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[1.Local]: I saw you

Reader comments -- ahh, yes, the juicy goodness following a meaty post. [1.Local] ducks past the swinging doors to see what readers have been chatting about in the back room over the past week.

I saw you in heroic Halls of Lightning last week. I was healing, wearing a Velen's Cowl of Conquest. You came in wearing full tier 1 with the banana shoulders. You tanked with skill and made the whole group smile. After the last boss, you headed back to Khadgar. Coffee, heroics and healing some time?

It was a "love" connection for two players from the Stormstrike battlegroup's Dungeon Finder last week -- and they reconnected right here in the comments of The Classifieds!

Hephaestus: ... Keleili, I very much appreciated your post and comments. Getting recognition for being a good pally tank (as well as a sharp-dressed one) was the furthest thing from my mind, but it sure made for a great birthday present! If only you were healing me on the eve of the BC expansion when I was getting the best of both worlds. I'll gladly run with you as my healer anytime; you, too, are a skilled player and a bacon saver! -- Hephaestus of Khadgar

Jennifer: *LOL* You are very welcome. It made my day. I had only just started to think about raiding on my then-60 when BC came out, so I never got to actually see the vanilla raid content. (If I remember correctly, I was always doomed to have 7/8 of the tier .5 set.) So, you are totally awesome in my mind. -- Keleili

All together now: Awww ... Join us for more reader-to-reader connections, after the break.


Why Blizzard can't and won't sell gold

The conversation in this thread about the potential of Blizzard's selling gold inspired one reader to send in the link on our tips line, just to make sure that [1.Local] noticed the discussion.

Wild Colors: I agree that Blizz shouldn't create gold out of thin air. However, I'm in favor of Blizz creating a legitimate market for players to exchange gold with other players in return for real money (or rather, game time). EVE has been doing this and the economy hasn't exploded. You simply pay real money to but an in-game item that, when used, adds a month of game time to your account. You then put this item up on the auction house and let the server's market decide how much gold it's worth. No gold is created or destroyed ...

This would allow people with limited time to pay for gold that already exists in the economy, if they so desire. It wouldn't destroy the economy by flooding it and creating massive inflationary pressure. It would allow people with lots of time to essentially play for free. Everyone wins, in my ever humble opinion.

That said, Blizz is completely against it, and the only reason I can think of is the tax issues.

Jafari: Could also work for in-game pets like the Lil' K.T., etc. The real-life money goes to Bizzard, so it's not attractive to real-life gold sellers. The gold is already on the server, so inflation probably will not result.

Wavemancali: I completely agree with this concept. Still a closed system economy, easy to set up so that there is no exchange of account info and therefore no hacking. People who are going to buy gold are already doing it. It's why gold farmers exist. Gold farmers would not farm for game time, there is no profit in it when you can't sell the game time. Hacking would be reduced by 80% the first day they implemented it, I would bet.

jair: You are correct in stating that the gold in-game does currently "come out of thin air"; however, there is a time-consuming process that precludes this gold appearing. It is limited to some degree by the number of dailies that can be done in a day, etc., etc. If there were unlimited dailies, inflation would increase dramatically.

Having said all this, it is the natural trend that inflation would exist because of this, and hence, why "gold sinks" destroy some amount of the gold. Gold sinks reduce the inflation that would naturally occur to a level that wouldn't destroy the game. I imagine on some level, Blizz has a rough idea of just how much gold is floating around on servers and makes decisions (like creating gold sinks) on how to keep this from growing out of control. It is not in their interest to have the game ruined by inflation.

Selling gold would dramatically increase gold in the game, and they would have to make even more gold sinks to control this. At that point, most everyone would have to buy the gold, to enjoy the same gold sinks that gold buyers would have access to, some of which could effect game play dramatically. Wouldn't it just be easier to do something crazy, like sell in-game pets for real money, rather than risk damaging the entire game by selling gold, which would result in the same thing?

wizeguy: You forget one other point related to inflation ... Gold sellers get their gold mainly by hacking and stealing it from players. Although gold may be redistributed within the server, now new gold is introduced to the economy. If Blizzard sold gold, do you really think they would steal it from players? Of course not. They would make their own gold, which would be injected into the server economy, causing inflationary imbalance.

Stop by the thread for many more thoughtful ideas and opinions on the topic.

What won't you do?

Matt Rossi won't kill critters. "It's a bit of a superstition that I developed after a beloved pet (a rabbit) died in real life shortly after I'd killed a rabbit in game," he writes in this Breakfast Topic. "It's simply not something I want to do ever since it happened."

Kayri: You're all missing something here people. Matthew Rossi, the manliest man on wow.com, had a bunny! And he was really sad when it died. Matt deserves a /brofist.

Matthew Rossi (via internal WoW.com e-mail): I really loved that rabbit.

/gulp. Perhaps this isn't the moment to bring up the new mage I started this week whose only melee hits are against ... umm ... critters.

What Cataclysm might mean for guild alliances

Will Cataclysm shove smaller guilds into bigger guilds, if they want all the benefits of guild leveling rewards? The details aren't yet clear, but some players in smaller guilds are apprehensive.

Ura Hero: This is pretty lousy for all of the friends and family guilds out there. I have a small guild for friends and family because I don't want to have to deal with tab privileges and storage. We all have access to everything. If someone wants something they can take it. If we want to raid, we hook up with a larger group and raid.

Now I am being told that if we don't drop anchor and sail to a larger guild that raids, we are going to get left in the dust. To me, that just shows a total lack of regard for smaller guilds who focus on helping each other rather than on trying to do all of the endgame content.

While I as a GM would like to have a guild that does all endgame content, it just isn't going to happen. I have better things to do with my limited spare time than sitting in SW, broadcasting in trade to try to keep my guild full of active players.

So what will happen? Obviously we are going to be penalized for wanting a small tight knit guild of folks who enjoy playing together. Yet another example of how Blizzard tends to ignore the folks who don't have the time for end game content raiding on a daily/weekly basis.

Mr. Crow: But the problem is what guilds lose by collapsing under one guild name. Aesthetic matters like what the guild name is or what the tabard looks like are going to be more or less important to some people, but one guild gets 7 tabs, while X guilds gets x * 7 tabs. From a sheer logistics perspective, an group of aligned guilds are being asked to other have bank alt guilds (which may lost out on important perks because all they have are level 1 bank alts, not actual players) or lose out on the functionality and investment of an entire guild bank.

Being in an F&F guild that has to PUG 1-2 players every week just for 10-man raiding, I'm really interested in hearing what kind of options smaller guilds are going to have. I'm not worried about guild leveling (we're already achievement whores, we'll figure it out), but I AM worried if the design is going to enforce a certain standard of how many people MUST be in a guild in order to get guild achievements.

From the introduction of the guild leveling system, it doesn't appear like Blizzard is going to create a standard like that, but we won't know until it gets implemented in the beta.

From the Department of Strange News Tips

Bizarre news tips are usually fodder for a good mid-day tangent in the WoW.com team e-mail loop.

From: [redacted]
Subject: The pet Wolpertinger and DEXTER

This is so frustrating but maybe you can help shed some light on it.

I've asked people on my server where the pet Wolpertinger originated from and nobody could answer it. Now, I myself did not know about it until recently. I was watching season 1 of DEXTER and half way into the season (I don't want to spoil season 1 for you) there was a certain person who had a certain item that was 100% identical to the Wolpertinger. I jumped out of my seat when I saw it.

Now, am I the first person to discover this? and also, how come a majority of WOW players aren't watching DEXTER? It's the best show since X-Files.

If you don't believe me, please do your research of season 1 and please write an article about it.
PLEASE!!!!

Elizabeth Harper: I ... I ... what?

Anne Stickney: ...okay, I gotta know what episode this was from.

Daniel Whitcomb: It was a legit ep. Some freaky dude they thought was the main baddie of the 1st season, but turned out to be some weird dude who did rogue taxidermy and chopped up animal bodies to make hybrid taxidermy stuff ... and killed his mom and buried her in his backyard and collected her Social Security checks.

But yeah. Wolpertinger predates that.

Dexter is a cool show, BTW.

Zach Yonzon: Isn't the wolpertinger an actual fictional animal? I mean, fictional outside of WoW like the jackalope?

Alex Ziebart: Yeah, it's a Bavarian legend/folk tale/whatever: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolpertinger.

Rich Maloy: Yes. Wolpertinger is the German version of the Jackalope. Or maybe the Jackalope is the American version of the Wolpertinger?

Joe Perez: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackalope, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolpertinger.

Very similar, minus the wings. I think the jackalope has a better press agent, though. Between Pixar and America's Funniest Home Videos, I think he's a bit better known. LOL

Until next week ... Keep it [1.Local]!


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