June 9th, 2008 at 11:17pm
Under WoW Guide
Summer’s here, gas prices are up, and the economy is suffering both in-game and in real life. Ultimately, it’s a “dogs and cats sleeping together” kind of situation for your cash flow. Jagoex over at Warlock Therapy has your wallet covered with “10 Ways Gamers Can Save Money.” He’s talking about all gamers, and has quite a lot to say for the console gamers, but his tips pretty much apply to everyone.Of course, there are a few things you can do specifically as a WoW player to save your bank account some stress over this bleeding hot summer.
1. Buy 6-month package deals. Let’s be honest. Are you really going to quit playing WoW at the end of the month? Unless you’re actually about to walk out the door, opting for the six-month subscription will save you two bucks a month. That’s not epic savings, but it’s a few gallons of gas over the course of the summer.
2. Take mini-vacations in game. If you don’t want to pay for the gas or plane fare to jaunt off to an exotic location, you do have an option. There are probably hundreds of places hanging out Around Azeroth you’ve not seen. Make a new character, and make it one of a race you’ve not played before. Gquit gracefully for a weekend, and take a break from your normal routine. If you have a significant other with whom you can do this, that’s even better — take your partner for a special date somewhere.
3. Snack cheap, snack healthy. It’s a two-fer. Jagoex has already heralded the beauty of water over soda as play-time fuel. I’d go a step further — grab a bag of carrots instead of junk food. Although just about everything’s getting more expensive this summer, your run-of-the-mill veggie will fill you as well as potato chips. Those carrots will probably be a little cheaper per-craving. The long-term health improvement will save you some doctor-time, also, and that’s a big-bucks saving.
4. Use your privacy to best affect. Many WoW players get their game on in the privacy of a computer room, at home by themselves, or otherwise away from the prying eyes of others. What’s more, when they’re gaming, they’re not hanging out in the rest of the unoccupied house. Use that, compadre. Turn off the lights in other rooms — save a little power, and drop your energy bill. Mount a fan on your Wowspace, and turn down the central AC to reflect that. Letting the air conditioner have a break will have the biggest effect on your power budget.
5. Use voice chat as your own VOIP. Opinions on WoW’s packaged voice chat have always been divided. But if you’re logged into the game anyway, you can take advantage of it nonetheless. This lets you avoid long-distance charges to relatives who also play, or cellphone roaming charges if you do happen to be traveling. I’ve used it to keep in touch with a friend from my Mid-Atlantic region who moved to Canada. I couldn’t guess how much phone charges I’ve dodged that way - certainly enough to pay my monthly subscription fee.
6. Play WoW for entertainment, dodge other costs. Let’s play a small math game. Like many good geeks, I’m going to see The Incredible Hulk next weekend. I’m confident and hopeful it will be good. But, if it sucks, I’m going to be regretting 6 bucks an hour (before concession prices). If I get popcorn and a soda, I could be regretting 16 bucks an hour. My favored movie theater is a gallon of gas away. 18 bucks an hour. Now, while I’m stacking costs here pretty quickly — you get the point. By comparison, a casual WoW player who is only online for an hour or so a week, with a 6-month package deal, is only dropping $2 to $4 an hour. This game is not what you’d call expensive. It’s cheap to play, and well worth the cost. Very few other entertainment media are going to give you anything like the return on your investment you experience in World of Warcraft.
It all still just comes down to conservation and careful expenditures, no matter which way you cut it. Like doing your dailies: a lot of little things, can add up to a lot.
By admin
June 9th, 2008 at 10:04am
Under WoW Guide
It’s the first full week of the month, and among other things, that means that the Darkmoon Faire is in town — That town being Shattrath City, at least for February. We’ve said a few things about the Faire in the past, but I’d like to get into the meat of the thing, so you can figure out how to get all you can out of Silas and his merry band before they head out for 
another month, or at least start your preparations for their next gig in Elwynn Forest. This time, I’d like to talk about the ticket system, that lovely process whereby Gelvas Grimegate turns Darkmoon Faire Prize Tickets into loot. Fellow blogger Robin Torres posted a good introduction to the system a few months back, but I’d like to expand it a bit and see what we can find out about how it works and why — or if — you should take advantage of it.
Check it out after the jump!
Why grind tickets, you ask? The two “big ticket” items, costing 1200 each, The Orb and Amulet of the Darkmoon, have admittedly lost a bit of their luster these days. They were incredibly nice back when Darkmoon Faire was new, mind you. As a feral druid, I wore my amulet with pride for months, right up until I found a new necklace in Hellfire Peninsula in the first few weeks of the Burning Crusade! These days, that means you’ll sadly probably find a better necklace somewhere in Outland long before you save up 1200 tickets. While we can hope for new holiday upgrades, for now the ticket system could use a bit of new life. That said, there’s still reasons to gather tickets.
First, there’s still some loot to be had. For 5 tickets, 12 tickets, or 40 tickets, you can grab yourself a Darkmoon Prize, which will contain trade skill supplies, a recipe, a green item, or even a blue item. It’s, at the least, a nice way to satisfy the gambler in you as you level up. If you’re an engineer, you’ll want to grab the schematic for the Steam Tonk Controller so you can hold Steam Tonk matches while waiting for those last few stragglers to show up for a raid or for your arena queue to pop, and 40 tickets aren’t too hard to get. Finally, bag space is often a struggle for the leveling (or non-leveling) character, so an easy to get 14-slot bag such as the Darkmoon Storage Box could be — excuse the pun — just the ticket! While the box is unique, so you can only get one, it’s still trade-able, so if you ever find yourself no longer in need of it, you can pass it on to one of your other characters, or a deserving newbie you know. Of course, if all that fails, you should never underestimate the comedy or role play potential of waving around a haunch of mutton or two, if you can equip maces. In fact, I’d say that allowing your warrior or rogue to swing around two flaming pieces of meat might be the best possible use of 2 Essences of Fire and 8 Small Radiant Shards ever conceived.
The second reason is that it can provide great synergy with leveling up of trade skills. It seems like every trade skill has those points where you need to make the same item over and over to level up, but you just can’t seem to find anyone to buy your wares other than your friendly neighborhood general goods vendor. That’s where, if you’re a leatherworker, blacksmith, or engineer, the Darkmoon Faire comes in to play. I recall that when I was leveling up my engineer, I made more than my fair share of Thorium Widgets on the way to 315 skill, and being able to send those widgets over to my druid to help him get his amulet was a great way to dispose of them when they didn’t sell very well on the auction house. Likewise, my leatherworker spent a lot of time skilling up on Rugged Armor Kits, and Chronos took those from me for even more tickets. Check out WoWWiki’s Darkmoon Faire ticket guide for a good, concise list of the various turn-in quests, and to figure out which trade skill items you can make.
The third reason is that you can also use the gathering of various animal parts for Yebb Neblegear to help you decide where to level up. For example, the famous Jame’s alliance leveling guide suggests heading to Thousand Needles when hit level 30 and gathering Vibrant Plumes off the Harpies there, 25 of them to get enough tickets for the aforementioned storage box. You might also look for them on the various Moonkin of the Hinterlands and Winterspring, or on other groups of Harpies like the ones up in northern Feralas. I’m personally a fan of leveling up in Desolace and the Badlands, so I often get Soft Bushy Tails for him. When I’m leveling Horde-side, I always seem to end up helping the Warsong clan in Ashenvale and the Royal Apothecary Society in Hillsbrad, so that always give me a good excuse to collect Torn Bear Pelts as well.
The last reason is a bit more simplistic: You just like seeing that green reputation bar inch on up. Sure, it takes a few (thousand) widgets and armor kits, but hey, if it means rock bottom prices on Cheap Beer and Darkmoon Special Reserve, it’s got to be worth it, right?
By the by, for all you less than level 58 types out there who are a bit bummed that the Faire’s in Shattrath, don’t give up quite yet. You can’t head directly through the Dark Portal for sure, but if you can hire a Mage, they can still portal you directly to the city, and from there, it’s a very quick trip outside, down through the lower city and out the southeastern tunnel. Plus, you can go to one of the city’s Inns on the Scryer or Aldor tiers and set your home to the city, and have an instant portal to any other capital via A’dal’s room.
By admin
April 10th, 2008 at 11:27pm
Under WoW Guide
Have you ever seen those chars with names like ÇÉL? Well this is how they do it. They use letters called Extended Ascii Characters, and all you have to do is find the letter you like from this chart:
and hold ALT and punch in the numbers ON THE NUMBERPAD! (numbers on right side of keyboard) you see in front of the letter than you want, like ALT+128 = Ç and ALT+144 = É. If a GM sees this they may or may not make you change your name, depends on luck, I have seen level 60s with names like this.
By admin