Tobold's Blog
Sunday, March 22, 2015
 
Bhagpuss mode

While technically I had unsubscribed from World of Warcraft, I continued playing for free the low-level characters that the "veteran edition" allows you to play. In what I call Bhagpuss mode, playing for relaxation without worrying about efficiency or trying to achieve much. World of Warcraft is a good game to play like that if you're tired after a day at work, it doesn't require much effort for the basic questing and similar solo gameplay. I first leveled a human hunter to 20, noticing by the way that I hadn't played the post-Cataclysm Alliance zones yet. Then I started a gnome monk. But at that point I got a bit annoyed at the free version not allowing me to do pet battles, which is also a nice relaxation mode of WoW. And so I ended up subscribing again.

One added advantage of subscribing of course is that it reactivated my higher level characters, specifically those with garrisons. I plan for them to continue to do work orders with the profession buildings, hoarding the materials needed to craft epics and upgrades. My thinking on that is that when the WoW token gets introduced, this will lead to a lot more gold flowing into the economy from currently inactive accounts, leading to more AH activity and inflation. The people buying gold for tokens will want to spend that gold on something, after all. As I can produce epics by just keeping my garrison production running with very little effort, I should be able to make a lot of gold, and translate that into free months of subscription.

One added advantage is that patch 6.1 increased the xp you get from mining and herb collecting in your garrison. So the characters I don't really want to play, like my level 96 shadow priest, are still slowly moving towards level 100 and a better garrison. On the silly side my level 100 characters are accumulating epic gear up to iLevel 670 just from missions, without even leaving the garrison.

But most of my time I'm spending on the gnome monk, collecting pets through pet battles, or tinkering around with cooking and leatherworking. Monk doesn't appear to be a very popular class for leveling, but if by level 20 I see that he doesn't work out, I can still switch to the hunter I already leveled to 20.

Comments:
Heh! I'm honored to be a mode! Funnily enough I just discovered yesterday that the "free" version of WoW doesn't allow pet battles. Blizzard have been very tricksy there - a free account can get the quest for the first Pet Battle, can equip the starter pet and see the creatures to be fought and collected on the map. The only thing you can't do is actually battle them.

I am already toying with the idea of subbing for one month just to play around with Pet Battles - it looks like something that would work well for playing WoW on my tablet. You'd almost think their marketing and promotions dept. knows what it's doing...
 
Score one for Blizzard.

Their model reeled you back in.

 
"I'll be back"

- T800
 
As a non-raider, I hope and expect that the upcoming token will make players and Blizzard focus more on the economy.

FYI 6.1 also added the heirloom tab - sort of like SWTOR collections. So you can make unlimited copies of heirlooms. So all the alts can get an extra 45% XP as they do their garrisons. Even the Stormwind cooking or fishing daily is nearly 3% of a level.
 
Loot at this way, you can spend a few $15 for WoW and still come out way ahead of some Hearthstone customers.

I am not advocating it - do what you enjoy - but my guess is the most productive thing you could do to be ready for the gold rush is to learn the family of addons, TradeSkillMaster.
 
If you want to accumulate some gold anyway... you might want to start looking into the auction house. Mayhaps you become a goblin after all ;-)

As a simple start: get your calculator and compare prices of darkmoon cards against darkmoon trinkets. Note the price flow over the week.
 
Tobold,

Is it still possible to get Thunderfury? All I need is the second binding and a few more ingots.

Also, is it worth coming back? I was unimpressed with Cataclysm - got to 85 because of free weeks every now and again. Is WoW fun again?
 
Few last things. Are pally's still too overcomplicated? I liked being a healer when the constraint was MP5 - all this conditional healing crap was unfun.

And being a whirlwind of death was fun too. I liked being able to solo Baron Geddon at lvl 80.

My pally is irretrievable too on the Armoury replacement - should I be worried?
 
@Michael: I'm afraid I can't answer your more specific questions. I don't know about Thunderfury and didn't play a paladin in this expansion.

To the more general question I think the answer depends very much on what you want from the game. Personally I am having fun, but I'm deliberately avoiding group content and everything competitive. Your mileage may vary, especially if you are more interested in group content and healing. I just solo.
 
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