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Ink traders still accepting Blackfallow Ink
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 Basil's re-reboot of Call To Auction, and email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail! The ink traders you find near inscription trainers allow you to buy any lower-level common ink you might need for the price of one current ink. Glyphs take a variety of inks, and if you want to craft one, you're more likely to need ink from some earlier expansion than you are a current ink. In Wrath of the Lich King, we were trading in Ink of the Sea. In Cataclysm, we've been trading in Blackfallow Ink. In Mists of Pandaria, including patch 5.0.4, we'll be trading in Ink of Dreams -- or at least the tooltip at the ink trader would have you believe.
Harvard makes distortion-free lens from gold and silicon, aims for the perfect image (or signal)
Imaging has been defined by glass lenses for centuries, and even fiber optics haven't entirely escaped the material's clutch. Harvard's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences might have just found a way to buck those old (and not-so-old) traditions. A new 60-nanometer thick silicon lens, layered with legions of gold nanoantennas, can catch and refocus light without the distortion or other artifacts that come with having to use the thick, curved pieces of glass we're used to -- it's so accurate that it nearly challenges the laws of diffraction. The lens isn't trapped to bending one slice of the light spectrum, either. It can range from near-infrared to terahertz ranges, suiting it both to photography and to shuttling data. We don't know what obstacles might be in the way to production, which leads us to think that we won't be finding a gold-and-silicon lens attached to a camera or inside a network connection anytime soon. If the technology holds up under scrutiny, though, it could ultimately spare us from the big, complicated optics we often need to get just the right shot.
PSA: Damage Inc. Pacific Squadron WWII demo out now on Xbox Live
Just in case you've been waiting to see what Mad Catz's grab-bag titled Damage Inc. Pacific Squadron WWII (which used to be the much more feasible War Wings) is like, you're in luck. The game now has a playable demo, available on Xbox Live. The demo is exclusive to Gold members, rings in at just about 770 mb, and can be grabbed for free.Unfortunately, the demo doesn't come with a free Pacific AV8R flightstick, which Mad Catz will be including with the Collector's Edition of the game, and presumably will be the best way to experience flying around in the Pacific Theater. As Mad Catz says in the press release, this game is part of its goal of "pursuing targeted software opportunities that pose manageable downside risk by complementing our hardware initiatives." Which is corporate talk for: They're making the game to sell the stick.But if you have another Mad Catz flight stick, it should work, or just a standard controller will probably do what you need as well. If the demo spins your propeller, the game will be out on August 28.
Gold nunchucks for sale at North American Club Nintendo
The North American Club Nintendo hub has on sale a limited quantity of gold nunchuck accessories, priced at 900 coins each. We think that's a very reasonable price for a handful of pure, unfiltered gold with some wiring down the middle. Seriously, Nintendo has to be taking a hit for each one of these it sells, right? Oh – they're not solid gold? And Nintendo made sure to point that out in the description, reminding us once again that somewhere, someone might have actually thought a scenario like that was possible? Oh.The gold (colored, not plated or solid) nunchucks match the gold Wii Remote Plus that came with limited editions of The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. Interested parties can purchase a gold nunchuck right here.
Mists of Pandaria Beta: Transferring wealth between servers with battle pets?
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 Basil's re-reboot of Call To Auction, and email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail! Note: This article is about the Mists of Pandaria Beta. There is no guarantee that this functionality will exist in the live version of MoP. The new pet battle system in Mists of Pandaria is going to be one of the most exciting new features for a lot of people; however, a potentially unintended consequence of the way it's currently implemented is that by selling pets on one realm that you bought on another realm, you will be able to transfer wealth between servers or factions. Orkchop wrote me an email that got me investigating: All these pets are bound to your account, across all servers, across both factions, and can be sold. You can log on to your level 90 main, buy some pets, learn them, then log on to another server, create a level 1 and go sell those pets at auction. All without touching the neutral auction house and its fees.
Add bling to your Xbox in the Castle Crashers Tournament of Champions
The Behemoth is hosting the second annual Tournament of Champions to discover and reward the "best Castle Crashers Arena Fighter in all the world," with first place earning a real-life, honest-to-chicken, gold-plated Xbox 360.This mirrors (in a yellowed, rich kind of way) the top prize from last year's tournament, but 2012 adds some new rewards for first place: 25 squeezy chickens, a chonku-chonku mini-fig in the color of the winner's choosing, all nine Castle Crashers phone charms, a beanie, a Behemoth t-shirt and the new Necromancer figurine signed by Behemoth developers.Second place gets everything except the golden Xbox, but in fewer numbers than first place, and third place gets fewer things than second, though more than anyone in the top 50. The prizes are outlined on the Behemoth blog.To qualify, players must hit the top 100 on the XBLA Castle Crashers Weekly Ranked Arena Leaderboards by August 17 at noon PST. The Tournament is scheduled for August 25, starting at 8 a.m. PST and ending at 5:30 p.m. PST. The top 96 valid registrants will compete in one-on-one melee matches, hosted by a Tournament staff member, until just one player is left standing.Check out the full rules and schedule right here.
Addon Spotlight: Getting started with TradeSkillMaster auctioning
Last time on Addon Spotlight, we talked about TradeSkillMaster (TSM) crafting. It was a bit of a slog, but I hope some of the readership were able to take the instructions and get TSM and have a bit of a go at setting it up. The setup is definitely a trial, but it's so worth it in the end. This week, we're taking our hard-earned crafted items, and we're going to sell them on the auction house. It is kind of the idea, after all! Just like last time, if you haven't already, please ensure that if you're trying to follow these instructions that you've got all the relevant modules of TSM installed. PowerWordGold helpfully and correctly pointed out in the last column's comments that TSM Gathering is outdated and should not be downloaded, but get the rest. As you get more accustomed to the addon, you'll be able to work out what you use and switch things off if they're not necessary. Download TradeSkillMaster: TradeSkillMaster.com, Curse Again, with this column, I'm not going to be getting into the really detailed super-user aspects of TSM. Like I said before, it's not really necessary to just get up and running with it. Once you've begun, you'll inevitably start working out how the additional elements work, and the more advanced guides will start to make more sense. I linked setup instructions for these guides in the past, so I won't be delving into the details for each profession. This is just a general guide. Right, that's the housekeeping out of the way. Once more into the breach, my friends!
Watcher explains gold normalization for Mists of Pandaria dungeon bosses
Have you ever noticed that the bosses in the oldest dungeons drop much less gold now that they can be soloed? Blizzard Game Designer Watcher says the developers felt the gold drops were too high for the difficulty of the battles, so they nerfed the amount of gold you can loot in dungeons like Magtheridon. In Mists of Pandaria, rather than retroactively nerfing legacy content, dungeon bosses will drop the same amount of gold per player, regardless of how many players defeat them. So if a boss drops 100g for 25 players, it will drop 20g for 5 players. This change is retroactive for all dungeons from previous content. The full text of Watcher's clarifications as follows. Watcher In general, enemies in raids and dungeons drop significantly more gold than outdoor foes, specifically because we are assuming that the gold is going to be split 5, 10, or 25 ways. As player power rises over time, it obviously becomes possible to complete old content with significantly fewer players, such that the gold rewards become disproportionately high. In the past, our only solution was to drastically reduce the gold dropped by legacy content across the board (e.g., Magtheridon, much of Karazhan, etc.). In Mists, we have a new system in place that normalizes gold yield based on the number of players involved in the kill. If a Black Temple enemy drops 100 gold today on live, and you kill it with a 25-player raid group in Mists, it'll also drop 100 gold and each player will get 4 gold. If you solo Black Temple, that enemy will also give you 4 gold. If you do it with 4 friends, it'll drop 20 gold and each of you will get 4. In other words, the gold obtained from killing raid or dungeon creatures no longer depends upon how many people you bring, or do not bring, with you. This system does not apply to anything in the outdoor world. source Watcher Quote: If this is the case, will the original gold values of the bosses in Gruul's Lair, Magtheridon's Lair and Karazhan be restored so groups will once again get more gold from the boss than from a single trash mob? Yes. source It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!
Breakfast Topic: Do you buy gold?
Once upon a time, the only way you could purchase in-game gold for real money was to go through a guaranteed unscrupulous vendor. These vendors hire (or enslave) farmers to earn as much gold as possible in a short amount of time. Over time, they have discovered that hacking accounts is much quicker and more lucrative. Account thieves get your information from scams, phishing emails, keyloggers, and selling you gold (oops). So Blizzard came up with a way to satisfy the desire to buy gold in WoW by introducing the Guardian Cub. In case you didn't know, you can purchase this tradeable pet for $10 or €10 at the Blizzard Store and then sell it on the AH. So buying gold safely is now possible with Blizzard's approval (and to Blizzard's profit).
9 reader tips for making gold
For someone who doesn't really know much about gold or the making of it, I've been posting a lot about gold recently! I recently posted a Breakfast Topic asking our dear readers what their gold-making secrets are, and we at WoW Insider thought the comments deserved their own post. First and foremost, some gold making tips cropped up too many times for me to attribute them to any one commenter. 1. Loot everything, sell everything. CaptainFreddy puts it well: And from someone who got his paladin Charger back in Vanilla, loot and sell EVERYTHING. You may feel grody picking that Troll Sweat up, but that's silver in the pocket. SueNankivell adds: And get a 'Vendor greys' addon to save time. If you're an AH player, these methods are not the fastest ways to make money. On the other hand, if you're NOT, then you need to make the most of what you DO do in WoW. Loot everything, and sell everything you don't need or use on the AH. 2. Use addons to your advantage. Many commenters mention the various addons that they use. TradeSkillMaster of course crops up a lot, along with others. AltosGold says: The "cunning scheme" is proper use of addons. Whether you are using TSM for posting auctions, Auctionator/Auctioneer for scans/resales, NPC Scan for farming rares, or Dailies Quest addon, the list goes on and on. Even a novice "gold maker in training" can utilize these addons and with a little bit of knowledge can rake in quite a bit of cash.
A First Look at Mists of Pandaria Professions: Tailoring
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Fox Van Allen and Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Feed Fox's ego by emailing him, tweeting him at @foxvanallen, or sacrificing your first-born to him. Tailoring has always been a solid profession choice, especially for casters. You can create some of the best, epic-quality gear for your character with your own two (digitized avatar's) hands. You can even create some serious bank notes by selling leg enchants and bags. It's never been the most profitable profession -- but in every expansion, it's been a solid money maker. A number of tailoring patterns have finally started appearing on the Mists of Pandaria beta. But is the outlook for the upcoming expansion as golden as it's been in the past? The outlook is a bit cloudy (misty? haw haw haw), but we'll still see if we can make some sense of some of the major changes coming to the profession in just a few months' time. Just how major are these changes, you might ask? Major enough that it's worth considering whether or not it's time to give tailoring up for good.
Alt-week 7.8.2012: Solar flares, trapping dark matter, and life-sized Lego trees
Alt-week peels back the covers on some of the more curious sci-tech stories from the last seven days. This week we swing by some superhero news, look at how solar panels might shape up in the future, explore a Lego forest and see how to grab dark matter just using some household gold and strands of DNA. Not only that, we discover how the sun likes to celebrate the fourth of July with its own firework display. This is alt-week
Breakfast Topic: What's your gold making secret?
I've been posting quite a bit about gold of late, mainly on the subject of gold sinks. In the comments of both these articles, many people have spoken about how they barely even look at the Auction House and make 10k gold per week. Others have waxed lyrical on how gosh-darn easy it is to make gold in WoW, how all you need to do is read up a little, know your markets and post auctions. Some have said they farm; some have said they don't. Some have said that the gold you make just by doing daily quests and leveling is very high; some have disagreed. An overarching theme I've noticed, though, is that those who do know how to make gold have their methods, while those who don't know how to make gold (myself included) barely have a clue. In my PvP columns, the commenters are always very generous with their advice for others, so I thought I'd try to engender the same spirit in some gold making secret sharing! So what's your gold-making secret? As I mentioned, I'm not that great at making gold. However, I do have a few cunning ploys. If I just need a bit of fast gold and I've got some time to kill, I farm herbs. Obviously, the Cataclysm ones are good sellers. I go and check out the Auction House to see what's low in supply and higher priced than usual, and then I go farm that. However, not flooding the market is a good move, so I'll mix it up a bit rather than posting 20 stacks of the same herb. Also, whenever my alts level up, I send the cloth they loot to my tailor. Certain cloth sells very well on my server, but if it isn't that sort of cloth, I tailor it into cloth gear, then disenchant that gear on the same character and put the resulting materials on the Auction House. Some sell better than others, but it can still be better than selling the cloth. And if the mats aren't selling, I'll make them into an enchant! So those are a couple of my cunning schemes. What are yours?
Gold sinks and entitlement in WoW
I recently published a news piece about the price hike of the Grand Expedition Yak from 60,000g to 120,000g in the Mists of Pandaria beta. I was not overly surprised by the reaction to the piece at first; I had expected something of an outcry, as there often is at the introduction of gold sink items. But then I began thinking about why. Why do gold sinks promote such ire in the WoW community? I first approached the question from the angle that it's hard to earn that sort of gold. Whatever you think, for the beginning Auction House player, it is. It's hard to transform 500g into 120,000g. And it's hard to imagine that such a transformation would ever be feasible when you're the person with 500g across all their characters or even the person who's always sat at about 30,000g -- no more, no less -- despite having a go at playing the Auction House. That latter one is me, by the way. I do try at playing the Auction House; I'm simply not very good at it or very dedicated! Worrying, really, when you consider I used to work for a hedge fund. I was managing real estate, in my defence.
UK's New Super Mario Bros. 2 pre-order bonus is a rad Mario coin case
New Super Mario Bros. 2 has more gold coins in it than the United States Bullion Depository and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York combined, but the only way to extract real, honest, actually completely fake gold from the game is to pre-order it from either GAME or Gamestation in the UK.The "gold" coin seen above is actually a small case for storing a single 3DS cartridge and is only available as a pre-order bonus from the aforementioned English retailers. By being so pretty and yet so impractical, the coin case satisfies the two most important bling requirements: Flashiness, and superfluousness.
Free-to-play details for Vanguard released
Vanguard is drawing steadily nearer to its free-to-play conversion, which means it's time for some facts and some FAQs. To that end, a set of answers to common questions has been posted, along with a handy chart outlining the differences that will exist between free and premium accounts once the switch to F2P is complete. Premium membership will cost $14.99 a month, which will buy you such perks as access to all of the races and classes (as opposed to only six and seven, respectively), extra character and bag slots, unlimited gold, full item access, and more. Along with the ability to create guilds (instead of only joining them) and full access to unlimited banking slots, fishing, and in-game mail, premium customers will also receive full customer support and no in-game pop-up advertising. Players with ongoing Vanguard subscriptions will find those accounts automatically converted to premium status; these accounts will become free once that subscription runs out. As a special thank-you to loyal players, anyone with a past or present Vanguard subscription will be able to play all of his or her characters (even if that character would normally be blocked from a free account) and will have 12 available character slots (even though free accounts normally have only four).
Gold Capped: Spirit of Harmony crafting limitations
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 Basil's re-reboot of Call To Auction, and email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail! The Spirit of Harmony is going to be the limiting factor in a lot of craftable items in Mists of Pandaria. Just take a look at all the recipes it'll be a reagent for -- some 153 so far, and they haven't even finished designing the professions. The interesting part of this is that the Spirits (and the Motes you can turn into Spirits) are going to be bind on pickup, which means that you can't trade for them. Does this means that you will not be able to level a profession up to the new maximum skill level without farming Spirits and Motes of Harmony yourself? Will it mean the end of readily available, entry-level crafted PvP and PvE blues?
PS3 controller goes 'metallic gold' at GameStop
All right, here's the setup for a classic prank. First, buy this GameStop-exclusive "metallic gold" PS3 controller when it comes out in October. Then, invite a friend over. When he or she is out of the room, swap the normal PS3 controller you were using for this new one, then start crying loudly.When your friend comes in to find out what's wrong, explain that you've been suddenly granted the Midas Touch and you're cursed with a life devoid of contact with anything but gold.Then – and this is crucial – yell "GOTCHA" before your unwitting target can ask what's wrong with you or note that the controller looks an awful lot like plastic, and that they can see the hastily hidden packaging anyway.Those of you in Europe can play along too: it's being released as a "limited edition" this month. Have fun!
Paramount pulls back the curtain on its movie-streaming app for Xbox
Another app for streaming movies debuts on Xbox 360 today. The Paramount Movies app allows you to watch purchased and rented movies – both in standard and high-definition formats – from Paramount's website. Yes, before you can watch anything through the app, you'll need to go through the website and spend some money first. As usual, you'll also need a Gold subscription to Xbox Live.
A First Look at Mists of Pandaria Professions: Inscription
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Fox Van Allen and Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Feed Fox's ego by emailing him, tweeting him at @foxvanallen, or sacrificing your first-born to him. I know there's some disagreement between myself and Basil over this, but inscription is hands down my favorite profession. That's not really because I like the process of finding or buying herbs, and I absolutely detest the whole milling procedure. It's because I like money. Inscription made me stupid rich. So, it would only follow then that I have great interest in what scribes will be up to come Mists of Pandaria. After all, Cataclysm brought the advent of the ultra-profitable and high-demand Mysterious Fortune Cards, so Blizzard must have something cool up its sleeves for this next expansion, too, right? Well ... sort of! I mean, let's face it, Mysterious Fortune Cards are a pretty big bar to set. That being said, there's some serious love coming scribes way in terms of new things to sell, new items to equip, and new, fun things to have fun with. But don't take my word for it. See for yourself.
