even carry along my phone. Probably the only thing technologically inclined that we used was a GPS system in the car, and that was just being used as backup as we already knew the route to go.
It was a nice, and much needed break. No Google Reader to keep up with, no patch notes to sigh at, no disappointing shadow priest Q&A to wonder why on Earth Blizzard thinks we scale well.
And when I got home, the first thing I did was not log into WoW, but to rush to get online for the Aion Beta weekend. Learning the quirks of a new game and what combinations are best for my new little cleric made it all the clearer to me that WoW is not the game it once was, and I am only logging in to keep up with friends in WoW and fulfill an obligation to our new guild.
WoW is just not that fun for me, and it’s not directly tied to any one thing I have issues with, but the overall picture. It is a mundane grind that lets me chat with folks I have grown close to in this virtual world. I’m treating World of Warcraft as my new Virtual Places. It’s a pretty interface that I can navigate while keeping in touch with folks while feeling a small bit of achievement.
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06.30.09
Posted in Legion, WoW at 8:09 pm by Fedoldinn
For those who haven’t had a chance to figure out who we are, or who may not know our background, I’d like to take a moment to go over the events of the past few weeks that have led us to where we are today.
Let’s start from the beginning. Fedoldinn and Middea are both experienced players who have been on the Bloodhoof server for many years. With the exception of a few breaks here and there, we have played since shortly after the initial release of World of Warcraft in one form or another. We enjoy the PvE side of the game and are focused mainly on raiding, although we have a tendency to become slightly obsessive about achievements and playing the auction house in our free time.
Most recently we were both in a well respected 25 man raiding guild called Mental Atrophy. While we were not a part of this guild from the beginning, they worked their way up to C’Thun and ventured into the original form of Naxxramas. We joined in The Burning Crusade and managed to kill Illidan and enter into Sunwell Plateau, killing Kalecgos before patch 3.0. In Wrath of the Lich King, we farmed Sartharion 3D weekly for the Reins of the Twilight Drake, achieved the Immortal title from Naxxramas and Heroic: Glory of the Raider before patch 3.1.
For almost two years Mental Atrophy was a significant part of my life. Needless to say, it was a sad day when the decision was made for the guild to stop pursuing end game raiding. Although many players have moved on to other raiding guilds on the server, the community continues to live on and we are proud to say we are still a part of that great community today.
Soon after hearing the news, we started to think about what it was that we wanted from the game and what we were going to do. Several options were considered, from applying to other respected guilds on the server and continuing on with 25 man progression raiding, to creating our own guild and leading with the ideals, dedication and passion that we play with.
Needless to say, the latter won out and we set out to start creating an identity for ourselves and making our vision a reality. A lot of work went into setting up the basic infrastructure and putting our ideas down on “paper” (online) and then came the real work: convincing other people to join with us. We had decided early on that we were going to stick with 10 man content and not attempt to pursue 25 man content at all. This was for several reasons, but they mainly boil down to the following:
- it is much easier to stack and make changes in a 10 man group,
- it is easier to find 10 excellent players than 25 excellent players, and
- it is more fun playing and rewarding playing with a smaller group that you can get to know well
Well, we’re into our third reset as a guild now, and although we had a solid infrastructure in place before we went public with our plans, we have seen a few minor issues come up. Of course, most of these are to be expected with any guild, but the transition from 25 man to 10 man raiding has been a bit of a challenge in itself.
Being used to having a much larger pool of players to draw from and having guild rules based around a larger player base for so long has made it easy to overlook what is going on in the smaller group dynamic that we now have.
Here is a short list of “issues” that have come up:
- recruitment
- it’s harder to recruit for 10 man than 25 man content
- it’s harder to recruit when you are a new guild versus an established guild
- players
- main swapping, spec swapping and lack of role definition early on
- gear difference and lack of motivation to run old content
- the divide between players who’ve seen the content and those who haven’t
- miscellaneous
- achievements vs progression
- friends and filling raid spots outside of guild
- guild alliances with other 10 man raiding guilds
Recruitment is tough everywhere these days, but it presents entirely new challenges in the smaller raid format. We are by no means a casual guild even though we are focusing solely on 10 man content. However, it’s hard to convince players to focus on 10 man content when most of the population only considers 25 man content as “raid worthy”. Adding to this issue is that although our names may be fairly well known on the server, we are a new guild and are not as well known as more established guilds are.
In order to try and get groups into Ulduar weekly, we’ve had to make some compromises. Early on it was tough to figure out who was going to fill out what role in our raids as most players had dual specs available with decent experience in both, and some had well geared alts that they could swap to as their main if needed. I think we’re past the role definition stage thankfully, and we all know what we prefer to play and are flexible enough to shuffle things around on nights when necessary.
Unfortunately, none of us have mastered the art of being able to play multiple accounts at the same time effectively enough to fill out the missing spots in our raid rosters. To accomplish this, we’ve had to invite friends from past guilds to join us on nights they aren’t raiding.
And of course, last but definitely not least, it’s summer time. This has been a notoriously tough period for raiding in each of my previous guilds as many people go on vacation or simply take time off away from the computer to enjoy the nice weather. It’s probably the most challenging time to start a new guild and recruit players.
While not in this guild since the beginning, they worked their way up to
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06.24.09
Posted in Rant, WoW at 4:23 am by Middea
For quite awhile, I’ve known of Auctioneer. I think I even once installed it and tried fiddling around with it and realized I just did not want to mess around and figure it out, curse of the lazy. A couple of months ago, I found just how useful Auctioneer is and why everyone should be using it, or at least something like it.
First things first, hopefully you have a bank toon, a little level whatever toon that has been abandoned or a new toon that is level 1 and pimped out in a banking outfit, either way, the basics:
- 4 bags, leftover non-binding bags or make/buy new ones.
- Set up a bank: I recommend a Guild charter, the first bank tab is 100g and has 98 slots. If, however, you prefer to purchase all bank tabs of a personal bank, it is 111.10g and that’s prior to buying bags to use in each slot. Although equipping 16 slot bags in each personal bank slot is 112 slots.
- Get alt to a major city, preferably one that has a short run from bank to auction house, as alliance I prefer Stormwind/Ironforge and as horde I prefer Orgrimmar.
- Enable Auctioneer only on this alt. It does eat up quite a bit of space.
- Log in, go to an Auctioneer, type in /say: /auc getall
Now, it is tempting to start playing around with Auctioneer and you might be tempted to start using it to buy things at this time, resist the urge. You want to get a good sound data collection going. What might look like a deal to Auctioneer isn’t necessarily a good deal quite yet, as there is not much information to compare to at this time.
For now, you want to log in your alt once or twice a day, I log in once when I first start up wow, do a quick scan, go to my main, and when logging off for the night, I hop on the alt and do a quick scan. Note: you can only do /auc getall once an hour, other than that you will need to hit the Scan button, this is a difference of the scan taking less than 5 minutes to a 15 minute plus scan.
Vendor Search
It is safe at any time to search for items people have listed that sell for less than what it is worth to vendor the item. Screenshot is labeled appropriately:
A. Right click the magnifying glass or open the SearchUI
B. Select Vendor
C. Search
Now, you should have something that looks like this:
You want to click on the Reason tab, and where they say Vendor:buy, highlight them and select Buyout at the bottom. Don’t hesitate, just do it.
Vendor:bid is a bit more tricky, you can mass bid them all or you can sort by Left and try just bidding on the ones you think you will win, I find it easier to just mass bid on them all and collect any Outbid spam from mailbox later. (Shift clicking mail auto opens your mail and collects the money). Or getting a mod like Postal that will open/loot all your mail items.
Any items you win on this search feature are free money, the profit column tells you how much of a profit it is, sometimes it’s as low as a few copper, sometimes you make it up to 1g.
After a few weeks or perhaps even right away if you know the market, you can use the Snatch searcher, it is right above the Vendor searcher.
To Set up the Snatch List:
You are now going to search the auction house for each item you want to add to your snatch list and send yourself a whisper linking each item.
Once you have each item or have maxed out links, send yourself the tell.
1. Again you will open the SearchUI by right clicking the magnifying glass.
2. Left click Searchers to expand the list, select Snatch.
3. Click on the link of an item from the tell, and put the value you are at the highest willing to pay for that item
4. Add Item.
Using the Snatch List
Once they are all added to the list, on left side there is a Search Button, this is the button you use, so click it, and it scans the auction house for any items on the Snatch list that are at your price points.
Sort them by Reason. The bid and buyout are set by your price points, so buyout means it is safe to buyout this item as it is under what you determined to be the highest you would pay for it.
Pct = how far below your snatch list price point an item is, so 90% isn’t as good of a deal as 25%. Example, You have frost lotus as 15g, an item at 90% will be like 14g or whatever, while a 25% is like a 3g item.
Selling items
With Auctioneer, the best part is the posting auctions part. I find that selling enchanting materials, as well as other things, sell better individually, and for a higher profit margin.
First, drag the items you wish to post up top in the box, prices will automatically fill in.
If you are splitting items individually, in the Stacks: split it up, first box is the number of stacks you want, second is how many items in each stack you want.
Since I’m posting 11 individual stacks, I’m using 11×1.
Now I’m looking at the prices Auctioneer gave me, 97 bid, 1.21g buyout. Comparing that to the listings on the right, I don’t really like that, I want to list higher as most individual stacks are listed for 2.1g bid/buyout. So, I’m going to change the price to probably 2.08g bid/buyout. So on the bottom left, I hit Create Auction.
*Make sure you have ONE bag slot free in your bags so that Auctioneer can split the items and you do not get x many error messages.*
Now, if you are selling individually, do not use undercut competitors as that will undercut the stacks that are full too, not much profit there.
Items
After you have been scanning the auction house for a while, you can begin to trust the hover over item tooltips:
This gives you the break down of what the item typically sells for. When it says Undercut: Cannot Undercut, that means there is not much of a market, according to Auctioneer, for the item, and you might be best off waiting for it to go back up in price. Yellow Cannot Undercut is market price is about the same as normal, Vendor this item means there is zero competition and it’s not even worth a deposit price to try selling the item, you can either wait it out or vendor the item.
Tips and tricks
While leveling, questing, grinding, farming, do use your bank alt to send all the stuff you gather that might be worth something to others.
- Do know what items are worth, I find Relics of Ulduar to be worth less than 2g a piece during the week but can sell them for nearly double on weekends *keep in mind each servers economy is different so do not take that item and that selling price to necessarily be great for your server!*
- Don’t forget to keep an eye on your snatch lists, if your Buy Each column is higher than the App. Value column, the market has changed and items are selling on average less than what you currently are snatching items for.
- Do use your bank toon to sell all items.
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