Project Lore

Blizzard has already set the bar for the next expansion. Based on Wrath and The Burning Crusade, players expect to have to level 90. Players expect either new races or a new hero class starting at a high level. Something that not many people talk about but would probably miss is a new tradeskill. Jewelcrafting was very fitting for Burning Crusade; the theme fit in well with the Naaru and the Draeni. Additionally, it added a whole new level of character customization and armor itemization. Inscription worked alright with Wrath; it used herbs as the raw materials, giving Alchemy a run for its money, and also offered some character customization. In a new expansion, should we expect a tradeskill? What kind of role would it fill? One of the first things to note is that a gathering profession would be hard to implement. It would require creating nodes all across all of the zones in order to scale with character level. Unless it started at a high level when you learn it, it seems unlikely that Blizzard would simply implement a new gathering profession without a crafting profession. Supposing they did make a new crafting profession, they have three options for raw materials: ore, leather, or herbs. There are currently three professions which use ore, two that use herbs, and one that uses leather. Enchanting is unique in that it uses equipment as a resource in a sense. The fact that three professions use the products of mining may be indicative of why mining is considered to be the most lucrative gathering profession by a wide number of players. The obvious design choice would be to choose the resource that is used least by professions to create an overall even consumption of resources. But what profession besides leatherworking could work with leather? If we look at the Jewelcrafting and Inscription examples, each of them came with a complementary ability to convert raw materials into processed goods for crafting. But what could you do to leather to turn it into something that doesn't fall into the realm of leatherworking? And what would it create? If not leather, how could we use herbs? A new crafting profession probably would not create armor as its main selling points. For each of the armor classes, there is a profession that creates armor for them. Inscription was reaching with the glyph idea, but its come to be accepted. Weapons are largely in the realm of Blacksmiths, and trinkets are (somewhat) in the realm of Jewelcrafting. Is it even possible with the rate that Blizzard will be coming out with expansions that they can continue to create professions for each one? It seems that for future crafting professions, it is necessary for them to couple new professions with a new feature. With player housing being one of the most requested features, I wonder how this could be implemented. Perhaps Tauren tents could fall in the realm of player housing. It could fall under a "Tanning" profession. Its kind of hard to differentiate what would fall between these, how this would work for the Alliance, and how to create a profession around just this. I think the solution is to give each profession the gathering ability that complements it. With more and more crafting professions and less and less gathering professions, the ratio of total players with crafting professions to players who gather more than they craft is decreasing. Having every player be able to gather materials for their craft would simplify it a lot for new players, as well as make it easier to scale professions together. Leveling through the first 350 levels of each profession could be done either by gathering or crafting, making it much easier. Additionally, theoretical new hero classes or players who drop professions for new ones could skill up easier. The profession bonuses, like Lifeblood and Toughness, have been a little inferior and less customizable than their crafting counterparts, and rolling some things together might make it easier to balance. Continuously adding professions and having characters only be able to choose two does add diversity, but it also may result in a lot of content or mechanics not being consumed or experienced by a large player base. This sort of fits in with my idea of the convergence of crafting and gathering professions that I've expressed in the past. Engineers can now gather from gas clouds, Tailors "gather" more cloth, miners smelt, etc. Most professions can give you money by interacting with the world or by interacting with players and crafting. Later, I'll talk about some speculation behind Woodworking. Do you expect a new profession in the patch, and what would it be, especially if its Maelstrom based?

Click to read more ...

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!

Click to read more ...

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?

Click to read more ...

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.

Click to read more ...

In this interview with Nethaera, Ghostcrawler has revealed a lot of the specifics about the upcoming dual spec system. Up to this point we've been given hints about how the system will work and what will be included, but this time GC has unveiled much more specific information. Some of the key points from the interview:

• Only level 80 characters will be able to purchase a second spec. This may be changed based on feedback.
• The Lexicons of Power located in major towns are required to switch specs. Additionally, scribes can create an item that allows a group of players to summon a temporary lexicon of power. The only other restriction (so far) is that specs cannot be swapped in combat or in arenas.
• Paying for a respec will only clear talents from a character's active spec.
• A Gear Manager is going to be added into World of Warcraft. This will not automatically change the character's equipment after a spec change, but will be configurable to quickly change weapons, trinkets, or entire outfits. Sounds like an integrated Outfitter or Itemrack.
• Hunters will no longer have to pay a trainer to respec their pets. Blizzard didn't want an extraneous step for hunters to have to go through to change their pets' talents. Hunters will also be given a new spell (on a long cooldown) that will allow remote access to the stables.
• As we've heard before, glyphs and action bars will both be tied to the talent spec, changing along with the talent switch.
• Talent points will be configurable before the get saved. This allows players who are respeccing to allocate talents with the ability to double check and avoid having to respec again just to move a couple of points.
• It is indeed Dual Spec, not Tri or Quad spec, for now. In the future, they may allow for more than two specs to be used in the system.

All of this is pretty exciting news. With a lot more of the details hammered out, it seems like this may be coming even sooner than I had thought. We'll still have to see how the whole dual spec system has shaped up when it comes up on the PTR, but I am very enthused about the idea of having more than one talent build available.

Click to read more ...

Oh sweet jumping Jesus.  Patch 3.0.2 is apparently creeping up on us sooner than I expected.  Blizzard Poster Zarhym announces that the bridging patch is going to be a large one.  Not that we expected anything less, considering the size of the pre-TBC “Before the Storm” patch.  I already touched on some changes that were announced when the patch was first revealed but the news of the impending download calls for an update. For starters, Zarhym warns us that this patch will be big.  So big that the flying skull wants all users to activate their Background Downloader to prepare to download the data that has been finalized.  It is also mentioned that the downloader should be downloading faster in general now.  Seems that they tweaked their torrent system a bit. The process should be enabled shortly. Even though we received the warning, Blizzard has still not added any patch notes to their site.  It's likely we will see some patch notes this week to elaborate on all the known changes. We also have some anecdotal evidence to hint at how soon the patch may be coming.  First off, the PTR forums have been wiped, which usually occurs before a patch heads to them.  I should mention that much of the new stuff has been tested on the beta realms extensively, meaning a PTR session could theoretically be skipped.  Secondly, the Launcher is now displaying a Wrath of the Lich King splashscreen.  Nothing groundbreaking or concrete, but evidence nonetheless. Here is some of the stuff we already know is coming with the new patch:

• Massive alterations to the way raid buffs/debuffs work
• A built in Guild Calendar
• New class spells and talents
• Stormwind Harbor
• Barbershops
• Two new Arenas
• Inscription profession
• Hunter pet changes and additions
• Zul'Aman bears no longer awarded

Get to work on those bear mounts guys.  I will be content with waiting for a Polar Bear though.

Click to read more ...

During the late afternoon yesterday it came out that we World of Warcrafters would be receiving one more content patch before the release of Wrath of the Lich King. This isn't that unexpected as Blizzard Entertainment did the same thing shortly before the launch of The Burning Crusade. Blizzard Poster Eyonix updated us with information on the patch that is meant to bridge the upcoming content changes. Here are the highlights:

• New class spells and talents
• Stormwind Harbor
• Barbershops in capital cities
• Zeppelin towers outside of Orgrimmar and Tirisfal Glades
• Two brand-new Arenas featuring challenging new layouts, terrain hazards, and moving obstacles
• Guild calendar
• New profession: Inscription
• Hunter pet skill revamp

Eyonix was quick to point out that the above list is simply highlights, nothing more. The flapping dragon mentions that the patch notes will be out as soon as they are available. Also of interest to some will be the addition of the Inscription profession. Blizzard will not be limiting the new profession to just purchasers of Wrath. Any owner of The Burning Crusade will be able to select Inscription as one of their professions with a max training level of 375. Those with Wrath installed will be able to train Inscription, and other professions, beyond 375. Inscription doesn't have me that excited to be honest.  But that is because I simply do not want to train another profession.  I will likely just remain as a consumer of the new profession rather than a producer.  What does have me excited is the changes to Stormwind.  I hope that Blizzard makes the changes slowly, progressing the addition as Wrath approaches.  If done correctly, the process should make the city feel more alive. Last but not least, Arenas with environmental hazards and obstacles?  Awesome.  What has you guys hot and bothered?

Click to read more ...