Money for Nothing

Yesterday I missed a concert by Mark Knopfler, silly me. Well, actually yesterday it was Lionel Ritchie, but I had enough of him in '84.

Well, talk about money for nothing, that is WoW. I'm not paying these dudes one more dime I really need to. I continue to play with gold, using my professions to craft 6.2 upgrade items, so called essences, making about 80k gold a month or so.

The Tanaan jungle continues to suck, so much, I had to reinvent some silly things like Treasure Hunting, solo old Pandaria raids, etc.

Not all was bad this month, I was INCREDIBLY LUCKY and on the same week, got both the ILLIDAN LEGENDARY Warglaives and the LEGENDARY BOW Thoridal, from Sunwell.

Also, I'm doing PVP with my rogue, so I'm gearing both the warlock and the rogue, and I'm having a nice rating with the rogue, which surprises me, how much easier it is to play a rogue than a lock and "WIN".

On the social side, I met with my Silvermoon Guild, Quies. The GM and family came here on holidays, so me and Caev, my guild mate, went to greet them and I took pasteis de nata ! It was quite nice and fun.

GW2...I went back to the game, and noticed a totally revamped Lions Arch. I also noticed that having 16GB instead 8GB makes a huge difference in terms of game smoothness, specially in MPVP.

RIFT...I got to 65, YAY YAY, and completed the entire (3.2) Epic Quest chain. There's a new patch 3.3 and a new Epic Saga, and I'm doing it, while waiting for my two pals to slowly grind their way towards 65 (still 63).

LOTRO...I went back to the game, and found a new Epic Battle, Pelargir, part of the Epic chain. I won it (the last part was really hard !!!) and I'm now inside Osgiliath. I didn't have enough patience to do all the non-epic quests for Central and Eastern Gondor, it's repetitive like a Nighmarish Hell, and besides the area is quite dark. I had the idea it had something to do with Sauron presence nearby, so I went to check upon it, and it's called a "dawnless day". There's no brithgness, no sun, it's all very dark.

Just like the WoW Jungle, which is also so dark we never see the sun, it's more brown than green, and ugly.  Ugly like hell.

GW2 expansion is called Heart of Thorns, it's pre-buyable atm, but I think I'll wait a bit more. It's probably only coming out 2016.

Same as WoW, it seems next August 6th Blizzard will tell us about the new expansion, which means this silly nonsense, TBC revisited, will end, and all orcs, all this ugly place will be over soon.

I intensely dislike this place. Never liked the TBC ambience also, I hated those minaretes and Blood Elf pinnacles. I'm an Arthas fan, I love fire and ice, what can I say ?

Back to the Jungle

I was hoping Guild Wars 2 jungle would be ready by Summer time. Maguuma jungle, or so the say.

Unfortunately, it isn't. Actually, thre's no release date yet for the GW2 release.

So I paid 50K gold to get a free month of WoW 6.2 Tanaan Jungle.

It sucks. It's ugly designed, visually it's too dark, a mess of paths, quests of exploration with no sense of discovery, the three factions seem to be planted there just "to spend time farming". It's worse than the .. what was that Pandaria Island called, where the sun was fixed in the sky ? Forgot the name. Ah yes, Timeless Isle. It's worse. Way worse.

Oh wait, there's not just the jungle, there's shipyards too. Just when we thought our Garrison would expand and allow new achievements to be set, for barn, inn, etc... no, they just:

1) Went and created shipyards with missions that are 2-3 days long... I'm on my 7th mission and it takes 3 days ? Ridiculous.

2) Rendered garrison useless, by decreasing the amount of gold one can get. So I spent weeks creating an army of lvl 100, with an army of followers, with an army of treasure hunters and now... I don't need the garrison at all, except may be to sent followers on Oil Missions (as I got, as most players, capped resources at 10K). As to the rest, I noticed the Blood item is now a cheap commodity, since they also rendered it useless.. I didn't even bother how we can now upgrade our crafted items, but I'm sure it no longers uses Blood, or any garrison specific items.

Last night I tried Hellfire Citadel. Another bunch of bosses, another "cavern" with no sky/natural light. Dark as hell.

Guess it's a "must increase gamma" patch.

F2P month I

Mission accomplished, played for one month without paying 1 €.

During this period, 30 days, I earned a little over 100k gold, enough for 2 months.

I found the easy way !

1) Level alts to 100, letting them build Inns for free weekly Treasure Hunter trait followers. This way, every gold mission gets 2x, 3x, as much gold. Garrison lvl 3 is not needed, lvl 2 is enough, for both the garrison and the Inn. Do missions for each alt. No need to gear followers above 600gear. But get them all to 100, if possible. How many ? A few. A dozen or so. All of them are obtainable by leveling. 

I show half a dozen that I specifically get as they are way easy. The rest comes with questing.

Leorajh

Taylor

Tormmok

Blook

Illona

Ironfist

2) Craft items, specially weapons (2H, staffs), Hexweave bags and most important, Steelforged Essences/Weapon Crystals (also Burnished Essence/Hexweave Essence, but less important as they target armor upgrades). These items upgrade weapons from 630-->645, 645-->660, etc. The cheapest upgrade sells for around 10K, the next in line for 11-15K. 

There you have, a Gold factory getting you about 3K/day in less than 30 mins a day, with a single Mine, Herb Garden and Barn (for Savage Bloods).

I'll go for AFK now for a few weeks, holidays and all...

For the last day, I rushed a few achievements to get me above 21000 points on Netcownt.

Weeee !

Tokenizing

WoW went F2P !

Well, kind of. Blizzard enabled tokens, supposedly to attempt a few things:

1 - stop the leaving player base...from leaving, of course.
2 - make more money.
3 - replace gold sellers.

How did they do that ? They now sell a token for 20€. This token can be resold on the AH for gold ! Buyers will gain 30 days gameplay, meaning, they don't have to pay. So what it is doing is that the wealthier players will pay for those that don't want to pay to play (anymore, like me!).

Example:

Before...
Swedish player A paid 13€, and paid X for gold
Russian player B paid 13€.
Blizzard got 26€ every 30 days.
Gold sellers got X.

Now...
Swedish player A pays 13€ to play, and 20€ for gold (35K-45K gold in EU servers)
Russian player B plays for free!
Blizzard gets 33€.
Gold sellers get zilch!

Blizzard wins, because player B won't leave the game and they get 27% more revenue for the same player base !!!
Player B wins, because it now plays for free !!!
Player A wins, because it now knows what X=20€=[35K-45K] and can check the prices anytime, e.g. on https://wowtoken.info/
Gold sellers loose because they must now sell gold way cheaper for player A to use their services.

A few calculations using a multi-character account like mine, and I could make 2K-3K a day easily, partly using Garrison missions. So I reactivated my account with gold, for a month, see how it goes, while I level a few more characters to lvl 100 and have some fun.

For the first week, target has been reached. Legendary Fangs of the Feather, the Dragon Soul rogue daggers !

Черт русские покупают PvP

I'm sure you didn't understand anything. The meaning is that Russian players absolutely dominate PVP battlegrounds, specially casual ones.

I don't know why this happens, but it seems that a common language helps, a sense of nation pride helps, hell, I don't know why, because portuguese players don't have this "nation group hug" ability, but whatever is the reason, and it should be studied by Psychology, it makes them nearly invincible.

Nearly.

I've been playing WoW the last weeks, finished the legendary quest line for 6.1 (awaiting 6.2 and I think I'll go OFFLINE until it comes out), and did most of the pet achievements I wanted to do, including, 10 minutes ago, AN AWFULLY BIG ADVENTURE, winning a lot of legendary battles with 2 battle pets and a carried non-battle pet. It was rewarding, to say the least.

PVP-wise, I've been battling with Strings/Fiddler, my healing Pala m8, keeping around 1500 (1532 was max. we got), and I'm full epic PVP 660/690 gear now, always as Demo, which I learned to master, in what concerns bursting.

Unfortunately, 6.2 patch notes have come out today and Blizzard will nerf it by a lot, ALL abilities (except Corruption, Yay!) will be nerfed by 10-25%. Absolutely stupid. I haven't seen Demo locks top the PVE charts or PVP charts, so

WHY THE HELL IS THAT ?

They seem to act in order to balance whatever happens at the top of the 2400+ PVP charts or Mythic raiding, things that only 1-10% of the player base reach.

The rest of the player base doesn't feel this lack of balance, but they are the Masters of the Game, they rule.

Our Bad. My Bad.

Meanwhile, stay with some arena games I did. I win about half of the games I play...

1-2-3 dead feral !

1-2-3 dead no not dead try again 1-2-3-4-5-6... 1-2-3 yes !

We took our time but boy was it fun to crush these two RUSSIANS !

...

Blizzard are keen in destroying player fun. The other thing they destroyed...Ashran.

Ashran was king of mass PVP in 6.0. People showed by the hundreds, mass battled, and it was fun to do so, and it was also the ONLY way to make any use of the Gladiator Sanctum building, ie, doing the Nemesis quests, 500 players down for each race.

What did Blizzard do ? Kill Ashran. Nerf most Conquest Point wins, and most important, removing CP entirely from killing the enemy commander. Result ? Horde, as usual (like Russians) now dominate the events that reward CP, and Alliance scatter and simply don't join. Consequence ? It's now utterly impossible to complete the Nemesis Quests.

Congratulations, Blizzard, another stupid move.

...

I've been slowly leveling my alts, with the help of Heirlooms, and a great XP buff Pot that Garrisons vendors sell (Dunno who gave me the tip, but it was a GREAT tip), one level per day in 30 mins or so.

...

Last but not least, I've been mount and legendary weapon farming, helped by the fact that SWP, Hyjal, BT are now rewarding pets too, and I got half of the LEGENDARY ROGUE SET from Black Temple !!! 

I'm also near the end of the Legendary Rogue quest chain from Dragon Soul, a few more weeks farming, which I'm also using to farm the Ultraxxion mount and complete my AWAKE THE DRAKES achievement !

BTW...

I APPLAUD THE BAN OF CRIMEA FROM GAMING MADE IN USA (aka WOW)

I WOULD APPLAUD EVEN MORE IF USA BANNED THE ENTIRE RUSSIA FROM WOW.

(so that they migrate to Western countries and teach western players how to properly play PVP. BloodPet as one good example, he's been my bible for Demo PVP)

(LOL)

Before I go... Quizz !

Yes, it's a waterfall. See my wings and my pets ?

Question: Where was this taken ? 

On feeling blue.. and loved. Really loved !!!

It took a few months worth of trouble, but Tarecqgosa, voluntarily trapped inside the Legendary Staff, is mine. Now onto Val'anyr, which has been damn unlucky to drop on my Paladin.

As to Frostmourne, I'm waiting for some help of Quie for the Blood Infusion with the BLood Queen in ICC. Hopefuly we'll do it soon. 

May be after we kill Kargath ! 2nd attempt, a lot more healing but still he downed us at 41%. 

Another achievement I got last week was the Love Event achievement They Really Love Me!

It was one of the most enlightening times of my 10yo WoW career.

For this, you need to have 50 Love Rays active on you simultaneously. And boy what a task that is.

I got it with the first PUG group I found, but later I found that the leader had been trying to do it for 20 hours, and I can surely believe that, because it's DAMN HARD to do it, in some circumstances.

It's an achievement that Blizzard designed for a group with persistence, that knows what to do, and has an infinite level of patience, understanding and solidarity.

More, it's not exactly ONE achievement. It's Nx1 achievement, 1 every turn, for each member, that have to take turns to get it.

You must stand on a circle for convenience, use a ray that has a 60-sec cd, 50 charges (or a 5 min cd if you have the achiev. + no charges), and time it with your mates in order to allow a buff to grow on the targetted idle member up to 50 times. This buff has only a 10 sec duration, so it must be refreshed quickly. As you've got less than 50 ppl in your party, people will have to time it for those that fired first to fire again, AFTER their cd has elapsed but BEFORE the buff vanishes. Otherwise...you'll have to start again, and you've just lost a lot of charges.

If you do it with around 10 ppl or less, you've got to refresh as late as possible (ie, when the buff is about to vanish) otherwise the first ones that used the prism will still be on CD when it's their time to use it again.

And it takes 5-8 minutes (around 1 ray every 7-10 secs) to do it for ONE member.

And the prisms take AGES to farm (unless you do it like me and go to Scarlet Monastery and use the pits to farm Zombies that spawn every 5 secs or so.. eheheheheheh), so you can't exactly go and buy another because you've used all your charges.

That's when you start thinking... with a PUG ? Right... after the first ones get it, they simply get the hell out of there and it ends in disgrace, because otherwise they have to be there for one hour or more AFTER they get the achievement.

Well, I found a set of 10-11 people that actually stayed there until the end (ok one went offline during the 11th attempt after we failed to do it), some of them with enough tokens for double charges.

Well, of these 11 people, only 7 had prisms with enough charges to do it in the end, so they had to time it PRECISELY to 1-sec-to-the-end-casting, and if you tried this achiev, you know what I'm talking about. 

Moreover, some of them/us had to use the "toy" charge with 5min cd for those that didn't have charges on temporary prisms..and had to know WHEN to use it, in order to allow the cd of some members to expire and for them to be able to use the ray again.

So you had to know how to create yelling/casting macros to shout to your neighbor that he's next, use the prism on time, monitor the chat/yells/event and pray that all the other dudes around you didn't mess up, didn't D/C, didn't go AFK, didn't have lag or a spike....

Two hours it took me. But I got it, and all the other members :)

PS: For the last one, Marlene, we had only 6 ppl with charges, so it was no longer possible and we had to be a tiny bit nasty and invite some + ppl. The good news is that those ppl were able to learn it and saw it done for Marlene. But after doing it for Marlene, we told them the bad news...sorry folks.

/BOW 

TEAKIE-DRAENOR, the leader of this party, he never went mad, he always explained, he was always nice. What a CHAP ! First one to get the achiev, stayed with us until the last one got it, pushing us fwd !!!

KENTRUS, a crazy mage that kept doing ice rings and other spells in the middle of the event, dancing, running, making things be even harder

MOLION

SENDAI

DREEYNA - left before the end, so that makes him the black sheep. Well, gray...
ENDAWIN

BURRBURU

PYORC

ANGELSPIRIT

NETCOWNT - a sleepy 45y old lock at 1AM doing this crazy stuff

MARLÉNE - last one to get it

THANK YOU, WARLORD TEAKIE from DRAENOR !

Ready for Raiding IV (part II)

My RIFT leveling pals went into pause mode, so I've been slowly moving up to 61, still inside the Reef. Below is one of the hardest solo (Epic) quests, having to kill a fast-respawn group of 5 guards and a boss. 

Can't resist a (bad) joke

On WoW, I decided to turn my paladin mode on and have some fun with Quies. And it has been so, we even went for Kargath and got him to 41%. Not bad, considering half of the raid has not been in one in years.

Quies getting ready to die in Kargath's Arena

The bad part is gearing. I had a great great help from my guildies with 3 x640 crafted epics, and had a bit of luck with LFR, so I went from 605 to 632 in 2-3 days. Now it'll be slower, and my slacking garrison helpers/followers were not helping, but I'm fixin' it:

GET TO WORK, SLACKERS... /whip !

Heroics have been a breeze, I think I'll give a hint for us to try a Bronze of Silver challenge some night, to keep ppl focused and add some diversion.

Also, I plan to ask for help for a help on the Blood Queen towards the legendary item from ICC, since old Net is nearly getting his Firelands staff and Ulduar's fragments are slowly (OH SO SLOWLY) dropping for Moonprince.

Some more funny shots of the last days:

Another (bad) joke

Seriously personality problems on the target

One of the TOP5 cretins I ever found in a PUG, Mr. Tank (ofc).