Project Lore

I recently had the opportunity to speak with one of my favorite WoW bloggers, Gevlon of Greedy Goblin. Gevlon is one of the few players in the game who has reached the elusive "gold cap" of 214,748.3646 gold. He is known for being extremely cynical and having radical and critical views of almost everything in WoW - from the game becoming too easy and the value of networking in game to more complex topics like objectivism, feminism, and welfare. I've been known to be cynical at times, and Gevlon's unique ideas often give me some great food for thought. Thanks for talking with us today. Tell us a little bit about yourself and how you started blogging. I've been playing WoW for 2 years. I've never had problems with making gold, had around 5-10K gold all the time. I had my first 100G before lvl 20, and 5000G before going to Outland. I thought everyone was like this. Then someone asked for 1000G for their epic flyer and promised they would "farm a lot" to pay it back. I asked him what "farming" was, and he described the terrible routine of grinding elementals in Shadowmoon for hours. Others joined in guild chat and agreed that besides buying gold, your only choice was grinding. That's when I decided to make this blog. Larísa helped with the first steps; I figured out the rest. What is the appeal of collecting gold? You often criticize gold sinks like the Traveler's Tundra Mammoth or the motorcycle mounts, so what do you spend your gold on? The appeal is not grinding. Ever. Nor doing daily quests. I haven't done a SINGLE Argent Crusade daily; no wolvar pups for me either. For me, gold has one purpose: raiding. I pay five thousand gold per week to a guild to raid despite my 20-30% attendance. You have talked about how you "buy" a raid spot since it is easier and quicker for you to make money than it is for you to spend time with groups that are just learning the encounters. Can you talk about this briefly? I like the challenge of raiding, but I don't want to spend 3-4 evenings on it, especially since serious part of it is repetitive. Orbituary is great at first, fun the second time, and just boring third. By paying, I attend 1 raid per week. I skip farm-raids and go directly to the most interesting hard mode attempt. I was present on Orbituary and Steelbraker first, and currently I'm going to Vezax hard tries. I don't even have the normal Vezax kill. I've already written that I find gear upgrades overvalued, so I don't bother farming gear. My gear is a mixture of random ilvl226 with 213 and even 200 trinkets. I still got lot of gear, since everyone else already farmed everything out of Ulduar normal modes, so I have no competitor for ilvl226. You "roleplay" a "greedy goblin" a bit on your blog, or at least use it as a metaphor for the archetype of a player out to make gold wisely. How and why did this start? Goblins are a money-oriented faction in WoW, so it was an obvious identification. I've started the blog in a roleplaying fashion, but that faded away quickly. I like the word "goblinism" since it is without the non-business aspects of real world philosophies. Terms like "liberalism" not only mean free market, but also the support of gay rights. "Neo-conservatism" not only means deregulation, but also violent crusades against the "enemies of freedom". I don't want to say anything about these things; they are simply not my topic. By being "goblinist" I don't have to struggle with comments like "how can you still support neo-conservatives after Abu Ghraib?" You have recently started a "goblin apprentice" program where you help lucky players learn how to make gold and blog about it. Can you tell us about this? From time to time I post an "apply now" post. People send me mails. I pick one, create a banker toon on their realm and start giving them advices how to make gold. Post their progress on the blog for other readers. When I write this, the second applicant is not yet selected. The first one made 5K in a week. What WoW economy-related blogs do you read or suggest?

• Just My Two Copper
• Zekta's Stuff
• Warcraft Econ
• One Copper
• The WoW Street Journal
• WoWenomics

Do you think that the professions are "balanced" for money-making? People agree on one thing: the worst professions to make money are the two they currently have, no matter what they are. Inscription is definitely the most profitable, simply because it's the most complicated (you have to juggle 350 recipes), so not many people do it. The rest of the crafting skills have a similar gold per hour ratio, and all of the crafting professions are way above grinding or even gathering. You seem to have mixed feelings on Inscription. What do you think about the profession, and what would you do to change it? WoW is made "casual" friendly (I really hate this "politically correct" term). Still, Inscription needs lot of addons, seed money, and serious time to start (after that it's running quickly). So I'm not surprised that there are not many scribes who use it to make money. I would change the glyph system so that adding glyphs does not destroy old glyphs. When you apply a new one, you should get the old glyph returned to your backpack. That way, the huge demand for glyphs would decrease (and also the huge money the common players pay to goblins). What posts do you suggest new readers read to get an introduction to your blog? The "my business" tagged posts. They are the most directly about making money. What/who is M&S, and where did that terminology come from? Morons and slackers. I believe WoW is easy and everyone who fails in it is either as dumb as piece of rock or as lazy as a welfare leech. However, real casuals cannot fail as they don't raid or PvP. There is no "success" or "failure" in fishing coins. What add-ons do you recommend or use for your daily trading? Auctioneer. The rest is for crafting: Lil'sparky, whohas, possessions. What do you think about gold farmers? Should Blizzard being doing more to stop them, or are they inevitable and even essential to the current game economy? They will exist as long as there are M&S who can't make money. Blizzard won't do anything about them since the goldfarmers also pay them $15 a month and they don't harass other players. What simple tips can you offer to players looking to pad their wallets a bit? Have the Auctioneer addon so you won't sell stuff for half price. Also, don't be a packrat. There is deflation; the items that are worth 100G today will be worth 10G a year from now. Sell everything in your bank that you don't use or plan to use in a short time. You can buy it back later cheaper if you need it. Thanks for talking with us! Thanks for the opportunity!

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It's been more than a week since Blizzard's deadline to personalize your Blizzcon 2009 tickets has passed, yet there's still a whole bunch of ticket holders trying to sell off their spares on eBay. Earlier this month was the last date for ticket holders to make changes to the names for Blizzcon tickets. Here's the process they required, as detailed on the official events FAQ:

You will have up until Saturday, June 13 at 5 p.m. Pacific Time to make any changes to attendee badge information in Battle.net Account Management. After this point, no further changes can be made. If you have not entered any information by this time, all attendee names will default to the full name of the Battle.net account holder. If you do not know the names of the guests you are bringing to BlizzCon and will not know by June 13, put all of the badges under your own name. Bring *all* of the printed bar-code emails, along with your photo ID, to BlizzCon, and you will be able to pick those up all of the badges yourself and distribute them to your guests. Photo ID will only be checked at the time of badge pick-up... In order to receive a badge, the name on the bar-code e-mail *must* match the name on your photo ID.

So how, exactly, are the ticket scalpers getting away with it if they can no longer update the names of the ticket holders? Some say they will show up at the convention center to pick up the tickets, then distribute them to auction winners. And I'm sure there will be some who will honor that promise (as long as you show up on time and in the pre-arranged location). I'm betting a handful won't. Other sellers say the tickets will remain under the auction seller's name, but say something shady like "Your badges will show my husband's name (or if you're a female, my name) but you will be able to get in and out without a problem." I'd rather not take chances with hundreds of dollars with that guarantee. And some sellers make no mention whatsoever that the June 13 deadline has passed. Now I'm sure that not everyone has evil intentions when they sell their tickets, but I do question the nature of sellers who want to sell their tickets for a crazy profit. Even a whole bunch of official fansite contests I've seen this month have all ended (as far as I can find out of the ones listed in the official forums). However, if you want some WoW-related entertainment, take a look at some of the WoW limericks submitted for WoWWiki's contest. Some are good, plenty are bad. But you'll definitely find some hilarity in there. But back on topic - there's not too many options left for those of us still without tickets. That only furthers my over all recommendation: Buyer beware! What's one to do? Well, first off, don't freak out. You, of course, should check back regularly here at Project Lore for news from the convention. If you want to live through Blizzcon without attending, check out the Directv offer to watch the event from home - murloc included. So, we have a little more than 8 weeks to go before the big event. I know there were a lot of you who didn't have luck with getting a ticket on the official sale dates. Did anyone try their hands at a contest, and perhaps even win some tickets? Anyone taking your chances with a ticket auction? How many of you are opting to watch from home?

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Earlier this week this video (thanks Kotaku) showing that someone had created a way to play World of Warcraft on the iPhone started circulating. TechCrunch called it the end of the world, and Gizmodo thought it had some potential. I just want it in my hands! The technology behind the program is a program called Vollee. Most of the processing is not actually done on the iPhone, but instead uses streaming video of the rendering done on another machine. The functionality was pretty basic, but it includes auction house access and also what would at least be a great way to get some dailies done without having to bring your computer on vacation. Unfortunately, the future of this and all WoW related iPhone Apps is up in the air. Blizzard just issued a Cease and Desist order to the makers of the popular apps, Armory Browser, Warcraft Characters, and Warcraft Arena Calculator. These apps used information that is freely available on the Armory, so why Blizzard would do such a thing is not quite clear at the moment. Perhaps Blizzard is making its own version of those Apps listed and doesn't want any other products out there to confuse users. Perhaps they're working closely with the creators of the Vollee application to give all of us addicts a way to get some WoW in while we're on the go. Whatever the reasoning, there is still a lot of potential in the iPhone and other smart phones for all of us. As a user of an iPhone and a couple of the apps that got Cease and Desists, Blizzard's decision to send out those C&Ds is a little frustrating to me. Hopefully Blizzard creates something amazing or gives up some control to the huge number of developers out there. I'd love a way to log in and chat with people while I wait for the bus and using the Auction House on the road would be amazing. What do you guys think? What kind of phone are you guys using? What World of Warcraft apps are you using on your phone? Would you play WoW on it if you could? What other WoW-related apps would you like to see?

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