Project Lore

Like 95 percent of the eyes on this page right now, I play World of Warcraft.  I am not one to shy away from the subject that I play WoW, unlike some people.  To top it off, I am actually proud of my nerdiness, displaying the titles I am playing in my living room as if they are trophies from the local bowling league.  This brings me to my point, I am a gamer - console, PC, handhelds, IRL sports, you name it. For nearly the past 20 years, the holiday season has become a video gamer's time to shine.  By that, I mean their time to get a handful of games, and lock themselves in a room in a vain attempt to finish all those news titles.  In recent years the holiday window has been extended further and further into the summer, with some analysts claiming that the new rush begins as early as September.  With all these triple A titles hitting the market, how is one supposed to find the time for them, as well as World of Warcraft? When I first started playing WoW, all other video games fell off the radar.  I let titles like Oblivion, Battlefield 2, Call of Duty 2, Company of Heroes, Neverwinter Nights 2, even Half-Life 2 slip by me.  Sadly, Resident Evil 4 (one of the best titles ever, in my humble opinion) and F.E.A.R. are the only titles released in that timeframe that I played and are worth noting - looking at you, Halo 2. Earlier this year I started a new regiment of gaming to compensate for all the missed material.  First and foremost, I cut back my World of Warcraft play time as a whole, and now play about half as much as I did during my high-end raiding days.  To accommodate this, I joined a raiding guild that was a close group of friends (I am not one of them) rather than a hardcore PvE guild.  Another simple change was to schedule things ahead of time and stick to it.  Basically, I only raid when I allocate the time a week or so in advance, as you would for any other activity that may take more than 30 minutes. Since implementing my new "life strat," I have been able to play dozens of other games, for better or for worse.  No longer am I missing as many big titles as I was before.  Portal, Team Fortress 2, Dead Rising, Halo 3, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Mass Effect, all defeated.  I even found the time to go back and play the amazing Half-Life 2.  With titles like Fallout 3, Red Alert 3, Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War 2, F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin, Street Fighter IV, etc. coming or here, I am glad I made the new strategy.  Then of course, there is Wrath of the Lich King.  That may change things for awhile... Are you guys content with just World of Warcraft and everything it has to offer?  Or do you fruitlessly strive to digest everything the wonderful video game industry has to offer as I do?  If so, what is your strategy? For those who may be wondering, I am currently playing The Witcher: Enhanced Edition, Red Alert 3, Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, The Incredible Maze (WiiWare - oh god, what a piece of trash), and still wrapping up Grand Theft Auto IV.  Fallout 3 is still in its shrink wrap, waiting for me to finish The Witcher.

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The Wrath of the Lich King World Event has come a long way since our little discussion on Friday. The event progressed to what many called Phase 4 during the weekend and just passed into Phase 5 last night. It was followed a few hours later by Phase 6, with the factions claiming to be developing a cure for the plague. Wouldn't it be awesome if the “cure” was the same one that Nathan Petrelli tried to implement in the alternate future of Heroes?  I digress. One thing we do know is that the new Karazhan boss mob, Tenris Mirkblood, will only be “around for approximately 10 days.” So if you want his non-combat pet or the ability to shred in World of Warcraft, then you better get that Karazhan group together before the 4th of November. If you want a run down on the zombiefication of the Azerothian nation, then head over to Wowhead. A recap is not why I am here. The real reason I write to you today is about the world event as a whole. This is the first designed event that has had any kind of perceived negative impact on the game. As many commentators noted in my previous post; it can be incredibly difficult to level during this time. I can understand their complaints under one condition, that they are entirely new to the game. I remember the good old days, before hours of raiding, before min-max charts, before perfecting one's spec for the best possible DPS or healing. I like to call them the virgin days. Everything was new and awe inspiring back then and you just wanted to take it in and never let it go. The World Event has disrupted all that, with most servers having nearly all of the NPCs whipped out and turned into minions of the Lich King. Quite hard to level and enjoy a new title under those conditions. However, most of you are not new to the game.  In fact, I would think that if you are visiting a site like ProjectLore, then you are pretty familiar with the title. That being said, please stop fussing over losing a few weeks of leveling your fifth alt and take in the world event for all that it is worth. These events happen once in a blue moon and can offer experiences in gameplay unmatched by any other title or genre you may play again. Ever.  Just ask the people that were around for the launch of the Outlands portal, the construction of Quel'Danas or better yet, the months long struggle for the opening of Ahn'Qiraj. Who doesn't remember the ringing of the gong outside AQ and the succeeding events? You are part of an epic and unforgettable event, live it.

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Oh, Hallow's End, how you have drawn me into the game once more. I mentioned in my Hallow's End Achievements post that it is my favorite seasonal event in Azeroth, and real life. The new Achievements, items and especially the candy, that Hallow's End offers has drawn me back to the game ahead of Wrath of the Lich King, which I did not expect to happen. I may not be raiding, but I am playing as much as before, if not more.

My new priest has received most of my Hallow's End play time, as well as most of my time in general. I have tackled a few of those Achievements I mentioned, despite the fact that I said I don't really care. I guess when I am so close to completing things like Tricks and Treats of Eastern Kingdoms, I get sucked into the idea of the pretty colors and effects flashing across my screen when I grab my last goodie. Unfortunately, I haven't tested my new found healing abilities in The Graveyard of Scarlet Monastery yet. The Headless Horsemen is just going to have to wait until I am 70, which should be before the event ends on November 1^st. I really need to get her in there so can experience the encounter as a healer.  Of course, she could also use the two rings, the mount, and squashling.

If I don't think my Priest is going to make it to 70 by the end of this week, I guess I will just start farming the Horseman on my Rogue. The rogue still needs an epic flyer, and while I will still have to cough up most of the money for the riding skill, at least I will look cool on the hard-to-get mount. Sadly, nothing else but the encounter itself is really needed.

I know Hallow's End is just a few days old at this point. Judging from the comments in my last post, that hasn't stopped some of you from completing the insane Hallowed Be Thy Name Achievement. Props to those who managed to accomplish it in only four days time, especially if you finished it before A Mask for All Occasions' removal. What are you guys going to do now? Work on scoring it on your alts, back to farming gold ahead of Wrath or abusing the EZMode raids due to the new patch?

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Wow.  What a mess the Echoes of Doom patch has been.  I do not know about the rest of you, but I have had a hell of a time with the latest content patch.  Blizzard Entertainment warned us that the maintenance would be extended, but my main server experienced over 12 hours of down time. Then it was hit with shoddy performance when the realm finally came up.  In fairness, I would rather take the downtime now, than when all the new content from Wrath of the Lich King goes live.  Of course, that is the exact reason Blizzard does these patches ahead of time, to work out the kinks. My server being down was only half the battle though.  I don't think I have mentioned this before, but I actually play World of Warcraft on three separate computers.  Keeping the WoW installations on the myriad of computers I have is difficult enough for common play (no, I don't want to carry around my WoW installation on an external harddrive).  So you can imagine how annoying it is to go through the motions of patching and reinstalling addons on three computers for a major content patch.  Tools like  the BLASC Client can only do so much. My two Windows XP boxes patched up nicely, although I had to transfer the patch from one box to the other because a download was corrupt.  Thankfully, Blizzard's repair tool managed to revert the MMORPG to 2.0.0 rather than having to reinstall everything.  Things went smoothly after that. My Windows Vista 64-bit box has been, and continues to be, a bit more difficult though.  I have the User Access Controls disabled - because they suck - and still get harassed by Blizzard's installer telling me to move the files to a public directory.  I told it to do what it wants and it failed to copy data from the original installation location into the public area.  I figured it was a PEBKAC issue and tried again, this time not moving the files.  Failed again with much the same error, unable to copy data. I then did a whole bunch of dumb things like copied the patch files into the installation folder, ran it as administrator, ran it as administrator while on one foot and ran it as administrator while I played The Witcher.  At this point I was worried about the installation as a whole, thinking that the failures may just cause a chain reaction of destruction.  Double-clicked the repair tool (as admin, while I prayed to Pagan gods) and got reverted to 2.0.0 on the Vista box. It took me awhile, but I finally gave up in frustration and began to download a new copy of the patch.  Hours later, in fact, it ended up being early this morning, it completed and installed correctly.  Looks like I was blaming Vista for another corrupted download.  Sorry Microsoft! Things are up and running on all of my computers now, and I have begun taking a hard look at which specs to select for my Rogue and Priest.  I think I am going to roll with a healer Priest from now until level 80, so that should be different.  How did the conversion to the Wrath of the Lich King's launch screen - which rocks by the way - go for all of you?

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Late yesterday afternoon the Player Test Realms were finally closed, marking the end of testing for patch 3.0.2.  At the same time, players were met with the typical “Breaking News” window at the login screen.  The latest in “Breaking News” was a message telling everyone that maintenance would be longer than normal.  Gee, what could possibly make maintenance longer than normal.  Oh, I know, Blizzard Entertainment is finally putting the Echoes of Doom patch live!

Just because we can't play World of Warcraft right now doesn't mean we should put it out of our minds.  There is plenty to worry about and do while waiting for Blizzard's techies to finish their job.  Hopefully most of you managed to empty out your inventories and cash out while you could.  If not, be sure to do so right away.  I expect that once the servers go live, the market will start its steady decline on those soon-to-be-replaced items.  The patch may make many items relatively worthless, but it will also allow many players to get some epic quality gems on the cheap.

Thanks to the removal of BoP and unique-equipped tags on PvP gems, those epic stones can soon be purchased by your PvP-dominating main and socketed into your whimpy alt's gear.  The change in PvP items – initially added because Blizzard was going to wipe Honor points and Battleground marks – is just one of the cavalcade of changes coming with Echoes of Doom.  There is another thing you can do, put on your reading glasses and hit up the latest official PTR patch notes for 3.0.2.

Done reading that ridiculous amount of class changes?  Well, then it is time to go lay out your new spec for your main and handful of alts.  I am actually still working on that myself, although I am kind of stuck with dagger builds for the moment.

Last but not least, and this one is often torture, it is time to start collecting 3.0.2 ready addons.  Many addons will be broken with the launch of 3.0.2, so updates will surely be needed for a handful of your mods.  The most popular mods have already been updated for the beta of Wrath of the Lich King itself, and therefore work fine in 3.0.2.  WoWWiki has a comprehensive list, complete with funny little icons, to keep us informed.  Most of my favorite addons are ready such as the Auctioneer suite, FuBar and tons of its plugins, Bejeweled, Itemrack, Rating Buster.  Some of my other favorites are in limbo right now, including the popular BankItems, AutoBar and Omen Threat Meter.  To make matters a little less time consuming, you may want to install the BLASC Client, which will keep your mods up-to-date via WoWAce's database.

Oh, and how could we forget the Achievements.  Which ones are you shooting for on day one?

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I have been on a bit of a financial kick lately. Although all the advisors out there say someone my age (less than 35) shouldn't worry too much about their portfolio, it is hard to break a daily routine. This daily routine actually extends into my digital life as well, as I am constantly monitoring fluctuations in the Azerothian market as well.

Being a self-proclaimed financial analyst, I figured I could give you guys a few pointers on how to cash in before the launch of Wrath. You see, as with any content patch, let alone an expansion, many things will change. It is pretty safe to say that no item from The Burning Crusade will remain at its current level of value once Wrath launches in mid-November. Although this may sound like a doomsday statement, there is still plenty of money to be made in the market.

Run On The Banks

The first thing you guys should do is take a hard look at your banks on all of your characters. Grab one of my favorite UI addons to make things easier. BankItems will allow you to look at all inventory - bank, mailbox and bags - on any character. Now that you can browse things easily, grab any items that will be worthless in Wrath and get the money for them while you can. Things like Primals, some enchanting mats and potions will all be replaced by better versions once Wrath launches.  Dump 'em like an abusive boyfriend.

Players should be able to pocket a sizable amount of gold by clearing out their banks of useless junk that they have been saving “for a rainy day.” Not only that, but your bank, and bags will be nice and tidy for the level grind to 80.

To The Market

Ore, leather, and cloth are a different story though. The market for these items will be different than the higher end gear, mainly because they are profession based. As mentioned in the comments section of my other economic post, things like low to mid-range cloth are actually selling at inflated prices. The reasoning behind this is due to many people leveling up alts for Wrath. Why stop and eat something when you can transmute some bandages and just keep on grinding?

This sets the old supply-and-demand graph on its head, with almost no supply but a high demand. Time is money friends and that jacks up the price on many trade profession goods.  If you have time, go farm some of these mid-range items on your main, and reap the benefits.

While running on your bank is making you money, it's more about cashing in while the items are worth something. In the trade profession market, you could make a good amount of gold by resale alone. If you are going to give this a run, be sure to pick up the Auctioneer Addon suite. It is a must have for any Auction House monitor, recording, scanning and adding functionality to the standard AH layout.

I should mention that each realm is different. What is selling like hotcakes for me may not be worth looting on yours. As an example, the ore market on Magetheridon-A has bottomed out recently, with high-end ore being at its lowest point since I reformatted some time ago. In contrast to that, mid-range ore, like Thorium, is through the roof. The evidence – that the bars are selling for much less than the ore – points to miners just buying it to smelt for skill points.

Be Careful - It Isn't Fool Proof

Be careful and do your research before you dump your stuff. Selling on the weekend and buying on weekdays (or bidding right before the servers go down) are also handy tricks to pulling in extra cash. Everything counts but it is still a risky market out there. Use my tips at your own risk but please, treat your financial advisor right. The last time I gave our readers some tips I couldn't use the ideas myself for a few weeks. I have no problem with players on my server making a buck, but send me (Solidsamm of the Alliance) 5% of the profit! Kthxbye.

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The moment of truth is about to arrive. As many of you noticed the second part of the patch has already began hitting our hard drives, and it's widely believed that Tuesday marks the release of 3.0.2. I am incredibly excited, but at the same time I am bracing myself for a bit of an awkward phase, and a somewhat rough transition. Things are about to change, and change a lot. I was not lucky enough to get a beta key, so in order to prepare I have been forced to spend my days reading blogs, websites, and patch notes to figure out what they are doing to my class. It seems like most classes have some pretty major changes coming, but some are bigger than others. Of course where I have been paying the most attention is my Paladin. To state things simply, they changed everything. From what I can tell, they changed the basic mechanics of the way the class operates. Our seal-judge-reseal way of life is gone. Now we have persistent seals and judgments that are not tied to the active seal. Not only that, but we have an entire new list of spells that seem to replace a big part of my tanking threat rotation. Seeing all this will be incredibly fun, but I can't help but feel I will be starting at square one. I will have to relearn how to play my class entirely. I admit that I get in a bit of a rut pulling with avengers shield, doing my standard judgments, and spamming holy shield. Now I have spells like Shield of Righteousness, Seal of the Martyr, and a whole mess of "hand" spells that will all find a good home on my hot bar. It is going to take some time to figure out my new seal and judgment rotation. We no longer have one Judgment, but three. While sealing and judging won't take up as much of my time, I feel it will still be important to manage seals and the debuffs we are placing on mobs very carefully. I imagine my rotation before and after the patch won't look anything alike. It's a bit of a frightening prospect. Luckily we have this 4 week window to romp through old content so we can focus on new abilities, and not have to worry about learning the instances. With any luck I will have all this mastered by the time Wrath drops. How about your class? Is this going to be an easy transition, or are you going back to the drawing board with me?

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Blizzard Entertainment announced the official System Requirements for their second expansion to World of Warcraft. Wrath of the Lich King sports higher requirements in a few areas that will likely force some users to upgrade their computers, or go nuts and get new ones. The announcement comes by way of Bornakk and the official forums. If you are interested in the full run down, then click that link. I will simply highlight and discuss the major changes. We learned shortly after Wrath's official release date was announced that the title would only be available on DVD. According to a poll run by WoWInsider, this means that some 7.5% of WoW users will need to upgrade their CD-ROM or CD-RW drive to a DVD-ROM or DVD+-RW. Thankfully, that cost is only about $30-$50, if you have the know how to install it yourself. Of course, there are some tricks around this, such as loading the game off an ISO image by way of an external harddrive. The rest of the upgrades are likely caused by Wrath's bump in graphics capabilities, like real-time shadows. The upgrades fragment a bit for the different platforms, PC or Mac. First off, PC users must have Windows XP SP3 or Vista SP1, but both service packs are free upgrades (for legal owners). This means that users of Windows 2000 will finally have to make the jump to Vista. Those who are scared of Vista should start searching for copies of XP now. Then comes the most drastic change for PC users. PC machines are required to have a faster processor than before, a 1.3GHz processor (or equivalent) instead of that old 800MHz dog. That is almost a 40% boost and will cause people on the low end to upgrade.  If you have the know-how this can be cheap, but most people will probably just opt for a new machine.  Ram and video card requirements remain the same, although Vista users need double the Ram than XP players, since that OS is a hog. Mac gamers are an entirely different story though. I will start it off with the worse news, all G4 machines will be unable to play Wrath of the Lich King. Blizzard states that the minimum processor requirement for Mac machines is a Power PC G5 1.6GHz processor.  This kills G4s across the board, PowerMac and PowerBooks. As for the OS, 10.3.x is being dropped in favor of 10.4.11 or higher. Look on the bright side , at least your OS doesn't cost hundreds of dollars.  Mac players will also need double the Ram at 1GB required, another low-cost upgrade. Lastly and most costly, Mac Minis and most MacBooks have been dropped due to their on-board video cards being a bit behind. MacBooks released almost three years after World of Warcraft can not play Wrath due to Apple's poor choice in graphics processors. Models from Late 2007 were finally updated with the Intel GMA X3100 on-board graphics solution, which can do the needed Lighting and Hardware Transform.  However, as of press time Blizzard has not confirmed them as suitable for Wrath, but it meets the announcement's listed requirements. It seems that many Apple supporters got the short end of the stick on this deal. This isn't to say that all year old PC laptops will be able to play Wrath.  Many OEM manufacturers (Dell, HP, Sony, etc) cut costs on the low- and mid-range machines the same way. Rule of thumb for those PC gamers, if you have an Intel on-board solution, there is cause for concern.  Lucky for me, my third gaming machine (I have a problem) squeaks by the requirements with a Radeon 9700 Pro. How do your machines hold up?

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Wrath of the Lich King has me far more excited than The Burning Crusade ever did. I don't know what it was about TBC that turned me off so much, because I was interested in what it had to offer. I was in TBC's beta, but I didn't burn myself out in it. In fact, that is where I realized that I wasn't as intrigued by The Burning Crusade as much as I was for World of Warcraft. I bought the first expansion regardless, hoping that Blizzard would manage to wow me in some way. I don't believe TBC struck me as much as vanilla WoW, but the expansion – and the community - managed to keep me entertained for the past 21 months and counting. Thankfully, WotLK seems like it will do more than just hold on to me.  With exciting features like these, how could it fail?

• Questing & Exploration – I love exploring these digital worlds that we spend so much of our time in and the new quests should make it that much more enjoyable.  To top it off, the lands are full of unseen monsters living in harsh conditions.
• Phasing – Phasing is the new black. The idea of phasing is to allow players to have their own unique world. Did you manage to do an escort quest and your buddy didn't? Well, to you, the person you escorted may appear in the nearby town, while for your buddy, he is still held captive by the forces of the scourge.  Same game, but appearing to each player in its own special way.
• Stormwind Harbor – Stormwind is getting a large addition that will gradually be introduced to the Human stronghold.  For the aesthetics alone, it is nice to see the major cities change over time.
• Naxxaramas – My hardore raiding days ended with Naxxaramas 40-man. No guild on my main server managed to clear it before TBC went live, although we were the closest. I can't wait to dance tackle it again, only this time at level 80.
• New talents & Level 80 – The idea of dual specs are interesting and so are all the new talents, for all classes.
• World PvP – World PvP and Battlegrounds are to make a comeback in Wrath. Arenas with environmental hazards are all well and good, but Lake Wintergrasp and Strand of The Ancients are where it is at for me.
• Enchanting Changes - Being able to sell and purchase Enchants on the Auction House = priceless.
• Death Knights – Forget about new races, that is old hat. Yea, we will have new racial abilities, but what could be more exciting than the first Hero class? I won't be leveling a Death Knight right away, but I will definitely take one for a spin due to the quest chains and lore associated with starting one.
• Lore – This is actually the number one thing I am waiting for. Wrath of the Lich King promises to have some killer lore.  With the introduction of the new Death Knight class, new quests, the lead up to Icecrown Glacier and the battle against the Lich King/Arthas, how could it not be awesome? I guarantee you that there will be one quest chain in the game that will blow you away. KooPA's are known for their truthiness...and walking off cliffs.

There is tons more to Wrath of the Lich King than what I have listed, another reason that I can't wait to jump in on November 13th. What has you all in a tither?

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It seems like the entire world (of Warcraft) has gone into a bit of a holding pattern lately. Many people (myself included) have stopped raiding, we just heard about the arena points reset, so there is not a whole left for anyone to do other than count the days until November 13^th. While I am very much in the same boat, like hell I'm going to stop playing the game! So I have been trying to find a few activities to keeping me going. In the short term, I have been spending my days grinding the Kodo mount for Brewfest. I have over 200 kills and still have yet to see the thing drop, I'm beginning to suspect the cake is a lie. I imagine I will get it eventually, and if not, Brewfest will ultimately come to an end. Soon I will be looking for other alternatives. I have been trying to stay positive and look at this as a good excuse to catch up on those things I have always been meaning to do. I'm talking about all those projects I have always meant to get around to, but never did because I was busy raiding. Here is my list of things I think I will finally be able take a shot at:

Netherwing - I want to finally grind out the Netherwing Dailies, and get my nether drake. Although I must admit, with all the new mounts on the horizon, my desire here is waning a bit.

Fishing / Cooking - I have played around with the idea of leveling my fishing and cooking. It seems like a good way to make some cash and be able to make all that tasty raid food.  Problem is I hate fishing, so I guess this one is just a matter of how bored I get.

Farming Gold - The last thing I could even thing to do on my main is stockpile gold. Certainly not a bad approach, but I question what is going to happen to the WoW economy, and if this will pay off in the long run.

Alts - I have a Rogue that is closing in on 70 fast, and want to make her a priority. I have a few others sitting in 60 range that I may have time to get up there as well.

New Professions - With the prices on the AH falling through the floor (at least on Executus), this isn't a bad time to powerlevel a new profession on one of my alts, and I've always wanted to try Jewelcrafting. For some it may be a good time to push to 375 on your main.

Roll Horde - I've always wondered how the other half lives.

I'm sure there are lots of other worthy projects that would be worth taking on during this time. So tell me, what are you guys doing?  Have you come up with a productive way to spend your WoW time? Please don't tell me you are still raiding... I may become incredibly jealous.

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