I don’t know about you, but rolling a new character in Warcraft is always something I do with mixed emotions.
Ok, the great thing is trying out a new class combination and anticipating the adventures ahead. However, I’m also aware that much of what I’m about to do I have done many (many) times in the past.
It’s fair to say that I continue to play, so the anticipation wins out over possibility of becoming a little jaded.
Then something else strikes me. As I’m rolling the character I remember just how limited the choices are for the appearance.
How dull and uninspired the preset character faces and styles are.
Humans in particular are a very weird looking bunch. The lack of real facial customization apart from the adornments of hair and piercing means they all end up looking pretty much the same. A look I would describe as “very 2005″.
There were good reasons for the paucity of detail in 2005. Computers were less able and the internet connection most people enjoyed was far slower, meaning that the time to load and cache a lot of different facial detail would have been a hurdle.
Now I can tell what some of you are saying “It’s all about the armour choices” Well to that I say “bleh”. One well specced Paladin looks much like another after a couple trips through Icecrown. “Same-old same-old”. Ok I understand that the clothes you wear con make a big difference, but that leads to everyone walking around Dalaran with their helmets on. Ok, I might be getting a little “RPG” at the moment, but then a little role play in a role playing game can’t be bad can it?
Here, in 2010 there are lots of MMORPG’s with far less financial clout that Blizzard, that produce games with massive amounts of customization. Champions Online, for all it’s (many) faults takes character customization to an insane degree, but this is one of its charms. You’ll rarely see two “generic” looking characters from one play session to the next.
Looking forward it is one feature I really would like to see implemented. Preferably sooner rather than later.
Sadly, having seen the trailers so far for Cataclysm, it isn’t something they are considering any time soon.
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The days of gold guides for Warcraft are numbered. The times of referring to a book to tell you what to do in the game to make gold are coming to an end.
It’s not really high tech is it? You are playing a state of the art game, then suddenly need to “switch out” and refer to a PDF document to work out where to go and what to do to make more Warcraft gold.
The term “guide” tells it’s own sorry story. A guide isn’t proactive, it just points you in the right direction. If you are hiking down the Amazon basin, a guide is useful, but it’s not going to do the hard yards for you is it?
Now I’m not knocking guides. They have played their role in the Warcraft economy, but their days are numbered. They really don’t cut it any more.
Then there are the guides that call themselves “systems”. Have you seen these? A system is a procedure you follow, using tools provided to achieve a result. Ok, fine, well the system in these guides seems to be;
1 – Follow the guide.
2 – What are you doing here? Get back to the guide!
If it’s auction house domination you are after then the guys at Norganna.org have got that covered. Norganna has a complete run-down of the whole auctioneer system. He even has his own Wiki. I have every guide I could find on the net and none (and I mean absolutely none what-so-ever) have the amount of good auctioneer information that Norganna has. Period. That shouldn’t suprise you. He wrote the application.
If it’s macros you are after, may I direct your attention to Wowwiki. Every possible macro for just about every possible event you can think of in the game. The hard bit is accessing them. Now follow closely. Ready? First you select the macro and “copy” then you go into your Warcraft interface and press “paste” got that? So “copy” then “paste”. Practice it a few times. Man If you bought a guide for auctioneer help and a few macros? You must feel a little sick now. You just paid for free inferior information. Ouch.
You want macros? Great! WoWwiki has a whole section with Warcraft macros, with examples of just about every one you can think of for every character type, race, profession and event in the game. You just copy and paste these straight into the Warcraft GUI. If you bought a “system” guide, then it will be a normal text document, with these two free elements added, then rebadged as a “system”. At least every one I’ve ever read has been like this. If you paid good money for this rehash of free information, then that’s gotta hurt. Sorry.
What Warcraft needs is a real system. Something where you press a button, and the inner workings of your servers’ economy gets ripped open.
Legal, safe and totally conforming to Blizzards terms and conditions. So simple a child could do it.
No grinding, no farming, no messing. A 5 minute install, then a system that doesn’t just guide you, it does all the work for you.
To take a look at the WoW-C Project click here Or if you’d prefer just Click for free guides
There are a lot of distractions on the way to getting a character to levelled in Warcraft, but here are five good reasons why you should prioritise this above everything else.
1 – Warcraft is now all about the end game. There is so much content once you get there that you will wonder why it took you so long. Ilevel-200 gear is so “last year”.
2 – Full blown PvP in Northrend, and beyond. Sure you can PvP at lower level, but the experience at level cap, with the new vehicles and team play, as well as the fantastic battlegrounds makes this the very best place to PvP in the game.
3 – You will feel better. Seriously. The day a character “pings” 80 is a great feeling. You are no longer a novice; you can walk tall in the game.
4 – Did I forget to mention Cataclysm? While it is true everyone can roll a new character to see around the all new Azeroth, only level 80’s will see all the great new content for levelling between 80 and 85. Blizzard are going out of there way to make every level a unique experience with the latest expansion. But of course it’s only open if you are already at the current cap.
5 – Finally making worthwhile gold. I know some guides tell you that it’s possible to make gold at any level, and to an extent that is true. But at level 80 it becomes so much easier. Just playing the game and selling the loot you pick up will yield around 200 gold per hour on most servers. Don’t go to all that hassle early in the game for a few gold pieces here and there. Your coffers will start to fill up very nicely once you get a level 80; just by playing the game as it should be played.
From the outside it can seem like there are two goals. Getting to level cap, and getting super rich. At times they might even seem to take you in different directions. Take it from someone who has done it 16 times. Levelling up as efficiently as you can is the key to success in both areas of the game.
Good luck, and get to level 80 as quickly as you can!
For absolutely the best and fastest way to level in Warcraft, click to see s Zygor’s levelling guide . Or for help in every aspect of the game, click here for our Free Warcraft Guides
Making Warcraft gold while playing can be a tricky business. Balancing the need to play the game, with the need to make gold is the hard bit.
Trading at the auction house is a good way to work. After all, your primary resource at the auction house is your skill, not your time.
I have found a new system on the market that promotes cross faction trading as the main way of making Warcraft gold. Cross faction trading is where you have characters at Alliance and Horde auction houses. You compare the price of an item at both. If there is a substantial difference you buy at the lower and sell at the higher. Transferring the items through a neutral auction house in the process.
Great idea. However there are one or two major drawbacks in using this as you main gold making method.
Firstly you cannot buy from yourself at an Auction house using a single Warcraft account. You cannot, for example, post an item with a Horde character at a neutral auction house, switch to an Alliance character and pick the item up to market it at the Alliance auction house. The system won’t let you.
You need a second account or a friend to assist you. A second account means actually paying Blizzard for two Warcraft accounts. Having a friend help you means splitting the profits, normally halving them. Not so profitable now is it?
The second issue is that of market saturation. A major flaw in these systems is they tell you to buy massive amounts. After all massive amounts should mean massive profits. However, you need to spread your inventory. Buying thousands of one particular item will flood the receiving market, forcing the price down.
At the end of the day there is a place for cross faction trading. But any system that relies solely on it for profits needs to be scrutinised carefully. There are some very big issues with setting the system up, and ensuring you are careful with your stock levels.
Want to dominate, without the need for a second account? Visit The Warcraft Advanced Gold Guide. Just want our famous free guides, then Free Warcraft Cataclysm Guides
Did you know that Frostwing was open? Of course you did. As I write its the 8th February 2010, it’s been open six days now. Apparently one guild has completed it.
Less than a week after opening the new wing, and despite the restrictions on weekly attempts, the most progressive guilds have conquered the Lich King in his final bunker – in 10 man mode anyway.
Is that it then? Other guilds will follow in time. So a nine month wait for more content begins. Ok my lot have not finished yet, and it will be probably three weeks until we do, We’ll then run it for another three or four weeks, taking us to say April at the outside. Then we are done. Game Over.
The wait for Cataclysm and 4.0 will be a long one. The most optimistic release dates are October 2010 or autumn (fall) 2010. Six months then with nothing to do.
For me, I’ll cancel my subscriptions and re-activate when there is something new to do. I’m not a brilliant player, but I reckon I will have finished what the game has to offer a full six months before Cataclysm. If there is no progression to be made, I’m out.
If you are an instance guild, does the idea of paying for months of no progressive content appeal to you? Yes. I have written before on this, and got replies about PvP and PvE quests etc. Good Great – Missing the point. A very large numper of people play Warcraft more or less exclusively for the end game instances. If you don’t, then great. No problem. This article isn’t aimed at you. But for those of us who play the game for the instances this is a disaster looming.
Just a quick note for the guys at Blizzard. Get patch 3.4 out, or release Cataclysm. I reckon June 2010, July at a push. By then even the guilds full of rushed Hunters will have completed the game. The essence of Warcraft is constant progression. No progression? For many that’s not an option they are prepared to pay for.
Want to comment? Just to download our now famous free Warcraft guides? Go to the Warcraft Information Exchange If it’s the best Warcraft gold making system you are after, then look at The Warcraft Advanced Gold Guide
Playing the race of your choice can lead to some issues later in the game. At level 20 you will receive a letter from your mount trainer, and that’s the time to pay your first few gold pieces and learn to ride your faction’s basic mount.
Mounts make travel 60% faster. Levelling and questing is speeded up considerably as a result. But what if you prefer a different racial mount?
Underneath, all mounts have exactly the same function, but some are just more appealing to players than others. The Night Elf sabre mount and the Orc Wolves are particularly popular, perhaps for the same reason that people keep cats and dogs as pets.
Well it might be possible. The first thing to understand is that you cannot have a mount from the other faction. Alliance mounts are for Alliance only and vice versa.
Assuming the mount you want is from your faction, the condition you need to meet is to be exalted with the race whose mount it is. Outside of PvP there are two standard ways of going about this.
Initially you could consider doing the starting quests for the race in question. They will yield the full reputation for that faction regardless of how high a level you are. Obviously the experience points will be low or none existent if you are level 20+ yourself, and the gold rewards will not be worth much to you, but it is reputation you are grinding, and at a high level you should speed through these quests very quickly.
The other method is available from level 40 onwards. Every race has a quartermaster who collects cloth. Wool, silk etc. By buying or grinding sufficient quantities of this cloth you can hand this in repeatedly for reputation points. Be warned though it takes thousands of individual pieces of cloth to go from friendly to exalted.
Keep going, until you get exalted status, then off to the mount trainer for that race and they will let you train and buy their mount. Good luck
For more information try the Warcraft Information Exchange To download our free Warcraft guides covering leveling, gold making and professions click on the Free WoW Guide Blog
Powerleveling with quests is the fastest way to progress in Warcraft. Here I will show you the first few steps to take with a Draenei character. You’ll soon be storming through the levels.
You will start at a crash site and are stood in front of a character called Megalon. If you “right click” on him a text box will come up detailing the first quest he would like you to perform. It’s a simple “take a message” quest that involved you walking down the hill towards the character that now has a yellow question mark above his head. Right click on this second character and another dialogue box will pop up with the option to complete the quest. Click – and you’ve done it. Congratulations, your first quest and experience points.
There are two more quests available in this small area. Click on the characters with the yellow exclamation marks over them (!) and they will offer you tasks in the same way as Megalon. Accept these quests.
These new quests involve your first proper action. You need to kill 8 volatile mutations and enough moths to be able to collect 8 vials of moth blood (yeuch).Remember, as well as your normal attack with the left mouse button, you also have a special attack. Normally accessed by pressing “2″ on your keyboard, or clicking on the second icon from the left on your Warcraft user interface at the bottom of the screen.
This will be a more powerful attack, but will require a few seconds to recharge. It may be a ranged attack, i.e. you can stand some way off from the mob to attack it. It will take the mob time to close in on you, giving you time to fire again.
These two quests are kill eight volatile mutations and collect 8 vials of moth blood. Killing the mutations is easy enough. However, to collect the moth blood, right click on the body of a moth you have just killed (the body will sparkle to show you that there is loot on it that you can collect) a box will open on screen with the items that you can loot listed.
So, loot everything until your backpack – which is shown in the bottom left of the screen – is full. Not every moth will yield the vial you need, so keep killing and looting until you have the eight the quest asks for.
Go back to the quest giver, right click on him, read the text and click on the button at the bottom of the pop-up window to complete the quest.
By now you will have levelled to at least level 2, and you will be directed to your class trainer. This is where you can learn new skills, and improve old ones. There are vendors in the area where the class trainer is situated. Click on them (they will have a bag or anvil icon on front of them when you hover the mouse over them) you will be able to sell the loot you don’t need to these, and they will pay you in copper for it.
Back outside; find characters with yellow exclamation marks over them. Accept the quests they offer. Hand finished quests in to characters with yellow question marks above them.
Completing quests is a great way to level up really fast. It offers extra experience and good reward items you can equip your character with; it’s easily the fastest way to power level in Warcraft.
Free leveling guide for all races and classes at Free WoW Guide Blog and click on the free guide icon. Or to comment on this or any other post then visit the Warcraft Information Exchange
With the forthcoming Cataclysm, the landscape of Azeroth will change forever. Places you know and love (or know and loath) will be transformed by the events.
Ashenvale will live up to its name, and looks like it will now be a Vale…full of ash, on the flip side the barren areas of Desolace will become the purple and green that signifies a night elf territory. Stranglethorn will be lovely – as it should be, but may well have a live volcano in the middle. These things happen.
Looking at the videos that have been released so far, one thing is clear. The new Azeroth seems a lot more detailed than even Northrend introduced with Wrath of the Lich King. This extra detail comes with a price. That is almost definitely the minimum spec will rise. Something to be wary off if you run a low end machine.
If you are a multi boxer this will of course stack up. You’ll need to keep a careful aye on the detail levels you set four your slave clients. Reduce the frames-per-second and perhaps change the settings on your keymapping software a little if they have the options.
The videos on Youtube, and on Blizzards own teaser sites show a lot more detail than we are used to. Movement and animation is everywhere. Water effects are vastly improved, flags flutter, clouds drift, and volcanoes belch smoke. Then factor in the great new detailed player models and textures and you have a lot for a low end PC to cope with.
To be fair, Warcraft has never been a particularly resource intensive game, but because of that many still play the game on mid to low end PC’s. This is where the problems may arise. It might just be a case of lowering the detail to get by. But then, the new graphics are that good – wouldn’t you rather see them in all their glory?
The Cataclysm expansion for Warcraft is still many months away. If you have a low end PC, then maybe take the time between now and the release date to see if you can upgrade your GFX card, Processor and memory. Cataclysm looks like a site worth seeing.
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Gold farming is the bain of many World of Warcraft players. This is the hard way to progress. You might feel as if you are getting somewhere, but this isn’t the way to become a World of Warcraft gold generator.
Ok, there is another option; to buy gold. A word to the wise here. Don’t. If the transaction is noticed (and Blizzard does watch out for them) then you will get your account suspended (and lose the gold). A second breach will see you banned from the game altogether.
Players continue to work the hard way. Gold farming. Perhaps they have given up for that elusive search for the World of Warcraft gold generator, a system that works “in the background” and with minimal input. If you are powerleveling however, the need to continually update your equipment soon becomes acute. Power leveling is perhaps the main reason why people fall behind with professions and equipment, then find they need to get WoW gold fast to catch up.
But there are methods that will work. However, these methods do not involve simply giving you gold farming tips. Instead they take a look “under the hood” of a typical Warcraft server’s economy and let you play the market like a pro.
Websites offering cheap gold might seem like a solution, and a quick look at the old fashioned systems that promise to make you a World of Warcraft gold generator might seem a safe way to go. But think about this. How do people in the real world make masses of money? It’s not with labouring. The grafters in the real world are not the mega rich. Likewise, in Warcraft the gold farmers are not he ones who are really rich. It’s the pros. The people who took the time to understand how the system works and then leverage some simple repeatable skills to their advantage.
Hopefully I’ve established that gold farming is not the way. To make gold in the most efficient way you should use a well researched and up-to-date system. A system that understands what makes the economies of Warcraft tick. One quick word of warning however, just like in the real world, the methods you use to make WoW gold need to change and adapt to the new laws and rules. An old gold making system is probably of little or no use. You need a system that is well researched and bang up to date.
The perfect system allows you to be the powerleveler you want to be, and have plenty of gold to support you without taking time out of the game just to farm for it. This might seem like a hard balance to find, but find a method that suits you, a system that uses your knowledge and abilities – not your valuable time.
To read more about making Warcraft Gold in the most effective way visit the Free WoW Guide Blog. To see the best gold guide around and read more then go straight to The Warcraft Advanced Gold Guide
The capital cities in Azeroth are where you can find the auction houses. It’s here that the most potential for profit and loss in Warcraft exists. The reason is the variability in price that you will find in here. One day Mageroyal is 5 silver apiece, the next it’s 10.
So it’s the variations that give you the player the opportunity to make and lose Warcraft gold. Selling to the NPC vendors that are dotted around the place does not offer variability. The prices they charge and buy for are fixed. SO if you have uncommon loot or decent crafting materials then these NPC vendors will not offer the best return for your efforts
Playing the market in the auction house requires that you first do some research, and collect some data. You need to know if a bargain is as good as it seems, or if you could get more profit for the items you are selling.
To start with download the auctioneer add-on. Once installed, this tool will run a full scan of the auction house at the press of a button. Collecting the price for every item it finds and storing it. Early in the game just run the scan and get on with powerleveling, don’t bother playing the market yet
If you run this scan once a day (or once every two days) until you have run it about 10 times, you will have a good idea of what people are asking for certain items.
Auctioneer will record all the asking prices and then put a percentage against every item you see in the auction house. This percentage is a ratio of the average asking price that auctioneer has found. So 90% means that the item is priced 10% below the average. Whereas 110% means it is priced 10% above.
Using this information, you can make decisions on which items to trade in. Following the simple real-world rule of buy low, sell high.
There are some huge shortcomings with auctioneer in the long run though.
As I mentioned above, it records the asking price. Not the selling price, it doesn’t even know whether the item sold at all. People can ask whatever price they want at auction. If you’ve seen a piece of wool cloth or similar on for 10,000g (it happens all the time) then this figure will massively increase the average that Auctioneer thinks Wool cloth is worth. It won’t have sold of course (at least not to someone who was keeping within the ToS and actually wanted it) People do this to either move vast amount of gold around, or in the hope that someone accidentally clicks on the item and buys it. The result is the same. Auctioneer’s average asking price gets completely skewed with rogue data.
Another issue is the fact that the game changes all the time. Items are useful, and then a patch is issued that makes them worthless. Perhaps they were part of a crafting recipe that is no longer the best available. Or the stats for an item have been changed. Blizzard increase and decrease drop rates for items all the time. In a matter of days rare items become common and worth far less, or the opposite can happen. Auctioneer will not tell you this. If you have invested heavily in one or two items, a patch can wipe out loads of your profit of you don’t know what’s coming up
However, to start with auctioneer is a great tool. Install it and run the scan. It certainly isn’t the be-all-and-end-all tool for making gold in Warcraft, but it is a tool that, used properly and knowing the pitfalls, can help you along the way to becoming a World of Warcraft Gold Generator.
Do you want to dominate the Warcraft Gold market? The download our free guide. Visit Free WoW Guide Blog to download it. If you just want to comment on this or any other post visit the Warcraft Information Exchange