Syp's picture contest

Syp at Bio Break is running a picture contest. He wants pictures of people "doing something MMO-y in the real world". I presume he means Azeroth. Outland's pretty unreal.

Here are my images of my guildies dressed up in their raid gear as characters from Earth Online.

Our raid leader explains our tactics for defeating the boss with
our new legendary weapon  - the [Projector of a Thousand Slides]

An epic projector from an earlier tier of raiding from the expansion "The Burning Celluloid"
- this is the [Projector of  Silent Movies]

The Boss

Raid wipe.

Killing Captcha

I was complaining yesterday about how I was losing comments that I posted to Wordpress blogs. In turn, Syncaine wrote about how he found it frustrating commenting on Blogger-hosted blogs. I sympathize with him and several of his commenters. Captcha is the bugbear here, and I thought I'd take a look at the Blogger settings to see if I couldn't turn it off. I found out how, so if you are a Blogger blogger, and want to do the same, here's what to do:

1. Go to http://www.blogger.com/home (log on). You'll see a list of your blogs.

2. To the right of each blog name, there are a set of actions you can do for that blog. There's a little inverted triangle ("more options") among them. Click on it to see the options for the blog

3. Select "Settings" (the bottom option)

4. Click on "Posts and Comments"

5. Change the setting "Show Word Verification" to "No".

6. Save your changes!

20 days of gold making - day 8 - reaching your goal

The next question that Nev posed on AHAddict is:

Thinking back to day 2, did you ever reach your goal or are you still working towards it? If you reached it - have you set yourself a new one

Oh, dear, I answered that on day two! Serves me right for not looking ahead.

I'll answer a similar question instead. Having reached my immediate goal of having enough money to buy some netherweave bags, and then my longer term goal of having as much gold as I need to buy anything I want, what am I actually doing with the gold?  Aha! I'll avoid answering question 19 just now ("gifts and presents"). What did I do with the gold, other than buying presents for myself?

Well, I will spend money to make money: for instance on tailoring patterns for desirable costumes. But that isn't the main use of my gold.

Growing up in Azeroth, I was enchanted by the world, despite the despoliation wreaked upon it by the invaders from beyond the dark portal and within. I was proud that my training could be put to use helping our Alliance in its struggle against the Horde, the Burning Legion, the scourge of the Lich King, the corrupt old gods and the madness of Deathwing. Even today we struggle on the unfamiliar island of Pandaria against enemies old and new. That is my purpose in life: to protect our Alliance from all threats.

Like all adventurers, I want to be the best I can be. So I spend my money freely on arms and armour, potions and preparations, flasks and feasts. I have never spared any expense in buying the best gear I can get, and properly preparing it with magical gems, charms and enchantments. And then repairing it.

My dieting regime is strict: I eat the finest Pandaren banquets, and the nootropic delicacies of the pot and the alchemist. Fish oil really does boost intelligence. I do a little farming in Farmer Yoon's ranch. He lets me keep all the crops, though in return he wants me to do all the work. No wonder the Mudclaws don't think much of him. But really, labouring on a farm is no sort of life for an adventurer while there are still orcs to be killed. And I'm too busy (I mean 'lazy') to actually do much fishing, so I buy most of my food at auction.

I'll tell you about my special treats on day 19.

Part of the 20 days of Gold Making series

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

Problems with commenting on Wordpress sites / Reputation revisited

Am I the only person having problems getting my comments published on Wordpress sites? It seems that for the last two months or so, my comments on most of these sites have vanished into the ether. It's very frustrating when I have matters of immense gravity and import to convey, but I can't comment on Syncaine's site, on Azuriel's site, on Cynwise's site, on Pugnacious Priest's website and a ton of others. I think it's because I don't log on with a twitter account, a wordpress account or a facebook account, and I don't want a gravatar. I just want to publish my comment, so I fill in my email address, my name and my website address in the three fields provided, enter my important comment, and click the "Post Comment" button. From there, the comment disappears off into the clouds (I am not even bothered by a captcha image to confirm the presence of my soul), never to be seen again.

Stop Press!
Azuriel figured out what was going on. My comments were in his spam filter. Erinys at Harpy's Nest tracked the problem down to the Wordpress spam-filter addon, Akismet, which seems to be a tad overzealous. I wrote to Akismet explaining the problem, and after a few days they added me to their whitelist.



Anyway, the last comment to disappear on me was one I tried to make on Azuriel's site, where he was looking forward to the rep changes in 5.2 (okay, he just said he was looking toward the changes, but I know how to read between the lines). Well, I'm not looking forward to them. I already mentioned in my Reputation article some problems with Blizzards reputation system. The changes in 5.2 are a retrograde step that just trivialize it further. Thank the Light that there are no tabards, at least!

Twenty Days of Gold Making - Day 6 - Best Market ever!

Which market has made you the most gold over the years?

That's an easy one to answer. Since I started, I've made more gold on glyphs than on anything else. Sadly, those days are behind us now. Blizzard made some important changes to glyphs back in October of 2010, with patch 4.01, the lead-in to the Cataclysm. This was the high-point of gold making through glyphs. Before this, when you learned a glyph, it became immediately active, replacing and destroying any previous glyph you had in that slot. Just like gems. After 4.01, however, once you learned a glyph it was never destroyed: it stayed available to you to activate at any time. This led to a spike in demand, as adventurers rushed to learn every glyph available to their class (since they were no longer destroyed, just activated or deactivated).

On the supply side, Blizzard had just successfully activated its Warden bot-catching programme, reducing the amount of herbs available, and also tripled the ink requirements for glyphs, so supply dried up. The result was that any scribe who had glyphs could sell them for a small fortune.

However, the downside of that for scribes has been twofold: the price spike attracted new scribes. Competition increased, and supply increased. Once people had bought all the glyphs available for their class, there was no more demand. So prices have steadily been dropping since Glyphmas 2010. It has been particularly bad for scribes (and good for everyone else) since our arrival in Pandaria. I'm not quite sure why that is. A new character race should have provided some new demand. Certainly a new class did, and monk glyphs are holding up reasonably, even as the other classes' glyphs tank. Perhaps it was that scribes stockpiled in preparation for another Glyphmas at the start of MoP, which never materialised.

Anyway, what's certain is that glyph sales are still a falling knife. As demand dries up, prices are dropping. Herbs aren't getting milled so there's a glut of them, dropping herb prices as well.

It isn't all bad for scribes: new Darkmoon decks, new offhand items, and new shoulder enhancements have kept them in cash. But glyphs aren't a licence to print money any more!

What's replacing it? Well, gems are still good, I suppose, especially if you're willing to camp the AH. I don't have any jewellers, so I can't benefit. We are going through a period of rapid change of gear as people qualify for heroics and then more and more LFR raids; replacing gear with new drops. This gear needs to be both bejewelled and enchanted.

Part of the 20 days of Gold Making series

Twenty Days of Gold Making - Day 5 - Different bankers

Do you keep the same banker alt or do you change them up occasionally? Why?

Actually, no, I've always kept the same banker alt. I simply don't have any desire to reposition my banker, Fuill. She's happy doing that job, and I'm thankful she's happy and I don't have to find another banker. Plus now that she is also the guild master (and in control of the guild bank), it would be too much hassle to move her from the roles she now fulfils.She's no-longer XP capped, though, and is planning to PvP her way to level 39, when she must decide whether to stop there, or carry on to the top of the next PvP band.

Part of the 20 days of Gold Making series