hoarding
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The Daily Grind: Are you a screenshot hoarder?
I hoard screenshots. Not just MMO screenshots, but single-player screenshots, alpha and beta screenshots, hell I have screenshot folders for things that aren't games. Some time ago I even spent a couple hundred bucks on a console capture device. Not for the 1080p video capture or streaming possibilities, although those are neat too. Oh no, I bought this thing solely because I wanted to get screenshots from all my console games. This obsession is especially bizarre because outside of the need for a particular image on a Massively article, I hardly ever look at all these screenshots. Anyway, what about you, Massively readers? Do you hoard MMO screenshots, video, or other mementos from your virtual travels? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
The Daily Grind: Do you hoard in-game money?
I will never be a rich man in real life. My only interest in money is in spending it, generally on whatever game is offering the cutest in-game hats at any given moment. In games, however, I am absolutely loaded. I carefully conserve my money, spending only when absolutely necessary, and by the time I reach the level cap, I'm already fairly well-off. My bankroll in Final Fantasy XIV is enormous, my wallet overflows with credits in Star Wars: The Old Republic, and if I ever go back to World of Warcraft, it will involve enough gold to swim in, Scrooge McDuck-style. There's rarely a reason to hoard cash, of course. It doesn't convey any advantages aside from allowing you to make enormous impulse purchases. In many games, it's not going to help you really kit out your character, and you don't need to be flush with cash to cover mandatory expenses like travel and repairs. But sometimes it's just nice to know that even if you're subsisting on a diet of instant noodles and water, your character is part of the one percent. So do you hoard in-game money? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Gold Capped: Epic gems in patch 4.3
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen and Fox Van Allen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail! Epic gems will come in patch 4.3. They'll not be prospectable from Pyrite or anything else -- instead they will drop from geodes on raid bosses. This may not be the final design, but it's what Blizzard has decided so far. The people who need the gems most are going to be the source for the uncut gems, and the quantity available will be very low. Every time I've talked about this before, I've hedged my bets that Blizzard might drastically change the design for epic gems compared to the last expansion. As things turn out, it did, and we're going back to a design reminiscent of epic gems in The Burning Crusade, which were mostly available to raiders. Everyone who stockpiled Pyrite now has to decide what to do with it.
Gold Capped: The downside of hoarding
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aims to show you how to make money on the auction house, and Insider Trader, which is all about professions. For Gold Capped's inside line on making money in-game, check in here every Thursday, and email Basil with your comments, questions or hate mail! In the beginning of an expansion, a lot of people tend to hoard goods for later. A herbalist friend of mine gathered his heart out for the first two days of Cataclysm and managed to produce something like 50 stacks of herbs. His plan for it was to use some of it on maxing out alchemy and then hold onto the rest so he could level inscription at some future point. We started talking, and it became apparent that he was aware that the price of herbs was high and would likely be much lower in a couple of weeks. This is not unique. Most people who end up with enough gatherable materials that they have to decide what to do with apparently default to hoarding it for future use instead of using it immediately or selling it -- even if they know that the value of their mats will be lower by the time they use it.
Breakfast Topic: Are you a hoarder?
This Breakfast Topic has been brought to you by Seed, the Aol guest writer program that brings your words to WoW.com. It began innocently enough. My first toon was a druid who, like all druids, started collecting off sets. As the soulbound epics began to pile up, I rolled a bank alt to store the herbs and other sundry BoE items she amassed. And then I started collecting alts. And professions. And materials to level just about anything you could imagine, from reputation to first aid. Before I could intervene, the bank alt formed her own guild simply to manage the inventory. On impulse one day, I decided the hoarding was too much. How many Bone Fragments does anyone really need, after all? Over the next few weeks, I auctioned off every item not directly related to profitable endgame crafting, making a substantial amount of gold in the process. There was order and storage and sanity -- until the turtle mount obsession kicked in. Maybe it's just me, but I'm incapable of vendoring potentially useful materials. Potions of Speed sell nicely, but not as quickly as the aptly named Pygmy Suckerfish float in, and a thousand hours of Guru's Elixir seems a tad excessive even for nine alts. Do you too have a hoarding problem? Glacial Bags across the board filled with complete tier sets from every level? Rare materials of dubious value looted while getting Loremaster? Stacks of epic gems you can't auction off rapidly enough? Fel Armaments in case someday you might want to become exalted with Aldor? Rows of Northsea Pearls you have no idea what to do with? Am I really the only person whose fifth guild bank tab is given over to something as questionable as Pygmy Oil?
Breakfast Topic: My life is a mess
While I am perfect in most every way, there is one notable area where I am lacking -- organization. My desk at work has stacks of old reports, many from months ago. There are tons of Post-it notes all around with phone numbers and addresses; to whom they belong, I have no clue. But if it wasn't important, I wouldn't have written it down. The notes stay. (Especially the ones with scribbles of dinosaurs.) My Warcraft life is no different. I was doing yet another run through of Hellfire Ramparts yesterday on my shaman alt, and I struggled to find a place to put Gargolmar's Hand in my bag. And Omor's Hoof. And ... oh god, there's a third item for this quest, too? What the heck am I going to throw out? Somehow, the fact that I still had Ice Cold Milk in my bag eluded me for the last 40 levels or so. And Umi's Mechanical Yeti? I don't hate myself enough to spend an hour flying around Kalimdor to actually finish that quest. Six slots are full of Argent Dawn memorabilia. There are probably even a couple of grays in here, but I'll be damned if I can find them when it's time to vendor. I tried solving the problem by creating a bank alt, but if you couldn't guess, the bank alt's bags quickly became a mess. Are you a hoarder too? Is there something in your bags that's hopelessly out of date, and yet you can't bring yourself to get rid of it? And good god, man, what am I going to do with these seven stacks of Peacebloom?
