Funny WoW Video: SK VS Nihilum

A video about two famous WoW guilds: SK and Nihilum.It is very funny,i bet. Don't miss it! Below are two screenshots:

Beckett releases an in-depth WoW guide

Beckett Media is a company normally known for their collectible magazines -- they cover things like baseball cards, Yu-Gi-Oh, toys, and all of that other junk most people don't bother with (ok, ok, I kid, collectors, but I don't get the point of buying toys you don't take out of the box). Apparently, a little while back, Beckett started to get into another field where most of what you do is collecting: massively multiplayer online games, and they started a magazine called Beckett Massive Online Gamer. And now, they've started publishing a series of biannual guides for various online games, starting with our very own World of Warcraft.

We haven't seen the guide, but their sales page promises "tips for conquering dungeons, guides for leveling to 70," and "perfecting WoW endgame classes," all for only $9.99. To tell the truth, it sounds pretty lame (not to mention that you can get exactly the same stuff right here for the low, low price of free), but at least there's another print competitor to the official Brady Guides -- if you absolutely need your WoW news in print form, you've got at least two choices now.

Anyone seen one of these yet? Next time you're at the collectibles store, see if they've got one sitting on the magazine shelf and let us know what it looks like

Officers' Quarters: Casual raiding that works

Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.

This is it, folks. This is the final column in my four-part feature about how to take your casual raids to the next level. For parts one, two, and three, click on the purple words with lines under them.

I've noticed in the comments under these features that a few people seem confused about the difference between casual and hardcore raiding. One reader from last week, Ger, put it best:

The point of "casual" is to concentrate on WoW being a fun game more than a chore, but if you want to raid then be prepared to take some dang responsibility and not be a liability to 9 or 24 other people.

That one made me laugh. It's a bit of an exaggeration, yes, but I like that definition. Let's recap what I talked about previously, and follow that up with some more suggestions.

Here are the six suggestions I've already covered:

1.Find a committed raid leader.
2.Develop a fair loot system.
3.Communicate your plan.
4.Hammer home the need for preparation.
5.Foster an environment of accountability.
6.Take both success and failure in stride.
To those I will add three more.

7. Never stop recruiting.

Sometimes I envy the hardcore guilds. In some ways they have it easy. Whenever I see a recruitment notice from a hardcore guild, they usually say something like "BT guild needs one Shadow priest" or "T6 guild needs one Protection paladin and one Resto shaman." For my guild, our recruitment ads are more like this: "Recruiting: All classes and specs."

That's because hardcore guilds have far less turnover than we do. Casual raiding means striking a balance somewhere between having no rules and having too many. Some people will always want fewer rules and some people will always want more. Some people will think you're not progressing fast enough and some people will think that everything is happening too fast. Factor in all the real-life stuff that goes in with a little bit of poaching and the conclusion is inevitable: You're going to lose members.

So for most casual guilds, the day you stop recruiting is the day you start shrinking.

The hardcore guilds also have it easier in that they can much more easily predict who is going to sign up and show up for their raids. They can get by with 35 to 40 members. My guild has far more members than that and yet we still have trouble filling out 25 slots on some nights because no one is required to show up. So we're constantly on the lookout for new people.

8. Never stop training.

One of the burdens of a casual guild is this constant influx of new membership. Unless you're lucky enough to get people who have already run all the raids you're working on, you're going to have to help them learn the encounters.

You'll also have long-time members who are just getting into raiding, and old raiders who just haven't been pulling their weight. Giving up on your own members is not an option for me. We have experienced raiders who know their class inside and out. They might get sick of it, but it's up to them to show these inexperienced or ineffective members how to excel at their role. A casual guild needs every single person who raids to be a genuine contributor, and there's only one way to get them there: personal involvement.

Evaluating raid performance is critical. You can't offer someone the best possible advice without knowing what they're actually doing during each encounter. I've written a whole column about this already.

9. Never stop having fun.

I'm not going to sit here and tell you that hardcore guilds don't have fun at all. They do. It's just that, well, casual raiding guilds are better at it. The vast majority of casual raiders are not going to be on the bleeding edge of content. We're not going to be the best-geared on the server. We're not getting any first kills, other than our own firsts. So having fun is the only way we can compete with those hardcore guilds. Fun is a casual raiding guild's #1 commodity.

I judge the success or failure of our raids largely by how much fun people had, not whether we actually made progress or not. Sure, it's nice to down a new boss or farm an entire instance without a wipe, but not if the raid leader is making everyone's night miserable.

Like most casual raiding guilds, we've lost a number of members over the years to more progressed guilds. And some of those people have gone on to be very successful as members of the top raiding guilds on the server. Others have come back. They aren't coming back for the loot, that's for sure. They come back because, as they say, "The game just wasn't fun anymore."

Choosing a class for raiding with low FPS

NSDragon wants to know over on Livejournal: what's the best class to raid with on a low-end system (as in, one that gets only about 3-10 FPS during raid boss fights)? First of all, there's no reason you should be raiding with a system like that anyway -- even a cheap PC will run World of Warcraft better than that, and even if you can't afford a new computer, odds are that you can at least add some RAM in there and speed things up a bit. But let's assume that you're a great person and you've given all your money to charity, so there is no way that you can afford to buy anything faster.

In that case, as most of the commenters on the thread say, ranged DPS is probably your best bet. You won't be able to pour out as much aggro as someone who isn't lagging, but at least you'll be able to use your 3 frames per second to do some damage, and you're sure you won't draw aggro and wipe the raid. As for which ranged DPS class, though, I'm not sure -- Hunters have autofire, so you can be sure that you'll be pushing out DPS constantly. Mages aren't too hard to raid with (most Mages will actually tell you that they just press one button over and over again). Warlocks might be easier with their DoTs, but even that relies on timing in a way that Hunter DPS really doesn't. I'd say Hunter.

Some people are saying Healers, which I originally thought was a bad idea, but if you combine their recommendation of just looking at the floor (to speed up the FPS) and watching the healing meters, you might have something there. Wouldn't be very fun (whack-a-mole FTW), but you'd be helpful to the raid in situations where you wouldn't have to move around much. So healer might be a viable choice for a low-end computer user as well.

IGOLG:One Year Anniversary-3 Dollars For Free

IGOLG is one year old now! Thank your for very customer supporting,IGOLG is now become a leading website for massively multiplayer online game (MMOG) virtual currency and item trading.
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Enjoy IGOLG One Year Anniversary!!!

WoW: Earn THOUSANDS of gold effortlessly!

OK here is how you have the chance to make thousands of gold effortlessly.


As most of you are aware, with recent patches Blizzard has decreased the amount of xp needed to level by 30%! This has lead to many players starting new characters and taking advantage of this. I as a raider my self, find it hard to find time to level up an alternate character between grinding for repair bills and raiding. But now with this increased leveling speed I and many of my raiding friends have started leveling up alts in our spare time, sometimes taking a day or two of raiding just to power level our alts.

Naturally to make leveling faster and more efficient we are just buying all the best greens,blues,epics off the auction house so that we don't need to waste time instancing for gear.

So this brings me to the conclusion that the prices of useful blues and epics WILL definitely inflate enormously. I'm sure by now you have caught on to my money making scheme idea but for those who haven't here is it again:

1) One:Easier to level
2) Two:More people leveling up (mainly raiders and rich people)
3) Three:Want to buy items not instance for them
4) Four:Willing to pay a lot for blues and epics
5) Five:Price of current blues and epics about to go up a LOT.

Therefore I suggest you go to the auction house, and click sort by EPIC value and set the item level range to between 30 and 55. and if they are relatively priced and bid or buy them out, then either: keep them until you see a noticeable price increase over the next few weeks or immediately re-list them for 100 or so gold higher. (as in this is the normal average price for them, can use auctioneer for this but I am not going to explain auctioneer usage since there are tons of guides about it here on mmowned)

Here is an example.

I go to the auctioneer in one of my factions main cities E.G. Stormwind of Ogrimarr and I search all the items of EPIC value between the level range of 30 and 55.

I find a decent buy:

Hammer of the Northern Wind for 80 gold Bid, 120 gold Buyout


I keep it for a week and I notice that the prices of Hammer of Northern Wind has been bumped up to an average price of 150 gold Bid, 200 gold Buyout. I wait for that one to sell then I re-list the one that I originally bought for 310 gold bid 320 gold Buyout.
Thus giving me a 200 or so gold profit.

Now, there is another method that you can use in conjunction to this method, something that I do often and is EXTREMELY profitable is:

If I am wanting to transfer one of my characters from one server to another, I go look at the prices of epics on my current server. I then go compare the prices on other servers, finding a server where the general price for epics is a lot more than my current servers prices. Generally the server type, server age, server population and server progression has a lot to do with the item prices on their auction houses.

With this method I normally look for the following things:
High level enchanting materials
High level reputation items
High level cloth
Blue gems (cut and uncut)
High and Low level Epics
High level rares (blue quality items)
High level ore
High level herbs
And other items that are vital components in making high end level epics, items, transmutes and so on.

Then I spend several thousand gold on the items that I think will be the most profitable and stock up until I have enough. Then I transfer my character to that server using A) paid character transfer or the B) Free character migration system if available.

These two methods, especially when combined will earn you THOUANDS and I mean THOUSANDS.
I have done this over and over and it has been a success each time. I guarantee that this is one of the most effortless methods to making MASSIVE sums of money.

WoW: Easy Gold Guide Alliance

I havn t made a horde to this point so sorry horde not for you. I have a horde guide later on so hey have fun I have used it so it works so good lick.



In light of some completely useless threads on money making, I thought I'd consolidate the majority of my knowledge when it comes to turning coin. This guide will take you from level 1 to level 40 and if you use these strats you WILL have your mount paid for by 40 and you WILL have top notch gear plus all your spells. The profit margin on these are great and in a few cases HUGE, you just have to invest the time it takes to get the items. That being said, let's get started…..



level 1-15:



Darian Singh in Mage Quarter SW

Sells: blue fireworks schematic

Purchase: 18s

AH price: 1-2g



Soolie Berryfizz in Tinker Town, IF

Sells: Free Action Potion recipe

Purchase: 18s

AH price: 3-4g



level 15-20:

Wenna Silkbeard in Sundown Marsh, Wetlands

Sells: Green Leather Armor and Red Whelp Gloves patterns

Price: 20s

AH price: 1g (each)



Frad Swiftgear in Sundown Marsh, Wetlands

Sells: Minor Recombobulator schematic

Purchase: 15s

AH price 1-2g





level 20-30

Bliztik in Raven Hill, Duskwood

Sells: Shadow Oil Recipe

Purchase: 15s

AH price: 3-5g



Zan Shivsproket in Ravenholt Manor, Hillsbrad Foothills

Sells: Gnomish Cloaking Device schematic

Purchase: 15s

AH price: 8-10g





level 30-40



Rikqiz in Booty Bay, Stranglethorn Vale

Sells: Gem-studded Leather Belt and Shadow Skin Gloves

Purchase: 35s **** (Thottbot says 35s but I remember it being around 1g each)

AH Price: Belt sells for 4-5g and gloves sell for 3-4g



Pearl diving in Vile Reef

Purchase price: None** (time investment only)

AH price: 4g per stack of 9 pearls

This strat takes a little more then just putting them on the AH.

Make 100's Gold Level 36 - 44

Ultima's guide to making 100g from levels 36 to 44

Introduction


First off, this is HORDE only and is geared to the levels 36-44! I devised this when I hit level 39, and realised 'Damn I spent too much, I will never afford the mount in time!'. I only had 17 gold and I needed to get 90g for my mount by level 40. It took me Level 39 to 5 bars into level 40 to get all the money. I figured out various tactics to make the money, so here they are!


1.Rock Elementals



I racked in a good 8g from this. I simply went to the Badlands and went to the camp at the north west and to the east there are level 37-40 rock elementals. This is pure grinding folks, you simply kill them and keep the items they drop. Vendor everything but the 'Solid Stone', 'Deeprock Salt' and the 'Elemental Earth' because at the AH you can make a much larger profit. This is a real good place to grind.



2.Scarlet Monastery

This is the king of money making. Get a level 60 friend to run the armory and library over and over (Cathedral if you get 2 high levels) and keep the loot and cash. A run with friends that give you all loot and the cash they earned at end ranges from 7-11 gold. Another way is to just run it with a normal group, the loot isn't as good but each FULL run of every part of the instance gets you at least 3g (And a whole lot of exp!). The ultimate grind place for cash is the graveyard in Scarlet Monastery. If you can get yourself past the elite bad guys in the beginning, and into the graveyard proper, the Forsaken Spirits drop from 1 to 8 silver, along with greys and the occasional green, and they're Levels 30-32 non-elites. They come in packs of three, and a rogue has little to no problems taking them down hard and fast.



3.Stranglethorn Vale
STV is gank city, but it isn't as bad as people tell. Just head to the north east and farm the Adventure Co. Geologists. They drop a lot of silk that can be sent to the AH and drop quite a few greens this is great for money, but it gets old fast, doing this for too long can drive you mad! Another good spot is the murlocs, they always have chests all around and are easy to kill. They have low def and don't hit hard so you can take a good 3-4 of em down without resting! These guys always drop 1-3 silver which is pretty good if you ask me.

!!!Gold prices may vary by server population and tmie of day!!

How to Make a Character with Cool Letters

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.

Guide to Mining and Goldsmithing

The key for all aspiring young blacksmiths is finding the raw material you will need to craft your creations. Therefore it is highly recommended that you take up the complementary skill mining along with blacksmithing or have several friends who are dedicated to mining for you. Like other materials related crafts blacksmithing requires 1 skill point to become an apprentice, 3 additional skill points to become a journeyman, and 5 additional skill points to become an expert. If you decide to take up mining as well to finance your blacksmithing venture, you will need to spend 3 skill points for apprentice mining, 5 additional skill points for journeyman mining, and 7 additional skill points for expert mining. As a result, unless you are human you will need to reach level 25 before becoming expert in both mining and blacksmithing.

Blacksmithing requires perhaps the most eclectic array of materials of any of the crafting professions. In order to craft some of the higher end weapons and armors you will need to collect materials from all of the gathering disciplines (Fishing, Mining, Herbing, and Skinning). As an example, in order to craft the Shadow War Axe you will need an alchemy Shadow Oil potion from an alchemist which in turn requires an Oil Blacktail fish from a fisherman along with other herbs. But for the most part your main components will come from mining so here is a list of the more common components you will need in great quantity listed in order of difficulty to attain (number in parentheses is the mining skill required).

Copper Bars (1) Your basic copper acquired from Copper mining nodes found in most hilly and mountainous starting zones (e.g. Dun Morough, Elwynn Forest, Durotar).
Tin Bars (65) These are found in Tin mines in lower level zones (e.g.Barrens, Loch Modan, Redridge)
Bronze Bars Bronze bars are smelted by combining Copper and Tin bars.
Silver Bars (75) Silver mines are quite scarce and found occasionally in place of a Tin or Iron mine.
Iron Bars (155 bug should be 100) Iron Mines are found in mid level mountainous zones and are usually guarded by ornery inhabitants of those zones (e.g. Alterac, Thousand Needles, Stonetalon)
Steel Bars Steel bars need Iron bars to lend them strength and Coal (from a trade vendor) to ensure the fires of your forge burn hot enough.
Gold Bars (155) Gold mines are a precious and rare commodity and can be found in place of Iron mine.
Mithril Bars (155) Mithril mines deep in the heart of the mountain yield an abundance of Mithril, unfortunately no blacksmithing formulas currently use it.
Truesilver Bars (155) not yet implemented Truesilver mines currently give you iron ore

In addition to metal you will also find stones inside mines which are also needed to make sharpening stones to add weapons damage and grinding stones used in almost all recipes.
Rough Stones Found in Copper mines
Coarse Stones Found in Tin and Silver mines
Heavy Stones Found in Iron and Gold mines

The final element you will commonly need to create your weapons and armor is the gemstones. Some can be found mining while others need to be acquired either from killing specific creatures or from fishing. In order of difficulty to obtain though not necessarily rarity:

Malachite Copper Mines
Tigerseye Copper Mines
Shadowgem Copper Mines
Small Lustrous Pearl Fishing or Small clams from Murlocs
Moss Agate Tin and Silver mines
Lesser Moonstone Tin, Silver, Iron, and Gold Mines
Iridescent Pearl Fishing or Large clams from higher level Murlocs
Jade Iron and Gold Mines
Citrine Iron and Gold Mines (and Dragons)

As in all of the trade crafts the difficulty of an item to make directly impacts how likely you will gain skill points from creating that item. Orange items will always give you a skill up. Yellow items will usually give a skill up. Green items very rarely give a skill up and grey items will never give a skill up. My suggestion is to always create orange or yellow items which require only ore and grinding stones as those two are your most common components. This will allow you to skill up quickly to the point where you can start selling some of your items at which point you can use your more rare ingredients to create items that people will actually want to use.

The blacksmithing trainer in all the major cities have the exact same stock formulas so there is no need to run around to different city trainers looking for different recipes. There are however special trainers scattered around the world that will teach you additional recipes. The three available in the alliance push are in the Stormwind Dwarven district (Hardened Iron Shortsword), Booty Bay (Moonsteel Broadsword), and Refuge Point(Solid Iron Maul). In addition to specialty trainers there are two other ways to acquire more formulas. Monsters will occasionally drop recipes relative to their level. And certain trade vendors in remote cities will sell smithing recipes (such as the Golden Chain Helmet in Tanaris).

WoW: Farming blues with low level twink

Twinking is very popular right now with the hot spots being the 10-19 WSG and 20-29 WSG. This guide will focus on the 10-19 WSG twink crowd. Farming blues can be not only difficult because most useful ones are world drops but plain boring as hell. This guide will show you how to make it as painless as possible.

The Strat

By far the highest concentration of kick ass twink gear is found in Shadowfang Keep. Both caster and melee items that are BoE and in the 16-19 range can be found here off any of the trash mobs inside. The holy grail of twink weapons is the assassin's blade.
http://thottbot.com/?i=12802
Rogues wet themselves for one of these and will pay upwards of 150g for one. It's the single best dagger for that level and if you drop say firey (for the budget twinks) or crusader (the fat wallets) on it and you are a machine on par with the 20-29 crowd. That's why its so popular. Sadly, I GAVE this to a guildie before I became aware of it's value. I just figured it was a decent blue dagger and since I was a 60 rogue, didn't have any use for it.

Not a dagger rogue??? How about this 1 hand sword…
http://thottbot.com/?i=11366
Again, sword rogue heaven. This in your main with assassin's in your off…WOW!

But Cowboy, I'm not a rogue… /cry Fear not.
Here's is the warrior's version of the assassin's blade.
http://thottbot.com/?i=12599

I personally sold one of these for 60g. Gave the other to my warrior. Again, drop a crazy 300 level enchant on it ON TOP of the nice proc and you've got a death stick to be proud of.
Slightly lower in the food chain but still a nice proc is this.
http://thottbot.com/?i=11109
Another nice 2 hander for a warrior or a pally.

If for some reason you want to carry a shield (I dunno why) and need a heavy hitting 1 hander try this (also great for hunters).
http://thottbot.com/?i=11691
This is aonther one I've personally sold. I set the buyout at 35g and it went in less then 2 hours. Probably could have gotten more but oh well. Looks cool as hell too.

Casters kinda get the hose in SFK but there are a few nice BoEs for you guys too.

This is mainly for the stats and a lock would enjoy this much me thinks…
http://thottbot.com/?i=9069

Not exactly what you want in WSG but the intel is very high for the level.
http://thottbot.com/?i=11136
Yeah, that says NEGATIVE 5 stamina

That's ALOT of specific level blues in 1 place and all are BoE. The drop rates are low just like any blue item but the mob density and relative small size of the instance makes it much nicer then grinding world mobs hoping for a specific item. Also, if youre an enchanter, all the boss blues DE into large glowing shards which sell for about 1g. I average about 3-5 blues (BoP) per run and anywhere from 6-15 green drops that I can sell on the AH from 50s to 1g50s depending on the item. That means I'm making about 8-16g for around 30-45 minutes work. If a twink item drops then it's a whole diffrent story.

Good luck and happy twinking!

WOW - Leveling Summary Of Going From 50-60

Summary of going from 50 to 60:
At 50, head to Ungoro because of all the collection quests avaliable. This is mainly a beast zone, hoever, there isn't an cash drops. There are good chances on items dropping in this zone.Doing each of the quests in Marshall's Refuge will get you 2 levels easily in a day. It is quite crazy how much exp you can gain in this zone with grinding mixed with questing. Just make sure you bring a mithril Casing with you to this zone because you will need it for a certain quest.

Felwood has some good kills that give you faction with the Timbermaws. At this point you should have your weapon (s) of choice until you are ready to do high level instances. So put Demonslay on both. This gives you a chance to stun and deal out an extra 100 dmg on each hit. Felwood is, of course, filled with demons. This area is also good for the lower 50s. I got up to lvl 55 fairly easy in a couple days from lvl 53. There are some nice quests in the southern area of Felwood which are easy to complete.

Now that you have demonslay you can also benefit from the enchantment in Azshara. The west side has some Satyrs to kill which are fairly easy to take down, though they have imp minions. The northern camps have lvl 51 Satyrs if you find the western zone to be slow exp. The mid 50s allow you to move onto Winterspring. In the SW corner, there is a dwarf lady who gives a decent cloak just for walking from one end of the zone to the other. The town also has a nice chunk of quests to complete which give good exp. The really good spot though is Lake Kel'Therill. It has more ghosts that are good for exp and easy kills till lvl 58.

The Plaguelands are the final area to hunt in. The West from 52-55 and the East from 55-60. They are full of undead to kill. Mainly though, you are here for the Argent Dawn faction, which can only be obtained when under lvl 60. Keep that in mind. Might as well get it done before hitting 60. If you are looking for demons to kill the east has a lot of hounds, but that is about it.

In the end your travels will be in Blackrock Stronghold. Getting down the basics of the spawn will kill you off a few times, but once you learn to understand it, the exp is great! Half of it is casters, which are perfect for killing. You will more than likely hit 60 here.

Instances to take into consideration on the side:
Before you hit 55 you will want to run through Mauradon. The trash blade (from killing the princess) is an excellent sword if you are one who weilds a sword. This drop is only beat by a rare drop in Blackrock Spire by killing the end boss. Make sure you finish up any quests in the Sunken Temple too, there are a few that give decent rewards. There are quests for this instance all over the world so do not be surprised if you come along another farther down the line.

Blackrock Depths and Blackrock Spire are where you will want to spend your upper 50s definately. The drops here are ridiculously good and require you to have a skilled group. Mess up just a tiny bit and the group is gone so be careful.

Quick Overview of grinding areas and lvls:

50 - 52: Ungoro Crater
- Marshall's Refuge has easy exp with all of the quests. The quests that tell you to kill Pterrodax do not take though (Waste of time). Start the Linken's Quest.
-Perfect place for skinners to lvl up is the Gorillas on the eastern side and the raptors on the southern side.

50 - 54: Azshara
- Demon Satyrs north of ghosts and in the top (50-54). They have minions though, but not tough ones.

50 - 54: Felwood
-Demon Satyrs in Felwood. Middle-west in zone. (50-54)
-If you do not have Demonslay kill Ironwood Stompers. (50-54)

54 - 60: Winterspring
-Ghosts on the lake. Lower central part of zone. (54-56). Can easily be farmed if you have the quest called The Ruins of Lake Kel'Theril (Just don't loot the shards you dig up) as it spawns 2 ghosts everytime you mine. Easy kills. Good Loot.

54 - 58: West Plaguelands
-Hunt Scarlets in the middle of zone. (54-58)

56 - 60: East Plaguelands
-Demon hounds across south end of zone (56-60)
-Mossflayer and Eyeless in middle of zone (56-58) and northeast (58-60). They spawn with chests.

58 - 60: Burning Steppes
-Orcs are stronghold. Takes a few tries to get used to it. Best place though since more than half are casters. (58-60)

WoW: Easy Cash for Mages lvl 60 150g hour!!

Easy Cash for Mages (Level 60)

Location: Silithus.
Build: Preferably Frost.

Essence of Air Grinding
In the northwestern corner of Silithus, there are approximately 50-70 air elementals. They have a slim chance to drop Essence of Air (these baby's sell for 10-20g each on our server), but this slight probability is reduced if you're killing all 70 at once.

Let's get some dosh!
Start on the outskirt of the elemental spawn. Throw on Ice Barrier (it won't ever break, really) and gather one elemental by running into it. Cast Rank 1 Arcane Explosion and run to another elemental. For each mob that aggros you, cast Rank 1 Arcane Explosion once. This will make sure that they never de-aggro you and run back to their original spawn point. Repeat the process until every single air elemental is following you, or an amount that suits you.

Followed by:
Next, Frost Nova followed by Cone of Cold, then spam Arcane Explosion until they all die. They're a pain to loot sometimes since they're all clustered together, but by maneuvering your screen cam around, you can easily loot every single mob. Each pull takes next to no time to re spawn and you can repeat this again and again.

To conclude:
On average, we gathered about 15 Essences using this method, in roughly 50 minutes. That's 150g per. hour at least.
We recommend you have decent gear when attempting this as if you are fresh into level 60; you may experience difficulties.

Buyer beware in the Auction House

After a player complains that they mistakenly paid 75g for wool cloth in the Auction House, Drysc confirms that Blizzard is all about caveat emptor: the auction house market is all about open trade, so if you buy something for the wrong price, it's all on you.

This, of course, leaves the system fairly open to rampant fraud -- I know someone on another server who would often buy anything epic on the AH, day in and day out, and inflate the price an extra thousand gold. In many cases, the free market (which I'm pretty sure this is, right economists?) can usually correct itself -- you have to stay on top of a certain market if you plan to dominate it, since if anyone posts a lower price than you, you'll lose out on a sale. But in terms of a fraud -- the original poster in the thread claims that no one would ever have a serious reason to sell wool for 75g -- it's always "be careful what you click." Blizzard isn't completely laissez-faire when it comes to the economy, of course; they control the flow of gold in all kinds of ways. But when it comes to the auction house, you're on your own.

Fishing your way to profit

I'm not sure if anyone else noticed, but all of a sudden, fishing seems to have become an extremely profitable profession. With the introduction the daily fishing quests in Patch 2.4, those with a bit of luck have found themselves getting a hefty profit from the Bag of Fishing Treasures that the quests give out as a reward. Any angler worth her salt knows that fishing can be profitable through selling fish cooked or raw through the Auction House, or even as junk through the vendor. Before the introduction of the goodies that come inside the Bag of Fishing Treasures, the Goldenscale Vendorfish was probably the most expensive gray item in the game, selling for 6 Gold to vendors. Anglers who are also cooks could profit nicely from raid buff foods such as Golden Fish Sticks or Skullfish Soup, or simply sell the raw ingredients. Even low-level fish sell rather well to those who would like to level their cooking.

The Bag of Fishing Treasures contains roughly over 7 Gold in cash in addition to rare items such as The 2 Ring, which can sell for a whopping 2,000 Gold on some servers. It can also contain the bind-on-equip Eye of the Sea, which can sell for 400 Gold. Even if you don't have the kind of luck to chance on such rare items, however, it's quite common to pick up insanely expensive gray items such as the Mithril Shaving Razor, which sells for 11 Gold; a Silver Statuette, which sells for 15 Gold; a Beautiful Glass Eye, which goes for 18 Gold; and the mother of all gray items, the Ancient Coin, which goes for a massive 25 Gold.

The white items aren't so bad, either, and are actually collector's items that seem to be aimed at bank toons typically dressed in tuxedo sets. I mean, who wouldn't want a Noble's Monocle? If it doesn't sell on the trade channel or the AH, vendors will take it for a little over 11 Gold. The Ornate Drinking Stein and Antique Silver Cufflinks also sell for 11 Gold while the Gold Wedding Band is a nice 15 Gold item. Some players actually want those items for bank alts or Role-playing marriages. Of course, aside from the nice exclusive gray or white items, there's also a good chance players will get Motes of Water or Elixirs of Water Walking. Even if you won't necessarily want to sell them to vendors, the various baby crocolisk pets are also a nice fishing perk. Although fishing takes a bit of patience (to be honest, it bores the living crud out of me), the Gold that fishing now promises might be enough to encourage some players to take up the skill.

Buying Void Crystals - Patch 2.4

One of the great things for savvy auctioneers in World of Warcraft is waiting for new patches and the gold rushes they often bring.

On February 1, Blizzard poster Drysc wrote the following:

You’re pretty close, but it’s actually going to be a part of Enchanting. Once every 24 hours, through Enchanting (not Alchemy) you’ll be able to split a Void Crystal into two Large Prismatic Shards. This is through a new recipe that’s being added in 2.4.
This helps reduce the exorbitant prices currently being seen for Large Prismatics, and helps raise the value of the Void Crystals. While this is the only change planned in 2.4 to help the Void Crystal prices, we’re still looking at the possibility of additional ‘help’ for Void Crystal value in the future.

So do I really need to tell you that you should probably start taking a long, hard look at the Void Crystal market on your realm?

Void Crystals (Wowhead Wowecon) are currently averaging about 16.7 gold on US Alliance markets, while Large Prismatic Shards (Wowhead Wowecon) are currently going for an average of 23 gold in the same markets.

On the surface of things this doesn’t seem like an extremely lucrative deal, however the markets on your particular realm and even blind luck can heavily skew profit margins in your favor. So it is worth at least a look.

One extremely important thing to note, however: if you are holding any Large Prismatic Shards with the intent to sell them on the Auction House do so ASAP! Or well, at least before Patch 2.4 hits the servers. This is sure to make the price on these drop fast. I would also recommend against buying any unless you actually use them for crafting or unless you see what would be a common sense purchase (i.e. you see one selling for five gold).

RoleCraft: Role-ing Solo

Much of the knowledge, skill, and ability to roleplay a believable character in MMORPGs comes from inspiration. Experience is perhaps the best tool to employ in order to feed inspiration. Personally, I don't think I'll ever truly experience what it's like to be a stalwart defender of Stormwind, to walk the magnificence of Thorin's Hall, or attempt a stealthy infiltration of dungeon Destard to face off against the dragon Rikktor. That's one reason I'm a gamer.

Lately, I've come upon the apparent fact that there are many MMORPG gamers, including many roleplayers, who have played very few other games, if any. I am aware of more than a few of my fellow roleplayers whose very first foray into roleplaying, and even gaming, is with their current characters in LotRO and WoW. To me, this is a very surprising find, considering I am of the first 'gaming generation', and many of my gaming friends are younger (some much more so) than me. The gaming I refer to in this article is primarily PC gaming, though I certainly don't exclude console games, board games, live-action gaming, and of course the traditional RP games like Dungeons and Dragons.

I was telling my RP friend Wendy a couple days ago about The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, and how I easily roleplay my characters therein. Oblivion is the best and most current game I can use as an example, even though the game was released in 2006. Oblivion is a huge game, with an incredibly large and open world, and is a great game for RP. Simply remove the massively-multiplayer and online aspects from an MMORPG, and you could have Oblivion. The game, that is. Aside from speech, if you ever want to give yourself a test to find out how much of a roleplayer you (think) you are, make Oblivion your testing ground. I think you'll be surprised at what you find out about yourself and your RP style.

As I said, roleplaying is very easy in Oblivion and other like single-player games, as long as you can project and transform your own thinking into thinking like your character. To me, it's no more difficult than roleplaying in MMORPGs, with the added benefit of never having to come upon gold scammers, RP griefers, atrocious leet speak, or anything else that hinders you from staying in character.

Oblivion begins with your character in prison, and an event sets in motion your escape and gives you a quest, which you may or may not undertake. I've created four solid characters who have all gone through that event, and immediately after finding freedom, I stop and think, why were they in prison in the first place? Once I have that in mind, I then ask myself, what if any bearing does that fact have on what I will do next? Those two questions have been more than enough for me to create a distinct and different personality for each, thereby allowing me to play through the very same game, yet experience it in four unique ways. Remember, Oblivion is a two-year-old game, yet not once has it ever been old or boring for me. Safe to say I've gotten my money's worth.

Outside of actual roleplaying, just looking at the core of a game like Oblivion can provide a wealth of RP materials to improvise and adapt into your own RP. From concepts of character design (Oblivion has an awesome character creator interface), learning about some new races (ten found here, some familiar, some not), a wonderful feature called Birthsigns (which would be great for explaining some of those difficult-to-RP items and magical abilities), and excellent in game interpretations for magic and alchemy. Combat and stealth-focused roleplayers would I think also do well with seeing what Oblivion has to offer, and taking what's useful to employ in their own RP play styles.

Speaking of stealth, if you really want to learn more about how to better RP a character with this trait, then find yourself copies of the Thief series. Yes, again, older games, but none have yet to be made since that do stealth better than this series. In both WoW and LotRO, I'm amazed at how many rogues and bandits creep about in stealth mode with their RP mode turned off. Simply because the game mechanic allows you to walk down the middle of town while 'invisible' doesn't mean that you should, especially if you consider yourself to be a roleplayer. Not only are they really good games, but they instill a real sense of what it means to seek and stay in the shadows, to strike quickly and precisely, and how to fade away from sight and away from danger when the time is right. Perfect points that every stealth roleplayer should take to heart in learning and using.

Roleplaying inspiration doesn't have to come from games with a first-person point of view. I sincerely hope that all my gaming friends have played the Fallout series of games. If not, you are missing out on one of the best adventures in gaming history. Taking the series as a whole, the storyline, atmosphere, gameplay, and RP influence is unforgettable. For example, there is an NPC in Fallout 2 that is one of my favorite of all time. Named Sulik, he's reminiscent in both look and speech of a tribal witch doctor. His voice is the one I have in my head as also being the voice of my WoW character Wichdocta, even though the mannerisms are different. Really, any game you play has the potential to have a character with some idiosyncracy that you may remember, and there's certainly no RP law against using them for your own characters.

Furthermore, some games exist which may seem to be as far from RP as possible, but are so only to the unimaginative. Games like Half-Life, Team Fortress 2, Starcraft, and even Civilization have one or more items that can be copied and pasted into RP for the right character. When creating the personality of my gnome mage Arsonite in WoW, I went back and played through the original Half-Life and wrote down all the lines the scientists blurt out, which deal with specific examples of engineering and scientific chatter. I played a few Starcraft scenarios, paying attention to what the Firebat units spoke. I even threw in a couple of Gandalf lines from The Fellowship of the Ring movie. To this date, no one has yet to whisper me saying they recognized any of Arsonite's words. They're not meant to be original, more of a way I show my honor and adulation for all the things that fire my RP imagination. And, hey, they work!

There are of course many other games that could possibly inspire your RP. More old games, like Myst and Deus Ex, and just as many newer ones, like Neverwinter Nights and Bioshock. Playing lots and lots of games has given me a vast rock solid base from which to draw much of my RP inspiration from. Many of my fellow roleplayers have not been so fortunate in building their own knowledge base of gaming as I have, so I am glad to share some games I currently play and have played in hopes you may also play them and be inspired in your own right. So, what offline games have been of great RP inspiration to you? What memorable characters, methods of speech, imaginative skills, classes, or races, or wondrous locations have you funneled into your own RP, and how? I look forward to hearing your answers, and until next time, role on!