How one WoW player’s eye for fashion made a million gold in 45 days
I hate the quandary between stats versus looks in MMOs. That’s why I love transmogrification; it lets you copy the appearance of one magical item onto another. In practice that means you can take two items: one powerful, one dapper and combine them to make a pretty thing with great stats.
The concept is nothing new, but it wasn’t introduced to World of Warcraft until last November’s patch 4.3. One man – appropriately known as The Mogfather – saw potential for extreme virtual wealth.
The Mogfather’s goal was to prove how profitable the transmogrification could be. Players aren’t able to sell any products created by the process, but that didn’t deter the entrepreneur. He started buying up auctions for cheap armour that looked cool: “When I looked at those armor sets that were primarily made up of lower-level items from The Burning Crusade and vanilla, my design eye kicked in,” the Mogfather told Joystiq. And he did all this before patch 4.3 landed.
Then, once the new feature hit, he relisted his designer items at a higher price based purely on their aesthetic appeal. “I took the pricing spread of fashion and brought it to my markets.”
World of Warcraft – Warsong Gulch PvP Three-Way
In our recurring Three-Way video segment, three editors go head-to-head-to-head as they take on the same section of the same game with unique strategies and play styles. Once they’ve put their methods to the test, the editors convene to survey their colleagues’ trials and exercise their inalienable right to copious wisecrackin’. In this edition, Josh, Chris and Tyler tackle a round of World of Warcraft capture-the-flag PvP in Warsong Gulch. Josh takes the role of bodyguard while Chris heals and Tyler focuses on running the flag. Check out the introduction above, and see how the team fared in the following videos…
World of Warcraft to get cross-realm raids with patch 4.3.2, expansion prices lowered
A post on Battle.net mentions that patch 4.3.2 for World of Warcraft will give players the ability to form raid groups using the Real ID party feature. Whatever realm you and your friends are on, you’ll be able to invite each other into a single cross-realm group and then take on any classic dungeon or raid together. This’ll work with the raid finder, but you won’t be able to run Dragon Soul on normal or heroic yet.
Ultimate Christmas Giveaway: Win a giant World of Warcraft bundle, including a signed copy of Cataclysm
Welcome to the PC Gamer Ultimate Christmas Giveaway! This is the biggest competition we’ve ever done: packed with peripherals, games, and exclusive items signed by some very important people. Why are we doing this? Because it’s Christmas! And we love you.
Merry Christmas PC Gamers! We’ve finally reached the end of our Christmas giveaway, it’s been a great ride, and we’ve given out some amazing prizes, but all good things must come to an end.
We’re going out with a bang though, giving your the chance to win a copy of World of Warcraft: Cataclysm signed by the dev team. That in itself would be an awesome prize, but we don’t do things by halves, and neither does Blizzard, and they’ve given us a monster bundle of goodies to go with it, including posters, t-shirts, action figures, comics, mousemats and more. It’s an amazing prize, and one lucky reader will win it.
Check inside for full details of what’s included, and a chance to win it.
Opinion: Why World of Warcraft’s new talent system doesn’t go far enough
I don’t envy the World of Warcraft development team. They’ve got a population of 10+ million players to please, a relentless stream of expansion packs and patches to deliver, and a vast array of content to refresh and balance. It’s a hard job. Right now – they’re taking on one of the hardest jobs possible: introducing fundamental change to the core mechanics of the game – the talent system – in an attempt to improve it.
The new talent system let you assign points into a tree of abilities every level or so. Instead, you’re given a menu of abilities that unlock at pre-defined intervals, and at those intervals you’ll pick one from three. It feels, immediately, less RPG-y that by not assigning points every level (or in Cata, every other level) you’re making less choices. But, I do agree with Ghostcrawler who pointed out in his blog that “you will have more choices that *matter*.”
World of Warcraft patch 4.3 adds Deathwing raid, new dungeons, raid finder and more
World of Warcraft’s Hour of Twilight update has been detailed in full in the official patch notes on Battlenet. The update will finally give WoW players the chance to defeat Deathwing in the new Dragon Soul raid event. A new Raid Finder tool will let out-of-guild players get raiding parties together quickly, and the patch will add a collection of new games to Darkmoon Faire.
The Deathwing fight itself sounds incredible. It takes place in two parts, the first asks players to “parachute from soaring gunships to attack the monster mid-flight and attempt to weaken him by ripping away his armor.” The final confrontation happens deep in the Maelstrom.
Star Wars: The Old Republic success questioned by Activision boss
Activision’s head honch Bobby Kotick has questioned whether Star Wars: The Old Republic will make enough money to keep going. Speaking to Reuters, Kotick – whose World of Warcraft is massive – said: “If you look at the history of the people investing in an MMO and achieving success, it’s a small number.”
Kotick also has doubts about how EA are going to pay George Lucas the massive licensing fees for the Star Wars uber-franchise. “Lucas is going to be the principal beneficiary of the success of Star Wars,” Kotick said. “We’ve been in business with Lucas for a long time and the economics will always accrue to the benefit of Lucas, so I don’t really understand how the economics work for Electronic Arts.”
Analysts are predicting that The Old Republic could pull 3 to 4 million World of Warcraft subscribers into the Star Wars universe, so Kotick is understandably looking for holes in the game. But publishers EA and developers BioWare are going to have to ensure there’s enough new content to keep players interested once they’re over the initial peak. Apparently EA needs at least 500,000 subscribers to make TOR profitable – we doubt they’re going to have many problems reaching that number.
Mists of Pandaria talent calculator calculates talent
We’ve known that upcoming World of Warcraft expansion Mists of Pandaria overhauls the game’s talent system, but the game’s new talent calculator – pointed out by Eurogamer – lets you see exactly how it’s going to work. Instead of accumulating talent points, each time you reach a multiple of level 15 you unlock a new talent, giving you the potential of six skills all the way up to level 90.
PC Gamer UK Christmas issue – Mists of Pandaria
For most people, Christmas is a day, but for us, it’s a whole magazine. This year we’re celebrating with Crimbo the Christmas Panda, who adorns our cover. What does Crimbo have for good boys and girls? Why it’s an enormous twelve page feature on Blizzard’s new games. From Mists of Pandaria to Heart of the Swarm, to Blizzard Dota, Christmas elf Rich McCormick has scooped all his Blizzcon news up into a big snowy wordball. Oh, and every reader gets a free copy of King Arthur – The Roleplaying Wargame.
You can read it all in the latest issue of PC Gamer UK, which should be on shelves shortly and arriving with subscribers right now. It’s also available online, digitally through Zinio and Apple Newsstand, and it should already be with subscribers now.
World of Warcraft is seven, free stuff for all players
If World of Warcraft were an Indian child, it would have just reached the age of criminal responsibility. This is a round-about way of saying that World of Warcraft is seven years old. To celebrate the game being legally responsible for its actions – if it were an Indian child – developers and publishers Blizzard are giving away a “Celebration Package” item, according to their official blog and reported by our chums at CVG.
The item consists of a few fireworks, a “feat of strength” added to your achievements, a visual only tabard and a 7% bonus to experience and reputation gains while active. To get the package, you’ll need to log in between now and 3 December. “It’s been a truly incredible seven years, and we’d like to thank you all for joining us for yet another fantastic year,” say Blizzard, adding a request that players “please observe all goblin and gnome fire hazard warnings and celebrate responsibly.”
World of Warcraft loses 800,000 more subscribers, Blizzard looks to Pandaria
I’ve got to hand it to Blizzard: While most MMOs would be circling the drain if their bubble burst to the tune of 800,000 subscribers, World of Warcraft barely notices. Yeah, the steep drop to 10.3 million – down from last year’s all-time high of 12 million – is by no means good news, but from where Blizzard’s sitting, it’s just a hint to try something new rather than a one-way trip to the MMO graveyard.
Bring back the gank: How Mists of Pandaria will return old-school PvP to World of Warcraft
We had a chance to sit down with World of Warcraft’s Senior Game Producer, John Lagrave, at this year’s BlizzCon to talk about what Blizzard wants to do with PvP in Mists of Pandaria. And they’ve got some big plans to bring back the memorable chaos of huge open-world fights and group ganking alongside the ultra-serene Pandaren race.
World of Warcraft Guardian Cub ready to take a bite out of gold farmers, available now
The Guardian Cub pet has arrived in the World of Warcraft pet store, boosting WoW’s cuteness levels by a solid 1.5%. The winged, purple, flaming lion cub will be able to follow you into the skies of Azeroth and is possibly the cuddliest thing ever conceived, but may also fill another important role. The Guardian Cub is World of Warcraft’s first tradeable pet.
Unless fully equipped, the little $10 lion can be passed on to friends and fellow guild members as a gift, or traded for in-game gold in the auction house. In the official Guardian Cub FAQ Blizzard say that they made the Guardian Cub tradeable to give players a way to get a new pet within the game without having to visit the pet store. It also happens to give players a legitimate way to sell their pet for gold within Azeroth, effectively bypassing external gold farmer operations.
Blizzard on how the war for Pandaria will progress with post-launch patches
In the run up to World of Warcraft’s Mists of Pandaria expansion, the virgin land of Pandaria has been hidden beneath a magical mist for an age, untouched by the conflict between Horde and Alliance. When the expansion launches, war will hit the shores of the Panda nation, but not right away.
We caught up with Blizzard lead system designer, Greg Street, at Blizzcon to discuss how the war for Pandaria will pan out. He tells us that it will start out as a peaceful land, but become increasingly war torn with the addition of each post-release patch.
Halloween descends upon your favorite MMOs: spooky stuff you can play this weekend
Halloween is a time for many things. Candy, costumes, vandalism, paganism – you know, wholesome stuff. But Halloween also has its darker side. That’s right: MMORPGs – perhaps the most evil, life-devouring game genre in existence. So clearly, it only makes sense that all of them would… OK, I’m done trying to make sense of this.
For some reason, MMOs take to Halloween like machete-wielding psychopaths to teenagers on camping trips. Why? Who knows? But it’s stupidly fun, and you get to punch zombies in a videogame. That, like, almost never happens. Find out what the likes of WoW, Rift, World of Tanks, DC Universe, and many more are up to this Halloween after the break.
