A while back I applied authenticators to both my and my girlfriends wow accounts. Her account had gotten hacked twice in 2 months but the hackers just logged on and looked at the characters. Luckily I had been on and seen them logging on. Both times I quickly logged on and changed the passwords and locked them out.
We never lost any gold, gear or toons, but I learned my lesson and put authenticators on both accounts.
This week we tried to log on to her account and found the password had been changed. Thank god we had the authenticator because even though they could change the password they couldn't log on.
What I believe happened was she had changed her email password back to what it used to be and the hackers just logged on to her email and went to battle.net to do a password recovery.
The authenticators may take some getting used to, but man are they worth it.
Friday, July 23, 2010
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Back to the gold making
It's been a while since I concentrated on making gold. I have more than enough gold to be comfortable so I haven't grinded out the ah stuff in a while. At most I have been posting glyphs about once a week for a few months now.
I have only been on the selling side of things for those few months because I had a stockpile of about 10 thousand ink of the sea. Last week I noticed my profit margin was way up. I decided to take a look at why that might be. I found that herb prices were sky high compared to what I was paying when I made my stockpile.
Low level herbs were about 4g a stack, now they are at 17g. High level herbs were at 12g per stack now 24g. And they have been staying that way for weeks now. Something is up.
I only see prices like this for a week or so after blizz hands out mass bans to gold farmers. Usually the prices come down as the farmers get toons up to the level they can farm again.
So what is happening now? Why wont the prices drop back? The answer is Battle.net and Warden 2.0. Now that blizzard has a solid way to identify and ban farmers we are seeing markedly less of them around. Less farmers = less competition. Less competition = higher prices.
Now lots of people see the higher herb prices as a bad thing. They see the cash cow limping along and not making the mountains of gold that it once was. Those of us goblins who see the wind blowing have already adjusted accordingly.
For instance: When I made my stockpile of inks, the mats cost came out to 80s or 2g12s for each ink of the sea depending on what I did with the snowfall inks. At the time I was making a profit off the DMF cards so it was the 80s mark. I could sell a glyph for 1g31s and still make a (miniscule) profit.
If I were to buy herbs now at 17g and 24g a stack my ink price would be about 1g60s or 4g depending on if I could sell DMF cards at a profit for the lower price. I cant so, my new glyph price is 4g per ink and any DMF cards I sell is pure profit.
Add 50s for each parchment and my glyph prices to break even used to be 1g30s (if my DMF cards sold which they did). Now its 4g50s per glyph with any profit from DMF cards as extra free income.
Big hit right? wrong. Since everyone has to pay these herb prices and no one can make a profit over mats costs on DMF cards, we are all in the same boat. Anyone selling under this price will lose money and eventually have to quit. The good thing is that those who haven't figured this out yet are falling by the wayside. Glyph prices are going up and with them the profit margins are too.
The biggest beauty of the whole thing is that I still have about 5 thousand inks in the bank that I bought (as mats) at about 2g each and my new bottom line reflects the current prices at 4g. If a glyph sells at my lowest price I still make 2g profit over what I payed in materials.
Bottom line is I love warden and blizzards efforts to eliminate bots and gold farmers. Sure the cheap mats are gone, but so are the part time competition and the quick buck people who don't want to put the work in. Less people who are trying for a cut means bigger slices for those of us who can still work the market.
It may just be time to reexamine whatever profession you have to see if some items have become profitable again now that less people are in the markets.
I have only been on the selling side of things for those few months because I had a stockpile of about 10 thousand ink of the sea. Last week I noticed my profit margin was way up. I decided to take a look at why that might be. I found that herb prices were sky high compared to what I was paying when I made my stockpile.
Low level herbs were about 4g a stack, now they are at 17g. High level herbs were at 12g per stack now 24g. And they have been staying that way for weeks now. Something is up.
I only see prices like this for a week or so after blizz hands out mass bans to gold farmers. Usually the prices come down as the farmers get toons up to the level they can farm again.
So what is happening now? Why wont the prices drop back? The answer is Battle.net and Warden 2.0. Now that blizzard has a solid way to identify and ban farmers we are seeing markedly less of them around. Less farmers = less competition. Less competition = higher prices.
Now lots of people see the higher herb prices as a bad thing. They see the cash cow limping along and not making the mountains of gold that it once was. Those of us goblins who see the wind blowing have already adjusted accordingly.
For instance: When I made my stockpile of inks, the mats cost came out to 80s or 2g12s for each ink of the sea depending on what I did with the snowfall inks. At the time I was making a profit off the DMF cards so it was the 80s mark. I could sell a glyph for 1g31s and still make a (miniscule) profit.
If I were to buy herbs now at 17g and 24g a stack my ink price would be about 1g60s or 4g depending on if I could sell DMF cards at a profit for the lower price. I cant so, my new glyph price is 4g per ink and any DMF cards I sell is pure profit.
Add 50s for each parchment and my glyph prices to break even used to be 1g30s (if my DMF cards sold which they did). Now its 4g50s per glyph with any profit from DMF cards as extra free income.
Big hit right? wrong. Since everyone has to pay these herb prices and no one can make a profit over mats costs on DMF cards, we are all in the same boat. Anyone selling under this price will lose money and eventually have to quit. The good thing is that those who haven't figured this out yet are falling by the wayside. Glyph prices are going up and with them the profit margins are too.
The biggest beauty of the whole thing is that I still have about 5 thousand inks in the bank that I bought (as mats) at about 2g each and my new bottom line reflects the current prices at 4g. If a glyph sells at my lowest price I still make 2g profit over what I payed in materials.
Bottom line is I love warden and blizzards efforts to eliminate bots and gold farmers. Sure the cheap mats are gone, but so are the part time competition and the quick buck people who don't want to put the work in. Less people who are trying for a cut means bigger slices for those of us who can still work the market.
It may just be time to reexamine whatever profession you have to see if some items have become profitable again now that less people are in the markets.
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Friday, July 9, 2010
Week 1 of Unholy
As blood, I had my attack priority down. I was about as close to perfect rotation I could be while still being human and having lapses in concentration.
I used to rank in the top 200 on world of logs about every week on a few fights at least. Lately I haven't gotten ranked at all. I have been in the high 90s in percentage of the #200 spot, but I attribute this to not having all bis items and no shadowmourne.
This week as unholy I made it to about 80 or 90 percent of that #200 rank. Since WAY more dk's are unholy I am betting that the top 200 all have shadowmourne and close to bis.
I also am still trying to get the rotation down perfect so that 80-90 percent scores will just go up.
Taking all this into account, I am pulling about 1.5k more dps in unholy than I was in blood. I still think blood is a more fun play-style, but in a world were a 10dps upgrade is worth paying for, you just cant justify not playing uh as a 2h spec.
In other news we downed H prof putricide for the first time this week. Sindra is all that is left before we hit our heads on the steel reinforced brick wall that is H lich king.
I used to rank in the top 200 on world of logs about every week on a few fights at least. Lately I haven't gotten ranked at all. I have been in the high 90s in percentage of the #200 spot, but I attribute this to not having all bis items and no shadowmourne.
This week as unholy I made it to about 80 or 90 percent of that #200 rank. Since WAY more dk's are unholy I am betting that the top 200 all have shadowmourne and close to bis.
I also am still trying to get the rotation down perfect so that 80-90 percent scores will just go up.
Taking all this into account, I am pulling about 1.5k more dps in unholy than I was in blood. I still think blood is a more fun play-style, but in a world were a 10dps upgrade is worth paying for, you just cant justify not playing uh as a 2h spec.
In other news we downed H prof putricide for the first time this week. Sindra is all that is left before we hit our heads on the steel reinforced brick wall that is H lich king.
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Yes, we're all individuals! ... I'm not.
I used to be an individual. Now I am a follower. Not because I want to be but because my mele section leader made me.
See, I'm a DK. I was blood and loving it. I am now Unholy. Boo hoo, woe is me. I was made to spec into the higher dps tree. I could go into the reasons why blood is a good spec, but when you raid it comes down to min/max and the numbers are just showing that Unholy is way better than Blood.
I was great as blood. A big fish in a little pond. I looked around at wws and wol and couldn't find another blood dk that pulled as much dps as me on my server. I used to rank in the top 200 in the world until those ranks got populated with Shadowmourne wielding DK's. In fact I was the #1 Blood DK in the world for a bit on festergut 10. the tank and spank fight in ICC. This was when the ICC buff was only at 5%
None of that matters. With the change to Scourge Strike and the ICC buff gone above 15% Unholy is pulling farther and farther away. It is the best 2h dps a DK can run. Frost DW is a close second if you don't have SM.
Well, I am getting SM next week (most likely, only a few shards left) so UH is my lot in life.
Might as well get used to it though. In Cataclysm blood is the tanking tree and there will be no such thing as blood dps.
Oh by the way, in the video, verity is played by the woman who pulls Brian out of the window at the end.
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