Wowstability

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With the lack of interesting things to do while the non-beta testers wait for Cataclysm, I’ve resorted to playing poker inside the World of Warcraft. Even though free poker flash games are just an alt-tab away from the WoW screen, there’s something else about playing poker, while you see orcs and humans kill each other in the WSG field. Maybe it’s the rush of killing something plus the risk of getting killed, plus the rush of losing in poker all combined, or I am just simply not admitting that I am a WoW addict and I need help.

This addon called WoW Texas Holdem allows you to play with your online friends while your healer takes a piss just before an Arthas encounter. It’s not advisable to play for real money because … you’re in the World of Warcraft. If you want to play for real money, go get a full tilt rakeback, because what rakeback does is it gives a percentage of the rake back to you. Playing for real money inside WoW wouldn’t give anything back if you lose, even your account! It is also not advisable, according to the author of the addon, to play for World of Warcraft gold. That would be gambling and shouting out a poker tournament in trade channel will get you reported and get hit by the mighty ban hammer. Blizzard is that strict when it comes to gambling . I think even if you ask someone in trade chat where the best rakeback review is, chances are someone will report you for talking about gambling. Keep those gambling talks hush hush; it’s a taboo word inside WoW. If you’re just playing with close friends, no one would have to know you’re playing for wow gold (evil laugh). Play the game of “winner takes all” and have fun while you wait for Deathwing to destroy Azeroth.

I suppose you could also bet things other than gold. Say for example, all players in the tournament bets a raw epic gem and winner takes all. Other things you could bet: flasks, potions, enchanting mats, rare gems, etc. You can also try all losers will jump off Dalaran wearing their FULL GEAR.

Wrath of the Lich King is now officially very boring. So boring that ICC 25 is already on GDKP and ON FARM and there’s nothing else to do but try and farm for the Shadowmourne.

Luckily Cataclysm Beta invites are out. Unluckily, I don’t have an invite. Too many scam emails are going around claiming to be a beta invite, so don’t fall for that trap. Instead of getting a beta invite, you’re going to lose your account and that’s not a good thing, I promise. So the best way to check if you have a Cataclysm Beta invite is to log in your battle.net account. Quoting World of Warcraft website:

Simply log in to your account by visiting http://battle.net when you receive a beta welcome notice and check your “Manage My Games” section to verify that the beta client is available for download. Be careful when reading emails claiming to be beta invites. Scam emails often use clickable links to gather your account information, so the safest practice is to go to http://battle.net to check on your beta invitation status.

So… Who has Cataclysm Beta Invites? All I can do is watch videos of people who have beta invites and drool at how they’re enjoying exploring the world while I’m stuck in the cold land of WOTLK. Here’s an interesting quest chain I watched:

I’m hungry for new things to do. How long will we have to stay in WOTLK? Since beta just went live, I’m guessing 6 more months? Ahhhhhhhhhh.

One of the reasons I started playing World of Warcraft is the fact that I can talk with my real life friends, and some of them are thousands of miles away. This is why we all played on the same server, so we can make a channel for ourselves and talk and laugh our hearts out. Eventually, some changed servers to adjust their playtime to their work schedules/time zones.  The only option left was to hang out in one guild’s ventrilo chat but the sound of “who’s this guy?” makes vent squatting a little hard.

REAL ID came and allows the user to see his friends cross-server and even cross-game. Get your friend’s battle.net email address and add it on your list and you will be able to see them regardless of server and game ( works on SC 2 and most likely on Diablo 3). Chatting with your real life friends, family and co-workers isn’t so hard anymore. Now, you can have fun disturbing your friend’s Starctaft 2 game while you go fishing on Wintergrasp.

However, for some of us, REAL ID also brings bad news. Not really because of the REAL ID, but more on the raid leaders who are requiring their core group to give up their email address! No more hiding from the raid leader? No way! Your raid leader can bug you to stop playing SC2 because they need 1 more healer? NO F*!@#)(@! WAY! REAL ID is just for real friends, not WoW friends! No matter what happens, never ever give your real ID to your guild. Your privacy will cease to exist if you do!

Hey, this isn't real gold!

Remember those days when the trade channel was spammed by casino advertisers looking to get your money with their odds sometimes even worse than REAL CASINOS? These personal casinos went public and got so popular that Blizzard just had to do something about it. These advertisers spam even worse than gold sellers. “Roll 65+ and get twice your money!” Yeah right, I’d rather play baccarat; at least I get 50% winning chance. Good thing these casinos got sanctioned; no one deserves those poor odds!

The gambling scene isn’t completely purged and it never will. Especially at this time when boredom is quickly rising, players find ways to make the game a little bit more interesting and they keep it underground to avoid the ban hammer. Only friends and guildies are invited to prevent an ass reporting you for illegal gambling. And just like in the streets of Vegas, players bet on anything:

1. Duels
2. Jumping from mountains (if you don’t die, you win!)
3. Amazing race around dalaran (this requires a lot of organization andpeople to avoid cheating!)
4. First player to punch a raid boss wins
5. Highest kills in a BG wins
6. Highest DEATHS in a BG wins (LOL)

Those are the only ones I am aware about. I’m sure there are a lot out there. The thing is, gambling will never end in WoW. Just like it’s more interesting to watch an NBA game if there’s money on the line, trying to die the most in a battleground is more fun with money than just plain dying! It just makes things more fun! Try it!Bet on that fellow raider of yours that he will die in the next attempt will make your raiding less stressful.

Eventually, wow players learn how to get massive gold especially with today’s countless gold blogs lying around the internet. After a while, and especially because of a lot of changes in WOTLK, gold isn’t so hard to get anymore compared to Vanilla and Burning Crusade days. Instead of a lack of gold going around, there is a huge excess of gold right now, with some players carrying hundreds of thousands of gold (and some even reach a million).

Gold sellers have their gold prices at the cheapest just to dispose of the stock they have and they advertise like hell to tempt players to stop wasting their time trying to earn gold and just buy them. Below is a screen shot of IGS.com advertising their gold ON AIR.

Clearly they are using hacks to make this possible. Who knows what else their hacks can do within the game?

Now that it is possible to earn thousands of gold without spending too much time farming, gold sellers have their customers getting smaller and smaller. Plus, the number of gold blogs, auction house tips and tricks have been rising and Blizzard makes it easier and easier to get gold (e.g. easier to get epic gems using honor points). See, gold sellers are already desperate. Hey, maybe this is why this website has been hacked thrice already.

Wow players have been trying to live with these gold sellers using addons that filter gold spam, reporting them, and bashing them in trade channel. Sometimes they become annoying (e.g. 24/7 farmers, corpse advertisements) that kind of destroy the World of Warcraft-ness of the game.  We can adopt all we want and try our best to report these annoyances but one thing’s for sure: these gold sellers will never go away!

I’m pretty sure you’ve found good material while browsing in mmo-champ, wowhead, wow.com, or the blizzard forums. And then, you forget to bookmark it for some reason (e.g. boss aggro), and you have no idea how to find that page again! The search in the website doesn’t seem to help you find it. You even forget how you arrived at that page in the first place!

In these troubled instances, Google will save you! For sure you remembered vaguely what the topic is all about. For instance, if you remember the topic is “arthas getting his ass kicked”, but the website search form isn’t giving you any results by searching “arthas getting his ass kicked”, you might want to try this google advanced search querie:

site:www.website.com [keyword/s]

If I was looking for arthas getting his ass kicked in mmo-champion, I’d type in google:

site:www.mmo-champion.com arthas getting his ass kicked

Hey, look what I got, a link where someone was talking about getting arthas’ ass kicked. That’s how accurate google’s advanced search querie can be.

How about how wow.com says something about Blizzard fails?

site:wow.com blizzard fail

gives you Authenticator Failure Revisited, Blizzard responds

When you finally find what you’re looking for, BOOK MARK IT! I suggest using delicious.com for your bookmarking needs.