A Shark among Fish

Cute Calvin Picture of the week

I've decided to add a new segment to my blog where I upload an adorable picture of my cat Calvin every week.

 

Call of the Crusade: Patch 3.2 afterthoughts

Patch 3.2 in World of Warcraft has been out for a week now. I'd like to give some thoughts on what I like about the patch and what things are not exciting.

1. Prospecting Titanium

In 3.2, jewelcrafters now have the option to prospect Titanium for rare and epic quality gems. On my server (US - Ysera), titanium ore stack of 20 goes for about 200-300 gold. At most, you will get only 1 or 2 epics out of a stack, if you are lucky. Saving up 180 ore, I prospected all of it, only getting maybe 3 or 4 epics. Prices have gone down on these gems a few hours after the patch went live on the servers. I was actually lucky in selling mine from 2:30 AM - 6 AM after my server was up and fixed after the patch for about 300 gold per. The uncut epic gems sell for 100-150 gold. So your best bet is actually to just sell the Titanium ore in the Auction House as ore, save the titanium for your jewelcrafting/engineering/blacksmithing, or have someone make Titansteel bars from them. Titansteel bars sell for a bit more than an uncut epic gem, and only uses 6 titanium ore per bar. This leads into my next point about if epic gems are really worth the price tag.

2. Epic Gems

As noted above, uncut epic gems are only selling for 100-150 gold. The cut ones are going for at least 250 gold or more. The rare cuts of the gems are still selling between 30 and 70 gold, depending on the cut and popularity. The big question that I bring up is: "Are epics gems that provide little more stats really worth the price tag?" I will use the example of my rogue to make my point, comparing prices vs. stats.

Stacked on my rogue are gems with attack power, agility, and hit rating. Being a jewelcrafter, I get special gems that I can only use. One of them is a Bright Dragon's Eye, which gives me +68 attack power (of which I can only socket 3 Dragon's Eye's into my gear). If I want to stack more attack power, I have 2 choices. The first one is to use a Bright Scarlet Ruby (rare quality), which gives +32 attack power. My second choice would be to use an epic quality gem called Bright Cardinal Ruby, which gives +40 to my base attack power. In my opinion, 8 more attack power isn't a big difference to me, so I would keep that socketed. There are some people in this game who like to have the best of the best gear. Now, for me to obtain the gem and cut it, the epics would cost me around 125 gold to cut, versus nothing for the rares (since I save up all the rare gems that I get). Most people are impatient, and just decide to skip getting the uncut epic and go straight to buying the cut ones. This adds approximately 150 gold onto the price tag of the gem. Why would anyone want to pay 250 gold for a cut epic versus the 70 gold maximum they would pay for a rare? It's a money sink in my opinion.

3. Emblems of Conquest/Emblems of Triumph

This is one thing I like about this patch. All heroics and raids outside of the Trial of the Crusader drop Emblems of Conquest now, as opposed to heroics and each raid dropping different types of emblems for different levels of gear. As like many people, I do not want to spend hours upon hours of my life every week raiding for gear. This is a set-back to us when we do want to join raids, and we get booted cause we don't have the best epic gear. This now allows the casual player to get gear comparable to what is found in Ulduar without having to waste their lives on World of Warcraft. Now many people in the game that are "hard-core" players are upset that casuals are able to get gear that they've spend the past few months of their lives obtaining. My opinion is that it's just a game. Just because someone doesn't have the time to raid doesn't mean they shouldn't have the same gear as you.

As for the guild I am currently in, many people in their have not had the chance to experience level 80 raiding yet. If they haven't raided, they can't get the good gear, which means raid groups won't take them. As for the past few days, I have seen an increase in the number of newer 80's running heroics for the badges. This is a great addition to the game helping the newer 80's gear up. (I've even volunteered to run heroics with them to help the other lesser-geared 80's get their epic gear.) And since the new daily dungeons and daily heroic dungeons drop 1 and 2 Emblems of Triumph, my fellow guild members will get gear of the quality that the people that waste all their time raiding get. It will take a much longer time than the people raiding, but the casual players can now be triumphant in their gaming.

Patch 3.2 general remarks

My other opinions on the patch are the new lower level mount system is great. My level 62 Death Knight has her flying already, and she is already prepared to get Cold Weather Flying at level 68 and Epic Flying at level 70. I saw no problems with the new talent changes they did to Death Knights. Being able to mount on your flyer in Wintergrasp finally (as long as there is no battle going on)! Not dismounting while flying over Dalaran and Wintergrasp is a plus too. To reiterate my whole post: Titanium prospecting = bad, epic gem price = bad, the new emblem system = excellent.

It's been a bad day

My morning started off pretty well. Woke up feeling good, was excited to go to Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab for their family day to see where my husband worked. My cat, Calvin, was running around everywhere. Well, just a little while ago, I heard him meow once and I went looking for him. He was in the area where his litter box was and he got underneath a box and seemed stuck. I yelled at him, which I should not have done, and tried to get him out of the box. He did jump out, but I believe his back leg hit the bottom of the vacuum cleaner when he landed.

I'm very scared right now. Yelling at him was a stupid idea. He does not understand what is right and wrong, and yelling will only make it worse. I love Calvin just as much as I love my husband. He is a key part of my life, and his little tabby self always makes my days better. He is usually a somewhat social cat. Oh sure, he'll come to you when he wants attention, but he can also be shy and run away as well. During the day, he is typically very social with me. Right now he is slightly playful but I think he is in fear of me right now. He won't follow me around, and when I tried to touch his back paws he was just crying moreso than usual. His movement is slower than usual, and he just wants to keep going under the bed. We just tried to play, and he appears to be fine. But on the other hand, something just doesn't feel right about him.

He is out in the main living and dining room area now, but much more skiddish than he usually is. I hope that there is nothing wrong with him. My husband and I discussed getting another cat possibly, but I know now that we can't. I can't even take care of one cat now. He just gets yelled at, and I hate myself everyday for doing that to such an innocent animal. He doesn't know any better, and I need to not yell at him for little things he does. He is a cat, and he loves trouble and getting into things. I'm still scared, and if something is wrong with him, it's my fault.

Update, 8:30 PM: Calvin made amends with me and isn't running from me anymore. He is running around playing and rubbing on me and purring, which is great news!

3.2 is out today!

It's official! Patch 3.2 came out this morning for World of Warcraft. Titanium prospecting, lower levels for mounts, brand new sets of dailies to do, plus a new battleground! I had already read most of the patch notes from the Public Test Realm about a month ago (which are subject to change when the patch goes live on all servers). While the patch was finishing up a few hours ago, the official patch notes were displayed and I scrolled through them. The one item that caught my attention was this: "In addition to the normal requirements, mining deposits in Northrend now requires a minimum character level of at least 65 to mine." My 80 rogue already has her mining maxed out, so you might be wondering why I care about the level requirement.

As it so happens, a few weeks ago I was browsing the forums on the World of Warcraft site. There were a great many posts about speed hackers and gold farmers/sellers in Wintergrasp using exploits to get underneath the Northrend terrain. Now, after they get underneath the terrain, they can run around without being attacked by any player or NPC. Mining nodes and herbs will disappear before your eyes when no one is around you. This video is a great example of how these hackers use the exploits. Also, being that you only need to be level 55 to obtain Grand Master skills, many of these hackers are between level 55 and 60. The addition of the death knights into the game and the little time it takes to level them to 58 adds to the problem.

A few days after reading these on the forums, I was in Wintergrasp trying to get some Saronite for my alt's professions. About 3 or 4 nodes had been targetted on my map during this time. Looking around to make sure no one else was using the node, I would try to mine it. It would say this node is in use, and it would disappear in front of my eyes. After getting tired of this happening to me, I made a comment in general chat about these "hackers". A fellow gamer on my server mentioned to me that if you do a "/who wintergrasp 1-70", there will be at least one person in Wintergrasp that is level 55 or 56 with a 450 mining skill (which you can find out their skill by looking up their name on the World of Warcraft Armory). I had done this, and found a 56 Death Knight called Calrimm. I put him on my friend's list, and payed close attention to his whereabouts while I was playing. He never left Wintergrasp. In my opinion, even if an 80 character is helping a 56, he will have a large aggro range and will be 1-2 shotted. I reported him in a ticket to a Game Master, and he got banned the day after.

It felt good to see that hacker temporarily banned, but not 2 minutes later, another 56 hunter shows up in Wintergrasp by the name Amarin. This hacker was a bit more sneaky then his other gold farmer, as he was also in Icecrown over the course of the next day hoarding mining nodes as well. I also reported him to a Game Master, but am unsure of whether or not he got banned.

Blizzard usually only puts 1-2 day bans on these farmers. I would like to point out that any use of exploit or speed hacking is against the Blizzard Terms of Use, and your account could be permanently banned for it. Being that Blizzard highly disproves of these exploits, I do not understand why these hackers get a day ban and then they come right back. It is nice to see that the new level requirement of 65 will make the gold farmers have to work harder and use different exploits to mine (in addition to the having to queue up for battles, so it will kick the gold farmers out of the zone temporarily), but the problem will still go on. Blizzard should just take all nodes and herbs out of Wintergrasp, and then the Wintergrasp speed hacking problem will go away. Fixing the exploit to get in there in the first place is also a start.