Monthly Archives: March 2007

A cravin’ love for blazing speed

I saw Upper Blackrock Spire for the first time last night. One of our guild was keen to get their Drakefire Amulet, so we gathered a motley crew of level 60-70 characters for an edge-of-your-seat life-or-death struggle against the forces of darkness… Well, either that or The Keystone Kops Do UBRS as, we charged around, pulled everything in sight and generally stormed through the place. Blue items dropped in cascades including a Manual of Eviscerate XI and Dal’Rend’s Tribal Guardian (oh, how I dreamed of Dal’Rend’s Arms ten levels ago), with everything somewhat heartbreakingly being turned into shards, except… Finkle’s Skinner! Almost totally pointless now; to skin a beast, you need (beast level * 5) skinning skill, so when the maximum skill was 300, the +10 skinning it gave was vital for getting leather and hides from beasts above level 60. With the upper limit for skills now being 375, there’s an extra five level “cushion”; still, you never know when you might need to skin a level 76 beast, and as it replaces a dull old regular skinning knife we decided it would be a shame to shard the entire contents of the dungeon, so I grabbed it.

After that, I wandered over to Shadowmoon Valley, as I’ve been working through the quest line that ends up with the Stealther’s Helm of Second Sight as a reward (hey, you know my hat fixation… and visually, it’s a major improvement over the lime green crash helmet that is the Helm of the Claw; stat-wise the Stealther’s Helm wins too, especially as I still haven’t picked up a meta-gem for the Helm of the Claw). Got a few items, found a group, killed a dragon, and home for tea, crumpets and a nice helm, huzzah! Just in time as well, as at that point my router decided that staying connected for more than five minutes at a time was too much like hard work, *sigh*

I think this time we shall escape

I logged onto WoW around 8.30 last night without a great deal of enthusiasm, just intending to potter around the auction house a bit and maybe do a couple of quests, to find a guildmate trying to form up a posse to bust Thrall out of Durnholde Keep. Fitting in with the general “bite sized” nature of Burning Crusade instances, they reckoned we could be done within two hours, which sounded like I could still get enough sleep that I wouldn’t need to hook up to an intravenous supply of coffee at work the next day, so we saddled up for Caverns of Time.

After the ease of being able to quickly fly anywhere in Outland from Shattrath, getting back to Tanaris is something of a drag, being about the most awkward place in the old world for the Alliance to get to. After reaching the Caverns, a couple of the group started the quest to gain access to Old Hillsbrad (I’d popped in over the weekend to get the riding crop pattern), which involves following an NPC slowly wandering around the place explaining what’s going on. Much like the introduction to Shattrath quest, where you follow Khadgar’s servant around the city, it’s not very interactive. It’s a bit like a coach trip, with the driver droning “and on your left, you can see the bridge where the Blood Elf attack on the city was halted, we’ll be stopping there so you can pick up your ‘I repulsed the bloody siege of Shattrath and all I got was this lousy tabard’ souvenirs”. It’s a little more interesting than just being given pages of dialogue, and five minutes is hardly the end of the world, but if you’re just in a bit of a hurry (or have done the quest on another character), it might be nice to have a couple of options: “Yes, I’d love to take the tour!” and “Don’t worry, I’ve seen those episodes of Star Trek, and Stargate SG1, and that new Primeval thing on ITV, portals in time, I get the idea, just send me back to Old Hillsbrad already”. As an aside, WoWwiki says “it might be hard to do depending on alliance/horde activity in the cave”, which I hadn’t thought about; doing the quest on a PvP server must be like taking the same coach trip but periodically having to fend off hijackers storming the bus, while the driver’s still pointing out the sights…

Anyway, within half an hour of logging in, we were all ready for the quest itself (which isn’t bad going for WoW). And as far as quests go, I have to say, Escape from Durnholde Keep is a peach, about the most fun I’ve had in Warcraft for a long time. Whether it was the group composition (a feral Druid, Priest, Warlock, Paladin and me as a Rogue), or the fact that we clicked as a team, we didn’t even suffer the Mandatory Initial Wipe (despite trying our best at one point, with runners from one group bringing a couple of adds at the same time that a patrol turned up around the corner). I think it would be fair to say we rocked the socks of the mobs clean off, even if they weren’t wearing socks in the first place (not an easy task, as anyone who has attempted to put socks onto an angry dragonkin just so they can be rocked off again will attest to). Maybe it was our levels, but at 70, 66, 68, 66 and 70 I don’t think we were stupidly overpowered.

What really made the difference, though, was the design of the instance. Up until now, I hadn’t seen much variety in Burning Crusade instances. The settings change, and the mobs you encounter, but by and large they’ve been “Start at point A; defeat many groups of (Orcs/Naga/Broken Draenei/Annoyed Shrews); defeat Boss A; repeat for Bosses B and C”. They’ve been fun enough to run through with a decent group, but not particularly memorable.

Escape from Durnholde Keep actually involves you in the story (minor spoilers follow, if you’re desperate not to know anything of the quest): you start by setting buildings on fire to cause a diversion, luring in the first boss; then you rescue Thrall and fight your way out of the keep, defeating the second boss at the exit as he tries to stop you; then it’s a ride into town for the denouement in the form of a big fight with a dragon. None of this is particularly complex, but it just lifts interest sufficiently so you don’t feel it’s a straight march from A to B, killing everything that moves along the way. The closest parallel I can think of is my favourite bit of an old world instance, the fight on the pyramid steps in Zul’Farrak, where you face off against wave after wave of trolls like a cross between Zulu and the end of The Gauntlet.

Adding such scripted elements isn’t without problem, though; one of our group had previously failed the quest when a vital NPC hadn’t turned up. Others had been in groups where over-eager participants had freed Thrall without everyone having the chance to talk to him to receive the next section of the quest. Fortunately we didn’t hit any bugs, and ensured everyone talked to the right people, but it just goes to show the difficulty of implementing even simple additional elements over “kill stuff!” in instances.

Loot-wise, my standard diatribe on random loot was forestalled by the bosses dropping three useful items. None for me, but I at least got a couple of green bits to sell; the quest reward was a bit of an anticlimax, though, as even with a couple of gems slotted the Southshore Sneakers you can get are worse in almost every respect than the Sure Step Boots I’ve been wearing since my first Hellfire Ramparts run.

Sure enough, we were done in about an hour and a half as well, so the initial two hour estimate was pretty much spot on. A nicely sized instance with a few interesting scripted elements and a good team made for a great evening. Next stop, the Black Morass!

The terraces: The terrace for the indefatigable loot linker.

Onwards! Onwards, dear traveller, into the depths of the inferno; we come ever closer to the Third Circle, but let us again take rest on the viewing balcony of another terrace. Regain your strength whilst contemplating the sinners within, our journey will soon continue apace.

The indefatigable loot linkers.

We’ve all experienced, at one time or another: that lucky item drop that is something above the norm, something a little bit special. Often enough this happens when teamed with a small group of people or when playing solo, and the urge to share your exultation at such fortuitousness often leads to sharing a link of your newly acquired item of wonderment with members of your guild or your circle of friends.

Fear not, dear traveller, for such action will not find you ensconced within the oppressive walls of this particular terrace. No, this place is reserved for those sinners who feel that every item that they’ve ever owned is worth noting to not just their party, or their friends, or even their guild, but the entire known world.

The indefatigable loot linker begins early, and with a conviction to rival the greatest zealots. From first level they are linking every quest item they are offered; not just the items they gain, which would be tedious enough bearing in mind that every other player has probably had something very similar if not identical offered to them, or will have very soon, no, the loot linker shares every item the quest offers, including the ones they themselves cannot use, and then debates at great length in any channel of communication that hasn’t had the foresight to silence or kick them already as to which item they should choose. This would be bad enough, but it doesn’t end there: the loot linker, in their discussion of the terribly difficult decision of whether to take the dagger or the staff on offer, will link every item they currently have, and how these new items will affect their current character build. They will deliberate at great length on the difficulty of the decision, they will link items from other quests that are comparable, they will link future items that may be upgrades, they will link all the items they have on auction, and how that might enable them to generate enough money to buy a better item from the auction house or a vendor.

And of course, they link all the possible auction house and vendor items they might be able to buy.

This goes on for quite some time, with nobody being able to communicate with one another for the sheer quantity of linked items being flooded on to all channels, until finally someone yells at the loot linker that they’re “only level two, and what the hell does it matter what they pick, because they’ll be upgrading the item in question about one hundred times in the next hours worth of levelling!”. At which point the loot linker goes off to sulk, but not before linking the rare twink item that they’ve already bought for their character and can use next level.

Instance runs are another joy, as any item drop from a boss will illicit a blustering tidal wave of deliberation on the part of the loot linker; they debate for an epoch as to whether they should roll on it, because so-and-so an item is better [link], and they might respec in which case they’d prefer [link] or [link] and [link] is nice but [link] would be better if it’s a sunny day, but they’d rather have [link] in case it rains, and [link] on the off chance of low-lying smog. Then finally, when someone threatens them with extreme physical disfigurement if they don’t make their mind up as to whether they need the item or not, they [link] the very much better item that they’re already wielding, and explain how it goes better with their shoes [link] and hat [link].

We must not forget, as well, the utter fruitless linking of the most common quest items in order for people to give the loot linker praise; we’re talking of the most common of common items, the items that unless they are somehow levelling their character whilst being entirely unaware of their surroundings (actually, we’ll meet examples of these in some of the deeper circles of the inferno), every single player has gained at some time during their adventuring career.

“Hey I just got [The 10,000th Most Common Potato of Extremely Common Ancestry. All Exactly Like This One].”

And there is silence. And more silence. And yet someone, somewhere, feels the need to acknowledge the loot linker. Ohttre (God of Bewilderment) knows why, but they do.

“Grats.”

And of course, that is the straw that engulfed the camel in a ten megaton atomic explosion and five hundred year nuclear winter.

“Thanks! I’ve been wanting [link] for a while because my [link] is getting old, but I’ll soon be able to get [link] or [link] or [link] or [link], but then I’ll need to change my [link] and [link] so that they’re comparable, otherwise I probably won’t be able to go to Linkville and get my [link] or link my link link [link] linking [link] link linky linkety [link] link linky link link [link] link link…”

Predictably, it goes downhill from there.

And the moral of the story is: don’t acknowledge your indefatigable loot linkers.

Actually the moral is: always hurt, with extreme prejudice, all known indefatigable loot linkers. However, in case you’re too decent a soul to do so, never fear, as this terrace of punishment will be here, waiting for them.

As we move on – move along at the back, keep up! – I will just briefly point out to you the linked (just my little joke, there) terrace next door to the one we have recently visited, the protractedly named ‘The terrace for those people who feel the need to shout “DING!” in the server global channel so that every player is fully informed of the fact that this person has finally achieved the near-insurmountable task of reaching second level.’

Sinners beware!

Weekend Warcrafting

Quiet weekend in WoW, with lots of rugby on instead… Aside from the wild excitement of creeping up to 350 leatherworking, allowing me to make riding crops if I just spend another seventeen years grinding the insane components needed, the highlight was probably a quick zap through the Auchendai Crypts. Remember I mentioned our guild’s mandatory “wipe on the first encounter or two”? We continued this policy quite magnificently…
Priest: “Watch out if they summon a Possessor. Those things are nasty, have to be taken down quickly.”
First group, a Posessor is summoned, takes control of our tank who mows through our cloth wearers, much death ensues.
Us: “We should watch out for those Posessors. They’re nasty, take them down quickly…”

After that, everything went rather nicely, including the loot; few greens for me, and useful things for our group from both bosses, including a ring from the final chap I had a roll on, but lost; not that I was too distraught, it was only a very slight improvement on a green ring I’d picked up from the auction house.

The trouble with the rat race.

I hate competitive gaming. I don’t know why I despise it so much, I’m not a hopeless player but I’m never top of the tables either; I’m a master of mediocrity, if you will. This shouldn’t really be a problem as I happily understand that not everybody can come first, and at least I’m not always last, but it doesn’t make my view on competitive gaming any less severe.

And so, I play cooperative games wherever possible; when certain friends were all playing Tekken and Street Fighter, and learning those dodecatuple-secret-probation manoeuvres that required you to physically induce RSI and hairline knuckle fractures just warming up before a fight to enable you to pull off the combos that would allow you to make ‘L’ loser signs at your ‘best friend’, I was instead playing Toejam and Earl with my best friend. Toejam and Earl was great because you had to work together as a team to progress and there was no incentive to compete with your team-mate: if he got a great item it helped you both and he was never more powerful than you for finding it, he just got your undying gratitude that he’d found Rocket Skates and not shot himself off the edge of the map. You were both, as a cooperating team, the better. I loved that game, and I still play it today because it sums up for me what so many cooperative games these days are not.

My introduction to online multiplayer gaming was through Quake II. A quick dip into Deathmatch game play was enough to put me off for a while, until I finally discovered the joys that were team capture the flag and team fortress. I say ‘joys’ because they were, at least, cooperative in the fact that your team were working together towards defeating the other team, but even in these early days of my online gaming experience the Rat Race effect was in evidence. In QII, Counter Strike and UT2k4, all of which I played a fair amount, there was as much competition within your own team as there was with the opposing team. Who came top of the kill scores, who got the most headshots, who had killed the most people using only a small lump of moss called Kenneth. And if people weren’t so good at killing others, then they’d use a different stat to prove that they’d ‘won’ over the other people on their team:

“Most kills? Pfff. Well ok, but anyone can kill other players. I mean, it’s the whole point of the game! Now if you want to see a real player, you want to be looking at the ‘Most suicides by jumping your vehicle backwards into lava from the top of a mountain whilst shooting yourself in the scrotum’ stat…”

And so the Rat Race became apparent in my mind, and continued to show itself in any multiplayer game I tried, what’s more it seems to have gotten worse as time progresses. You could play the Happy Smiley Game of Helping Your Friends Through Genuine Generosity of Mind, and as soon as you logged on you’d hear:

“Most help? Pfff. Well ok, but anyone can help other players. I mean it’s the whole point of the game! Now if you want to see real altruism…”

It shouldn’t have come as much surprise to me then, that MMORPGs evolved a whole new level of Rat Race mentality. In an MMORPG you have a million things to be ‘better’ at than all the friends, colleagues and general players that you meet on a regular basis. I should note that I’m talking about the PvE side of things here; if people want to go play PvP and beat the snot out of each other and make virtual ‘L’ loser signs whilst claiming their victory was through skill, when if they were honest it was possibly due to the fact that they were four levels higher and had far better gear than the other player, and their team mate healing them all the while might have been a slight advantage too (yes, some people do heal in PvP. I’m one of them, in fact), then I say all power too them, it gets them the hell out of the area of the game I’m playing, where people use words of more than one syllable and don’t throw their keyboard at their Mum if she interrupts them with some inconvenience such as a lovingly prepared dinner. I know I’m generalising, there are always exceptions to the rule, and not everybody is like that. But in general they are, that’s why it’s a generalisation.

So yes, anyway, the PvE Rat Race! MMORPGs are invariably a rat race: you fight monsters to level-up your character and gain better gear so that you can… fight even bigger monsters and gain even better gear. That’s it. There’s no ‘You won! Well done! Have a cookie, and here is the list of developers that you’ll probably never read whilst we play some end-game muzak’; you just keep running on that wheel until you collapse from burn-out or another company releases a bigger, shinier wheel, and you pootle off and run on that wheel instead. Nevertheless the formula works and in general many people, myself included, enjoy the run for what it is. And therein lies the problem: those people who like to prove themselves to be great need something to wave at everyone around them to demonstrate their greatness, and the RPG nature of many MMOs provides this in spades. So even if you are not a competitive person – competitive people have even coined the phrase ‘Carebear’ for such people, because they need to prove that the only manly approach to anything in life is to be beating it over the head until it you are the winner and can declare yourself better than it – you are forced to compete with others at every turn.

I see people trying to compete everywhere I go, in the most surreal situations. Running races are a good one, where people will race you from, say, the gryphon point in Menethil to the dock; I once had someone drink a swiftness potion so that they could ‘beat’ me in the ‘race’ we were having, except that I wasn’t racing I was just making my way to the boat, you’d think they’d realise this what with me being a druid and having a travel form and yet running along in my normal Night Elf form. But no, they did a little victory dance when we got to the pier. Then we stood there and waited for five minutes for the boat to arrive. But they got to the waiting area first. Winner!

It’s these surreal competitions that really make me boggle, when there are so many ways to prove yourself ‘better’ than other people, character level, shiny items, guild status, PvP rank, amount of gold, number of epic mounts you can use in a three yard journey…

Actually I think that was getting back to surreal towards the end. That’s not to say that I haven’t seen that: a chap in a pickup group went through about fix or six epic mounts whilst we were travelling across the Western Plaguelands to an instance: he had his race mount, rep grind mount, PvP mount, second PvP mount, reserve PvP mount. Well done, you won the, um, Mounty Cup, you win… a boggle.

Boggles

I could live with all the faux competition, I really could. Ok, I admit, I’d like to be able to get to the end of the dock, watch the foot race champion of the world do his little victory dance, and then turn myself into a 1000 foot tall mega-demon, and eat his character, his alts, his guild and his PC’s hard drive, but who wouldn’t? No, what really annoys me is when people treat anything I do as an incitement to competition. If I’m running from point A to point B, then it’s a running race! If I take on two mobs at a time, then it’s a competition to see who can mass pull the most mobs! If I gain a level, it’s because it’s a race to get to the level cap!

It’s not the fault of most people, there are a select group of people who have to compete in everything they do, and the nature of RPGs amplifies this competitive nature such that it infects many others; when people see someone rushing towards the level cap by playing non-stop for 43 hours straight and using every trick in the book to be ‘the winner’ it’s understandable that they feel that the game is in fact a competition with everyone else, that it’s everyone for themselves. And perhaps this is one of the reasons that pickup groups are in general such a feared entity in a game that is supposed to be about teamwork and cooperation against a common enemy: when the game instils in its players the need to compete and to be self sufficient, there’s little incentive to strive to be a better team player, to have aiding others and working as a team against a common enemy as your primary goal.

When everyone around you can be seen as a competitor and therefore an enemy to your superiority, why bother with fighting the real enemies the game throws at you?

If Melomth were a Carebear, he’d probably be Grumpy Bear.

Occasionally turning into the 1000 foot tall Yog-Sothoth bear, where his Carebear stare would eat worlds and corrupt the very fabric of the universe itself.

So, we’re talking really pretty grumpy.

Roads of battle, paths of victory

Doubtless you’re all on the edge of your seats, so just to let you know… the final honour point calculations came in, and yes, I got that Grand Marshal’s Slicer with a whole 52 points to spare.

I’d rather been hoping for the Lady of the Lake, her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite, to hold aloft the sword from the bosom of the waters of Loch Modan, and that merely drawing it would smite any opponent who dared glance in my direction. As it turned out, the quartermaster handed it over with barely a second glance, muttering something about it being the 73rd that day, and combat continued much as before, apart from each swing dealing an extra 17 to 23 points of damage. Perhaps I’d built it up a little too much… Still, on the plus side, the ludicrously oversized blade is longer than my legs, so when wandering around with it strapped to my belt I plough furrows in the earth, which should be of considerable benefit to any agrarian communities in the zones where I quest. Provided they’re not quest objectives, that is, otherwise the improved crop yield may be offset slightly by the wholesale slaughter with added “ploughshares into swords”-type irony…

Too Much of Nothing

My first day of level 70-ness didn’t get off to a great start, with the new 2.10 patch proving somewhat troublesome (the downloader managed to get about a megabyte at a time before going off in a sulk and having to be restarted), and when it finally did finish installing, the servers were all down. Still, they were back up before too long, so it was on with the evening’s main task: getting the last 1,000 or so honour points for a big ol‘ sword. A couple of Warsongs and an Alterac later, a couple of guildmates suggested a run to the Steamvaults, which sounded like fun, so off we went.

Our group was two Druids (one feral, tanking, one boomkin), a Mage, a Priest, and me, the Rogue. After the obligatory early wipe (I think it’s the law that within the first five fights, you have to have a bad pull with extra fear-into-another-group) we kicked arse and took names, only didn’t have a pen or paper for the name taking part, and there wasn’t another death along the way. No problem with Druid tanking after their changes in 2.10 (even with an aggro-happy Mage and Rogue doing their best to make his life difficult). A couple of the group got bits of the Karazhan key, and I got the Helm of the Claw (with meta socket) from a quest in there (not so useful at the moment, as I don’t meet any of the meta-gem-requirements, but hey, it’s another hat for the collection. An astonishingly ugly hat, but a hat nonetheless), so not a bad run all told.

As for loot… take a guess. Yes, I’m afraid it’s another loot whine, as to add to my single, solitary, somewhat lonely looking trash green item from runs through the Slave Pens and the Underbog, I got… nothing. Well… I sort of won a shard, but let the enchanter keep it (as I’m buttering him up for a nice enchantment on my Grand Marshal’s Slicer, once I actually get it). But no blues for me, and indeed no blues for anyone in the party, as the only potentially useful items were for a healer, and our Priest was already decked out in better stuff. Still, I’m fine with that. Really. Totally fine. Absolutely happy, yes siree, I don’t need any of this ‘loot’ stuff, nope, not me, it’s friendship and exploration that’s important, yes, who cares about loot, certainly not me, no no no, why do you keep going on about loot? Eh? Eh? I’ve told you! It’s not important! Stop talking about it! Stop it! LA LA LA LA LA I’M NOT READING THE LOOT TABLES OF BOSSES TO FIND OUT WHAT MIGHT HAVE DROPPED LA LA LA LA LA LA.

*Ahem*. Sorry about that. Anyway, it really is good to see these instances regardless of loot, and at a touch over two hours, it’s a good size. Indeed, getting out in good time meant I could fit a few more battlegrounds in, so I’m fervently hoping the estimated honour for yesterday isn’t too inaccurate as I ought to finally qualify for that Slicer! Not that I care about it, you understand, I only PvP for the challenge, and the cameraderie, and… oh, wait, I’ve done that rant already.

Sittin’ on Top of the World

Well, that’s level 70 reached. I was wandering around the Blade’s Edge Mountains, but had reached that slightly annoying point where there are a few quests to complete in disparate locations. Previously I’ve been fairly methodical about clearing zones as much as possible before moving on to the next, but being 85% of the way to level 70 I thought “sod it” and headed up to Netherstorm. Sure enough, a quick wander around Area 52 netted a stack o’ quests, all within a short ride, and a short while later the death of some Blood Elf captain netted that last little sliver of XP.

Boots of Draenic Leather

I was working on my leatherworking last night, and using a combination of accumulated items in the bank, a few auction house purchases and a rampage through Nagrand denuding it of much of its native wildlife, I managed to increase my leatherworking skill by a massive seven or eight points. Woo! It’s now 341, allowing me to craft a couple of bits of armour that might have been briefly useful several levels ago, some nice leg armour kits with expensive components, and bongo drums, presumably for tapping out some crazy jazz rhythms. That’s insane, daddy-o!

Crafting has something of a split personality. On the one hand, it seems set up such that you only need a small number of crafters. At the very, very least, a crafter needs to make one item per point of crafting skill, so to hit the maximum crafting skill of 375, they’ll likely have made 400+ items; outside an Alchemist drinking his own potions, that’s far more than the crafter themselves will need. Furthermore, the sheer quantity of raw materials required to make those items needs one person to spend a lot of time and effort (or money) acquiring materials, or, more ideally, several people gathering resources to supply one crafter.

On the other hand, however, everyone is given an incentive to craft, with most professions now having either bind on pickup recipes (i.e. only the person who crafted the item can use it), or items requiring a certain crafting skill to use (in much the same way that most engineering items always needed a certain engineering skill to use, so e.g. drums require a certain leatherworking skill).

So you have your eye on the bind on pickup Trousers of Splendidness, and you’re crafting away working on improving your skill to get to the required level for them, and you think “well, I might as well help my buddies out” (or perhaps “muahahahaha, I’ll make me some money by selling stuff”). And that’s a bit of a problem for tailors, leatherworkers and blacksmiths. Everyone is bombarded with quest rewards as they adventure around the world, which tends to be enough to give a fairly decent outfit. On top of that, there’s the items randomly dropped by mobs (quite where wolves keep those greatswords, shields and cuirasses is a constant source of mystery); if they’re not directly useful, they can always be traded around a guild, or put up for sale at the auction house. These drops can be *anything*; a Cheesemongers Hatstand of the Wombat? Absolutely! An Undercoated Wardrobe of the Herring-pickler? You bet! (OK, I exaggerate slightly. But the items cover the whole level range of the game, for every possible type of weapon/armour, and with a wide variety of possibly bonuses). In contrast, within a range of ten levels or so there’ll probably be… one set of crafted armour that may be vaguely applicable to your class. If you’re lucky. Granted, the crafted item is available then and there (presuming the crafter has the raw materials), but with an active guild and/or auction house there’s almost always a superior alternative (usually a range of them depending on which stats you prefer).

To an extent, this is offset by other things the crafter can produce, like a tailor’s bags or a leatherworker’s armour kits, so now and again you can increase your skill while making these useful items. But inevitably (for leatherworking at least, I’m guessing it’s similar for others) there comes a point where, in order to increase your skill, you need to make more useless armour and dump it on the auction house for less than the raw materials would fetch (as you’re competing with every other leatherworker dumping the same useless armour), or send it off for disenchantment. Which is all the more galling when you could’ve used the same components to make a couple of stamina giving armour patches that people really would find useful, but wouldn’t have increased your skill.

At the very least, it would be nice if there were some more generally useful items that could be used to skill up, but it doesn’t seem like it would take a giant leap to make the armour crafting system more useful. The Wild Leather items, for example; when made, they have a random enchantment (… of the Monkey, Tiger, Wolf etc.) This makes them even more staggeringly useless than the rest of the armour that you can craft (remember, random loot = bad), unless you get lucky and happen to get a useful stat combination. However, if you could *control* what enchantment they were assigned (start with ten pieces of thick leather, and say add elemental fire and a feather for … of the Monkey, elemental earth and a pearl for … of the Tiger, whatever), all of a sudden you’ve got more choice with what you can make. Having gem slots in crafted items is a step in the right direction, but they only turn up on some of the higher level Rare pieces. Ah well. In the meantime, I’m off to some dungeons to try and get some Stylin‘ Hat patterns to add to my headwear collection.

Jewels and binoculars hang from the head of the mule

I haven’t been paying much attention to jewels or enchantments on the road to level 70, as most items are replaced fairly regularly on the way, but now I’m nearly there I thought I’d have a quick browse of the auction house to see what sort of jewels might be affordable. I hit a bit of a snag, though; I believe the Auctioneer add-on puts me at a slight advantage over plain interface users, as it gives a “Gem” option to filter results, but even with that applied I was seeing over 850 items for sale, both cut and uncut gems. With the speed of auction house paging, that’s not really a viable number of results to browse through, especially as you don’t want to buy an item on page 1 and find the same thing for half the price on page 20. I ran a few searches for specific gems, but typing “Bright Blood Garnet”, search, checking results, “Delicate Blood Garnet”, search, etc., isn’t much fun either. A cursory Google didn’t really turn up any add-ons or similar to help (though it was very cursory, as I was busy typing “Solid Azure Moonstone”, search, “Jagged Deep Peridot“, search, for much of the day); anyone found a better way of doing it?