Having finished with the pirates in Tanaris, I remembered that I still hadn't done the last pirate quest in Stranglethorn Vale. So I went back to there and proceeded to kill the captains of the three pirate ships there. The quest and the mobs are level 45, but even at 48 this wasn't easy, because there were so many pirates, I often got 3 of them at once, they tended to run away and get more, and they respawned fast. But with some mind control tricks and some strategic retreats *cough* *cough* I managed to beat them and finish the quest. And the pirates continued to be good to me, one random pirate dropped an Underworld Band, an epic level 38 ring. First epic I find while soloing, I think. Third epic already that I see on the new server, but the other two were in groups and I didn't win them. But this character found an unusual high amount of bind on equip blues already, so money is good.
I also did some quests in the Hinterlands, but there aren't as many for the Alliance as there are for the Horde. So I started finishing some scattered quests involving a lot of travel, and even started the ultimate travel quest, the Legend of Zelda cameo quest for Linken, starting in Un'Goro. And I did a third expedition to Zul'Farrak, finishing all my quests there. With all this I dinged to level 49.
As my holidays end today, I'll spend today driving home. Started the holidays as level 36 and finished as level 49, a bit over half a level per day, pretty solid progress. Yesterday I ran another Censusplus and counted that of the 1552 players online, only 350 were level 50 and above and thus farther ahead than me. I'm in the top quartile, three quarters of the players are of lesser level than me. Others would probably interpret that as being leet, but I think I just overdid it. Well, inside the house was the coolest place during the heatwave we had on holidays, so I had a good excuse to stay in and play. But basically being in a leet guild just influenced me to hurry up, due to peer pressure.
Saturday, August 5, 2006
The truth about powerleveling
I received an e-mail from the CEO of a powerleveling company, PGMx, directing my attention towards an article called "The truth about powerleveling". I don't condone powerleveling, but the article *is* worth reading, listing the inherent dangers of powerleveling, getting banned or getting hacked. So the advice that if you absolutely want to do powerleveling, open a fresh account and level a character there instead of using your standard account with existing characters is quite solid.
In my opinion the level 1-59 part of World of Warcraft is far superior to the level 60 part. So powerleveling has somebody else do the good part of WoW for you, just so that you arrive at the bad part without effort. I always compare it to paying somebody to watch TV for you. And then of course you can't play that character as well as if you had leveled him yourself. So I can't recommend powerleveling at all. Buy gold if you must, but level the characters yourself.
In my opinion the level 1-59 part of World of Warcraft is far superior to the level 60 part. So powerleveling has somebody else do the good part of WoW for you, just so that you arrive at the bad part without effort. I always compare it to paying somebody to watch TV for you. And then of course you can't play that character as well as if you had leveled him yourself. So I can't recommend powerleveling at all. Buy gold if you must, but level the characters yourself.
Thursday, August 3, 2006
The rise of the bots
On the new server my level 60 guild mates keep complaining that many of the hunting grounds are camped by gold farmers using bot programs. Rumor has it that there is a new bot program out, which Blizzard hasn't detected yet.
Up to now I didn't have any problems with the gold farmers, bots or not bots. But this night I woke up just before 5 am, couldn't sleep any more, and logged into WoW. Just for fun I ran a Censusplus count to see who is online: 350 people online, of which 70 "players" are level 60 hunters, the most favorite botting class. One in five characters a bot, at least during the small hours, that is pretty significant.
This is the first server where I get random tells from people named "Wsdfg" or so, telling me to visit this or that website for cheap WoW gold. Seems prices are down to about $50 for 1000 gold. I wonder if the market is going to collapse soon, or whether Blizzard finds a faster way to detect and ban the bots.
I don't mind the regular gold farmers who play manually like everybody else. I figure it doesn't really matter whether Joe Buyer farms himself for his epic mount, or whether he pays somebody else to farm for him. The number of farmers playing normally is limited by the demand for gold, at some point farming gold for dollars doesn't pay a living wage any more, not even in a third world country. But I do mind if the gold is farmed by bots, because if you can automate gold farming, the cost to farm gold drops significantly, and there is nearly no limit to how much gold can flood the market.
Up to now I don't see many signs of inflation on the auction house prices. In fact I'm already buying stuff like major mana potions, because a stack of 5 for 3 gold is much, much cheaper than the prices on my old server. And when I sell my green items, even good ones like "of the eagle" stuff isn't selling very well, in spite of me putting them up at quite low prices. Falling gold prices, lots of bots, and little sign of people buying all that gold make me think that market forces might push the gold farmers off the server before Blizzard does.
Up to now I didn't have any problems with the gold farmers, bots or not bots. But this night I woke up just before 5 am, couldn't sleep any more, and logged into WoW. Just for fun I ran a Censusplus count to see who is online: 350 people online, of which 70 "players" are level 60 hunters, the most favorite botting class. One in five characters a bot, at least during the small hours, that is pretty significant.
This is the first server where I get random tells from people named "Wsdfg" or so, telling me to visit this or that website for cheap WoW gold. Seems prices are down to about $50 for 1000 gold. I wonder if the market is going to collapse soon, or whether Blizzard finds a faster way to detect and ban the bots.
I don't mind the regular gold farmers who play manually like everybody else. I figure it doesn't really matter whether Joe Buyer farms himself for his epic mount, or whether he pays somebody else to farm for him. The number of farmers playing normally is limited by the demand for gold, at some point farming gold for dollars doesn't pay a living wage any more, not even in a third world country. But I do mind if the gold is farmed by bots, because if you can automate gold farming, the cost to farm gold drops significantly, and there is nearly no limit to how much gold can flood the market.
Up to now I don't see many signs of inflation on the auction house prices. In fact I'm already buying stuff like major mana potions, because a stack of 5 for 3 gold is much, much cheaper than the prices on my old server. And when I sell my green items, even good ones like "of the eagle" stuff isn't selling very well, in spite of me putting them up at quite low prices. Falling gold prices, lots of bots, and little sign of people buying all that gold make me think that market forces might push the gold farmers off the server before Blizzard does.
WoW Journal - 4-August-2006
Everybody loves pirates. I just hit level 48 in Tanaris, and I made most of that level fighting the pirates there. Solo, or in small teams with whoever was there too, I killed hundreds of pirates, and did all possible quests. The most hard to get quest was the one for Cuergo's gold, where you need to combine three rare drop map fragments to form a treasure map. Takes quite some time to get all the fragments, because the pirate's footlooker you can find them in only has a 4% drop chance. And then not all footlockers contain map fragments, and it is likely that you get several of the same type before finding one each of the upper, middle, and lower map fragment. And of course Cuergo's Gold turns out to be alcohol, but his treasure chest has 2 green items as well, plus a parrot skeleton. Do pirates bury their parrots with their treasure? :)
Other rare drops there are a shipping schedule, which starts an easy hand-in quest for nearly 5000 xp, and a captain's key, which opens the captain's chest in the cabin of one of the pirate ships. But besides a couple of greens, I mainly got silk and mageweave, cash, and lots of xp. I had finished all the quests there when being about 80% into the level, and decided that this was such a nice grinding spot, that I'd stay until dinging 48.
Curiously I hadn't done much pirate killing on my Horde characters, although the Tanaris quests are neutral, and can be done by both factions. Next stop is the Hinterlands, where I did a lot of Horde quests, since a patch added a Horde village there, but never did the Alliance quests. I'm having fun!
Other rare drops there are a shipping schedule, which starts an easy hand-in quest for nearly 5000 xp, and a captain's key, which opens the captain's chest in the cabin of one of the pirate ships. But besides a couple of greens, I mainly got silk and mageweave, cash, and lots of xp. I had finished all the quests there when being about 80% into the level, and decided that this was such a nice grinding spot, that I'd stay until dinging 48.
Curiously I hadn't done much pirate killing on my Horde characters, although the Tanaris quests are neutral, and can be done by both factions. Next stop is the Hinterlands, where I did a lot of Horde quests, since a patch added a Horde village there, but never did the Alliance quests. I'm having fun!
Wednesday, August 2, 2006
Gamasutra interviews Mark Jacobs
Interesting interview with Mark Jacobs on Gamasutra. While I wasn't a big Mark Jacobs fan before, because some of the things he said about RMT were just lunatic raving rants, in this interview he makes a lot of very sensible statements. Especially about the success of World of Warcraft, the size of the market, and the chance of Warhammer Online to "beat" WoW.
Peering deep into my crystal ball, I predict Warhammer Online reaching a number 2 spot on the MMO market, similar to the position Dark Age of Camelot held for some time. It will attract a lot of burned out WoW players, due to having a similar look and better PvP (the one definitive area of superiority of Mythic over all other companies), but it won't "beat" WoW. It *can't* beat WoW, due to requiring much higher system specs, you can't sell more games than there are PCs that it could possibly run on. But Warhammer Online is certainly a game I will be playing, even if I am not a big PvP fan.
Peering deep into my crystal ball, I predict Warhammer Online reaching a number 2 spot on the MMO market, similar to the position Dark Age of Camelot held for some time. It will attract a lot of burned out WoW players, due to having a similar look and better PvP (the one definitive area of superiority of Mythic over all other companies), but it won't "beat" WoW. It *can't* beat WoW, due to requiring much higher system specs, you can't sell more games than there are PCs that it could possibly run on. But Warhammer Online is certainly a game I will be playing, even if I am not a big PvP fan.
Tuesday, August 1, 2006
Why can't we admit it's over?
Having read a couple of magazines about PC games, I know that the "game of the month" is a new shooter named Prey. Some people don't like it, but other reviewers give it very high marks. Prey can be played through in 8 to 12 hours. And there are quite a number of games that only take about 10 hours to finish. Role-playing games usually last a bit longer, but even a Final Fantasy lasts only about 60 hours, and the longest single-player RPG I've read about time to completion was Baldur's Gate with 200 hours, if you do all sub-quests. And yet here we are and discuss that World of Warcraft has a design flaw, because unless you raid there is nothing left to do for you after about 500 hours. Why can't we admit that we reached an invisible game over screen?
I don't think there is a "design flaw" in World of Warcraft. It just ends, like any other game. While you play, you consume content in the form of quests, zones, spells and abilities, etc., and at some point you have seen it all. If it were Baldur's Gate, we would either put the CD back in the box and stop playing, or roll a new character and start over. But in World of Warcraft we insist on playing our level 60s for hundreds of hours more, excerting tremendous effort to reach the last tiny bits of content we haven't seen yet, all the time complaining that there isn't much content left. Isn't it us who have a "design flaw"?
Of course Blizzard is partly to blame, because they foster that kind of behavior. Instead of giving us closure with a screen saying "Game over, congratulations, you won" at level 60, they give us that hard to reach content which requires 40 people to coordinate for hundreds of hours to achieve. That divides us into a group of people who are willing and able to coordinate with 39 others for hundreds of hours, and those who notice that this isn't the same World of Warcraft any more, and won't or can't chase after that last bit of content.
But whatever style of gameplay we prefer or are willing to cope with, we all want more content. We want the next episode of World of Warcraft, because we are tired of watching the first episode over and over. We just don't have the willpower to stop watching that first episode while waiting for the second one. Damn addiction!
I don't think there is a "design flaw" in World of Warcraft. It just ends, like any other game. While you play, you consume content in the form of quests, zones, spells and abilities, etc., and at some point you have seen it all. If it were Baldur's Gate, we would either put the CD back in the box and stop playing, or roll a new character and start over. But in World of Warcraft we insist on playing our level 60s for hundreds of hours more, excerting tremendous effort to reach the last tiny bits of content we haven't seen yet, all the time complaining that there isn't much content left. Isn't it us who have a "design flaw"?
Of course Blizzard is partly to blame, because they foster that kind of behavior. Instead of giving us closure with a screen saying "Game over, congratulations, you won" at level 60, they give us that hard to reach content which requires 40 people to coordinate for hundreds of hours to achieve. That divides us into a group of people who are willing and able to coordinate with 39 others for hundreds of hours, and those who notice that this isn't the same World of Warcraft any more, and won't or can't chase after that last bit of content.
But whatever style of gameplay we prefer or are willing to cope with, we all want more content. We want the next episode of World of Warcraft, because we are tired of watching the first episode over and over. We just don't have the willpower to stop watching that first episode while waiting for the second one. Damn addiction!
WoW Journal - 1-August-2006
I'm making good progress with my new priest, who is now already level 47. And most importantly I am having fun, doing quests that I have never done before, this being my first Alliance character that got this far. Currently I am questing in Feralas, with Tanaris being the next step.
I found one more hidden quest, a level 40ish quest series called "Sweet Amber", where you help some dwarf to brew alcohol. The hidden aspect of that is that the quest giver dwarf is in the mountains of Westfall, and not many level 40+ characters go there. The only bad aspect was that I had to look up where to find the bags of corn he wanted, because the quest text did not give any hint at all, only with Thottbot was I able to solve the quest. But I got a cool reward, I trinket representing a hip flask. Using it not only gets me drunk, but also makes me breath fire for 5 seconds, burning all enemies in front of me. Fun!
I also did two expeditions into Zul'Farrak, one of my favorite dungeons. Especially the defence of the pyramid event is always worth doing. And except for Gahz'rilla, the whole instance is more or less the same level range, and can be completed with a group in one run. I think I won't bother gathering the mallet for Gahz'rilla, maybe I find a group where somebody else has it. Getting the mallet is more trouble than killing the monster. But I do appreciate the reference to Japanese monster B-movies.
I found one more hidden quest, a level 40ish quest series called "Sweet Amber", where you help some dwarf to brew alcohol. The hidden aspect of that is that the quest giver dwarf is in the mountains of Westfall, and not many level 40+ characters go there. The only bad aspect was that I had to look up where to find the bags of corn he wanted, because the quest text did not give any hint at all, only with Thottbot was I able to solve the quest. But I got a cool reward, I trinket representing a hip flask. Using it not only gets me drunk, but also makes me breath fire for 5 seconds, burning all enemies in front of me. Fun!
I also did two expeditions into Zul'Farrak, one of my favorite dungeons. Especially the defence of the pyramid event is always worth doing. And except for Gahz'rilla, the whole instance is more or less the same level range, and can be completed with a group in one run. I think I won't bother gathering the mallet for Gahz'rilla, maybe I find a group where somebody else has it. Getting the mallet is more trouble than killing the monster. But I do appreciate the reference to Japanese monster B-movies.
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