Banking In WoW, AKA Being Muleheaded

 Get the Gold  Comments Off on Banking In WoW, AKA Being Muleheaded
Jul 312008
 

Banker, mule, or Auction House Alt, the idea is the same. The [tag-tec]World of Warcraft[/tag-tec] has made it easy for us to make many different characters so lets take advantage of this.

The Banker/Mule/AH Alt is a character who stores, buys, and sells stuff for your toons. All of them.

Gather up some collectibles, hit the nearest mailbox, and send them all to your banker. Log into the banker at some point and post your auctions, collect your successful sales, buy stuff and ship to the appropriate other character, etc.

The major share of all your gold will stay with the banker. Partly for convenience, partly to stifle impulse spending if your main is careless with her gold.

Start Here

Roll up a toon and run to the nearest auction house, at level 1. Level it to 5 if you want to make use of skills such as disenchanting, tailoring, etc.

I like Stormwind on the Ally side, but Ironforge and The Exodar are fine. Darnassus’ AH and mailbox are too far apart and I’m lazy. 😉

Horde side I like the west AH in Slivermoon since the mailbox is about 5′ from the AH, but go where ever works for you.

Never see the Ah again

Rather, your mains won’t. Anytime they get stuff, they send it to the mule. Anytime they need stuff they send a purchase order to the mule, who then buys it, packages it, and sends it off.

One trap here is forgetting exactly what gear your main has. It might be worthwhile to send some cash from your banker to your main and have your main buy it directly. She’ll have to do that with Enchants anyway, so what the heck.

Need some extra short term storage space? You main sends the stuff that needs to be stored to the banker, who then returns it. It’ll sit in the mail box for up to 30 days and you can pick it up as needed. The mail system will hold far more stuff than your bank and it’s more convenient, it just won’t hold it forever.

About that level 5…

If you level your banker to 5 you can pick up the enchanting skill and level it to 75 if you like. You can then disenchant all those worthless low level green items you pick up.

If you grab tailoring then you can add a minor health enchant to the low level chest items you can make. This might allow you to sell those items for a bit more on the AH.

You can also make up some of the basic green items, disenchant them, and sell the parts.

So save yourself some time and effort in the future and roll that banker now.

Faster WoW Leveling – Two Cool Tips

 Leveling  Comments Off on Faster WoW Leveling – Two Cool Tips
Jul 312008
 

I wish I could claim credit for these, but they’re both from the people at Dominate Your Server. Cool site, great tips, and their emailings are full of good stuff.

1) Never quest out of rest.

Questing is faster than grinding, but only if you have your quests somewhat organized. This is why I like leveling guides. Many players don’t really need them, especially after leveling several characters all the way.

Always stop in an inn when done and always make sure you have rest XP available when playing your toon. When you run out of the rest XP then you hand in whatever quests and log out in an inn to recharge.

If you run out of Rest XP and just have to keep playing then go for it, or farm for items or gold or rep or go kill other players. Heck, log into your auction house banker and do some buying and selling.

If you stick to the rest XP and you have your quests organized you should find yourself leveling very quickly.

1b) Roll several toons and run …

Have lots of playing time? Roll several toons and combine playing them with the rest xp. So when toon #1 is out of the rest xp you log her ouit and log in the net toon. So you’ll have two more characters leveling at pretty much the same rate, you’ll be able to stay in the rest xp zone for 100% of your playing time, and you’ll have those characters all hitting 70 arouind the same time.

2) Never play alone.

If you always pair with someone to do your leveling you’ll find that the levels go by significantly faster.

You’ll get less XP per kill, sure, but you’ll kill things alot faster. You’ll also have less downtime, even if the extent of your healing capability is your first aid skill.

You’ll be able to take on tougher mobs, those silver elites will be much easier, the gold elites will become something to sneeze at, team quests will be a lot easier, and your chances of getting ganked on the PvP server are a little less. Conversely, your chances of successfully ganking others is that much better.

My wife and I play together alot. She’s pretty new, but is coming along quickly. One pair is my Hunter and her Rogue, the other is my Pally and her Hunter.

It works out very well. We truly suck at the PvP part on these toons, but we’ll get there.

Now get back to work.

I Have a Cunning Plan…

 Rogues  Comments Off on I Have a Cunning Plan…
Jul 292008
 

Actually, it’s a Cunning Blade and I’ll skip further Black Adder references.

[tag-tec]Rogues[/tag-tec] at level 10 can do a quest chain to get this Cunning Blade as a quest reward. This quest chain is entirely optional and if you browse the Auction House regularly you’re likely to find better weapons for not much gold. (And you twinks can stop laughing now.) 🙂

Still, it’s a fun little quest chain and it can be quite challenging for your average level 10 Rogue. Each race has a different quest, in its own area, but the quest rewards are the same.

Gwynne’s done a complete walk-thorugh of all of these level 10 quest chains. So if you have an up and coming Rogue, here you go:

  1. Level 10 Rogue Quests for Horde
  2. Level 10 Rogue Quests for Alliance

New WoW Battlegound – Northrend Battleground

 Battlegrounds  Comments Off on New WoW Battlegound – Northrend Battleground
Jul 242008
 

From TenTonHammer:

The new battleground being added in Wrath of the Lich King looks to be something completely new and unique. Instead of a battleground where you have to adapt between attack and defense, this one puts you on one side and then the other. That’s right, you play a game as the attacker, and then the teams switch sides and you play it again! Whoever does better in a combined score, wins.

Sneak Peek – New Wrath of the Lich King Battleground

According to the article this is a Normandy Beach Assault, WoW style, and it even comes with seige vehicles! Send in the ninjas and man the tanks.

Now will those vehicles be driven by Taurens or lobbing Taurens? M1 Abrams Tauren Lobber? Or pour in a pile of Gnomes and lob them all?

Ok, that’s not very likely, but it’s fun to think about.

Honor awarded, marks, allowable levels (I’m guessing over 70) and what you buy with those marks seems to be an open question for now.

Naturally the losers in the crowd will try to figure out how to surrender and die to their opponents as quickly as possible and I wonder where the AFKers will hide. Maybe we can lob gnomes at them?

The whole thing looks like great fun to me.

edit: TenTonHammer also has info on the arenas and a video of the WoW devs discussing the new PvP areas. WoW PvP Preview: Dalaran / Orgrimmar Arenas and Northrend Battleground

edit:From WoWwiki – Full Northrend Map, Beta

Wow Talents – Now to Level 80!

 wow news  Comments Off on Wow Talents – Now to Level 80!
Jul 242008
 

Via MMORPG.com

Blizzard has posted a Wrath of the Lich King talent calculator, which helps players explore the talent changes that are coming to WoW with the next expansion.

Bliz has the preliminary level 80 talents up on their talent calculator. All of these are subject to change, and likely will be changed, as [tag-tec]Wrath of the Lich King[/tag-tec] moves through beta.

I suppose that since Bliz has posted these talents that they must be reasonably close to the final version, but we’ll see.

Still, they’re fun to explore now. Check out the new talents here.

Fast Leveling Tips for WoW

 Videos  Comments Off on Fast Leveling Tips for WoW
Jul 232008
 

Leveling and gold gathering are two topics of interest to pretty much all WoW players. Well, here’s a fellow who’ll show you how to do both.

Some extracted tips:

  1. Always stay in the center of your screen
  2. Call out your abilities as you use them
  3. Say “For the Horde” alot, even if Alliance
  4. This guy’s going to beat WoW in a few days. Can you do that?

Warning – Major silliness follows:

World of Warcraft Achievements

 wow news  Comments Off on World of Warcraft Achievements
Jul 212008
 

From the offical World of Warcraft Site:

While Wrath of the Lich King will improve many of [tag-tec]World of Warcraft[/tag-tec]’s existing features, it will also introduce plenty of brand-new ones to keep the game fresh and interesting. One of these new features is sure to suit a wide range of play styles: achievements. These self-contained goals will offer new challenges, satisfy goal-oriented players, allow others to see your accomplishments in World of Warcraft — and are just plain fun.

Achievements, of course, are a big thing on the Xbox system and they’ve been done in other MMOs, such as City of Heroes’ Badges.

Personally, I like the idea of adding achievements to WoW and I think it’ll spark some new interest in re-doing some old stuff, as well some other things that aren’t necessarily along the lines of leveling of making more gold. .

It looks like their Feats of Strength achievments will retroactively take care of some past glories, so older players won’t have to re-do everything again. Bliz even says that some of these will be impossible to achieve in Wrath of the Lich King.

For new glories there will be achievements for getting a shave (Ok, let’s load those Dwarves onto the cart!) and there’s even one for people prone to falling off of high towers.

Anything to further the WoW addiction, right? 😉

So what do you think should be some of the new [tag-tec]WoW achievements[/tag-tec]?

Patch 2.4.3 Is Live

 wow news  Comments Off on Patch 2.4.3 Is Live
Jul 152008
 

It looks like patch 2.4.3 is going live, since it just downloaded today.  Patch notes haven’t made it to the main page, though. They’re still on the test side.

Here they are: Public Test Realm Patch Notes

I’ll be buying a couple of those level 30 mounts ASAP.

 Posted by at 7:33 am
Jul 092008
 

From the G4 site: Bushnell Predicts End of ‘Warcraft’

In an interview with Gamasutra, [tag-tec]Bushnell[/tag-tec] said:

[tag-tec]World of Warcraft[/tag-tec] just passed what I call the Bushnell Threshold. The Bushnell Threshold is… I watch my sons, and because they’re my sons, they tend to start things at the beginning, or sometimes a little bit before. So they play and play and play and play, and all of a sudden, they don’t play anymore. They stayed with World of Warcraft for a long time. My older son all of a sudden got Mage 72 or whatever it is and quit. All at once. Cold turkey. I didn’t think it was going to happen. And my 14-year-old is getting close to there, which is surprising.”

Well, my kids showed a similiar pattern, and then they keep coming back when something in the game sparks new interest. When [tag-tec]Wrath of the Lich King[/tag-tec] come out I expect they’ll be spending long hours exploring every last inch of the thing.

When you’ve leveled everything and raided everything and done every BG many many times the game gets a bit old.

Given the continuing growth of WoW and the fact that the #2 game is so far back that you have to use a telescope to see it… well, I don’t think WoW is ending anytime soon.

It’s also kind of funny to see an Atari guy saying this. Atari has had a record of sharp to brilliant ideas shot down with unbelievably bad follow through.

No, I don’t think the End is Near.

How about you?

Activision and Vivendi Tie the Knot

 wow news  Comments Off on Activision and Vivendi Tie the Knot
Jul 092008
 

From the Washington Post blog:

This afternoon (July 8,) game publisher Activision announced that its shareholders have voted to approve a merger with Vivendi Games.

The proposed merger between the two video game giants was announced in December, but required the blessing of Activision shareholders. The game publisher said that 92 percent of shareholders approved the deal, which is expected to close tomorrow.

One analyst has predicted that the merged company would make $1.38 billion in profits during its first financial year, enough to make [tag-tec]Activision Blizzard[/tag-tec] the world’s largest game publisher

This could mean interesting things for the World of Warcraft, or maybe that the new company will have the resources to come up with similarly successful games.

But I don’t think I’ll be calling them Activision Blizzard very much…

More on Blizzard Activision:

Source: Activision’s ‘DJ Hero’ Was A Vivendi Game, Now A … – We now know that “DJ Hero” was in development under publisher Vivendi before they merged with Activision to become Activision Blizzard. The now-called “DJ Hero” was one of the few unannounced projects that the new mega-publisher decided …

More layoffs at Blizzard Activision – Vivendi, Blizzard’s owner, officially combined its interactive entertainment business with Activision, a publisher of mostly console games, in July and renamed the group Activision Blizzard. Layoffs have been reported at other locations …

Could Activision Enter The Console War? – Take a look at your game collection, and see how many of your games either have Activision, Blizzard, or Vivendi on them, and then think back to the Atari 2600, and how many quality games over the last 29 years have been released by …

Activision tried to buy Blizzard before merging with Vivendi Games – Merging with Vivendi Games was not Bobby Kotick’s first thought. While talking about the deal today, the Activision (and now Activision Blizzard) CEO admitted that in his first conversations with Vivendi Games CEO Bruce Hack, …

 Posted by at 7:34 am