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A Mild-Mannered Reporter: Positive charge
PAX East this past weekend was indeed filled with revelations, but none of them had to do with City of Heroes or any other NCsoft game, really, so I can't even complain about one getting all the love while the others were ignored. And while I could probably try to spin a thousand words out of wanting to insert a Rock Band Blitz-style minigame into the game under discussion, I have the feeling I'd get some odd looks and a rejected column. What I did have opportunity to consider, however, is how pretty much the only thing I've brought up in regard to the Paragon Market has been the many, many choices made regarding it that I consider debatable. The Super Pack and the numerous power sets both have been targets for negativity, and I honestly haven't said anything corresponding about the positives. This seems unfair on many levels. Sure, I think the implementation is sometimes dicey, but there are a lot of parts of the market that are great, and I happily doff my hat to the team for them. So instead of burying the shop, let's praise it.
Preparing your old iPad for sale in five easy steps (Update)
It appears from the huge pre-sales of the new iPad that a lot of people are getting the new model. We've also heard from a number of iPad "recyclers" that they're seeing record numbers of people who are selling their original iPad or iPad 2 to trade up to the new model. Since I'm among those who recycle their iPads whenever a new model appears, I thought I'd share my method of getting the old devices prepared for sale. There are five steps that you should take to prepare your old iPad for a new owner, even if it's just going to be turned over to a friend or relative. Follow along as I go through these steps: 1) Cancel your recurring monthly data plan if you have a Wi-Fi + 3G model This first step is only necessary if you have a Wi-Fi + 3G iPad. You'll want to make sure that you no longer need the 3G service before you do this, but it's a necessity if you don't want to continue getting billed every month for cellular data. Update: If you are staying with the same carrier and using the same plan, do not cancel your data plan, and don't follow Step 2 of this post. You can swap the SIM from your current iPad and put it into the new iPad. Steps 1 and 2 area really only useful if a) you're switching data carriers or b) getting rid of your iPad and not purchasing a new one. Go into Settings on your iPad, then tap the Cellular Data icon. You'll want to tap the View Account button, after which you'll need to log into your account using the email address and password that you used when you signed up for the service. Once you're signed in, you'll see an account overview (screenshot below). The shows the data plan you're using and the status of that plan (how many MB or GB you've used and how many are left). Next, tap the Add Data or Change Plan button. This brings up a list of plan options for your wireless carrier. To cancel the service, tap the Cancel Plan button. The following screen appears: You'll be asked if you want to cancel your plan and delete the account now, or cancel the plan and have the account deleted after 60 days of inactivity (screenshot below). Make your choice, and then tap the Continue button. After tapping the Cancel Plan button, your iPad pauses momentarily and then displays a note that tells you that you will be notified of the changes as soon as they are processed by your carrier. In my case with AT&T, that took about 30 seconds. 2) Remove the SIM if you have a Wi-Fi +3G model Next, you'll want to remove the SIM from your iPad. Once again, this is only necessary if you have a Wi-Fi + 3G model. Locate the SIM door on your iPad. On the original model, it is located lower left side as you face the screen. On the iPad 2, it's on the top left side. Now take a very skinny paper clip or one of Apple's SIM removal tools (which they no longer seem to provide, by the way), and push it into the hole at the top of the SIM door. The door pops open, revealing the SIM in its tray (see photo below). Pull it all the way out of the iPad, remove the SIM, and keep it as a souvenir. I have a pile of these things... When you're done, slide the door back into place until it clicks. Note that you'll get a "No SIM card installed" error message on your iPad the first time you power it on after you remove the SIM. 3) Back up your device OK, hopefully you're on a Wi-Fi network for the next step, backing up your iPad. Fortunately for all of us, we no longer need to back our iPads up to a Mac or PC unless we really want to. Instead, tap on the iCloud button in Settings and then tap the Storage & Backup button (screenshot below). Chances are good that your iPad has automatically backed itself up when it is plugged in at night. If it hasn't met the backup criteria of being plugged in, locked, and connected to Wi-Fi, the Storage & Backup screen will show that you haven't been backed up in a while. You can plug in your iPad and then tap the Back Up Now button to force a backup (screenshot below). Wait until the backup is done before moving on to step 4. 4) Delete everything Quoting the great line from Aliens, "I say we take off and nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure." The iPad equivalent of nuking the site from orbit is completely wiping its storage. The iPad and iPad 2 both support hardware encryption, so Apple's method of wiping your data is stated as "Erases user settings and information by removing the encryption key that protects the data. This process takes just a few minutes." To "nuke the site from orbit" is pretty easy. Go to Settings, tap on General, and then tap the Reset button. Next, tap the Erase All Content and Settings button (screenshot below). With a few minutes, your iPad is cleaned of all apps, data, and setting that you had on the device. You probably want to wait until after your new iPad is set up and running to do this... 5) Clean it up physically Many of the "recycling" services will actually pay more for iPads that look brand new. If your iPad spent most of its life in a case and has no scratches or dents, you'll get top dollar. What I always do before boxing up my old gear to send to the recyclers is to clean it physically. The best way to do this is to use any of the commercial cleaning sprays and a microfiber cloth. My current favorite brand of cleaner is the Antec Advance line, which comes in bottles of various sizes and will last a long time. Rather than spray the cleaner right onto the device, I always spray the cloth lightly and then begin wiping the screen and body to make sure that any and all smears are gone. Let the iPad dry completely, and then give it another close look to make sure you haven't missed something. That's it! Your iPad is now ready to leave your hands and go on to be used by someone else. Give it a goodbye kiss if you'd like -- just don't smear up the screen you just cleaned.
Report: UK retailer Game is for sale
UK retailer Game is gearing up to sell the final thing it has on its shelves -- itself -- and has hired Banque Privee Edmond de Rothschild as the sale adviser, Bloomberg cites the Sunday Times as reporting. The Sunday Times doesn't list a source or means of obtaining this information, Bloomberg writes, but with Game's awkward economic happenings recently, this news doesn't come as either a shock or surprise.Game hasn't been able to stock high-profile titles during recent launches, including Street Fighter X Tekken, Asura's Wrath, Ubisoft's Vita launch titles and Mass Effect 3, the last of which alone lost Game an estimated £2 million ($3.2 million). Game's market value sits at roughly £15 million ($23 million), MCV reports, meaning the lack of just one title, Mass Effect 3, generated a loss of one-seventh of Game's entire worth.
How to sell Hagara Pick Pockets to rogues
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. Check out Fox and Basil's reboot of Call To Auction, and email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail! There's a fairly simple way to make gold without professions: Sell summons to a pick-pocketable Hagara to rogues looking to get their legendary quest starter daggers, Vengeance and Fear. These are the most accessible rogue weapons, because aside from picking the pocket of the fourth boss in a raid instance, the quest can be easily completed with a 10k gold and a minimum amount of help. These daggers are the best entry-level options for rogues who PvP or PvE, available as soon as they hit 85 and are capable of completing the quest. If players are raiders, they'll probably get it for free just by being in a raid that gets to Hagara; however, if all they do is PvP or casual PvE through the Raid and Dungeon Finders, they won't be able to get the first leg of the quest finished. Within a few weeks, most rogues who want to start the quest will have started it. Until then, I've heard of non-raiding rogues paying as much as 25k for the opportunity to pick Hagara's pockets.
Amazon marks 'best holiday' for Kindle devices, fills stockings full of cash
It was yet another solid year for Amazon's Kindle family of products. The mega online retailer sent out its yearly post-Christmas card, bragging about moving "well over one million Kindle devices per week" for December, making it the best holiday yet for the e-reader / tablet line, according to the company. Three Kindles held the top spots on the site's list of best sellers, led by the Fire, the Touch and the plain old fourth generation Kindle. No exact numbers from Amazon, as per usual, but it looks to have been a pretty green Christmas for Bezos and co. Jingle all the way to the celebratory press release after the jump.
Kodak shopping its IP wares, looks to cash in on the patent buying craze
Pssssst... wanna buy some Kodak patents? The venerable photography firm has decided to unload a fair chunk of its IP -- 1,100 patents, give or take -- to boost its bottom line. You see, Kodak's got cash flow problems, and it thinks selling a portion of its portfolio is part of the solution. The company must've seen dollar signs after Nortel made a mint selling its patents, as Kodak's now marketing its IP merchandise using the same firm that helped Nortel do its record deal. Strong move Kodak, now if you can just settle up with Apple and RIM, you'll really be in the money.
Gold Capped: How to use trade chat to make gold
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. Email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail! When was the last time you saw trade chat used to actually trade more than Chuck Norris jokes? Interestingly, it can actually be used for making gold! This might be a bit of a paradigm shift, so bear with me here. Trade chat is simultaneously one of the most overused and underused tools in our toolbox. Non-auctioneers sometimes use it almost exclusively because the addon-free auction house is intimidatingly badly designed. Gold-making pros sometimes get so wrapped up in their own business that we miss out potentially profitable chats. So how can you use trade chat to profit?
Gold Capped: Buy low, sell high
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. Email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail! Everyone who gets into the auction house to make tons of gold immediately assumes that it's done by buying low and selling high. Seems simple enough, and it's one of those chestnuts that we've all heard Wall Street types talking about. Brokerage takes no trade skills, no addons, and it feels like making money from nothing. A lot of what I've written about for this column has focused on how to use trade skills for profit, but the truth is that brokerage really can be a profitable use of your time. It's not as easy as it sounds, but assuming you have a solid understanding of what you're doing, you can use it to good effect.
ASUS to debut Eee Pad Transformer in Taiwan this Friday, Honeycomb confirmed (updated: coming to US in early April)
While we've yet to see other Honeycomb tablets materialize in the shops after the Xoom, news has it that ASUS is about to debut its Eee Pad Transformer back in its home country this Friday. There's still no final pricing to be seen for this Tegra 2 device, but some of our watchful readers have already spotted the stricken-through $799 label -- in US dollars, oddly enough -- on ASUS' Transformer countdown page on Facebook, and hopefully this price tag will cover the docking kit as well. Anyhow, anxious Android fans will be able to order this peculiar 10.1-inch slate -- in 16GB or 32GB flavor -- later this week, so that Taiwanese pen pal of yours will finally come in handy. [Thanks to everyone who sent this in] Update: We just heard from our ASUS rep here in the US and it looks like the Transformer will be hitting the US market in early April. No word on pricing yet, but we will keep you updated.
Gold Capped: TradeSkillMaster, the last trade skill and finances addon you'll ever need
Every week (since Feb. 14, 2010), WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aims to show you how to make money on the auction house. Email Basil with your questions, hate mail, or guild applications! edit: This post introduces the addon and concepts, but for a hands on setup guide, check out the basic and advanced posts. I have been playing around with a new addon, TradeSkillMaster. I've talked about a whole slew of other tools players can use to make money before, but none of them are anywhere near as awesome as TSM. Before I jump in, though, you should all probably know that this addon is still in beta. There are a few little bugs I've encountered (and reported), but the addon works very well in its current state. Please note that when you download the addon, you will need to download each module separately, as the entirety of the addon's functionality is accessed through the modules. They are linked in the description section of the TSM main page, but if you have a Curse Premium account, you can get them all at once. TSM is now my main tool for every single one of the markets I'm active in. That said, Sapu, the creator of the addon, needs help. He's done 95% of the code on the project so far, so if any of you are looking for an opportunity to work on an exciting and popular World of Warcraft addon project, I'd be just thrilled if it was this one. Down to business: what does TradeSkillMaster do, and why am I so excited that I wrote a post about it before it's done?
EVE Evolved: Having a fire sale
One of those strange rituals all EVE Online players go through at one time or another is the fire sale. Over the course of normal play, we buy, loot or otherwise acquire assets all over New Eden. After a time, our asset windows become a mess of long lost items and treasures hidden away in the cargoholds of ships we forgot we had. We all eventually reach breaking point and need to sell off our distributed stockpiles of odds and ends. Maybe it will happen when you run out of ships to PvP in, or perhaps when your subscription is about to lapse and you need to buy a 30-day PLEX. With the recent five-day reactivation offer on many expired accounts, I imagine a lot of EVE players are currently scrambling through their assets in an attempt to raise enough ISK for a PLEX. Whatever the reason behind it, that dreaded day when you need to have a fire sale on your assets will inevitably arrive. A monumental logistical task now lies ahead of you, but it doesn't have to be the headache you'd expect it to be. Having been through countless cycles of accumulating bits and bobs and then selling them to buy PLEX, I've picked up a few tips to make the process as painless as possible. In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at the tools and strategies you can employ to squeeze every last drop of ISK from your misplaced treasure troves, and how to complete the task with a minimum of effort.
The Daily Grind: Do you like playing the merchant?
It's hard to deny that there's a certain appeal in playing the market in a game. While the stakes are certainly lower than in real life -- a failed investment deprives you of only in-game currency, with rare exceptions -- the successes feel just as visceral. Certainly it's something that EVE Online has capitalized on, to the point where some of the game's detractors complain that it's all-consuming. And of course, therein lies the problem -- some players log in to get away from the economic concerns of the real world. More recent games have veered away from having players act as merchants, instead choosing to make buying and selling almost wholly reliant upon auction houses. Of course, games like Recettear prove that there's still some appeal in playing a virtual tradesman for some. What do you think? Do you like having the option of carving out your particular niche in a virtual world as a crafter and salesman? Or would you rather have games focus on grand adventure, and leave the mundane tasks of shopkeeping to the NPCs? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of our 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 The Daily Grind!
Insider Trader: Market alerts from The Undermine Journal
Insider Trader is a column about professions, written by Basil "Euripides" Berntsen, who also writes Gold Capped. This week, we're discussing something near and dear to every trade skill user's heart: prices -- specifically, how to get better prices. You remember The Undermine Journal, right? Here's what I wrote when I discovered the alpha. The creators have been busy managing the growth of the site, adding servers and realms, as well as periodically adding new functionality. It's in beta now, and they just added the most interesting feature: market alerts. You can now set up the site to email you every time stuff you're looking for hits a certain price. For example, if you are buying Saronite Ore to prospect so you can take advantage of the removal of the epic gem transmute cooldown removal in patch 4.0, you can go to your realm on The Undermine Journal and set it up so it will email you whenever the price goes down to your target.
Changes incoming for the markets of Final Fantasy XIV
Even if you're a fan of Final Fantasy XIV, you're probably not enamored of the way that selling items among players is currently handled. It's not that the market wards aren't useful, they're just a really slow way of finding items in a game where nearly every single item is crafted by players rather than found or purchased. So it's good news for the game that the development team is aware of the issue, and adjustments are incoming within the relatively near future. The first slated update will sort the market districts by items sold, thereby allowing players to zero in on exactly what they're looking for rather than the current ambling search. There are also plans for further refinement and specialization to the wards, along with plans to better facilitate hiring and employing multiple retainers at once. Whether or not the system will ever be replaced or supplemented with the often-requested auction house has not been stated, although there are no hints that such a system is incoming for Final Fantasy XIV. Even so, the promised updates should make finding items a good sight easier.
Gold Capped: Quick Auctions Poster does the undercutting for you
Every week, Gold Capped (from Basil "Euripides" Berntsen) aims to educate players about how to make money on the auction house. For the inside line on crafting for disenchanting, transmutation, cross-faction arbitrage and more, check in every Wednesday. Also, feel free to email Basil any comments, questions or hate mail! Quick Auctions Poster is here, and it's going to change your life. It was written by one of the auctioneers who inhabit the Just My Two Copper forums, and here's the description of what it does, straight from the download page: This addon is a plugin for Quick Auctions that adds a checkbox to the auction house posting frame with which you can toggle continuous scanning and posting of Quick Auctions. It saves you the effort of hitting the post button whenever a scan has finished. Sadly, because this Quick Auctions button doesn't have a name and its function is private, this action can't be macroed, but this addon manages to obtain the correct button and simulates a click on it. In essence, you can fill your bags up with stock, and instead of using QA3 to post a single batch, it will keep refreshing your scan for you while you wander off to do something else. It will keep automatically undercutting everyone until you run out of stock.
Gold Capped: Breaking the glyph wall
Every week, Gold Capped brings you tips on how to make money on the auction house. This article from inscription specialist Steve Zamboni has been brought to you by Seed, the Aol guest writer program that brings your words to WoW.com. Almost all auction house tactics revolve around the undercut. It may be a single copper, a few silver or a few gold, or a freefall drop down to the price of materials. Regardless of the amount or the frequency, most undercuts share a common misconception: that you're controlling the market with your undercuts. You're not. Your competitor has the control. By undercutting, you've just let your competitor decide your price. You've let your competitor set a cap on your profits -- and more, you've agreed to accept even less with your undercut. The inscription market sees more than its fair share of this, sometimes on a large scale. The low deposits encourage large number of postings, followed by even larger numbers of cancellations and repostings. Prices fall as each new poster accepts and trumps the previous poster's prices, until the market falls to the cost of materials and the walls go up. The final wall signals a complete loss of market control. Once it's up, it no longer matters who built the wall. If it's your wall, you can't raise prices until the competition perched above you goes away. If it's not your wall, you can't raise prices on your auctions until someone breaks the wall. Stalemate, and out come the piña coladas.
The Mog Log: Can't hardly wait edition
While our column last week was all about Final Fantasy XI, we're turning this week to Final Fantasy XIV and the release date that is approaching oh so quickly. But not quickly enough. Somehow knowing that it's just around the corner in September just makes the interim that much harder. I mean, we have to go through how many more weeks of the agonizing anticipation? At least it gets released after PAX, so I won't have to worry about the timing of that with traveling out to Seattle, but holy wow guys the game is coming out in two months. If it weren't already wholly obvious, I'm pretty excited. The game is shaping up to be amazing by every standard I care to use, and the fact that it's this close to release is unexpectedly wonderful news. But while I would have happily discussed some of the release details last week, there were other events that needed attention first. Now that I can sit back down and take a closer look, however, there were a couple parts that really stood out to me. I mean, even beyond the squealing joy of its oncoming release.
Gold Capped: Making gold with alchemy
Want to get Gold Capped? This column shows you how. Join author Basil "Euripides" Berntsen, also of outdps.com, the Hunting Party podcast and the Call to Auction podcast. Alchemy is an awesome way to make money in WoW. As we've said before, some businesses are proactive, requiring you to invest time and money in order to make profits. Some are reactive, allowing you to use a cooldown to craft something that's in demand for smallish volume of sales at high profit. Alchemy is unique in the sense that it allows you to both! You can craft and sell potions, flasks and elixirs, and you can transmute an epic gem once a day and Titanium Bars without a cooldown since patch 3.3.
Apple sells over 300,000 iPad tablets on US launch day
We heard some pretty ridiculous estimates over the weekend, but these figures are straight out of Cupertino's mouth: over 300,000 iPads were sold on April 3rd. Specifically, that many were moved in the US as of midnight (PT, we're assuming) on Saturday, though this does include deliveries of pre-ordered units to customers, deliveries to channel partners (such as Best Buy) and sales at Apple Retail Stores. We should point out, though, that just because Best Buy purchased a bundle of 'em doesn't mean that end users have (yet), but still, this is a pretty impressive feat for something that not everyone was convinced that they "needed" in January. If you'll recall, Apple only sold 270,000 iPhones during its first 30 hours on the market, yet it moved over a million iPhone 3GS units during that handset's opening weekend. In related news, iPad users also downloaded over a million apps and over 250,000 ebooks from the iBookstore during launch day, with Steve Jobs himself noting that "iPad users, on average, downloaded more than three apps and close to one book within hours of unpacking their new iPad." Now, let's see if these guys can keep pace through the first full week. [Thanks, Tal]
Gold Capped: Selling with Auctioneer's Appraiser
Want to get Gold Capped? This column will show you how, and is written by Basil "Euripides" Berntsen, also of outdps.com, the hunting party podcast, and the call to auction podcast. Auctioneer is a wonderful addon I've mentioned a few times already, and today we're going to talk about how to use it to sell your goods efficiently. First up, go download and install it. Now, when you open the auction house, you will see a different interface. We'll be going over a bunch of other useful functionality this has in another post, but today, we're focusing on selling. Do a quick scan by clicking on the fast forward arrow: You should make a point of scanning the AH this way as often as possible, but generally not more than a few times a day. I do it every two days, or whenever I need the data. This allows auctioneer to learn what items are worth in your economy, by keeping track of the listing price over time.
