New gaming news website

I'm not updating this blog anymore (really?  like you couldn't tell) because I've started a new collaboration over at Bantergaming.com It's mostly news, trying to get some editorials going on some of the more popular games/game companies. If i do come back here it'll probably be an MMO rant/rave blog since TOR comes out in a few days or I'll go ahead and start complaining about WoW some more(<3 those guys). Oh if you haven't been paying attention, Blizzard released the Looking for raid system a week or two ago.  I ran a few, it's fun to be *That Guy* that ninjas all the loot and takes advantage of blizzard's follies in development of the system...I mean, there was some random huntard ninjaing everything...that guy was a jerk. He's probably part of a Broteam...ala wowcrendor.  If you don't know who they are...go to youtube and type in their name.  Actually here...CLICKY CLICKY

GTA V Trailer

Hmm, what to say about the franchise that made gaming cool.  Grand Theft Auto.  Spank, the infamous drug from GTAIII, murder, mayhem. The game that brought out the fight in mothers against video games and teen normality.  Well, hopefully Rockstar games has another hit on their hands(purple dildo beat downs included).  The first railer was released all of a few minutes ago on their site, which you can go to Here.

 

GTA V Trailer

Battlefield 3 Launch

Tonight at midnight, lock and load ladies and gentlemen...can't wait. For your enjoyment...a fanmade trailer.

Mists of Pandaria

 Well, It's that time of year again.  No not christmas, but for some of the people that play World of Warcraft it may feel like that.  It's time for Blizzcon.  The biggest announcement?  Mists of Pandaria.  As much as I love writing and feel i could do a great job of covering all the new content myself...I feel that the folks over at MMO Champion did a much better job So you should check out their constant great updates on Mists of Pandaria Also, Blizzards got their own site for Mists of Pandaria up that you can check out Here.

BF3 Beta Caspian Border

Ok so i'll hand it to DICE/EA, they really did end up pulling it all together with the beta for Battlefield 3.  I managed to rank up quite a few times playing through metro and while there are still a few bugs and glitches that are present, the dev team has announced The top 10 issues they're working on for release.

Some Jet Gameplay from IGN 

First and foremost, they're not patching the beta, and are instead investing time into the actual release version of the game.

Battlefield 3 Early Access Beta Fail

Well, here we are.  Tuesday the 27th of September. EA announces that those who bought the Limited Edition of Medal of Honor or Pre-ordered Battlefield3 would be invited 48 hours earlier than the general public to the open beta.  An announcement was made stating the time when the beta would go live: 5AM pst, 8AM est, ect.  Well here I sit, almost 2 hours post-launch with no email along with approximately 90% of the PC users that pre-ordered BF3 on origin.

I am happy to say, if you picked up MoH on steam, you can log into your steam game library and get your beta code there.  I would argue EA made a big mistake choosing not to launch on steam seeing as they get beta keys up for a game they're going to make no money off before the publishers can get their heads together.

"Soon" Blizzard Delays Diablo3 Release

With the recent announcement of the Diablo3 beta, we all thought the game would be on track for a holiday 2011 release, but a current announcement has informed us of a new release window of early 2012. You can read the news on blizzards website here. On the bright side, they did announce they'd be able to add more people to the beta as time progresses seeing as it's going to go a few months longer than expected.


In related blizzard news, if you're interested in Growing an amazing beard feel free to do that in anticipation of Diablo3's release.  I haven't decided if i'm completely on beard yet but I've definitely got the manly 5oclock shadow going on atm.

Diablo 3 beta is live

 http://us.battle.net/d3/en/blog/3542796

It would appear that blizzard has brought their public beta for Diablo 3 to fruition.  Now go forth and check your bnet accounts with your fingers and toes crossed.

Mage Tier 13

Ah to be a wow player still.  I doubt this will make me come back seeing as my max lvl mage is alliance and a gnome and I don't have any friends i still play with on that server (foreveralone), but thats not the reason for this post.  The reasoning behind it is, blizzard forgot a major piece of Timelord gear in their T13 timelord regalia. A fez. or a Stetson, or a sonic screwdriver.  Yup, I watch doctor who, so enjoy this new render of the Tier13 mage armor aka "Timelord Regalia" aka terribad because it doesn't include a fez.  I'll be in my Tardis(it actually belongs to my dog but he won't mind).

Firefall Beta starts

Well, they said it would happen soon after PAX, and here it is.  The Firefall Beta has begun, unfortunately it's a close beta and if you weren't signed up and participating in their forums it's unlikely you got in.  I know I didn't get in and I'm a little bummed about that but their gameplay video will have to suffice. 

Go ahead and sign up for yourself here if you'd like a shot at future invites.

Enjoy this video from Red 5 Studios

Modern Warfare 3 Multiplayer Premiere

It would appear the most recent update released by MW3 is their new additions to multilayer.  I see a few new toys, some new kill streaks that look interesting, a new turret type device, even some new armor and masks similar to those in the game Army of Two(no comment). I'm still in the BF3 corner, but we'll see if this game pulls out anything truly innovative and exciting before it's release, but i somewhat doubt it. 

Diablo 3 Beta leak

Here's a video to tide your appetite for awesomeness, but the folks over at Diablofans.com have updated their news feed with a great video of the character creation screen and some in game screenshots of what looks to be the early game.  I'm more and more pumped with every new bit of info we gather about this game.  Beta is getting closer and closer.  As I said before, there was confirmation that it will be up and running before the end of September unless anything drastic changes that, I'd say we're looking at an early 2012 release so Activision/Blizzard can push this as one of the best selling games of the apocalypse ...did i just say that? 

Google+ invites for all

This is going to be a short post about absolutely nothing. I was tooling around in google+ and realized i had 150 invites I could handout.  Since I have all of maybe 10 people who's emails i actually know I figured I would go ahead and share them with you, my loyal readers and dare i say...friends?  Anyway, Feel free to plus one stuff for eachother with googles sweet new +1 feature associated with google+,  after all, I've been doing it for a number of blogs i frequent... ;) 

https://plus.google.com/i/QW5SOeRhLK4:OG0XoB53img

Forza Motorsport, Halo, what more could you want?

So I'm a huge fan of Forza.  Forza4 is coming soon and it looks like as a promotional along with halo's anniversary edition they released a video that made me laugh.  If you haven't played forza and aren't a halo fan, well then, you're probably not much of a gamer.  We can make an exception if you try to assimilate into the fanbase that is the hardcore racing sim gamer.  Or not, I can't force you to play forza or anything, I'll just continue with my fanboy rant at another time.  And for your time...here's the video.

Diablo3 community site live

 

Blizzard Entertainment

That's right folks, blizzard's community site for Diablo3 is up and running. Head over there to check out their awesome forums and blog.

PS:There's a post about beta...blizz confirmed for it starting before September 30th. Keep your eyes on your emails and if you haven't signed up yet, do so in your battle.net account under beta settings.

Bad Gamestop, down boy

I'm generally not a fan of yahoo news, but this morning I was checking my email and I always scroll through their newest articles because they're pretty good at getting stuff up quick, especially breaking news.  Now it's not that I dislike Yahoo, it's just that they have a lot of writers that don't fact check which is a wonderful practice that I would love to pick up some day(not really).  Anyway, their gaming blog put up this article about the new game Deus Ex:Human Revolution and how GameSpot is a bunch of *expletives*.

Portal 2 Live Action

I was browsing the various you-tubes and came across this new film short based on Valve's popular game Portal 2 that was released a few months ago.  Enjoy, I know I did.

DOTA2 Champion crowned

 

I really wish i could've been as awesome as these kids to be 200k richer at their age, I wonder if they try and tell the person with the worst K:D ratio that he can't have as much because he's not as 1337 as the rest of them.  Anyway, they beat out the Chinese team EHOME to bring home the grand prize of 1million dollars US. which in the Ukrane is like 8million in monopoly money...er Hryvnia is what they call it, I just enjoy monopoly(i'm always the hat because we lost the car).  

CS:GO

Thats Counter Strike:Global Offensive for my non-in the know internet speak friends lmao roflmao and u r a 1337 nub.  And now that I have that out of my system enjoy this trailer that shows absolutely nothing, other than valve still praising its failtastic game know as Condition Zero. 

PS: Episode 3 plox

Who needs D3 anyway?

This game is called path of exile and it's complete and udder awesome from what i can gather from a few sub 5 minute videos on YouTube.  If you ever played Diablo 2, this game is going to make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside.  It's in closed beta right now, but if you head over to their website at Pathofexile.com you can register for their site and get a shot at getting into the closed beta yourself. 

Poor EA

 Using the Force to predict sales.

I know I've been ragging on EA for the past week, but they make it so easy.  In their most recent profit projection scheme as I'll call it, they're limiting the number of box and digital sales of the game after release as reported by Gamespot.

Again with the BF3 News...Lack of server selection

http://bf3blog.com/2011/08/battlefield-3-pc-version-wont-have-in-game-server-browser/


Would it have really been that hard to do what every other half way decent company is completely capable of doing and giving us an ingame server selection system?  I mean hell, DICE has done it before, we KNOW they're capable of it even if it does utilize terrible systems like punkbuster. 


Lets force players to waste countless minutes for the rest of their time playing battlefield. Really with this one, I can't imagine a legitimate reason why you would veer away from the norm.  I'm pretty sure no one enjoys splash screens, especially when you have to watch them 30 times in the span of a few hours because a new friend logs on and the server is full, or you don't like this map, or you're getting dominated by the stacked opposing team, or...any number of legitimate or unintelligible reasons for wanting to switch servers. 

I'm gonna go ahead and say its  so we have to be spammed with adds on origin by re-opening their homepage every time we want to switch servers, i mean if you're going to do that why not just do some in game advertising on billboards and buildings.  I'd much rather take my anger out on an ingame object like a billboard with a  rocket launcher than my monitor with my fist. And alas therein lies the reason, because advertisers don't want people shooting at their advertisements where everyone can see, just like how racing games used to not allow damage on cars with actual make and model names because some manufacturer was too much of a pansy to let us enjoy their vehicle to its fullest extent.  That's why innovators like Rockstar with their clone cars that we could absolutely destroy are my heroes. Keep doing what you're doing guys, oh and that definitely got off track, from FPS to RPG and racing games...I'm losing it.

Come on DICE, give us an in game menu, even if you do have to advertise for SWTOR or the next need for speed on one of the sidebars of it. 

Transmogrification

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/3309048
It looks like blizzard will be bringing back the old school raid sets in the next patch, not in the same way they've done before (ahem...naxx, cough cough) but by allowing you to "transmogify" the stats from a new set of armor onto any older piece. 

I enjoy running around Orgrimmar as the only paladin in T2 with my finkle's lava dredger.  It was fun while it lasted Blizzard, until everyone and their mother go out and farm BWL for sweet new lewts.  I would urge Blizzard to implement some sort of restriction that wouldn't allow everyone to be running around with little effort in some of the most amazing looking sets in the game but alas, i guess they want to legitimize old content instead of releasing the new stuff...yet again. 

In the mean time I guess I'll have to settle for my sparkle kitty, until they put it on their blizzard store for $3.50.  At least it's cheaper than a fully geared max lvl necromancer for 49.95... ;)

This is me being happy, please don't ruin it for the people that still play.

If you're interested in some actual news minus the ranting, MMOchampion just put up some info about patch 4.3 other than this new transmofail thing thats going to ruin my fun and laughing at my raid group as we pull nef and i'm still in T2 and supposed to be tanking adds...as ret,  Ah, good times. Otherwise i have cliffs of the 4.3 changes so far with excellent commentary below.

More BF3 Awesomeness

DICE announced at Gamescom germany that they'll feature something never before seen in the battlefield series, Co-op.  Now, don't get me wrong but I was always under the assumption that co-op dictated that(in the vidya game world at least) you're going through the campaign with your best buddy on the hardest difficulty while you're on his guest account only to make it harder on yourselves because you're going to have to do it again on your account, breaking controllers due to nerd rage, hating that one mission where you have to plant a device in a cabin and make it out through a field of random unlimited bad guys(i know that's a single player mission and not in the battlefield series, but i hated it that much), all the while trying to beat the game.

This is glorified spec-ops.  "Co-op" missions with point values and a leader board that you can do with your friends. I'm going to hope it can be 4 player co-op as a redeeming factor, and I'm happy that they at least put a mode where you can fight wave after wave of bad guys with your best bud, but I am disappointed with that implementation. 

Back to the good old "it would ruin immersion of single player" excuse i guess. Nothing gets me more immersed in a game than yelling expletives at my friend when i reach the objective first and kill all the bad guys and look at him raise my eyebrows and ask "you mad?"

It's Fanboy time

I was going to avoid going full retard love affair for any games but BF3 right about now. One thing to say mind=blown. Their new video of the map Caspian Border is godly amazing, the new frostbite 2 engine is looking like it will live up to it's name, and I was a BF2 nerd forever that despised BF2142 and played BF1943 for all of 5 minutes.  I'm pulling for you DICE, this is the game I've been waiting for and I really hope it doesn't go the way of most productions by EA with it's pre-order shenanigans offering maps that easily could be released with the full game to anyone whether they pre-order or not.

And this new Origin deal, I don't really mind them releasing their own distribution software that's earily similar to Valve's Steam, but really?  The same overlay ingame, friend chat system, not allowing your games to be distributed on Steam because of a "TOS Disagreement" with valve's Steam is BS, just say you want to pull an extra 5 dollars per sale because you know you can.  I enjoy having all my games in one centralized location and Valve beat EA to the punch by a longshot.  Unfortunately with EAs backing and pull in the industry, we'll probably end up seeing more than EA exclusive games up for sale on Origin in the near future. 

Guessing games, or cold hard facts

I just read an article that says Cowen and Company are saying SWTOR has the potential to ship 3million units at release.  The article also informed that at this point in development that TOR has the same number of pre orders as cataclysm and Starcraft2 did at the same point in time on their development calendars.  Thats saying something as the article didn't say anything about how SC2 and Cata didn't have any incentive for pre-ordering while SWTOR has a number of interesting items for each of their pre-order levels ranging from unique mounts to power crystals to an entire in game store for their overpriced drivel they call the "collectors edition" at 149.99 which I believe is sold out on a number of online retailers.

whether that says anything about it's popularity or not, i'll let you decide but while i don't particularly care for that giant darth malgus statue i'm sure there are a lot of hardcore SW fans that ordered it exclusively to add that to their doll...er "action figure" collection.



the article if you're interested-

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6328785/star-wars-the-old-republic-could-sell-3m-analysts 

I'm a rantaholic

So I've been ranting and less raving, more raging about Game developers to a few of my buddies IRL and I've come to the decision that I can make a difference.  A crusader on a mission, not for god and country, but for my fellow gamer.  To point out both sides of a decision with a balanced and maybe even respectful viewpoint from the gamers perspective, for my fellow gamers.  In all honesty if I really get angry it could get very NSFW very quick, that is if you're 5 or you work in a kindergarten where the children are reading the same blogs you are and their parents get offended by bad words. 

Protip: Pizza is fracking delicious.

Diablo 3

So I never played Diablo 2.  My friends all tell me it was amazing back in the day and I'm inclined to believe them.  I went and tried it and just couldn't play with all those pixels all over the place. It was like playing GTA 4 and going back to GTA 3 and looking at their awesome glob hands again.  But Hopefully Diablo 3 will be a new page in blizzards books, especially with having lost 600k subscribers from WoW over the last few months.  Beta in Q3 2011...we shall see.  I would however like some info on project Titan.  If it's gonna be farmville with a 15 dollar a month price tag I would like to know now so I can go ahead and pass on it before i start getting interested. 

oh look, 4.1 is here

Looks like the trolls over at blizzard have finally gone and figured out how their system works to patch over from the PTR to live servers.  They're gonna be putting 4.1 out tomorrow unless something goes horribly awry.  I think my account is still active for another week or so.  I guess i'll go check out ZG and ZA and then wave goodbye to what was formerly a great game.  I'm estimating 2 months until firelands has a release candidate on the PTR and July before it's released on live servers. 

-oh yeah, apologies for taking a few weeks off without telling anyone, not that my ramblings about the evil video game industrial complex is in the least bit interesting, we can all pretend it is.  I might start rambling about SWTOR if anyone wants to start hating a game that'll probably be great despite having little to no information out on it atm.  I'll have to come up with cool pictures though as i can't just take screen shots anymore...

No Firelands in 4.1

So my guild decided to take a break this week after clearing 12/12 normal modes and half of our core not being in the mood to wipe endlessly on heroic modes for a few months.  We figured we'd go super casual until patch 4.1 and the firelands came out and we were doused in new and exciting raid content.  But alas. no firelands in patch 4.1 which is currently on the PTR.  I guess ZA and ZG rehashes were a better allocation of time by blizzards development staff.  I remember a blue post a week or two ago about how development takes a lot of time and they would like to bring back old content as well as implement new content. 

Well there have been rumors of how scaled back blizzards dev team has become since vanilla especially with their acquisition by activision and the push to cut costs.  It makes me wonder, if you want to push out old content, why not hire people to do that, it's not like the WoW IP isn't the greatest thing lining the pockets of activision/blizzard execs and they can't afford a few extra employees to re-code the content for the most current tier of wow.

Xmute Gold

I haven't made a post in a while so I figured i'd stop in and say hey.  Been busy with classes and whatnot. apparently piling on projects that are due the week after spring break is an upward trend.  So anyway.  Xmuting life into other volatiles is like free gold, especially if the sale price of truegold is falling as much as it has on my server. Oh and as i promised, SS of the purple phoenix mount above.

omg a phoenix mount

I just want to thank blizzard for implementing a mount that we as a guild have achieved but are unable to attain because none of us are exalted with the guild yet. Thank you blizzard.  Anyway, 12/12 in current content normal modes just in time for the ptr to be announced.  I'm sure attendance will decrease until the next patch is released on live, but for the time being we will step into heroic modes and attempt to clear a few.

Drakes galore

A few bored folks enjoying all their sweet drakes from wrath, figured since i didn't have anything exciting to add I'd throw up a this pic i took today.

The Gold is in the Cards

It appears darkmoon cards are going to keep their price points up for another darkmoon faire or two.  I still see cards above 1k gold consistently and decks, not trinkets are being sold readily at 10k plus.  I had originally decided to get out of the game and pursue greener pastures in the gem market, and while the gem market is standing strong there's no reason not to be in the darkmoon market with herb and volatile prices so cheap on most servers. 

There's a niche secondary market for these cards/trinkets as well.  every time you turn them in you get rep towards the darkmoon fair which is required for the achievement Insane in the Membrane it's quite intense and requires a lot of reps all around, and has even been nerfed since wrath but is still quite the feat and allows you to dawn the title "The Insane" which is befitting of most people that spend 50-100k gold on a single rep from an achievement that requires many. 

A Glorious Day

So today i spent, or wasted if you will, 200,000 gold.  On what you ask?  only the greatest horde mount in the game.  The Swift Spectral Tiger.  I told myself at first i was gonna work towards a million gold and hoard it all to myself, but this mount is just so damn cool.  Oh well, back to the drawing board.  maybe I'll try and acquire other rare and or bad ass stuff of the course of this expansion. Notice my Tauren friend on his Zulian tiger that i was unable to grab during wrath despite my best attempts.  I think i may have to race change as well.

Get outside

So I didn't really have a post/update for today but i was writing for my other blog and I thought it was such a great Idea to share it with my more sedentary friends(no offense, okay maybe a little offense) that i'd cross post it here as well. But so this does have at least some relevancy, Shaman are getting their passive healing bonus increased from 10% to 25% which will give them a 15% increase to healing across the board.  I know quite a few shaman who will be able to stop cutting themselves after raids because their HPS is will be slightly less terrible now. 

Also, druids and shaman will hopefully be getting a new CD soon...as blizzard has finally realized yet again, the error of their ways and figured out natures swiftness is a terrible cooldown, especially for a talent. So without further adoo, get your ass outside:

"I went for a run this morning.  6 Miles. It was brutal, mostly because I'm not a runner, I'll hike in the state park a few times a month and do 6-8 miles because it's so damn pretty up there, but running around the neighborhood is more of a pain than a joy.  Despite the hindrance it was to roll out of bed an hour and a half earlier, I went out and did it and i feel great now.  Do yourself a favor and go out and get your blood flowing.  play basketball or tennis with a friend, go for a bike ride, anything to get yourself up and away from the computer.  I know I spend too much time on it.  Which reminds me, raid in an hour and i need flasks.

Oh and so you know I'm not some super athlete, I'm 5'9" 195lbs of pure sex(fat), so no excuses, skinny or fat, go get some exercise.  Start with a walk if you can't jog/run yet.  It's one of those things you'll never regret even if you hate it at the time."

NO BLIZZ

It would appear the whiptail bug has been fixed so any whiptail you bought at half the prices it was going for last week is going to be worth hopefully what it was prepatch.  I know folks that bought a lot of whiptail at 80-90g a stack and are going to be reselling it for 180 or so.  If you missed out, not a big deal.  Life might still be lagging behind in how quick it returns to pre patch prices so take a look at those prices on your server as well.

gem xmutes

I buy a lot of elementium ore and herbs to make gems with.  Go look at the prices of raw gems, or cut gems if you're a JC and determine if it's worth it to buy 3 of the green quality gems and 3 herbs to make a blue quality gem of the same color.  you can make money on mys server just selling the raw red gems and all of hte other ones cut are decent profit so find yourself an alch and start transmuting blue quality gems if you're not getting enough from just prospecting the elementium.

Darkmoon faire

Do yourself a favor and go check the prices on both darkmoon decks and the cards that comprise them.  Cards are going for 1k to 1500g on my server and the decks are over 15k.  I buy any card i see under 1k and any card i need for up to 2k, and I'm still making money just spending 5-10 minutes a day browsing the AH for cards to make decks with.  Also if there's a cheap card that you don't need but someone else does, buy it and trade it to them for a card that you do need.

The fair ends this weekend though, so get cracking.

Herbs Galore

So there's a bug, or a working as intended, but lacking in the patch notes change with 4.0.6.  Herbs in both uldum and deepholm are instantly respawning whenever another is picked in that zone.  this is allowing those with herbalism to get tons of herbs very quickly.  I was at between 40-50 stacks an hour in uldum on a tauren druid being able to avoid killing mobs and only farm the delta area in uldum. 

Back in Black

Ret is back baby, I finally get to play my ret paladin again now that they can pull comparable numbers.  The best part is, I ended up getting the mace off magmaw last night which was the first time it's dropped for our guild. It's also BiS for ret atm with all that sexy sexy mastery on it. 

HOLY JESUS BATMAN

So when to Tauren druids get their flying cow form?  I love the new Troll Bat form, it's HOOGE, like xbox huge. I'm pretty sure Blizzards intention was for us to be able to ride troll druids around orgrimmar in their flying form it's just that epic.

Meta Day

Tomorrow is meta day.  The patch is coming and that means three new metas that are supposed to actually work and be viable best in slots for every dps class. If you're lucky enough to get one of these patterns in the first few hours/days of the patch you may want to sell it for a cool 50k or so if it's not super common.  If you're a JC and you've stockpiled metas for this day, i applaud you, and enjoy your 1k per metas while it lasts, provided you can get a pattern.

Fish food

Fishing in a game where you slay dragons and kill monsters seems like such a small insignificant thing that it shouldn't even be included in a game of such epic proportions like wow, yet one of the best food buffs for each class comes from fishing as well as the greatest title ever imagined by blizzard...Salty. I really would love to be salty sieger but alas, i can't manage to get a rare fish and since blizzard didn't add any rare fish to the list in cata the one that didn't get away really did. I'm forced to go back to Howling Fjord and farm these herrings and turn them into pickled herring, so if anyone is hungry and enjoys pickled fish...hit me up.

Mood Rings

It's funny really, how you can kill two progression bosses in one night and have someone rage quit because of that very raid.  It probably doesn't help that certain members may have berated the said rage quitter multiple times during the raid, but it's all in good fun as it always is.  Our guild is the one that swears curses and uses racial epithets more often then we should. We don't really have a GM or a raid leader at any set time and our most moody person isn't the 15 year old high school student, in fact we don't have any of those.  It's the 30 year old that gets angry when we tell him how to do his job.  We always forgive, never forget.  In fact, I'm fairly sure the next time someone runs off the elevator in BWD it will be referred to in my guild as pulling a sieger...I died to that elevator a grand total of 3 times tonight making it more deadly than omnitron and magmaw combined, almost as deadly as bastion trash and slightly less deadly than Halfus, V&T, and Twilight Council.

Also if any tanks on Grizzly Hills horde side are looking to have fun on Nefarion, we might need one next week. PST Sieger, Siegur, Barackhobama or Orrak  for more info and keep on having fun, after all whats wow without a little guild drama.

I like totems, totems are cool

I began leveling a dwarf shaman on Tichondrious a few days ago to play around with.  With no gold, no bags, no BoA gear, and no totems i set off into the great unknown.  It's refreshing to start anew on a server overrun with people.  The old rules of my run down low pop server didn't apply anymore.  Xp from both dungeons and questing is great, and the xp from gathering isn't a total let down.  At least we're not doing our gathering profs with no reward but the satisfaction of feeding your gathering profession or putting it on the AH to sell for pennies.

Rule number 1: everything sells.

I sold linen cloth at 4gold a stack, green boes from random mobs for 5-10gold apiece.  Multiple quests give you 8 slot bags now so you don't have to worry about the dread of running around with just your back pack any longer.  I'm sitting on about 50g with my normal mount and 2-shotting mobs is pretty fun for a shaman.  oh and my UI is prostar, don't deny it.

Community

 I posted this on the mmochamp forums and thought it was one of those things i just had to share with the world as if I were some kind of non herp-derp player.

Referring to why we keep playing wow...

The people. Nethaera said something about where else would you get such a diverse community to come together and the truth is i really don't know. I've played with MDs, lawyers, PHD students as well as insurance claims adjusters, assembly plant workers, the unemployed, and a slew of college and highschool students. Men, women, young, old, it doesn't really matter because we're all enjoying ourselves under a common element. One of my best friends in game would probably hate me in real life because of the simple fact that our politics differ significantly, but we'll be on vent for 3 or 4 hours in an evening and even if subjects we disagree on do come up we can have an intelligent conversation over it. And thats the other thing that keeps me coming back. Despite the dimwitted and unintelligent, the trolls and white knights, there are a few diamonds in the rough that stand out and every time they speak I'm just awestruck at how amazingly intelligent they are. I joke but if you had a dozen of the most intelligent, common sensed, goal oriented people from each realm join together to create a think tank, they could save the world, if they weren't to busy saving Azeroth that is...

MC: Molten Core and Maelstrom Crystals

We Three Paladins...Remember how i said i ran Molten core a lot?  yeah well this is what my paladin looks like, along with the use of a couple secret potions of win. Anyway, this post is more about the latter MC than the former.  If you have any Maelstrom crystals that you're pushing out for less than 3k apiece you may want to hold onto them.  Now that the maelstrom farm is gone and we don't have a reliable source anywhere near as cheap as alch trinkets to DE we're looking at blacksmithing shields possibly which are 3 truegold and 3 hardened elementium apiece plus whatever orbs you'd have to have the blacksmith attain in heroics.  I would keep an eye on your markets, Crystals on ally side my server are already over 4k per and they're getting there hordeside.  Good Luck, and godspeed...i know that's not MC but my T2 is so much more badass.

What is this I don't even

Blogging is what all the cool kids do these days, right?  Right. Lets talk about gold and how you make it.  No, not in real life, in a video game.  I'm talking about world of warcraft.  You all know that game that has all of what, 13 million subscribers now. I play on a mediocre backwater server where the most progressed 10man guild as of today is working on nef and as far as 25mans go, well...nef is still standing in Blackwing Descent, Halfus is the only one taking a dirt nap in Bastion and we all know how easy council is in Conclave provided the folks on your caster platform aren't related to Herpderp(not that i don't love Herpderp and he will most definitely be my favorite npc for some time to come). 

I said something about making gold didn't I...well i started off this expansion with about 50k gold.  I figured that would be a nice little next egg for progressing into the great unknown that we, er, uh, "know" as cataclysm(bad joke, i know...see what i did there). most of the gold from wrath that i made came from not wiping in raids, farming bosses in MC weekly, and selling gems.  Go ahead and throw those 3 out the window for the most part.

While I still farm MC on a regular basis for a few non existent legendary weapons, the gold you'll get in there isn't worth your time, hell it wasn't really worth it before but it was something to do.  As far as raids go, If it weren't for the BoE epics from Bastion trash that we've been able to sell for guild repairs I'd be down a lot of gold due to wipes from disconnects, failing at mechanics, and all around moments of derp. The one thing i have been able to keep a hold on is jewel crafting.  Cutting blue gems themselves aren't worth all that much money.  Not because the markup on them isn't substantial but because they don't move at a rate that will net you a large amount of gold.  I can get up to 100% markup on cut red and purple gems while blues and greens only move at a measly 1 or 2 per day with 10-15% markup from buying the raw mat.  Now thats mostly me being greedy because I've got stacks of blue quality gems sitting in my bags.  sure i could put them up at 20-30g per cut but I'm doubtful I'd sell them to actual consumers at that price any faster than the 100g plus range they're at now.  The problem is there simply aren't enough gem slots in the gear people are acquiring to warrant them buying more than 1 or 2 gems a day provided they get an upgrade.  There are those players that re gem for different encounters or switch specs and re gem gear but i don't count that at more than 10 sales per week for one player.

Where the money from jewel crafting is to be made is in prospecting ore. If ore is under 75g a stack for obsidium and 65g a stack for elementium you can make profit by simply cutting the gems and vendoring them.  I'm not advocating this as the best way to make money in the least.  Your best bet, atleast on my server with enchanting mats at 50g per greater celestial and 11g per dust is to turn your green quality gems into green jewelry with your JC and have a friend DE them or find a kind enchanter you can tip to do it for you.  you'll get 1-3 dust or lesser celestial per green and when you're crafting those rings there's the chance for it to craft into a blue which can be sold on the AH in excess of 50g.  On my server the 325ilvl blue quality rings are selling consistently for 200-300 gold apiece. That's a huge profit for the minuscule investment of less than 2g for the setting and a single gem. if you look at your servers enchanting prices and ore prices, you can see what the max you'll pay for ore is while still making profit by just doing some simple napkin math.

Some things to watch out for while doing this method of making gold: the zephherite uncommon gems are almost worthless as they can't be used for crafting jewelry to DE.  They are, however used in the jewelcrafting daily, so you may want to save them and try to sell them for a decent profit on those days, otherwise the 9g for vendoring cut ones might be appealing.  The gems on my server vary quite a bit in their raw form as far as AH price goes.  they can drop down to 12-13g per in which case i'll continue to craft greens and DE them, or I can get the opportunity to sell a dozen of a single color on the AH for 30+ gold in raw form.  When the nightstone daily rolls around i can get 50-100g per single raw uncut nightstone if I'm lucky.