Thursday, October 23, 2008

Inscription

Well, I have decided to jump on the bandwagon an make my mage an inscriptor (inscriptionator ?) hehe She is already a herbalist so that's convenient, as that is the gathering profession that goes with inscription. Like prospecting in Jewelcrafting, Inscription has a partner skill called Milling. The Inscriber "mills" stacks of 5 herbs into pigments. Pigments are used to create inks, which are one of the mats used to make Inscriptions.

Some of the things inscriptors make they can only use themselves. These include things like Scrolls of Recall, which are sort of like a back-up hearthstones. They can also make off hands, and shoulder improvements called Master's Inscriptions, such as Master's Inscription of the Storm which provides spell power and a boost to critical strike rating.

Armor and Weapon Vellums can prove an invaluable resource to Enchanters. These Inscriber-created items allow any Enchanter to affix enchantments to them, allowing the Enchanter to trade, mail, and sell the enchants. If you do not know any Inscriptors, the blank sheets can also be sold on the AH or traded.

Inscriptors can also make cards, which come in two varieties, Tarot and Darkmoon. Tarot cards, such as the Mysterious Tarot, allow you to create a random card in a set of five. Once you have assembled the Tarot deck, you can then travel to the Darkmoon Faire to turn them in for some green or blue quality armor and jewelry. Crafting Darkmoon Cards allows you to obtain the rarer cards from the original Darkmoon sets. With higher level Inscription, you can craft both Outlands-specific and Northrend-specific Darkmoon Cards. Both types of cards can be traded, mailed, or sold on the AH.

Lastly, Glyphs are where the Inscription profession really shines. These enhance both the spells and the abilities of anyone who uses them. There are both Major and Minor Glyphs, and they can be utilized by the classes for which they are specifically designed. Each adventurer can use multiple types of Glyphs and they can be replaced or upgraded at any time, but doing so destroys the original, like socketed gems. Your Glyphs can be found in the Glyphs tab of your Spellbook. Ultimately, this can be a constant money-maker for the Inscriber. You can also gain access to Inscriber-only glyphs via discoveries made through Northrend Inscription Research.

All in all, I think that inscription will be a money making profession, in the long run. However, it probably will not be right away, for anyone that is not able to level it to 375 right now, such as someone that has been saving herbs or has thousands of gold to waste buying them in the AH.

Which brings me to my final topic for the day. Since inscription is such a hot commodity, I am sure you all have noticed the prices of herbs in the AH. They are ridiculous !! So if you have any hanging around in your bank, now is the time to sell them !!! Or if you have a toon that is a herbalist.....now is the time to farm some ! You can get a lot of gold, even for stack of peacebloom and silverleaf, so even if you don't have a herbalist, make one and level them to 5 and pick up herbalism and farm some low level herbs, it is definitely worth your while !

That's my opinion and I am sticking to it ! hehe

Jade

Saturday, October 18, 2008

Three Cool Add ons I Found

Well, in my travels I have found a couple good add ons that I wanted to tell you about. But first ! I have to tell you about a really cool program that my friend Michael told me about that updates your add ons all by itself.....well, most of them. Some add ons are not supported by the program, but very few that I have found. It is called Wow Matrix and you can find it at wowmatrix.com. All you have to do it download it and it runs. No configuring, no complicated set up, you don't even have to tell it where your add ons are....it finds the folder itself. Now that is what I call service ! Simply click on the Update All button and off it goes, finding all the updates for your add ons and installing them for you. It even shows you what mods it cannot update for you, so you can do it manually. Why can't everything be this easy ?

The first mod I ran across was also recommended by Michael (affectionately known as the ModKing)and it is called WoW Instant Messanger. If you have been frustrated by trying to find your whispers in a sea of channel chats, or if you have been embarrassed by sending the wrong whisper to the wrong person ("I think you are so sexy" to your Guild Master, instead of your boyfriend)then this is definitely a mod you will want to have. It gives you your whispers in totally separate, movable boxes, so you can easily find them and respond to them. It also sounds a tone to let you know you have a new message. This mod also has no configuring, just toss it in your folder and it just works......always a plus in my book ! WIM is available on the Curse Gaming site.

The second mod I wanted to tell you about is called Auctionator. Now, this add on is no Auctioneer, but it does allow you to place auctions up quickly and easily. You simply hold down the alt key and click on the item in your bag. It will bring up a window (also can be brought up by clicking the Auctionator tab at the bottom of your screen) and it puts your item in a window and at the top shows the price that the mod recommends you sell it at, which is determined by the prices of like items that are in the AH right now. (you can tell it by how much you want to undercut your competition, in the options) It even lists the items that are up for auction, at that time, and the prices they are being sold for, noting which of them are yours and which are others. If you don't agree with their recommendations, then you can type in your own price for bid and buyout. It it pretty handy dandy, the only complaint I have is that it does not hold the prices that you post your auctions at from session to session. Such as, say you are selling Scorpid Surprise Recipes. If you type in your bid and buyout prices, it will hold that price if you want to sell more than one, but if you go to sell them the next day, you have to type in the price again. Ah well, nothing is perfect. Auctionator also does not have a database to suggest prices or a scanning function. It is more or less just a small price comparer for those of us that sell the same items consistantly, and need to know what the competition is selling them for that day. It's pretty handy, but I will still be looking for another AH add on to do what Auctioneer no longer does, simply or easily. Auctionator can be found on the Curse Gaming site.

Hope springs eternal :)

Jade

Patch Woes

I have been playing WoW a long time and I have lived through many a patch, but this has got to be the worst one yet. All the sudden, the major add on groups that I use have decided they are not going to update......leaving me high and dry. The two most notably screwing me are Cosmos and Auctioneer.

Cosmos was a large package of mods that I have used practically since Thrall was in diapers. It did a large variety of things and was only one download, instead of having to update them all separately. When I read they were no longer going to update the package I was totally bumming. /sigh

But the most crushing for me, the AH Queen, was Norganna's decision not to update Auctioneer classic. When she came out with Auctioneer Advanced, a few years ago, I tried it and I found it to me WAY too complicated with WAY too many features that I find to be useless for my needs. It is hard to understand and even harder to use, so when she came back with Auctioneer Classic, I breathed a sigh of relief that I would have my easy to use, perfect AH companion mod back. Imagine my horror when I read on her site a few days ago that she is not going to update it for 3.0. I tried to take it like a trooper, and decided to give Auctioneer Advanced another go, thinking maybe she had simplified it in the intervening time. I was distressed to find, upon checking it out that it is just as horrible as ever as to being hard to understand, hard to use, and bogged down with a bunch of features that are either unintelligible, or useless to me. No more simple add on that just suggested a price, and held the prices you wanted to sell at. /sigh

I have found the current mod crisis to be worse that what we went through in Burning Crusade, by far. I keep updating the mods I still have with their replacements, that they say are fixed and working for 3.0, but I still am having tons of problems. My chat log is full of gibberish, and no chat shows up at all. Weird error messages with garbled warnings that make no sense. Mailbox mods that won't show up at all. And a mod that supposedly lets you move around your frames....that doesn't.

I am pretty much at my wits end about all this, so I am going to set it aside for a few days and hope that the programmers get their act together, and in the mean time, look for some new mods to replace the ones from Cosmos.

If any of you have some suggestions.....please let me know !

Jade

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

New Hunter Stuff

I flat out stole this from Spugnort's newsletter, regarding hunters. But since I am giving him credit, I don't feel guilty. :)

So Many Cool Changes to Hunter/Pet in 3.0 - Ok, so with the release of 3.0, hunter's pets will now have one of three of their very own talent trees where hunters can distribute points to make their pets more viable in all different aspects of the game. With this we are also being given more stable slots, so now it's totally possible to have a pet for raiding, one for PvP and yet another spec'd for PvE! In addition to this, pets will "auto-level" when they are trained or taken from the stable to be within 5 levels of the hunter. Pet XP gained from their masters has been increased and the loyalty system has been discarded. Whew! It's good to be a beastmaster hunter!

I have a 70 Hunter, so I will be heading over to MMO-Champion to check out the new talent trees, both for her and for her pets. *Sigh* With 15 characters, I am gonna be staring at Talent trees for a very, very long time. On the bright side, we get free respecs and new talents ! Whooo hoo !

Another awesome thing coming with todays patch:

New Pets Tab in 3.0 - Players will have a nice new pets tab beginning with the release of 3.0 which provides a place for adventurers to keep all of their mounts and vanity pets so they don't each take up an inventory space. Basically you click on the pet in your inventory and it will teach you a spell to summon the relevant pet or mount. Pretty sweet, huh?

Ciao for now,

Jade

Hallow's End to Start on October 18th !

Hallow's End starts on the 18th ! YAY !!! This is my favorite season on WoW ! I love the silly masks you get and the wands that you can use on other group members. I love crashing the Wickerman Festival outside UC, and defending Southshore against the rampaging stink bombs. But I think what I love most is the Headless Horseman quest in Scarlet Monestary......that has to be the single coolest holiday mob, ever ! You also get the chance at a permanent mount drop from the Headless Horseman, a cool flame footed horse, just like his ! This year I WILL GET IT !!! You will also be able to use the new Achievement system, coming in today's patch, to track your progress, simply by hitting the "Y" key.

To read the full story on all the awesome stuff that Hallow's End has to offer, check out the Community site at http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/events/hallowsend/

More Later....

Jade

Monday, October 6, 2008

Warhammer - Yay or Nay

Well, I have spent the last few weeks playing the new MMOG Warhammer Online, Age of Reckoning. I have played alone, I have played with others, I have joined a guild and played with them. I have quested, done battlegrounds, and open RVR. (pvp) I have even done a bit of their crafting system. And the verdict is......(drumroll please)

Thumbs DOWN ! I am sorry to say, as much as I have tried I just cannot like Warhammer. Now I know what some of you are going to say....I am too wrapped up in WoW to give another game a chance, but that just isn't true. I play Perfect World and love it; look at all the Squidoo lenses I have on it. I have played Warhammer with a totally open mind. Through the fact that all the characters look like the bride of Frankenstein, I still played. Through the first week of hideous lag, I still played. Through the battlegrounds that are almost a carbon copy of the BG's in WoW (that I don't care for either) I still played. I played and played, trying to find the fun and value that some of my friends do. Unfortunately, playing more, instead of making me like it more, made me like it less. I just don't care for it....that's all.

It's hard to describe exactly what it is about it that I don't really care for. I think it is a mix of things. Without taking into account the 2 hours I spent on the phone, calling back 4 times, simply to be able to get into my account to put in billing information, which they insisted on having one week after starting to play the game, not 30 days. They locked me out until they got their credit card number. Their tech support people are ninnies that gave me the wrong information and caused me to have to call back again and again, languishing on hold for ages each time, listening to hold music that sounded like five 10 year olds with their feet caught in a meat grinder.

As for the game itself, my first complaint was the character creation. All the characters are ugly. Even the Elves and human women have faces that only a mother could love. The hair styles are pretty sad as well, but it's the faces that are just horrible.....they would look more at home on an animal with hooves and a mane and tail. You would think in three years, they could have done better. Another thing about the characters I didnt care for was the fact that some of them only come in male.....like the orcs, goblins and a few others. No women ? Are their children delivered by the stork ? I find it offensive they would make characters that are only available in the male sex. I also didn't care for the classes they chose. They are mixed up and not clear cut as to what exactly they are. Like the healer that has to beat on someone to get up the energy he needs to heal. ??? Does this make sense to you ? or the White Lion, that has a pet, but has no ranged attacks that do decent damage. They are expected to beat up mobs manually, right along side their pet. The Magus is another strange one. He spends all of his time riding around on a circular disc like some strange version of the Silver Surfer. The only difference is, he cannot get off the disc. Ever. I admit I may be guilty of comparing their classes to WoWs, but even if I didn't do that, I think I would find their classes to be poorly thought out and many of them difficult and not very fun to play. The only classes I found that were pretty fun to play are the Destruction's Sorceress and the Squig Herder. (male squig herder)

One of the overriding factors that I really didn't like about Warhammer was the character movement. At first I blamed it on the lag, but as the weeks went by, I noticed that while the freeze ups were growing less, the jerky character movement was not getting any better. The movement of the toons is not fluid. When they run, the leg movement is stilted and not realistic looking. This is the best they could do in a brand new, latest technology online game ? Perfect World is better and it is free to play, and made in Malaysia. WoW is better and it is almost 4 years old. Another really annoying thing I found is that you cannot run through most objects, like low hanging tree limbs, and the like, so you are constantly getting hung up on things and fighting to free yourself and go around them. It really is a pain.

I have to admit, the quests are pretty fun and imaginative. I had no complaint there, and I really liked how the area you need to go to for quests was outlined in read with a tooltip mouseover, on the big map. A method WoW would do well to adopt. I can't really say too much about the RVR (PVP) aspect of the game, as that is not really something that I enjoy too much. However, I was disappointed with the crafting system. They only have two crafting professions, Apothecary and Tailsman Making. No way to make armor or weapons. The gathering professions are scavenging, salvaging, butchering and cultivating. From what I understand you will need items from all gathering professions if you want to make things with the two crafting professions, so you better have alts in all professions or be prepared to buy what you need at the auction house.

All in all, Warhammer is not horrible.....I have certainly played worse (visions of Mabinogi dancing in my head) but it was not nearly as good as I expected it to be. From what I understand it is also going through some pretty serious faction imbalance problems on most servers, which I can understand because the Order classes are rather lame, and even uglier (if possible) than the Destruction Classes. It kind of surprised me though, because the Destruction faction is really evil, and do things like torturing Order's war lions and such. I would not think that would be so appealing, but I guess it must be, as the Destruction outnumbers the Order 3 to 1 on most servers. They have also already taken the Order Capital city of Altdorf and killed their King on at least one server, an event that Mystic did not expect to happen for a month or two. With this happening, a level cap of only 40, and no end game content to speak of, other than the taking of the other faction's keeps and capital city......I feel it will not be long before many people will find themselves bored with Warhammer Online.

The above statments about Warhammer are my opinion only, and one that I will say my friend Syrenidus, does not share. He loves Warhammer and has left WoW to play it. I just don't see what the appeal is, personally. *shrugs*

Ciao for Now,

Jade