Deathwing Comes!

With deathwing on the horizon players dive into what's to come. Now granted it is a bit away from X-pack time and Arthas has yet to appear. But most are all a buzz about Old world being torn apart by lava and fire, level cap to 85 and flying mounts in Old world. Some very big changes and im sure more to come. But the biggest thing I am excited about is that Blizzard is creating new story line. Deathwing was presumed dead in the last warcraft book series "The Demon Soul". Now he will rise again and for players this most certainly will be no picnic. But before the fire will be a cold day Arthas is coming soon be prepared!

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Under Development Update!

Blizzard has announced new plans for the future of new content. They have posted they are working on new 5, 10, 25 man instance, a new BG and more dailies! Here is the list posted on their main site:

• The Argent Tournament Expands: With the help of Azeroth’s heroes, the Argent Crusade will finish the Argent Coliseum just in time to call for all brave citizens to prepare for battle with the Lich King. New dailies, rewards, and more will be available at the Argent Tournament grounds to lure adventurers into the coliseum.
• Crusaders Coliseum: In order to prepare for a siege on Icecrown Citadel, players will be called by the Argent Crusade to test their mettle in the coliseum. 5-player, 10-player, and 25-player challenges await inside.
• New Battleground Isle of Conquest: a new large-scale siege Battleground, will be open. The Horde and Alliance will battle head-to-head for control of strategic resources to lay siege to the keeps of their opponents.
• New Arena Season Season 7: will officially start, paving the way for all-new items and challenges.

So prepare yourselves fellow players. Never fear content is here! This news also should come as a relief that they are still working rather regularly on new stuff and not just leaving us to Ulduar for 5 months before releasing anything. So bravo Blizzard! Good luck all.

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Q&A w/ Jederus and the WOWenomics Team!

Ever curious about the economy of WoW? Or try to figure out why blizzard charges so much for certain in game items? Well I went and sought out the WoWenomics team to do a little Q&A with them. Anyone who wants the nuts and bolts of the WoW gold game should visit WoWenomics blog site. Having said that I fired some questions their way and Jederus answered the calling, this is what was said:

Slash Nerf: How does the cost of certain things such as expensive flying mount training, cold weather flying and dual specing provide any kind of gold balance on a warcraft realm? And does this cause more to sell on auction house then are actually buying?

Jederus: Expensive but highly desired skills and items serve to remove gold from the game by acting as gold sinks. A gold sink, by design, helps keep the server’s economy in check by giving players something to spend their money on. Gold sinks can be something as mundane as repair costs or as profound as a 20,000 gold mount. As far as the desire for these items causing more AH activity goes, it’s hard to say what each person does to meet the gold cost for an item they desire. Sure, many players use the AH and of the ones that do, many sell more than they buy. That said, there are also players that dislike using the AH and prefer using the daily quest system as their primary path to riches.

Slash Nerf: In your opinion(s) has blizzard's cracking down on gold farming and buying died down significantly since BC? And how had this impacted the state of all realm AH's?

Jederus: I would say that Blizzard is not pursuing gold farmers and sellers and more or less than during Burning Crusade. We still see gold advertisements because people are still buying gold and it is cheap for the sellers to advertise so their cost to benefit ratio fits the mechanic of sending spam. I should add that Blizzard could certainly be more aggressive in getting rid of gold sellers but these aggressive tactics might involve more thorough investigations and account bans. Both the manpower for the investigation and the loss of revenue for the company from issuing bans could hurt Blizzard’s bottom line and, as a for profit corporation, this is not something they are interested in doing.

Slash Nerf: Alot of players are rather uniformed of profitability of cooking and fishing. What is your stance on these professions for gold?

Jederus: Both the cooking and fishing professions are fantastic moneymakers. Put together they are even more powerful. The interesting thing about these professions is that they don’t take up a regular profession slot so, in a sense, they are a free skill. Some people make more gold from these free skills then they do from their regular skills. Glacial salmon is one example of this. On most servers this fish goes for approximately 35 gold per stack. This is often higher than the going rate for a stack of Saronite Ore, high level skinned leather or many types of herbs on those same servers and each of these takes about the same amount of time to farm. In cases where the fish is not selling well, simply use cooking to turn the fish into a more profitable consumable and profit on that end. Dragonfin Filet and the Fish Feast are excellent examples of items that increase greatly in value when cooked.

Slash Nerf: Have too many people abandoned certain professions causing other players to florish with their unliked profession(s)?

Jederus: That’s an interesting question. I’m a firm believer that all professions have profit potential. I do think that one of the best opportunities to make gold in the game is in exploiting niche markets. That is, if you are crafting something that everyone else is not you can set supply, and thus prices, at whatever level you can sell your goods at. Even with popular professions there are ways to exploit this mechanic. All too often crafters get caught up with only making and selling the highest-level items within their professions. This results in fierce competition and can be discouraging. Overlooked are lower-level niche items like an Engineer’s Gyrochronatom (used for, amongst other things, a Badlands quest) or an Alchemist’s Frost Oil, which is used in two quests and the crafting of several non-alchemy items.

Slash Nerf: Some dont choose a main profession and just gather herbs and mine nodes. Is this a good move to make gold?

Jederus: This is a fantastic move to make gold. Focusing on straight farming skills actually increases your money in two ways. The obvious way is that you are now able to gather twice as many items as you normally would. The less obvious way this specialization makes gold is that you are no longer spending gold for recipes and recipe training, crafting materials and junk items to skill up. So, you are both making more and saving more. Unless you’re going to work hard to find your unique niche in crafting, farming is the way to go speaking in a strictly profit sense.

Slash Nerf: Here at Slash Nerf I like to start a trend with knowing what "Nerf" you like to see either in or out of game! So all bets are off here. What Nerf if you got 1 would you ask for?

Jederus & WoWenomics team: Hmmm, I put this one to the WoWenomics team and there were all sorts of ideas flying around: nerf the official WoW forums, nerf commercials, nerf bosses and work in general, nerf the prices at Starbucks. However, after much heated discussion, I think we came to agree that family aggro during our play time was the one thing most in need of a nerf (just don’t tell the wife okay?).


I like to thank the entire WoWenomics crew and Jederus for taking the time to answer. They are no doubt one of the top if not the top provider of WoW gold and economy info out there. So go check them out! Happy farming!

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No New Mounts! Beware of Scam!

No those offers of a new mount in whispers are not true... they are scammers and all should know better. If there is anything official be sure to check blizzards main site or many of the various big fan sites. Scammers prey on those that may not be up to speed or less knowledgable about the game. So therefore it is up to us as a WoW community to keep those less informed, informed about current scams or loggers. The more we discourage these interwebz "terrorists" the less likely they will stick around for long. Goodluck in game everyone and scammer beware!

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Zarhym Burns Down the Rumor Mill

Ever see those posts where someone goes into a rant about Blizzard and what direction they are going? Then you sit there and think to yourself what they are basing all their "conspiracy theory's" on... Well blue poster Zarhym had read enough and began to give the "Facts" of the state of Blizzard and WoW. The following are quotes from Zarhym and we will call him M.informed:

M.informed:
" So it's looking more and more like blizzard is spreading out achievements and making changes to the game so that achievements/goals take longer."

Zarhym:
" It's difficult to believe you'd have this view if you had played extensively at level 60. The content has become nothing but more accessible over the years for a wider range of players. "

****** Warning Rumor Mill INC!**********

M.informed:
" Rumor is they will not be making any more expansions for WoW. "

Zarhym:
" Rumors are fascinating, given that they don't need a shred of evidence in support of their basis to spread like a wild fire. In fact, in the past we've provided nothing but evidence -- vague though it may be -- that would contradict such a rumor. "


****Would you like some mustard for that foot?*****

M.informed:
" I've heard that they are focusing on other projects. If this is true you can expect more of this, and less customer service/content. At this point they can just sit back and add some new arena/pvp gear every4-6 months and that's it. "

Zarhym:
" This a common misconception. Such a misconception requires nothing but assumptions and misinformation to hold water. We have completely independent art and development teams for each project on which Blizzard Entertainment is working. Sure, people switch positions and may move to other projects from time to time. This is common practice in any company, whether or not the company develops games. But if a position is vacated, it is filled. You may have seen earlier this year that Jeff Kaplan, former game director for World of Warcraft, announced he would be leaving his position to begin work on the new, unannounced MMO. Tom Chilton stepped up to fill his role on the World of Warcraft development team. We're never short on talent and our teams are constantly growing. There's absolutely no reason or evidence to support the theory that we've shifted focus away from the Warcraft franchise. I'm surrounded by employees in this building working hard every day that can attest to this, were they not too busy working on a prioritized list of new content for this game to speak directly. "

*** How that other foot taste?****

M.informed:
" People are saying that there is another MMO in the works at Blizzard. Seriously, if there was, they would be advertising it already. "

*** He is seriouz peoplez, I wouldnt lie****

Zarhym:
" We have nothing to advertise for the new MMO because it's a shell of a game thus far. We've already stated it'll be a brand new franchise, which means the lore, art, and game play are being developed entirely from scratch. It's an overwhelming process, but a process through which we excel. Our track record supports this. "


At this point you get the jist that Blizzard is not abandoning WoW and that guys like M.informed are everywhere so ignore the rumor mill. Hopefully this "factual" dose of reality to M.informed will have him thinking twice before posting up some heresay rumor garbage. But from all this atleast go away knowing they are not abandoning anything. Blizzard is still working on content and have no plans of just ditching WoW.

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