Saturday, December 18, 2010

Oh Hai


I hate writing (and reading) posts about why there are no posts, so this won't be one of those. I also don't like going to WoW blogs for some escapism, and winding up reading posts about children and the wonders of raising them, so this won't be one of those either. Suffice to say that I don't have a lot of free time. I write about what I'm doing in my life, and I don't feel like redesigning the entire site layout to transform it into a "wonders of scripting in Python and managing print quotas on a wide scale with third party tracking software".

There are three things I gotta get off my chest real quick, though, and 66.6% of that is WoW related, so here goes:



1) Volatile Air. Really? If you don't know, Volatiles are the new "motes" or "Eternals" of whatever element. Volatile Life can be gained in abundance by herbing. Earth and water, while not as common as Life, can be got by mining. All can be farmed from non elite mobs (outside of instances) with an average droprate of 15% for Earth and Fire, 14% for Air, and a 19% droprate for Life (life is intended to be the most abundant, more on that in a sec).

Pretty standard, right? Except that no direct gathering skill that can obtain Air. Oh, but wait, there is. Engineers used to be able to roam around the maps and suck motes of air out of gas clouds since BC. The Zap-Throttle mote extractor no longer works, but there's a replacement that kicks in while an engineer is herbing, skinning, or mining. You have a chance to extract bonus Volatile Air during that process, assuming you have one of three possible tradeskill combinations.

Engineers who took Alchemy, Blacksmithing, Jewelcrafting, Inscription, Enchanting, Leatherworking or Tailoring are out of luck.

This is the first time a trade skill perk has required a second tradeskill be present to function at all.

Yes, there are tradeskills that play off of each other (Mining and Blacksmithing), or even some that require another alt or guildie to help you out (Enchanters needing rods, Leatherworkers needing Enchanted Leather), and there are some professions that are naturally suited to play off each other (Jewelcrafting's super gems going in a bonus socket provided by Blacksmithing), but never has there been a "if you're a tailor, you can sew these patterns in your cloak, but only if you're also a scribe".

There's an Alchemy transmute on a 24 hour cooldown that will transform 15 Volatile Life into 14-16 other Volatiles, but you can't predict what they'll be until you do it (which is tied to the same cooldown as the much more lucrative Truegold xmute, which incidentally requires 10x Volatile Air).

So this is basically me bitching that I can't use my engineer to feed Airs to my two xmuters, like I can use my Warlock who's "farming specced" (mining / herbing) to feed them Life, Fire, Earth, and prospectable ore and Pyrite bars.

I don't really see this changing, as they'd need to implement gas clouds, and they basically just got lazy and were like "fuck clouds, just give the herbs and mining modes a chance to proc Air motes, zzz". My Engineer isn't mining or herbing, so... gg.

2) Honeycrisp Apples. This is the 33.3% of the post that isn't about WoW, but OMFG run out and eat one of these if you haven't. They're hands down the best fucking apples on the planet, and I'm a man who loves me some apples. I had a friend who lamented to me one day that orange juice would never be the same anymore after she drank a glass on Ecstasy. That orange juice was the most amazing glass of orange juice she ever had, and whenever she drank orange juice now it paled in comparison.

Honeycrisp apples are like that. Granny Smith? Fuji? LOL AS IF. Get me some Honeycrisps or GTFO. They've actually been genetically engineered or something to be as delicious as possible, which might freak some people out, but screw that. I'm a big fan of technology, and if we can make super apples that stay crispy and taste like the flesh of God, then hell yes. Sign me up.

3) I miss my guilds. All of them. I'm in some crap guild now called "Chillin Villians", which in and of itself is embarassing. I have to stand around Orgimmar with that under my name. I joined it because it was going to be doing rated BGs, which sound interesting, and I knew I wanted to be in SOME guild for the perks like mount speed and bonus XP / gold while leveling. I haven't interacted with any of these putzes in my time in the guild, and actually find myself digging through my friends list and finding old arena-mates to prospect my ore or whatever.

BUT!

I dare not leave, until I have something else lined up because of said perks. Guild membership is something that directly relates to gameplay, which is what they intended. Good! But, for someone who's becoming super casual as a result of just having no time to play (farming specced warlock at 82, main priest at 81, no one else even logged in for choosing talent specs yet), I feel like if I'm NOT in a guild at all (even one that I don't interact with and chose a ridiculous name), I'm shooting myself in the foot.

Trade has become full of people advertising guilds that don't care who you are at all. We're becoming families of strangers, but we get welfare checks from the government of WoW for banding together and toughing it out, all while still totally alone.

:(

13 comments:

Figworth said...

If you preform the alchemy transmutation in Uldum, it'll always be volatile air. This comes from a blue post explaining that where you preform it has an effect on what the result is.

Rich said...

Interesting.... But it's odd the tooltip says specifically that you won't know what the xmute will produce....

Nearlight said...

welcome back ixobelle been a long long time

Klepsacovic said...

In my experience the mote extractor was most useful while I was out farming (mining) anyway. If anything I'm surprised that it works with non-mining gathering. But your point remains: this is totally new. I wonder what the next steps are.

david said...

Nice to see you back!

Rich said...

Klep: yeah, I can see that being the case, where you're out for one thing and pick up another, but I would go out "farming" with just the extractor, and while not as effective as my lock, I could pull in materials of a different kind (motes). I guess it made engineering a weak version of a gathering skill, in addition to it being what it is already, so maybe I was having my cake and eating it too.

Nearlight and david: <3

Griddlebone said...

Wb Ixo!

I'm not sure about the future consequences; I mean, it could be another experiment or it could be something they just didn't think about and threw on last-minute. Speaking of that, I've noticed the level of polish in this expansion go down considerably; the cutscenes especially feel pretty half-arsed most of the time.

Tesh said...

"Trade has become full of people advertising guilds that don't care who you are at all. We're becoming families of strangers, but we get welfare checks from the government of WoW for banding together and toughing it out, all while still totally alone."

A natural consequence of incentivizing guild membership. As I've argued so many times before, you cannot force socialization, it will always backfire. It has to happen because people want to be together, not because they get shinies if they play nice.

Oh, and good to hear you're alive. Did I tell you the story about my kids lately? I'm sure I have some slides around here somewhere to get you caught up on the last few weeks.

Isey said...

ha - I was just revisiting your site to say 'come back to the interwebs' and here you are.

Coolest guild name ever. How do I sign up? =)

Kiryn said...

My fiance and I haven't played WoW since last summer and don't really intend to come back for Cataclysm any time soon, but I still stay subscribed to a few WoW-related blogs.

Our first reaction to reading this post was to go out and find some honeycrisp apples. OMG you're totally right. These are the best apples I've ever had. Any other apples will forever be disappointing.

River said...

Good to see you back....But I'm sorry Golden Delicious are superior apples.

Sage said...

Oh, and companies can sue you into the ground for illegally using their seeds. This is equivalent to your plants being converted, because hey, you must of grabbed some seeds from somewhere.

It gets dirtier from there. Either farmers lose their property, they fight an insanely long legal battle, or they become a snitch for GMO companies.

Anyone who fights is harassed (people park by their property and watch them, threats on their life, alienation from their whole area). At it's base, it is, right now, a land grab. Later, it could be worse.

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