Seal Clubbing

I came across this term for the first time a few days ago, while trying to find the formula for WN7, which sites like noobmeter.com use for rating World of Tanks players. The term is used to describe experienced players who deliberately play in low-tier tanks to win lots of battles against noobs.

As a casual noob myself, I'm perplexed by this. Surely the whole point of the World of Tanks matchmaking system is to prevent battles where inexperienced players are pitted against experienced players? If I remember back to my early battles, everybody in the battlefield was a total noob. We would be shooting at each other, driving into each other, rushing across the field in Malinovka, doing everything noobish in the book. But as I improved, so did the quality of the rest of my team, and so did the quality of our opponents. Rushing was not so common, and when it was used, it was a deliberate scouting action by a fast tank that hoped to survive, rather than an attempt to overwhelm our enemies. That's as it should be. I was no longer a total noob, so I wasn't matched with total noobs.

Now, after 3000 battles at an "adjusted avg. tier" of 2.47, according to noobmeter, I never find myself in the same battle as "seals" (noobs relative to me), nor do I find myself in the position of a"seal" being clubbed by somebody with a lot more ability than me. I find myself in battles with people of about the same ability as me, with their tanks at the same level of improvement as mine. There is no way that I could get into a battle against genuine noobs, and there's no way a player with much more ability than me would end up in the same battle as me. After 3000 low-tier battles I cannot recall any examples of seal clubbing.

So what's going on? Why are the World of Tanks forums so full of talk about seal clubbers? How can they really exist? Is it, in fact, mainly a term used by players at the top tiers to denigrate play at lower tiers? Or have I noobishly misunderstood something?

20 days of gold making - day 7- beginning again

If you were starting over again (maybe on a new server perhaps), how would you start building some capital & what goal would you set yourself?

There was a great answer to that question a few years ago by Raimondas, that I mentioned in "I become neglected". He showed how a level 10 can make his first 2000g. I particularly liked his advice for acquiring the first 20g: sell your signature to prospective guild masters!

In fact, it isn't hard making gold in Azeroth. Just sell everything!

Part of the 20 days of Gold Making series

20 Days of Gold Making - Day 1. How I started

This article has been submitted to Cold's Gold Blogging Carnival for February.

Nev Jones over at Auction House Addict has an interesting idea: to get bloggers to answer twenty questions related to the WoW economy over the next twenty days. The first question is straightforward: When did you start gold making & what triggered it?

I started making gold right from the start of my time in Azeroth as a result of the quest to get more bags. At the time, I kept virtually everything, in case it might come in useful later - I didn't know that grey items would never come in useful (what a pity. Wouldn't it be great to think that some mage out in a gingerbread house in a dark forest somewhere wanted you to meet her at midnight with a basilisk heart, a poisoned spider fang and a dried scorpid eye). So I wanted to buy bigger bags. At 10g a pop, netherweave bags were a serious expense, so at first I thought, I'll be a tailor and make my own. When that looked to be a rather long-term goal, I next tried to sell stuff at auction to get the money together. That was when I started looking around for tools to help with the (still) poor auction-house interface. Markco was still running the Just My Two Copper website at the time, and a Google search brought me to an article he had written there on Auctioneer. Markco really was a trailblazer back then. Anyway I installed Auctioneer on the strength of that article.

The greatest thing about auctioneer was to build up a database, over time, of the price of items. If it did nothing other than this it would have been worth it, back in the day when I didn't know if a piece of woolen cloth was worth 1c or 1g or something in between. Once you can set sensible prices, the money will start to come in. I got the cash for my netherweave bags fairly fast after that.

I'll tell you what I put in them on day 3!

Part of the 20 days of Gold Making series

GW2 first impressions

Loving it, so far! Like Nils often does, I may spend a lot of time covering the niggles that I don't like in Guild Wars 2, but overall, it's a great game!

 Here are two niggles.

1 They're really about lack of information. In the download screen, there's no obvious way to pause a download. On-screen you see the amount downloaded so far, the download speed and the number of files left to download, plus a progress bar at the bottom. Let's say that after a couple of hours of downloading, you get tired of waiting, and you decide you're going to play Rift for a bit. You want to pause the download. You can't see a pause button on the download screen. In frustration, you exit the download screen. Of course, you are curious, and want to check immediately if you've lost all your existing download or not, so you restart the download. Horror of horrors, the progress bar is back at 0%! The amount downloaded is also at 0. It is with relief that you notice that the number of files left to download still shows the same number you saw when you exited the download screen. So the upshot is, you pause by exiting, and you don't lose already-downloaded files.

 2 On registering, I had to supply a "Real Name" and a "Display Name", but it wasn't clear what each of those were going to be used for. I still don't know what "Real Name" is for, but I didn't give my actual real name in this field, I stuck in some junk. Display Name is seen quite a lot. It's kind of an account name. First, it is made unique by having some numbers appended to it. All the characters that you create are linked to that unique name, and if, for instance, you join a guild, guild members can see this account name beside your character name. Also, this display name is used on the forums.

 I chose the realm "Far Shiverpeaks" simply because it was the top English-speaking WvWvW European realm. Although it was labelled "High Population", I've not found too many other players around for comfort. Probably because I'm not with the first wave of players!

 Next, to character creation. I had a problem actually seeing the character models in the character creation screen. I could only see two of the professions, elementalist and warrior. For the others, I just saw the background, and the character was invisible or missing. I looked around on the internet for help, and I saw suggestions to re-install video drivers. I didn't need to do that, and if you're having the same problem, and can't see your characters, you should first try fiddling with the in-game video settings. To get to those from the character creation screen, press F11 to enter the options screen. Then I went into the graphics options (second tab down on the left) and changed the "Render Sampling" setting from "Native" to "Subsample" That fixed the problem for me. If it doesn't fix it for you, I suggest that you first record what your current settings are, and then change them one at a time until you get an improvement - that kind of trial and error was how I stumbled upon the fix for my particular setup, in the first place!

Anyway the character creation screen is fun and lets you personalize your character in many ways, but I won't bore you with the details, except to remind you that when you get to naming your character, you may use spaces.

I created two characters, a male Sylvari, and a female Norn.

I love the Sylvari race; what a great idea, to have a race of plants rather than animals. As well as a strong sylvan and elven theme, this race has strong Celtic overtones: Brittonic and Gaelic names are used for many placenames (for instance Caer Verdant, Ogham Wilds) and NPCs: the articifer trainer (for smithing magical items) is called Draiocht, the cooking trainer is Bhia). The voice acting is done by English actors.

The Norn are just like tall humans, with a Norse theme. I'd have loved if the Norn had been voiced by Scandinavian actors, but it was not to be - these characters all have American accents. I'm not sure why anyone would choose human as a race.

Adventuring in this world is fun - the starting zones are fun to explore, the storylines are interesting and the artwork is - well, painterly. It isn't trying for the sort of realism you get in Skyrim, if you know what I mean, but it has a style of its own that stays on the right side of cartoony, and never looks grimdark. Adventuring is fun in and of itself. It's more varied than the usual "kill 10 rats" questing, and it seems the developers have really tried to think of ways to engage us as adventurers. Gear and gold don't shower upon us, and I think I'm still (at level 7) wearing the gear I started with (with the addition of a pair of gloves and a wooden focus). I'm not adventuring for the rewards!

The dungeon instances I've been in so far I have soloed. I like the fact that even when I visited an instance that I'd outlevelled, I was automatically down-levelled so that it was a real challenge. Syncaine doesn't like this. But he's just grouching because he's been conditioned by other games to expect a reward for every activity he takes part in, rather than the activity itself being rewarding. Now, like Pavlov's dogs, he salivates in expectation of external reward, and is grumpy because he isn't given it.

The death penalty is unusual. When you are downed, you don't die immediately. Instead, you are left on the ground with a few minimal abilities and a small amount of health. At this point, you are almost dead, but if you manage to kill your opponent before you actually die, you rally, and are brought back from this downed state. However each time you are downed, you get a stacking debuff that leaves you with less health when you are next downed. Each point of debuff only lasts a minute, so it isn't a permanent loss. In addition, one piece of your armour is damaged and needs to be repaired. Together, these two penalties make you less blasé about getting killed than you would be in Azeroth.

Other niggles:
Zoning: In 2012, you would think you needn't sit through a loading screen when walking from one zone into the next.

Portals: Portals are used to teleport the adventurer from one location to another. What's interesting about the portals in Guild Wars 2 is that you don't teleport from one portal to another. You teleport instead from anywhere to a portal.That's a nice idea, but it comes at a cost: you can't interact with a portal directly. You can't touch a portal, you have no magical or technological item that your character uses to reach the portal. Instead, you must temporarily break out of character, and click on the portal on your map. Each time I do this, I'm reminded that I'm just playing a game, clicking buttons, rather than living in a fantasy world.

Instances: there's a lot of instancing while following storylines, and I wonder how much of it is really necessary. For instance, while following one storyline, I am called upon to go to the city and meet a certain character in the city's keep. I talk to her and she tells me to go somewhere else. Normal quest behaviour, you would think, but for some reason, my meeting with her in the keep is inside its own instance! What's that all about?


TL;DR: Loving it!

I become neglected, and am provided for

Kudos to Raimondas for showing how to make 2000g at level 10 starting with no money! Now you never need to be stuck for cash again!

[Edit:
Raimondas' archives have been destroyed in a cataclysm. Until he is able to recover them, the wayback when machine has preserved his article here: http://web.archive.org/web/20100924182428/http://raimondastheinsane.com/2010/08/24/2000-gold-at-level-10/
]

Mr. Micawber's Transactions

Companion pets are great fun. What white witch doesn't love to have a black cat padding quietly behind her? Actually, I now have quite a collection of pets, and I accidentally discovered something worthwhile: pets are a tradable commodity!

Companion pets are an especially good source of gold for low-level players, who might have a few silver coins spare and can buy a beautiful black Bombay Cat from Donni Anthania, the cat lady just between Northwind Abbey and Stormwind City. You can then auction it in Stormwind for a good profit.

However, if you can get to the Blackwater Auction House in the goblin-held cities of Tanaris or Booty Bay, you can make a even more money there, because horde traders make the trip there to buy these alliance pets (pets that the vendor will only sell to alliance members). They can't get them any other way.

Other pets you can easily get at low levels are the Snowshoe Rabbits from the Amberstill ranch in Dun Morogh, and the owls of Darnassus. Any time you're passing, just pick up a few and sell them in an Auction House.

Also, if you happen to be visiting the Blackwater Auction House, you can often pick up horde pets. Those Golden Dragonhawk Hatchlings are especially pretty!

Have fun with these beautiful creatures!

Our Housekeeping

I hope it goes without saying that after you have killed the enemy, their mangled corpses should be subjected to the indignity of a strip-search while their blood still gushes hotly, and that you should loot everything you can carry.

What have you been doing with all that linen and woollen cloth that you've found on them? Chances are, you've been selling them to a vendor. Well, stop that, right now! There are at least two things you can do with them that are better than that.

Firstly, various professions can use these scraps of cloth. For instance, if you are a tailor, you already know that they can be turned into the most beautiful costumes; if you have the first aid profession, you can turn them into bandages.

Secondly, if you don't have a use for the cloth, sell it to an adventurer who does. Your fellow adventurers pay a lot more than vendors for it. But how do you sell it to somebody else? The Auction House is how. Go to the auction house, select an auctioneer, and search for the cloth you want to sell. You'll find loads of it, at various prices. Decide on the price you want to sell your cloth for (make sure the price you set is above the price a vendor would give you for it), and post it! If you select a low enough price, you'll find it will sell easily, and often within a few minutes. You'll get paid by a letter in your mailbox an hour after the sale.

And it's not just cloth that sells well. Every green item that you loot and that you can't use youself can be sold in the auction house. The secret here is that people will usually buy these item not to wear, but to disenchant into various magical powders, crystals, essences and so on, needed by enchanters. This gives even the lamest green item a value much higher than the vendor puts on it.

As well as green items, many white items also sell well at auction: consumables (like cloth) that are used in other professions or for quests. For instance those small eggs that you get from the birds in Westfall are worth quite a bit to chefs.

Also, while you're at the auction house, don't forget to buy some bags. You can get some from vendors. You can get bigger bags from tailors who sell their wares at the Auction House. Obviously, the bigger your bags, the more loot you can carry.

I don't want to turn this into a guide to using the auction house here; that's been done very well already in loads of places, including Just My Two Copper (http://justmytwocopper.blogspot.com/). I just want to draw your attention to its importance. Don't be poor. Sell your loot in the Auction House. At the very least, the AH is a great way to turn your unwanted loot into gold. The trading game can also be fun in its own right; I love trawling though the auctions looking for bargains that I can resell for profit later.

By the way, if you want to get the most out of the Auction House, you'll really want to get the AuctioneerAddon. This improves your pricing by tracking historical prices and letting you see when items are cheap or overpriced. If you never get any other World of Warcraft addon, get this one. And check out Marcko's guide to using it: http://justmytwocopper.blogspot.com/2009/02/22-steps-to-using-auctioneer-correctly.html

I enlarge my Circle of Acquaintance

What should you look for when choosing a guild? That depends on your motives. I have been in a number of guilds for different reasons, and I foresee that as I progress I may find reason to change guilds again.


First, you may choose not to join a guild. Many people find solo adventuring very satisfactory and feel no desire to join a club - for that´s all a guild is. There´s nothing you can´t accomplish as a solo adventurer. That said, there are many ways in which a guild can make things easier for you, which I´ll talk about below.


The first guild I joined, I joined for money. As simple as that. I had 5s54c in my pocket when I met a level 60 warrior who was yelling out that he would give 1g to anybody who would sign his guild charter. Let me tell you that was the easiest 1g I ever earned, and the most useful. By all means I advise you to take this offer yourself, if you're not yet in a guild. You need the money, he needs the signature. Both parties profit.


What's that all about, by the way? Why would a level 60 warrior be down in the market square in Stormwind offering gold to all and sundry to sign his charter. Surely he's more selective about who he wants in his guild? Surely the last person he wants in his guild is somebody who's just joining for the money? What's the catch? There is no catch. Or rather, the catch is, he doesn't want you in his guild - but the offer of 1g is genuine. The player who is offering money for your signature is not planning to steal anything from you (what have you got that might interest a level 60 warrior, after all). He's wanting to set up a 'banking' guild. This is a guild that will eventually only have 1 member, and that member will be his banker. Once the guild is up and running, it's probable that you and all the other signatories will be kicked out of the guild, 1g richer than when you joined it. What the guild master really wants is to be able to create a guild bank where he can store more items than he could store in his private bank account. Don't worry. Be happy. Take his 1g payment, leave when he finally has his guild up and running, and take the next guy's 1g. All parties will be happy.


Eventually you may want to join a proper guild. Maybe you just want to see what being in a guild is like. I encourage you to try a few before you settle down. Sow your wild oats. Different guilds have different flavours. Try a few out, and then decide what you like.


You'll see various advertisements in the trade and general channels from guilds who are looking for new members. These advertisements often contain a number of code words that will help you identify the kind of guild that's being advertised:


Guilds that advertise "we have our own tabard and bank tab" are generally new guilds - it's a big deal for them that they have their own tabard and bank tab because the guild master and officers have just spent a bucketload of money getting them. New guilds often die out. Try not to join a new guild until you have had experience of an established guild. I don't mean that you should never join a new guild. In fact, I think that eventually you should. Just not until you know what an experienced guild has to offer.


Guilds that use the words "progression" or "raiding" should be of no interest to you until you are level 80. You will certainly be of no interest to them.


Guilds that are "friendly" or "social" are certainly worth experiencing. Sometimes this is code for "not interested in joining the rat-race to level 80 and beyond. Just interested in having a good time, sharing some jokes, hanging out and having fun". There's nothing wrong with that, and it's worth trying out.


Guilds that are "levelling" guilds can be both friendly and social, but what their members have in common is this: they are very interested in joining the rat-race, and reaching level 80 and beyond. There's nothing wrong with that, and it's worth trying out. Very often, these are new guilds who have got beyond the "have tabard and bank tab" stage, but have no members at level 80 yet.


In my opinion, you should try out several guilds before choosing a long-term partner. You'll quickly realise what style suits you - social or levelling (of course most guilds are on a continuum between these two extremes). Once you are level 80, if you are considering raiding you'll perhaps look at the serious raiding/progression guilds. By then you won't need any advice from me.


Before joining a guild, I recommend you look at their member profile on the armoury. The EU armoury is at http://eu.wowarmory.com/ and the US armory is at http://www.wowarmory.com/


A levelling guild with less than 50 members will either die, or will require a lot of hard work from its members to get it up to a critical mass. On the other hand, a guild with more than 200 members might seem a bit impersonal. One of the most important things to know about guilds is that they're usually set up by a group of people who know each other well, perhaps having been together in other guilds, or perhaps grouping together often as they levelled up. Sometimes such a group can make you feel a little like an outsider. I left such a guild some time back, after a guild photo-shoot. The location chosen was the surface of the lake in Darnassus. If you couldn't walk on water? Too bad, noob. You weren't in the photo. I left the very next day.


I mentioned earlier that there are many ways in which a guild can make things easier for you. I´ve more or less covered these already: they can provide you with pals (for the crack), they can provide a ready-made pool of players around the same level as you with whom you can group and level and PvP, and after you´ve reached max level, it provides team-mates with which you can raid.



I also mentioned earlier that I think you should eventually join a new guild. Actually, the more I think about it, what I really mean is that I joined a new guild and liked it enough to want to stay. Why? Because in a new guild, you make a difference. You level up with the other new members of the guild, you get to know them, they get to know you. You make friends. Of course, this can happen in any guild, new or old. It can happen outside of a guild. All I can tell you is this. I like being in a new guild whose members are known to me. I wish it was a bigger guild, since we could more easily plan guild dungeons. I know that whatever happens to the guild (it's at the grow-or-die stage right now), I've enjoyed it.


If you ever want to start your own guild, I have one piece of advice: don't.
Just don't. It's a lot of work, and the rewards are uncertain (unless you're just creating a bank guild). Maybe it'll turn out like the guild you hoped for, maybe it won't. More than likely, there is already a guild out there that is a good match to what you want. It's probably a better match than the guild you build will eventually be! But if you insist in ignoring my advice, at least take Matticus' advice: http://www.worldofmatticus.com/guides/build-your-own-guild/


By the way, whatever guild you join, don't accept a boost. You'll regret it. More on boosting later.

I am Sent Away

There comes a time in the life of every child of Elwynn Forest when we have to spread our wings and fly away. Of course, we've all been to Stormwind already, and met the high-level Jenkins and heroes, and beggars and bankers; but really this is still home. No, usually our first trip abroad is to Westfall, and what a difference there is between Westfall and Stormwind. While Elwynn forest has a magical fantasy mediaeval touch to it, Westfall has a different
atmosphere: dustbowl America - a formerly rich but now rundown farming community, now almost derelict and overrun by weeds and other undesirables.

The story of Westfall is the story of that shadowy organization, the Defias Brotherhood, and it's a great story, though this isn't obvious when you first arrive. In fact the initial quests in Westfall are a little tedious - kill twenty of this, collect 8 of that - and the magic mechanical scarecrows, while they add to the not-in-Kansas atmosphere, do not fit into the world - no attempt is made to explain what they are, where they came from, how they came to life. They are just there, as out of place as a laser-gun-toting murloc. But never mind that, follow the yellow-brick road to Sentinel Hill and Gryan Stoutmantle. That's where the real story starts.

And it's also where you get to fly! When you were fighting the great Hogger, you noticed high-level characters passing overhead on flying steeds, and thought "wow, it must be wonderful to be able to fly! I'll bet you have to get to level 80 before you can do that"! When you get to Sentinel Hill, however, you discover you can join that elite group. You don't even have to own or train the mighty beasts that will soon be transporting you to Stormwind, for they are a taxi service. And what a great service! The journey from Stormwind to Sentinel Hill probably took you a week or two. The return journey, high above the scene of your recent epic deeds, takes a minute or two. I'll never get tired of flying!

Anyway, back to Gryan Stoutmantle. At first, the quests he gives you just feel like more of the same "Kill Ten Rats": kill 15 Defias trappers, kill 15 Defias smugglers, kill 15 defias pillagers and looters, and so on. But gradually, the story begins to come into focus with the Defias Brotherhood quests starting with a trip to Lakeshire to learn more about this shadowy organization.

This excellent slow-burning quest chain leads you, via Stormwind city, deep into the Deadmines in Moonbrook village, the first instance dungeon that most players, where you hunt down the leader of the Brotherhood, and then leads to the next instance, the Stockades in Stormwind, to interview his deputy, finally leading to the higher echelons of Stormwind society and your first audience with the King. Great stories like this are what make me want to play more. The stories, not the loot. Make more great stories like this, Blizzard, and you will be loved forever.

I Fall into Disgrace

I suppose the first experience most people have of the benefits of grouping together is when taking on Hogger. The first thing I noticed is that people using the 10-day trial account are at a significant disadvantage here - they can't invite anybody to join their group. Instead they have to rely on somebody else to invite them. I joined such a pick-up group recently. We were a warrior, a priest and me. I was the highest level character, at level nine. The people were nice, but once it came to fighting Hogger, I made a huge mistake: as a mage, I'm only wearing cloth, and when (after one particularly fiery strike from my fireball spell) Hogger decided he was going to ignore the warrior in our group and swing his axe at me, well, I panicked.

What I should have done was coolly cast a Frost Nova spell at point blank range as he swung at me, then stepped back and let the warrior take his attention, and let the priest heal me. What I actually did was - I ran! I ran blindly away from Hogger. Hogger ran after me, and the warrior ran after Hogger. The priest couldn't target me to heal me, because I was moving so fast and both Hogger and the warrior were interfering with his target selection. You know what happened next. I got too close to a nearby gnoll camp and four stout gnoll warriors came out and gave Hogger a hand! They made mincemeat of the warrior and me, then Hogger returned to give the poor priest his full attention. We were wiped out.

However we learned from our mistakes. I learned the value of standing my ground and being prepared to die if it meant the group would succeed. I also learnt the value of making sure Frost Nova was available on my action bar. And the group leader learned the value of kicking a poor player out of his group!

What a pleasure it was, then, to meet a friendly Paladin who seemed to know what he was doing, and who invited me and three others to join him. We hung around, killing gnolls, until Hogger made his re-appearance, and were able to make fairly short work of him (because we'd been diligently killing gnolls beforehand, there were none around to intrude on our battle).

The pick-up group is one of the things that makes online gaming so interesting. You meet with some strangers, you work together on a task for a short time, you have some fun, some banter, then you go your separate ways. After a while you notice that you see the same characters again and again, because - guess what - they're levelling their characters at about the same rate as you are, and are often on the same quests. You avoid the people you don't get on with, you team up again with the people who are on your wavelength. Pretty soon you're becoming friends.

I have a change

The first thing I did on leaving Northshire was to head down to Goldshire, and got Innkeeper Farley to set my hearthstone to the Lion's Pride Inn.

What a fun place Goldshire is! Loads of exotica - my first sighting of elves and draenei and high-level characters mounted on all sorts of beasts - and my first duel. Of course I was rubbish and got killed immediately. Didn't know what I was doing. Anyway playing about dueling is a fun way to practice Player vs. Player fighting (PvP), and eventually I managed to win a duel and gain the "Duel-icious" achievement.

Goldshire is a great place to be based in, since so many of the Elwynn forest quests either involve you starting or ending there, or returning there to empty your bags (by selling the contents to Tharynn Bouden). I love the stories behind the quest chains!

I Am Born

As a new human mage, I came into the realm of Azuremyst a few months ago at Northshire Abbey, a complete novice to World of Warcraft. I knew nothing. Not even how to walk (funnily enough, we learnt to run before we could walk). Well, I've forgotten so much about how I learned those very basic things a few months ago, that I thought I'd jot down what I do remember before that, too, fades from memory!

I was tickled pink when I learned how to dance! (simply type /dance (and hit the enter key), or click on the emote button for a list of emotions you can display). Simple things amuse the innocent. I danced, I flexed my muscles, I waved, cried, begged, laughed. Man, I must have spent a half an hour just messing about like that.

One big mistake I made was to leave Northshire Abbey before I reached level 5. This just got me killed a lot! Inside the training grounds of the Abbey, I was fairly safe, but outside, I couldn't safely leave the path or I'd get stiffed by a Defias thief, or a spider. Lesson learned. I went back to the Abbey and kept up my training there until there were no more quests for me to do there.