I haven't updated in a while, mainly cause of being busy at work but also from having a short break from WoW and raiding. At this very moment I'm on the last leg of this weeks marathon to reach level 80 on my paladin. My noob is level 52 now, and have been playing the auction house while having troubles finding good places to level. 50-60 is a drudge and I was blessed to do it with Recruit-a-Friend this time around.
I also haven't updated cause the noob expressed some interest in writing a piece of his own and I was kinda holding out on that. I also have made contact with another noob friend who is doing WoW tourism and asked if she would be interested. Apart from not quite knowing what to write about she sounded interested, so you might want to keep an eye out.
Friday, August 7, 2009
Saturday, August 1, 2009
A few thoughts on "normal" servers
THEY AREN'T NORMAL.
Srsly. People on those servers were probably dropped on their heads repeatedly when they were infants. I knew I did the right thing, rolling on a RP server back when I started, cause I figured there'd be a smaller amount of idiots. I rolled on a normal instead of RP-PVP cause I didn't want to be ganked. After levelling a warrior to 60 and a paladin to 70 on a normal PvP server I can say that I was right about the idiot part, but wrong about the ganking part. I've only ever been ganked once, and that was just outside of Blackrock depths by some rogue who probably was just bored waiting for his group and I was at half health. I ganked a bunch of gnome warlocks while riding through Duskwood though, the class/race combo makes me rage. Otherwise I find little pleasure in oneshotting lowbies, since I myself wanted to avoid exactly stuff like bored 60's killing me just cause they could.
Instead, while catching up on professions and class quests I'd missed while rushing through the levels (RAF is silly fast), the orange text "CONTESTED TERRITORY" actually made my tummy tingle a bit with excitement. I had to be on constant lookout and I encountered similarly levelled Allies while questing and we'd have a standoff with both of us coming to the conclusion that it wasn't worth it, and we left each other be. Kinda pussified on a PvP server, but it represents the tension between the factions a lot better than "zomg a dorf must keel it". I may have had the upper hand some of the times being two toons at once (although I'd not be able to PvP effectively on both of them at the same time anyway, but the Allies couldn't know that) but it was still interesting.
Anyway, along to the stuff that struck me about the PvP server I spent some 100 hours the last couple of weeks on, Shattered Hand:
1. There's a lot of PuG:ing going on. The server's population is a lot smaller than Argent Dawn's, but there's a remarkable amount of PuG spam in trade. This leads to dirt cheap Runed Orbs, epics and enchanting mats.
Said PuG's do not advertise for roles, but classes ("need resto shammy, kitty druid" etc) leading me to think that they are doing "class runs" in other instances than VoA. Reserving gear is also very frequent - "LFM FL-10, Firesoul reserved" is common, as is PuG's where only a set amount of bosses (often the easy ones) are targetted. There is also almost always a gear check and achievement link requirement to join regardless if there's just a FL run or not. Orgrimmar bank roof is full with the people spamming trade, cause that's where they gather to do the gear checks.
People will even start their spam advertising, and keep it up for hours, while being the only person in the group. "LF1tank, 1healer, 2DPS HC VH". Quite the optimist - on AD, people go to LFM/Guild/Friends list when there's a last few spots to fill, not straight away. More often than not are groups of 5 DPS in trade going "LF2tanks 3 healers Naxx-10 be skilled have gear link achiv"
2. The trade spam is truly spam. People will copy/paste their message over and over and over again, and in a culture like that, the only way to make yourself heard is in turn spamming, contributing to the vicious cycle. Trade is not just trade - it's LF Arena partner, LFM, Guild recruitment and also a source of some entertaining bickering and accusations of ninjaing (people will come out of PuG's with BoE epics, go to a capital city, spam trade to sell it, and people from that PuG will show up in trade calling them on their ninjaing ways).
3. The economy on the server is, probably in large cause of 1 and 2, completely batshit insane. With ten PuG's to 25 man Ulduar killing 2-3 bosses and FFA rolls for the Runed Orbs instead of them going to a guild's gearing up efforts each night, they go for next to nothing on the AH. I fled Shattered hand with my warrior with 6 runed orbs that I paid 1200 for in total. The BoE epics are since long aquired by everyone who frequent these PuG's, and therefore they only run it again to get another BoE to sell for some easy gold, and since everyone is selling them, the prices are way low. At this moment, I'm waiting for a few auctions to sell (some things still sell well, mostly the stuff you can't farm by PuG:ing end game content - Netherweave cloth is well expensive for example), and before I leave, I might have three or four ilvl 213+ epics for my tanking set straight off the bat, just from money I earned while levelling and selling the stuff that dropped. Emblem of Valor bracers? 200g-500g. On AD they go for 600g a good day. Relics of Ulduar sell for 1g at most, 200-stacks go for 150g more often than not.
I also suspect there's a lot of gold buying going on, Ratchet is fairly often full of higher level guys just standing around, and once when I was transferring my questing from 1k Needles to Stranglethorn, there was a fucking queue to do face-to-face trades with some level 1 orc warrior with a name with only consonants in it. I stood around and looked in horror for a while...
The faction specific auction house will sometimes contain really low-level items for very high prices too - I don't know if this is a case of "I hope some idiot presses the wrong button" or a way to avoid sending gold in the mail (which Blizzard apperantly monitors quite close - I've read up on the subject cause it started to fascinate me) between farmer and buyer, but either way it's not healthy.
While I'm not entirely sure how gold buying and extensive farming by chinese gold selling agencies affect a server's economy, my gut feeling tells me it should raise prices, not dump them (more gold to go around to inflate the market), but I guess people just buy gold for their money sinks (Hogs, epic flying, mammoths and stuff) and that it doesn't make it's way onto the Auction house.
4. People have some serious issues with naming. I've become truly jaded - all of a sudden "tommypala" is a perfectly acceptable name to me. "Twofish" or "Toothache" might have their place on a RP realm since there might be a reason why someone would be called that in game, but next to "Angrymama", "Eranikús", "Drunkdrood" and "Steakheals" (authentic examples I just picked up) in the spam fest that is trade, and on top of that, in fucking Swedish, they are just widely out of place. I just cannot relate to this in anyway. Even when I was 16, playing the epic grind fest that was Diablo II, this kind of naming was fairly rare, here it's commonplace.
5. People will whisper and pester you about all sorts of inane shit. Being a mage in Orgrimmar leads to the occasional whisper on Argent Dawn - people can't get enough portals. But being pretty much anyone, anywhere on Shattered hand will lead to you being spammed by lowbies (I only remembered this cause I just got whispered by a level 16 rogue to boost him in SFK - I told him to gain a few levels and find a real group and play the game the way it was supposed to. Didn't go down too well.) asking to be boosted or wanting to buy your services killing some alliance dude ganking their asses. People will randomly whisper you asking for your PvP gear and if you are willing to boost them in Arena for gold. It's absolutely mental.
6. Related to number 5 - people are twinks. No exception. There's level 19's, 29's, 49's and God knows what all running around with ilvl 25 blues with Mongoose on them. This is the easiest to relate to - twinking and voluntarily staying at a lower level bracket may make for a more interesting game, I for one would never play D&D 4th Ed. above level 10 (or at least never above 15) for my everyday gaming needs so I can kind of understand it. This is very rare on Argent Dawn. I'll see one every now and then, but standing around in Orgrimmar usually only yields people's mains and bank alts doing business at the AH while Undercity, Thunder Bluff and Silvermoon City is shockfull of them.
7. This is barely it's own section, but people use Swedish in their spammages and character names all the time. Shattered hand does have a predominantly Swedish population and as such, it's accepted by everyone there, and the rest can just go fuck itself as far as the probably 15-year old Swedish population is concerned.
The really sad part is that the people acting like they are in their early teens probably quite often are in their early 20's and that my prejudice towards young people in part is wrong, and the people on Shattered hand simply are idiots in large.
It will feel so good to finally have all my alts on RP servers again (huntard and rogue on Steamwheedle will probably stay there for a long while, don't intend to play them again) and level with the soft embrace of Absolution's guild chat close by. I love you guys.
Srsly. People on those servers were probably dropped on their heads repeatedly when they were infants. I knew I did the right thing, rolling on a RP server back when I started, cause I figured there'd be a smaller amount of idiots. I rolled on a normal instead of RP-PVP cause I didn't want to be ganked. After levelling a warrior to 60 and a paladin to 70 on a normal PvP server I can say that I was right about the idiot part, but wrong about the ganking part. I've only ever been ganked once, and that was just outside of Blackrock depths by some rogue who probably was just bored waiting for his group and I was at half health. I ganked a bunch of gnome warlocks while riding through Duskwood though, the class/race combo makes me rage. Otherwise I find little pleasure in oneshotting lowbies, since I myself wanted to avoid exactly stuff like bored 60's killing me just cause they could.
Instead, while catching up on professions and class quests I'd missed while rushing through the levels (RAF is silly fast), the orange text "CONTESTED TERRITORY" actually made my tummy tingle a bit with excitement. I had to be on constant lookout and I encountered similarly levelled Allies while questing and we'd have a standoff with both of us coming to the conclusion that it wasn't worth it, and we left each other be. Kinda pussified on a PvP server, but it represents the tension between the factions a lot better than "zomg a dorf must keel it". I may have had the upper hand some of the times being two toons at once (although I'd not be able to PvP effectively on both of them at the same time anyway, but the Allies couldn't know that) but it was still interesting.
Anyway, along to the stuff that struck me about the PvP server I spent some 100 hours the last couple of weeks on, Shattered Hand:
1. There's a lot of PuG:ing going on. The server's population is a lot smaller than Argent Dawn's, but there's a remarkable amount of PuG spam in trade. This leads to dirt cheap Runed Orbs, epics and enchanting mats.
Said PuG's do not advertise for roles, but classes ("need resto shammy, kitty druid" etc) leading me to think that they are doing "class runs" in other instances than VoA. Reserving gear is also very frequent - "LFM FL-10, Firesoul reserved" is common, as is PuG's where only a set amount of bosses (often the easy ones) are targetted. There is also almost always a gear check and achievement link requirement to join regardless if there's just a FL run or not. Orgrimmar bank roof is full with the people spamming trade, cause that's where they gather to do the gear checks.
People will even start their spam advertising, and keep it up for hours, while being the only person in the group. "LF1tank, 1healer, 2DPS HC VH". Quite the optimist - on AD, people go to LFM/Guild/Friends list when there's a last few spots to fill, not straight away. More often than not are groups of 5 DPS in trade going "LF2tanks 3 healers Naxx-10 be skilled have gear link achiv"
2. The trade spam is truly spam. People will copy/paste their message over and over and over again, and in a culture like that, the only way to make yourself heard is in turn spamming, contributing to the vicious cycle. Trade is not just trade - it's LF Arena partner, LFM, Guild recruitment and also a source of some entertaining bickering and accusations of ninjaing (people will come out of PuG's with BoE epics, go to a capital city, spam trade to sell it, and people from that PuG will show up in trade calling them on their ninjaing ways).
3. The economy on the server is, probably in large cause of 1 and 2, completely batshit insane. With ten PuG's to 25 man Ulduar killing 2-3 bosses and FFA rolls for the Runed Orbs instead of them going to a guild's gearing up efforts each night, they go for next to nothing on the AH. I fled Shattered hand with my warrior with 6 runed orbs that I paid 1200 for in total. The BoE epics are since long aquired by everyone who frequent these PuG's, and therefore they only run it again to get another BoE to sell for some easy gold, and since everyone is selling them, the prices are way low. At this moment, I'm waiting for a few auctions to sell (some things still sell well, mostly the stuff you can't farm by PuG:ing end game content - Netherweave cloth is well expensive for example), and before I leave, I might have three or four ilvl 213+ epics for my tanking set straight off the bat, just from money I earned while levelling and selling the stuff that dropped. Emblem of Valor bracers? 200g-500g. On AD they go for 600g a good day. Relics of Ulduar sell for 1g at most, 200-stacks go for 150g more often than not.
I also suspect there's a lot of gold buying going on, Ratchet is fairly often full of higher level guys just standing around, and once when I was transferring my questing from 1k Needles to Stranglethorn, there was a fucking queue to do face-to-face trades with some level 1 orc warrior with a name with only consonants in it. I stood around and looked in horror for a while...
The faction specific auction house will sometimes contain really low-level items for very high prices too - I don't know if this is a case of "I hope some idiot presses the wrong button" or a way to avoid sending gold in the mail (which Blizzard apperantly monitors quite close - I've read up on the subject cause it started to fascinate me) between farmer and buyer, but either way it's not healthy.
While I'm not entirely sure how gold buying and extensive farming by chinese gold selling agencies affect a server's economy, my gut feeling tells me it should raise prices, not dump them (more gold to go around to inflate the market), but I guess people just buy gold for their money sinks (Hogs, epic flying, mammoths and stuff) and that it doesn't make it's way onto the Auction house.
4. People have some serious issues with naming. I've become truly jaded - all of a sudden "tommypala" is a perfectly acceptable name to me. "Twofish" or "Toothache" might have their place on a RP realm since there might be a reason why someone would be called that in game, but next to "Angrymama", "Eranikús", "Drunkdrood" and "Steakheals" (authentic examples I just picked up) in the spam fest that is trade, and on top of that, in fucking Swedish, they are just widely out of place. I just cannot relate to this in anyway. Even when I was 16, playing the epic grind fest that was Diablo II, this kind of naming was fairly rare, here it's commonplace.
5. People will whisper and pester you about all sorts of inane shit. Being a mage in Orgrimmar leads to the occasional whisper on Argent Dawn - people can't get enough portals. But being pretty much anyone, anywhere on Shattered hand will lead to you being spammed by lowbies (I only remembered this cause I just got whispered by a level 16 rogue to boost him in SFK - I told him to gain a few levels and find a real group and play the game the way it was supposed to. Didn't go down too well.) asking to be boosted or wanting to buy your services killing some alliance dude ganking their asses. People will randomly whisper you asking for your PvP gear and if you are willing to boost them in Arena for gold. It's absolutely mental.
6. Related to number 5 - people are twinks. No exception. There's level 19's, 29's, 49's and God knows what all running around with ilvl 25 blues with Mongoose on them. This is the easiest to relate to - twinking and voluntarily staying at a lower level bracket may make for a more interesting game, I for one would never play D&D 4th Ed. above level 10 (or at least never above 15) for my everyday gaming needs so I can kind of understand it. This is very rare on Argent Dawn. I'll see one every now and then, but standing around in Orgrimmar usually only yields people's mains and bank alts doing business at the AH while Undercity, Thunder Bluff and Silvermoon City is shockfull of them.
7. This is barely it's own section, but people use Swedish in their spammages and character names all the time. Shattered hand does have a predominantly Swedish population and as such, it's accepted by everyone there, and the rest can just go fuck itself as far as the probably 15-year old Swedish population is concerned.
The really sad part is that the people acting like they are in their early teens probably quite often are in their early 20's and that my prejudice towards young people in part is wrong, and the people on Shattered hand simply are idiots in large.
It will feel so good to finally have all my alts on RP servers again (huntard and rogue on Steamwheedle will probably stay there for a long while, don't intend to play them again) and level with the soft embrace of Absolution's guild chat close by. I love you guys.
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