The Value of Things.

It's been a long week.  And it's only half over.

       As far as raids went this week, they didn't.  Between everything I'm juggling I just had to take a step back and admit I didn't have time to run them.  I haven't been on game but a few minutes as well so I didn't connect and try to get someone else to run them.  Next week I've posted Blackrock both days.  I think we will step back to Highmaul every other week or so until It's gone, but I want our main focus to be the newer of the two raids.

     Just as a quick update, the PTR is testing the game time currency right now.  The price seems to be set at twenty dollars for thirty days of game time.  I predicted it would be higher then the normal  subscription and I was right.  My understanding is that you now buy the token, put it on the AH and the price is actually set by Blizzard based on the give and demand on your server.  That way no one can use to it majorly inflate or deflate the market.  I'll be honest, I'm not a fan of this model as I believe that a market where the players set the price is a better system, but we will see how this shakes out.  I still like this idea over all, and I'm interested in see how it shakes out.

    The other value I am looking at right now is time.  Right now work is pretty hectic and is kicking my butt.  Along with everything else I just haven't been drowning in time.  (Really, I'm three weeks behind on the Walking Dead.) I have decided at this point that I'm not going to focus on leveling any more characters for a bit.  I have my pally, hunter and shaman on Alliance side, and I will eventually get my hunter or rogue up on Horde.  At this point however I don't plan on doing what I've done the last couple of expansions and leveling a bunch of characters to the max level.  (Last expansion I had 13 level 90's by the end)  I just don't have the time and energy.

     I don't believe I'm at the point of quitting this game any time soon.  I am however debating scheduling and minamizing my time on it a bit more.  I just have too much other stuff to do lately.  I plan on raid leading still, and I will work on keeping a couple of characters current.  Other then that I am not sure what I will have time to do.  I guess this is just part of getting older.  It sucks.

     I will be honest, if it wasn't for the people in the guild, I might be quitting at this point.  I'm just tired and don't have the energy for the obsession I've had for this game in the past.  I used to know enough about all the classes to tell you thier cool downs, stat priorities etc...  Now I'm luck to remember them all on the classes I have maxed.  Maybe I need to take a break... I'm not sure.  I don't see that happening in the near future however.

     So, what do you do when Wow is getting stale/old and you need to decompress from it?  Where do you spend your energy when your not in game?

Lag/Lazyeye

I'm ready for flying now.

I think it's been long enough.

     I am going to keep it simple.  We didn't raid this week.  Attendance boss hit us twice so we all (those who showed) Jumped into an LFR and ran whilst chatting.  Not the fun we were looking for, but it was fun non the less.

      I haven't minded not being able to fly thus far.  I agree with the big heads who have decided that not flying in Draenor where right.  The world has been more immersive and the experience leveling has been much better.  The ability to run into other players is nice, and I mostly haven't felt limited, until now.

     At this point in the expansion I am not as worried about immersian.  Most of the time when I'm going some where I want to get in and out.  I have played through the areas 2-3 times, and I know the stories already.  Most people now spend the majority of their time hiding in thier garrison and avoiding the outside world.  The whole reason they decided not to allow flying is evaporating quickly.

     I also miss my mounts.  While they have made most mounts able to run, glide, or crawl along the ground it just doesn't feel the same.  The mounts that I earned by doing raids, dungeons and achievements are starting to collect dust and it doesn't feel good.  Out of all my mounts I only use a small handful in the first place, and it's even less now.

     Not flying on the other hand, is not going to make me quit Wow.  It's not something that is going to destroy my enjoyment of this game, or make me cry and shriek about unfairness.  It's just something I would like to see return.  Please Blizzard?

    That's about all I have for now.  See you next week.

Lag/Lazyeye
 

I am not discussing Gul'dan spoilers.... I'm not!

But I am oh, so happy about them.

     Tuesday we went into Highmaul again with a heavily alted group.  We only managed to get three bosses down, but I am holding the save and we will keep going in until the whole raid is done, then it will be Blackrock, all raid every raid.

     Wednesday we ventured back into Blackrock Foundry.  Gruul went down quickly and we moved on to Hans and Franz, whom we finally took down this week!

    Really though, if you don't mind spoilers (and I'm wondering how long this is considered a spoiler) You should watch the cinimatic for the end of Blackforge.  It is amazing and has sprung up a lot of good questions.  And the fact that as always Khadgar is right.  That dude is always right.  Assuming it's really Khadgar. (If you have read any of Matt Rossi or Anne Stickney's Tinfoil hat Lore columns, you should.  They discuss this a little bit at blizzardwatch.com)

      The other thing that just hit me was that Blizzcon was announced and somewhere between juggling work, school activities and Girl Scout cookies I missed when they released this information.  It will be November 6th and 7th this year.  Assuming that they are going to try and stick to the timeline Blizzard is aiming for, if they announce the next expansion at Blizzcon, they would be only giving us a few months heads up before it drops.  That is unless they decide to do a third raid tier in Warlords.  That would put us at about six month notice.  Unless they go thirteen months again between expansions.   Then most of us will be crying.

     The raid team continues to evolve.  We have some new blood coming in which makes me ponder our direction.  I want to finish Highmaul and move on to Blackrock full time, but with the new folks coming in I debate that course.  I want a chance to get folks some gear, though if they are running their LFRs every week, the Gear should be coming.  Not everyone is pulling great dps yet, but I'm seeing improvement weekly on those hitting lower numbers.  I think we are on our way, but I'm not sure how quick we will get there.  I don't want to stagnate and stay in place, but I want to make sure we have every opportunity to make folks ready for Blackrock full time.

Little hair metal for you today.

Scattered in my thoughts to day I am.

See you all in raid this week.

Lag/Lazyeye

     

   

Buying Time In Highmaul

How do you feel about it?

     Tuesday night was interesting.  Several people in the raid where in on alt characters (Including yours truly who took his hunter Lazyeye.) So, it became fascinating to see how we handled so much change.  The deeps was a little lower over all, but mechanics seemed to be the demon of the night.  We still one shot Kargatch and The Butcher.  Butcher had some rough spots though.  Twin Ogron kept setting us on fire because we just weren't avoiding it very well.  We finally got them down at the end of the night, but we only got 3/7 for Highmaul this week.

     Wednesday we managed to get Gruul down on the first pull that wasn't an accident.  It felt good and we moved on to Hans and Franz again.  We managed on the final pull to get them down to 10% but we have some more work to do here.  Hopefully next week.

     Let's get to the meat shall we.

      Blizzard is going to allow people to buy game time tokens and sell them on the auctionhouse.  As of yet a price hasn't been set for this token, so we don't know how much it's going to set us back.  My honest guess is it will be $15 for 30 days, not cheaper (because then it would be cheaper to get tokens rather then a subscription) and I don't think it will be much more expensive.  Maybe a dollar or two as a "service fee."

     I am not sure where I stand on this yet.  I like the idea of being able to use gold for game time, but we don't know how much gold it's going to cost yet either.  That price will be set by the community on the AH.  My honest opinion is that anything over 10k I won't spend.   Even then I will hesitate as I haven't had the play time to earn a lot of gold lately.  I would like to say when they did the guardian cub years ago he was $10, and he stared out for about that 10K price, but eventually dropped down to 5k or so.  This only means so much because the economy has been inflated a lot since then.  But it does give us an example of what has happened in the past.

    The obvious pitfall here is that if the game time sells for too much gold only a select amount of players will be able to afford it.  At that point it will be a benifit for the elite few who make a lot of gold off the AH, and the rest of us will occasionally be able to get a month for free if we are lucky.  I am sure that this is not what Blizzard intends, but it may be what it becomes.  In that case if you want to buy gold it might be lucritive to drop an extra $15 or so here and there and  pick up some in game currency.

     The bonus is that if it works out right, then the price will drop down to a point where the everyday player can afford to drop gold on time if thats what they choose to do.  Now, to be fair, I don't think that this idea will work if everyone in game can afford to buy time off the auction house.  I think the average player should be able to afford to buy time every couple of months or so.  There will be people who never can afford this, but I am hoping those are in the minority if this is implimented correctly.  At least that is my opinion.  For all I know Blizzard is looking at this in a whole different light.

    How do you feel about buying WoW time with gold? Are you going to participate in this as a buyer or seller?  What thoughts have I missed?

Lag/Lazyeye.