Project Lore

So I'm sure many of you are running around in WotLK, leveling up your toon, gaining profession points, maybe a few new achievements. And with all of that 'living' in the World of Warcraft, there's a price: food, water, reagents, ammo and repairs.

But here is what some of you may be missing: Always shop where people know you. In other words, only buy and repair from people you are exalted with or you will lose tons of gold in the long run. Since patch 2.3, your toon's status with a faction can get you great discounts at exalted. These discounts of 20% are huge for guilds that try for world-first boss kills or grind on trash mobs in places they don't have the gear to go into and kill the boss. "But I'm leveling. I don't have time to go to SW or Thunder Bluff. And what's a few more copper anyway?" Okay, okay. you might be right. You might be willing to pay a little more for a service that's right in front of you rather than going to Shatt and porting to IF or Undercity. And really what's the difference on a 10% discount? What does it really matter? Well there may come a day when you might want the epic flying mount riding skill or maybe cold weather flying? That's the day you'll wish you'd repaired at SW or Undercity. Get a little addon called FuBar_DurabilityFu (requires FuBar) or something like it. It will show you exactly how much you save by repairing with a faction that really, really likes you. Now riddle me this: Do you do that in RL? Well? Do you shop at a convenience store for basics like milk, cookies and bread? Do you take your car to be repaired at a big dealership who know you only by your license plate number? Do you spend thousands of extra dollars on on an education or a house because you took the first loan you got approved for by some huge conglomerate who might know who you are if you give them your social security number? Well? So take a look at the game, and the players who have loads of money, already rollin' around on those mammoths you want so much. Take a look at the system of commerce, and really watch it. And then you'll start to see that it really is who knows you, who you're exalted with, that gets you the best deals, the best stuff and those special little things that they won't even consider giving to just anyone. Always shop where people know you. You will save in the longrun and you will get better deals that you ever thought possible.

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Hooray! Blizzard officially announced that Wrath of the Lich King will have Achievements. These will work in a similar fashion to Achievements in other games and on other systems, such as the Xbox 360. So, you can perform a task and get credit towards an achievement. While all achievements will grant meaningless points towards a score for comparison between players, some will also give fun or cosmetic rewards, like many of the seasonal quest rewards. The achievements will be separated into categories of PvP, Dungeons and Raids, Professions, Quests, Events, World Exploration, Reputation, and General. A couple of the examples listed for achievements are Shave and a Haircut and Fo Grizzle My Shizzle. Hopefully the second one has something to do with skinning a bear and having it aggro all bears in the zone. These things are going to do wonders for Blizzard, and will probably keep level 80s interested even more, causing players to spend lots of time and money getting just one more achievement.

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