I’ve been so busy these past few days, sorry for the slow updates! I’m playing lots and LOTS of consoles lately, but I have definitely been putting in a good chunk of hours into WoW as well. I’m level 100 and basically working my way through Nagrand with a fine-toothed comb to complete all of the quests and absorb the story. Spires of Arak was really kinda boring and I feel like it contributed very, very little to the actual overall story. I think one boss may have come from the whole zone that meant anything… maybe not even that. Nagrand was a breath of fresh air, and I was immediately experiencing the story again.
I’m not making money at a reasonable rate yet, and by reasonable I mean to afford to pay for my subscription. Can one of you gurus out there give me advice on how to earn money? Every day I send my companions out on their missions but that only makes a few hundred gold (maybe 1/4 of them are 100) and I guess I should focus on fleshing out my garrison. Yeah… I definitely need help with what buildings and what to do.
The dungeons I’ve done so far have been a little bit of a let down. I did the first two on normal mode and they weren’t really special. I was also a bit shocked by how the loot worked. One person got loot at a time from the bosses and it was random. For some reason I thought everyone got loot. I’m going to have to review these loot changes again.
In general, the end-game in WoW is still really crappy. I don’t enjoy dungeon grinds at all. I want everything remotely imaginable done to reduce the grind and the annoyances for dungeons and raids so that I can simply jump in and jump out and experience them. I want my WoW to be like a FPS game where I jump in and play, experience the game to its fullest, and jump out. In a weird way, the more themepark it gets the more I want it to fully commit and just go all the way. As my time to play a game like WoW becomes more finite due to busy RL schedule (and my desire to play lots of other games too), I do find myself wanting that “niche” MMO where I can get things done — mind you, I still want that big epic and involved MMO too. There’s a spot for both in my life, hence why I have less time for a game like this.
Valor is coming back to WoW, but now it’ll come back in the form of just upgrading items rather than there being a valor vendor. I love the idea of a currency that complements items that drop in a dungeon rather than competes with them — the dev insights on their blog are 100% spot on, and I applaud them for finally making this realization. More of this kind of stuff, please!
My last point tonight is that on queue times. Holy crap the wait times of 45 minutes for a dungeon are murder on someone like me who might play WoW for 1-2 hours tops. Thankfully I have so much more to do still in the form of questing, but if I had finished everything? The queues would make me quit. That needs to be fixed.
Legion can’t come soon enough.
That loot system is called personal loot. Each person has their own chance to get stuff off each boss. I’ve seen bosses where everyone in a dungeon gets something and some where no one gets anything. I’ve gotten two pieces off a single boss before. That’s the nature of random but in the end it works out a lot better for everyone.
My opinion for best money making buildings:
Small – Enchanter hut, salvage yard, whatever
Medium – Inn, trading post or barn
Large – War mill, Barracks
Get at least 10 followers with treasure hunting and 5 with scavenger up to 675 and then from there its kind of random. Some days I get a ton of gold missions and some days I get just 1 or 2.
Also doing the mine and garden everyday is a decent steady income. Do the initial shipyard stuff to unlock tanaan so you can do kazaak. That’s about 1k per character per week from felbloods.
Awesome, thank you! I did not know the loot was so random. It was just a coincidence then that each time a boss died only 1 person got loot. I didn’t know multiple people could get something. The systems might not be so bad then if everyone is just competing with their own inner RNG demons.
How do I get my followers to have treasure hunting and scavenger? Is there a way to train them on that?
Once a week you can get a new follower and pick one of his abilities at your tavern.
“Spires of Arak was really kinda boring and I feel like it contributed very, very little to the actual overall story.”
“I’m not making money at a reasonable rate yet, and by reasonable I mean to afford to pay for my subscription.”
“The dungeons I’ve done so far have been a little bit of a let down.”
“In general, the end-game in WoW is still really crappy. I don’t enjoy dungeon grinds at all.”
“Holy crap the wait times of 45 minutes for a dungeon are murder on someone like me who might play WoW for 1-2 hours tops.”
“The queues would make me quit. That needs to be fixed.”
…and for some reason you still feel compelled to play?
There are so many top rated games out there I don’t know why you are wasting waking hours playing something that you do not seem to enjoy.
While I have cherry picked out the negative perspectives I didn’t appreciate any stated strong offsetting positive factor that would make you want to take the bad in stride.
Maybe you can find a way to offset paying for the sub, but why bother?
It sounds like a compulsive gaming behavior trying to invest more game time to pay off a game that you have such negative feelings for.
I remember being out in New Orleans one night with a good friend who had her friend and husband along for the evening. The guy kept going from bar to bar to score more coke while we drank and tried to ignore him without being overtly rude. He was dragging us around all night and it was now 7 in the morning and he kept trying to keep my friend and myself out promising that his latest connection would soon show up, but I had enough and pointed out the futile cycle he was in trying to get more coke to stay up longer to look for more coke, and convinced my friend to leave him behind.
I guess what I am saying is Keen, we are all your friends, but you may just need a WoW intervention, and the first step to healing is admitting that you have a problem. 😉
WoW is my only go-to computer-based MMO. Heck, it’s my only MMO at all right now. If I had another MMO? I’d play it. I enjoy the story, and I do enjoy dungeons when it’s not a grind. While I write this I’m in UBRS having fun. I’m addicted to MMOs, but I love them. ::shrug::
Healthier than a coke habit, and cheaper to boot! 🙂
Well especially if I can start earning enough to pay for my sub! 😛
As an aside I think it would be interesting to do some blogs on hidden indie gems broken down into different subgenres.
I find so many on a daily basis on STEAM that it is hard to keep up, and I can only imagine what I am overlooking.
I have so much content coming up in the future when I can write about it and/or get access to the games. Right now I’m just struggling to find interim topics for discussion. I have a bit of writers block. I think you indie spotlight idea has merit.
For a guaranteed follower with the treasure hunting trait do all the quests from Harrison Jones. Eventually you get him as a follower. You can look up the chain.
Also I make a ton of gold having a level (3) barn and keeping it churning out Savage Bloods. They still sell for 75-130 gold each on my server and I average 4 or 5 a day.
The reason your queue was so long was because you were doing normals. Heroics are still around 20 minutes for dps. Many raids will pop in about that time too.
I make my money with treasure hunter followers too. Hire one a week through your headhunter in the Inn and get them leveled up with gear Asap. Some of the gold missions aren’t available until certain follower gear levels. Also level 3 of the inn unlocks more gold missions.
The Jewelcrafting hut is also a nice way to make easy gold. The daily quest takes around 10 seconds to do and will net 225 gold on average. Your mine should provide more than enough ore for the daily. It needs to have an active follower with the Jewelcrafting trait, but that’s really a minor issue.
Awesome info, thanks all! Looks like I need to upgrade my Barn, maybe swap my enchanter hut for a Jewelcrafter, and be more vigilant with my mine.
What I find fascinating is it appears you have read somewhere or otherwise heard that a bunch of people have figured out a way to get free subs by playing the game for a few hours. We all knew that in many games Chinese gold farmers could spend 8 hours a day generating some cash in many games, but you seem to be implying something far simpler here.
And then the whole personal loot description just sort of blew my mind. It’s the exact opposite of committing people for a social game. No need to make friends, put in time, or earn trust. Just get lucky and you never need to see those people or that cave again.
Shark meet jump.
@Sanz: Yeah, pretty much. That’s what WoW has become, though. Has been for a while. It’s a game where you just jump in, experience what they’ve done with the story, and whack loot pinatas with random people every time you play.
I think it says a lot about the game that Keen can put a relatively small amount of time into the game and enjoy it in his own way while there are players that put in a ton of time and also have fun.