I wish the Goblin would stick to making money in Wow. . .

I don't like to get into topics like this because Wow is my "escape" from real life. Its a game, I treat it like a game, its fun for me. In real life I work in the securities industry, so I think I have an above average understanding of how the economy works in the real world.

If you have read this post completely ignore it. The goblin gives an incomplete and often incorrect assessment of things. Wow is not a real economy. It lacks a lot of the mechanisms of a real economy. The biggest thing Wow lacks, and the general reason for a lot of our problems in the economy right now is debt.

In the real world, a large driver of the economy has been debt. You borrow money from someone that has it with the promise that it will be paid back. Individuals do it to finanace houses, cars, school, all kinds of things. Institutions loan money between each other to loan to individuals. The federal government and the states solicit these loans in the form of bonds (as a side note, the Chinese government is one of the biggest investors in US treasury bonds). The interest that is paid on these loans is the price that is paid for the service, in addition to the promise that the principal amount will be paid back.

The system works pretty well based on one major assumption: the loans will be paid back on time to the lender. Some default risk is built in, and generally bonds with a higher risk of default can pay out higher yields (commonly referred to as junk bonds), the trade off for risk of default is a higher interest payment.

The problem with our current system is that people are borrowing more than they are able to pay back, which has started a chain reaction. Person A defaults on a loan to Bank A, which then cannot pay back it's loan to Bank B, who then does not have money to lend out, so has to lower its rates to person B, who then has to borrow money to pay back to Bank C, its a vicious cycle that unfortunately we have become somewhat locked into. Maybe after billions in "write-offs" of bad debt, we will reach some sort of equilibrium, but that is one of the true reasons behind our current problems.

The point of all this is that Wow has no such system, so any comparison between Wow's economy and the real world will be at best incomplete and at worst downright wrong.

Stay tuned for my upcoming post on Death knight tanking, I much prefer talking about that to anything involving my real life job ;)

3 man instances, inside jokes and head kicks. . .

I hope everyone had a good weekend. For me it was part relaxing, part catching up with some old friends, part chugging through some goals in good old Wow and part hockey.

I'm sure by now everyone has run Hellfire ramparts with less than a full group. One of my goals is to solo it, but I didn't feel my level 71 was quite prepared for the bosses, so I held off. I feel particularly lucky on my alliance server in that both guilds I am a part of are extremely helpful and have a lot of people I enjoy sharing chat with (thats why we're in guilds right? well, pre-raiding anyways). Well last night I was talking to one of the 80's in my main guild Sons of Silence and she asked if I needed help with anything. I replied that I was good on questing, but I did need to run ramps on my death knight. She said her bf was running something, but he loved ramps and when he was done, we set off to 3 man ramps with an 80 gnome rogue, 66 frost DK and my 60 unholy DK (although I dinged 61 midway through the instance). I didn't think we'd be successful with the rogue not having as strong AoE and no heals, but who believes it, we pulled it off, didn't take too long, I got the hell-reaver and the belt (more to come on that below). I was a very happy DK last night.

On the inside joke front, it just hit me last night, does anyone else think the Tenacious Defender is a referrence to the Jack Black band Tenacious D?

One of the other things that happened this weekend was a free UFC event on spike, UFC 95. Although there were no championship matches it was a pretty solid card. First of all, knockout of the night has to go to Nate Marquadt with bonus points for opening up his opponent. Not only did he hit a beautiful flying knee, he followed up with right and left legged head kicks and punches. He put such a charge into his opponent, the cut man was still working on him when Marquadt's interview was done. Head kicks have to be one of the most exciting things in sports.

Oh, and as anyone who has ever leveled blacksmithing to 300 will say: it's horrible and I never want to do it again, but I did it. Now its on to hoarding fel iron and farming primals to get to 350 so I can go to cobalt. I have kind of put off leveling so I can get the armorsmithing breastplates for the pally. He is currently at 65 and the level 65 one is pretty nice, it only gets better at 70.

Loot rules, Heirloom shoulders and The Wrestler. . .

There was something I saw last night that really bothered me, and as usual, that motivated me to blog. Had it happened to me personally, I probably only would have been affected by one action, but it was the overall that really bothered me. No one likes a loot ninja. The worst types of loot ninjas are the ones who brag about it in guild chat. One of the guilds that I am in on azuremyst (populated by in general great people) has in its membership a paladin. I believe the paladin was specc'd holy for this particular run in Naxx. This person somehow acquired mail legs, leather caster shoulders and plate tanking gloves. I can't imagine either a tank or off tank couldn't use purple plate tanking gloves more than a healer, and it irks me to see a plate healer rolling on mail and leather. Maybe there were no shamans or druids in the entire raid, and maybe the tanks already had better than the purple tanking gloves, but thats a lot of maybes and it rubs me the wrong way.

Speaking of raids/heroics, I have finally found a reason to level up, gear up and run them. I want the heirloom shoulders for my alts, and they're only 40 badges of heroism each. I figure I can get one pair of leather for shammy/druid and one pair of cloth for the mage, then my shoulder needs are set till 80. Well, I want to level the pally and DK first but yeah, those shoulders are very nice and once I found out they were attainable with no pvp whatsoever, I am all about it.

Lastly The Wrestler. Amazing movie, well done, but SOOOOO SAD! Without trying to spoil it too much, its the first movie I've ever seen where I wanted the main character to get together with the stripper, and Marisa Tomei is smoking hot in it, especially for being in her 40's. I think it did a really good job of capturing a more realistic look at professional wrestling. Again, so sad, and I must say the ending left me a little unfulfilled, but I'll leave it at that. Even if you're not a fan of professional wrestling, you should see it.

This is the part where I feel like a total N00b. . .

I would love to participate in the screenshot posting. I think its a great idea, share some history about the game, give insight into my characters, etc. There's only one problem. I didn't know you could actually A) take screenshots or B) how to do it.

Yes, I do feel quite the nOOb.

When I get home, I will double check and see if there is anything there, maybe I will take a few for a "Guided tour of Fish" post. . .

Love stinks, and more non Wow related content. . .

Whats worse than a hallmark holiday created to move merchandise? A blizzard clone of said aforementioned holiday. I'm sure this isn't my first bout with said holiday but as I had a nice long weekend to farm er play, I had more opportunities to be annoyed with it this year. No I won't mend your heart, enjoy your debuff, thanks for playing.

In case anyone was wondering, I did celebrate the real life version of the holiday. We had a nice dinner, I grilled steak, herb basted shrimp and served it with cheese grits. I think I delivered in spite of my illness (I had a pretty major sinus infection). Yes, I like to think I have 450 cooking IRL. . .well, maybe 300, I'm not quite an iron chef lol.

Non Warcraft related content to follow!

So I saw a post from One Among Many titled "to the pain" and I thought "ZOMGTHEPRINCESSBRIDE!!!!!!!!!"

This got me to thinking "I think I'll post my top 5 movies of all time". I don't believe any on the list are better than the others, they are the best of their given genres (in my opinion).

1. The Princess Bride - Just classic, swordfighting is amazing, practically the whole movie is quotable. Its just a giant cornucopia of goodness, thats all there is to say about that.

2. Gladiator - Epic. It is the best historical piece I've ever seen, I never get tired of it.

3. Any Given Sunday - In my opinion, this is the best realistic sports movie ever made. I think it realistically portrays how football actually is.

4. Snatch - If you havent seen it, do yourself a favor and do so. Part crime caper, part comedy, it is at times disjointed but an amazing movie.

5. The Matrix Reloaded - Total non-stop actiongasm. It has normal fights, fights with weapons, gun fights and an epic car chase. Sure, the plot is kind of convoluted and its not where I saw the franchise going, but as far as an action movie goes, its hard to get better action than the matrix reloaded.


I think those 5 best represent their particular genres and I never get tired of them. What are everyone else's top 5?

Why I love mages, and my build at 80. . .

This is kind of a new thing for me. With almost all of my characters I enjoy the leveling process, focus on the here and now, what I can do. With the mage it's different. The warlock was an easy class to get used to with easy conversion of health to mana, a pet to keep the mobs away and dots to tick damage down. It was efficient and well, easy. The mage is not easy. It is technical, there are a lot of abilities which can be very situational and I die a LOT leveling (less now than in the beginning). The more I become accustomed to them the more I feel the power there. Aoe damage, utility, self sufficiency, all the things that I look for in a character. They definately aren't easy, but what that is worthwhile is?

Again, in a move that is new to me, I've planned my talents up to level 80. Yes this implies I am actually going to charge to 80 with a character. The freedom from PvP and general enjoyment of the class and understanding have opened "new" doors for me. So hopefully this link works, my planned talents at 80.

The real question was "do I go into fire or arcane?". I honestly believe that the 51 point talent in frost is A) next to useless and B) not worthy of being a 51 point talent. The deciding factor on which way to go was the 21 point talents. Presence of mind is cool and has some utility but blast wave makes this a no-brainer. Aoe damage that is instant cast and knocks people back from me? I can just imagine the havoc I can cause on lower level instances with this (as I've previously stated, I solo lower level instances for fun and profit).

I would love to hear any and all comments/suggestions from those more experienced than me in the magical discipline. . .

Dual specs are coming. . .

So in searching to see which realms are eligible for free character transfers (azuremyst is too heavily populated for me, but I'm pretty well established there, so I would move for free, but its not worth paying), I saw a post by ghostcrawler talking about dual specs. I just figured I would throw my 2 coppers into the pot about what we learned.

The good:
There is a one time fee for the dual specs, once you buy them, you can switch between them freely at any lexicon of power. Also, your glyphs stay with the spec, thats awesome. They are implementing a feature that would make you actually save the talent spec for it to be set permanently (no more clicking something and going "OOPS, guess I'm stuck with it there!").

The bad:
You have to be level 80 to have dual specs.

So basically they are implementing a bunch of great enhancements that will be useless to the characters it would benefit the most. I get the theory that once you hit the level cap, the game begins, I have never accepted that explanation. Once you hit the level cap dailies begin, and extended farming, and maybe if you are so inclined raiding. Allowing dual specs only for characters at the level cap is counter productive because the skills needed to play in a given spec are gained through leveling, and basic dungeons are much more forgiving than heroics. I don't want to tank a dungeon with a re-specced priest who has never healed before. I'm sure healers wouldn't want to run with someone who has never tanked before (not that there seems to be a shortage of tank-specced characters in the game).

I have healed as a paladin in instances before. I have a basic understanding of pretty much every class in the game. I can tell you right now, I would not be that effective healing as a shaman or druid, or getting max DPS from ANY class. Are these skills blizzard thinks we will magically acquire at level 80? Maybe it is because I don't have a level 80 character. Let me ask those of you that do: when you hit 80, did you gain an understanding of how to play every spec in your class?