Addon Frenzy
About a week ago Blizzard has made an announcement about changing their addon policy. Most of the stuff was pretty much harmless – don’t interfere with gameplay, don’t obfuscate your code, don’t put offensive stuff in the addons… Things that are obvious and reasonable. And there comes the surprising bit – addons must be free of charge and they can’t include advertisements or in any form ask for donations.
I was very surprised when I read that. What the heck, people are seriously making addons that are not free? Does that kind of things even exists? I have never seen that, neither did any addon I ever used ask me for a donation. After a bit of searching I found some of the guilty ones. For example, QuestHelper was asking for donations and Carbonite had both free and premium versions, of which the free one was nagging the users with ads and stuff. By the way, does anyone have a screenshot of that? I’m curious, so if any of you have that, please send me a link or something.
Of course, the addon developers aren’t happy about the policy change. And I’ll be honest with you – below this sentence were a bunch of paragraphs about my surprise and some bashing… but after some more reading I’m not really sure anymore. I can understand why few of them are angry – they were basically making a living on their addons, while having invested a serious amount of time into them. That’s fine with me – a good work is to be rewarded (even if I personally do not use such addons), and I understand that without some kind of a donation reminder, not many people would take the time to go to the author’s website and donate there. But I also understand the reason for Blizzard to put the restriction there – even though all of these policies are is just a legal way to protect themselves, even if the threat would be minimal, and the thing that the Carbonite guys did was apparently breaking the line.
But enough about the addon authors, lets get to the interesting part – what about the players? First thing that comes to mind is that we will suffer greatly from this change. The 3.1 patch will come, but unlike with previous major patches, this time the developers won’t be working on making their addons compatible, so we will be left without them. Oh, imagine the horror that it would be if we would have to play with no addons!
Fortunately, this is not the case. Most of the addons will get updated anyway. The ones that will not? We will change them to some that will. The addons tend to get replaced over time anyway – I remember using KTM long time ago when I started raiding, and now pretty much nobody uses that, they all use Omen, and KTM is pretty much dead now since the pre-Wrath patch. So losing one mod is not really a big deal. Especially that the two most known mods that are going down are Quest Helper and Outfitter – both of which will be in a way replaced with Blizzard’s UI changes in the 3.1 patch.
Sure, the Equipment Manager that Blizzard created is in no way comparative to Outfitter – it’s just a list of sets that you can save and activate, it doesn’t change things automatically when you change forms or stances, and it also doesn’t give you a little button in Fubar or Titan Panel to change the sets in an easy way. You see, I’m not really bothered with that, as I never use the automatic features of Outfitter anyway. I tried to use it some time ago to automatically equip my Riding Crop when I was mounting up, but then 99% of the time I rode up to a mob, attacked it and killed it with the Riding Crop still sitting in my trinket slot. You just can’t help that if you go straight into combat from your mount, and it was annoying me in battlegrounds as well, so in the end I just disabled it. So if I’m using Outfitter just as a fancier version of Blizzard’s Equipment Manager, I won’t really notice the change if it stops being updated.
In fact, I will probably notice it even less – the current version works pretty well on the PTR, with the exception that the game version changed (and you have to check the “Load outdated addons” box in the client), and that’s very easy to fix. So I might just fix that myself and just continue using it. And I’m pretty much sure that someone will make a Fubar plugin that will allow to change the ingame sets with ease.
So in the end, I don’t really think we will suffer that much. Sure, some changes will have to be in order, but nothing more than a normal patch day has for us – the normal players. The developers are in a bit less of a luck, though… And we can’t really do anything about this. I know only one thing – stomping your feet and taking the toys away won’t do any good for anyone.
Little Hunter Love
The little Tauren Hunter is not so little anymore, with level 27 done this morning. I have to say that I fell in love again with leveling a hunter, and I don’t even mind that I have to run around the Old World all the time.
The powers that the BM hunters have (even at low levels) are just awesome. Soloing a level 30 elite panther, which was an objective of something they call a “group quest”? No problems, me and my kitty make an awesome group, and that’s a vanilla type group quest, not the Northrend ones, that most of them were so hard, that I could solo them with my quite squishy rogue.
Venturing alone to the Wailing Caverns to see how far I can go without help? That went pretty well – I died few times due to the mobs awful sleep spell, or randomly appearing patrols, but other than that I got five quite useful blue items from there. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to kill the last bosses as a level 25, so no achievement for that. Still a nice excercise in chain trapping, pulling, avoiding mobs and all that stuff. And if you thought that level 18-20 elites can’t kill a level 25 player, you’re wrong. :] I’m especially happy about the blue shoulders that dropped from one of the bosses, as having anything in that slot is quite uncommon at this level.
Gold is even less of an issue – I’ve spent about an hour farming some stacks of Small Eggs in Eversong Woods, and gathering herbs as I quest – with 400 gold as a low level I can be sure I will have enough for mounts, skills, glyphs and whatever else I need to level.
Professions in 3.1 – Fishing
The 3.1 patch will bring a lot of good news for WoW fishermen, and I’m really happy with most of the changes. This profession was in need of some help lately, and Blizzard apparently heard the call.
This is the second post the 3.1 changes series – you can check the whole category on the right sidebar, but don’t expect any serious math from me. And now, on to the changes!
The time needed to catch fish has been reduced.
From 20 seconds channeling to 10 seconds channeling. Quick and easy way to speed up fishing.
You can now fish anywhere, regardless of skill. Every catch has the potential for fishing skill gains, but you are likely to catch worthless junk in areas that are too difficult for your skill.
Catching worthless junk (that sells for a bit of copper/silver to the vendor) instead of just failing. Failing to catch anything was just a huge annoyance, good that they’re getting rid of that. A lot of people tends to disagree here – but I’ll be honest, after the first character on the realm, I’ve never leveled fishing again on the other ones – it’s just too much of a pain in the butt to do it. This change (as well as the next two below) will change it and make it not so annoying.
Players are no longer required to do the Nat Pagle, Angler Extreme quest to gain Artisan fishing. The quest now offers a special superior-quality fishing pole instead. If you already completed the quest, you can visit Nat Pagle in Dustwallow Marsh to receive this new fishing pole.
Not bad. Usually I’m not so cool with removing the class or profession quests, but if the quest is just changing its reward, then it’s fine. Running around the whole world just to learn Artisan level was surely annoying, and the new fishing pole is welcome. It will give 25 bonus fishing, which is just awesome for this level. For comparison – the Kalu’ak pole gives 30, and the Outland one from Terokkar – 20 fishing skill.
You no longer need to learn fishing from books. The trainers have finally done their reading and are able to teach you the same thing.
Continuing on the change above – you won’t have to chase books and uncommon fish around Azeroth to get you fishing to the next level. I already did that the hard way once, nice to see I won’t have to do it ever again if I decide to pick up fishing on another character.
New fishing dailies are now offered from Marcia Chase in Dalaran City!
We’ve already seen the new dailies in the earlier PTR patch update. There are 5 of them, they require you to fish stuff all around Northrend, and the quest giver works just like the Outland one – giving one random daily a day. It’s about time they added something like this – and I have to say the mechanics of the dailies are fun.
Also, the dailies have quite nice rewards – some epic gems, new fishing poles, a little crab pet, random highly-priced vendor junk…
You can now fish in Wintergrasp, and the fishin’ is good! A new clam, the Giant Darkwater Clam, can be obtained by fishing in Wintergrasp. This mighty clam has a greatly increased chance to drop pearls, and yields up to five times the regular amount of clam meat.
And here we have another thing to get me ganked to hell and back. How cool is that! ;] The Wintergrasp area will give fish that are needed for Fish Feasts (that’s Nettlefish, Musselback Sculpins and Glacial Salmons) in addition to the new type of Clams. Right now, getting materials for a stack of Fish Feasts takes about an hour, and after the patch it could take a bit less.
A new (and very rare) special mount can now be caught from Northrend fishing pools.
The mount was previewed lately on MMO-Champion, and I have to say one thing – I will have that even if it takes me a month of fishing to get. :]
A new recipe has been added to cooking trainers for making Black Jelly, using several Borean Man ‘O War as ingredients. While it looks disgusting, it restores more health and mana than the highest level food.
And the last change – for a while the Borean Man ‘O Wars were useless, and now you will be able to learn a recipe for them from your local helpful cooking trainer. Not too bad.
What’s in a name?
So I got tagged by that one fine rogue Dinaer from Forever a Noob, to reveal the secret behind my name. So there you go.
Saithir and Vrethir – these names I used for a long time in fantasy themed games, where my usual nickname didn’t quite fit. I think that the first occurence was something like 9 or 8 years ago, when I started playing a MUD. My memory of that time is a bit blurry though… I’m pretty sure I made Saithir first, but I can’t remember exactly how. With Vrethir I have less problems, as he was supposed to be his brother, so I just changed the first half. Or was that a dragon rider and his drake (think Riders of Pern style, though the naming scheme doesn’t fit at all)… Argh, I’ve always been so awful with remembering names and such details, sorry.
Ashler, Sheven and Riwynn – these three are just names generated by a random name generator. I pick one and try until I find a name that sounds well. It’s more of a success in the case of Riwynn, my little baby Tauren hunter than the night elves, though…
Lirelle and Vean – these two I haven’t generated randomly, I just thought them up and liked them. Lirelle is quite appropriate for a female human paladin, and I just like how “Vean” sounds.
So, that would be it. I know it’s a bit dissapointing – I wish I had some cool story to all the names, and they don’t even have a meaning… ;] Also, I’d like to forward the meme challenge to Davlin and Nexultor. Have fun guys. :)
Poor no more
Just a quick update before I drop on the bed like a brick. The baby Tauren is already almost level 19, got a very pretty white kitty (though as a Hordie, I think that it’s much more common), and is doing all kind of weird quests in The Barrens. No screenie for now though, but I will add something next time :)
Why the title? I started her as a first character on that server, so of course she started with only the backpack and barely enough silver to buy skills with. That changed not long after I visited Thunder Bluff and got my two gathering professions. Now I have some bank slots, three Netherweave Bags and I finally can loot (and then most likely vendor) everything that drops from mobs. Oh, and still over 60 gold left, so there goes a mount pretty soon. :]
The secret to that? There is no big secret really. Double gathering is one part – on every server there will be alts and mains needing even the basic herbs and metal bars, you can count on that for some profit. Farming [Small Eggs] is another one. The eggs drop from any low level flying mob, and while the Alliance have it a bit easier in Westfall (there’s more space and it’s easier to pick the birds from other mobs), Mulgore isn’t a bad spot for them. [Swiftthistle] is another good thing to sell – it’s used in rogue potions for regaining energy, and there aren’t any alternatives to this potion later on – but as it’s a rare drop from lower level herbs, you can’t really farm it. So it gets quite good prices on most AH, even if you don’t sell it in full stacks.
So if I can easily have 100 gold even before level 20 (and with not that much extra time spent on that – I just pick stuff while questing mostly), I’m not going to believe anyone that will try to say that getting gold in WoW is hard. Especially some dwarves. How can a dwarf be poor?! It’s clearly against our nature! ;]
Things happen, sometimes.
Some things just happen.
On Tuesday, the guild finally got to kill Malygos-25 again (after something like two weeks of not enough people signing), so Saithir is now a happy dwarf with the best necklace a rogue can get… and a [Frosted Adroit Handguards]. Getting the best in slot gloves for mere 20 dkp is definitely not bad, so it was worth the wait. :)
Today I responded to one of our officers looking for a dps to heroic Violet Hold, and what bosses do we get? Ichoron of course, who I’ve been lacking to complete the Lockdown achievement. While doing this, I also got the achievement for this boss, so I don’t have to hunt him again for another two months or more.
I’m also entertaining myself with doing the dailies in Scholazar Basin – I plan to get exalted with the Frenzyhearts, get their reward (the flask that turns you into a cute wolvar), and then switch them to Oracles. Doing the puppies first is easier – both take about same time, but I only want one thing from them, so I could switch back faster.
And yesterday I made a baby Tauren Hunter alt on another PvP realm. She’s level 10 at the moment and doing quite great. It’s amazing how easy can you level a hunter if you already know the class, and know how to shoot stuff, kite stuff, trap stuff (well, not yet, but I know how to do that already) and all that. She’s also a miner and herbalist – I think it’s quite the standard for a first character on the new realm, as I have to get some gold from somewhere.
Maybe I should just make her dance naked on a mailbox, though. ;]
Professions in 3.1 – Inscription
The patch notes were updated yesterday, so I logged on the PTR to see what exactly has been changed, mostly in regards to various professions. The outcome? Some screens and one quite happy dwarf.
First comes Inscription, as it’s my main gold maker, so of course I’m interested in the new stuff. :) I’ve decided to split the information into a few posts instead of making one gigantic one, so the rest of the interesting changes will be up soon (probably after I make some more screenshots). Also, expect this post to be updated with new screenshots and informations when I farm some more stuff on the PTR.
New recipes
Added a recipe to trainers for creating a level 70 superior-quality off-hand item.
That’s a good change. Currently Scribes can only create level 60 and 80 offhands, so this simply fills a gap there. The new item is basically a crafted version of [Fetish of the Primal Gods] from level 70 badges – quite nice for a caster alt, especially a new one that’s not at all guaranteed or expected to have 35 TBC badges.
Added a recipe for creating a different level 70 superior-quality off-hand item. Scribes will find the recipe is dropped from residents of Silverbrook.
Kinda strange why a recipe for a level 70 offhand drops from level 74 mobs… But I guess that with the on-use effect it has, it makes some sense. I’ll make a screenshot of the effect a bit later – just as I went to farm some Eternal Shadows, the Wintergrasp started a battle, so all the elementals disappeared. I created the item – it transforms you into a big grey wolf for two minutes. No faster running or awesome dps boosts, though, as you’re pacified in this form. Still not bad for laughs once in a while. No screenshot cause pretty much everyone knows how a standard wolf in this game looks like.
Added around 50 new glyph recipes. These new recipes can be obtained from Books of Glyph Mastery found as world drops on Northrend monsters. Reading a Book of Glyph Mastery randomly discovers one of the newly-added recipes.
This is a bit confusing, but I guess it’s a good change after all. With this change we will have two random elements that can grant new recipes – Northrend Inscription Research and Books of Glyph Mastery. That might make Inscription a bit better for making gold with, depending on how rare the drops will be. I didn’t get any so far, but I haven’t really tried yet. Unfortunately I can’t say if the new recipes will be availaible with the Research as well, as it is currently broken on the PTR.
Some new recipes have been added to the Inscription trainers as well.
Minor changes
Glyph icons have been updated so it is easy to distinguish between classes.
This is a really small change, but I like it a lot. As you can see in the screenshot below, the glyph icons are colored with the class colors, which makes it much easier to find specific ones in your bags. The three glyphs in the middle are Priest and Warrior ones – it seems they haven’t updated them all yet.
Players will now learn 3 recipes the very first time they perform Northrend Inscription Research. This does not apply to players who have already discovered recipes from Northrend Inscription Research (sorry).
Personally, I don’t really care as my Inscription is already at 450. ;) But for people starting on the profession now, it will be a nice way to catch up with their glyphs. They still have to keep doing the Research daily after that, but it’s a good start.
Finally
Got the Higher Learning achievement few days ago, and a new pet. I saw it before, but I still didn’t expect it to be almost as large as me. But it was worth the effort. At least now I don’t have to keep sitting in Dalaran up till 2:00, waiting for the silly books to respawn. Well, not that I had to do it that way, but camping these spawn poins is not that easy with me spending most of the day in my workplace.
With this and the last cooking achievement my points count went over 5000. I’m still not quite sure if that’s good or bad, though. It doesn’t really seem to be much for me (and there are a lots of people that have much, much more of them), as I think of achievements as an extra challenge. They just happen when I’m bored enough – I would probably go and farm some cool pets or do all the quests even if there wouldn’t be an achievement for that. Especially the quests, as even after leveling two characters to 80 I can still find something new and awesome.
But when I look at achievements of most of the people that apply to our guild, I usually see that they have about 1500 points, which is a bit scary… Or is it not? I’m not really sure what to think of it.
Creepy murloc is creepy
World of Warcraft, Eh? is one of the better drawn WoW webcomics out there, and I’ve found this little gem on Cadistra’s (Wow Eh’s author) Deviantart page. Check it out and hopefully you’re laugh as hard as me.
Also, don’t forget to check the webcomic itself. Cadistra is doing a really awesome job there by drawing the cutest tauren chick I’ve seen.
Preparing for a reputation grind
In my post about grinding Sporregar reputation, I wished for WoW Reputation Calculator to be updated with Wrath info. Unfortunately it’s author is still working on it, and it doesn’t have any deadline to look out for… But few days ago I was randomly checking my characters on Be.Imba and I found a replacement for the site.
The new rep calculator (apparently it’s not really that new, just not that advertised or known) is called WoW Juju, and it is basically everything what you can ever need – at least if you care about your reputations. If not, you can still find some news and forums there, but I’m not really interested in just another news site.
The tool shows your every reputation and can provide you with different ways you can increase it. And it includes not only Burning Crusade factions like WRC, but everything. Northrend ones, old world ones, even the PvP ones.
For every faction you can see their repeatable quests, dungeons, how many of each you need to do for the next level and how many will it take to get Exalted. It also shows rewards, but that is a minor feature to me, it’s not like I need anything. ;)
Unfortunately, just as WRC, it could use some armory caching mechanism… Not much can be done when the EU Armory decides to play dead, and it does every so often. And the reputation icons could have been done better – now it’s not that easy to see if I’m Revered with a faction or already Exalted. Still, for the level of usefulness that this tools brings, I’m going to overlook this bad sides a bit and use it. If only the freaking Armory would work…