vendors
Latest
Boat vendors MIA
One of my favorite little additions in patch 2.3 was the boat/zeppelin vendors. Sure, there's a whole crew there, but after talking to them once to see what gossip they had, the vendors were the only ones I went back to. Since Blizzard refuses to take me up on my suggestion to allow fishing from moving boats, it gives me the one more thing to do while waiting for that zone-in screen, aside from chatting and making bandages. Being able to sell trash, stock up on reagents, and sometimes repair during this downtime is really nice.Unfortunately, the boat vendors have been disabled in a hotfix to the live realms, for vague reasons. Nethaera clarifies that there are "propulsion issues" that necessitate the vendors being out for the time being, but that they'll be "back on duty" as soon as the issues are fixed. Possibly related is a note that the entire boat crew is gone on the 2.3.2 PTR, "for testing purposes." Hopefully the vendors will be back soon; until then, my boat rides will be (even more) boring.
New Arena vendors in place and selling their wares
As of this writing, the servers still haven't come back up yet, but apparently when they do, Drysc says we'll have more places to obtain all that Arena gear we're all lusting after. In addition to the Arena 52 vendor, there will be vendors outside the Nagrand and Blade's Edge arenas. And the Crimson Ring (did we ever determine if that was the group actually putting on the Arena fights?), if that is their name, will also have a vendor available in Gadgetzan.Not exactly earthshaking news-- as busy as the vendors were when new stuff went on sale, I don't know that there was much traffic there when things slowed down-- but welcome news to Arena gear purchasers just the same.
Extended maintenance and new Arena Season 3 vendors
In case you haven't heard, Arena Season 3 starts tomorrow. Blizzard is taking down the servers at 2 AM PST and is scheduled to bring them back up again at noon. When the servers come up, Season 3 will begin, Season 1 gear will be available for honor purchase and there will be new Arena Vendors.You will no longer need to travel to Area 52, pile into the little hut and speak to the Pinchwhistles in order to buy your Arena gear. As of the beginning of Season 3, you will be able to purchase your Arena gear outside of the Arenas in Nagrand and Blade's Edge and even in the old world town of Gadgetzan.How many pieces of Season 3 gear have you saved up for? What do you have planned for the downtime? (Other than reading WoW Insider and Massively, of course.)
Inside the accounting files of NPCs
I've already said a few times that I'd love to see Blizzard's population figures, but a query (from an MVP, strangely enough) brings up another set of figures that I wouldn't mind a look at: NPC vendor sales numbers. Crepe wants to know how many items Griftah has sold (and how many hula dolls he sells post 2.3), but unfortunately, Nethaera deflects the question and leaves us with nothing. Additionally, I'd like to know how many heroic badges G'eras is going through on any given night-- maybe the fact that he's not selling many of his Heroic items is the reason why Blizzard is going to start dropping Badges in both Karazhan and Zul'Aman next week.Blizzard has given us peeks at a few numbers behind the game, but they haven't updated that page since it went up (and with all the exceptions on those lists, it's not much help anyway). There is a whole new world of statistics to be had in Outland, and it'd be nice for Blizzard to let us at just a few of the most interesting ones.
Wal-Mart looking to sell "sustainable electronics" to help Mother Earth
The same store who snubbed the idea of installing Wii kiosks in its stores and is probably installing Big Brother style monitoring systems as we speak is now looking to take a bigger stand in its fight to keep Mother Earth in good shape. Following the trend of downsized packaging (as in Apple's iPod, for instance) and recycling as much as humanly possible, Wal-Mart is now setting a goal to sell "sustainable electronics" as early as next year. While it's not entirely out of character for a mega-corporation to jump on the green bandwagon, Wally World has "released criteria that will be part of a scorecard used to evaluate consumer electronics suppliers on the environmental sustainability of their products," essentially forcing suppliers who want to keep their products on such hot shelves to rethink their approach to "minimizing impact on the environment." While we can't deny that those huge boxes are quite enjoyable to take home, compacting PC titles to simple jewel cases would be a long overdue start to minimizing the amount of waste just sitting around, and we're such Toshiba is getting a nice pat on the back for already helping the retailer out.
Inventory management
Bags. We all got 'em, we all put stuff in 'em, but I'll bet that each and every one of us has a slightly different way of organizing and managing our inventories. Personally, I find that I'm a "less is more" kind of guy, probably because I get a bit overwhelmed with seemingly innumerable slots full of items both usable and junk-worthy. I like to make frequent trips to the Inn and sell off anything that I don't think I will use again or that I can't auction for a decent price. Seeing as I'm absolutely lousy at working the AH for any kind of profit, I vendor a LOT of things. Back in the day, I used to try to keep my hearthstone and any important quest items in my last bag, along with a few food and drink items. This way, I could just open my backpack and say, "Oh look, stuff I looted that I need to vendor." Now that I'm 60 and raiding, I've found that my bag slots are taken up with different types of situational items - a few trinkets, my Nature Resist gear for AQ40, my Fire Resist gear for BWL, and a couple of different weapons for whether I'm standing back and need buffs, or in the mix and need to do damage. Popping open bags and trying to find what's what became a bit of a chore, and so I started looking for tools that'd help me manage my inventory.
