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Weekly news roundup with Panser of TradeChat
TradeChat's official WoW Insider weekly news recap is here once more, and as probably expected the biggest news on the tips of everyone's tongues is patch 5.4 and everything related. Topics covered in this week's video include: WoW TCG packs up its decks for good Patch 5.4's release date confirmed for September 10th Blizzard's official patch 5.4 gear guide, as well as WoW Insider's version of the same Panser's wonderful interview with Dave Kosak Blizzard at Gamescom: WoW character model revamps under way plus could WoW go FTP? Discussion Topic: Would you still play WoW if it went free to play? If you like the show, make sure to subscribe to TradeChat, leave comments, and tune in next week for a new episode!
TradeChat interviews Dave Kosak
Panser of TradeChat has posted the video of her interview with WoW Lead Quest Designer Dave Kosak about what's to come in patch 5.4. Covered topics include things to look forward to on the Timeless Isle, Wrathion's legendary quest line (including some discussion on the legendary cloaks themselves), the Siege of Orgrimmar raid, flex raiding, proving grounds, and the much-anticipated noodle cart scenario. You can watch it embedded above or head on over to TradeChat's Youtube channel to check it out there. September 10th is only two weeks away, folks!
Breakfast Topic: Do you turn off trade chat?
Trade chat on almost all servers is a wretched hive of scum and villainy. But you can advertise items for sale and look for groupmates there as well. Sometimes you can even get answers to your questions -- if you are very lucky and willing to sift through the lies and mockery. General chat in the MoP beta can be just as bad, as it can in any MMO, beta or otherwise. (See SWTOR.) And even if chat isn't full of obscene references and spam, there's the whining. The whining! Another problem with trade and general chat is the feeding of trolls. Perfectly decent people will get into a rage war because Trollmaster and Trolliscious demeaned a class, profession, race, favorite sports team, etc. Trolls love that. Any attention is good. And then everyone else has to put up with the arguing and insults flying back and forth. I know. It's hard to ignore when the trade chat villains start calling anyone who likes the female pandaren "chubby chasers," but going verbally postal in public chat isn't going to help anyone. I fought the urge and so can you. (Though my Twitter followers heard all about it.) Guild masters and officers often keep trade chat on to make sure that no guildies are misbehaving in public. This can be a painful experience and usually not worth the time. Personally, I turn public chat off in live and keep it on in beta. Beta general chat often answers questions I have -- in between all the misogyny and malicious pranks. Do you turn off the public chat channels? If so, do you turn them back on again to conduct legitimate business, or do you just stay away? Do you find chat problems in other MMOs? Or are you one of the ones causing the problem? /glare
Trade skill crusader brings back customer service and sweat equity to crafting
WoW players today tend to consider the deterioration of the in-game community in terms of relatively recent influences like the Dungeon Finder and then the Raid Finder. We sometimes forget that design tweaks and new systems have been chipping away at the paradigm of Azeroth as a place to forge ongoing personal relationships for years now. Take a gander at the beginning of this analysis I wrote on the death of the Azerothian salesman all the way back in the hyper-modern era of The Burning Crusade circa 2007: Forget the endless debate over hardcore versus casual -- there's another moniker that we here at Insider Trader hold dear: salesman. What's that? You don't know any salesmen in WoW these days? You're not alone. Times have changed since craftspeople toiled to build reputations as the go-to traders on their servers ... when Ironforge was the hub of civilization, where a few elite enchanters held court over the entire server with coveted formulae from such exotic locales as Stratholme and Scholomance. It's a brave new world in today's Outland. Most enchanters don't enchant for the general public at all, unless you provide mats and a tip. And in any profession, with so many other players on the servers who have the same patterns (even rare patterns are generally available from more than one player) and so many easy ways to make money (hello, daily quests!), there's little reason to hang around town to build a regular clientele. Components provided or created by other professions are readily available on the Auction House -- there's no need to seek out and nurture relationships with another player from a complementary profession. Have the conveniences Blizzard has developed for today's crafters meant the death of the salesman? Most WoW players would agree that convenience and self-service is the way of today's game. But for one stubborn tradesman on Sentinels (US), life as an Azerothian salesman is anything but obsolete. Daen, a dedicated craftsman and proprietor of Daen's Crafting Emporium, single-handedly maintains what may be one of World of Warcraft's last remaining bastions of personal craftsmanship and trade skill service -- with a twist. This proprietor not only aims to provide personal service, but he does it at no charge, with the insistence that customers devote sweat equity to their mutual creations as well.
Chuck Norris plays a melee hunter in latest WoW commercial
Blizzard has just posted an official copy of the newest Warcraft commercial, in which Chuck Norris plays a human melee hunter with a cat pet. The commercial shows Chuck punching and kicking his way across Azeroth in a particularly monk-like style, fighting orcs and kodos in The Barrens and Westfall, and beating up gnomes in seedy bars. Chuck Norris jokes have been a fixture of Warcraft Barrens and trade chat lore for years, so it was probably inevitable that we'd get something like this eventually. Personally, I'm still a bigger fan of Vin Diesel jokes (and Vin Diesel the human being, for that matter), but it's hard to deny that Chuck doesn't have his place in pop culture and in the WoW community. Now, with this commercial, it's official. And I won't lie, I'd probably give my humans that hairstyle and beard if they showed up in game.
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?
The Queue: The one with the fashion-forward warlock
Welcome to your daily dose of The Queue. With Mike Sacco quite literally powerless, his precious Queue was left unguarded and captured by Fox Van Allen. All members of the Van Allen faction shall enjoy a 5 percent buff to damage and experience for the 24-hour duration, and Spirit Shards may now be collected. Ladies and gentlemen, I have returned to host The Queue once more. I know you've missed me. You're probably saying to yourself, "Oh man, I wish Fox could do The Queue every day of the week, four times a day!" This, of course, would be folly. You can indeed have too much of a good thing. Remember when Who Wants to be a Millionaire first aired on TV? It was on maybe once a week. And then it got so popular that they started adding extra shows. Turn on your TV on Wednesday and -- boom -- there was Regis. Turn it on Thursday -- Regis. Friday -- Regis. Sunday -- Regis. Sooner or later, you couldn't even take a trip to the mens' room without seeing Regis Philbin staring back at you from the urinal, asking you who the father of quantum physics was. It's Niels Bohr, OK?! Niels freakin' Bohr. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm trying to go to the bathroom here. Man. Sharvis asked: How has trade chat been since the last patch? Now that you can't spam in it, it seems slower-paced to me at least.
Drama Mamas: Spearheading morality
Drama Mamas Lisa Poisso and Robin Torres are experienced gamers and real-life mamas -- and just as we don't want our precious babies to be the ones kicking and wailing on the floor of the checkout lane next to the candy, neither do we want you to become known as That Guy on your realm. I strongly believe that your fun should stop when it starts to infringe upon the fun of another. However, the behavior of funsuckers is not something we can control. Sure, we can report the blatant offenders to Blizzard. Yes, we can put them on ignore. But no matter how hard we try, we will never be able to make them change their ways. The question is: Does it hurt to try? Dear Drama Mamas, Recently, I've taken a more active role in trying to combat the rampant immorality and indecency that has taken hold on the WoW community. I used to be content with ignoring it, and I even left trade chat in an attempt to isolate myself from the more concentrated locations. However, I couldn't just sit by while the problem gets worse each day. It's gotten so bad on my realm that people are actually cheering at people who ninja, troll or gank. I have been brought up right: instilled with values by my parents to make moral choices in my life. I had hoped to reach out and bring some of this awareness to others, but so far it's only lost in the flood or so bashed that people simply laugh at my efforts now.
The Lawbringer: 5 ways trade chat can get you in trouble
Pop law abounds in The Lawbringer, your weekly dose of WoW, the law, video games and the MMO genre. Running parallel to the games we love and enjoy is a world full of rules, regulations, pitfalls and traps. How about you hang out with us as we discuss some of the more esoteric aspects of the games we love to play? There's this place downtown that I know. You've probably been warned about it -- a seedy place of corruption, danger, intrigue, questionable math, and Tempest Keep runs where the Ashes of Al'ar are on reserve. You'll never be able to link Thunderfury last. This article is not for the faint of heart, so if you are easily offended, I would advise turning around 180 degrees and walking away. We're talking trade chat. This week, we talk about five ways trade chat can get you into some trouble with Blizzard. From naming violations to impersonating and scamming players, you can strand yourself out on some pretty thin ice with the GMs at Blizzard by violating the Terms of Use. For the sake of everyone else in game, don't.
The cynic's guide to World of Warcraft
We tend to be very careful while composing articles here at WoW Insider. We're always mindful that not everyone plays the game in the same way, or has the same experience on different servers or factions, but every so often a certain madness seizes us and we feel the urge to ... tell the truth. In that vein, I am pleased (sort of) to present The Cynic's Guide to World of Warcraft. This article owes a heavy debt to Ambrose Bierce's The Devil's Dictionary. If you want to see a real master at work, read that.
Breakfast Topic: Mister Jones and me
Jones and I are buds. He's a cat that likes to hang out on the landing in the stairwell of the Legerdemain Lounge in Dalaran. He's a stealthy little guy -- he doesn't even have a listing on Wowhead, but if you stop to give Jones a /pet, he'll purr contentedly. I like to hang out in the stairwell sometimes, just Jones and me -- it's a relatively quiet spot in the middle of a usually busy area, and I can sort through my bags, chat with the guild, harass trade chat engage in some lively banter in local channels, and just hang out without being pestered. I've got a few different spots I like to hang out at, and the locations change every expansion or depending on what I'm focusing on at the time, but nothing beats Jones, he's the best. I'm not sure why exactly I like finding non-crowded places to sit and chat with people -- it shouldn't really make a difference where I'm typing to people from, but I enjoy the relative solitude in what is otherwise a very busy and populated game. And every expansion it happens -- in vanilla, it was the upper buildings in the Drag in Orgrimmar. In Burning Crusade, I liked the relative quiet that could be found in the World's End Tavern in Shattrath, or the rocks up above the city. In Wrath, it's either the Underbelly, or the little landing in the Legerdemain that I share with Jones. He doesn't mind, he's a pretty well mannered kitty. Sometimes we tell each other fairy tales. So how about you guys? Do you have a favorite spot to sit and chat? Does the generally crowded nature of Dalaran bother you? Do you, like me, seek out an area of relative solitude to hang out at when you aren't off storming the castle or otherwise occupied?
Breakfast Topic: Are you using the Looking For Group channel?
Once upon a time, a long time ago, in a world... in a land... there was a zone-specific Looking For Group channel. Then Blizzard saw fit to make it realm-wide so that no matter where you were -- whether questing or gathering or hanging out in big cities -- you could have a channel to make group requests to anyone in your faction not in an instance. The unintended, though easily foreseen, consequence was that Barrens/Elwynn chat spread to all zones like a plague. And Blizzard took it away, eventually, claiming that it was adding functionality by stuffing it in their new (at the time) LFG functionality. Some protested and created their own LFG channels, but most were satisfied to keep it in the big cities and take it to Tradechat, transforming it forever.
Drama Mamas: Don't feed the trolls
Dodge the drama and become that player everyone wants in their group with the Drama Mamas. Lisa Poisso and Robin Torres are real-life mamas and experienced WoW players -- and just as we don't want our precious babies to be the ones kicking and wailing on the floor of checkout lane next to the candy, neither do we want you to become known as That Guy on your server. We're taking your questions at DramaMamas (at) WoW (dot) com.When is a troll not a troll? We can't answer that one for you (when he's a Goblin, instead? /shrug) – but we can definitely tell you when a non-troll actually is a troll: more often than you may oh-so-righteously imagine. Only two weeks ago, the Drama Mamas were reminding readers that you cannot "fix" other people. This week, we must add on to this principle: You may neither "fix" your fellow players, nor may you "beat" them. In fact, when you try to beat 'em, you join 'em. The Drama Mamas explain why.
Breakfast Topic: Oh, Trade chat
Trade chat; that wretched hive of scum and villainy, that baying pack of horse thieves and reprobates, that hopelessly addictive ongoing chronicle of server zeitgeist. The stupidity that invariably infests the channel makes it tough to stomach at times, but there's no faster way to get something you need or catch up on the local gossip. I was introduced to WoW Bash the other day and spent an entertaining morning laughing at the various private and trade chat gems chronicled on the site (much of it, just as an FYI, is definitely not safe for work), many of which irresistibly reminded me of my own server's best offerings. I can't help but remember a trade chat conversation that took place at some godawful hour in the morning on a Saturday between several overcaffeinated people, all of whom were playing a sort of "finish the story" game in which a plucky single mother attempted to finance her astrophysics and fishery mangement degree by participating in Ice Road Truckers. Tragedy (hilariously) ensued, but not before players managed to sneak in a Star Trek reference, an allusion to A Winter's Tale ("Exit, pursued by a bear"), and several threats to ignore or report each other. Do you have any particularly fond memories of trade chat, or do you avoid it like the plague?
Insider Trader: Your bad self
Insider Trader is your inside line on making, selling, buying and using player-made products.In the World of Warcraft, as in life, we are constantly being faced with morally significant choices. Some players try their best to listen to the Angel on their shoulder, while others will do whatever suits them at the time. Proper etiquette is always in debate.Of course, as this is a virtual world, the moral implications of our actions are on a much smaller scale. Hitting someone for being annoying could cause many problems in my personal and professional lives, yet blasting someone similar off of a cliff in-game can be almost therapeutic. When it comes to gathering and crafting, greed crops up. There are many ways to get what you want, often at the expense of others. This week, Insider Trader will discuss the underhanded side of the professional world.
Breakfast Topic: Are you a Trade Chat grammar narc?
I don't know which is funnier, watching people in Trade Chat trying to figure out what to call someone with the Inscription profession or watching the people who get upset by it. "Inscriptionator" versus "It's SCRIBE, you morons!!" -- they are both pretty funny.Trade Chat, as you know, includes a lot of things besides Trade chatter: Guild recruitment, LFG, general help, gold spam and, of course, every topic under the sun. It also includes a lot of typos and grammar errors. Some of them are pretty benign, but others are so bad it's hard to decipher the meaning. And then there are the pet peeves. You're a literate bunch. Do you correct people in Trade Chat? If not, do you mind or care when people do? And doesn't it take longer to type "ne1" than it does to type "anyone"? I know it does for me.
Breakfast Topic: Too much politics in your WoW?
I am on record in preferring no outside world topics in my MMO chat and that particularly applies to politics, but what with a major real world political event happening today, politics have been a hot topic in Azeroth. Cinnabunz writes in that he's tired of politics taking over Trade Chat and I can totally empathize with him, even though the Trade Chat in my server has mostly been filled up with "I put my [insert link here] in your mom's [insert link here]" for the past couple of weeks. Last week, I got an invite from a complete stranger to a guild of Ron Paul supporters. Regardless of my opinions as to who should be running the country, I don't want to deal with it in my favorite form of escape. But I know that many of you consider WoW part of your social circle and look forward to chatting about real world topics with your guildies and server-mates.So does political chat belong in Trade Chat? Does it ruin the immersion too much for you or do you feel that something this important should invade even the virtual world? How long do you think it will last after today?
Insider Trader: Popular enchants and where to get them
Insider Trader is your inside line on making, selling, buying and using player-made products.If you've ever spent any time sitting in trade chat, you could probably make a list of some of the most popular enchants. Requested frequently, any enchanter possessing the the knowledge to imbue a weapon or piece of armor with the proper stats stands to make a fair amount of gold. For example, a healer seeking Major Healing, or a meleer seeking Mongoose, will know the materials, and gather them. Each time they replace their respective weapons, back into trade they will go to request the enchant. Today, Insider Trader presents a list of some of the most requested enchants with information about how to obtain them so that you can offer them to friends, guildmates, and your server. It is by no means a complete list, but it will get you off to a shining start and provide you with quite a to-do list. Check out the comments section for helpful details as well. Drop rate data was gathered from the Armory, and Blizzard uses ranges such as Very Low (1-2%). This is narrowed down with data from Wowhead where appropriate, but keep in mind that some bind on pick-up recipes can only be seen by enchanters, and Wowhead cannot filter out that data, making their estimate much lower than the actual drop rate. In the next couple of weeks, I'll be working on the faction recipes series, focusing on enchanting, so stay tuned.
Forum post of the day: Where's my big brother
At one point in time Chuck Norris jokes dominated trade chat. Then it was the Murloc game. I'm sure we've all noticed that now it's the anal <insert spell> gibberish that now floods the channel. Dolce of Blackrock believes that it's time the Blizzard begin moderating trade channels during prime time. The chat channel can be turned off, but then it loses utility for valid messages such as selling enchants, transmutes, and well, general trade. As a parent, Dolce continued his argument: Wow has a very broad appeal and the average parent would look at the packaging of the World of Warcraft and assume that it is nothing more than a fantasy game where their son or daughter can play with their friends and have "adventures". The average parent I imagine (and this is merely a broadstroke comment based on the huge playerbase), may not have any sort of familiairity with online games, and even to a certain degree, computers as a whole. Asking parents (although I am extremely attentive to what my childrens activities are) to have an intimate knowledge of joining and exiting out of city channels is a bit extreme. Perhaps if there were parental controls that you could set ot make this easier...... /wink In any event I would not be suprised to see some news anchor with some over the top expository on the lewd and profane content that is seen in WoW spun out of context in the near future. I would say they would be killing a variety of birds with one stone if they simply moderated these popular channels.
Fighting off the WoW doldrums
Andy Salisbury recently forwarded his latest post to the WoW Insider team, originally published on A Rogue's Eye View. The article provides some excellent tips for staying excited about the game. They should be especially useful now while fighting off the it's-not-expansion-time-yet blues.Here's a brief summary of his points, minus the tips, discussion and personal experience in the article: Don't treat the game as work. Start an alt. Make time for other games. Take a break from raiding. Spend time with friends that doesn't involve a computer.
