Archive for February, 2011

February 25th 2011

Is the Alchemy Drake Failing as a WoW Gold Sink?

The photo above just bowled me over because it encapsulates nicely the argument being made for the Alchemy Drake: It’s just not worth the gold.

At least for my guild, demand for the Alchemy Drake has been very tepid compared to other gold sink mounts like the Mechano-Hog, Mekgineer’s Chopper and Traveler’s Tundra Mammoth. I’ve also observed that most Gold sellers don’t even use the Alchemy Drake to entice potential WoW Gold buyers. So what gives?

It’s part price and part niche appeal. The Alchemy Drake is very cool for what it does, which is turn you into a flying mount, but its cost is very prohibitive at 65,000 WoW Gold, materials and labor included. For that amount a player can purchase the other gold sink mounts plus a top-end BOE raiding gear piece or trinket.

Another barrier is that the Alchemy Drake goes against player attitudes. The main appeal of the Alchemy Drake is that you get to take another player on your back like a great big dragon. But most are seeing it as: “Yipee! Another guild member wanting to get a picture with the drake freak.”

The better part of fun goes to the player who paid zero Gold. Compare this to the joy of seeing your toon riding a slick Mechano-Hog or a Traveler’s Tundra Mammoth. You see your toon in the driver seat, while appreciative hangers-on ride in the kiddie seat.

And let’s not mention the extremely time-consuming Archaeology and Alchemy grinds for those who want to create the mount for themselves, for a sense of achievement or to save an arm and leg on professional crafting fees.

All in all, the Alchemy Drake is a lackluster gold sink mount. And I guess Blizzard realizes it, too. Notice how we’re getting new Zul’Aman war bear and Zul’Gurub tiger and raptor mounts in the next Patch 4.1? It wouldn’t surprise me at all if one of those becomes purchasable with WoW Gold.

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February 24th 2011

WoW killer? Nah, RIFT is our Gold scam savior

It’s been an amusing week to say the least, watching the forums turn blood-red from RIFT vs. WoW fighting. While others see RIFT as a potential game killer, I on the other hand see it as the next haven for our resident Gold scammers. Oh, we will be cleansed!

Allow me to string along a scenario here. If—and this is a big if—RIFT blows up enough to steal a significant number of players from WoW, now how would our pesky gang of Gold scammers take it?

Gold scammer 1: “Eh, me down like 100 hackzz ~:-C”
Gold scammer 2: “Me too Q.Q”
Gold scammer 1: “They in RIFT!!!”
Gold scammer 2: “Hm, you go there?”
Gold scammer 1: “Lets hackzz platunim?”
Gold scammer 2: “$.$”

Gold scammers may be dumb as pond scum, but their basic instinct is to profit so like equally brainless fruit flies they will go where the sweet smell of opportunity goes. So all you panic nauseous doomsayers who think it’s the end of WoW, just think that we might be entering a scam-free Golden age, one with less phishing emails, hacking attempts and in-game spam.

Blizzard also badly needs a good scare, given that its most recent rivals have failed to give it a run for its money. A desperate developer clinging to power will do absolutely anything to keep its power base in place, like I don’t know, deliver on those guild housing and appearance slot promises.

So, still hoping RIFT fails?

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February 16th 2011

Account Security for New Players, and Blizzard’s White Lie on Gold Selling

Probably for the sake of new players who just joined the game this Cataclysm expansion, Blizzard has summarized the Account Security Basics that veterans like myself have long been practicing.

If you do not have a Blizzard Authenticator installed, do not know how to spot an e-mail scam, and think “phishing” is just a misspelled variation of the WoW fishing profession, then please spare five minutes to read the account protection guide now.

The guide itself is pretty straightforward. Keep your account information (e-mail address, username, and password) private even from your closest family members and do not click on suspicious links posted in-game or in unsolicited e-mails.

Kudos to Blizzard for giving us a refresher course, but what I don’t agree with is their unsubstantiated white lie about Gold selling. Take special note of the last underlined sentence:

The first half of this advice is legally correct, because Gold selling is against the Terms of Use. But I’ve long argued that buying Gold is a morally acceptable activity, especially in a game where gear and mounts are priced at tens of thousands of Gold that will take ungodly hours to grind.

So I let that slide. What I can’t stomach is the claim that Gold sellers depend on hacking to source their Gold. Really, Blizzard? I call B.S.

How much Gold is sold each day worldwide? Millions, even billions given the multi-billion dollar industry Gold selling has become. How many accounts need to be hacked everyday to supply this Gold demand? Thousands, even tens of thousands of hacked accounts with maxed out Gold, if we are to believe Blizzard.

That would mean in a year the majority of WoW players would have been hacked and cleaned of their Gold, which is absolutely preposterous.

I’m pretty sure it’s the still the documented computer farms in China doing all the heavy lifting when it comes to Gold supplies. Ore mining, skinning, auction house trading—these activities still provide the highest Gold income on a per hour basis as anyone who’s played the game knows.

Blizzard should stop the ridiculous propaganda machine trying to lump Gold sellers with Gold hackers. It is nothing more than an attempt to scare us Gold buyers, who have legitimate needs and the right to skip the grind if we can afford it.

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February 16th 2011

WOWGOLDPIG.COM: Blogging All the Way to the Bank

After suffering a grueling week of e-mail shenanigans and horrible gameplay tips , I decided to unwind at one of my favorite online spaces: The WoW Gold Pig blog .


Written by the same geeks that run current gold awardee WoWGoldPig.com , The Pig blog has a very cool, laidback vibe. It updates quite frequently and discusses anything under the California sun. Naughtiness is encouraged, and there are hilarious discussions on lovely forearms, candy raiding and cosplay girls—the third one being a frequently recurring topic.

But my favorite post of late happens to be the one uploaded today. Faced with increasing defections to upcoming online game, RIFT, the Pig harnesses his inner rapper and changes the lyrics of “Westside” by TQ to express his undying loyalty to World of Warcraft.

It’s equally angsty and funny, just as the Pig likes it.

I’ve long stopped asking why a gold seller bothers maintaining a blog when it can just focus on selling as much gold as it can, because apparently it just works. The blog attracts its own set of devoted readers, who then get referred to the gold selling site and vice versa, with customers discovering the blog after having purchased cheap Gold from the website.

This community approach is something all the other Gold sellers should try to emulate. For one thing, this strategy is obviously bringing in the bucks for WoWGoldPig.com and two, ripping off a competitor’s strategy should be right up their alley.

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February 14th 2011

How to Farm Gold and Get Shafted

A lot of friends assume that when it comes to WoW Gold farming, the best guys to seek advice from would be the masters themselves: The lowly, hardworking paid-cents-by-the-day Chinese farmers.

So I did a little experiment and parsed through the known Chinese selling sites for the best WoW Gold-making tips. Even I didn’t expect what a disappointment that would be.

It seems Gold farmers offer the worst WoW Gold farming tips, a laughable irony that had me in stitches. Here’s a typical example in a sea of misinformed and poorly written “10 Basic WoW Gold Farming tips” by a certain Ruibo Chen from YOURWOWGOLD.com:

1. Its really easy and should be done right from the start of the game. Grab the 2 primary professions, mining and skinning. While you’re out leveling yourself you can easily skin the animals. You’re bound to eventually enter a mine which will have many minerals. Be sure to mine those ores. You can easily sell off the extra items to merchants or players.

Correct in the professions, wrong in everything else. A few types of humanoids, like the Yeti, can be skinned while critters cannot so it’s misleading to categorize all skinnable sources as animals. But the greatest travesty here is the advice to sell fat stacks of ore to vendors. That’s a surefire way to the poorhouse.

2. Make sure you grab quests every chance you get. You can easily gain additional exp, gold, items and faction while you’re leveling. You may even complete some of your quests with out even knowing because they normally require you to kill off mobs or require you to travel/speak to other NPCs. The quests of World of Warcraft are more player friendly than other MMORPGs.

So wordy for something so obvious. Would have been better for him to mention that daily repeatable quests at the end-game can haul in the Gold.

3.    Don’t spend any money buying World of Warcraft items, equipments and other accessories early in the game. Low level characters from 1-40 are not gear dependent. Along with that fact, you’ll get a nice load of items from just completing quests.

Considering I’m not really into low-level twinking, I’d agree with this advice. But these are supposed to be WoW Gold farming tips. Not saving tips. A better bullet point for this would be to farm BOE greens and blues and sell them via the auction house to twinks and low-level battlegrounds fanatics.

4.    While you’re out leveling, there are certain monsters that has better drops than others. An example would be humanoids. They tend to drop more gold and items than any other creatures in the World of Azeroth.

Cloth is the only proven higher drop among humanoids, but unless you’re aiming to be the king of band-aids, you should probably adopt a more appropriate rule: Run level-appropriate dungeons when farming for sellable drops.

5.    This is the advice I give to friends. When setting up your character, be sure first to read about the characters plus, and minuses; then set up for the strong and weak points. Take in consideration how the character supports himself and how the character can keep going and keep on track to level without losses.

Bullshit. What the heck are these “strong and weak points.” With the notable exception of druids who have been known to use their flight form for ninja node gathering, all the classes and races are fairly even in the WoW Gold farming department.

6.    Don’t spend money on items at the auction during the first 10 levels of your character. Almost everything you will need will drop to you from the quests. Keep your activities balance in the amount time of questing and making products. Then, as you gain money from making and questing you will see your pocket grow.

Mr. Obvious strikes again. You can’t blow a lot of Gold because there’s virtually nothing to buy at the auction house for the first ten levels. After that it’s one big blah we already know about as well.

7.    The usual, your character does by the skills he has, whether it is mining, leather, or tailoring. You make and sell your products. This is how you gain, the more you practice your trade, the more gold you have in your pocket, when you sell the items. The higher the level your character is the higher the prices in the prices of your products.

Incomprehensible gibberish. What I do know is that crafting need not be profitable at the highest levels only. Sure it gains the biggest Gold at max-level, but while climbing the skills ladder a lot of professions like Jewelcrafting can be lucrative as well.

8.    Resale, this happened during the holidays. I know of a character that went out and bought snowballs and after collecting many, was selling them at a higher price to others. Later, bragging about the profit. Take advantage of this.

This one seems to be the only one that has a semblance of use in it, but even then it has less promise than the author makes out. Given the nature of holiday events as all-inclusive extravaganzas, chances are your profit margins will dwindle to coppers when the eventuality of humongous supply kicks in.

9.    Once you level some you can charge others to guide them through lower quests that you can whiz threw. There are many ways to make money, for example you can protect and kill for lower characters.

The most important information has been left out—tanks and, to some extent, healers are the best for-hire candidates. DPS classes and specs are rarely paid to join a group in-game.

10.    In the group playing, be sure to express your wants and needs, to keep the character going. Drink and food on hand before; so your character can keep going till the quest is completed.

Don’t be caught dead without consumables, especially when farming. (A trip to town can cost you valuable farming time). And in dungeon PUGs, ask mages for food and water.

So why do Gold farmers create such awful guides? Obviously, they want you to fail so they can have all the coin to themselves. Sneaky bastards.

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February 10th 2011

FUN4GOLD.COM: Playing With You Like You’re a Dumbo

Creativity knows no bounds among the desperate. Want proof? Take FUN4GOLD.COM who managed to flood my inbox with their illegible spam (Gold prices aren’t even that spam-worthy when around half of the sellers I know can beat their price!)

See what they did there? Those sneaky rascals manipulated the e-mail time stamp, dating it 2013, so their trash would rank highest in my inbox Unfortunately for them, my spam screener is vacuum tight so they ranked highest all right – in my trash folder.

I have to give them some credit for misdirected originality though, I mean I don’t even know how they do this. I promise to give this some research, but rather than spamming WoW players with sub-par Gold deals, I’d rather use it for more useful purposes. Maybe a perpetually top-ranked I love you e-mail for my girl this Valentine’s?

While investigating, I should probably alert the lawsuit-happy Daniel Balsam that there’s probably some law that FUN4GOLD is breaking with these timestamp shenanigans. Mr. Balsam has allegedly racked up $1 million in court judgments and lawsuits from suing e-mail spammers and this might be an easy case for him to win.

It also goes without saying that the e-mail message itself from FUN4GOLD borders on the disastrous. Take a look at that brilliant copy:

Notice how they can spare symbols to make those weird-eyebrowed, straight-lipped emoticons ^_^ but can’t even bother to put periods in their own URL address? Talk about priorities. Plus, what a timely discount code! Xmas? Really?

Or maybe the writer got schizophrenic halfway through writing this e-mail (that happens when your job is the pits) and he began greeting me with a Happy New Year but then just decided to copy paste the previous Christmas e-mail, discount code and all.

Oh the work ethic these days!

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February 8th 2011

TOP1WOWGOLD.COM: Beating Everyone Else in Rip-Off Prices

When you’re good at something, you want the whole world to know about it. Maybe that’s the screwed up logic behind the name of TOP1WOWGOLD.com, because this hack website is the most ridiculously overpriced virtual gold seller I’ve seen in years.

1K Gold for $12.45? Even fat-walleted Goldman Sachs traders—and I actually know some who buy WoW Gold by the bazillion—would be horrified at that grossly overpriced rate. I’d only consider buying Gold at that price if it came with private shares of Facebook, which according to the same Wall Street types is going to go public soon and make its shareholders a lot of moolah.

Sadly, this is no “buy-virtual-Gold-get-stock-market-Gold” deal. Just a plain ‘ol rip-off designed to snare those unlucky enough to stumble onto this site and forget to compare prices to, let’s say, another Top 1 claimant, IGE.

At the very least, IGE gives us a reason to believe they’re numero uno, what with their “most trusted” proclamations backed by pretty solid proof from consumer forums and BizRate reviews.

Want a real test of TOP1WOWGOLD.com’s legitimacy? Just copy /paste some of the content on their site into Google Search and have fun.

Unprofessional to say the least. Is their English so bad that they had to lift copy off US-based sellers or are they part of a 100-strong scam network that not only shares “About Us” pages but also your personal information, e-mail addresses and credit card info illegally?

If you live across the Atlantic, you’re apparently German, at least their EU sell page assumes everyone is German. For the Germans, “Kaufen Sie nicht von dieser Web site!”

In the interest of fairness, I thought about giving this Gold seller a chance at redemption. There was the smallest chance that an agent would be able to explain to me the insane prices listed on their store, but the whole package just screams DANGER!

I’ll check back if Live Support has come back after the Chinese New Year festivities simmer. Something tells me I’ll get an explanation that Top 1 means “robbing you blind” in Mandarin.

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February 3rd 2011

WOWGOLDCOW.COM: Milking Your Time with Dead End Links

First was the Pig. Then the wannabe Hog. Now there’s another cow-pycat in our midst. (Sorry, that’s the sour milk talking.)

WoWGoldCow.com has all the makings of a first-rate Gold spam site.

Kindergarten English, check.

Cheesy name origin witty only in Chinese, check.

Useless spam content, check. (100g an hour—can’t wait to watch that video… of a level 85 toon questing.)

But here’s the rub folks: Despite looking like a sleazy Gold-selling operation, WoWGoldCow.com doesn’t actually sell any Gold on the website. All those shiny “Buy Now” buttons you see? Dead links. Talk about being sleazy AND useless.

So, to the owner of this website, please put this pathetic Cow out to pasture. Maybe offer it up to the great 4chan for D0S target practice?

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