Wrath of the Lich King and Altoholics

There’s quite a bit of news out of the beta and only some of it is good for altoholics like myself.  I cannot cover all of the news, but I will cover the bits and pieces that interest me particularly.  This is full of spoilers for Wrath of the Lich King, so please be aware.

The good?

• Enchanters will now be able to enchant their own alts via inscription.  In short, inscription allows the making of a special paper that can be imbued with the armor or weapon enchant by the enchanter which will then be consumed in the process of applying that enchantment to weapon or armor.  Of course, making the weapon enchant paper is quite a higher skill level in Inscription.
• Enchanters will also be able to sell their enchants using the same process.  No more of the ‘let’s meet up, do you have mats….’, it will be COD.  It also means that enchanters will be able to charge a stable price for enchants and possibly stabilize the price of mats – people can make money farming them, but rather than the end consumer (the enchantee) purchasing them, the enchanter will purchase them and charge a final price, which is usually more friendly to the end consumer (at least on my server).
• Blacksmiths will be able to add sockets to items using things like belt buckles (and the current report is that these sockets stack with enchantments).  Can I just say “AWESOME” to this?
• Death Knights are reportedly incredibly fun to play – I am reserving judgement until I can actually play one.
• Tailors are getting some love with a profession-specific mount – A FLYING CARPET.
• Glyphs!  Glyphs are a new system to allow players to customize spells, abilities/talents.  The Glyph of the Penguin allows a Mage’s Polymorph to polymorph into a baby penguin as opposed to a sheep/turtle/pig.  There are six Glyphs (with a potential seventh), two each Major, Minor and Lesser.  Some glyphs increase damage, some glyphs increase buff affects, some glyphs increase range.

The Bad?

• Experience tables have been extended, taking more to level.  At last night’s report, it was almost 80% more per level to make that level.
• The spell-power/+healing and spell-power/+spell-damage ratios are NOT equal.  At current, it seems that the spell-power/+healing is 1:2 and the spell-power/+spell-damage is almost 1:1.  This is going to make using armory to judge healers a little difficult for a while and making a party VERY difficult.
• They’ve apparently removed Potion Sickness but not Tinnitus from the beta, making a great many raiders who took leatherworking solely to be able to produce Drums (and keep an overlapping set of buffs on the raid) VERY sorry.
• As a consequence of the above, a goodly number of leatherworkers will be re-skilling a different profession.  Meaning a sharp rise in AH prices for lower level goods for almost all professions.
• WIth the little information about inscription out there, people are beginning to speculate on herbs. *raises hand*  Myself included.

Why are these good and bad?

Well, the good ones stand a heavy chance of lowering or stabilizing AH prices and indicate a growing knowledge by Blizzard of where some areas needed improvement – like the enchanter having no way to enchant their alts gear.  They also allow further character customization after the initial character creation, which hasn’t been possible before now – not to mention the proposed-but-not-completely-implemented dance studios and barbershops.  I’m quite excited by the ability to customize my characters and the only thing that I could wish for would be dyeable armor so no more clown look while leveling.

And the bad ones are the ones that will make AH prices rise and will cause mass confusion when the expansion is released.  The conversion to spellpower alone will cause major issues – “LFG: Priest w/1k+heal” now means almost any buffed priest at end game will fit the bill.  “LFG: Priest w/1k+heal” after Wrath (if the conversion remains the same) will be looking for T4+ Priests.  This kind of confusion will settle after a bit, of course, it always does.

What are you excited about or worried about with Wrath of the Lich King?

Money, Money, Money…

“… it’s a rich man’s world!” – ABBA

It’s a very true statement in WoW. Without Gold, as more people progress to end-game content and stop rolling alts, the economy on a WoW server can become unbalanced. The introduction of Dailies and the easy Gold they brought to characters made an large impact by allowing a minor economical reset as more characters were able to purchase more of the previously out of reach gear/items.

However, that can lead to another problem. With the introduction of Inscription (the new profession being introduced with Wrath of the Lich King), the price of herbs and mid level items such as level 45-60 green armor/weapons (to disenchant) have already begun to skyrocket as people begin to collect and store herbs (used in making ink for Inscription) and enchanting mats in anticipation. This echoes a similar situation before Burning Crusade came out and people were collecting ore and gems in anticipation of Jewelcrafting.

So how do you as a player deal with the economical upset? The short answer is that I don’t know, I can only offer my own experience. I’ve rolled and leveled alts to avoid it – I have an herbalist, an alchemist, a tailor and so on. I’ve created a Guild solely populated by my alts and family to store mats for Inscription in the Guild Bank. I do dailies for the cash and buy from both the faction and neutral Auction Houses.

What’s it like on your server and how are you dealing with it?