Arozcaldo answers the Call of the Crusade

Foofixit (my healer) and our regulars from Ulduar, answered the Call of the Crusade.  I had been told that Toc10 was easier than Ulduar, but I did not realise by how much.

Not only did we clear it, but we did it in one evening.  We wiped at least once on every boss, and I already know I fail at PVP, so being focused fired as a healer left me wanting.  I have been instancing so long that I forgot about Psycic scream.

I thought this meant I would finally head off to ICC.  However, our resident king slayer (and a couple of others) informed us that we should do better on ToC10 before attempting ICC.  Mean mean people (Even if I suspect they are right).

So next week back to ToC.  We will be play with the mix a little, going back to something looking like our Ulduar group.  (With the exception of one player who will remain DPS for a bit. You are nearly as good as you think you are.  But a dirt nap because you pulled agro at the start of a fight it is a fail.)

Online AH - still unimpressed

I had a look at the online AH when it was first in beta, and posted New remote auction house - yawn.

Now I have looked again. I am currently posting a lot of glyphs and gems, and my requirements for my posting toons are:

• Automated Posting 
• according to a strategy
• about 1000 auctions / day
• Automated expired mail collection.
• Automated gold collection.

At the moment I have QA3 with a set pricing strategy, and Postal + Mail Opener to collect mail. This works OK, posting/retrieving roughly 50 items/minute while largely AFK, plus a couple of minutes for logging in to the posting toons.

I have read good things about using the paid Web based AH, so I thought I would look again and bought it.

• No automated posting (or at least I have not found an addon
• Limit to the number of auctions / day
• No automated expired mail collection
• Does have automated gold collection, and do not need to be a

If it had either of automated posting or automated mail collection in a more convenient form than currently exists on a toon, I would be interested.  Instead I promptly unsubscribed.  I am not paying additional money for the ability to collect gold of the AH.

Glyphs update

As some regulars may know, I have re-entered the glyph market full time. For a while Wek was posting my glyphs (for a fee).

My aims for glyphs are to sell 100 glyphs/day (if that is sustainable), and to have a large stockpile of inks and glyphs when Cata hits.

I was having difficulties selling glyphs, being immediately 1c undercut by Bankzoors. I responded with a 3g90 wall of 3 glyphs, 48 hours. I sold a few at this price, and was content to sit there.

Yesterday, Flagrante upped the ante and is playing monopoolist, and has bought out all my glyphs, & posting them at 50g. Bankzoors is mostly gone, probably also having been bought out. As Flagrante has an apetitite for glyphs, I am now posting glyphs in sets of 6, and a little more expensive. With Flagrante having an apparently insatiable appetite, on Alliance/Cael now is a good time to sell any oversupply you have.

I have played this game before, and previously burnt out on it. It is part of the reason that I no longer make my own inks. Last time I undercut even harder, to the point of no profit. I found it difficult to keep up with ink supplies.

This time, I have a larger stockpile of inks and smaller ambitions. Every glyph sold makes a profit.  Skillet and KTQ to craft glyphs, and Altaholic to track inventory across accounts. I use QA3 to mail glyphs to the correct toons, which helps significantly on crafting time.

In summary:  If you are on Alliance/Caelestrasz, and you have a surplus of inks or glyphs, now is a good time to sell. You do not need to be the cheapest on the AH.

And Flagrante, if you need glyphs, please mail me your requirements. I am happy to sell you as many as you want.  You know my toon names by now.


Question of the day moment: How many glyphs are consumed per week during this phase of WoW?
Some observations:

• People buying glyphs for use include : Levelling toons, respec's and possibly for specific fights.
• According to Wow Census, Caelestrasz has (approx) 16,000 Alliance toons (level 10+) logged in over the last 30 days.
• Very occasionally I will sell thousands of glyphs/week  Some times I only sell 5/week.Often 20-30
• With the introduction of a new seller that can drop down to 1-2 glyphs/week. A new heavy seller will traditionally drive the price of herbs up for a 2-3 week period before they enter the market.

Buying truckloads of cheap gems

When Cata hits, Northrend Epic gems will end up where BC epic gems are now - worth a few gold for levelling purposes. That's OK. We still have months to go for Cata.

I have noticed a 20g drop in gem prices lately, but I saw an interesting offer in trade. WTS Cardinal Ruby 1k/stack, Ametrine 800g/stack; Dreadstone 800g/stack. This is much cheaper than recent prices. The (level 1) seller had a *lot* to sell. He was quiet, but did seem to speak some English. With the gems and quantity he sold, I suspect a battleground farmer.

This is significantly cheaper than I bought my existing stockpile for. That cost is 'sunk', and I have written off the difference as the new reality. I bought the lot.

I will be selling these gems off, cut or uncut, but I am unsure if I will be buying many more gems. With out me buying (and some weeks I will buy a hundred or more), there will be more gems available on the market and that will drive the market price down.

I know that Epic gems will devalue between now and Cata, with the only question being when. On Caelestrasz, it looks like that devaluing may be starting now.

Anyone want to buy some bargain priced gems?

Arozcaldo uncovers the Secrets of Ulduar

Yogg-Saron you Drive me crazy

I have struggled as a tank. I am stubborn.  I run content in order. 

• Original 5 Man "Heroic's" : 19 Dec 09
• Fall of Naxxramas : 17 Jan 10
• The Spellweaver's Downfall : 9 Apr 10
• The Secrets of Ulduar: 21 Aug 10

We are hopelessly overgeared.  We run most Saturday nights, averaging 3 hours per night, historically pugging the last two spots.  The raid composition changed a lot between our very first Flame Leviathan kill in April (was it that long ago?) and finally downing Yogg.

If I recall, we reset Uludar 4 times.  But we still found some bosses ... tricky.  Some bosses are designed to test a toon or two (generally tank or healer).  I still fail at kiting adds on Ignus.  Other bosses test the weakest player in the raid.  Hodir was interesting.  Yogg tested us, and mostly found us wanting.  Then we tried.  Then we won.

Many (other) people like easy progression.  I enjoy failing better than last time.  Last night we had one player with 2000 ms lag and another with 3500ms.  We fought bosses.  We fought with each other.

At the end of the day we downed Yogg with an approach of : To each according to need.  From each according to Ability.  (Despite being goblinish towards the auction house, small groups do work with a social environment). The successful Yog raid makeup was 1 tank, 2 heals, 3 Melee, 4 ranged, with only Foolich (me) taking a dirt nap towards the end of phase 3.

I take this opportunity to thank those on our run: Those that could not understand why we were failing; Those that improved (and no insanities means we did improve); Those that swapped toons and roles. It was fun.

We are now off to answer the Call of the Crusade. My prediction : the first few bosses will be easy, and the last few will feed on our tears. We will be changing some of the toons that we bring. It looks like we have an over subscription of tanks, so I will be healing on Foofixit. It will be fun.

In Aus, Minorities Rule (Politics)

I like my politics on the front page of the paper instead of in the back rooms of unknown buildings.
Australia Votes (ABC)
Both Labor and Liberal have run a campaign based around "Don't vote for them", being very light on policy.

• Labor's (the previous goverment) campaign was based on forgetting about what they did last term, replacing their own Prime Minsiter to do so.
• Liberal's campain was to stop the boat people (all 2000 of them).
• At least we knew what the S-x Party stood for (I think).

Well, the voters have listened.  With compulsory voting they voted for the other guy, with 2 new independents (now we have 5), with what looks to be 72 seats to Labor and 73 to Liberal, and we probably won't know for 2 weeks.

My apologies for bringing real life politics to WoW.  I won't do it often, but election days are ... special.
You will hear terrible things about minority governments.  The worst of which is that politicians will listen to what people want.  You will hear more about politics and politicians than you ever did before.

The campaign for the next election starts now.

Facepalm Moment - very cheap gems

There were some happy buyers on Alliance/Caelestrasz last night.

Previously I had epic gems listed with QA3 according to gem colour - i.e. 6 settings: Ametrine, Cardinal Ruby etc.

As gem prices have been, somewhat unstable and i've been adjusting them recently, I went to 2 settings - one for primary colours (Cardinal Ruby, King's Amber, Majestic Zircon), and one for secondary colours (the rest).  However, I seem to ... have got the settings wrong on my primary colours.  I sold every auction, ... and got 17g each (sob sob)

The moral of the story is: If you are using automation, always check the first few posts after making changes.

More to raiding than ICC

I am seeing a number of ... compaints that Blizzard are not planning on releasing another raid.

For example this forum post:
...
Guilds generally wont do anything else, pugs wont do anything else, not even togc. Its rare you find one of those.
Ulduar forget it... Naxx... oh hell no...
All we have is one instance atm.
RS is new but doesn't really count because its really short and most pugs dont even run RS due to the low medium to high skill/communication factor needed to win. 
...


I am a late arival to the raiding scene.  I found that tanking was the role I failed most in 5 mans, so I made my tank Foolich my raiding toon.  I have run OS, Naxx, Ulduar in order, only repeating a few bosses, currently wiping on Yogg Saron.  I have another regular tank, never have problems getting DPS, and only occasionally have problems getting heals.  Foolich rarely does 5 man instances.

There are many players that want old raid bosses, whether they be WoLK, BC or vanilla.

We raid Saturday nights.  We have a core of raiders, semi-regulars, and usually pug one or two.  I will admit it took me a while to assemble the core raiders, with most of the group starting as pugs.  The first few runs were hit and miss, but we have raided every Saturday for a long time.  I have not stepped into ICC 10/25 at all.  I have only once stepped into TOC on any toon.

If you are only raiding ICC, its your choice.  Do you have the hard mode achievements on older instances.  Make a blues run (ilvl 200 - no epics).  Find 2 tanks, 2 heals and pugs will come.  Herding players brings it's own rewards, and you will be a better player in Cataclysm for having done so.

If you would like to join us, talk to or in game mail Foolich of Caelestrasz

Yet another Economic Blogroll

http://wow-econ.blogspot.com/

Cameron from WoW economic review has announced that he is leaving WoW. He intends to keep his blogroll up , but it does not look like it will be updated too much more.

Over the next day or so, I will be adding the WoW gold making blogs that I read.

If you wish to have a blog added or removed, please leave a comment (on the new blogroll). The criteria for being added as a blog will be:

• How many posts in the last 3 months.
• % of posts that are gold making
• The blog passes my 'sniff test'

Mail from blizzard on World of Warcraft - Real ID and Forum Changes

My response to Blizzard Thank you for reversing your stance on real names on the WOW forums.  I have since renewed both my son's and my personal accounts. Also, thank you for allowing me to opt out of Friends of Friends.  However, it is still not enough for me to use real id in games.  In Wow, on blogs, and in vent I am known as Foo.  (Almost) no one in game knows me as Unknown.  Untill I am able to choose an alias (I would accept toon name + guild + server), I do not intend to use real id in game. This is unfortunate as we have many alts, and using friends lists to keep track of alts is becoming painful.   I will however continue to use addons like Tekkub's 'Friends with Benefits' (Link to www.wowinterface.com) as it allows me the privacy I require. The email from Blizzard Greetings UNKNOWN! We noticed that you recently cancelled your World of Warcraft® subscription for account UNKNOWN. The comments you left with your cancellation mentioned the new policies we had announced for our official forums, so we wanted to make sure you were aware that we have changed some of our plans with regard to the forums and our in-game Real ID system as well. One of Blizzard Entertainment’s core values is that Every Voice Matters, and feedback from players like you is what helps drive our direction and decisions. After considering your feedback and that of other members of our community, and weighing it against our goals for improving the forums, we ultimately decided not to move forward with the plan to require real names to be displayed when posting on the forums. Blizzard Entertainment CEO and Cofounder Mike Morhaime made the official announcement of this decision here: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html? topicId=25968987278. In addition to changing those plans, we have also listened to player feedback regarding the Real ID Friends-of-Friends feature. We understand that not everyone is comfortable being displayed on friends-of-friends lists in this fashion, so we are developing an option to allow players to opt out of this feature. The full announcement and FAQ can be found here: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html? topicId=26137024221. We hope that this will allay some of the concerns that led to your departure from World of Warcraft. Your characters are waiting for you, and you can renew your subscription at any time through Account Management at this link: http://us.battle.net/account. If you have further questions or concerns, we’d love to hear from you. Simply e-mail realidfollowup@blizzard.com, and we’ll have a representative respond within 10 days. Thank you for giving us this opportunity to talk—and best wishes to you! Regards, Customer Care & Loyalty Team Blizzard Entertainment http://www.blizzard.com