Patch 6.2: Some thoughts...

I honestly don't know what was I expecting. I mean, I was expecting something but I didn't know what. So far, situation is so hectic that it is pretty close to impossible to kill a Rare Creature unless you accidentally aggro it while walking along it's spawn point or you join a group of "Rare Hunters" that are camping them and announcing themselves on General Channel.

In correlation with the release of the Patch, price of [WoW Token] jumped by about 10.000 gold over night and it's current price is ~53.000 gold per Token on EU realms while price on US realms stands steady at ~25.000 gold pieces per Token. (Source: WoWTokenInfo, 27.06.2015.)

 [Cursed Feather of Ikzan] dropped by High Priest Ikzan. Why isn't this classified as a Toy?

Overall, Tanaan Jungle has the same vibe that Timeless Isle had only bigger. Vast area with lots of Achievements, Treasures, Rare Creatures that drop ILVL650 Baleful Tokens which are useless if you are seasoned Raider that's a member of the Guild with a Raid Progression... But very useful thing if you are gearing up an Alt Character as iLVL650 is minimum requirement (announced by Blizzard Devs) in order to even be considered for Normal version of Hellfire Citadel.

Timewalking event was finally implemented and it brought a bit of Nostalgic feel to the game. You can queue through RDF for it and band up with 4 other players to re-live old dungeons as it was meant to be played rather than going back as High Level player and facerolling through. Currently available dungeons are from TBC era: The Arcatraz, The Black Morass, Mana-Tombs, The Shattered Halls and The Slave Pens. Timewalking is a Weekend event that lasts for 3 days and will end on Monday. Next Weekend event will be Apexis Bonus event where drop of Apexis Crystals will be multiplied and they will be found more often while looting. Next Timewalking event will happen on July 17th when we will have the chance to tackle down WotLK dungeons in same manner.

Mythic Dungeons are finally opened. Same Dungeons only a bit more challenging. They are on a weekly lockout, drop item level 685 gear, and allow you to use [Seal of Inevitable Fate] for bonus rolls. Speaking of Seals, cap for [Seals of Tempered Fate] was increased to 20 and you can buy them at your Tanaan faction hub vendors for 300 gold pieces per Seal.

In "Garrison Related" news, I created The Shipyard and for a moment everything looked awesome. Then I found out that I need to grind reputations so I can obtain more ships and I got easily bored by it. As every ship has a chance to be destroyed if mission fails (win chance less than 100%) and because I am Resource Efficient, The Shipyard won't see my foot setting onto it's soil for a while now because all current available missions has a chance of success around 50%, which are odds that I don't like at all. Especially if Rare ship is in question.

Drop chance of Salvage Crates was nerfed and you will see them in less quantities than you could. High-value Gold follower missions are nerfed and you will see less of them, especially on your alts. (Since it is semi-related to the Garrison) Ashran's grouping system was nerfed and you can't queue for it while in Raid group so, goodbye Nemesis pre-made groups... Profession cooldowns and Buildings yield double amounts of materials now and you get twice as much as before. Profession Upgrade Tokens underwent a change so it could be easier to create them and amount of materials needed to create them has been normalized. And for some god damn reason, we are getting dismounted AGAIN while interacting with finished Work Orders.

Enchanting ProTip!

Warlock is by far my favorite class. What ever game I played, first pick was always Warlock or Necromancer or basically anything that reassemble that class (if those 2 are not listed as available).

There is something in tormenting your soul with practicing Fel arts and invoking Demons to fight by your side.

Although there is a wide variety of professions in WoW that can be of use for Warlock, I always took Tailoring and Enchanting. Why? Because I can craft gear for my class and Disenchant what I don't need.

Pre-Pandaria enchanting was predictable. You Disenchant Green (uncommon) pieces of gear in order to obtain Dusts. Disenchanting same quality Weapons gave essences in most cases and Blue (rare) and Purple (epic) gave shards and crystals. After the release of Mists of Pandaria, things got both simplified and complicated. Green items gave mostly [Spirit Dust] and Weapons rarely gave [Mysterious Essence] however, you could create Essences yourself by "compressing" [Spirit Dusts] or shattering the [Ethereal Shards]. We were like Nuclear physicists, splitting atoms and shit.

With release of Warlords of Draenor, Essences got lost in the Nether, probably some scheme conducted by Dreadlords. Disenchanting Green Draenor items give only [Draenic Dust], Blues give mostly dusts but also give [Luminous Shards] (around 70/30 chance) and, for some reason, Draenor items that get upgraded to Epic (Quest and Treasure Rewards), Disenchant into [Sha Crystals], which makes no sense what-so-ever...

If there is one thing I learned during active playing in these last 2 expansions is that it is simply not worth Disenchanting Green items... During MoP period, average vendor value of Uncommon Quality items was between 25 and 35 gold pieces. When Disenchanted those same items gave 5, or 7 [Spirit Dusts] at the most. In order to get 1 stack of 20 Dusts, you had to Disenchant 3-4 Items which translates into (roughly) 100 gold that you could have yanked out of some poor vendor if you had sold those 3-4 Items. At the same time, people that don't know math (Read: Retards of the Auction House) were placing stacks after stacks of [Spirit Dust] for a price of 20 gold (40 tops) per stack of 20. I didn't complain as it went in my favor... I get a green item, sell it to vendor for 25 gold and then buy 1 stack of Dusts from AH for 20g. When you do the math, I was around 40-50g richer for every item that I could have Disenchanted to get that same amount.

That same principle works more or less same in Warlords of Draenor with a difference being that Dusts are overpriced at some moments and, it is cheaper if you run through a dungeon or two... As I stated, it is not worth to Disenchant Uncommon Quality Draenor items as most of them give 2-4 [Draenic Dust]. Best thing for you to do is to sell them to vendor. Best way to stockpile the Dust is to Disenchant Rare Quality items. You can get 5-12 [Draenic Dust] per Disenchanted item and you also have a chance (70/30) to get [Luminous Shards]. If any of your items (Loot, Quest Reward or Treasure) get upgraded to Epic Quality and iLVL (Item Level) is lower than 600, DO NOT DISENCHANT as you will in 99% cases get [Sha Crystal] which is currently useless and does not sell that good on AH. I am yet to test whether Epic items with ILVL higher than 600 give same result or if that is different.

Another tip I can give is to build (and upgrade to LVL3) [Salvage Yard] on same character that has Enchanting profession / [Enchanter's Study]. [Big Crates of Salvage], obtained from Follower Missions if LVL3 Salvage Yard is present, are source of Class Transmog sets that do not have big Vendor value but have high Disenchant value. Blues obtained by Garrison Followers is another great source of [Draenic Dust] / [Luminous Shards].

For The Children!

Another year has passed and another Children's Week has arrived... Another chance to abuse orphans for achievements... It's not only because of that, each of the orphans gives a wide variety of Battle Pets for your collection at the end of their respective Quest Chains.

New thing this year is [Green Balloon], which you can buy from Blax Bottlerocket (Orgrimmar) or Craggle Wobbletop (Stormwind) for only 10 silver coins.

At the end of their respective quest chains:

• Human and Orc orphans give you a choice between [Piglet's Collar] (Mr. Wiggles), [Rat Cage] (Whiskers the Rat), [Turtle Box] (Speedy) and a [Snail Shell] (Scooter the Snail).
• Blood Elf and Draenei orphan offer a choice between [Elekk Training Collar] (Peanut), [Egbert's Egg] (Egbert), [Sleepy Willy] (Willy) and [Legs] (Legs).
• Northrend orphans reward you with a choice of two Battle Pets however, you have to choose which pet you want to obtain at the very start of the quest chain(s). If you want to obtain [Curious Oracle Hatchling], you need to spend some time with Oracle Orphan and if you want [Curious Wolvar Pup], you need to make Wolvar Orphan happy. After completing the respective Quest Chain, chosen pet will be sent to you through Mailbox approximately 15 minutes later.

If you already have all of these Battle Pets, you can chose to take [Pet Care Package] which has a guaranteed drop chance for [Flawless Battle-Stone]. Even if you don't need it, take the package as this little stone is worth several thousand gold on the Auction House.

When it comes to achievements, they are pretty much straightforward... You can find a detailed guide on Icy-Veins. However, I'd like to give a couple of suggestions.

Best possible place to complete [Daily Chores] would be Isle of Quel'Danas if you haven't unlocked any other Daily Quest hub throughout your leveling as there are around 15 Daily Quests in the entire area... Other (fast) alternative would be Halfhill Market in Valley of the Four Winds. Note: Orphan needs to be summoned when you are turning in quests. He does not need to be around while you are actually doing them.

[School of Hard Knocks] can be nuisance to complete on Max Level. Best possible suggestion I can give is to do this achievement with your lower level Alt, preferably between levels 70 and 80.

TIME!!! We need more time!

[WoW Tokens] finally got introduced to European population... It can be bought for 20 EUR (15 GBP) from the in-game Shop, and starting price was 35,000 gold in the Auction Houses across the Europe region.

Be advised that price of the Token is dictated by Demand for the same, so... If demand for tokens is high, price will be rising. When demand drops, price will drop. Tokens were made available to players around 5PM CET and, as noted, initial price (set by Blizzard) was 35k gold per token. Peak price was achieved 7 hours later (Apr 22nd, 2015 12:05AM) with price almost 10k gold higher, 44.981 gold. Price started dropping down after this point and it currently circles the number of 40k.

As a reference, [WoW Tokens] were made public on April 7th at 7AM EDT on NA (North America) realms with initial price of 30.000 gold per token... Token achieved it's peak price only 4 hours later at 31.218 gold and price dropped after that point. As stated, price is controlled by Demand so, at that point price on NA realms started fluctuating with highest price of almost 27k and lowest of almost 20k. Current price of the token on NA realms is ~25k gold.

Retards of the Auction House

There is nothing worse than getting pissed off over some random and not that important thing. Be it some random douchebag hunter that trolls the entire raid with [Aspect of the Pack] turned on, scumbag that does not move out of the fire and then flames healers for "being useless" or fucking greavers that are corpse-camping you even though they don't have any in-game benefit because they are usually 50-80 levels higher than you. I guess they weren't breastfed when they were babies and lack of that exhibits as need to torture random lowbies and newbies. It's one of the reasons I hate playing on PvP realm, mostly because I know shit about PvP. But, that's the story for another time.

Another branch of people that I hate in WoW are Retards of the Auction House (in further text RotAH). These are people that:

a) Don't know how Auction House functions;
b) Don't want to know how Auction House functions;
c) Don't give a shit about anything related to Auction House
d) Profit through trolling on Auction House.

These people, also, don't seem to notice that even game such as WoW has it's own in-game economy that gets ruined with every small move that they make.

Let me get something straight. I am a casual PvE player. I don't "play the Auction House" and I am not earning tons of gold. With introduction of [WoW Token] in upcoming Patch 6.2, I will be making just enough so that I can afford next month to play.

Everyone knows what Undercutting is. My rant is, however, aimed mostly towards players that do not understand how functional undercutting works. Why do I call it "Functional Undercutting"?

Lets take a look at definition itself:

undercut, verb: offer goods or services at a lower price than (a competitor).

So, the way I see it, Effective Undercutting is when Player A offers [Tabard of the Lightbringer] at a price of 50.000 gold and then you place your own auction asking for 49.500 or 49.000 gold, undercutting original price by 1 or 2%. IF (or WHEN) Player C comes along, and wants to place his own auction, he does the same and undercuts my auction by the same amount that I did placing his auction for 48.500 or 48.000 gold. That way, average price of the Tabard stays more or less equal for a longer period.

Ineffective Undercutting is when I go to the Auction House and offer [Tabard of the Lightbringer] at a price of 50.000 gold and then comes some random douchebag and offers the tabard at the price of 30.000 gold and then, the next one comes and lowers the price even more (15.000 gold, for example).

This, in itself is both bad and good thing. Why is it bad? Because in some cases, for some items, a set period of time needs to pass before price can be corrected back to the original value... In most cases, value can be corrected back immediately without any problem but in some cases, people will avoid such an item by saying that "price is inflated" and that "item was much cheaper earlier / yesterday" even though rarity of the item dictates high price.

Right now, I am not dealing with items of high rarity. I have some auctions for herbs, Augments and mostly gear that has Transmogrification Potential. As an example, this is what I encountered in AH today:

Pieces of [The Forgotten Peacekeeper] item set, that I am trying to sell on AH, resemble Freethinker's Armor, removed Zul'Gurub paladin set. In itself, it's Transmog value is high and price should not be too high because pieces are rare, but not THAT rare. I came across ridiculously high and ridiculously low auction prices.

You can see very good example of Ineffective Undercutting.

• Pants: 2 Auctions of 500g, undercut Auction of 244g and all subsequent undercut auctions that start under 170g, ruining the price of the auction.

• Shoulders: Ridiculous auction of 75.000g, followed by realistic price of the item ~3.000g and then ineffective undercuts of 530g and even worse for a price of less than 100g.

Good thing is, if you are willing to risk, you can buy Ineffective Undercut (for example, the undercuts placed at 100g) and then sell it at the original price in a few days, after the price gets corrected. It's the same principle used in Auction Sniping. Downside of this, is that, although they have good Transmog Value people don't buy them that often. You will usually spend several days re-posting the auctions before someone buys the items.

Another type of people that I hate in-game, that fall under RotAH group, are trolls. These people usually dump enormously high amount of materials into the AH, all in the stacks of 1... Example:

611 [Starflower] stacks of 1. And this is just a tip of the iceberg. Throughout the playing I have seen some really weird amounts going up to the few thousands... With the release of WoD, most of the materials that once stacked in 20s now stack in 200s. While I see the need to place auctions in stacks of 5, 10, 20and even 50 even though maximum amount of materials in a stack is 200, I fucking can't see reason of someone placing 611 stacks of 1.

And I am gonna leave it at that and go play for a while until I find something else that pisses me off.