Project Lore

The in-game fixes for 2/17 are not very extensive. In fact, there's only one item listed at all this week, but it's a fairly important one, especially for herbalists and those that consistently raid with flasks.

According to Bornakk:

Listed below are recent fixes we have applied to the game. Keep in mind that some of these changes may not be active until after the realm has been restarted. 

To review previous in-game fixes, please visit: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=21723843880&sid=1 


2/17 

• The drop rate of Frost Lotus, from herbs in Northrend, has been increased by 50%. 

The primary justification for this move seems to be lowering the currently exorbitant Auction House prizes on the valued herbs.

Undoubtedly, this is going to mean a whole lot of different things to different people inside World of Warcraft's economic spectrum. As a raider who only casually hunts herbs on an alt, I couldn't be more elated.

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When patch 3.0 hit, I dropped Engineering for Herbalism to prepare for Wrath. I thought it would better complement my Alchemy, and raw materials like herbs were likely to be in high demand as people level their professions. I thought that the Lifeblood ability would far outweigh the benefits of Engineering as far as usefulness goes, as the Engineering item enhancements do not stack. Months later, I'm wondering if I made the correct choice. Lifeblood is barely useful in PvE; healers don't expect me to cast a small heal over time and the health I regenerate in that period is unlikely to save me before a healer gets to me. It doesn't provide me with any stats. It is questionably useful in PvP, and I've been eying other professions like Jewelcrafting to provide me with more usefulness in raiding and arena. Blizzard has very much begun to treat professions like they treat classes: diverse, but all useful. Hardcore raiders will spend thousands of gold to squeeze out another dozen or so DPS, and Blizzard wants players to choose the professions they enjoy, not the profession that they should choose in order to best perform in content. All the different professions have comparable buffs to each class in both PvP and PvE situations, often in the form of bonus stats. These often take the form of special item enhancements, like Enchanter's ring enchants or Scribe's shoulder inscriptions, or passive abilities like Toughness. To me, Lifeblood is not nearly on the same footing. It has its uses in some situations, but having to use another action bar slot or hotkey as opposed to doing an enchant or getting a passive enhancement for a lesser effect gives me a sour opinion of Herbalism's PvE/PvP usability. As far as money making, some professions have some ability to make money by doing things you normally do while questing and exploring and an ability to make money by spending time on just the profession. Usually, this is in the form of gathering and crafting. For example, engineers can craft epic BoE items and collect from gas clouds they encounter in the world. Miners can mine from nodes that they find while out and about and can smelt ore into bars. Tailors can craft BoE items and have the Northern Cloth Scavenging to find more cloth while killing mobs. Either way, most professions are designed to be able to be lucrative both passively while roaming in the world or by investing time into them. Professions that satisfy this are Enchanting, Engineering, Tailoring, and Mining. I consider these professions to be much more appealing than the others. With the carpets from tailoring, I just may pick up Tailoring on my main (rogue). Its interesting to note that these professions are generally considered not to have a direct "complement", like Alchemy/Herbalism or Skinning/Leatherworking. For now, if Frost Lotuses weren't selling for 30 gold or more on my server, I'd be dropping Herbalism for something else right now, because it gives few benefits compared to other professions. The only benefit I would miss is being able to track herbs, which helps immensely for some of the Cooking dailies. As far as effort required, some professions are very easy and some are very difficult. Inscription requires you to stock a lot of herbs, pigments, and inks, and also requires you to sell a wide variety of glyphs to make the same amount of money as the other professions. Enchanting can be difficult to market - many players have an enchanter in their guild or someone they know rather than check the AH or shout in trade. Inscription seems very unappealing on a main for me for this reason and that its hard to "passively" make money. I think this needs work in the long run. What professions did you choose? Do you ever switch professions, and why?

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Up until the past couple of months, I always stuck with Horde characters. Sure, I've tried out Alliance here and there, but never found them quite as intriguing. I'm sure the fact that my RL friends I play with are all Horde also plays a role. But now that I've been true to the Horde since the WotLK release, I decided to try out an Ally once again. And the fact that I wanted to roll a character on the Executus server so I could play in the Alliance Project Lore fan guild gave me a good push. I know my way around gameplay pretty well, and I expected a refreshing change of pace when I rolled a draenei hunter. But as I've been leveling with her, I've been surprised by how much it has changed my perception of the game by adding to it. Obviously, Alliance is a new faction, and draenei a new race for me. And therefore, it's a new starting area to learn my way around. Pixie is my first hunter character (but thankfully I have a little guidance on how not to be a huntard). I've tamed my first combat pet, Artemis, and started training fishing and cooking for the first time to support his dietary needs. I picked up a couple of professions I've never leveled before - herbalism and alchemy -  just to keep the excitement going. And the friendly group of players in the guild that I'm new to have done a good job of making me feel welcome. So how has all this affected gameplay? Well, there have been a couple of funny moments. Like the first few times I came back from questing and initially thought it was weird that I was walking into a group of Draenei and not getting attacked. Then, realizing I'm one of them now. Also, the first couple of quests to kill Bloodelf spies or other Hordies tore at my heart a little. My Locomomo started out just like them! And now that I've pointed out differences in how we speak in vent, I owe my guildies some props. I've gotten a lot of help learning my way around the Alliance areas that up until now, I've only ever heard of and never fully experienced. And, I learned how to cluck at a chicken until it laid an egg that I now have for a pet. That confirmed my suspicions that indeed each faction has a few surprises up their sleeves. So all this new stuff makes it almost like I'm playing for the first time again. But at least I know the basics and lingo to help get me through. And it's making clear to me just how wide the world of warcraft can be, if you choose to utilize all it has to offer. One aspect that I'm looking forward to seeing in action will come once I leave the starting area. This is my first time on a PvP server. Have mercy! Has anyone else had a similar experience when starting up a new character?  And how long did it take you to get into the groove and past the feelings of awe that come along with the unknown?

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The heart of World of Warcraft's economy is the auction house. It doesn't matter what server you're on or what side of the conflict you've picked. We all deal through the auction house. If you're a blacksmith, enchanter, seamstress or in my case a scribe (inscription) it's your livelihood for gold. Now I don't know how the rest of the professions fair, so I can only speak for myself and for my realm of Kargath’s economy, but I'm hoping you all will pitch in your thoughts and comments. When inscription was introduced I jumped on it. I wasn't into doing professions before, and I had two open profession slots so I picked up herbalism and inscription. I leveled my skill up rather quickly. All was well. Then WotLK dropped. It gave us scribes new glyphs, scrolls, books and what would becomes my money maker (till recently) - Darkmoon cards. Any scribe will tell you that when the expansion was released selling glyphs was profitable. I remember selling the Glyph of Vigor to rogues for over 150g. I was making great money. Then people realized how easy it was to level up inscription. Prices dropped gradually and now you're lucky if you can sell any glyph for over 50g. The real value of inscription has yet to come, as we've seen how many new glyphs will be purchased when dual specs are unveiled in 3.1. Right now the only way to make real money is Darkmoon cards, more specifically, Nobles cards. When the Ace through Eight of Nobles are combined, a Nobles Deck is created. This rewards a Darkmoon Card: Greatness. About two months ago I had 10,000g. I was buying Adder's Tongue in the auction house for about 20g a stack and selling Chaos, Undeath, and Prisms cards for 500g or more. The complete Nobles deck was selling for 20k and each card for 2500g. Ah, good times. Now you’re lucky to get 50g for some cards. Some won't even sell for 25g. The auctions will just expire over and over. The nobles are holding some value but not as much as they used too. Decks now go for around 12k, so they've dropped too. What caused this to happen? I'm sure a lot of you have been victim to this crime of Auction House Etiquette.  This rule of etiquette is often broken or just plain ignored. Let's take an item like, say, the Ace of Undeath. This item used to sell for 500g or more but for this example we'll just say 500g. After selling a few of these I know the price. So I go to the auction house and lucky me there are no competitors, so I start the bid at 475g and buyout at 500g. Now, as expected, someone else gets the card, they see my listing and naturally want to beat that price so his item sells. So you'll see someone beat my previous listing for something like 470g for bid and buyout at 495g. We might go back and forth by 5g or less just to be listed as the cheapest. Then someone comes in and just decides he wants to just sell the item for a quick buck and decides to kill both of our chances at making some nice gold and lists his for 200g buyout. Seeing this travesty my competitor and I are now forced to lower our price to beat his rediculous price. It's called etiquette or common courtesy to respect other people's auctions so we can all make money. Why does someone do this? I know this can't be just happening to scribes of inscription. So have any of you out there seen this happen? Have you logged into the game to check your auctions, only to find that your stuff hasn't sold because some jerk has out priced you by several hundred or even thousands gold for a quick sale? Because this is happening to all of us on all servers, it's killing the professions economy. I know there is always going to be competition, and I know we are always going to be fighting for the lowest price. Let's just be a little more cautious when we do so that we can all make money.

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Sometimes I have to stop and think that I made the wrong choice as far as my professions go. Being a tank I have grown accustomed to always being out of gold due to massive repair bills, but if I had made the smart choice I would have picked a profession to help balance that out. I didn’t. I am an enchanter/engineer, so I have two crafting professions. This means I don’t gather up mats, I have to buy them to level my professions. So it is safe to say I have spent a fair bit of time trolling the auction house looking for good deals. With the expansion being so new, there are lots of spikes and valleys as the market settles on a price for these new materials, but there is one trend that holds true no matter what. You gatherers are making a killing selling your mats! Prices on some of the more sought after mats have been just mind blowing. I know prices vary highly from server to server. But I am guessing we are all seeing the same trends. Being an engineer I’ve had to buy up lots of cobalt, saronite, and titanium bars to level up high enough to craft my goggles. This was an expensive process for me. The prices were just sky high, early on I saw stacks of lower level bars going for hundreds of gold each. Prices for herbs and leather haven’t been particularly low themselves. I imagine that those that are supplying these mats are getting very wealthy from them. I have several gathering friends that have straight up told me they have more gold then they know what to do with. That sounds like a good problem to have? I am pretty jealous of you guys that have built in income everyday from smelting titansteel. I’m fully aware that enchanters don’t have it so bad, and that enchanting mats are fetching a small fortune as well. My priority was leveling enchanting with those mats. Perhaps now that I am at 450 I can start to get some money back there. As far as my engineering goes, I am looking for clouds and gathering eternals… but these income methods seem to pail in comparison to the true gathering professions. It’s clear that there is gold to be had in Northrend if you know how to do it. So how are you doing? Are you gathering up a small fortune? Or are you the one lining the gatherers pockets?

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