SWTOR/WoW — Credits, Gold, Coinage, Dinero

AAARRRGGGHHH! We can’t afford the gorram gas to get this heap to … oh, didn’t see you there. Yeah, my bounty hunter is starting to feel like Captain Mal trying to keep Serenity flying. She’s having a money flow problem. It’s flowing out but not in. I am not getting a handle on the Galactic Trade Network at all. I haven’t found anything that sells. She’s Biochem but no matter how low I price things, no one’s buying.

She’s a little concerned since she’s almost level 22 and speeder training is looming just over the horizon at level 25. 40k credits for the training and another 8k for the speeder. I remember my first WoW character grinding mobs at about level 42 or 43 still trying to get enough money for her mount but I thought it would be different in SWTOR, I mean this time I actually knew there was a GTN but so far it’s been no help.

My last brilliant plan to become a SWTOR mogul failed horribly. I placed my sith warrior who has slicing on the Imperial Fleet and had her run slicing missions thinking I could succeed that way. Now this was before the nerf to slicing and it didn’t make me money, it cost me about 1k. Thankfully I saw a tweet by Vrykerion of The Land of Odd mentioning that to save money leveling slicing you should not do the missions, do the nodes. Nodes? What nodes! Didn’t know slicing had nodes, embarrassing. Hmmm. Maybe instead of leveling crew skills I should be out gathering the mats to sell to others who are leveling crew skills. Worth a try.

So yeah … feeling depressed I headed to the Shattrath City bank to cheer myself up. My druid rolled around in her piles of gold for a while and then tried once again to obtain Lumpy, no, no luck. She didn’t feel all that bad about it though cause in Azeroth we’re filthy rich.

A few posts back I was enthusing about everything being shiny and new in SWTOR, how did I forget about the pain of being poor. Ah well, time to leave the bank and suck it up and learn how to make credits. If I find out I’ll be sure to let you know.

In other SWTOR news, I have FINALLY got a character with a bad attitude. This girl really hates everyone. As soon as she got to the Sith Academy on Korriban everyone was, well, talking shit to her. Pathetic slave this and pathetic slave that. It was too much for her. She just snapped. It possibly could also have something to do with her incredible ineptitude with her class, I mean that’s got to make her mad. At one point I though she wouldn’t even be able to complete her companion quest at level 10 when the smarty pants bounty hunter got her companion at level 6. I seem to be a complete fail as an Inquisitor. But on the bright side her companion seems to be on the same page with her, Khem Val would just as soon kill everything, which is fine with her as soon as she learns how to inquisite properly. She even fed that one-eyed monster thingy on Korriban so it could eat everyone at the Sith Academy after she shipped out.

Frankly I’m not sure how any of my characters are surviving. Playing four different classes in SWTOR and WoW simultaneously is probably not the way to become skilled at any of them, but alas that’s the life of an altoholic. It seems more like a superb plan for guaranteed mediocrity. I need to focus, pick a character, go with it. But who? Okay, that’s it, it’s the bounty hunter … really … just an soon as I get the Imperial Agent to level 10. Then I’ll stop. Or not. Or I’ll send her back to Balmorra to pick flowers and make some credits. Oh, the life of a bounty hunter/sith warrior/imperial agent/sith inquisitor. So much to do, so little time. And yes, those are only my Empire characters. What! I said I was an altoholic!

Winter Veil, and I don’t feel so good …

Alright, first … I just had to bite my tongue. It must be the mother in me … but hon … really? Don’t you think you could put some tights on or something and a shirt for heaven sakes? Is that really appropriate … okay, tongue bitten. She’s a grown Druid, if she wants to parade across the country dressed as a holiday strumpet that’s not my business.

I read somewhere that the Red Winter Hat needed for the achievement ‘Tis the Season had a 100% drop rate off of Grand Magus Telestra if you did The Nexus on heroic. I don’t know if that’s true but she was wearing it the first time my Druid went in so that completed her Winter Garb Set.

I told her I’d meet her with a piece of Graccu’s Mince Meat Fruitcake I had so she could complete her achievement. There, another one done, what’s next?

Oh wow, I think this ship has sailed, at least on my server. She stood in Dalaran forever hoping another Snowman would show up to dance with her for A Frosty Shake but no luck. The only good thing was it got her to finally take off her Winter Garb, whew. She completed Bros. Before Ho Ho Ho’s, looks like the next step is to go warm the hearts of the horde with her caroling skills.

I told her I’d be back to help her with that. I had to walk the real life dogs first. She’s met them so she said fine, take your time. I didn’t really feel all that great but IRL there is no NOT WALKING THE DOGS ALLOWED, EVER. The dogs are strict taskmasters and I must obey or there will be consequences … the kind I won’t like.

Logically, I do know that the laws governing the universe do not suspend during holidays, I really do know that. Nonetheless, I continue to treat holidays like they come with a calorie amnesty. Last night we were in the mood to watch I Am Legend. During the viewing of the movie I ate two ham sandwiches with a side of Doritos then for dessert had a bowl of ice cream with the rest of the belgian chocolates kind of like a topping. All of this was washed down with red wine. I attribute it to my concern for Will Smith because I knew what was coming next in the movie, so I really wasn’t paying attention to what I was eating, that’s my story anyway.

So on the dog walk, universal law number 1176 kicked in. Said law states, “If you are going to feel sick, you will be at the maximum walking distance from your home.” It is somewhat comforting to know our lives are governed by laws you can count on however inconvenient they may be.

At maximum distance I felt a near uncontrollable urge to ralph the previous evening’s eating marathon results. We were at this point, in front of a lovely, well-maintained mail box in a manicured lawn. Not good. Luckily the way back is downhill and my dog thought it was great fun to run at breakneck speeds down the hill to the woods part of our walk, otherwise known as pooping station two. With glee he helped me clear a path through the bushes where I could ralph to my heart’s content out of the view of curious passers-by.

Yes, a cautionary tale isn’t it. Learn from my mistakes, there is no food amnesty on holidays. Repeat it, know it, learn it. Right … will do. Next year will be totally different. Ah, I feel so much better.Well enough to don a Gaudy Winter Veil Sweater and go impress the horde with my incredible singing prowess which is what I love about Azeroth. In Azeroth I have incredible singing prowess, IRL … um … not so much.

One Small Wrapped SWTOR Present

There are two things that have been driving me crazy in SWTOR. I have a Razer Diamondback mouse that’s not working with SWTOR. I can use it, but none of the programmable buttons function. I’ve still found no cure for that one. Apparently running the .exe files for your mouse software as administrator is working for some but not for me.

The other annoying problem is that I rarely have a reverse engineer button. I finally decided to pay attention to what I was doing and where I was when it does appear and it seems if you open a trade window with a vendor, hooray, it appears. It seems to stay around after that.

I am exceedingly pleased now; it’s like a SWTOR early Christmas present. I’m quite taken with reverse engineering. I make stuff so I can destroy it in the hope of discovering an even better recipe. I seem to be hooked on crew skills at the moment, I really have to get back to killing all the things but for now I want to decimate the contents of my inventory.

If anyone knows the secret to convincing a Razer Diamond to talk to SWTOR I would be eternally grateful if you could share it!

A WoW Christmas, or Else

Oh awkward … I should have seen this one coming. It appears that my Druid paid a visit to Dromund Kaas to tell the Bounty Hunter in no uncertain terms that I would be spending the holidays in Azeroth. It apparently got a little ugly what with the Bounty Hunter making remarks about how she loves to hunt big game, especially cats. Oh boy, not good. Can’t we just all get along?

Well, as I’ve come to find out the Bounty Hunter is really just all talk, and no matter what she does she just keeps racking up points for the light side, so it didn’t come to blows. And as long as my Druid doesn’t shift into cat form she’s usually pretty laid-back. So they finally agreed on the holiday arrangements, someone could have asked me, but whatever. I’ll do what’s needed to keep the peace. I’m just happy the Druid approached the Bounty Hunter rather than the Sith Warrior—that would not have gone well.

So it’s settled I’ll be celebrating the holidays in Ironforge. The Druid likes to be first in line when Greatfather Winter starts handing out the presents. So happy holidays to all and may all your holiday drops be epic!

The Joy of Noob

OMG! For the love of all that is holy don’t do what I did. Warning! There are these itty bitty icons on the lower left of the SWTOR loading screen. You use them to select things like Preferences, Servers, etc. I got up this morning early and logged in sneakily and quietly, hoping to avoid dog detection. I myopically stared at the icons and selected what I thought was the server icon … it was not, it was the freaking credits. Are they serious, it went on and on, I couldn’t find any way to end it. I think I waited until they started listing the guys that drive the snack trucks and finally had to Alt F4 out of the game. So beware and don’t get stuck in the scrolling credits of unending doom.

Wait, what? Is this yet another character? Well yes it is; a smuggler. I felt my Republic side was under-represented so I thought I’d try one. This is not a class I thought I’d like, but hey, got to try them all, right? I was questing in the starting area and was having the best time ever. I’m running and jumping and taking cover all over the place. I finally notice that I’m hitting keys and nothing’s happening, what’s up with that … I continue on, killing and running and ducking behind boulders. FINALLY, I notice that my quickslot bar CHANGES when I take cover, kind of like shifting forms in WoW. Oh my, L2P STWOR noob. She’s only level 6 but so far I really like her, while the Inquisitor who I had high hopes for, at this point at least, I’m not feeling her.

My Juggernaut tanked her first flashpoint. I’ve done Black Talon twice now with rag-tag groups, one all dps and a pet tanked (he did it much better than my juggernaut), the second time me as a noob tank, again no healer. My tanking debut was fraught with hangs at the cut scenes, I stood in the fire and died on one boss, we all died on another and the thing is it was incredibly fun.

I spend a half an hour running around Kaas City trying to find the Dromund Kaas Commendation vendor. You can’t imagine the thrill on finding her, a shiny new gun, what every Bounty Hunter wants.

I’m having an amazing time in SWTOR. This is the time that long time WoW players miss. Doing instances with whatever group you can get together. Being lost, discovering new places, Npcs, game mechanics. It’s all new and wonderful. WoW is my long time relationship, I’m not leaving the humor, the beautiful world I love, but I can’t get back that noob feeling, I know WoW too well. It’s not WoW’s fault it’s just life and WoW will always be my home. Have I found a second home? I don’t know, time will tell. I’ve done this before and no second home has lasted more than a few months.

Right now though, I’m going to enjoy the hell out of being a noob again. I don’t know how long this will last. I hope it’s a while. I’m kind of worried. I saw a LFG who was insisting on having a competent healer, not in exactly those words though. If they allow addons at some point I think things will go downhill fast. Give people the ability to measure things and the my … Dps is bigger than yours will start, but for now I’m just going to revel in being totally clueless.

SWTOR: Lost in Space … port

Stuck on Dromund Kaas

In her hurry to see everything, my bounty hunter rushed off to Dromund Kaas without seeing the quest for the first flashpoint, Black Talon. After looking around town she headed back to Dromund Kaas Spaceport to try to get a shuttle back to the Imperial Fleet.  She wandered around forever; she took the elevation to the docking bay and unsuccessfully tried to board a shuttle. I logged out and back in. I looked it up in-game and out of game. All I got was, go to the docking bay and click on the shuttle door to leave planet. Hmmm, I finally decided to look for other elevators, although I was SURE I was where I had arrived. Not. There was another docking bay with a functioning shuttle. So if you’re ever stuck there, look for another elevator, docking Bay 0-17 is the correct one.

I picked up the quest for Black Talon. I responded to a LFG, and then we got two more. Ready to go. The LFG originator then dropped group, they didn’t say why and the rest of us were off.  I don’t know much about the talents of companions other than the bounty hunter’s Mako, but one of the other two in the group had a pet that did the tanking. I was trying to pay attention to the flashpoint but it was hard. The companion tank kept melting to the group and leaping back up. Kind of like a melty feign death. I don’t know if this was some kind of a glitch or he was working as intended but I was mesmerized by it and had a hard time taking my eyes off him.

The Black Talon was a lot of fun. And I’m saying that totally without being influenced by my bounty hunter’s luck in getting some lovely new boots. I wish I could tell you more about it; I’ll have to do it again on my Sith Warrior and hopefully not get distracted by any companion antics.

Light/Dark

Okay, I’ve given up on my bounty hunter; she’s just a big Pollyanna. She’s one mean killing machine … apparently with a heart of gold. So in my quest for pure evil I created a Sith Warrior, yeah, now she’s GOT to be evil, right? Not really, I am trying but she’s sitting smack in the middle. I know, I know, she shouldn’t have taken off her companion’s shock collar. I’m really enjoying the character choices between right/wrong/indifference. Although I don’t RP, I definitely want my character to have a personality. I have a clear sense of my character’s personality in SWTOR, and I have it very early on in game.

Classes

I was hesitant to create a warrior, I’ve never gotten one past level 20 but I think I will this time. This Sith is turning out to be a lot of fun. I went Sith Juggernaut but I’m going down the Vengeance tree so she seems to be more of a Tank/DPS hybrid than a pure tank.  I haven’t figured her out yet, she can kick butt, she’s incredibly hardy in spite of not having a full set of heavy armor yet but she can’t hold aggro, her companion keeps pulling mobs off her, how embarrassing.

My bounty hunter is wonderfully fun to play; I live for the cooldown to be off Death from Above, the absolute best ability ever, the damage is awesome and the animation even better. I think if they nerf it I would have a senior nerd rage it’s that fun.

A Jedi Knight and Jedi Consular were also created as a result of the peak hours queue. I tried to find another server that wasn’t as popular, as my backup. So in true altoholic fashion I already have 4 characters.  Neither Jedi has gotten to level ten yet so I don’t have much of a feel for either class. Hopefully I’ll stop jumping around long enough to learn at least one class well. Oh hey, it could happen, really, maybe.

It’s Greench Time!

Ah, she’s so cute. She wants to tell Greatfather Winter that she killed that old greench but she’s a little shy. Thanks to The Harpy’s Nest I knew that it didn’t matter who killed the greench, the sacks would become clickable once the greench was dead to complete the daily, You’re a Mean One… and she would finally get the achievement, Simply Abominable.

I wasn’t too hopeful. It was just before 7:00AM but I thought I’d go check. He was there with a group of people standing around. I thought I’d help when I realized they were standing around because they were all either hunters or mages. I thought about offering to tank (thoughts of total carnage running through my head, no contacts in yet) when a horde warrior showed up and we all got our Stolen Treats.

She has other holiday business to take care of; she just needs the hat to complete her Winter Garb Set. According to comments on Wowhead it looks like the hat still drops from Grand Magus Telestra as long as you do it on heroic so she’ll be spending some time in the Nexus trying for that hat. If it drops she can finally get ‘Tis the Season done!

So much to do, so little time … what? Real life? Oh go ahead, throw cold water on my Winter Veil excitement. Yeah, I have even more stuff to do irl, but priorities, we all have our priorities and right now mine is running the Nexus for that hat. I’ll finish wrapping later, really.

SWTOR Early Access Vacation

Cyborg Bounty Hunter, yeah, I am a badass. I am badass personified; I am all that bad and more. As it turns out not so much, but more about that later. This is the lovely Zorah of Shadow Hand. I got my early access email yesterday morning and the whole rest of the day went out the window. We had to eat fried shoe leather for dinner as I skipped going to the grocery store. I’m sure I’ll calm down in a day or two.

It’s such a strange and sometimes wonderful feeling not to know what the heck is going on. While there is a lot of information out there if you get stuck, it’s not always easily accessible. When trying to google for information the guide sellers are the ones who prepared, so you get a lot of useless links coming up first.

I had read that you should stick to your class main quest line and I think I took that too seriously. I COULD NOT find the bounty hunter trainer anywhere. I think I probably missed a quest that would have sent me to them, in my dedication to only doing my main quest line. So for anyone like me, who had to do most of the early quests without training, the trainer is Zinny. If you were to come out of the Poison Pit where you start and run straight across, you will come to an area with armor merchants, Zinny is in the back of this area waiting to train you in the fine art of contract killing. At the time I wrote down the coordinates, but unfortunately I wrote a bunch down so hopefully these are the correct ones, -446,520.

At level six I got my companion Mako, who is wonderful. She heals me while I run around like a witless gerbil killing all the things. I am so bad. Um … my bounty hunter is level 7 now and the only points she’s received are for the light side. Absolutely no dark points. What kind of a bounty hunter is she anyway. She don’t need no stinking light points! Sigh … so like any true altoholic I made a Jedi Consular to see if she’d rack up dark points or light. She’s only level 3 so I can’t say yet.

My first impression is that I will pay for a subscription for both WoW and SWTOR for a while. Is it a WoW killer? Pssshaw, not for me, it’s new and fun and I’m going to be vacationing there for a while but I’m not leaving my crew in Azeroth. I’m just having a fling, I hope they understand.

Pet Hunting and Old Hillsbrad

Holiday preparations are getting in the way of WoW time lately. I steal quick bits here and there. I thought I’d consult my armory page and see what state my pet collection was in. Seemed like something I could do with my little bits of stolen time. Sheesh, I still needed eleven to get to 125. Ah, I see Ravasaur Hatchling is a 100% drop from a Ravasaur Matriarch’s Nest in Un’Goro Crater, perfect! I used these coordinates, 62 – 72, 62 – 65, 63 – 63, 69 – 67, 69 – 61 and there it was! I even had time left. Only ten more to go.

Another pastime that can be done in short bits is finishing off old reputations. I only do the ones that I don’t consider painful. I saw that I didn’t need much to get the Keepers of Time to really, really, love me. Just have to do Old Hillsbrad and Black Morass a few times. Okay, just have to do Old Hillsbrad a few more times. Even on easy, easy, mode I found out I still hate Black Morass.

I like Old Hillsbrad. Who doesn’t want to help out a young Thrall. It’s not dark and dreary, I don’t get lost and what’s even better, look who I found.

It’s things like this that I love about WoW. Apparently Optimistic Benj was added in 4.3. A younger version of the rare Cranky Benj. Down on the docks you can find a young Zixil starting on his journey to Merchant Supreme.

And look! For those Alliance who miss the old Southshore it’s still here, lovely as ever. Now if they’d just add a timeline with a version of pre-cata Darkshore my world would be complete. Which reminds me, next stolen bit of time I get, I’d better get over to Theramore and get some screen shots before it’s only a fond memory too.

Parental Control Woe

Well my Druid finally committed to an outfit. I like it; she looks like the sort of no-nonsense Druid you’d call to help out with a dragon infestation. Anyway, before this goes off track and turns into a pocket lint post, a few words about parental control and well, me.

First off, I am the parent. I parental controlled myself. Why? Why indeed. In retrospect I can’t believe I jumped on the hysteria bandwagon, I usually don’t do that kind of thing. Must have been a bad week. Back when the real id drama was at its peak, WoWinsider had a post saying that if you were worried about real id just turn on your parental control, they had instructions on how to do it, easy. Done. No worries now about being stalked, murdered in your sleep, stoned, tarred and feathered, whatever. I’m not sure why I thought this necessary as I don’t post on the forums anyway.

I think parental control is excellent for parents, I thought the post at WoWinsider was a great idea to calm the WoW masses but what I didn’t account for was me. When I started playing WoW, I didn’t give any thought to the email I signed up with. I used an email address that’s through the hosting company where I host websites. The hosting company had the greatest customer support ever. They became so great that a big hosting company bought them. They are now the worst hosting company ever. They block many addresses; they can’t KEEP THEIR COLDFUSION SERVERS … okay, sorry this isn’t about them. The problem is I can’t receive email from Battlenet.

I was blissfully unaware of this until my son-in-law said hey, we should real id each other and do Molten Core or something. Great! That would be great, I thought, and the epic struggle to uncontrol myself began.

There had been signs. I ordered Fraps and didn’t get the code to unlock it. I contacted them through PayPal and they had been sending it but my hosting company was blocking them. I didn’t think much of it until I logged into Battlenet and followed the instructions to receive the email which would allow me to remove parental control. Nothing happened. No email. At this point I email them again with a different browser, and another one. I emailed different times of day from different computers, still nothing. I know, I know, proving I’m insane according to Einstein.

By this time my son-in-law had moved on to other games so I kinda forgot about it. Recently, someone who I’d like to chat with asked if I’d like to share real ids. I had to explain the mess I’d gotten into, embarrassing. I tried the email approach again, nothing. I can’t change my WoW email by email since I won’t get the email. My hosting company deals with everything with the deny, then blame method. Of course they aren’t blocking my emails, they are probably in your spam folder, what else can we help you with today? Sigh … have I mentioned that I have developed issues about talking to customer support of any type? I have. It’s so bad I now have a phone phobia. When the phone rings I stare at it like it’s a coiled rattlesnake ready to strike. Sometimes I hesitate long enough that it stops ringing. Good, it was probably the pharmacy robovoice telling me I can get a flu shot. So with much trepidation I called Blizzard explaining the problem. I don’t know if I just got lucky or their support is that good but I managed to get my WoW email address changed with no problem.

Yay! Finally! I logged in and sent the email that would get me my instructions on how to turn off the FREAKING PARENTAL CONTROL … nothing … I got nothing. I’m guessing that while I did manage to change my login email the parental control email is still the one through my FREAKING TERRIBAD HOST.

I’m tired. I’ve stepped in the dog’s business of parental control but I don’t have the will right now to contact anyone’s customer support. I’m thinking of paying for a vent server to talk to people. It would be easier. The collective might of all the customer support departments has broken my will. I give up.

Anyway I just thought I’d share that cautionary tale in case you were thinking of using parental control. Want to use parental control? Control the urge. Or at least use an email address that won’t change, or won’t block half the world’s known IP addresses. Whew, got that out of my system. Now I’m going to go to a room with no phone and eat a bag of potato chips – all purpose therapy.