Cornering a Market

When we started playing, one of the silliest things (and there were a lot of silly things) was that we had absolutely no understanding of how the auction house worked. I remember going over to an auctioneer once, clicking open her little window, seeing nothing for sale, and then not going back for about another 10 levels.

Now, when Feifer and Skrah play, a good portion of the time spent (usually after questing or whatever) is spent working the auction house angle. We both make stuff to sell, buy mats and materials, and just generally cruise the auction house. Kinda strange that a game would consist of that kind of "play," but the game is full of surprises.

So, recently Skrah got into Thorium in a big way. Mining it, sure, but also buying thorium ore cheap and selling thorium bars (once smelted) a little higher. In one day of doing this, Skrah can make a good 10 or 20 gold. Then came Uktheredon (name changed slightly), who, on our server, decided to corner the thorium market.



I noticed it first when all of my thorium got bought out by Uk, and when I went to sell more, I saw that s/he had bought everyone out and completely stabilized the market in terms of price and numbers of units. Where as thorium bars were once selling for anywhere from 32g to 50g for a stack of 20, now there were only stacks of 5 and each was 8g. Go Uk go!

So I got in on it, starting to price my own stacks of 5 just below Uk's price. But Uk was having none of it, and kept buying me out ... which, of course, worked for me. In a few hours of this, I made 100 gold. Then I ran out of thorium and had to wait. Boo!



Anyway, I'd never seen someone in the game try to corner a market before, and in the long run, it was only minimally effective. With thorium, at least, there are just too many people out there with it who are willing to sell for whatever price. But I'm still convinced that Uk's moves pushed the overall price up, which was clearly one of his/her goals.

Guild Gratitude

I love my guild. Skrah and I have had some bad experiences, but this one is a real keeper; and, to top it all off, we've stayed in and been involved enough that we've even become officers. (I hope we're good officers and very helpful).

Being an officer has changed things a bit. We can now see "notes" on other players--and even make some notes if we so desire; we can take more from the guild bank; we can try to boost morale. Of course, the ironic thing is that we're the high lvls now, so we mostly need to give to the bank, not take from it . . . plus, there's very little of use to us in there anymore.

But beyond riffing on officer status, I'd like to offer a suggestion: wouldn't it be great if there were guilds--GOOD guilds--in real life? If you had a chat line that would contact everyone who could help you with a problem? If there was a communal bank of goods that was at your disposal? If there were events like naked wrestling and fish fighting? Well, ok, the last two could get weird. But the general principle is a good one, I think. A support network that's made up of people who are working hard to advance, who like what they're doing, who want to help each other so that the larger group can succeed.

Damn, I wish I had that in RL! And don't even try to suggest that family counts . . . that kinda guild comes with guild guilt, which will have to be the subject of another post.

To a universal chat line! To phone a friend! For the Horde!

Floaters

I'm a sceenshot fanatic. When Feifer and Skrah discover a new place, I take a screenshot. If I see someone in a groovy getup, I take a screenshot. When I ride the bat, I take a screenshot. And whenever I encounter a glitch, I take a screenshot. Not that glitches are all that common in the game; I'm continually surprised by how few glitches there are.

Floaters are one seam in the works that I particularly enjoy. You kill a beast or dude near some kind of object, and because of the object, the beast or dude ends up with their corpse just kind of floating there, hung up by the object. Corpses don't wrap well. In some cases, which are particularly fun, the objects are removable, leaving floaters up off the ground. (Miners know this well.)

So here's my little gallery of floaters, including Skrah floating on top of where some copper once was. Floaters are a reminder, in a game with so few glitches, that there are still ways to find and create the un-real in gameland.

Pet Me: Skrah's Little Dragon

Skrah recently upped his engineering by making a dragon companion. Yes, making. I love the idea, first an foremost, that you could take piles of metal and ore and craft a cute (*CUTE) dragon who will follow you so loyally wherever you may go. Granted, the dragon only sticks around for a short time, and we often find his little body dead on the road after a long hike . . . but still, the little guy is precious and makes me almost wanna have a pet of my own. You know: I don't wanna have to do all the chores associated with a pet: summon it, feed it, take it out for walks in the Hinterlands. But pets, companions, minions, and vanity pets are absolutely fun.

The Epic Dolls know all about vanity pets--their latest post on the subject rocks. Amazing to think of a whole bank full of pets . . . it would be illegal, or at least not "free range" if this weren't wow.

Maybe Skrah will post a picture of his little cutie . . . in the meantime, here's one I like.

Update: That image.

Beggars will be Takers

There are, as far as I can tell, two classes of leaches in the game: the Beggar and the Taker.

Beggar; n. a player who asks for mats, equipment, enchants, etc with no intention of ever helping him/herself. Habitat: chat lines and cities. They request materials because they are simply too damn lazy to help themselves. They are, necessarily, too cheap to tip, and would never, ever lift a finger to quest and or gather things for themselves. Indeed, they fear no reprisal, nor do they feel any shame about their activities. Associated terms: Taker.

Taker; n. a player who helps him/herself to whatever s/he wants from the guild bank without ever donating anything. Habitat: the high ranks of a guild. These players will gladly rob you blind; feel no compunction to be fair, reasonable, or equitable; and do not, despite their use of the guild bank, understand guilds to be about communal sharing, helping, and teamwork. Associated terms: Beggar.

Both anger me deeply, and, in my opinion, ruin what little belief I have left in the potential for the longevity of any guild. My only hope is that our guild leader will notice the particular player who is always mooching off the kindness and hard work of everyone else. But, as you probably surmised by now, my hope is small and extinguishable.

Beggars are usually Takers and someone needs to teach them the Art of the Request . . . or at least give them a good old fashioned bare-bottom spanking in the center of Orgrimmar.

All Numbers

One of the things I have trouble accepting in the game is the degree to which it's all about numbers. I was reminded of this yesterday, though, cause when Skrah bumped over the 50 mark, all of his vital stats (stamina, strength, smelliness, etc.) went up with him. It's a game of pushing buttons, and those buttons are all about increasing numbers.

Here's a quote from wowinsider.com just to demonstrate how mathy the game is:

Previous to TBC, 50 Stat Points = 50 Stamina or 50 Strength. So an item that was "worth" 50 stat points would have 50 points of a stat. Combining stats would increase the number, though, so that an item worth 50 stat points would have 34 Stamina plus 34 Strength. This way, the value of the item isn't reduced too much by spreading the stats around. Combining three stats reduced each stat even more to 26 points a piece.

I like to think it's a game of skill, a game of quickness and agility, maybe even a game of talent. But it's really a game of talent points, of calculations, and of numbers. Push the button, get some numbers. The other day, for instance, I got into a button-pushing battle with a lvl 31 ally, and no matter what that poor slop did, he couldn't get my health down. Too many numbers on my side. He pushed his buttons, I stood there, and nothing happened.

So when we quest, we quest for numbers. When we battle, we battle for numbers. And all we do, we do with numbers. I guess this adds a certain mystery to the game for those of us who aren't all that numeric, but at the same time, for the bean-counter players, the game prolly has a lot more transparency than it does for me.

p.s. (a total aside) Skrah rode a flying lion from Hammerfall over to the beach in the Hinterlands yesterday. Can you say vertigo? It's the best ride in the game, as far as I know, going straight up and then straight, straight down. Fwoosh!

On Name Changes and Death

Within our guild, within the last week, two of our high level members have had to change their names. Now, I understand that there are rules about names and representation (posted at the bottom for your "ref"rence), but there is something sad about the loss of a name. Our guild leader lost his name in a crazy set of duels--his opponent got pissed and turned him in for a name violation as a means of retaliation (and bad sportsmanship, I might add); another of our guildies had to change the ending of his name from an "s" to a "z." Both characters were in their 60s, level-wise, and had been playing for quite some time.

One saw it as a real loss, the other joked about it until he could smile again. I think the guild members didn't quite know what to do: we all keep slipping up and/or just using the old handles in guild chat.

Now I should explain two caveats here:

1. We all use alts and, as such change our names in the game quite regularly. But these characters come with different levels, different experiences, different histories.

2. A long time ago, in a guild far, far away, my guild leader robbed the bank, disbanded the guild and changed his name as a means of going underground (so as not to feel our guild wrath).

So what's in a name? In WoW: everything. You can choose to use an alt, you can go into hiding; but you can also be stripped of one of the only things that really distinguishes you within this online community. I'm still mourning Stealthfreak, and if this kind of erasure were to happen to feifer (or skrah), it would change everything. This ain't no Social Security card or driver's license: it's an existence, a living, a character in WoW--and my god, what else is there, anyway?

From WoW Terms of Use:

"In particular, you may not use any name:

1. Belonging to another person with the intent to impersonate that person, including without limitation a "Game Master" or any other employee or agent of Blizzard;
2. That incorporates vulgar language or which are otherwise offensive, defamatory, obscene, hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable;
3. Subject to the rights of any other person or entity without written authorization from that person or entity;
4. That belongs to a popular culture figure, celebrity, or media personality;
5. That is, contains, or is substantially similar to a trademark or service mark, whether registered or not;
6. Belonging to any religious figure or deity;
7. Taken from Blizzard's Warcraft products, including character names from the Warcraft series of novels;
8. Related to drugs, sex, alcohol, or criminal activity;
9. Comprised of partial or complete sentence (e.g., "Inyourface", "Welovebeef", etc);
10. Comprised of gibberish (e.g., "Asdfasdf", "Jjxccm", "Hvlldrm");
11. Referring to pop culture icons or personas (e.g. " "Britneyspears", "Austinpowers", "Batman")
12. That utilizes "Leet" or "Dudespeak" (e.g., "Roflcopter", "xxnewbxx", "Roxxoryou")
13. That incorporates titles. For purposes of this subsection, "titles" shall include without limitation 'rank' titles (e.g. , "CorporalTed," or "GeneralVlad"), monarchistic or fantasy titles (e.g., "KingMike", "LordSanchez"), and religious titles (e.g., "ThePope," or "Reverend Al").

You may not use a misspelling or an alternative spelling to circumvent the name restrictions listed above, nor can you have a "first" and "last" name that, when combined, violate the above name restrictions."

Guild Life

Last night, Feifer and Skrah headed to the Hinterlands to kill some stuff, level up a bit, and generally explore. In the game, new areas are a kind of treat worth reveling in a bit. While we were at it, we ran into the confirmed couple we sometimes play with. They're both a bit above our level now, so after some chit-chat over dead spiders, we went our separate ways.

One of the amazing things about Feifer as a player is what an efficient multi-chatter she is. Our current guild, Sinister Legion, has turned into a pretty nice community of peeps, and Feifer is often chatting in the guild, whispering with random others, keeping present in the party, and killin stuff. Multi-chatterboxing is fun, and funny when it means you're in the middle of a mob and talking about (two nights ago) ball rot or (last night) a guildie's birthday.

There's plenty of skepticism about online communities, and I think the whole of a WOW server is not much of a community (though it has some of those features). Guilds, on the other hand, can be super tight, full of sharing, generosity, and support. It's rare that a day goes by when Skrah isn't asked to tank something (these days mainly Sunken Temple), and there is always supporting and informative chatter about leveling, professions, and various kinds of weapons/armor.

Which reminds me: still looking for a few more pieces of Imperial Plate armor to fill out that armor set. Though Skrah won't look quite like this, the general gist of the armor set it like this: old school knight action.

Guide to Life (and Death) in Tarren Mill

It seams like every WOWish blog is pretty much a guide: a guide to leveling, a guide to pimping out your character, or a guide to mods and macros. So we thought WOW Lovahs would get in on the action with a little Guide to Life (and Death) in Tarren Mill. Mainly death.'



Skrah and Feifer are not alone in having died about a million times at Tarren Mill. We get off the bat and die. We try to quest and die. We go wade in the river ... and die. And if there's ever a peaceful moment at Tarren Mill, we usually end up down at Southside provoking someone into killing us. Though I can say that neither us have ever had our brains eaten out at Tarren Mill. That's nice

So these are the best ways, in our experience, to die at Tarren Mill. Follow this guide and you can die at Tarren Mill too!

• Do nothing, death will find you.
• Try the Yeti Cave. Half way through killing Yeti, some ?? will show up and take care of you.
• Join up with a bunch of other bastards who've died a lot and try to take Southside. It won't work: you'll all die.
• Try to quest.
  
• Try not to quest.
  
• Kill a lowbie. Now, Skrah would like to note that this is his favorite way to die at Tarren Mill. Come across a lowbie, nuke 'em, and then just wait about 20 seconds for one or two ??s to show up and kill ya. Very fun.
  

Freakin Hilarious. Period.

Is it an innocent question?

I have often been asked whether Skrah and I know each other in real life. My response is usually coy, sarcastic, evasive: something like "maybe . . ." along with a patented distancing move, usually some crack about not knowing Skrah's age on the guild chat line.

Last night, when we had our confirmed couple siting, I admitted the whole sordid story. We were promptly asked, "you guys married?" And I remembered why I usually play it coy.

All of this made me wonder, why the evasion, the squeamishness? Are these questions about pairing innocent? Are real life (rl) couples not wow approved? and, my gosh, what will the guild think??

Couple Confirmed

Last night, playing the game, we had our first confirmed interaction with another side-by-side wow couple. He was a bit older and kept referring to himself as stupid (in the funniest kind of way); she was noticeably silent. Both were lvl 50 hunter trolls, which means they've been playing side-by-side pretty much all the way, doing all the same quests and all of that. In fact, we played with this couple before, suspecting they were side-by-side.

We're so not like that: our levels vary, and while we're both undead mothahs, the fun for us is in having different abilities that, when we're playing well, complement one another.

Anyway, making this Confirmed Couple Sighting prompted us to set up this blog. Skrah may be an only semi-literate undead, maggot infested dope, but at least he can put up some pictures. Maybe Feifer can write a few things.

At the moment, she's over here reading an amazing tale of a WOWer who duped a bunch of dudes into giving her gold for cyber sex chat. Very funny.