Decided to have a go in the PvP battlegrounds today. Apparently I came somewhere in the top half of the table without having a bloody clue what I'd been doing.

No e-mail from Play, but my copy was posted on Friday, which means I may have it tomorrow!

Yay! It arrive this morning!

Heh, I was quite interested in how many total subscribers Blizzard has fro WoW. I found this quote which is quite frankly staggering:

Nearly 120 million dollars a fucking month!

I finally got off line around 2am!

It's pretty impressive.

Outland, or rather the little I have seen of it, is visually stunning - it's quite odd running around with stars, planets and nebulas circling overhead after the normal blue skies etc.

I spent most of the evening looking around Exodar, the Draenei city.

It's a bit like being in a dream - and by that I mean the music and the look of the place is very surreal - not that I was in a state of euphoria! It’s certainly very different to the other cities in the game both in look and structure.

The Draenei have rather ridiculous looking mounts though, they look like miniature elephants and one of them is actually pink!

I’m pretty certain I was the first person in IF offering portals to Exodar as well! (no takers, everyone with the expansion installed was in Outland!).

My only real complaint - so far - is that it wasn't immediately apparent, after installing the upgrade, that you had to go to the WoW website to activate the expansion.

Past that though it looks good!

There must be something wrong with the assumptions, because the whole of the Vivendi Games division had revenues of €53 million a month in the first nine months of 2006 (see here for details). But still, we are clearly talking huge numbers!

It doesn't say that those subscribers are current subscribers does it? People may have moved on and let subscriptions lapse.

Yes I probably should have realised that myself.
They may have had a total of 8 million subscribers since release but it's doubtful 8 million still play now.

Yeah, and don't forget that 4 million of them are Korean Gold Farmers . . .

I think they said it's 8 million active subscribers. But the catch, 3.5 million of those are in china, and Blizzard make a comparatively pitiful amount from the chinese. I don't know how it works, but people playing in china don't pay a subscription like everyone else, it's paid for by ISPs or something (this is only something I vaguely remember reading so might have got it wrong). I can't remember the exact figures but I seem to remember it being an order of magnitude less money than had it been 3.5 million europeans or americans. Still, it's a ridiculous amount they're making from it, even if there were no subscription at all, selling 8 million copies of the game would be amazing anyway.

XD

That reminds me, how is it in WoW for Gold farmers?

I mean I don't fully understand how you go about getting gold, but I'm more interested in rare items.

In Final Fantasy 11 and RF Online (the only two MMORPG's I've played) the really really good loot dropped off of monsters that had very linear spawn conditions. For the most part it would be 24 hours since last time of death + up to 3 hours. Or it would have to be raining on Watersday at night etc. The problem was that gilsellers who had multiple players on the same accounts allowing them to play 24/7 would know when a lot of the monsters were going to spawn and thus it was sometimes difficult to get really nice items.

How do item drops work in WoW?

When you kill an enemy, it just generates random loot. Not entirely random, there'll just be percentage chances of dropping certain items (including items you need for quests, which leads to the most irritating type of quest in the game, where you have to butcher hundreds of the same enemies in the same area over and over until you get the right drops to complete the quest). As far as I know, someone else killing enemies won't mean they get the rare loot and you miss out. It's just a very small percentage chance that a blue or purple item will drop. They tend to show up in ridiculous places, like for instance I killed a bird and got a really powerful two handed battle axe. There's obviously more room under those feathers than you think.

To be honest I've never noticed a gold farmer, presumably because they get more money in level 60 areas and power level the characters to get there. I've had plenty of spam from characters with names like "huhgfdfidpf" advertising gold, but never seen those characters in game. I think they're not even players, they're automated bot scripts that just run around in one area repeatedly killing the same enemies and looting them.

It's not as bad as some would lead you to believe, but the number of characters whispering you in the game, directing you to farming sites, or sending you messages in the post, is definitely on the up.

I've come across a couple of "bots" in the game, characters that are automated to kill certain monsters for their high value drops. As NA said, they tend to have names like "jkjkjk" and at best they are simply annoying, but at their worst they are bloody frustrating as they stop you from completing quest objectives or make the process several times longer than it should be.

I can remember one character in particular, towards the end of last year, that was farming the same stone circle for the best part of a week before Blizzard evidently banned it - the annoying thing is they ask people to report suspect characters, but they don't make it clear on how you are supposed to go about doing so . . .

Generally though - as I said at the top - it's not that bad, and you'll probably find that most of those who claim to have left the game because of it were dissatisfied with it for other reasons as well.

Get yourself out to Felwood, Un'Goro Crater or Silithus and look about for Hunters. If they're solo then wait for them to start attacking a new mob and tag it yourself before they do. If it's a bot they'll just keep blindly attacking it. If it is then this is a dead easy means of making loads of cash / items. Just follow it round tagging all its kills before it can and looting once it's done the hard work and killed them for you. I managed it for about 2 1/2 hours once before I got a whisper from another character demanding that I stop, evidently having been AFK up until that point. My response was to kill them (it was a nelf) then get in a few guildies to corpse camp them until they went offline. Reported the incident, had a GM tell me that I'd reported a character they were already investigating. Job done.

Nice.

I didn't realise you could attack monsters other people had claimed.

The loot goes to the person who first claimed it then?

Yep. Once you damage a creature to anyone outside of you and the party / raid you are in its portait appears bordered in grey rather than red (hostile) or yellow (neutral). You can still attack it, you just won't recieve any gold, loot or XP from it. I quite like it as a system. Means that you don't get people stealing your kills if you've been battling for ages but if you see someone in obvious trouble with something you can step in and lend a hand.



And it lets you piss off gold farmers.

I've had occasions where I've done the first bit of damage to an enemy, then let someone else kill it, and I've got nothing from it, no loot, no XP. I'd always assumed that it would let the person who did the majority of the damage have the XP. In a similar situation, I was killing bears outside Tarren Mill, and every time I attacked one too close to the town, a guard would come running up halfway through the fight and kill it in pretty much one hit, since they're way higher level. I get no XP and no loot, despite having done the first bit of the fight myself. It's bloody annoying.

Edit: Maybe it only works if you're horde and the other player is alliance, or vice versa. Otherwise you could seriously quickly level up a player by going into extremely dangerous zones with a level 60 escort, do one bit of damage to a creature you have no hope of killing, then let the level 60 take the aggro and kill it.

Nope, if you start attacking something and NPC's then do the majority of the work you will get nothing.

If you start attacking something and a playing character joins in (bot or not) if you let them take over you should still get the kill, some XP and the loot provided you are of a similar level to the target.

If, however, it's a target where the other player does all of the work because you are out-gunned (say you are level 40 and the target is level 50) they will get the kill and loot.

At least that's the way it seems to work on the PvE servers.

I too have out witted some bots, including the one I mentioned above, by getting the first hit on a target and letting the bot do the rest. I’ve incurred minimal damage, but still got the drops and some XP.

Just had a wonderfully panicked moment installing Burning Crusade-

"Disk 4?? There's no disk 4 here! There's only 3 disks here. Oh no, wait, there's one in a card sleeve on the other side of the case. Phew."

Why is it not just on DVDs instead?

Lowest common denominator - everyone has a CD ROM on their PC.

I dunno. Why ask me? What is this? Why all the questions? What do you want? STOP PRESSURING ME!!

You've been playing far too long . . .

Well, I've finally gone ahead and ordered a full copy after having a go on the trial version.

You playing Horde or Alliance? And what server are you on?

EDIT- Oh, and I discovered that Burning Crusade is available on both CD and DVD. Not sure how you go about getting a DVD copy though. But it is available.

If you want to play as an Alliance character, sign up on Agramarr and I'll send you some cash!

And Dragonmaw if you decide to roll Horde.

That's what I'd assumed. I hate it when they stick games on CDs these days. Surely anyone who's got a computer good enough to play games has a DVD drive by now? Otherwise we'll be getting back to the days when games came on ridiculous amounts of discs.

Final Fantasy 11: 6 discs, 6+ hours of updates

EDIT: I decided when I play the trial I'll be a Dwarvish Hunter.

Don't. Alliance sucks.

Really?
I'd be interested in hearing why I'd hate to invest time into something lame.


EDIT:Oh wait, were you kidding around coz you're a whored player?

Oh, no real reason. I just play Horde mainly, so I'm obliged to take the position that all Alliance players suck. I'm sure if you ask an Alliance player they'll say the same about playing Horde side.

It actually depends which side my friend plays on, you know the one who is tryign to get me to play. I will join the same server and allegiance as him so we can fight together rather than against each other. He can also Powerlevel me and give me stuff. Huzzah!

I'm still going to be a hunter even if I can't be a Dwarve

Semi Related. Seeing as I do not play WOW. But I just found out the the guy who plays as Leeroy Jenkins Lives in Lafayette, Colorado which is where I used to live. Funny how some people become (in)famous

Guild Wars is better.

I hope I don't die for saying that. But it's true...

...for someone who refuses to play WoW after seeing what it's done to one person.

Having played both I can confidently and with full justification in my statement declare that Guild Wars does in fact suck balls when compared to WoW.

I spent over an hour grinding in Felwood last night and only saw four other players - that's unheard of!

Anyone on Scarshield Legion?

I'm guessing probably not, I think it's a Role Play PvP server =/

Agramarr, Dreanor and Aarie(sp?) Peak.

I haven't played Guild Wars but I have watched someone else playing it, but from what I could tell, Kei is quite right indeed. It appears 8 million other people also have the same opinion. According to most people I know who've tried both, the fact that there's no subscriptions is the only thing Guild Wars has going for it.

No reason. I just like hearing / reading that.

The Burning Crusade is apparently the fastest selling game ever. 2.4 million copies sold on the first day. Bloody hell.

It is damn good though.

Too right!

I spent quite a while grinding in Felwood over the weekend, which is empty now everyone has fucked off to Outland!

Herb gathering has become quite profitable, I made over 180g in two days!

Would I be right in thinking that "grinding" is going to an area and just fighting for hours at a time?

Personally, I use the term for anything repetitive that is designed to make me a lot of money, but I believe in it is used by most people to mean fighting the same nasty for a prolonged period (for cash!).

Pah! Felwood? Zangarmarsh is where it's all at. Killing spore giants for exp, then getting herbs from skinning them. I really do like the way that herbalists can now skin plant beasties and miners can skin rock elementals.

Yeah, but there's two things at play here - first, Outland is heaving with players at the mo and, secondly, I don't want to charge through all the new content in a couple of weeks!

It has taken Blizzard the best part of two years to come out with this add on, if it is the same distance to the next one I'll have plenty of time to get to know the new areas!

Well my friend gave me a 10 day Guest pass for WoW, I joine dhis server which i believe no-one here is on so I wont be able to scav some stuff off of you. Not that i can anyway as the guest pass accounts are severely limited. Either way I won't buy it after the pass runs out anyway, I need a job before I have the monthly fees coming out of my account with non existent money in it.

heres my character, a nice generic chracter creation choice I am sure:

Tauren Hunter. Interesting. Most people go Orc or Troll as hunters for the racial bonuses.