2018

My first FPS ever

Even though I’ve owned a few first person shooter games in my time, I’ve never actually managed to play them (that includes a lovely copy of Fortnight I was super excited about that a friend gifted me). FPS has been one genre of game that I have avoided, for no real reason other than it simply didn’t appeal to me. I am not a fan of guns, violence, or killing even in a video game. I don’t like realistic games where you play at war. I admire the skills required but that’s about all.

Slowly, games started hitting the mainstream market that appealed to me a bit more. Bright colourful games without blood, characters that had personality and were more than just army characters. Cartoon like graphics that help take some of the edge off of the genre for me. Of course I’m old enough to understand the difference between a video game and real life, and I don’t worry about me being influenced like that – but it has still always made my stomach a bit queasy.

When Overwatch came out I was interested in it right away, but the price tag and the fact that I had no idea if I would even enjoy a FPS kept me from buying in. There was an awesome sale around Christmas where I almost folded and picked up the Game of the Year edition for half price, but life got busy and I balked. When I started turning my gold into tokens and adding them to my Blizzard balance I waited to see if it would go on sale again, and as my luck would have it, this weekend they also offered a free trial for people along with a 50% off sale.

My PC is still having issues with FPS in games even after trying a new video card, so I knew playing would be awkward at best, but that didn’t stop @scopique, myself, and my husband from jumping into game and playing a few rounds against the AI on medium difficulty.

It. Was. A. Blast.

I had so much fun, despite the lag (playing at 13 frames a second is really hard in an FPS). I played a bunch of different healers which as it turned out, is something I really love doing. I got to level 5, got some lunar loot boxes, fell in love with the different skins you can collect, and because I had enough coin saved up in my blizzard balance, bought the game of the year edition.

Being able to convert coin into WoW tokens into $19 CAD has been amazing. I had enough in my balance for Overwatch, and I also moved my alliance hunter to the server my husband and I are playing on. With future coin I’ll pay for game time for my account, though it’s not needed. It’s just nice. Sales have been a bit slow lately, but that’s alright I don’t expect every week to be huge, I’d rather look at a monthly picture, and I bought 5 tokens last month, which (to me at least) is a lot.

I’m really eager to solve whatever issue is going on with my PC and be able to game properly. I know playing against the AI isn’t the “real thing” in Overwatch, but for my first time ever playing that sort of game, I think I did OK. As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Back At It!

Shew! After nearly two weeks I’m finally back online, moved into my new home, internet set up. The drive from British Columbia to Saskatchewan was pretty amazing even if we did have to take part in a 5 hour detour due to avalanche control. We drove through Jasper instead of our original plan through Banff, and while it wasn’t quite as spectacular, it was still pretty special. Unfortunately along the way the husband got sick, and then shortly after myself and my little one caught what he had (the joys of driving for four days along with living in a hotel for two weeks). We’re slowly getting over it, but I stress the word slowly. The flu this season is nothing to laugh at, that’s for sure.

Now that we’re getting settled, I’ve had some time here and there to do a little gaming. Or at least, I would, if things had worked out with my computer. Something (I have no idea what) happened during the move and now my computer suffers from FPS issues any time I play any games, and it also lags out typing in programs like discord. I get no errors, my drives all seem OK, and at this point in time I haven’t narrowed down if it’s my SSD, my power supply, or my video card. I’m hoping to swap some parts out with my husband’s computer to try to figure it out, but again we’re just getting settled and that’s a lot of work to jump right into. Needless to say, I’m frustrated. I would replace whatever was broken if I knew what it was, but without any errors to follow I’m just running various monitoring programs and trying to make sense of what I see.

That being said, I DID manage to get into WoW and do some auction house business, a game where FPS isn’t a big deal and won’t kill me unless I miss click on an expensive item. Blizzard finally brought their API back online yesterday, and there was much rejoicing from everyone who uses the remote auction house, The Undermine Journal, and TradeSkillMaster. I haven’t been making a ton of coin lately, but 15-20k a day is not too bad and I’m content with that.

This weekend is a free play weekend for Overwatch, a game that I have wanted to purchase for ages now – I’m HOPING with this free weekend it also goes on sale, and I’m impatiently waiting for that to happen so I can snag the game. I want to try streaming some of my initial attempts, of course with my computer under the weather that may take some time. We’ll just have to see.

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself. I have missed everyone dearly and I’ve missed writing here – so expect more posts coming in the future, hopefully on a better schedule than I’ve kept over the last year or so.

Sales Round-Up

Not every day starts off with opening the mailbox to a nice number in sales, but some days do, and it’s lovely. I’m 10k short of buying my 3rd WoW token for the week. I’d normally be able to afford it now, but the price really shot up over night. I’m hoping I can make 10k today so I can buy it before it goes up any further, but I don’t always have the best of luck. I know some of you (all of you?) are probably already bored of these posts where I just go on about making coin in world of warcraft, but I’ve been writing about it just because I find the whole idea of it so fascinating. The fact that I’ve made more gold in this single week than I have in the entire time I’ve played WoW (10+ years off and on) honestly surprises me.

Of course I also get a bit bored of it after some time. Making money is great, and it will be wonderful to purchase Overwatch and BfA and maybe a server or faction change or two with coin that I’ve earned instead of having to pay out of pocket for it, but it’s a lot of repeating the same actions over and over, hoping for a good day, and patience. Lots and LOTS of patience.

I have no patience. Well, OK, I have a BIT of patience, a little more than I started out with before I had my son, but I’m still lacking. I (like many others) like instant gratification in my video games, and playing the market in WoW is NOT about instant gratification. At all. So I find that I’m a bit at odds with myself.

Anyway. Sales over the weekend were slow, and spread out. More people playing on a weekend means more competition, and less people shopping (from what I’ve seen, YMMV). I’m hoping sales pick up a bit more over the upcoming week, but since I’ll be moving I will have to step back from making gold for a bit until we’re settled. I made just shy of 600k in the last 7 days, and it’s a really nice feeling. Even if it is just virtual currency in a video game.

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

 

Earning Gold with Little Gameplay

I think one thing I like most about earning gold in WoW the method I’ve been using is that it is a very passive way for me to earn coin. I have a bank character parked at the AH, I scan for items that are under priced, I buy them if I think I can make a profit, and re-post them later in the day with the new price. I log in my bank alts twice a day and check their earnings, rinse and repeat. This means I don’t do a whole lot of actual gaming per say, which I know sounds weird, but my schedule just doesn’t allow for it right now as a solo parent getting ready for our big move this week.

Playing the market this way lets me feel productive and also scratches my gaming itch. Sure, if I was more proactive I could earn more gold, but I’ve found a method that works with my schedule, and that’s not always easy. As I’ve mentioned before, this method of gameplay is also fascinating and fun for me. I’m still new, still learning, but it’s a start.

As you can see by the screenshot above, yesterday I bought an item for 1200g and sold it for 24119g – nice big profit. When I logged in this morning I had a few smaller sales across all of my AH characters, around 25k worth across three servers. It’s not going to be a big win every single day, but it’s a little coin here and there when I normally wouldn’t have earned anything at all because I don’t have the time to sit down and play for an hour (unless llama bean is napping his one nap a day, and then I’m usually napping too). It feels odd to say, but this is some of the most fun I’ve had playing WoW. The goal is of course to make more than I spend, even if that means losing out on some items only to recoup my loss on another. Sure, I won’t be super rich like some of the goblins I see in discord who make hundreds of thousands of gold a day, sometimes even millions a day, but for me, this is a really good comfortable start.

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Learning TradeSkillMaster

I’ve been trying to make more gold in WoW for some time, unsuccessfully. I don’t have a lot of time to play, so farming is something that I have to make quick work of, with a lot of direction in order to turn a profit. My class hall rewards some coin, but only a few thousand or so a day, IF the money reward missions are up. It’s not always guaranteed.

There’s a popular addon called TradeSkillMaster that optimizes how you go about earning coin in World of Warcraft, but this addon is not for the faint of heart. It’s complicated, there are a ton of settings, and you can’t just jump right into it (as I discovered). That being said, if you’re willing to dedicate a little bit of time to watching some YouTube videos and hanging out in their discord channel, you can learn a LOT.

That’s how I went from having about 60k to my name, to making 400k this week, and buying two WoW tokens. I’m trying to either buy Overwatch, or pre-order Battle For Azeroth using just WoW tokens. I LOVE that we can convert tokens into a type of blizzard currency. I can either get 30 days of game time, or $19 CAD. I probably need at least one more token before I can afford the basic version of BfA, and I certainly need one to get OW unless it goes on sale again (kicking myself for not picking it up over Christmas) but I’m confident that I can earn the coin without too much issue.

What have I been doing? Well, I watched some videos on YouTube first, and set up groups in TSM to do specific operations like undercut based on a %, or price at a % depending on what the market value is. The blizzard api has been down since 7.3.5 so prices are skewed right now and are not working optimally, but it’s still teaching me and it’s not too bad.

Once I had my groups optimized to do the pricing I wanted, I started watching the market. I bought a few items for a couple of hundred gold that I flipped for a few thousand. Fists of Thane Kray-Tan I found for 350g, and sold for 14250g which is still well below market, so it was a quick sale. A few recipes were going for well beneath their value, so I picked those up. Flipping is a slow way to make gold, it’s hit or miss depending on the market, and you’re subject to the whims of players. You need patience but it can pay off.

I also started selling BattlePets. Now these are different than selling most items because you can sell and buy them account wide, on any server. High population servers tend to have cheaper pets (more competition). The hardcore ‘goblins’ as the gold earners are called in discord, buy and sell on multiple servers, depending on which ones are high / low in price. Me, I’m not quite that dedicated yet. I do play on a handful of different servers, and different factions, but for now I’ve just been trying to focus on learning what I can about the main server I play on.

Alts also help you make gold, but I don’t have any that I’m actively playing right now. There’s even a discord channel for the farmers, multiboxers, and all the rest. There are so many different ways to make gold in game depending on how much time and resources you have available to you.

Honestly, I find it absolutely fascinating and I’ve been having a lot of fun with it. I don’t know whether it was just luck that got me the two tokens or if I can keep up earning that sort of gold, but I feel like I’m learning about how the market works, how volatile it can be, and improving my money making capabilities. You need to take the time to learn your market, what sells, what doesn’t, what are quick sales, what requires a little more patience. With new races coming up it means people will soon be dusting off those newly created alts and leveling up, meaning some things may have more of a market than others. You need to pay attention – and I love it.

I’m enjoying my time in WoW. I don’t care what anyone says about the game, how easy it is or how I should be playing XYZ instead. It’s relaxing, fun, and just really comfortable. Plus my husband should be joining me in game VERY soon, and I am just absolutely tickled about that.

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!