Besides all the hub-bub-bub about Warcraft hunters using feign death for something other than a solo’ing disaster … which reminds me, didn’t we have this very same conversation about feign death in 1999 when EQ monks discovered the wonders of feign pulling? (ya, we did.)
Besides that, there were a few observations I made while griffing all over Azeroth 49 times:
Enchanter scams. Obviously scams arrive in a brand-new game on Day 1, but this was a new one to me. Level 30-something Player is auctioning in /shout that he will do high-end enchantments on weapons for a low, low price to the first few people to /tell him.
I wouldn’t have paid attention to him otherwise because we have a guild guy on call for that, (being obligated can be painful), but as soon as EnchanterX /shouted, at least five other people added their /shouts warning people not to fall for the scam. Some of us asked for details, how is he scamming? Seems EnchanterX would do an enchantment alright, but a lower level one than advertised … then promptly /ignore all his dissatisfied customers.
According to the /shouters, they had been /reporting his ass for over a week, obviously to no avail, as there he was in Ironforge, still spreading his special brand of thievery and chicanery. There’s really no way for the players to protect themselves, other than word of mouth or withholding payment until after they SEE the modification after accepting the weapon back in trade. If we all begin withholding payment until after our weapons are modified, I’m sure some enchanters would then get ripped.
The solution can only come from a game modification, but damn, he’s been reported for a week and still no action, as in a permanent vacation from Warcraft. I’m sure the GMs are understaffed (and oh so underappreciated), but triage this shit and clear the scammers out ASAP.
The (alleged!!) Chinese Farmers and other crack smokers. I don’t know about other servers — sometimes I’ll check out other Auction Houses to see if my server’s prices are as whacked as I think they are, I don’t have all the time in the world tho — but, just because an item is colored blue (rare) or purple (epic) doesn’t mean it’s worth THREE HUNDRED GOLD.
So many of those items have utterly ridiculous stats and I can’t imagine any class being interested, yet there it is in the Auction House, day after day, listed at 300g or more. You’d think that the professional farmers would have a greater understanding of value and worth for rare items. You’d be wrong. They have just as much hope as the amateurs.
And speaking of the pros, exactly how hard is it to shut them down? For all of Blizzard’s blustering about how theirs is a new era in clamping down on rl sales of in-game items for rl money, has there been any movement on this? I know the farmers that I’m stalking watching are still doing their 24/7 bit in the same zones, camping the same chests and the same nameds, looting the same shit.
Here’s an idea. Any account that’s logged in for 95% of the week is gone. They’re either pros or sharing the account like it’s a disease-ridden whore. They want to farm? They can farm their way back to 60 from another keycode. Problem abated.
Casinos. They’ve arrived on my server; we were a little late to the game with that. I will never understand why people participate in these. WHY?? WHY?? At least EnchanterX put some thought behind his scam, and I have some symphathy for those he’s taken, but giving gold to an unregulated casino is lunacy.
Set the odds grossly in the house’s favor, have a buddy use /say to boast about how much money he’s made gambling, boom. A successful in-game casino. And the spam. MY GOD, the spam!
There’s a sucker born every minute. And two to take him.
The Ironforge Campers. I understand sometimes players have to camp the Auction House, guarding a targeted purchase as the time remaining dwindles down to a close.
(Here’s a tip: put a buyout on that low-level, everybody’s-looting-it, I-practically-have-mobs-throwing-that-shit-at-me, equipment. No one in their right mind is going to drive up the price on level 30 equipment EVER, so just put a buyout and be done with it.)
Now that I’ve helped clear three more people out of Ironforge, what in the hell is everyone else doing here ALL THE TIME? Who are these people that are ALWAYS in Ironforge? There’s usually a herd of level 20s milling about, inspecting all the 50s, asking how they should spec their talent points. Do they ever get any talent points? I think they’d have to level to gain a talent point and it’s really hard to level inside IRONFORGE.
Every time I fly in, usually at 1/3 health with 5% durability left on the equipment, the same people are in zone, having the same arguments about which class owns which in PvP, and which class needs a nerf.
I do not understand the appeal. I get the hell out as fast as I can.
Level 50 Mercenaries. Now this is odd. Since I’ve breached the late 50s, I get at least 2 or 3 /tells a night from strangers (some are stranger than others … ba da bing!) asking if I’ll help them with quests or camp equipment for them … for pay.
First of all, I’d have no idea what to charge. Second of all, I’m sure they can’t afford me. Third, who the hell gave them my name?
Recently, this level 40 rogue wanted me to camp a blue dagger for him in Blackrock. It has a 5% drop rate per thottbot, so it won’t take too long!! 5%, my ass. 5% says one thing to me, and that’s: All Day Camp.
I feel sorry for the young pup, so I spend about 15 minutes while farming craft shit trying to explain why he doesn’t need The Best Equipment Ever to kill stuff. He shouldn’t mortgage his Warcraft future, as it were, for his level 40 equipment: quested equipment will suffice and the rest can come from lucky buys at the AH. Lord knows he’d have plenty of company with the level 20s while watching the auctions.
I just know that pep talk fell on deaf ears. Hell, I tried.
I guess these players looking for a level 50 to hire don’t have any game friends yet. Or they have some twisted view on how to “win” Warcraft.
I don’t know what their problem is, but hiring level 50s is not going to solve it.
There’s some kind of line regarding equipment. It’s not worth whoring yourself completely to have The Best Equipment, or doing runs way below your level in the hope that you get the rare uber-drop (which some other party member will probably get the lucky roll on anyway).
So long as you make some effort to have gear that’s Pretty Good, which is easy enough if you’re got a semi-useful craft, then you can buy plenty of decent stuff.
On the other hand it pays to do some research into the potential of stuff your level, otherwise you can hitting way under your weight in a group, and end up on The List for sucking.
Speaking of, why don’t you just put the casino people and all their damn shills on ignore?
“Speaking of, why don’t you just put the casino people and all their damn shills on ignore?”
I hit the limit on the /ignore list long ago. But for others that aren’t as quick with the /ignore macro, that’s good advice.
I saved this from the boards, give it a look 🙂
http://www.cesspit.net/misc/spam.jpg
What would be handy would be an asshats out of 10 rating for those on your ignore list – kind of like when your containers fill up and you dump the least valuable loot, you could remove people with lower asshat ratings.
From 1 asshat out of 10 (I was extremely drunk and didn’t mean to add you to /ignore) to 10 asshats out of 10 (I would need to be extremely drunk to take you off /ignore).
Because hitting the limit when there are still so many to ignore isn’t much good.
heh, love the asshat rating system. I think I have quite a few that are just a 1 rating, but can’t recall the circumstances leading up to the /ignore.
Great screenshots, Ab. I do not envy the WoW GMs their job.
Ah, buyouts. wth is with people that don’t put buyouts on their non-blue/purple stuff? If you’re selling a green item better than the one I have, I want it now! Not maybe 12 hours later (screw your ‘very long’ auction, I ain’t waiting for it).
Put a reasonable buyout on your unwanted shit, and if I like it i’ll gladly give you the money for the convienience of getting back to what I really want to do (killing and such, the point of the gear in the first place).
I think the people who try to buy time start off with a /who 60 and ask everyone in the list, then a /who 59 and so on until they find some sucker. I do know that when I reached 60, the number of begging requests increased at least threefold. At first, I would ask for the name of their guild leader and then talk to him or send him a mail explaining that he had a begging scumbag in his guild and suggesting that he might want to take action. Unfortunately, everyone in warcraft is guilded, if you are not, then you can expect to get invites so often it feels like a harassment violation. I have no doubt these people just move on to the next guild whose members have macros. I can be a pretty cruel person, but I dont think my next plan of action was undeserved. Now adays, I agree to help nooberX with whatever boss he needs to kill and tell him to meet me at the entrance to the instance and to message me when they get there. I make this sound as genuine as possible. Then I put them on ignore and think about how many times they were killed trying to get to the portal. To give you an idea of what I could of won if I actually turned up, $10 for killing Vancleef, $200 to powerlevel from 26-40, $40 for that 15% drop rate 1handed sword from the hydra at the bottom of blackfathom deeps, $10 for the four bosskills in SM to complete the quest.
Take a closer look at who hangs around outside the ironforge bank. You should see a good number of level 60s, further investigation will also reveal another small congregation right outside the ironforge gate that are dueling each other.
Now, I am a freak. I am the only level 60 player on alliance on my server that doesnt belong to a guild. I will be joining my long time guild on the Euro servers when it finally gets released here in a few weeks, so I have no intention of joining a ‘pickup guild’ in the interim.
My class is not part of the holy trilogy, so groups are pretty hard to get. I have a few friends who try to hook me up when their guild raid needs one more person, but in general I am stuck with pickup groups. Actually its worse than that, I am now stuck with pickup raids. There is a complete lack of of any global “looking for group” functionality, its not even possible to tell if someone is in a group so sending /tells to people asking them to join me will yield pretty poor results. At level 60, theres basically just three things people do:
1. Group up and do instance runs.
2. Player vs Player
3. Port back to ironforge to repair, sell their junk and check on their auctions.
Two of these are busytime. The only way to form pickup groups is hanging around in ironforge and using the general or lfg channels or talking directly to the other level 60s who are hanging around or between instance runs.
Expect this problem to get a lot worse as more people reach level 60. See, there is nothing you can do without a large group. Hopefully blizzard has recognised this problem, there is talk of “meeting stones” and other such systems. This isn’t going to solve the underlying issue, it will just move these congregations outside of IF to wherever the meeting stones are. The fundamental problem will still remain, theres nothing to do at level 60 that doesn’t require a lot of people and a lot of time.
People are far to sensitive with their ignore lists. I couldn’t imagine having my list full of people who i never cared to talk to again. Don’t get me wrong, I see lots of people talking about rather meaningless topics in the gen chan. I just don’t let it get to me so quickly.
Responding to #7 Tranixx’s comment – the meeting stone functionality is partially in the game now. If you’re lucky, you can quickly click on a small button that appears on the right edge of your minimap when you log in. When you do, a message comes up about leaving the meeting stone queue or something like that. Since that much is in already, maybe it’ll be up and running “officially” in the next content patch (once can hope).
It’s the one who got scammed who is to blame for being a fucking moron. Dueche bag. I wish I knew how to spell or form coherent thoughts. Mostly I furrow my brow in a vain attempt to understand the material.