Have the forsaken been forsaken?

Patch notes always manage to annoy me. Of course they do, I am a warlock after all and even though I am now far more in tune with other character classes understanding their soft spots and where they could use some help seeing the stale and uncreative changes to the warlock class never put a huge smile on my face.

But this is not about warlocks... at least not specifically. I make it about warlocks because I happen to be a warlock of the undead variety. So chosen back in the day for the race defining ability 'will of the forsaken'.

Will of the forsaken is an absolute godsent for any warlock especially in the northrend PvP game. Together with the standard PVP trinket undead warlocks can break snares twice and happily port back to their circle of magical 'there will be a warlock here soon' glowiness (you know the little green circle things where rogues like to hang out).

But the PTR patch notes for 3.3 tell us a story of foreboding doom:

"Will of the Forsaken now shares a 45-second cooldown with similar effects, including the Medallion of the Horde, Titan-Forged runes, Insignia of the Horde, etc."

Which in essence means that your race defining ability now shares a cooldown with quite a few silly little pvp trinkets that are available to pretty much anyone with the gumption to cap a few towers in Hellfire peninsula or do any other moderated form of pvp.

So no matter what kind of undead you are, come 3.3. your PVP trinket will be useless. After all it's not like you can exchange racials nor do you get the option to change race after such a modification so the only real thing left to do is hunt for a new trinket.

Perhaps this is the great equalizer, a cheap little trick to snuff out the value of yet another racial to bring it in line with the collection of other marginally useful racials.

But to this here warlock, whom even with a spec that is literally built for survival it's a significant kick in his non-existing nuts (organic stuff does not stay attached post death).

I can stomach the fact that I have to go look for a different trinket, in a way it's a relief not to have to go for the pvp trinket anymore but losing yet another defensive cooldown is hard especially when you know you're reliant on it for your survival.

My warlocks future looks somewhat bleaker for it. Now rather than to trinket out of the rogue stun, port back to my circle and WotF out of the rogue stun from the rogue that's surely there I get to recapture those lovely moments all us warlocks know where we get bursted down from 100% to 0 in the duration of a single stun.

But hey, maybe we can hit the sacrifice button from our otherwise useless voidwalker before the second rogue gets to us. Or perhaps they got bored waiting on that big green glowing blotch on the floor for a warlock to appear. Or maybe we can get that 1000+ resilience we're going to need to just live through the initial stunlock burst sequence so we actually get to cast something. Or maybe I'll just stay in the tree I've been sitting in casting dots at the passing crowds.

On the bright side it may, in the long run, result in a few less undead in the world and we'd all be better of without so many of us trying to develop a new plague to turn us all into forsaken (in which case all of y'all will get our spiffy racial).

WotF much?

Post Pilgrim's Profit

With the pilgrimage over and most pilgrims having achieved their pilgrim title there's a large slew of people that have figured out that the harvest festival was a tremendous boon for those looking to train their cooking skills up to 350.

And while you probably saw your profits plummit to an all time low if you're selling raw food (yes there's a market for that) you can now rejoice in a very brief period where people want to equip their newly created level 350 cooks with something more than just a bit of skill.

They have just spent a few minutes looking at their achievements and figured out that with a recipe or 100 more they could score yet another few of those brilliantly useless achievement points for their characters to show off.

And like anyone else rather than traversing half the WoWverse on foot they'd much rather pay a highly inflated AH price for a good set of recipes which is where we come in to make some quick gold.

So I decided to strip down my mage completely bag content wise (a male naked Belf isn't exactly my cup of tea) and send him off to distant land to collect inane amount of recipe's to mail them to a temporary banker character for storage.

I am not going to plot a route for you but here's an overview of more or less all cooking recipes you can get your paws on: recipes

I ended up charging quite a decent sum for each recipe based on their cost price (ranging from double to triple value) and was able with some trade advertising (to create some awareness) and a night's worth of sleep to shift approximately 80% of what I was trying to auction off.

That said I was always able to sell cooking recipes but it seems that after the harvest festival the margin's have gone up a little and the amount of repeat auctions seems to be dwindling.

Of course without a doubt this clever stroke of profiteering will not go unnoticed so I am sure there will be a merry go-round of undercutting going on soon if anyone else is willing to go through the hassle of collecting all those cooking recipes.

Fortunately it is quite the hassle (I didn't bring the mage for nothing) and so hopefully the increase in popularity of cooking recipes will stay in our favor for a while.

Now if you will excuse me I have a cookbook or 200 to compile.

One bridge too far

I pity the fool... who thought that was actually a good idea. Now let me start by saying I don't have any issues with Mr.T.
In fact when I was 8 years old I watched A-team on a regular basis and remember enjoying it quite a bit; But when it comes to MMORPGs you have to be careful not to rip the fabric of spacetime.

And by that I mean, you simply need to take care that whatever you introduce into the world is in some way shape or form related to the world's lore or people therein. If it's not, and you're suddenly presented with something that is so obviously not of 'this world' it is simply put the end of immersion.

Here you are fresh out of the starter zone ready to take on the world and you run into a guy trying to pawn some grenades off on you that have no purpose other than make everyone around you look twice as ugly as they did before. Not to mention the fact that if you're horde that particular night elf will look horribly out of place despite his obvious non-wow demeanor.

I say nay, if you are to introduce a quasi celebrity into a virtual environment it has to fit. I could've seen ozzy as a warlock leading a small army against the lich king and thought to myself 'sure, why not' but to have 'Mr. T's' alter ego standing at the exit of the starter zone just makes me wonder why.

Why are you standing there? What is your purpose?
Why are you handing out grenades instead of grills?
Why would I want to look like you?
Are they going to make the next class a 'mohawk'?

I like frilly things. I love giants that fart big green bubbles and pop them with their finger, I tremendously enjoy thrall and all the other characters that show up repeatedly throughout the game. I even like haris pilton and other introductions of semi famous people in interesting ways and even Ozzy's short introduction to wow was worth some giggles.

But Mr.T the night elf mohawk computer hacker that hands out cosmetic surgery grenades to anyone 'who believes'?

I'd rather french kiss a kodo.

Theres a lot of room in this world for fantasy and fun and there's nothing as funny as a well placed 'real life' reference... but if it's not done right it just ends up being a clear break from immersion, a reminder of what is going on out in the real world that we tried to get away from by playing in the first place, in short: one bridge too far.