02/06/2015

Bags, the AH, Weather, Graphics

Today, a post about a couple of things that aren't really connected but also aren't worth talking about in separate posts of their own.

Bag space (or lack thereof) is driving me a bit nuts. My character currently has a mix of eight and ten-slot bags, all of which she found out in the world, and which seems about right for her current level from what I remember... but it's just not enough. Since I'm willing to play the healer role in dungeons, I've put together a healing set which has intellect and spirit on it instead of strength and stamina and which takes up a whole bag all by itself. I'm also a miner, and I forgot that ores only stacked to ten in Vanilla. Ack! Add to that my desire to avoid throwing away white quality items (someone could use that Crisp Spider Meat and Murloc Eye I'm sure - in Vanilla they had uses) and I have no doubt that you can see my dilemma. Back in Wrath I wrote a post bemoaning the uninspiredness of its loot tables, and I do still enjoy sorting through my bags, but at the moment it sometimes feels like too much, mostly because vendors and especially banks can be hard to come by when you're on a quest in the middle of nowhere. It gets a bit annoying when you're at the back of a cave, knowing full well that you need another ten spiders to complete your quest (who all drop about five different varieties of spider parts) and pretty much after every pull you have to stop to consider whether to discard something or leave the last corpse unlooted. The only alternative would be to hearth out, sell stuff, and then come all the way back.

One way of getting rid of bag overflow is to sell things on the auction house. I've found Kronos' economy to be a strange beast. Initially it felt a bit dead at the low levels, but it seems that the server has been growing and the low-level economy has picked up as a result. I'm having to re-learn what actually sells and what doesn't. Rogue or feral druid leather? Yes please. Caster leather? You'd have to be pretty insane to level a druid as balance or resto in Vanilla, so not much luck. Things like cooking ingredients can be very hit or miss depending on whether anyone is working on levelling their cooking or not. Also, I miss jewelcrafting - it's obvious that there aren't enough uses for stone and gems at this point so their value is pretty low. Actually, a lot of things seem very cheap in general - but that's simply a sign of a young economy, where most players are new and (relatively) poor. I keep thinking of how many of these low-level items used to sell for multiple pieces of gold when I last played on live, but on this server the majority of the potential buyers simply doesn't have that kind of money to spare. Even coppers matter.

I left the guild that I joined back in Loch Modan. No big drama, I just hadn't got to know anyone really and guild chat repeatedly caught my eye in a negative way because of multiple people making jokes about rape, abortion etc. It was obvious that this was not the kind of company I wanted to hang out with and that just seeing them talk detracted from my experience instead of adding to it. If someone else asks me to join their guild, I'll have to be a bit choosier in the future.

Why does it always rain on me...?
I don't know if Kronos is slightly wonky in some way or if this is a case of me misremembering the way things were in Vanilla, but I don't remember it raining quite so much. Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining - I'm really enjoying the day/night cycles and weather changes, especially as they are something that I sometimes miss in SWTOR. Still, there are certain zones (Elwynn Forest, Loch Modan, the Wetlands) where it seems to be raining ninety percent of the time whenever I get there. I just don't remember those areas being quite that wet.

When Blizzard announced that they were revamping the old character models for Warlords of Draenor, I was excited because I had to admit that their outdatedness had started to bother me. (Though I have very mixed feelings about the results.) Funnily enough, the Vanilla graphics on Kronos do not bother me at all. I've been thinking about why that is and I think the secret is consistency. As Blizzard continued to add better and better looking zones, mounts, pets and gear, our characters increasingly stood out in a bad way. It was hard to miss when your entire character model consisted of fewer polygons than your shoulderpads; they just didn't match. But on Kronos, everything looks equally blocky and I've found that I'm actually okay with that. It's a crude style, but it works.

7 comments:

  1. Really, ore only stacked to ten in Vanilla? I'm glad I started in TBC. Then it stacked to twenty!

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    1. That's how I remembered it too (since I started playing shortly before BC's launch, so late Vanilla and early BC frequently get mashed together in my memories). It was a rude awakening, lol.

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  2. I can relate to the bag problem, but I perceive that as just another minor inconvenience that I can live with. Personally, I was fortunate enough to make some very good trades early on to be able to afford some nice bags.

    As to the weather – constant rain – that seems to be indicative of (vanilla) private servers in general because Nostalrius has the exact same problem, as did Rebirth and many others. It always rains in ... Elwynn. I think it has to do with the original MaNGOS core that is the basis of all private servers.

    You'd have to be pretty insane to level a druid as balance or resto in Vanilla

    How can you say that when I did, in fact, level all the way to 60 as Balance in Vanilla?! For shame! ;)

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    1. I'm afraid I will have to question your sanity on that one... then again, I'm currently levelling as a prot/holy hybrid so who am I to judge? (Apart from the fact that as a paladin, I'm obviously judging all the time... /rimshot)

      I can live with the bag space problem too, but I do miss ores stacking a bit higher at least! And being a noob who wouldn't have cared enough to carry a second gear set around.

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  3. Sorry about your guild. Judging by your comments, I think that you were entirely justified in leaving.

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  4. It's not exactly a solve-it-all solution. But mules (aka low lvl chars with bags and bankspace) are a time-honored tradition in MMORPGs .-)
    And if thats not enough the mail system basically allows you 60 days of storage for 30 copper per stack. (send it to an alt, return if you need it, otherwise it comes back after 30 days and lies in mailbox for another 30)

    So if you are ever near a mailbox you have unlimited banking space at you disposal :-)

    It doesnt save you in the depths of the spider cave, but it makes "banks" (aka mailboxes) more widespread

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    1. I kind of feel that if I need to create a bank alt when I only have one character (who is still levelling no less), I've already lost!

      I'm aware of the mailbox thing but have shied away from it as leaving stuff in the mailbox means that I can't use the mail icon to tell when I actually have new mail. However, I might consider rolling an alt purely to have somewhere to mail ore away temporarily; that's one of the biggest issues I have.

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