the Beta Post

You’ve got to be kidding me!

Like a lot of people that play World of Warcraft I registered for the Beta when it was announced. I didn't really expect to get picked, even if it was a totally random chance, I'd never been in a Beta before and in a sense I would be quite happy if I didn't get picked. Unlike a lot of players I still had a lot of things I wanted to do in Wrath of the Lich King before Cataclysm launched.
So the Beta launched and I didn’t give it much thought, I logged onto the account management page the Saturday after the launch to check on something and saw a new button there. It said Cataclysm Beta, I went off to check my email and sure enough there was an email confirming the fact. Nervously I downloaded the Beta client, always the suspicion at the back of my mind that this was some kind of hack attempt on my account. I spent much of the rest of Saturday morning into the afternoon downloading and installing the patches (I think the whole thing came to 32gb). After a few false starts I was ready to go, the login screen came up and then I had 4 realms to select from one of which was Mekkatorque (EU), the others were Korean and two in the US (one PvE the other PvP).

Goblin Ingenuity

Being a Hordie I rolled a Goblin first off, this would be the character I posted on the Beta forums as, you can find my posts there under the name of Zandlin. People in the guild know me as Zand from my first character (in the Alliance NuGen) Zandathor so I followed this naming convention with most of my alts in the Beta.

Zandlin is a Goblin Hunter, as a hunter you start with a pet but no pet action bar so it attacks whatever you are in combat with. I have levelled a few hunters so I would be able to make a few comparisions, in fact in the month before the Beta I had levelled a Hunter from 5-50 so it was pretty fresh in my memory.
The spell book is now laid out to show you what level you get your spells at, spells will automatically rank up as you level. Also you now get spells at other than every two levels, the first new spell is earned at level 3 and you get a quest that shows you how to get and use it. Each time you level up a message display’s on the screen and also tells you any new spells that are available, because spells auto rank-up this is less intrusive than you might think.

The low level zone quests require you complete them all to move onto the next phase much as the Death Knight start area did. The difference being that the phasing seems more organic than in WotLK. The quests are quite fun and involve some mini games which don't suck, this is a good idea as it makes the experience much more fun from the kill 10 of those, collect 6 of these quests. As a result the whole experience feels much more like a RPG. I enjoyed the zone and it had some nice humour in it to boot.

The RPG style continues in the next zone that you encounter, you cannot get to the rest of Azeroth until you complete this zone and once completed you cannot go back to this zone. Once again phasing is used, which can be a problem if you use your Hearthstone at certain points in the story (the same is true of the Worgen zones). Once again the quests feel varied enough to keep it interesting, with only one grindy quest that I encountered involving collecting items with low drop rates. However things are constantly being changed and some of the grinding has been eliminated since I played through these zones. There are some quest that have an epic feel to them as well without resorting to boosting your stats in the way the DK final quest did. After you complete this zone you will find yourself in Orgrimmar.
Orgimmar
The city has changed a lot in Cataclysm, so much so that at first I got lost many times, there is now another gate which leads straight into the first new zone, Azshara. This is very much a Goblin themed zone and the quests are pretty varied and not too much of a grindfest. The zone still seems incomplete with some areas inaccessible, that said it should take you up to level 20+ without any XP bonuses just by doing the quests.

While I was levelling in these zones some significant changes became apparent;
The find function on the mini-map has now been changed to a tick box system so you can look for Herbs and Ore at the same time.

Herbalist gives lifeblood at skill 1, however lifeblood has been significantly changed giving you a small heal and a temporary boost to Haste. There is a discussion thread for this on the Beta forums but it hasn’t been particularly productive. I’m unsure about this change but it just means adapting to the new spell.

Hunters now use Focus and not Mana, focus works the same as it does for Rogues. The focus regen rate is being tweaked and a number of Hunter spells have no focus cost as well. For example Concussive shot had a focus cost which has now been dropped, instead it has a 5 sec cooldown and a 4 sec duration. Prior to this it was next to impossible to kite at low levels.
The new 31 point talent trees are in use but are constantly being changed so I’ll not say much about them yet. What I will say is that getting an old style talent from the old specs at level 10 is pretty cool, and some of the bonuses for selecting a particular tree can be very useful for levelling. At the moment I would say Hunters are not the fastest class to level (hint: pick a class that begins with ‘W’ ...any class).

Casual Crafting - For Profit

What follows is a series of guides to making a ‘reasonable’ amount of gold without using gathering professions (Mining/Herbalist/Skinning). The quickest way to make gold while levelling are still the gathering professions. It isn’t a guide to making thousands of gold a day, however when you do reach the end level content you should have a character with level 425-450 skills in a couple of crafting professions without having a huge hole in your gold. It is primarily aimed at the more time restricted player for whom the option of spending a couple of hours a day gathering isn’t really an option.
With recent changes to WoW, taking gathering professions to make gold as you level is no longer as time effective as it used to be. Using gathering professions if you are levelling through questing makes a lot of sense because it is something you can do without putting in too much extra time. However if you choose to level mainly through instances/battlegrounds you won’t be able to level those skills very quickly let alone gather enough ore/herbs to make an acceptable amount of gold.
For those that are looking to make thousands of gold a day they should check out these sites, but be warned they are largely aimed at L80 characters with level 450 professions;
http://justmytwocopper.blogspot.com/
http://greedygoblin.blogspot.com/

Basic Principles
I have made around 900g a character on my level 35 characters without doing much farming of materials. At the moment I am doing an experiment on a high population realm using just Inscription, at level 12 I am making around 30-60g a day despite tough competition and spending around 30-45 minutes a day online overjust a couple of sessions. In order to do this you need to understand some basic principles behind the Auction House(AH).

Knowing the value of an item – I use Auctioneer, it is mainly useful in giving an idea of what the average selling price of an item should be. This is important when it comes to deciding what to craft and what to avoid. Simply put the cost of the materials to make the item should be less than the average selling price of the crafted item.
For Example, a leatherworker can make 3 Ruined Leather Scraps into Light Leather, if the average price on the AH of the scraps is 3 silver and the average selling price of Light Leather is 12 silver then you can make an extra 3 silver (less 5% charged by the AH) on each Ruined Leather Scrap. Not only this but if you buy the scraps on the AH for less than the average price you make a larger profit. While these are small amounts of money the principle should be applied to anything you craft.

Know what you can sell – It is no good making lots of items with a good profit margin if no one wants to buy them, I learned this the hard way. Make a few of an item and get a feel for how many you can sell over a week or so. I know I can sell 2-4 Strange Dust during each week day, and probably twice as many at the weekend.

Buy Low Sell High – Commonly known as flipping. Simply put buy any items that you know there is a demand for when they are sufficiently below the market price that you can make an acceptable profit. I buy all my materials below the market value; all you need is a little patience. Here is a good example on a high population realm I wanted to make golden pigments which needs particular herbs to make. For a whole week I noticed the price of these herbs was very high (2g each) however eventually I was able to buy several stacks for just 50s each.
If materials are overpriced sell materials – Don’t turn all your materials into crafted items straight away, if you sell 2-4 items you don’t need a lot sitting in your bank crafted. I have over a thousand herbs of various types (some of which I have no use for) in my bank. However if there is a rise in their value I can sell them for a nice profit.

Don’t flood the market – It’s better to sell 2-4 of 5 items than to list 20 of one item, you will sell more items and have less gold tied up in stock this way.

Invest in your business - While you can start from almost nothing and make money, it is better to have some gold to start with, this will allow you to buy mats when they are cheap as well flipping items that are underpriced. 200-250g is good but you can start with less. Bottom line is the more gold you start with the quicker your progress will be. To this end try levelling some gathering professions up to level 10-15 and you will soon have enough gold to start with. You can then drop the gathering professions and switch to crafting. If you are levelling mainly through the LFG tool (which my bank alts are doing), you will have to get to L15 first anyway.

Personally I have a couple of questing characters with gathering skills (for the bonuses they give) and bank alts that I level crafting professions on.

Next time I’ll look at Tailoring (up to level 150) including some items that have sold well for me.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes!

Alright, so there's been quite a lot of hoo-hah going on in the NuGeniverse since the back end of last year. Let's see if we can't get you fine people up to speed.

First off, The NuGen Continues (the guild Riande and I originally made as a solution to people leaving The NuGen Alliance at level 80 to join a real raiding guild) has been disbanded.

There was a mass of confusion about this, discussion of hacked accounts and whatnot, but the long and short of it is: the Guild Master of The NuGen Continues took the money and contents of the bank (I could have told him that he didn't need to empty the bank, that by disbanding the guild, all the contents of said bank automatically go to the GM anyway, but whatever, I'm nitpicking) before disbanding it and (possibly/probably) changing servers with some friends. I'm not going to go into my thoughts on this. I will simply say that I think it's sad.

Anyway, boo-hooing aside, those who remained guildless over the Christmas/New Year period picked themselves up, and now have their own guild established, Compromised, which they are hoping to have up and running by the end of January. As the guild is now fully out of NuGen control, we simply wish them the very best of luck with their future endeavours (and hopefully a spare DPS spot for Catrinna once in a while!).

Which brings me onto The NuGen Alliance, the first guild I had my hand at actually running (before I chickened out and handed it over to Riande to deal with all the complainers). With Riande now following in my footsteps over to the horde, hence giving up her post as alliance GM, it was assumed that the alliance guild was to be closed. However, a few of the members offered one another up as replacement GM, as they did not want to see the guild disappear. This guild is now also still up and running, with Sayal at the wheel, and the others offering their support. Again, as it's now out of my hands, I wish you all well!

And finally, onto me, myself and I, and my fellow hordies.
This is my current "collection" of characters. Aren't they pretty? So I've maxed out my character limit on Hellfire now. The only way I'll be able to make a new character (looking for a goblin in Cataclysm) is to delete one. Punctuation, currently my bank character, is looking the most likely to bite the bullet. Sorry love, but you're just too damn orcish.

The NuGen Horde is plodding on its merry way. We have recently seen the return of a few old faces, such as Fuzzyfelt, who has brought his shaman over to us (still not sure why he had to go and make an Orc Shaman, but meh, to each his own), and the fabled healer extraordinaire, Tzix. Also, we've had an influx of Warlocks joining us recently. I'm not sure why; maybe it's Warlock season, I don't know. But at any rate the guild is going strong; our 80s have had to date one successful run of the Spider Quarter in Naxxramas, and we went to Karazhan the other day, just for poops and giggles.

The guild continues...

PuGs - Don't be that Guy!

Since the launch of Patch 3.3 and the new LFG tool, instances (especially pre-TBC content) has seen a resurgence of interest. I was initially cautious about going back into the Pick up Group (PuG) environment. However I am delighted that despite being time-limited during the week I can do 2-3 instances a day. I am far from an uber player, but I make up for that by not being a liability. What follows is based on my experiences in low level instances (RFC to RFK) but should provide some guidance to all players that want to make their PuG experiences less stressful. At the very least it should help you avoid being ‘that’ guy in the PuG.

Be Prepared
Before you hit the LFG button it’s worth checking you are ready, on a most basic level it means having enough ammo if you are a hunter. On a recent Gnomeregan run my Hunter won a Bow which was an improvement over the gun he was using. Fortunately I always carry at least 1,000 ammo for my alternate weapon. What I didn’t realise until later was I actually only had 32 shots left for my gun! This was despite starting with over 1,600 rounds for my prime weapon. However this applies to all the classes, for example a Tank had to leave an instance to repair his armor And I’m guessing it wasn’t 100% when he joined!
I have a mental check-list that I go through before I hit the button;
• Repaired?
• At least 1 stack of drinks if I use mana
• Stack of bandages
• Stack of buff food
• Stack of mana/healing potions
• Elixirs
• Scrolls
• Consumable weapon buffs

This leads nicely to...

Bring your own Buffs
Healing and Mana potions are really cheap from the Auction House (AH) most of the time, there is no excuse not to have a few of these potions. Don’t be like the Mage who told everyone ‘why should I have mana potions?’, he was pretty indignant about it too.
Elixirs can be a bit more expensive, but it is worth finding a friendly Alchemist who will make you some if you provide the mats. Check out what elixirs are best for you at your current level and remember you can have a Guardian and Battle elixir active at the same time, they generally last for 30-60 minutes provided you don’t die.
http://www.wowwiki.com/Elixir
Certain food will increase your Stamina (Health) and Spirit (Mana regen) for 15 minutes so bring at least 4-6 of the best you can.
http://www.wowwiki.com/Well_Fed
There is also food that boosts your pet’s stats; it works on Warlock pets as well. However you need to be at least level 55 as far as I know.
Scrolls often stack with Elixirs and so it is worth considering bringing a couple, once again they are often quite cheap on the AH, but if not someone with inscription can make them for you.
http://www.wowwiki.com/Scroll

Sharpening Stones and Weightstones increase melee damage and are made by Blacksmiths.

Understand your Role
I use the standard User Interface (UI), however it does allow you to have different versions of the main bar. I have 3 versions usually, one of these is just for Instances. This is because rotations are different when you are in a group and it’s worth being able to mash keys as opposed to clicking on buttons. The main benefit is I can actually watch what is happening on my screen rather than focusing on my action bar. As a result I’ll notice that patrol (Pat) that has wandered along while everyone is focused on a fight, or I can see the healer has drawn aggro and can intervene before they die.
• Tank - you are not there to top the Damage Meters, you are there to take all the damage the mobs are doing and make sure they focus their attacks on you. As a result you have to be watching the other players portraits to see if they are getting aggro (especially the healer). Know all your getting aggro abilities and use them as often as possible, this allows the DPs in your group to use their most damaging spells/abilities. While DPS like to top the damage meter, you should be thinking total damage done minus damage done to others in my group. Check everyones mana before moving on to the next group of mobs, you’ll die less often that way.
• Healer – be intelligent with your heals, this means making efficient use of your mana not spamming your biggest heal from the first second of the fight. So adapt to the situation, it’s okay to not heal unless it’s needed. I’ve been healing on my Shaman so I won’t comment on the other healing classes. However I often stand around in fights doing very little, on the other hand on occasion I will be spamming heals like crazy. Learn to know at what point you should start healing, heal DPS when it is practical with special attention on Warlocks, they convert their health into mana.
• DPS – Damage meters are largely irrelevant until you start raiding, before that you main role is to do as much damage without pulling aggro as you can. Be aware of any aggro dumping spells you have and use them when you pull aggro. The main thing you have to do is ‘learn’ how much aggro your tank can hold and then DPS accordingly. As a result I change my rotation from group to group (I DPS on a Warlock, Hunter and Mage). That is the real challenge of DPS in instances. To be Honest you can probably get away with being carried in many groups without anyone worrying too much.
Don’t be ‘that’ guy;
• Like the Druid tank who didn’t have bear form and thought tanking involved standing behind a mob and hitting it with a slow 2 handed weapon. That is one way to get booted and ignored. Yes we booted a tank, they aren’t untouchable.
• Like the healer that was always out of mana half-way through every fight.
• Like the DPS that spams Go!Go!Go! And thinks that topping the damage meter = winning.

Use macros for quick party instructions
/p Patrol!
/p I have Aggro!
/p Out of Mana
/p Healer has Aggro!
Put them on an action bar and use when required, people will notice that you helped the group not wipe and that is always good!

So yeah, then I made it into a blog...

Hello Hordingtons!

Good to see you on the dark side!

Hi, I'm Riande and i'm an altoholic :)

You all know Cat, and if you don't then there's something wrong with you! Well Cat and I have been running guilds together for a couple of years now (all with NuGen somewhere in the title) to date we have 'The NuGen' <------BEST GUILD EVA!! in that it when was cat and i first started wow and we were too scared to talk to ppl in the game (yes, its true) so that consisted of only mine and Cat's first ever horde chars on the Aggrammar server. and its still there as we've not deleted those characters as of yet.

After that we decided it was time for a 'proper' guild with acutal ppl in it and everything. So we rerolled and then came 'The NuGen Alliance' 'The NuGen Mooners' 'The NuGen Continues' 'The NuGen Continuez' <---lasted a day the z was a no no, 'The NuGen Horde' <---thats you!! and also 'NuRF', which is NuGen Reformed. A lot of these lovely....names that dont appear on the website's main page were because of us trying to expand and finding a GM to lead the way with raiding, as frankly Cat and I were total noobies (still are, really) when it came to raiding.

Anyhoo last couple of months have been pretty hectic in the NuGen life, what with Cat and me decidind to reroll, me chickening out, cat rerolling, the GM of the raiding guild getting hacked, getting the raiding guild and the GM back, then the GM of the raiding guild getting hacked AGAIN, and finally me not being able to live without my wow life partner. (thats you, Cat, btw)

Those of you from the very early days of NuGen Horde might remember a hunter called Daerwin, well that was me :) I came over in the beginning for little bit to help recruit a few ppl and see if my rerolling would actually stick. Alas no, my little gnome warlock demanded more of my attention so i continued to play on Darkspear.

anyhoo, now the GM team is back together and we are whole again! Yeay! So i'll be seeing you all in game. I dont have a regular 9-5 job so ill be on at random times frequently and infrequently, RL stuff has been demanding a lot from me lately and the voices in my head are telling me to cut back on wow so thats what i'll be attempting to (she says as she types on a wow forum...) so in my role as the other half of the GM cru i'll be doing...well pretty much sweet FA really.

Those rerolling with me might be surprised or not knowing how much little wow time i've had recently and i'm here to pretty much chillax and answer questions/queries/comments like everyone else.

My areas of expertise include

1) Addons
2) The AH
3) Locks (tho only end game mainly as im lvling a lock for the first time again in like a year)
4) Raids (done most, and can give tactics for the really easy ones especially from a ranged dps POV as we all know Locks RULE, but mages, hunters, priests all smell)
5) erm...i can tell you what wines go really well with what foods...
6) and i can tell you how NOT to burn your hand on your new portable heater

So with that bit over with here's a few additional things

Cat and I spent a lot of time sorting the website (ie, she makes it look pretty and i applaud) and we try and make it useful for you. Remember the forums are here for you guys to help each other out and share questions and information outside of the actual game. Cat and I love the social apsect of WoW, it's what kept us going for so long and we love it when a project gets utilised.

So take the time to check out some of the topics your fellow guildies have posted. Feel free to post pretty much whatever you want in the Offtopic section (lets keep it clean guys).

Want to know more about your class if you're just getting started or are starting a whole other one. The class specific forums are a great place to learn and ask as all of NuGen can share their knowledge.

We currently have a MUGSHOT thread where you can post pics and finally put faces to names!

And NuGen are very lucky in that we have (atm) a free vent server where you can chat if you're fingers get sore from typing. You'll most likely find ppl in it from darkpsear but we also have plenty of channels designed to give ppl some privacy. There are rules to go along with using the vent server and we've not had a single problem yet. BUT i must warn you, it's mainly dull :) If you want sparkling conversation about the outside world around you then go outside! It's mainly a bunch of ppl chatting about WoW or other such scintilating topics or they'll be five ppl on and once every 20mins someone will say something.

But along with all this, as there are changes to the NuGen, so there will be changes to the website (Cat is not one to stick with the same picture for long :) ). We'l be giving you more information on the above topics now that I'm here to nag Cat and give her a kick up the bum. (We're STILL waiting for a new bit on the raiding guild section and its only been oh i dont know, a few MONTHS) Needless to say (so i guess i'll say it) we'll be working hard to make thing a little easier, and hopefully, more fun for you in and out of WoW.

So with the new year rolling in, I raise my glass and salute you fellow NuGenites, wishing you a happy New Year and plenty of WoWing

Rx

Like Buses

You wait for ages for a blog post then TWO come along at once!

And there will be more. I still have many thoughts and feelings towards the 3.3 patch, and in particular the new LFG system, with its pros and its eye-popping cons. But I'll talk about that later. Right now, I want to talk about me. Me, me, me.

So on Saturday, my hunter Catrinna dinged 80 after what seemed like a lifetime. While the NuGen Horde guild has only been running since August this year, I have had Catrinna in some form or other pretty much since I started playing almost 2 years ago (Wow, I've wasted almost 2 years of my life). This was a very special moment for me. I'd like to thank everyone who supported me through this journey; Jesus, my cats, etc.

This one time, in Shattrath, the server reset while I was logged in and I didn't get logged out...

In other news, Christmas is coming in case you didn't know, and the hordies have (mostly) embraced the funtime Christmas tabard (and those who haven't can suck it - I hate Christmas as much as the next miserable cow, but you can't say that watching a Tauren run around brandishing a Christmas tree on their chests isn't funny).

Hordies in Icecrown

OK, so at some point in my altoholism, I forgot that I actually have a level 80 healing druid (and healing is about all I can do on it - cat Dee Pee Ess is just far too complimacated to get my head around, and tanking? LOOOOOL, no). So when Omg and Divad were asking about attempting a run through Icecrown Citadel, I leapt at the chance at being able to heal with people I know instead of the LFG "OMG NOOB HEALZ0R NOOOOOOB".

The group was made up of Divad (on Mor) tanking, me treeing it up, with Omgnametaken, Kharren and Paragus bringing up the rear with the pewpews.

The run went steadily for the most part. I think I died at some point. But then I tend to do that a lot anyway. Thank goodness for 3 druids with battle rezzes and innervates in their arsenal.

In the end, there wasn't enough Dee Pee Ess to escape from the Lich King and he kept reaching us by the third wall block [fail pics to follow], so we called it off as a bad job. Still, not a half bad attempt all around.

Afterwards, we had some fun with Arthas:




No hard feelings, eh, Arthy? We'll come back for you, eventually.

You just watch this space.