Whirly: good to go

I reached my goal today of 2000 gold. I accomplished this on a newer server, horde side, starting with 10 gold acquired from the mining, buying and selling of copper. I’d just moved from a high population server where my two level 60s would grind for an hour to make 10 gold. I decided to get rich on this new server and figured the place for that was the auction house. I was expecting to use a database, spreadsheet or create my own system. I was searching the internet for ideas when I ran into the add-on Auctioneer. I made 30 gold that first weekend.

I wish I could say I had a good plan or system. I don’t. I started with commodities, moved to recipes, got into then out of weapons and armor. Most of my cash was made with recipes until this last week when I added high end weapons and armor.

I don’t get involved unless the upside potential is 60% or better. I mostly sell on the weekend though I’ve recently started posting items with a low auction carrying charge during the week. Auctioneer is my solo game now. I rarely spend time acquiring experience except with friends.

As a side note, my main on this server, a 39 priest-enchanter, has made all his walking around cash using Enchantrix. The only time I’ve given him any money was 170 gold for the purchase of a weapon. I got it for a good price

I downloaded the 1.6 gig Ryzom client, created a free account and am in the process of giving it a try. No credit card is required, but you need an email account and a street address, oh, and a name.

I understand you can play forever with the free account. You can’t leave the Newbie Island though. It’s not as bad as it sounds. There are 100 levels and they recommend you be over 20 before leaving the island anyway. Wait a second, how can you reach level 20 if it’s a skill based and not level based? I guess I’ve still a few things to figure out.

The play and controls are different, but not by much. After talking to the first guy, man what a talker, I headed out to the nearest field to kill something. I picked the very lowest mob, I guess, I’m not quite sure how to tell. I died.

I’ve done a few quests, created a few pair of shoes and wandered around until a pack of things jumped me and killed me for the second time. I’m still trying to find the answer to the MMO question, “what’s the point?” Is there level dings or not? What drives players to continue with this game?

I cancelled my City of Villains account. Every time I wanted to play I faced a multi-hour patch that just killed the whole thing. I’m sure the problem was with my system. I was unable to muster the energy to trouble shoot a problem that only affected CoV.

I was bummed to find I hadn’t made Grunt in the battle grounds Tuesday. It looks like one or two more runs would have done it. I couldn’t face another, last night, after the spanking I received Monday. A holy priest’s life is hard in BG. There was a hunter/warrior team that ripped me up. I salute them. Teamwork goes a long way in BG. I’m amazed it’s not used more often.

I logged in one of my auction house (AH) mules to find I’d sold an item for 136 gold that cost me 40 gold just the night before. That was followed by a 50 gold sale that cost me 7. It was a nice way to start the evening.

My friend Mark is feeling burned out on the AH and the low profits he’s been making lately. It certainly can feel like a drag some times. But, together we have around 3000 gold at 39. On our old server, I remember grinding for weeks to get our mounts at 40. The AH is just a part of the game. There is no reason to continue if it’s not fun. Especially when you’ve already won.

Once again into Scarlet Monastery for Commander Mograine. If we take him we’ll be done in there and can move on. Or farm it for drops and experience.

Entering and clearing the church was very orderly and professional. Not counting the two times Mark and his warrior lagged out. He says it’s his ISP flaking out. We picked up an exploding mage while Mark was away, what a pain without a tank to hold aggro. His little AE explosions kept my priest busy healing. Even a lagged out warrior takes damage.

It looked very good for taking Mograine and friend until we picked up an another add. Mike tried to keep the add sheeped, but the attention and mana we spent on him left us short for the last fight and we went down.

I think we need to fight at the back of the stage or even in the back room, once the door is open. Maybe we can avoid the adds that way. Ahh, probably not.

We screwed around leaving and wiped, once more, on a crazy - let’s do em all - kind of fight that is so much fun and puts a pleasant period on the evening. I’d be glad to pay for this much fun, oh wait, I do pay.

Embarrassingly, I’ve made it this far without being in a raid. I suppose it doesn’t matter to most players, but a healer needs to see everybody’s health and I didn’t know how. Last night, while waiting for a battleground to start, I figured out how to get the raid info to my screen, (social, raid, drag groups to screen).

It was a strange battleground raid with 2 Hunters, 2 Mages and 3 Priests. It must have been stranger for the Alliance as we overwhelmed them. I only received 11 kills. I’m not complaining. I only saw them a couple of times in their flag room.

I think I’ve found the Holy Priests roll in battleground – Dispel. Strip them of everything they’ve got. It seemed to work in this limited test anyway.

I must reach Grunt level with my Priest. There is a must-have Priest trinket that dispels fear, polymorph and stun. I’m hoping it won’t be too difficult. My Hunter is 1/3 through Scout level after only 2 raids.

My enchanting skill is 225. Raising it higher requires a visit to the trainer in the Uldaman instance. Our group is getting close to heading in there. I’m not ready.

My enchanting finances have dropped to a perilous 30 gold. Raising my skill, while at the trainer, will require I take, using Allakazam’s prices, 50 gold worth of parts and 15 gold for formulas. I need to start collecting those parts.

One of the enchanting formulas I’ve been looking for “Enchant Weapon – Crusader“ showed up on the auction house yesterday for over 600 gold. I didn’t buy it. Luckily I can’t use it till my skill reaches 300.

At level 38 we made our first attempt at Commander Mograine in Scarlet Monetary. We didn’t quite make it, but I was impressed by how close we got. We cleared the church, what a pain. There are so many in there. We took High Inquisitor Whitemone in the hidden room then gave Mograine a try.

It’s been a long time since we’ve done this instance and we couldn’t quite remember the sequence. As I understand it now, after our refresher course:
* Kill Mograine
* door opens and out comes the lady
* beat on her a while
* she stuns us and rezzes Mograine
* kill her (she’s a healer)
* kill Mograine
We made it, except for killing Mograine the second time.

Frankly, I was surprised we made it that far. I expected us to wipe while clearing the church. It took us multiple tries in our last personas to get through this instance. Of course, we might need multiple tries this time, but it looks like not. I believe it’s because Mark is a better puller than I was. He claims it’s our better gear and knowing what to expect. I guess it’s a combination of things.

We certainly have more experience, especially with multiple mob situations. We have voice communication, making it easier to plan and change as required. We also do have more cash for equipment. I just purchased a 50 gold wand for my 38 priest. When my Hunter reached 60 I splurged and bought him a 30 gold crossbow – my biggest purchase to date, other than mounts.

My third Warsong Gulch attempt ended much different. Instead of being bottom score I was top. I think it’s ranked by kills, I died once. I enjoyed my fourth run the most as we had some good teamwork and I felt like I was helping. Um, I didn’t use my 19 Priest though. I took a 17 hunter, what can I say, I was a killing machine.

The Hunter was only 14 a couple of days before. I had to grind him to 17. It felt good in the Hunter saddle again. I’ve played everything in this game to at least mid 20s, other than Pally and Shaman, and the Hunter is just the easiest.

At the suggestion of a reader, I’ve been playing with Warlocks also. I’ve a 28 Lock on our old server. I did a little soloing with him and I’m leveling a Horde Lock on our new server with the intention of trying him in battleground.

I might try my 38 Priest as well. As you can play in the battlegrounds without gaining any experience, it’s a great place to play a toon you don’t wish to level. I’m just not sure how you don’t die as Priest in PVP. Especially as this is a mostly Holy Priest.

At one point an Alliance Hunter targeted me. It’s very intimidating running around with an arrow over your head.

I took my 19 Priest into the Warsong Gulch battle grounds again. There were more of us this time. Like everybody else, I asked for an invited, but an invite never came. I’m not one to beg so decided to look around and try not to die as much.

I tossed buffs on anybody who ran by me. I looked for and healed anybody who needed it and attacked any enemy who got close enough. At one point, I started firing on an alliance guy who was being beaten on by one of the horde. After alliance died the horde player sent me a tell thanking me for stealing his death blow. I assume he was being facetious and was surprised to find we weren’t supposed to work cooperatively. I made sure to only do a little damage in the middle of a fight after that. It seems real stupid to me.

I died only once, got a couple kills and lots of assists. Instead of being at the bottom of the listings I was somewhere above middle this time, a much better experience. I still haven’t found a roll for a 19 priest in this thing, especially if we are playing as individuals and not as a group.

I purchased a co-workers computer to be my second. It’s nothing special, 2.4 gig Dell. The striking thing is how quiet it is. My main computer, a 2.4 gig built by me, screams and I mean noise not speed. I work around computers every day and they make noise. I just figured mine made a little extra. The computer scream is the same frequency as the ringing in my ears. Coincidence? I got down there, under the desk, poking my finger in the fans trying to discover what’s making all that noise. It’s the hard drive – no surprise there.

I entered “quite hard drive” into Google and chose the one with quiet PC in the name. There was a list of “quiet” hard drives. I scanned the list till I found a 250 gig Samsung. I found it on New-Egg, my supplier of choice, read the reviews, it sounded like exactly what I was looking for.

I also have a GeForce 6800 video card that has a noisy fan. I easily found a “quiet” fan replacement for $21. Both the hard drive and fan should be here next Tuesday.

Although a clean install is an attractive thing, I’ve decided to try and drag all my stuff over instead. The drive I’m replacing is a 120 gig Western Digital with around 50 gig used. I have a 120 gig external firewire drive that came with Ghost 2003 and that’s the system I’m going to try.

I broke out the external and got that all going. It required an un-install of Ghost and then a re-install. To image the new drive I’ll need to boot from the Ghost CD. I’ve not tried that yet.