Look! Up in the Sky!

After Kil’jaeden is defeated, Illidan uses a magic crystal to open a portal between the worlds so that they (and, presumably, we) could get back home. But, what’s that saying? A door swings both ways, I blieve?  While we could see Azeroth from over Argus … we can see Argus from here!

Initially, only those that brought down KJ in raid could see it, but this Tuesday, they opened the final wing of The Tomb to use LFR-ers (uh, “Raid Finder”, they say over at Blizz).  And on that magical day, Argus appeared everywhere.  Except for Northrend!Dalaran.

Be warned! Lots of pics and a video below!

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The old capitals had a good view.

But, sadly, Exodar missed out again.

Kaz Modan …

… and Kalimdor …

Sometimes it showed in the most unusual and interesting ways …

And while I couldn’t see it from Northrend!Dalaran, other places in Northrend had a good view.

Even Pandaria had a good view, now that the mists have cleared.

And, in case you haven’t seen it yet, here’s the cinematic that explains this little bit of fel candy in our skies.

It breaks the heart

Grimm spent weeks stalking and finding his first spirit beast, Gondria.  Since then, he’s been content with what he has, but always been on the lookout for additional members to the stable.

Unfortunately, that’s never happened.  Oh, we’ve seen plenty of other exotic spirit beasties in our travels, but never when logged in as Grimmtooth. Flora saw Skoll a couple of times while pugging, but of course Grimm was never nearby when it happened.

And now, this week, Flora’s encountered Bulvinkel, a spirit beast moose (as promised by Ghostcrawler). Grimm was half a world away, and, of course, by the time he arrived, the beastie had been tamed (or worse, killed).

Don’t be that guy

It’s amazing. Mere days after posting a link to one of my articles about How2Auction, I get an in-game chat from a guy that just doesn’t “get it” with regard to an item I was selling.

In this case, one of my side markets are the Tomes of Illusion that Enchanters can make.  The mats for each come from the expansions they correspond to, and some of those are a little pricey, especially the older ones from Azeroth or Outland.  I don’t mean vendor price, but what they sell for on the AH, which is considerable, if they’re even available.

So you’re looking at on average a cost per tome of around 1500 GP, and of course there’s going to be the traditional markup. If there were no profit, I wouldn’t sell it.

Thus the stage is set.

HIM: Your price for Tome of Illusions: Azeroth is too high

ME: It sells well enough at that price.

HIM: It’s just a cosmetic thing!

ME: But it takes rare stuff to make it

HIM: But the mats are easy to farm

ME: Well, if you bring me the mats, I’ll make it for the mats, though a tip would be cool.

HIM: Fuk u

And halt.

This reminds me of a recent series of threads on Twitter, in which artists were being yelled at because they wouldn’t provide free artwork “for exposure”.  There are a lot of tiny little twitch channel commandos out there that think they’re hot shit, and expect to be catered to as such, and no dumb bish “artist” will be permitted to dis them by not doing shit for them for free.

Entitled little weasels.

Here it is in a nutshell. If you want it, it has value.

I don’t make claims to even remotely the same level of talent of the artists I see day in and day out posting samples on Twitter etc and trying to scrape out a living doing what they love. But I feel in some small way the frustration they must every time some jerk yells at me for not giving away the goods for free.

Don’t be that guy.   If you want a thing in WoW, you can

1. Pay market price
2. Bring the mats and be nice to someone with the skillset
3. Get friends that don’t mind your freeloading

If you want art/code assets from a person, pay them.  “Exposure” means fuck-all, and it doesn’t put food on anybody’s plate. If you can’t pay an artist to decorate your Twitch channel, or a coder to set up the front end for your database, go get a real job. Maybe even learn to do yourself.  Stack Overflow at least won’t charge you to tell you how to do for yourself.

Squad Goals and Creature Comforts

I have a huge, huge rant about glyphs and the glyphmongering economy in the feed chute, but despite some very negative things I have to say about that, it’s still important to note that a resourceful person can make a decent virtual living in this game and still enjoy the game.

Today I poked my head over the 3,000,000 GP mark collectively with the combined sales of glyphs, tomes, and enchants – plus the occasional doodad that has no use to me – such as cloth.

I spend maybe a TOTAL of an hour a day on this, so don’t let anyone tell you you have to be dedicated to the cause of making the cashes. You can be a “dirty casual” AH tycoon and get along just fine.

One may ask what’s the point of having all this gold if not the act of having the gold?  Good question. My original goal was to never be wanting for the basic comforts of the game, be that mounts, gear, or supplies. Since the token came out, that goal has been modified to include “while never having to pay real money to play”, and occasionally for a family member as well.  Even with the higher cost of the token, I’m still managing that and coming out with a net positive.

Finally, I’ve modified my goals to include “being able to buy other stuff” by converting gold to Blizzard Bucks. Ever since Blizz revealed that you could buy Blizzard Bucks with tokens, and that you could spend Blizzard Bucks on anything in the Blizzard store, new vistas have been opened.  For sure, it’s also inflated the cost of tokens by around 100,000 GP per, but that’s because people are buying the HELL outta those suckers (so much for the rumors of Blizzard’s demise).

If this were a bigger chore, or the market less cooperative, I wouldn’t be doing it. But when I can have this kind of “security” without having to go nuts like some of those creatures I see humping the auctioneer’s leg hour after hour, I call it a win.

I won’t repeat myself, though the time may be ripe for an update to how I do this thing.  But the core principles still hold. Here’s past posts on the topic for your entertainment.

• How Much is that Glyph in the Window?
• To Hear the Lamentations of Their Brokers

I’m currently working hard to get my JC and Potion sales going, though getting that “one-off” Alchemy boss has proven to be quite difficult. I don’t really know if there’s a market for either until I have some data, so that’s where we are right now.  But in this expansion, consumables are king, so that’s where I’m angling.

Art Department, can we talk?

I’ve recently completed my class mount quest, and, well, I need to preface my thoughts a little bit first.

Listen, art department peeps, I know you’re hard working Artists with a Capital A. And I respect what you do.  Going from solid models to 3D models requires a broad skill set.  Creating new sounds for fantastical creatures that don’t even exist is challenging under any circumstances. And you folks in the lead positions, I know for sure that it’s difficult to give good leads to the art and sound peeps and fold it all back together at the end of the development cycle and get it in to the assets people to be merged into the test servers.

I respect the challenges in developing all the pixels we see and use in the game.

Having said all that, I have to observe that somebody actually signed off on this.

Its a good … whatever, Brant

I can’t even. It’s like somebody mashed an owl and a lion together without a) being told that it was supposed to be a mount or b) knowing what a lion or owl looked like originally. And the sound … the sound the thing makes when you summon it is reminiscent of the Witch King’s mount in Lord of the Rings. There is nothing divine about this creature’s screeching wail. It’s like somebody got the sound files for the Death Knight mount mixed up with the Priest mount files, and everyone’s too embarrassed to admit it. Working as intended, yo.

I hate to sound ungrateful, but, seriously, if they’d posted a note that “the Priest mount will be delayed for a few weeks for additional enhancement”, I would not have objected at all, expecially if I knew what we’d get “on schedule”.

Next up: mage mount.  It’s a fidget spinner, yo.  I can live with that.  It’s like that Pandaria Red Cloud thingy.

So that explains that

Perhaps you’ve seen the skies above the Black Temple and wondered, “why can I see Azeroth up there in the sky?”

Spoiler alert … this is the end cinematic from the Sargeras fight. Don’t watch it if you don’t want spoilers.