World of Warcraft

It’s true, after months of inadvertent saving, it appears that I finally collected enough to get my very own flying mount. Sure it’s a bit late tot he game, but the best part was I hadn’t even been trying to obtain it! After some time of doing dailies, transmutes, and other quests leveling up some alts (paladins are a bear to level…), I found that I was quite close to the mark! Here are some tips if you’re saving for an epic flyer of your very own:

With the addition of the Shattered Sun Offensive and the recent expansion of the daily quest limit to 25, this is far and away one of the easiest ways to earn gold. May personal favorite is the auchenai spirit towers daily, picked up from allerian stronghold or stonebreaker hold. The towers reset every 6 hours, and you only need to capture one!

I don’t really recommend “farming” for primals, but you are BOUND to get primals along the way from the various mobs that drop motes in dungeons, while questing, etc. Save these and head over to the AH. With the new content and new gear coming out with the latest patch, these have seen a significant increase in price, and so you’d be well advised to sell them if you’re aiming for a mount before the expansion.

Much of my revenue for the mount came from my bank. There is all sorts of items that will sell on the auction house for serious money. Rep related items like armaments and arcane tomes, netherweave cloth, various gathering skill extras. Liquidate your bank, inventory what you have, and sell it off peacemeal. You’ll be shocked at what you can get!

Good luck!

If you’re like me, you probably rushed to the Isle of Quel’Denas as soon as the patch was released, both to see the sights and find out what all the hubub was about with these new daily quests. Personally, I’ve had a total blast so far. Getting reputation with the newest faction, The Shattered Sun Offensive has proven quite painless as you get rep for doing just about anything. The daily quests are relatively painless and some are downright fun! If you’re a newcomer to the isle, however, here are some tips to help you on your journey.

I know, usually I have our mid-week video right? But instead I’m gonna shake things up a bit and visit some activities that I do once a day for fun and of course, new equipment. On average, these activities can be done in about an hour per day. You don’t need to do them all of course, but if you happen to only have 15-20 minutes you can still squeeze in a daily or transmute here and there. Here’s what I like to do to progress my character in a limited amount of time.

1. Dailies (Average completion time: 5-15 minutes per quest) I know I’ve mentioned daily quests in previous articles, but for the sake of completeness I thought they were worth mentioning again. If I only have 15-20 minutes of game time to work with, I’ll often head over to Ogri’lah and get as many dailies done as possible. If you are very limited on time stick to wrangling aether rays and the attunement quest, as these are the quickest timewise and will give you precious rep that will lead to solid (though overall sub-par) gear and potions from your favorite ogres. Be sure to leave your hearth near by, so that you can log in and hearth to your dailies if need be.

2. Dungeon Dailies (Average Completion time: 30min-1 hour and 15 min.) I’ve made a past time if trying to complete dungeons as fast as humanly possible. I think it really accelerates the challenge and skill of an instance, especially if you outgear the place. Don’t write off the regular dungeon daily, either. You can burn through a regular instance in a short amount of time, and end up with some blues to disenchant as well as the money from the quest (and consortium rep!). Heroics are a bit more of a complicated affair, so make sure to bring a group of friends you travel regularly with. For me, our group usually clears a heroic (depending on the instance) in about 45 minutes to an hour. Take advantage!

3. Gathering Professions (Average Completion time: 10 minutes) These are great money makers for alts looking to make a quick buck. Simply park your character near a zone/area that often has node spawns or herbs, log in, and run them around a pre-designated loop. This can take an extremely short amount of time if you happen to have an epic flying mount! I’ve often spent a couple weeks grabbing nodes on an alt this way, and ended up with a tidy sum after selling my goods to the auction house. Again I’m sure this is a re-cap of what I mentioned in an earlier post, but it’s important to note!

4. PvP Daily (Average Completion time: 20-40 minutes) If you happen to like the battlegrounds, but don’t want to get burned out cranking out match after match, the pvp daily is a great way to earn extra money and honor. I usually hop on a character, do the associated daily, and log off, happy with my small taste of pvp for the day. It’s important to note that you should only do dailies that your faction is likely to win. You don’t want to spend the next 2 hours getting face stomped in eye of the storm, do you? Instead stick to surefire winners, such as the AV alliance side, in my case. Play to your factions strengths, and you can pull in a solid amount of honor and gold each day.

I’m sure there’s more to it than that, so feel free to send me any money-making ideas you come across. I’m not really a min-max type of player myself, so I usually pick one of the above depending on what I think will be the most fun, and I encourage you to do the same!

For me, it’s always been an enjoyable aspect of the game to pay some attention to the game’s economy and how I can profit on it in a short amount of time. One of my favorite past times is finding items that most people don’t think to sell. Here’s a few that have been good in the past:

1. Sanguine Hibiscus With the recent addition of the spore bat pet to sporregar reputation, these things have been selling like hotcakes. If you’re fairly well geared you can get them yourself in regular underbog, but I prefer to run heroics and just take turns on the flowers that litter the instance. Badges and money? Sign me up!

2. Clefthoof leather If you happen to have a skinner, head over to Nagrand and hunt yourself some clefthoof. These big fatties are easy to bring down at 70, and sell very well on the auction house.

3. Primal Life If you happen to be an herbalist, the large trees that stomp around Skettis make for easy primals, and therfore easy gold. Try not to do it around prime server times though, others have caught on to the trend…

More to come later on, I’ll keep you posted!

Well, it seems Blizzard was in fact serious when they said they would turn Arenas into an E-sport. Now you too can participate in this groundbreaking opportunity while competing with some of the best players around the world.

Here’s how it’s going to work, according to blizzard’s site (which you can find here):

* The registration fee is $20 per account for each six-week online qualifying round (played out on the tournament realm)
* Qualify for live tournaments with a chance to win cash prizes
* Instantly create up to three new level 70s with full sets of PvP gear
* Prove your skills in 3v3 Arena team combat

I definitely like the fact that everyone has the opportunity to compete at the same level. After all, given my relatively light playstyle, there’s no way I’d be able to compete with players that outgeared me, and I certainly wouldn’t pay for the experience! Int his case though, I may throw together a team, put my 20$ to work, and hope for the best.

These pots aren’t small either, the top team will bring home some serious bacon! Here’s the breakdown:

“At the world finals of the 2008 World of Warcraft Arena Tournament, the winning team will take home the impressive sum of $75,000. The second-place team will win $30,000, and the third-place team will be awarded $15,000. There will be cash prizes at each regional final as well, consisting of $15,000, $6,000, $3,000, and $1,500 for first, second, third, and fourth place respectively, while fifth- through eighth-place teams will each receive $600.”

So I logged on for about a half hour last night (I recently got a number of books for Christmas, which cuts into WoW time!), and was headed to do my dailies for my elusive epic flying mount. I usually get there by hitting up my engineered teleporter to Toshley’s Station.

When I got there, thanks to the new basic UI changes implemented by Blizzard, I noticed a number of “!” in the area. Apparently, there were a number of quests I never got around to accomplishing when leveling. It should be noted that I’ve never really accepted the concept of “grinding” an in MMO. Grinding (the act of repeatedly killing the same monster or doing the same task over and over and over ad nauseum for long periods of time) has a negative connotation because it isn’t fun..and I play games to have fun! As such, rather than head over to do my dailies, I decided to opt for a change of pace and picked up the remaining quests in the area.

Shockingly, not only did these long forgotten quests pay just as much (some more) than my dailies, but they also rewarded me with valuable green quest items that could be sold to vendors for even more profit! Elated, I went on to finish every quest there was in Toshley’s Station. Tonight I hope to head to Shadowmoon Valley, where I have never taken my mage before even though he is now 70.

As always do what works for you. It’s easy to get caught up in the timesink aspect of MMO games, but remember if you’re in it for the phat lewtz, you’re really just spending time not having fun for shiny pixels so you can…continue to not have fun? MMORPGS have evolved quite a bit from the days of games like Everquest (I’ll leave UO out of that category, that was a blast!), and you don’t have to grind/raid/pvp/farm if you don’t enjoy doing so, progress your character at your own pace and have fun while doing it? Otherwise the only thing waiting for you at the end of the road is burnout, not an enjoyable experience you can joke with your friends (who play!) about.

Throughout your various adventures in Outland and Azeroth, you will likely find yourself strapped for gold from time to time. After all you need to fix your armor, occasionally buy some potions, grab those primals for your new crafted set, or most expensive of all, buy an epic flying mount. Traditionally the best way to get gold was simply kill as many monsters as you possibly could. Unfortunately this become boring rather quickly, as the monsters typically don’t pose much of a threat. Grinding out gold for hours is not my idea of fun either, but there are some better ways for you to earn your loot!

1. Transmutes If you are an alchemist or tailor, you can convert items into rare materials such as primal mights or moon/shadowcloth. There’s a 1-3 day cooldown each time you do this, and so these items are rather rare. People will often pay you to do a transmute/make cloth for them, or you can just make it yourself and then sell it on the auction house for a profit (from my personal experience, primal earth to water sells the best transmute wise)

2. Daily Quests There are a whole slew of daily quests available to players that allow you to bring in a significant amount of goal once a day. If you’re looking for a change of pace, PvP daily quests were recently added. A battleground is chosen at random each day, and after a victory you can turn the quest in for additional honor and about 12 gold. It’s important to note that this is also the only daily quest you can do before level 70, so take advantage at the lower levels as well! Other dailies you can do on your own involve bombing runs, demon banishing, and more are all available from 2 main factions: Ogri’lah and the Sha’tari Skyguard. Both of the starting quests for these dailies can be found in the city of Shattrath. In the same city, if group play is more your style, there are daily dungeon quests for both heroic and non-heroic instances. Just look for some ethereals in the lower part of the city!

3. Auction House Arbitrage Day to day prices of various products like potions, cloth, and leather fluctuate from day to day. If you are vigilant you can find these selling at a discount, you can corner the market and sell them for a profit. I make a good amount of money doing this each week. A good rule of thumb is that prices are typically cheaper Friday night, when everyone comes home from work/school and puts their items up for sale. Keep an eye out, there’s a gold mine to be had!

Have any additions or comments? Feel free to drop me a line.