Flight of Fancy - Silly Ideas for Micro-transactions in WoW

The big news last week was a datamined snippet of a potion/elixir that you would be able to buy at the in-game store which gave a 100% XP boost. Apparently it was confirmed today but only for the Asian markets but that hasn't stopped lots of people from talking about micro-transactions & in-game stores and the eventual decline of WoW to a free to play game!

I'm not too worried about all that to be honest but I did have a few stray thoughts as to what Blizzard might put in this new in-game store to tempt us gullible players into parting with even more cash! I'm sure they would include the existing pets & mounts which would make it even easier to splurge on them. Currently I think I've only bought maybe 1 mount & 1 pet & that was for a giveaway on my other blog but if it was easy access in-game, I think I'd find it harder to resist!

So here's my list of ideas so far - some old favorites that would be a perfect way for Blizzard to keep lots of people happy & some silly ones too :)

• Good old armor dye packs - perfect for when you can't find that purple cloak to match the rest of your transmog maybe?
• Tabard bag/closet - they took the key bag away to free up some space on the toolbar so maybe the tabard bag could be an extra slot in your bank that just accepts tabards & doesn't cost a lot of gold like Void Storage does!
• Transformation potions - there are loads of nifty gadgets & baubles in game that let you change your appearance temporarily - some for 30 seconds & some for 3-5 minutes but most break when spell casting. Wouldn't it be fun to transform for say 1 hour & not have it break for any reason? Probably my favourite is the Super Simian Sphere but there's also Orb of Deception & Orb of Sin'dorei, a Time-Lost Figurine, Bones of Transformation & of course the Savory Deviate Delight too, just to name a few. Most are rare drops so having a 10-15 minute potion available could be a fun vanity item. 
• Outfits for pets, saddles/bridles etc for mounts - don't need storage - just a drop down list of what you have & you click to select. Little tabards, head decor, maybe themed for time of year or in game festivals or even famous sports teams maybe?
• Portal stones - like the ones you can grow on the farm but more useful! I'd say these would sell well especially if they went to more remote places & not necessarily to major cities - bit like the engineering wormhole generators perhaps.
• Buy a lvl 90 but only of a class you already have at max level - part of the hassle of changing server is either paying to transfer or re-leveling. If you could buy a lvl 90 - in basic greens maybe - especially with the new Virtual Realms being discussed, I know I would be tempted. Make it cheaper than a transfer, race or faction change & more people will buy into it. There would obviously need to be some kinds of restrictions but if you already know how to play at level 90, why would you 'have' to level it all over again?

I'm pretty sure there will be all sorts of ideas & suggestions floating around & perhaps Blizzard will pick up on some of them, who knows. I just know it's a fun thing to speculate about & that's all it is right now. maybe in 2 years, I'll read this post & see how close I was!

What would you be tempted to buy? What would you put in the store that you think would sell well? Let me know in the comments if you'd like to :)

****************

Check out some of my Squidoo lenses!

Horde Gift Guide | Alliance Gift Guide

Secret Projects, New Tech & More!

I Love Cuddles!

It's been a strange week here at Casa Nev - full of ups & downs as the 1 year anniversary of my breast cancer looms ever closer with my hospital check-up next week. I thought I was ok with it all but that appointment is definitely looming ever larger in my random thoughts. Not that I think there's anything to worry about but I guess I won't rest easy until I get a definite all clear again.

Been busy at work in my new job - week 3 and we had the annual auditors visit - interesting when they are asking me stuff like 'where's this invoice' and all I can say is 'see that cupboard over there?' because I have no idea yet where anything is or how things were done in the last financial year!

I started the week in WoW with more pet battles but I finally caved in and treated myself to an iPad which arrived on Wednesday. I spent most of that evening downloading new apps and logging in to my regular ones like Twitter. It was most peculiar to be sitting at my computer & responding to tweets via iPad even though I had Twitter open on my PC!

I treated myself to Netflix too so Thursday evening was the first evening since last August that I spent away from my computer desk. I actually sat on the sofa and watched some tv & played some silly games. That may sound strange but as I didn't even have a sofa until about 3 months ago & I still have no television, I haven't had many options for getting away from the PC other than to lie in bed & read or sit on the floor or something! Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining at all - I made my choices & I'm pretty happy with them so far.

I've also started my own improvement project - joining a gym, eating sensibly & trying to shape up a bit. Eventually I'll add giving up smoking to that list but with everything going on, I don't think right now is the best time to add nicotine withdrawal to my list! There's something else on my self-improvement list but I don't think I'm ready to share that yet - it will be the biggest step though and probably another life-changer for me.

As for my secret project, that started a couple of weeks ago & this morning was almost finalised. The end results will be made public in the next few days & I am mega-stoked to share it with you. It's been really hard keeping it to myself but I think & I hope it will be a popular move with my friends & my readers.

I'll be back to pet battling posts next time though - I'm heading in now to finish of Northrend & maybe the Cataclysm zones too before bedtime tonight! 

****************

Check out some of my Squidoo lenses!

Horde Gift Guide | Alliance Gift Guide

Pet Battle Addict? Just Maybe!

In my previous post, I explained how Rez has been almost solely responsible for getting me addicted to pet battles! Yes, I'd already had a dabble before but I found the long slow way to level pets kind of boring so had walked away from it. When he talked about the speed leveling post, I just had to give it another try didn't I?

So here's a summary of my game time this last week!

Monday - not shown as a screenshot is the achievement for Zen Pet Hunter which is for capturing 200 pets in battles. I finally managed to finish the speed leveling method and got a level 25 Dragonbone Hatching. It took me ages until I finally realised that I didn't have to keep my pets alive as the trainer was nearby. I'd been playing tactically - swapping them in & out depending on their health so the XP was being spread between all three pets & slowing me down! But in the slow process, I did manage to pick up some rare quality pets of level 22 so I have a fair few high level rares to play with now.

After a random comment from Cold on Twitter, I also realised I didn't have to level specific pets to beat the final Pet Tamer - just use my high level ones & blast her down! I tend to get a bit too focused sometimes & miss the obvious shortcuts!

Tuesday - I decided I only needed a few more pets to capture in various zones across Eastern Kingdoms to finish the Eastern Kingdom Tamer achievement - to capture a pet in every zone. In doing so, I finally hit the magical total of 250 unique pets so I got my Feral Vermling pet too!

Wednesday - I woke up about 40 mins before my alarm went off and as I had so much time & it was so early, I thought I'd try my luck with the seasonal Qiraji Guardling. I'd left my hunter in Uldum the night before so it was just a short flight across to An'Qiraj & there they were! I was surprised to be the only player there too but it worked out well & I got my Guardling really easily - just a grey but I can fix that later! 

What I hadn't realised though is that I only needed to capture a humanoid pet to get my Family Reunion achievement and of course, the Qiraji Guardling is humanoid! It was so early, I was slow & didn't get a screenshot for that achievement though!

Thursday - I set out to complete my Kalimdor Tamer - I only needed to capture a pet in about 5 different zones so that was easy but slow - I used my hearthstone & portals in Stormwind to move across the continent but it was still slow!

Friday - I spent a little while flying around Kalimdor again - I'd forgotten to battle the 5 pet tamers for the quest so that was frustrating but I did it eventually and got my final achievement for this week!

To Do List - So now I have to capture pets in every zone in Outland, Northrend & Pandaria and fight the pet tamers there too. I'll undoubtedly be adding more pets to my collection towards the 400 pets achievement and each unique pet I capture will also count towards the Safari achievements. Each rare I manage to capture will count towards the 50 rares achievement too.

Now that I have a better understanding of the speed leveling process, I might try it again with a fresh set of pets & time myself this time - the claim for a level 25 in one hour seems impossible to me but I'll let you know how that goes!

Also this week, Liopleurodon wrote a great post about Pet Battle PvP 101 - I'm resisting so far but as my stable of level 25 pets increases, I'm sure I'll get sucked in there too!

****************

Level a Pet to 25 Quickly? Yes Please!

Pet Dragon? Yes please!

Hmmm so I promised myself more WoW time & somehow I managed to spend about 4 hours in game yesterday & lost most of this morning there too! Yesterday was spent sorting out banks and crafting lots of things to sell after I bought a whole bunch of stuff of the Auction House but that's a story for my other blog AH Addict!

Today I popped in to just do my auctions & use my cooldowns on my various alts. I had no intention of really playing anything as I have a long list of stuff I should be doing. But when I logged my Hunter to make my living steel for today, she was over in Deadwind Pass & there was an Arcane Eye pet just in front of me so I just had to try to get it!

I was a guest on EGP about 3 weeks ago but it seems like much longer (sad face here) and Rez is just a wee bit addicted to pet battles. One of the subjects he talked about in that episode is how to level a pet to 25 quickly. By capturing level 16-18 Arcane Eyes with lowish level mechanical team then jumping to Dragonblight with the Arcane Eyes team to get the level 21-22 Condors, you can skip a lot of the in-between leveling. The forum post that explains it in more detail reckons you can do it in an hour but it's taken me much longer just to get 2 uncommon (green) quality Arcane Eyes and just as I was getting fed up & had promised myself just one more, I snagged a rare (blue) quality one too!

So that kind of got me buzzing again but I couldn't be bothered to drag an alt all the way over to Dragonblight. I had my DK over there just 3 days ago but had decided I wasn't going to need her for a while so hearthed her back to Half Hill just yesterday! I decided to try for the Eastern Kingdom Trainers quest - the one where you have to beat 5 trainers? Yeah that one! My Clockwork Robot is level 16 now because it took me so long to get those Arcance Eyes & I have a level 17 rare Arcane Eye and my Mr Grubbs is level 14ish and I thought I could do it. I did manage to get the first 4 done but that nasty dwarf Durin Darkhammer has some horrible tricks up his sleeve!

I've found a helpful bit on Wowhead in the comments though and apparently I need a level 17 magic/aquatic/beast combo so I guess I need to do some more leveling before I can tackle him & his pets! I think I'll focus on getting at least one to level 25 first though - that will let me capture some higher level wild pets & hopefully that will make fighting him easier! Guess I'm off to Dragonblight after all then!

****************

Still Here, Still Talking!

oh to fly away again!

Last time I posted, I was deep into Neverwinter & enjoying my holiday. Now I've been back a couple of weeks & it honestly feels like I've never been away - work was kind of backed up when I returned & this week I moved desks to start my new position. I've just signed a 12 month contract to cover maternity & sick leave for the Accounts Assistant.

Timing wasn't the best though - the boss lady is on vacation herself this week so I had 2-3 days with her last week & spent most of this week pretty much trying to work out how to do stuff from what they did last time! It's nice to be using my brain again, that's for sure!

As far as Neverwinter goes - I'm still playing although not so much. I was playing my Cleric with Cold of Cold's Gold Factory and as he is on massive overtime at the moment, we've not been able to match up our schedules! So that's left me with WoW again - I actually did a dungeon this week - Heroic Scholomance with my favorite guildie. He was surprised I didn't know my way around until I told him I'd only been through there 1 or 2 times ages & ages ago!

I'd prepared him for my rubbish DPS but he'd made a couple of suggestions before the queue popped & I think it helped because my DPS wasn't anywhere near as bad as I thought it was! After we got out of there, he joined a group for Nalak & dragged me along there too - I got the ilevel 522 legs from the boss loot & got them again on my bonus roll - how frustrating! So now my item level is 467 and I'm running out of excuses to not do LFR!

I also reached exalted with Shado-Pan at last so now I'm doing the August Celestials & Shieldwall Offensive work orders on my Tillers farm. I will get all the reputations eventually - I only need 3 more for the 45 reps achievement & I have 5 Cataclysm factions at revered so I should probably go back & sort those out too!

I also guested on not one but two podcasts this week! On Monday evening, I joined Phatlewts, Goblin Raset, Manthieus & Novitsh for the Happy Hour Roundtable podcast to discuss the upcoming patch 5.4 and some of the PTR notes. It was great fun and nice to hear some non-US accents for a change.

Then this morning, I joined my fellow Brit goldmaker extraordinaire Marcus Ty for episode 7 of his podcast - The Journal of Marcus Ty. When I tell you the skype call was 3 hours long, don't worry, we didn't record the whole time & Marcus is great at editing! It was great fun & I hope you can hear how much we enjoyed putting the show together for you - it's not published yet but if you're feeling curious, I was also a guest on episode 3 so you can hear my crazy Brit accent!

So I have promised myself to get more time in WoW next week - I have pets to collect & battle, gold to make & achievements to work on even if I don't really play any alts! With the Midsummer Festival XP bonus though - now might be a good time to push my 3 level 85/86's towards 90 - at least that will give me more choices of what not to play at end game!

****************

Check out some of my Squidoo lenses!

Horde Gift Guide | Alliance Gift Guide

Neverwinter - My Latest Distraction

It's been over a month since I posted on AH Addict & almost as long for this blog but now you get 2 posts in one day!  I'm away on my travels again so I've hardly been online at all even though I have access on an old PC, it drives me crazy because it's so old & slow & prone to blue screens! My friend has gone back to work after almost a full week off & I thought I'd better get my brain going again!

A few weeks ago, my Twitter feed was alight with talk of a new free to play MMO called Neverwinter. I wouldn't call myself a gamer girl by any means, I don't think playing WoW for 3 years really qualifies me for that. I've never played any other MMO unless you count about 3 hours in Rift on a PC that could barely run it so Neverwinter has been quite an eye opener for me.

For starters, the whole movement thing had me confused, press w & use the mouse to steer? I've been a keyboard mover in WoW for years so that was a bit weird & when I did briefly log into WoW, I struggled to move there - kept moving my mouse & wondering why I wasn't changing direction! lol

What I haven't done in Neverwinter is play the Auction House there - I find the interface very limited & the volume & sheer amount of unknown stuff is daunting. I thought I'd whizz through on one character to get a feel for professions & what loot drops might be like but it turns out, I'm not just slow leveler in WoW, I'm slow in Neverwinter too! It's not too difficult to make Astral Diamonds in Neverwinter though, I'm just being very lazy!

I've been playing a Devoted Cleric (heals/damage/ranged) & a Control Wizard (damage/ranged) - I tried the Guardian Fighter to tank with Cold running a Cleric to heal - thinking we could blast through but I hated the Guardian Fighter! I've also started a Great Weapon Fighter & although she's only level 5-6 right now, so far, I quite like it.

When I get home again though, I have to decide whether to halt my WoW subscription or play properly & put Neverwinter on a back burner. I want to keep my AH Addict blog going & if I can find a nice project to work on, Neverwinter will be an occasional thing but I am enjoying it. I'd definitely recommend giving it a try even if I have no other game experience to compare it too. It's definitely not like WoW though so don't expect a WoW-clone. I'm on the Mindflayer Shard if you want to add me - set up your character there & poke me here or on Twitter & I'll give you my details then :)

I'll probably put a few Neverwinter posts here when I gather my thoughts more, I'm sure there is all sorts of stuff that could be talked about, especially as it's so new there are very few blogs or fansites out there yet!

****************

Check out some of my Squidoo lenses!

Horde Gift Guide | Alliance Gift Guide

School of Hard Knocks - Oh Yeah, Well-named!

So I took a week or so off Wow, not realising it was Children's Week - which is a bit of a nuisance as the Children's Week achievement is the last one I need for the meta-achievement & more importantly, the Violet Proto Drake. So yesterday morning, I woke up promising myself a day of PvP if it killed me!

That was at about 8am but by 11am I still hadn't logged in to game - I actually did some long-overdue housework as a way to delay the PvP experience! Now I know you guys don't know me very well but let's just say, housework is really not high on my list of priorities in life so I was grasping at straws by using it as a delaying tactic!

Eventually though, everything was shiny & clean & I couldn't find anything else to distract me so I logged in & went & found my Orphan. I've done a bit of PvP over the last few years but usually on a lowbie or on my Hunter. This time around, my hunter is still sitting in Halfhill in level 85 Cataclysm leveling gear so I figured my Paladin was probably my only option for this attempt.

The annoying thing is when everyone says PvP is easy or just got to keep trying - believe me, I have tried, many times but the four objectives required for the achievement have never happened in any PvP battleground for me, let alone when I really need to do them for the achieve!

I eventually managed to assault a flag in Arathi Basin - I thought I had it on the 4th battleground but it seems I clicked a little prematurely & merely defended the base instead of assaulting it! In the 5th AB, I just missed the Gold Mine flag as some nice person used a speed boost/sprint gizmo & beat me to it. That battleground was a whitewash almost - the Horde team had us hemmed in at the stables & were camping the graveyard. It felt totally useless to keep trying but I managed to slip away & raced to the Lumbermill, around a big fight at the edge of the road there. I was super lucky & all the Horde had gone to join in the huge gankfest happening below so I just sauntered up to the flag & finally, after so much annoyance & fruitless efforts earlier, I clicked the flag & the cast time happened without getting sapped or dazed or insta-killed!

I think I'd have kept this orphan!

So next I thought I'd try Warsong Gulch - I love WSG as a lowbie but although I have managed to carry the flag there a few times, I usually either heal or protect our flag carrier from range. I was advised to camp the flagroom & hope I could return a dropped flag but it seems the Horde had their strongest PvP teams out yesterday - our flag carrier never even got to their base & their flag carrier arrived with about 3 healers & 2 rogues as his escort. I did manage to slow him down but I'm no match for 2 rogues - ever! Even bad rogues have fun with me, I'm that bad at pvp!

So three attempts at Warsong Gulch & no glimmer of returning a flag, I thought I'd try Eye of the Storm - it's about the only place I have ever managed to cap a flag previously so I was a little hopeful. I had three more attempts there before realising that Sunday afternoon at the end of Children's Week, is probably not the best time to try. I didn't even queue for Alterac Valley - I usually just follow the masses there & if I die, I get lost. I hate that place so after all my failed attempts, I just couldn't face it.

I did manage to pick up 2 more of the Children's Week pets though - I was hoping to take more than one alt around the quests to get the remaining 3 that I don't have but I got sidetracked (which is another post) again & never logged back in last night!

Not the best of my weeks in WoW but I've needed this achievement for 3 years straight now & honestly, this is the first time I've even tried it! As one of my favourite podcasts have a habit of saying - I guess I should put it on the board - under long term goals & take steps to practice a lot harder before this time next year!

****************

Check out some of my Squidoo lenses!

Horde Gift Guide | Alliance Gift Guide