Lost week

Yeah, that's not a typo: last week was truly a lost week for me: first a three day work trip which ended up being four days, then the holidays during which the weather was so great I just couldn't sit by the computer.

I did, however, have a nice email conversation with Tipa who directed me to a very intriguing side path from this regular WoW-whining of mine. I'm trekking that path whenever I can, rest assured I'll come up with something about that!

The few minutes I got to be in the game (make that two hours during the whole weekend...) resulted the following notions:
- The price of glyphs is rising again, and for many the price is stabilizing to correspond the cost of materials. Gone are the days of outrageous prices, both high and low.
- I made some decent wins with Nexus Vortexes, which I purchased some weeks ago. I purchased quite a lot of them and due to the fact that the AH deposits are enormous on these emblem vendored goods, I was pretty reluctant to sell them cheap. Now I made some 3-4 times the purchase price with them, and I'm certainly looking for more as soon as there are some for sale.
- 76-80 blues are appearing in very low prices, even though they sell for very nice profits. I'm not objecting, just wondering why people are throwing away all that gold: if there is demand, utilize it, right?
- Made Laiskajaakko Exalted in Darnassus and Exodar: Gnomeregan still waiting and then the main factions in the Old World have been conquered. Which makes me wonder, though: why do the toons who have passed lv60 and gone through the Dark Portal have to grind for their faction's reputation? They surely are world class heroes and should be considered equal to King Varian and other miscreants by that time. Really, which of the Old World heroes do you see fighting the monsters and demons of the Nether? Huh?
- And while going through the Drenai starting areas with my heavily over levelled protection warrior, I noticed that I really enjoy the storylines and stories which are obscured into the quests. I really want to make sure the Blood Elves' portal to Outlands (Sun Portal) isn't opened into Bloodmyst, and that's only because the story is scripted so well into the quests in there!

That's all for now. There have been a couple of very good discussions in the earlier posts, which I urge you all to read -and possibly even comment!- if you have spare time.

Missing trade goods

Levelling a profession without the gold to purchase the required materials is a drag. Then again, the grinding is even more of a drag. If the levels were filled equally, there would be enough lower level gatherers and looters to keep the AH stacked with the materials over the level and profession skill levels.

However, this is not the case, at least not in the first generation servers like Thunderhorn-EU. The level range of the toons is very, very top heavy, and the levelling through 20-60 content is ultra fast, even though the 40-50 levels of death are still revered as such. I've noticed, however, that the current speeding up of levelling has in fact taken that hellish grind stage off, and the level range 40-50 has become 50-58, only to speed up at the entry to Outlands.

The result in the materials available is clearly seen in AH: Mageweave is almost non-existing, Runecloth is pretty scarce. Both being the 40-55 range stuff. I also heard the same from my brother who's toon is Leatherworker: certain leathertypes are missing from AH or are extremely overpriced, mostly due to the fact that they are scarce.

Sadly, this leads to the fact that if a new player comes into the game, s/he will face the burdens of outlevelling the content and at the same time outlevelling the 'natural' ways to get the materials needed for the professions. Double burden.

And it's of no use to start training the professions when the toon is capped, if there is no supply of the materials in the market. Add grind to the grind for the raid buffs, repairs and getting the gear to be able to enter the raids...

Ouch. Not a pretty picture.