Cash is King

Any of you finance majors might recognize this title. Once again, what's true in the real world is true in World of Warcraft as well. Well... at least as far as economics goes. The phrase refers to the importance of cash flow in the overall health of a businesses. A company may have a ton of assets, but if they aren't easily liquidated (possibly high accounts receivable) and/or they don't have a lot of cash, they may not be able to pay wages, for example.

I started reflecting on this last night as one of my guild mates was showing off his new Nether Drake Mount. Leiandra the Mage isn't poor, but I wouldn't call her cash rich either. I've successfully skilled up two producing professions to 375 (tailoring and enchanting) with an alt's
alchemy to 351 (mostly off of AH goods), so that's taken me a bit of gold. I've noticed that I have a lot of things that could sell for a decent amount of money if I wanted to take the time and patience to get them sold. So, assets I have, even if I don't quite have enough for my epic flying mount.

The biggest single expense that I know about in the World of Warcaft at this time is that of your flying epic mount. The cost is 5000g for the riding skill and then another 200g for the actual mount. Then if you want one of the Nether Drakes, you have to purchase the artisan riding skill, and then complete a series of daily quests. If you do them every day, the daily quests will take about 30 days to get the needed reputation for one of them. It's estimated that you get about 1000g while completing these daily quests as well.

So, for me, once I have purchased my 300 riding skill, I imagine I'll be more willing to spend the 27g to get one Primal Fire on the AH. Right now, I'm watching my money too much to justify spending the 27g for something that I can get (at the right time) in an hour or less. In other words, if I didn't have this large expense looming, I'd feel more free to do what I want, instead of feeling like I have to go grind some more.

Boggled

I'm gonna need some help on this one, because I don't really understand. The subject today probably boils down to lack of communication. I'll be the first one to admit that guilds don't really mean too much in WoW. For the most part, it's essentially a glorified friends list. It's not like the guild gets anything from downing an individual boss. Sure, members of the guild get something, but the guild itself gets nothing.

Before WoW, I played Everquest 2 for a while. It's been awhile since I've played, so things may have changed. You had certain designated members of the guild that completed writs to gain status points to help level the guild. At level 5, you got your guild name above the players' heads. At level 10 (I think), you could get guild housing. Eventually, you could have crafting tables in your guild hall, and special things to buy, etc. If one of these designated members left the guild, the guild and the player would lose the status points. I'm not sure if there were any repercussions if one of the "normal" members left.

I bring this up because we have a few members that have joined, gotten a few pieces of epic Kara gear, and then left the guild all in a matter of a week or less. And most of the time, it's without even saying anything to anyone. I've heard the gambit of excuses as well: I joined my friend's guild, you guys don't raid at the time I want (which they knew when they went on our their first raid with us), somebody made fun of my name, etc.

While I'm not discounting the validity of the excuses, what I do think is inexcusable is the /gquit without saying a word to anyone. I equate the guild aspect of WoW to a normal job. You don't just stop showing up. If you decide you want to quit, you normally give a two-week's notice. You let your boss know that you are leaving. Of course, you don't get paid in WoW or by your guild, so maybe that's not entirely the best comparison.

Maybe a better analogy would be that of a sport's team you signed up for. Think back to High School. (Some of you may only have to think back a few weeks.) You sign up for the Soccer team. You're pretty good at soccer, and your team really appreciates that you're there. You've all spent time together. You've played some games together. You've won some; you've lost some. Maybe your team even won a trophy at a tournament that you get to keep. Now, for whatever reason, you decide you don't want to play anymore. Don't you talk to your coach, your teammates, whomever to let them know that you're not going to play? You'll still see those people around the server... errr, school. Sure you can still go play baseball or whatever other sport.

/sigh. I guess a large part is due to the anonymity of the Internet. "Nobody really knows me, so why should I give them the common courtesy I would my High School friends?" Anyone else have any thoughts to help my head stop spinning about this?

Moroes Hints

Last night, we ventured into Karazhan once again. We easily strolled into the stables and downed Attumen the Huntsman without any problems. He dropped something new for us, that made one of our priest very happy. The Gloves of Saintly Blessing was one of the items and the other was some mail piece that quickly got turned into 2 Void Crystals (no hunters or shaman last night).

After him, our MH had to leave, so we got one of our druids, who's not resto spec'ed, to come help out on the heals. I thought we had Moroes on farm, but apparently I was wrong. First we ran into an unfortunate experience of having both tanks on Moroes lose agro. One got gouged, and the other got blinded, so Moroes ran through the rest of our party taking out the healers and so we had to reset the event. Another time, Baroness Dorothea Millstipe got off a couple of Mana Burns to leave those member with no mana. And a third time, we left 2 of the adds shackled and our two tanks didn't have enough agro.

So... this is not a full guide, but here's some of the things that I feel are very important; a Lessons Learned, if you will. This should be taken with other guides read as well.

(1) The Mana Burn from Millstipe has to be interrupted no matter what. She burns 6000 mana, which can be quite a huge blow.

(2) Keep the adds under control. You generally have two tanks that both need to be on Moroes due to the gouge and blind abilities. If you keep all but one add shackled or ice trapped, then you only have to kite around one add until you kill it. Unfortunately, this takes time. Crippling Poison or a Mage's Ice Bolt will be enough to make it easier, but these have to stay up.

(3) Lady Keira Berrybuck is a paladin that can bubble and heal. Stun her around 25-30% and then finish her off quickly. It just makes the fight against her take so much longer if she has time to heal herself or others.

(4) Know when to reset the event. By running Moroes out of the room, it resets the event. If key players, namely one of your tanks or healers, die during the first phases of the fight, reset the event. It'll take less time to rez the couple then it will to have a full wipe.

It should be a simple encounter, but there's little things that can make it challenging. Having everything under control, it's a simple gear check. If you've got the gear and you know what you're doing, you should sail through it most of the time. (There's always exceptions or unlucky things that can happen.) Anyone else have any hints or tips that I missed.

Deadly Boss Mods

After being gone for all of the Karazhan for my guild for this past week, we tried to do The Curator for a second (or maybe third, I'm not sure) time this week. Those of you that aren't familiar with this fight should head on over to BossKillers and read up on him a bit as I won't be explaining him here. Unfortunately, we did not kill him. I don't think it's gear or group composition, it's just our current inexperience. Plus, when our MH only has enough time to give it two tries, it kinda limits us. I'm pretty sure that we'll be able to down him this week.

But the main point of this post is less on a specific boss and more on a specific mod. I imagine that most people are pretty aware of CT_mod and the closely linked CT_RA (Raid Assist). There's a lot of great UI augmentations that CT provides. For now, go check out their site if you want more information on it. What I'm going to focus on is the Deadly Boss Mods.

Technically speaking, this is a compilation mod. There is a GUI mod and an API mod that is kinda the base of the mod. They also control which mods are loaded. You only load the mods you're using. Furthermore, if you aren't in any of the raids or battlegrounds, none of the other mods will be loaded. Makes it nice that it's not taxing on your system at all. Also, this is pretty much for raids only. It does not contain anything for the 5-man instances or even anything like UBRS. But it's your traditional raid places: Onyxia, ZG, Naxx, Serpenshire, Karazhan, etc.

So what does this mod do? I'm not an expert, and I'm sure I don't know a lot of the additional functionality of this mod, but what I've seen is impressive. It creates timer bars to let you know when things are going to happen. For example, during the Curator, the timer bar tells you how long until his next evocate, and then also give another bar when he's evocating to let you know when it will be finished. Another example is during the Maiden of Virtue, it estimates how long until the next Holy Fire and Repentance. For Moroes, it lets you know when he's going to vanish. For the Oz event, it lets you know when each new mob will enter the fight. The timer bars are just really, really cool.

CT_RA has a feature that sounds a bell and gives a warning message when you pull agro off of the tank. I'm pretty sure this is only when you pull the target off of the MT. Deadly Boss Mods seem to go a step further. First of all, you don't have to (or can't) set an MT for your raid. DBM seems to scan all targets and all of the edges glow red when you pull agro. There's also a message of who you pulled. It just seems to really give me that sense of urgency when I pull something.

The last thing I'll talk about for the raid portion is the distance meter. The Maiden has the Holy Wrath ability that can chain through players that are close enough together. The Curator has the Flares that players can chain their arcane damage to others. You want to keep a certain distance from other players, but how do you know how much? When DBM is loaded, there will appear a box right in the middle of your screen (yeah... hard to miss), that will tell you who is too close to you. For this reason alone, it's a good idea for all your raid members to have this mod. There's also some synchronization things that happen if multiple people have the mod, but it hasn't caught on much in my guild yet.

Finally for the battlegrounds. I don't spend too much time there myself, but there is a neat timer that tells you how long until the leading faction wins based on the number of resources they have and how many points they currently control. (Think AB on that one.) Not sure what it does for the other battlegrounds, but I'm sure they've included something.

Bottom line: It's a good, solid mod. It seems to be updated every few days, so you know that people are working to perfect it. I haven't seen any bugs yet, so that's refreshing. If you start using it and see other features that I missed, please let me know.

Tonight we'll start Karazhan over again since it reset. Let's see how far we can get this week. :)

Afk, But Not Forgotten

As I mentioned on Wednesday, I spent the weekend in Yosemite. And oddly enough, I made some discoveries related to the game. The first one I saw was related to Westfall. Upon leaving the park, I saw a ranger station sign for Westfall. It just made me chuckle since, according to Richard P. Ditton and Donald E. McHenry:

Westfall Ranger Station in Sierra National Forest is operated by the Forest Service of the U. S. Department of Agriculture. Its main purpose is fire and insect control and timber improvement. A laboratory of the U. S. Bureau of Entomology and Plant Quarantine is also located here to study effects and control, of forest insects. The suppression of forest fires in this area of well over one million acres is a cooperative project between the State of California, the U. S. Forest Service, and the National Park Service. The station was originally Miami Ranger Station but was changed about 1940 to Westfall in honor of one of the first forest ranger in this area.

The other discovery was about the Fen Dwellers/Creepers/Lords. Unbeknownst to me the word "Fen" isn't made up. According to Random House a fen is "low land covered wholly or partially with water; boggy land; a marsh." Well, it makes sense that these guys are found in the Wetlands, and that they are actually found in the water. The fen in Yosemite was actually quite interesting. There's a layer of peat that has developed due to the slow moving water. It's also a great source of nutrients for plants, which provides a support for numerous insects, which feeds a lot of birds in the area. Overall, a really relaxing place in Yosemite with none of the Fen Lords to disturb your peace. :)

In my absence, our guild was in full force, downing Attumen, Moroes, The Maiden of Virtue, and the Oz Opera event. They tried the Curator a few times, but were unsuccessful. Tonight we'll try him again. Hopefully we can get somebody their T4 gloves.

Blizzard Downloader

It never fails. If I forget to try to download the patch first thing in the morning, before the servers are up, or at work any time during the day, I almost always have issues downloading the patch. My "glorified dial-up" doesn't help (it's the cheaper variety of the cable modem), but for the one time every once in a while that I want to download something, I can't justify paying more. But that's not really the point. For some reason, I always seem to get stuck around 97-98% complete. Last night was no exception. It sat at 98% for about 10 minutes, while I was talking with guildies on Vent.

From what I've read on the forums though, I'm not alone. So, the tip for today is: if the downloader gets stuck and doesn't seem to be downloading anything else for you, simply close the downloader, launch WoW again, and voila! You'll download the remainder of the patch just as fast as you normally download. (And no, you don't have to download what you're already downloaded.) After the 10 minutes, I remembered this trick and the remaining 0.8 Mbs downloaded in about 10 seconds.

p.s. I'm headed to Yosemite tomorrow morning for the weekend, so I won't be posting again until Monday.

Casual Flopping?

Let me first start out by saying that Real Life happens. No matter what happens in the World of Warcraft, there are times when real life can and should take priority over this silly game that so many of us play. That said...

Since we didn't get in a Karazhan run this past weekend, we decided to get our members and throw in a quick run to at least kill Attumen last night before the instance resets this morning. Like almost always, we didn't have the ideal group situation, but for Attumen, we would be fine. After a miscommunication, but recovery, on the first pull, we easily stroll in to Attumen. The fight is explained to the new people and we're about to pull. One of the priests basically says, "I'm sorry guys, afk real quick." So, we wait. And wait. And wait. Nobody, I mean, nobody would go afk right before a boss fight like that. Not to mention that there would soon (about 20 minutes after killing them) be respawns that would force us to re-kill everything. By this point, we were just hoping that everything was okay with the guy. We didn't have another healer online, and nobody seemed to be LFG for Karazhan.

Long story, short. We tried to kill Attumen with 9 people after we fought the respawn once and it failed pretty miserably. The guy came back and told us that his brother's dog ran away and they had to go find him. So, hopefully tonight will be a little better. I forgot to ask, but I hope the guy's dog is okay.

So, what are some of your favorite afk stories?