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Spirits of Harmony may become BoE after all
Spirits of Harmony, the Mists of Pandaria currency used by many professions both for supplies and for crafting, have been BoP since the expansions launch. The last we'd heard, there were no plans to make the items BoE by the end of expansion, as with Cataclym's Chaos Orbs and Wrath's Frozen Orbs. However, a tweet exchange last week between Professions Designer @hwoome and a player suggests that the resource might not stay BoP after all ... and might even make the switch to a BoE item sooner than we'd thought. @StarkRavingCalm No harm in 6.0? I agree. Maybe even a little earlier. ;) - Hwoo (@hwoome) March 28, 2014 While it's not a confirmation by any means, the tweet came from a game designer, which suggests at the very least that the issue is not off the table for discussion as previously thought. Whether or not we'll see Spirits lose their BoP status is still up in the air, though -- so I wouldn't worry about stockpiling the items for now.
No plans to make Motes or Spirits of Harmony account wide
Thanks to Chaos Orbs in Cataclysm, which began life as a BoP item, but became BoE with the last patch, and Wrath of the Lich King's Frozen Orbs, many had assumed that Spirits of Harmony would lose their soulbound status towards the end of the expansion. Community Manager Lore has confirmed once and for all that there are no plans to make this change with Spirits of Harmony. @rebrown38 @WoWMonk No plans to make those (or Spirits) account-wide. - Lore (@CM_Lore) March 21, 2014 We're not entirely sure on the reasoning behind this decision, but it might be something of an annoyance for players. Although, with previous expansions at least, the item was largely completely irrelevant by this point. Spirits of Harmony, in so much as they can be traded for items in the Shrine, have at least held some value. So don't stockpile them for an alt's crafting, on the basis that they might become BoA, or for an auction house bonanza that may never come.
Patch 4.3 PTR: Chaos orbs no longer soulbound
An important crafting change has just been pushed live on the public test realms. Patch 4.3 will finally lift the soulbound restriction on Chaos Orbs, allowing players to freely trade them and roll on them at the end of heroic instances. No mention was made of whether or not orbs will be purchasble with valor or justice points, but only that they will be free-rolled for when they drop. Back in Wrath of the Lich King, Frozen Orbs were not initially soulbound but lost their restrictions and need-roll exclusivity over the course of the expansion. It was assumed that the same thing would happen to Chaos Orbs as time went on, and lo and behold, it has. Crafters will have to adjust prices accordingly now that a rare component will become less rare.
Some Assembly Required: How to screw up your sandbox
Between bouts of Global Agenda, Age of Conan, and a stack of single-player games, I've been taking my own advice lately and looking for a new sandbox. The end of Star Wars Galaxies is forcing my hand, and I figured I'd better start now if I don't want to be stuck with nothing to play on December 16th. While there is a veritable ton of different sandboxes to choose from, I must admit to being a bit frustrated with nearly all of them. If it's not one thing, it's another, and most are such glaring deficiencies that I can't help but wonder what was going through the minds of the development teams during the construction process. Join me after the cut for a few things you should consider if you're making an MMORPG sandbox.
Officers' Quarters: Secret farmers of the Firelands
Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook, available now from No Starch Press. In the Firelands, red fire and black ash rain from the sky. Meanwhile, purple axes, scalpels, scales, mysterious apparati, and even scraps of purple parchment rain from its dying denizens. Another raid has brought with it the opportunity to kill scores of trash mobs for high-ilevel loot, much like players did in tier 11 with the Bastion of Twilight's first-room trash-athon. The purple recipes hearken back to the days of the Sunwell Plateau. Yes, trash farming has a long and illustrious history in WoW. With such great opportunities for both loot and gold, it's hard to blame players for getting in there and farming away. WoW Insider's Mathew McCurley even wrote a guide about how to do it. But should your members ask permission before they use the guild's raid ID for such runs? This week, one guild leader found out that some members have been venturing in without telling anyone. Hi. The basics. I run a decently good 10-man raid guild. We have a guild-master, me, a few officers, a few semi-officers, and raiders. The semi-officers are guildmembers that are very good at their class and been in the guild for a long time. You could say very valued members or maybe classleaders and they have some areas of responsibilty in the raids and guild. We often seek their advice but they dont have decision making rights like the GM and the Officers. The background. We killed Shannox and some other bosses the first week of Firelands, and we have done so every week up to date. We recently learned that since the first week a few of the semi-officers has been going in to the guilds Firelands instance, between raid days and farmed trash. The drops [have] been used to gear themself and their alts, but the stuff they havent had any use for, odd drops recipies, has been sold on the AH for quite alot of gold.
Gold Capped: Monopolizing the market
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! I got an email that got me thinking about monopolies. I play on a medium to small pop server that is decidedly near the bottom of progression, and there is one individual on our server who has a monopoly on epics. He seems to play all day, regularly buying up underpriced epics from clueless people in trade, as well as the reasonable and even overpriced epics from the AH. He then jacks the prices up 10-15K. Based on what I can tell from popular WoW economy websites, our server's epic prices are consistently 10-20K gold more than the average. Kudos to this guy, but it's annoying me in some way I can't quite put my finger on. It doesn't effect me personally: I don't buy much BoE gear and I'm fine with my AH income. It's the idea of the monopoly that bothers me. I feel like it's hurting the server in some way. My question is: there must be a few economic theory type solutions to busting a monopoly of this nature, but what are they?
Officers' Quarters: Directing your cash flow
Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook, available now from No Starch Press. Almost exactly two years ago, I wrote a column about guild bank gold and the proper use of it. The game has changed quite a bit since then. Most guilds now have a steady income from the Cash Flow perk. With the consolidation of loot tables for both raid sizes, even smaller raiding guilds can loot and sell some pretty impressive BoEs. Guilds are no longer dependent on the generosity of their own members to stay in the black. In this new "business model," two officers are having a debate about how to use this income to the guild's best advantage. This week's email spells out their arguments: Hey Scott, I recently got into an argument with my friend, and we are both officers of the same guild. We were discussing how the guild bank is to function. Specifically, I wanted to use the guild money which we got from BoE epics to make flasks for the raid at a much lower cost than AH. He didn't approve of the idea that [the] guild bank is losing money for something that should be mandatory for the raid. My points for this are: guild epic BoEs are earned collectively as a group, so the gold we get are technically "shared" towards the whole raid guild bank money wont be used for anything else He responds by saying that: guild bank money should only be used for emergencies a considerable amount of gbank money would make our guild look less "scratchy" (ie having 0 gold will make us look bad) we should not be giving free gold to members because we are already doing so much (ie leading raids, recruiting) he stresses that its not "necessary" to help them out, as they should be self-sufficient in preparing for raids anyways
Wings Over Atreia: All I want for Solorius is...
While admittedly they don't include two front teeth, there are definitely some things I would be thrilled to see in my virtual stocking this holiday season from the developers of Aion. At this time of year, you almost can't help but look ahead and dream about what things would make it a better world. Don't believe me? Name me one other time when you hear "peace on earth" more -- not counting a beauty pageant! But our desires for a better world need not be confined just to that real one we inhabit when our computers are shut off; in fact, wishing for a better Atreia (though peace among Daevas may be counter-productive) is right in the holiday spirit! I am not looking for any "I win" or easy button -- just a few things that will make for a better and brighter Atreia, some things that will put more fun into my time in Aion. I'm making my list and checking it twice. After all, 'tis the season of miracles, right? Sleigh ride past the break to take a peek at part of my Christmas... er, I mean Solorius... wish list!
The ups and downs of the Battered Hilt
Yesterday, Bornakk said clearly that the Battered Hilt drop that starts the Quel'delar questline was dropping at the right rate, which is much less than when the patch first hit. And then of course, in last night's fixes, they went ahead and increased the drop rate anyway. He also claimed there were no plans to make it BoP, but who knows what'll happen in the future? For now, however, you can still buy and sell the quest item for quite a bit of gold. We'll have to see where the price eventually ends up -- on the staff here, we've seen anything from 8,000g to over 23,000g, and Twitter tells us that people are paying an average of around 12k or so, going up to as high as 30k (or even shady real money offers in online classified ads). Our own Matt Low has actually seen the drop three different times, and lost every roll. It drops off of any of the mobs in the Heroic versions of the Frozen Halls 5-mans, and as Bornakk says, any class can use it to come up with a pretty solid weapon, so the competition will probably keep the price high, depending on where the drop rate ends up. The silver lining, if you really want one, have terrible luck, and don't ever expect to have all that money, is that the price will probably go down eventually. Bornakk says that as people move up into Icecrown and start picking up weapons that are even better than the sister blade, demand is likely to drop off a bit. But he also says that Blizzard does want this to be a special and relatively rare item, so you'll still have to probably either be lucky or ready to grind it out. Good luck -- I'm out there searching for one with you.
Phat Loot Phriday: Northern Barrier
Been a while since we did a shield. And since we did a BoE, actually. So here's both in one.Name: Northern Barrier (Wowhead, Thottbot, WoWWiki)Type: Epic ShieldArmor: 7890 Armor (221 Block)Attributes: +42 Strength, +94 Stamina Increases defense rating by 63, which is just awesome. %Gallery-33600%
PuG dungeon loot etiquette for dummies
So with the dawn of Wrath, a lot of people have been heading into 5-man dungeons, both the normal and heroic type. They may be after experience, they may be after badges, they may be after achievements, but nearly everyone is also very interested in whatever loot may drop along the way. To add to this, not everyone is so lucky as to have a pre-made 5 man ready to go when they log on for the night. Maybe they're guildless, maybe their guild is off in Naxxramas, maybe their guild is 10 levels below them, but whatever the reason, a lot of people end up looking for the pickup groups to get their dungeon diving done. Anyhow, you probably know what happens next. Pickup group plus loot equals drama. You'd almost think that's some sort of universal constant in WoW. Sure, we've had some great PuGs, but we've had some bad ones too, and those bad ones seem to come complete with ready-made loot drama, and it seems like we're not alone. We're hearing from a lot of people lately who've had problems with loot distribution drama.
The ethics of a botched deal, redux
"The ethics of a botched deal" turned out to be a much more popular article than I'd been expecting. I didn't really think the subject matter was going to result in that much commentary, but, having read all of the comments, I think I see why. Everyone's been on at least one end of a bad deal, and stuff like that is a lot more common in the early days of an expansion with new recipes, dungeons, and raids everywhere you look, with the attendant opportunities for costly mistakes.A few people quite fairly said it would be tough to make a call on the incident given the limited account I'd written in the original article. Others pointed out that you could probably draw an ethical distinction between the Blacksmith's decision to: a). accept a tip, and b). keep the gold gained from vendoring the 2H mace (and I think this is accurate, although it does raise another question. More on this in a bit). Commenters also observed that, the ethics of the Blacksmith's actions aside, you wouldn't necessarily want to be a repeat customer of his for reasons that hadn't been articulated in the original piece.So behind the cut is a more inclusive look at the issue, a little more background on what happened, and how other players responded to it ingame.
The ethics of a botched deal
My chat box isn't usually a wretched hive of scum and villainy, but on occasion it turns up a few statements that'll make your eyebrows execute a shuttle launch. One such morsel popped up recently in the form of an amused snicker from an acquaintance who'd applied to raid with my guild in Wrath. He'd just made himself a quick 38 gold off a blacksmithing deal gone awry and was having a laugh over his good fortune. A leveling player had asked him to meet in Orgrimmar to make a Saronite Mindcrusher and could provide both materials and a tip. The applicant obliged, ported to Org from Dalaran, made the mace, and then they discovered that it was BoP and thus unusable by the customer. The disappointed player thanked him for his time, tipped him anyway for making the trip, and went on his way (according to the person who shall henceforth be known as The Blacksmith)."So not only did I get a 25g tip," he concluded smugly, "but I also made 13g vendoring the mace."That dog won't hunt, Monsignor. "You did give the guy the 13g at least?" I asked. "I mean, those were his mats, the mace wasn't yours.""No. Why would I? It was his mistake."To quote everyone who has ever set foot on the internet ever, ORLY?UPDATE: The post got a lot more attention than I expected, so I've written an addendum here that gives a little more insight into what happened.
Tracking the BoE market in Wrath
The folks over at WoW Economist have started up a blog on one of the most popular problems in World of Warcraft: making money, and lots of it. The truth is that it's not hard to do, whether you're working with professions, trying to hang in the AH, PvPing, or just starting out, but everyone's got a tip to share, it seems, and WoW Economist is no exception.This time around, they've got a good short analysis up of what might happen to green BoEs in Wrath of the Lich King. Once upon a time, there was actually a good market for BoEs on the AH -- some of them even challenged Karazhan gear in the early days of level 70, so anyone new to 70 could just spend some time in the Auction House and pick up some nice gear for running the basic instances and starting to build up blues and epics. But in my experience the market has thinned out lately -- while there's always a market for enchanging materials you can get from BoEs, people aren't that interested in buying green gear with epics so easy to get elsewhere. Most of the time, I get more from vendors for greens than I can actually sell them for on the AH.But WoW Econ says there's a bump on the way -- Death Knights are going to be shooting through 60-70 directly after Wrath, and they're going to want the level 66-70 greens floating around (plate gear with Strength and Stam on it), so that will probably sell well. But everything else is pretty much dried up -- DE it if you can, or just vendor it away and move on. The gold will come quicker in Northrend anyway.
Officers' Quarters: Three questions for Wrath raiders
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.With Wrath nearly in our hands, it's time for us as officers to go over a mental checklist and make sure we're adequately prepared for this expansion. (Please no Illidan jokes -- poor Arthas has no catchphrase and it only makes him angrier.) I can't possibly tell you what should be on that checklist -- it all depends on the type of guild you run and what your guild's goals are. You do have goals, right? However, here are three questions that you should start thinking about -- if you haven't already . . .1. How will you distribute BOE raid drops?Epic BOE raid drops aren't new. World bosses in Outland had their loot changed to BOE to encourage guilds to go after them. But it's been a long time since most guilds have had to deal with them on a regular basis -- not since Molten Core, if memory serves. They weren't too difficult to manage back then. With 40 people tagging along, odds are someone in the raid wanted whatever dropped. If not, the drops were all class-specific, so the number of people who could request them was relatively small.
Profession epics go BoE in Wrath
Professions have undergone a lot of changes since WoW began. Most recently, in Burning Crusade, crafting professions were typically a good way to obtain surprisingly high-quality items that you couldn't get any other way, such as Stormherald or the Frozen Shadoweave set. So far we haven't seen any evidence of directly parallel itemization in Wrath of the Lich King, and according to a couple of recent posts by Verimonde, we're not going to. Specifically, Verimonde said that "There will not be a Stormherald type weapon 'high level crafter only,'" although there are, for instance, several BoE epic smithed weapons in Wrath. In his second post he explains the reasoning a little more: Blizzard didn't like that many people were picking professions based on what would make them the most powerful, as opposed to what they enjoyed.
BoE epics on each Naxx boss
Someone on the forums noticed what at first appeared to be an oversight: Rusted-Link Spiked Gauntlets, from Grand Widow Faerlina in Naxx-10, are tagged as BoE, not BoP as most boss drops are. As it turns out, this is intended. According to Blizzard poster Verimonde, each boss will have one BoE item on its loot table. This has a few obvious benefits, as Verimonde points out: More trickle-down items from raiding - non-raiders, be they alts, friends, or just random AH patrons, get access to a few raid items More excitement - even if nobody needs anything from the boss, there's still a chance to get a potentially lucrative BoE (and badges, of course) Another income source for raid guilds Although it isn't mentioned specifically, I expect that this BoE philosophy will extend to all raid bosses in Wrath. I think it's a nice idea. Let's say the average 10-man boss has a 12-item loot table and drops 2 items from it plus badges. If one of these items is made BoE, there's roughly a 17% chance to get it, which sounds reasonable. My question: what will raids' loot rules be for BoEs? My guild typically does open rolls for BoE items that aren't needed by anyone present, so that's probably what we'll do. But how will DKP guilds handle it? Will people who need it for their alts get precedence? Will they be auctioned off and the funds added to the guild bank, if nobody needs them? I guess it'll vary depending on the guild. But between these BoEs and Heirloom items buyable with badges, raiding is going to be a lot more interesting for those of us with many alts.
Tailoring additions in 8902
Some interesting things got added for tailoring in the latest LK beta build. Tailoring is the first production profession I got to 375, and although I'm angry at the Primal Mooncloth set for having no stamina which causes me to die all the time, the profession still holds a special place in my heart. Particularly interesting is A Guide to Northern Cloth Scavenging, which is a tailoring recipe that seems to give the tailor an increased chance to get cloth drops in Northrend. I'm not sure where it comes from, but I'll certainly be glad to get my hands on it. The other additions came in the form of several sets. The Frostsavage items aren't really a set as of yet, in that they don't have a set bonus, but otherwise they're similar to BC's Imbued Netherweave set. Blue quality, BoE, level 80, relatively cheap mats, decent stats to fill in spots where you haven't found anything good from a quest. Eight pieces of Frostsavage are available.
Inscription to allow enchanters to sell on the AH
Blizzard has been saying for a while that they're working on letting Enchanters ply their trade via the Auction House. When the Wrath beta launched, we didn't immediately see any way that this feature has been implemented. However, Elisalia, a beta-tester, wrote in to let us know that she'd figured it out. The link between Enchanters and the AH is going to be Inscription, and it looks like it will work as follows: Inscriptors can create blank parchments, such as the Bleached Parchment seen in the picture. Each type of parchment works for one type of item to enchant -- armor, weapon, etc. Enchanters can cast enchantments on those parchments, to create, for instance, that Scroll of Enchant Cloak - Greater Defense. These scrolls can be listed on the AH, mailed, or traded like any other unbound item. The scrolls can be right-clicked by anyone to apply the enchantment to their own items. It's a good system, and I like it. In addition to using the AH, of course, this will also allow enchanters to give enchantments to their own alts -- about time. I wonder if Inscriptors will be able to use a similar system to vend their own spell enhancements. Also, hopefully the cost of the parchment will not be too high; if it's more than a few gold, people will likely circumvent this system entirely and keep doing enchants the way we do them now. Enchanters, does this look like a good system to you? Would you rather preserve the face-to-face, personalized nature of the enchantment transaction?
Illusionary Tactics: Orb of Deception
Welcome back to Illusionary Tactics, where we look at items or quests that can make you look like something you're not, for fun and profit (profit not guaranteed). The Orb of Deception is probably the first item I think of when I think about things that belong in this column. It's just so...deceptive! What does it do? It makes you look like a member of the opposite faction, for five minutes on a 30-minute cooldown. The transformations are determined by your race and gender, and are as follows (thanks, Excorsism):
