Farming the AH for raid gear

Here is a quick summary of the upgrades I’ve got for Mortigen, my Frost Death Knight in the last 2-3 weeks. Note that all so far are via the AH or Hyjal quests – and I’m now running with 4x items that are either Best in Slot, or well placed to be BiS in combination with other gear.

Why do I raise this? Well my gearing plan now is to make a huge boat load of gold on the AH and buy my way to decent raid gear. I can’t raid regularly at the moment, but I’ll be damned if I’ll not be taken later in the raids when my schedule gets better due to poor gear (meaning still wearing ilevel 359 items in most places). So now starts a sell-up of all the mats I’ve stockpiled over the expansion, to be converted into trade goods and items which will sell. In raw value I think I have at least 10k worth of mats banked, which I hope to convert into well over 30-40k. We’ll see.

• Cloak: The Hyjal reward is BiS and healthy. A darn good start, and such a great bump.
• Wrist: purchased valor based wrist, so another upgrade to wrist slot is far lower priority now. yes, it was a bit of a waste to buy this so early, as the prices are going to drop significantly in the next month…but I wanted it.
• Trinket 1: I just purchased an Apparatus of Khaz’goroth (AoK), which makes most of the other Dps trinkets a much smaller upgrade (ie. from Ragnaros). See ranking table from the EJ guys.
• Trinket 2: The Crushing Weight is is still apparently darn good, and given how much Expertise is dumps, I agree.

Trinkets for Dual Wield Frost DKs are a funny thing. The License to Slay ranks very high on that table, but then its main stat offering (Hit Rating) is something that I have a stack of due to the main hand weapons also having Hit. I’ll have to consider grabbing a License at some point, but well after the other gear slots are up to spec.

The AoK is very nice, although it is said that it is far worse for a DK using Unholy, as they do not get enough Critical Strikes fast enough to actually acquire 5 stacks of the power. That makes sense, and means that I’ll probably stay Frost unless a fantastic 2 handed weapon somehow gets within my grasp. I can’t see it happening any time soon. I did some preliminary testing to see if I’d wasted a lot of gold, but it had a slight dps increase on a dummy, so I hope that will translate to a more powerful increase when I’m raid buffed and killing things “for real”.

I also can’t see myself getting any of the Heroic versions of the trinkets either (or any other gear come to think of it), although I might get lucky and get a Firestone to upgrade an item I have much later at some point. I think I’d upgrade the AoK, as the Heroic version is really nice too. People are challenging the item as the potential affect cannot be fully utilised all the time, but the Str buff alone is very healthy and if macro’ed in to a strike then you’ll always use it when its off cooldown.

Yes, now I’m much poorer than a few weeks ago (spent approx 34k so far), but if my enchants sell then i could be picking up another BoE upgrade within a week or two.

I might even sell the Orb of Deception and Haunted Memento that I’ve had for ages too; the sale value of both has not changed hardly at all, despite being somewhat rare.

A beautiful day for distractions

The weather has been cold, not unusual for Melbourne in July and certainly not new for me. It is however a little more present in my reality due to the early starts and late finishes that work has required recently. I am jealous to read all the blogs about summer frolicking in the northern hemisphere. You lucky crazy sods – you at least should be busy and outside, but are instead inside with Warcraft.

In wow I’ve been quiet due to a range of factors not really related to the cold at all. The main cause is legitimate distractions of work, house renovations, and broken cars.

Work has been busy as we started a new contract about two months ago, and although I think it will get better in the long term, in the short term that means no raiding – as fatigue makes good raiding really difficult. A 7-11ish raid plus the peripheral discussions till midnight are not viable when you get up just after 5am each day. Hell the contract is only for four years, so I guess I’ll be ready for Firelands raids by then. Grumble.

We’re also renovating our unit, at the moment that means adding a new fireplace and we’re mid way through the prep and painting of the mantlepiece. Again wow suffers, as I want the darn fire finished and it frustrates me to not have it completed. I could perhaps rush it and sacrifice the quality of the finish, but I’ll have to look at that fireplace for years to come and any blemishes that were avoidable will bug me.

To offset the missing games I’ve started reading a bit more. I can read in much smaller time segments that I can play warcraft, and it is as much a satisfying escape from reality as online games are. Two books that I’ve borrowed are the last Harry Potter and the Game of Thrones first novel. As of a few days ago I’ve just put down the last Harry Potter book. I saw the film and felt that the book would not add anything new. That is a little snarky, but thus far the book has been a very fair match to the films, and therefore I’m not going to gain any deeper insight by finishing the book. I might come back in a few years and read it, once the images of the films have been forgotten and it seems a little more fresh.

Game of Thrones also follows the TV series very closely, but the book is adding a lot of depth to my understanding. I’m staggered just of close to the original the TV series was, and also that there can be suck side stories in the novel that tweak my interest. I understand now some of the small embellishments or slight changes in timing between the presentation of the two – as it makes a more TV friendly presentation.

I wonder too how the Warcraft film will follow the lore. To make a viable and profitable film the target audience needs to be far wider than just the current subscriber base – and that means making the material digestible in a single film. This adds a complexity of picking a section of the lore which is a discrete story, and also has enough gravitas with the community to be worth seeing.

They have a hard script to write, and I hope they throw a darn good team at it.

Anyway that is enough of a rumble on my distractions. May your novels always be enticing, your wine glass full, and your hearth warm.

SW ToR – No Australian Pre-Order

Get early access to Star Wars: The Old Republic. Pre-order Now.

Why on earth would Australia not have a pre-order capacity?

Maybe because we’re a tiny population, maybe they’ll have no AU servers, distribution rights are complex, or maybe it is just because there is limited coppies…of a digital product. Even the digital version has:

Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ is not available in your region

What a total buzz-kill and fail, and some other aussies agree and are already taking it to the forums. Not the best sign of Aussie support or compassion. This cartoon from the forums says it all, thank you Static52.

There is a thread from Bioware on the discussion too,

To all of our fans outside of North America and Europe:

Today we’ve announced the pre-order details for the initial launch of Star Wars: The Old Republic, and as you may now know, we’ve taken the difficult but necessary decision to limit our initial launch supply for the game. BioWare and LucasArts are completely focused on building an exceptional game and an exceptional game service to go with it. We decided to constrain our launch capacity to ensure we deliver a great experience to every player.

Part of the reason this decision was made was because of the overwhelming demand for The Old Republic, and we’re humbled by that level of excitement and anticipation. We fully intend to deliver to you an amazing game when we expand our service post-launch, but right now we cannot commit to any timeframe for when that may happen. As soon as we have more information about additional launches in more territories, we’ll let you know.

We are committed to delivering Star Wars: The Old Republic to BioWare and Star Wars fans around the world, and to growing a truly global community.

They’re not humble, that is marketing speak for “opps, we’ll fix soon”. Guess I’ll just keep playing World of Warcraft. Grumble.

Death Strike buff for DK Tanks

There has been a buff to Blood DK’s talent of Improved Death Strike – it now provides 40/80/120% bonus damage, up from 30/60/90%, and a 10/20/30% critical strike bonus, up from 3/6/9% (source).

This would not affect Blood Shield (I assume – as it is inbound damage not outbound that is used in the calc), or affect threat beyond the additional threat caused by the damage applied.

This seems good, I like any buff. The hotfix now applied to live realms as at 19 July 2011. If Death Strike’s Bloodshield would persist a few seconds longer I’d be happier still.

I didn’t note any major issue, but then I only really tank when we’re very short of actual Tanks these days. There area few other sources which have requests for this, dating back a long while. Some folks don’t believe this is real at all.

implications of a blog list clean-out

Nasty little thought occurred to me as I was updating my rss feeds last week, follow me through the logic of why I’m a tad sad for a (short) moment:

• We know that account subscriptions are on the way down, but still not to the point of risking world of warcraft as a huge game, or as a positive money generator.
• We know that several new offers have been made to entice new players (quasi-F2P and recruit a friend to 80) into the game, or get people to return.
• There are far more players than readers of blogs, and far more readers than people actually blogging. I don’t know the number, but at least 1000:100:1 would be a minimum (a total guess).
• When I went through the massive list of rss subscriptions I have for WoW blogs, I had to remove over 30 blogs, as they had officially retired or not posted in 2011 at all.
• Some of those blogs were the cornerstone of small community of readers, with specialised focus, who contributed daily content, instead of the weekly and monthly blogs that are around.
• There is no way that my blog list was exhaustive, in fact it pertained to New, Announcements, Death Knights, and the few other classes I play. Sometimes added were the huge profile bloggers like BBB, who create content that is basically best of breed.
• Not posting for 6 months is a reasonable indicator that the person has a much lower interest in the game.

It was depressing, and while I’m a little sad by the passing of so many good contributors (stealing ideas was great) I hope it is ok. I think this withdrawl is only making the remaining blogs stronger and it opens opportunities for new bloggers too. It certainly helps the aggregator services garner good content, and it also has a flow on affect of making it easier to find those folks who have been at it for a while.

When I stated raving on this small digital soapbox there were a small number of people really doing solid work. Starting was intimidating. Then the community exploded and we saw 20 new blog sites each week. Now we’re back to smaller numbers but a more specialised group.

I still see a ton of Hunter blogs, Warrior blogs, and general toon & personality blogs. There are also heaps of gold generation blogs, if you like that kind of thing. And guys like Tobold will be writing about games until they turn off the sun – so all is not lost for us as an audience and community.

I don’t see a huge number of Death Knight blogs, and I miss the contribution from folks like Skeleton Jack and the DeathKnight.info community. The stable EJ forums still pelt out the theory-craft too, but only if you want that core knowledge – banter on lore and stories are not received well there. Perhaps the up-swell of Twitter has moved some of the general DK banter to there too, which replaces the need for casual bloggers? I didn’t see anything cohesive there though.

There is no real message on this post; just a wish that more folks would blog, comment, and cross-link. I feel that the retirement of blog writers reflects a slow down in the tempo of the community, which is sad. There are so many more things to be gained by sharing than just listening and nodding.

So in closing if you’ve thought about it, or stopped – consider a return to chatter. Happy blogging, reading, and as always, killing. TyphoonAndrew.

The most balanced it’s ever been

Another Blog Azeroth topic which reacts to the idea of the game being balanced. What a squirming can of worms for a topic. Nice idea really.

Ghostcrawler recently said that, in his estimation, the game is the most balanced it’s ever been. Agree? Disagree? And if it’s the most balanced, does that mean it’s enjoyable for you at the moment — have there, in other words, been more enjoyable, if less balanced, moments in the past?

Balance is a tough thing to define as it is totally subjective. One view is often shouted down by others, with only a hodge-podge of data and experiences to back them up.

My perspective is that we will always have something worth bitching about. Always – and that is good for design. It is not a reason to have a deliberate gap, but a small gap is always going to be present, and that gap will be perceived differently by different players.

What has WoW taught you?

A topic from the Blog Azeroth forums a long time ago, which I never go to posting at the time.

What has WoW taught you?

It has taught be about myself as a person, a little on controlling reaction to stupid and silly events. Those stupid things pile up, arrive in one and twos, and sometimes in tens and twenties. I know that there is value to calm and behaving with certainty.

Taught me how to value a relationship, and what I really value; with Life > wow being my mantra.My partner didn’t understand wow, and we’ve built up the expectation of what is reasonable between us – so that we are both happier.

It has helped strengthen my skills on how to impart bad news to people, and how to effect a change without backlash. Unsurprisingly it comes back to speaking plainly and honestly.

Happy gaming – Typhoonandrew

Not a traditional free to play model

A quick thought – if wow is Free to Play then can I cancel paying my subscription and then only login to the game on an existing toon that is level 1-20?

ie. Can I choose to suspend paying per month for a while, then move back to a subscription when I choose? No.

Clearly not, so its not true F2P, although I can understand why offering the model is a reasonable hook to players. There is a gulf between this form of free to play, and the form offered by Champions Online. I guess in an industry which is this competitive it stands to reason that marketing will bend what we think of as traditional F2P models. Perhaps that is even a good thing.

Are there many players left who have not already tried wow?

the loot system is farked

In another post’s comment, I wrote that “the loot system is farked in wow“. It really got me thinking that such a negative statement could gather up how I feel about PvE raid rewards in World of Warcraft. It is worrying. Not only for PvE raiders, but for the fact that other games will look to WoW and copy the reward system as a fundamental. In this case Blizzard has it fundamentally wrong.

I promise that this will be one of the last posts about loot, gearing, and the cycles involved for a while. Just one last rant to get off my chest.

A skinner box session in progress. I think the bird is DPS...?

The system is based upon grinding for gear, in a most inefficient manner. When you kill a boss a random sub-set of items is presented as awards and the team get to decide who gets what. I like the fact that we get to decide how we divvy up the booty, but there is no consideration to who participated, or what is needed in the team. And that is just broken.

We have entire systems (ilevels, gear points, reforging, enhancements and enchantments, etc) to classify gear, and improve the gear we have, but no way to reward repeat raiding effort to gain specific items. These items are often needed to move forward efficiently.

You might think that I am forgetting that you get widget-points for killing a boss (who cares what they are called – widget points is fine), which can be use to purchase items? I’m not. That is a good system, which is logical, and places the control back with the player to participate in the gearing choices. Widget points are well loved as a system, the real contention is how fast you acquire them, not if the system is useful.

I’m raising the idea (yet again) that we need the game to facilitate improvement through effort in a better manner for boss loot.

Examples of the issues:

• There is no point dropping Priest specific gear if we don’t have on in the raid. It is useless.
• There is no point dropping an item that cannot be used by anyone in the raid at all, like Spell plate with no Paladins.
• No prohibition on rolling for items which are irrelevant for a spec as a “Need” item.

Oh, but am I forgetting that it will get converted to a shard, and shards have value? No. An item being “sharded” in early content is a total waste, as the team really need upgrades to progress, and it late content you have so many that they are almost irrelevant. Shards only have high value and high use in the middle of the game, when you have gear worth using the shard on, but also don’t have 90% of your raid geared.

It is all really illogical.

But then is it really illogical to everyone? The drop randomness keeps a percentage of the players raiding each week. They can do nothing except raid to clear, and hope an item drops. This means they keep at it, and keep playing longer. It is not a stretch to suspect that if the loot system was improved then we could see more players switching to alts, or switching to other games.

Perhaps it is only illogical to keep doing it.

Well then you might ask what can be done. Well if you go digging through this blog you’ll find all manner of suggestions. In the wider wow community you’ll see more, and if you look as far as outside the wow community (gasp), there are plenty of good examples of other ways to handle rewards and loot. Far too many to bother with a summary here, but a few driving principals apply:

• Minimise the amount of wasted loot
• Balance loot amongst the classes and specs present
• Guide loot distribution using the assigned role
• Minimise the impact of greedy players

However here are a few I prepared earlier: Better gear rewards from runs, and Algorithm for need vs greed by role.

The opportunity to change this in the current 4.2 game is not a reality. It is probably too large a change to be made except by change in major version like the next expansion, but it could be made.

May your dice roll high, and you always see your loot. TyphoonAndrew

Frost and Unholy Gear Guide for 4.2

Orcish Army Knife has a really good summary of gear for Frost and Unholy Death Knights, updated for patch 4.2. Just thought I’d share it in case there are some DKs who have not found it.

Why is it good? Well you can plan where you will get your upgrades from.

For example my only Wrist upgrade is either PvP, or a BoE drop, or one boss drop. So I purchased it now rather than waiting to get lucky. Sure, I needed to spend 12000gp on it, but it will be my wrist slot item until we are in the next content release, as I doubt I’ll get lucky with Lord Ry’s drop rate on wrist items.

Cross Realm Grouping Live

WoWInsider is reporting that the cross realm grouping is live. Whoa – and free at the moment. I’ve already stated that I think charging for this is bloody wrong in a game where they wish to drive the social aspect to retain players and grow the community. Social – what a crock to pay for it when social is a huge reason I still play wow as opposed to other games. Grrr.

When delving into the depths of Azeroth’s darkest dungeons, it always helps to have some friends at your side… now you’re able to issue a call to arms no matter what realm they play on. We’re pleased to announce the new Real ID Party feature is now available for testing! This new feature will allow World of Warcraft players to invite their real-life Real ID friends of the same faction to a party regardless of the realm they play on, and then queue up for a 5-player regular or Heroic dungeon.

I love the idea of this feature, but hate that they’ll charge for it. So this weekend I’ll have to try and find some friends who have not already moved to Horde, so I can linkup with them as Alliance between realms.

Of course the comments are flowing thick and fast on the official forums, and on the wowinsider post. The premium model has not been announced, and I’d bet that this is a way to see how heavily utilised it is, so a measure can be taken on the additional cost.

Are the 5 mans fixed?

The original basis for this post on 5 man difficulty was drafted well before 4.2 was released, in fact it was just after launch of Cataclysm. In that first draft I was very angry and frustrated with the encounters, and could not name a single boss fight which I found challenging and entertaining at the same time.

As the content was tweaked in the early days of patch 4.0 it did not get much better, but when 4.1 was released (ZA/ZG 5 mans) there was a substantial change in the staging of the older 5 mans to make a progressive path through the gearing process. I re-edited the draft with less anger, adjusted for some of the changes, and then added back in the frustration and disappointment when I pondered ZA and ZG as experiences themselves.

ZA and ZA felt like mini-raids, which were designed to push players and punish them hard when execution was not perfect. Even if the actual encounter mechanics were partially random, the players were still punished. Poor design in my opinion, and something that I hope more than just a few in the Warcraft community have experienced and would agree with.

Now that 4.2 is live we have a range of small changes to some aspects of the 5 mans, and also easier access to gear, which in turn helps mitigate the poor encounter design. As you might be lucky enough to have a team that partially over gears the encounters, you can somewhat reduce the impact a mistake has, and potentially not outright wipe. This is no replacement for good encounters, it is just a happy side effect of players getting better gear.

Today I’ve decided to post this reflection on 5 man runs, as the feeling has been consistent throughout the Cataclysm expansion in a way I have not experienced before. TBC and Wrath did not feel like this. It is a personal taste on how you view the content, and also how well you feel the”curve” is being handled.

The main angst I feel toward the 5 man content is that to continue my goal of gearing up I must do these, yes they are frustrating at times. My goal of gear is conflicting with my sense of entertaining play. So once again we have two factors: Gear & fun as key parts of the discussion.

A noobish moment

The ExtraLife community has a great section for WoW/the Instance – and there was a post there with the Question of the Week (QotW) – What noobish moments are you willing to share with us?

A long time ago I remember realising* that I had my rotations and methods of healing as a Paladin all the wrong way round. No bloody wonder that my mana bar always ran out, my raid group seemed to die a lot, and that I chugged potions like they were going out of style.

* Being told by the GM and resident Paladin class guru that I was killing people by being such a noob. Fark, what a bad day for the ego.

PSN: Best in Slot BS

There are many posts about getting BiS, or Best in Slot. For Raiders the meaning of BiS is blindingly obvious, and frankly that is good – that is what you would expect.

The reason I think this topic needs a blog post is that I see a lot of material about people becoming ignorant of what their gearing options are. A lot. Poor forum posts, misplaced gearing, poor selection of item combination, melee characters with no Hit Rating at all, etc.

Its nutty out there at the moment, and in particular I’ve seen a player using a BiS item (until the 4.2 patch), but having a set of final combat stats that is borderline useless. This guy did almost trivial amount of damage in a run, and had some really nice items. This post is for that guy.

So what does it mean? In simple terms these are the items that are the optimal choice in some manner for the spec and class. Grab them, they’re good.

Why is following BiS only flawed?

• Some resources will give a BiS list, as a full gear set; meaning the BiS items when used in combination, to reach the thresholds.
• Some resources will give the raw individual item score based upon stat weightings ignoring the set it is used with (a true BiS).
• Some will just list a full gear set without thinking about how they combine.

PSN: You can gear a character to be highly competitive without having BiS items. And you should ignore a BiS recommendation if you don’t also understand why and how the BiS recommendation is being made.

Why? Your character is optimal when certain thresholds (which are different for every class/spec) are reached, and then stat ratios are maintained based upon their weighting. Hit Rating is very common, Expertise is common too.

Understanding the why those thresholds need to be reached, what a stat priority means, and what the difference is between a BiS item in balanced terms vs another item is critical to performing well.

How do I know? Because I used to make the same mistake.

How do you fix it? Research your class, stat weightings, combat stat thresholds, BiS. Start with Elitist Jerks, and work your way around the web.

Consider this a public service announcement.

Happy killing – TyphoonAndrew

Almost a single game player

Kill Ten Rats has a nice post on the happiness of single game players. Good enough for me to transcribe & expand my comment, and worth a bit of your eyeball time.

In a nut shell: are people happy with wow because they know no other options for game play exist, or is the choice to play a single game only actually a valid cognitive decision?

Zubon writes:

What was revelatory for me at one point was that there were people who thought of themselves not as gamers, not as MMO gamers, but as WoW players. They are not interested in the genre, in seeing competing implementations, in the next MMO coming out… They just play WoW. Hardcore or casual, this is their game, done, the way some people are baseball or football fans (a perspective that had not occurred to me until I typed it, which suddenly makes “one game” make a lot more sense, although most seem to be “sports fans” who need a group of sports to make it through the other seasons).

I’m an almost single game player. I’ve tried eve, ran screaming from DDO and LoTR, and looked enough at Rift, Conan, and Warhammer to know that WoW was a better game for my taste and therefore not worth changing from. That is the key for me, my current taste is well served by wow and while I’ll happily look at other games; there is little in the market which is enticing a change. My taste may change too, but for now wow is ok enough.

This was not always the case though. Before I played wow I played a wide range of games, and was always buying new ones. Not because I was keen to experiment, but because I like a narrow band of games and wow is in that band. There is no reason to pay for a new game when the current subscription is doing the job. I dread to consider the amount of money I wasted on games in the past, where the play time was around 15-30 hours and then it was done.

A game has to be worth the sticker price. Apart from World of Warcraft my favourite game is Master of Orion 2. It is now ancient, but still had the right balance of management and action for a turn based game. The updated version 3 was horrid and seemed to miss the “game” that was delivered with the v2.

Add to this the investment of time in terms of what has been achieved for me in WoW, and it is hard to argue with wow as a fundamentally good offer; for me. I know that this statement is somewhat recursive, as the more time spent, the more investment you have; but it is true to my ape brain. The subscription cost per month is the equivalent of two drinks. Even if I only play for 10 hours a month, the cost is almost inconsequential.

But WoW has its flaws too. Like I said, they do the things I like well, and I tend to stay away from the aspects of wow that I dislike (pvp, pet and mount collecting to name two). Blizzard has created many features that I’d rather not have, or moved in directions that I dislike – and you cannot have everything.

I doubt I’ll find a game that meets all my perfect criteria, and if I did it would probably have such a small player base as to be not economically viable for long.

In terms of getting all the features, I actually think it is better to do less features very well, than do every feature in an average way. A narrow and loyal market segment can be widened, but it is very hard to grow wide when you’re not already doing something to retain customers. Simple games also can be powerful in the market. Do one thing well and have the opportunity to show your expertise.

Happy gaming – TyphoonAndrew

wow free to play thoughts

World of Warcraft has added a “free to play” option … and if you were hunting for a great set of keywords to type into a gamers search app, you’ve found them. Hits ahoy! On the surface this might be huge news, and the day that World of Warcraft actually does go fully free to play, with the mandatory micro-transaction components added, then we’ll really see something of a disruption in the MMO game market.The real facts here is that wow is not free-to-play, its just an unlimited trial period.

The fine print on the offer is more revealing, and demonstrates why headlines are worse than cheating husbands for how they can easily mislead (god bless the abuse of facts at the hands of the media, for without it we’d only have truth – not pithy taglines). Blizzard is unlocking the 30 day trial, so that it lasts forever. It has the same limit on communications functions, same lock-out of the advanced Cataclysm features (like new races and such), and you’re limited to level 20. It does now include one of the older expansions, which is a change from the previous evaluation period. Players now can play around as much as they want, switch and swap toons, design hairstyles, and the rest of the basic game functions for as long as they wish; just don’t expect to get far beyond the starter areas.

Now don’t get me wrong – every game should do this. If the publishers could actually understand that gamers distrust games, and hate spending a fortune on a product that sucks dreadfully, then they’d give this option out of the box on launch day.

The level 2-20 game is actually good in Warcraft. I’ve played almost all the starting areas and they all have something to offer. Compare a game which offers so many different starting zones to most other online games, and you’ll already see that offering this gratis is something more than most studios can do. I’ve seen many games that offer no more replay in the early content than changing the “hello Wizard, your quest” gets switched to “hello Fighter, your quest”. Hardly exciting at all, and not something that I’d pay for.

If a game is released without a trial period or a locked down open period (as is the case now with wow), then all the publishers and designers are saying to me is that that the game sucks, and they need the box price purchases from the great unwashed so that they can try to mitigate the huge loss of creating it. No thanks. I’ll trust the reviews, my friends, and the early adopters to filter the games that are worth paying for, which don’t have a free evaluation period. These games are trying to capture my attention for months and years, to entire return revenue, and if they can’t at least offer 15 days of test time, then they have something to hide.

In the future when the “Free to Play” change actually occurs in WoW I suspect the reason will be that the game is actually in serious decline, and needs a final boost. It will be like the installation of a pacemaker and blood thinners, so it can live longer. And I’ll bet a coffee that this happens after Blizzard’s next MMO is out and proven itself as a winner. Why else would a studio mess with a formula which is generating so much revenue for so many years.

Till the next greatest thing is released, consider trying wow if you have not already. Be warned – it is not the game for everyone, and has burnt out more players than most MMORPGs have had as subscribers; but it is actually a very good game. Other publishers copy the current incarnation for a reason, it works.

Happy gaming.