Crafting and Tipping Etiquette
Well I'm back from my holiday blogging break and I decided to start with something that I have seen discussed on the forums and in my server's trade chat quite a bit recently: etiquette when crafting and etiquette when buying from crafters.
I've seen too many people over the last weeks saying things like "[Blacksmith] Looking For Work - Crafting Free with Your Mats, Tips Appreciated" and then getting upset when they receive only 5g or even no money at all. I think this is a basic failure on the part of the crafter and on the part of the buyer. These are my views on crafting/buying etiquette. They are not laws so feel free to disagree, but I think these basic concepts would make the crafting/buying process a lot smoother.
Crafters:
If you expect any money at all for your services, set a fee beforehand. Saying "Tips appreciated" is not setting a fee. A tip is an extra gesture on the part of the buyer that is not required.
If you set a fee, do not be unreasonable. In Wrath of the Lich King, there are very few rare recipes, if any at all so you crafters can't price gouge to the amount they could previously.
If you only work for tips, do not be upset by what you get. Tips are what the buyer feels like giving you based on the service you provided. All things have different value in the eyes of different buyers. I've crafted the epic engineering guns for people and only received 5g tip before, but then I've done some basic enchants and received 20g tips.
Any tip is more than what you had beforehand. No matter what you get tipped, be it 2g or be it 50g. If you don't feel that what you're making for tips is worth your time, don't craft for random people from trade chat as there are plenty of other people willing to provide their services to these customers.
If you do not receive a tip, do not be upset. I've done plenty of work for free for people and received no tip, but what this often does is create return customers. And majority of the times, return customers will tip.
Buyers:
Pay for what you get. Nothing is ever free. The thing that bothers me is most buyers are also crafters so they understand how hard it can be to raise some professions and then they'll go on without tipping and yet expect a tip when they craft something. Pay for what you receive based on the quality. Don't pay a blacksmith 2g for an epic weapon, but at the same time don't pay 100g for a green or blue quality item.
Pay per item, not per exchange. If you are having a jewelcrafter making you 5 green quality gems, don't tip them 5g for the total of the gems, it'd be more proper to tip him 5g per gem they crafted, so 25g for the whole exchange.
Go to the crafter, don't make them come to you. You are the one wanting the service, why should they have to go to you. If they're in Orgrimmar and you're in Dalaran, don't force them to come to Dalaran to provide you that service. You should be willing to travel to them.
Get good service? Return to that crafter. One of the best things you can do is to find a good crafter that can provide you with great services when you need. Maybe you can even make a new friend out of the whole situation.
Mordiceius' Tipping Chart:
The following are my views on fair tipping for items.
Low Grade (Green) Items: 5-10g each. This also includes the low grade enchants (only require a few dust or essences).
Medium Grade (Blue) Items: 10-20g each. This also includes the medium grade enchants (require quite a few dust and essences and often shards).
High Grade (Epic) Items: 20-50g each. This also includes the high grade enchants (the ones requiring the crystals).
Follow these simple steps and your adventures in buying and selling will be much more pleasurable.
Merry Christmas All!
Sorry about the silence coming from around here for the past few days. I've been completely swamped with my work. But now I'm off for the rest of this week and all of next week so I expect to be blogging a lost more frequently over the coming days.
Everyone have a Merry Christmas this weekend, I hope you all get what you want. 
If not, I hope you at least are able to share in fellowship with loved ones or family. Rynala is gone to visit her family until Sunday so I expect most my time will be taken up by Left 4 Dead (my present to myself).
A Gentlemanly Duel
I've been working on getting my Salty title. The main roadblock in this being The One That Didn't Get Away. This achievement is incredibly mind numbing to accomplish because majority of the fish you have to catch are a 1/5000 or worse catch rate. Anyway, there was a rumor on the Internet that the pools in Shadowglen (the Night Elf starting area) in Teldrassil had an above average drop rate of one of the fish for the achievement so I headed there to check it out.
While out there fishing, the occasional level 2 Night Elf would come and attack me only to die to one whack from my fishing pole. Occasionally, a level 40-70 character would be running through the area for reasons unknown and come and try to attack me. I was always able to quickly swap weapons and dispatch of them without trouble. For the most part, however, people left me alone.
I continued to fish there and it eventually led to what I now consider to be one of the most enjoyable PvP experiences I've had in WoW.
While only half paying attention to fishing, I noticed a level 80 Draenei shaman ride by on his Elekk. He seemed to be uninterested in me so I paid little attention to him. I figured he was probably working on his Loremaster achievement. A few minutes later, I got hit by a lightning bolt out of nowhere. While I was fishing, he had set up totems and buffed up far behind me and out of my vision and began his attack. I was able to stun him, run away to break combat and mount up to escape. He gave chase initially and then broke off so I went back to fishing. A few minutes later he came back and the cycle repeated.
After he had attacked me the second time, I went off to a corner of the area after he had broken off to buff myself and prepare. I got back on my mount and scouted the area to see if he was still around (which he was). We charged headfirst into each other and the fight began. After about ten minutes of fighting, I was able to properly time my cooldowns and kill him (I'm holy so it was a feat in itself). He ankhed up and the battle continued. Twenty minutes later, we were both still fighting. We were unable to kill each other but able to heal through the damage the other did. I did a /wait emote on him and just backed up and stopped attacking him. He backed up and halted his spellcast. We /shrugged, /saluted, and decided to accept the terms of a draw. This was a fight that would have no winner.
This was a real treat for me because I'm not used to fights lasting very long or being very fair. Had I gone against a class that couldn't heal, such as hunter, it would have been a fight that was over fairly fast. Being sofar out, neither of us could easily call in backup so we were left to a 1v1 to find the better man. After accepting that we were equal, he went back to whatever he was doing and I went back to fishing, having made a new friend on the opposite faction.
I still haven't caught that damn fish.
Long Boring Days
Not much has been happening in my neck of the woods lately. Rynala and I finished up Storm Peaks and started in Icecrown, where we're about 20 or so quests in. While she was working on homework for most of the last week, I spent the time doing Naxx 25 with a friend's guild. We finished the raid last night and I even snagged a couple upgrades. I haven't had a time to write much as work has been ramping up and I've spent a lot of my off time relaxing or just plain sleeping.
Saw the movie "Chaos Theory" with Ryan Reynolds on Sunday and I'd highly recommend it. I hope to get a real blog post out either later today or tomorrow.
The Slippery Slope of RMT
After making a pretty impulsive and short sighted response to Scott Jenning's blog post about the RMT news , I've taken some time to reassess and refine my views on the RMT model in MMORPGs.
My main views deal with double dipping by requiring subscription fees while having an RMT shop. My points on RMT could be summed up as:
* If you are going to put RMT into a subscription game, do not offer anything that is not obtainable in a game just by playing.
* If you are going to have RMT exclusive items, do not require subscription fees for your game.
* In a subscription based game, don't divert items from game attainability just so you can sell them as RMT.
* Make sure subscribers don't feel like they're getting cheated.
* Make sure your RMT purchasers don't feel like they're getting cheated.
If you are going to put RMT into a subscription game, do not offer anything that is not obtainable in a game just by playing. This was one that took a bit of internal debating for me. At first, I was completely against adding RMT to a subscription based game but after trying to look at the picture from another view, I came to terms with it and could empathize. I don't think RMT is bad. Companies making money is a good thing as it allows them to make more games and after all, we're all here because we love games.
I think that RMT should be seen somewhat of an alternate assisted advancement path for those with less time but more income. The caveat to this is that in a subscription based game, I do not think there should be anything you can get from RMT that you can't get in game. Second, I think that certain RMT thing should not be offered until specific times.
In a subscription game's launch, there should be no RMT. Everyone is new and on a level playing field. But as time progresses, RMT should be introduced. For example, at this point I think it would be a great idea to offer RMT in the form of buying level 60 characters. Sell them for $30-40. This would have been a bad idea at launch, but at this point, everyone is reaching 80 and a level 60 RMT character is insignificant. As for selling gear, I think that the RMT should hold off on that until the gear has been in game for a while. Give the players who want to and have the time to obtain it their chance, but after a while, offer it as RMT.
I don't think that the best gear in the game should ever be offered as RMT. But by the time Sunwell Plateau came out, having RMT for Karazhan quality gear is something that I think is no problem
For the vanity items such as costumes, pets, mounts, etc, I think that they should be sold at RMT at the same point when they're put in the game at a cost that is relative to the difficulty to obtain them in game. If it is a rare spawn that drops the mount, maybe sell it for $50. But if it is a 25man raid boss that has low chance of dropping the mount, perhaps the cost should be about $300.
The most important thing of this all is not allowing people to buy things from RMT that you cannot also obtain in game. It should be seen as an alternative way obtaining something if you don't have the time. It should not be seen as a mandatory if you want a specific item.
If you are going to have RMT exclusive items, do not require subscription fees for your game. Basically a continuation of the previous point; if you want to make things exclusive, move away from subscription fees. I think that people go into free-to-play MMOs with a different mindset. They expect RMT for special times so go hog wild. Money has to be made somehow.
In a subscription based game, don't divert items from game attainability just so you can sell them as RMT. This is what I feel very strong about as I, and many in my position, feel like we've been burned by this before. While some people disagree, I see the WoW loot cards in the collectible card game as just another version of RMT. Want a spectral tiger mount? Well go buy a bunch of trading cards or buy the card off someone else. Want a giant red rocket flying mount? Hope you have a lot of money.
I especially feel burned by this because a lot of the card game exclusive items are stuff that should have been given to the engineering profession. In the beta for the Burning Crusade, there was an engineering item that enlarged critters. It was removed pre-beta and a few months later, the card game received "pet bites" that increase your non-combat pet's size. A lot of players, mostly engineers, feel like we've been given the short end of the stick on items that should be rightfully ours (I know I know, we're all self-righteous pricks).
This could be the most dangerous side to RMT in MMORPGs. My biggest fear with RMT is that it could lead to laziness in developers/publishers. "Why create a bunch of epic quest lines for this gear/mount when we can just offer it as RMT." Resources should NEVER be diverted from your live game for RMT. Bring in additional people to work that, don't take away. This leads in to the next point...
Make sure subscribers don't feel like they're getting cheated. In a subscription based game, people should be able to obtain anything and everything if they have enough time and dedication. For monthly subscribers, the RMT should be seen as an optional alternative for when they don't have the time or dedication. it should not be seen as a mandatory process for obtaining something they want.
Lastly, make sure your RMT purchasers don't feel like they're getting cheated. Tipa and Michael Zenke have been talking about the RMT changes being made to Everquest and Everquest 2. From $10 outfits that look like garbage on some of the races to $10 experience boost potions that only last four hours and fade away if you die, SOE may already be making some mistakes that could leave a bad taste in peoples' mouths.
All in all, dabbling in RMT is walking a fine line and must be handled with extreme caution to balance all the sides. When done well, it can really be a big help to bringing in the types of people who won't subscribe to MMOs because they are "too much of a time sink". When done poorly, you can alienate a lot of your playerbase and turn them against you (especially us bloggers as we are such a fickle bunch).
Double Dipping
This is just a quick snippet from me.
Tipa at West Karana and Massively are reporting about how SOE is introducing RMT to EQ2 . I have a problem with this. I understand a lot of Asian MMOs do the "no monthly fee but huge RMT store" approach, but western MMOs are big on the monthly subscriptions. Doing both seems like double dipping to me. Do either one or the other, not both.
It feels like going to a restaurant and paying $20 for a burger and fries and then having to pay an extra $10 for the salt and ketchup.
Bungle in the Jungle (Racism in Sholazar)
So this past weekend, Rynala and I wrapped up Sholazar and headed to the Storm Peaks. While I think the Storm Peaks is a great zone, this is about something I noticed in our perceptions and attitudes in regards to some of the creatures and events in the zone.
Warning: If you haven't done this zone and want to avoid spoilers of some of the events, skip this. There may be some spoilers.
One of the quest lines in Sholazar was quite a humbling moment that caused a bit of reflection for me.
While questing in Sholazar, one of the quests from the Nessingwary base camp eventually leads you to kill this large cat. You're not the only one on the hunt though. The local Wolvar of the Frenzyheart Tribe are also hunting it. And although they run in fear when it lashes out on them, when you kill it they proclaim that you have stolen their rightful kill and are now a slave to them to repay your debts.
Now the Wolvar aren't to be taken too seriously. Most of this zone is very lighthearted. It's a nice little break from all the death and destruction that is the rest of Northrend. Don't get me wrong, the Frenzyheart are in a brutal bloody war with the Gorlocs of the Oracles tribe, but it's more of an "awww aren’t they so cute" type of massacre instead of a "look how Drakuru wiped out his own race and is torturing and mutating trolls" type of situation.
Well the 'cute' factor of the Frenzyheart grabbed Rynala and I must admit, I thought they were pretty charming as well. They were very clumsy and spoke in a very uneducated way, but they seemed mostly harmless. Their quests start out as simple hunting quests like "Prove yourself as a slave and kill these gorillas" or "Prove yourself as a slave and kill these wasps". They do have some funny quests though like "Poke the gorilla children with sticks" and "The village idiot accidently let out the chickens, now go catch them".
Eventually, you get a quest to go wipe out a "bigtongue" camp and destroy their shrine. We had no problem with this as the gorlocs are very ugly and primitive. After doing that we were told to that there was a wounded big tongue near the Frenzyheart camp and that we should go capture it and bring it back to be poked with sticks and interrogated. When you find the wounded Oracle, he begs for his life and promises to take you to his leader. One of the Frenzyheart hunters appears on the scene, assumes that you have sided with the Oracles, and runs off to tell his leader (making the Frenzyheart hostile towards you).
The Frenzyheart/Oracles mechanic is a more lighthearted version of the Aldor/Scryer situation. Being friends with one makes the other hate you. But unlike the Aldors/Scryers, it is a lot easier to switch reputations (and it is actually encouraged). Both sides have their share of rewards and you'll want to take each side to exalted once to at least get the achievements.
Getting to the Oracle main camp changes your perceptions on things. The Oracles all appear to be very benevolent and sincere. The only reason they're at war with the Frenzyhearts is because the Frenzyhearts brought the war to them. It turns out the Oracles had been living in Sholazar for a long time. It was their origin. They believe themselves to be the guardians of Sholazar even they didn't know what they were guarding or the true power of the Basin. The Frenzyhearts recently came into the Basin after being pushed from their homelands by the Scourge. Instead of living in peace with the Oracles, the Frenzyheart Tribe lashed out and started raiding their village and killing everyone. To the Frenzyheart, the Oracles were just another animal to hunt.
The whole situation deeply troubled me. I truly had been a slave to the Frenzyheart, doing their bidding without ever asking myself why. I didn't care about the Oracle as first. They were ugly so they were probably stupid and primitive too. I had become like the racist generals of the Alliance who hunted the Horde because they were "savages".
As the quest line goes on, you eventually venture out to an Oracle village across the zone that no one has heard from in a while. When you get there, the situation is grim. The Scourge have completely overrun the village. There are blight aberrations walking around, dragging the chained up bodies of Oracles around them. The buildings are burning and bodies litter the ground. This village never stood a chance. You receive a quest to check the bodies of the Oracles to try to find survivors. A few are found, but most are dying. The ones that do die question them malice of the attackers and why this is all happening to them when all they wanted is peace. They offer you their most prized possession before they pass away. For a quest that had previously been so lighthearted, this was terribly depressing. It was an emotional one-two combo that I wasn't expecting.
In the final quest, you are forced to face off against a Lich responsible for the current invasion. This fight comes with a twist. He has one of the main Oracles and one of the main Frenzyheart you've interacted with chained up. Halfway through the fight, he forces them to attack you until you slay one of them. Whoever you let live is the side you join. (You can repeat this fight each day so you can switch sides daily).
Our decision was that we would go with the Oracles in the end, so that meant siding with the Frenzyheart initially (we just wanted the achievements so this was a gameplay decision, not a roleplaying decision). Not only do we like the personality of the Oracles much more, but they offer a better flavor item, an egg that can turn into non-combat pets or even a flying mount vs some brew that can turn into drinks, potions or alcohol. Even still though, every time we do the Frenzyheart dailies now, we don't see them as cute and cuddly, we see them as vicious warmongers and it breaks our heart when we have to kill Oracles for their quests.
All in all, this part of Sholazar Basin connected with me on an emotional level I wasn't expecting. It forced me to think about if I am unfair to people in real life just as I had been to the Oracles because I either didn't know about them or placed my preconceived prejudices unfairly upon them. I just wanted some fun quests, I didn't sign up for this. 
“Shin Megami Tensei: Imagine” Impressions
I recently saw on West Karana that the Shin Megami Tensei MMO had gone into beta in the US. Being that thousands of beta keys were being given away and Asian MMOs tend not to be to overcrowded with people wanting to beta, Rynala and I each got a key, installed the client and gave it a go. I don't plan on playing this game beyond these initial impressions, but I do want to share what I thought of it.
The install went smoothly, but when I loaded the game up, I noticed that the fullscreen mode only went up to 1280x1024, offering no widescreen support. I didn't watched stretched models so I forced myself to play in windowed mode.
Character creation was very basic. There was no help or information on any of the options, but I had played a couple Asian MMOs before, so I was used to this. Rynala was a bit frustrated by it. Graphically, the characters looked about on par with PlayStation 2 quality in my opinion.
They hit you with story right from the beginning cutscene. Demons started plaguing Japan. Wars broke out. A tidal wave wiped out most of Japan and most the demons. Hundreds of years later, people are living in underground bunkers and demons are starting to come back.
Loading in, I found that I had the red shirt was the current fad. This was troublesome. Our skill bars started out with a couple skills on them that we wouldn't get explained to us for another half hour. The only other thing that really bothered me about the beginning tutorial section is that you cannot group for it. In the start area, you can see other players, but then you can't group with them so Rynala and I had to run and do it separately.
After the intro tutorial, you're shown a cut scene that doesn't seem to be translated and then given some more story. Translation does seem to be a bit of a problem currently. A lot of things are mistranslated ("Mordiceius throwed down a dice.") or in skill descriptions having one word broken across two lines.
Combat is fast. You have a lot of different abilities to use right away. A quick attack, a mutli-target attack, a guard break, a guard and some other skills beyond that. You have to use these skills fast and quickly change your strategy. While neat in concept, it didn't really work well for me. I don't know if it was just lag or glitches in the UI but skills would often say they were firing and not fire, or not even charge to fire at all.
Even though it did have some nice tutorials to explain the skills eventually, I feel that this game is just another by the books free-to-play Asian MMO. For about the two hours I played, all the basics were there: clunky UI, unintuitive menu system, very grindy quests, poor translation, and plenty of items with no explanation. I do have to commend it for pushing forth a story heavy game (even if at some points the cut-scenes are untranslated).
All in all, if you enjoy the free-to-play Asian MMO style like Maple Story, ROSE Online, and the like, you should enjoy this. Otherwise, it's just another in the fold.
I Don’t Fear PUGs Anymore
Ever since I quit my raiding guild back in late September, I've been in a two man guild consisting of myself and Rynala. And while I have a lot of friends in raiding guilds, they're not always available or interested in running instances. So needless to say, we've been doing a lot of pugging (pick up groups).
I'd say probably 70% or so of the instance runs I've done in Wrath of the Lich King have been with at least 1-2 PUG members. Of all the runs I've done, I can only think of a couple that were bad and only one that was disastrous. Back in the Burning Crusade when I would run in PUGs, I would usually bring up the armory on my second monitor to check on all the members for a hint if it was a disaster waiting to happen. I'm not so afraid anymore.
Last night as soon as I logged in the server, my friend's guild was running 25man Vault of Archavon (the Wintergrasp raid) and then planned to run 25man Obsidian Sanctum (the raid under Wyrmrest Temple) but were short a couple healers and a DPS or two. Rynala and I joined the raid to help out and the rest of the members were grabbed from other raiding guilds. All in all, it wasn't really a PUG as everyone in the raid was familiar with everyone else and the raid went smoothly.
Later in the night Rynala had logged out to work on some college essays and I decided to try my luck at pugging the 10man versions of Obsidian Sanctum and Vault of Archavon. It took a while to get all the members, but we had myself healing, my friend off-tanking as a Death Knight and then eight puggers filling the other rolls. All of the people in the raid were people I have never seen before from guilds I had never heard of (I assume some are leveling guilds).
About six of the people in the raid had never been to Obsidian Sanctum before and other than myself and my death knight friend, maybe only one other person in the raid ever had raid experience past Karazhan. Even though I knew the two raids were easy, I feared for the worse. In Obsidian Sanctum, we pulled the first trash pack and wiped in about 15 seconds. Old dread started coming back. We all went back into the instance again and pulled the same trash pack. Only the hunter died because his trap broke early and the tank wasn't fast enough to pick it up.
From there on the group really flowed. Everyone worked on their part and did it to the best of their abilities. Some of the DPS were obviously better skilled than some of the rest, but to their credit, they all did a fantastic job on the trash and three drakes on Obsidian Sanctum. My only fear with the drakes was Tenebron.
When fighting each drake, the drake will open up a portal to the shadow world that the raid members enter. Once inside, they have to DPS something down and then they'll pop out of the shadow world and fight the boss. For the other two drakes it is a single dragonkin, but for Tenebron it is six eggs. In the 25man, the DPS usually isn't high enough to kill the eggs so time runs out in the shadow world and whelplings spawn that need to be offtanked. I feared us getting overwhelmed with adds in the 10man if people weren't on par. In the first time in the shadow world on Tenebron, they killed all but one egg. They quickly killed the whelp and went back to the boss. The following times, they actually were able to kill all six eggs. I was really shocked.
When it got to the boss himself, we two shot him. It was the tank's first time ever tanking the boss but he read up, prepared himself and flawlessed it both attempts. We wiped on the first attempt just because even though I explained it, it's easier to know what you need to do once you have seen actual encounter. We effortlessly killed the boss on the second attempt.
Wintergrasp turned at that point so we went to the Vault of Archavon. One DPS who was already locked to the raid left and one healer left due to connection difficulties. Even though it took a while to replace the healer, we did and had zero problems on that boss, killing him first try.
Even though it is a much larger undertaking, I think that tonight or tomorrow night I might try to organize a PUG 10man Naxxramas. My hope from this all is that I can find a dedicated group of people who have never raided seriously before and bring them all into my guild and forge a competent raiding guild out of them.
As for now, I don't fear PUGs anymore. All the hardcore are constantly complaining that the game is being made easier and Blizzard is pandering to the casuals. For the hard core, it is easier. It isn't hard when you take five to ten people with Sunwell experience and run through the five man or ten man content. It isn't hard at all for players with that level of skill and dedication. But for the vast majority of people, this game is becoming a lot more fun. From now on, when I see "LF1M Heroic Nexus Need 1 Healer", chances are I'll probably take them up on the offer.