Imperium

Its something that we all want and need but what is the best way to make money?

There are several ways:

Professions:

Certain professions will see you raking in the money. Others will actually cost you a lot but will be a great asset to you later on. Gathering professions reap the most reward; they cost next to nothing and you can sell your collected herbs/skins/ores at the AH for vast profit.

One profession that seems to be missed a lot is fishing. I have made much gold by selling Oily Blackmouth and Firefin Snapper. In certain areas you can also find random drops like recipes and items which can be useful.

Enchanting won’t bring in the gold for some while; get your skill up up to a higher level and you can rake it in. Bear in mind that the production professions will not be as effective at making money as selling the resources will be.

Farming:

Farming; killing lower level creatures for drops to sell, eg. Wool Cloth. This can be extremely dull and in my opinion the least favourable option as questing will inevitably lead you to get plenty of rubbish to sell anyway.

The Auction House:

This needs a section all of its own. If you learn a bit about other professions you will soon find out what items are in demand and how valued they are by certain players. When you are in IF take a quick look through the items that only have a short time left until they expire.

Very often you see over-priced items which will not sell. However, quite often you will find an item that has a buyout that is too high but a starting bid that it too low. Place a bid! You have nothing to lose. If you get outbid you’ll get your money back and if you win you’ve got a bargain which you can re-sell for a profit or get an item you need on the cheap.

When placing an item for auction always check the market to judge what price to put an item on at, it will pay off in the end. An item that doesn’t sell will cost you money through the loss of your deposit.

Trade Channel:

Never underestemate cutting out the middle man! Even if your item at the AH is bought it takes a slice of your profits! If you don’t believe me check it for yourself; put an auction on for a round number and I bet you wont get it all back! Tell everyone that you have something to sell; if nobody wants to know then what have you lost? Nothing! This is a great way to sell less common items that don’t have a guaranteed market at the AH.

…

By practicing these methods I have managed to accumulate enough gold to buy a mount at level 40 (when I get there, lol) with plenty to spare. I currently have over 120G.

Why let the Goblins make all the money in Warcraft? Unless you employ some or all of these methods I can almost guarantee that you wont be able to get a mount until mid-to-late 40’s. A mount is something you want to get as soon as possible; it will save you from mobs and the bastard Horde!

Happy hunting people!

Readwulf

Hello there,

Last night there was a great deal of guild-related w00tage.

For those of you who weren’t present, I took some photos of the events as they unfolded which I’ll link below (sorry if the quality isn’t brilliant).

http://img287.imageshack.us/img287/150/imperium23xk.jpg

http://img316.imageshack.us/img316/1563/jimvsjimmyfists6rj.jpg

I’d like it if we could all get involved in some PVP action together. To that end, I will be asking each of you frequently if you’re free to either go to battlegrounds or join a raid. This sort of thing will hopefully allow us to get an idea of how good we all are in a PVP situation, and also to bring the guild closer together in terms of helping each other and working as a team.

Eldilor

Hello there,

We now have seven members; Goring, a level 28 Dwarf Paladin, has joined our ranks.

From now on, I am laying down a formal ‘trial’ process for all new members. For all recruiters (Lieutenants and Generals) please observe the following protocol:

- Only invite those players with decent names.
- Do not recruit members who are greater in level than the highest in the guild at the time.
- If a General or I are online at the time you wish to recruit someone, please consult one of us beforehand (consider anyone ranked General to have equal authority to me in terms of deciding who stays in the guild).
- Before you give someone an invitation, inform them that they will stay in the guild for a trial period of about a week or so. After the trial period, the Field Marshal will decide whether they can stay in the guild or not.
- If they’re ok with the above, give them an invitation via the guild tab in the social window.

I hope that clears up a few things. In terms of ranking, here’s my general set of rules for deciding who is promoted:

- All guild members start off as Private (apart from the exception of Raedwulf) and have to work their way up the ranks by proving themselves in various ways.
- To achieve Sergeant rank, a member simply has to show that they have a loyalty to the guild. Once I (or a General) feel that a member can be relied upon as a contributor to the guild, I (or a General) will promote them to Sergeant. Being promoted to Sergeant signifies that a member has fully entered the guild.
- To achieve Lieutenant rank, a member has to show that they can be trusted (since they will be allowed the privelege of being able to recruit new members). The current criteria I have decided upon for Lieutenant are that the member must a) already be a Sergeant and b) must have recruited a suitable new member to the guild.
- The rank of General is reserved for those members who I know I can absolutely trust with the priveleges attributed to the rank (promotion and demotion among others). To be promoted to General, a member must a) already be a Lieutenant and b) must gain the absolute trust of the Field Marshal. Please bear in mind that a General should ideally have contributed to the guild over a prolonged period of time.

Also, I’d like to make it clear that when I say ‘observe the chain of command’ on the front page, I mean it! If a guild member of a higher rank orders you to do something, you are obliged to carry that order out. Of course you will probably never be given an order outside of a combat (PVP) situation, but bear in mind that the chain of command is in effect at all times.

Raedwulf informs me that he has some free web-space on his account, so we were discussing making a forum for all of you to discuss whatever you want to. Hopefully this will happen at some point but no details are confirmed as of yet.

I hope you’ll all keep coming back to the site to check up on things concerning the guild, I’d like all Lieutenants and Generals to do so regularly.

On a positive note, the guild is going very well. I’m certainly enjoying running Imperium and I hope you’re all having more fun being a part of it. So, let’s all keep helping each other out and remember to look out for potential members.

Eldilor

Hi there,

My apologies for the somewhat boisterous title, but it feels pretty damn good to have reached this level, not to mention the associated benefits.

That’s right I’m level 40, and so I’ve now got my beautiful Nightsaber to ride into the sunset on, the ability to wear glorious plate armour, and the general coolness which comes with having got this far into the game!

Now that I’m at level 40 I feel that its a good time for me to relax on level grinding and heavy questing, and start concentrating more on helping the rest of you out, as well as focussing on recruitment. So expect to see me more from now on.

Tacitar is coming up to level 20 and Raedwulf should be getting to level 40 soon. I hope you’ll try and attend a wondrous event tomorrow (Sun 29th) which will henceforth be known as ‘The Great Piss-Up’. The piss-up will be held in mine and Tacitar’s honour, to celebrate our ascent to level 20 and level 40 respectively . Just be on tomorrow and I’ll try and organise it so that we have as many guildies in attendance as is possible.

Eldilor

I don’t know when and how I decided that 6 members constitutes a ’squad’ but hey, what are ya gonna do? It sounds good anyway!

As promised, Tacitar has arrived and his friend (name Terilar) as well, so we’ve definitely got a enough to constitute a respectable group I’d say. I’ll make sure to update the site welcome message (hope you’ve taken notice of that by the way) to accomodate the new members and such.

So please welcome our new members and help them out if you can.

Eldilor

Good evening,

I generally take the view that Blizzard have done a better job than many in terms of balancing their classes. However, you might have guessed by the title of this post that I believe there’s an exception to this rule!

The Rogue has troubled me ever since I’ve first been in combat with one. That the faults of the class only became visible to me after having engaged one in combat does not limit my criticism to merely the balancing issues of the class, but also it’s context issues. Let me explain…

To start off with, I personally feel that the Rogue as a class has no place in the world of Warcraft. To my memory, none of the units in any of the previous Warcraft games are specifically labelled or otherwise signified as Rogues. Since I firmly believe that WoW should attempt to tie-in with its predecessors in every way possible, introducing a class with no connection to the rich history of Warcraft can hardly be seen as inspiring.

I have considered that in the lore of Warcraft, there are mentions of assassins who are probably the closest to ‘rogue’ as anything in Warcraft ever could be, and that this might be used to defend the presence of the class in WoW. However, this minor footnote in history hardly qualifies the rogue to be at the forefront of WoW i.e. a playable class.

The main problem with the Rogue though, lies in the classes’ abilities. I’m thinking in particular of a single one here; stealth. The concept that Rogues are skilled at remaining hidden is as good a one as any, in fact its to be expected from any implementation of the rogue class in an RPG. WoW didn’t get it quite right though…

An example of how the rogue has been well implemented in gaming history; the ‘Thief’ games. In Thief (at least the second and third in the series) one was able to remain hidden through the use of shadows in the environment, melding with the shadows in order to not arouse the attention of the numerous guards in each level. Thief (2) is a damn fine game and I remember having great fun sneaking up and wacking idiotic guards over the head with a blackjack . I can hardly say the same about the implementation of stealth in WoW though.

My problem with stealth is simple; its not stealth, its invisibility. I was having a conversation with Raedwulf about this very issue earlier on in fact, and he reminded me that in the WoW beta, mages were given a spell which made them invisible. This is effectively what Rogues have in retail.

My argument for making such a bold attack on the rogue’s stealth ability is that the rogue in WoW can activate stealth whenever he wants to (given that he doesn’t have a damage over time ability such as rend active at the time); day or night, in direct sunlight or in a holy temple lit by the divine light itself!

There is no shadow system in WoW, the rogue can stealth wherever he wishes, whenever he wishes. Effectively this means that one minute you can clearly see him, the next he vanishes into thin-air right before your eyes! This is not simply possible using conventional means of camouflage or stealth! Not possible I say!

However it would be possible to do so if one was a mage, which is why, in my opinion, Blizzard have two options (if they care about what I say…which they certainly should):

- Massively nerf stealth
- Don’t massively nerf stealth and instead implement a shadow system like the one in Thief.
- Remove the Rogue class from the game altogether because they’re stupid anyway

Radical thoughts eh?

Eldilor

Hello again,

What about this?

Items are great, I love items, who doesn’t I ask? One criticism though; why do we all have to have the same weapons, the same armour, the same trinkets etc…? I know that on the whole it is rare to find two characters who have exactly the same outfit at one time, but the fact remains that the path you take in the game is far from unique, and so are the items you collect and wear in your time as a WoW player.

Why not make some items (perhaps just Epics) unique, so that once one of an item is found, it no longer spawns ad-infinitum? This could be done per-server or server-wide depending on how far you want to take the concept, but wouldn’t it be so much more satisfying to be the only person to ever possess a particular item? Think of the glory!

Of course this would involve some work, but how hard can it be to think of a new item name, slap on some attributes and set a spawn rate? Come on Blizzard, you know I’m right!

Hi guys,

I don’t know how you all feel but I hate dying. It’s one of those things that just makes me want to put my head through the monitor! Then again, that would be painful and quite possibly lead to my actual death! If this were the case then I would be sincerely greatful to any nearby spirit healer…wouldn’t want to miss out on WoW now would I!

I think back to the good old days of Diablo and feel grateful that I don’t have to walk around in my pants until I find my decomposing body again. Not all bad eh?

In fact death sucks, unless its a Horde who has been camping me for half an hour and gets squashed like a bug by a passing lvl 60. In that case its extremely satisfying…lol!

Raedwulf

Ok guys,

The guild is still at four members as you can see now thanks to the handy new status message above, which will be routinely updated. I’ve also added a picture to the header (of me) which I think adds a little attitude to the site.

Tacitar will be joining us in a few days, he’s at level 16 so he’ll likely be appointed Sergeant to the lower level members.

I’ll be away for the day tomorrow but I’ll be back on in the evening hopefully.

Eldilor

Hi folks,

While I was playing WoW today I was reminded of a gameplay issue which I’ve been debating for a long time now.

The ganking problem. Now I know a lot of people don’t think there is in fact a problem. One common response to complaints about ganking that I see is that when you sign up to a PVP server you’re aware of the fact that PVP won’t always be pleasant; you sign up for the bs.

I’d like to point out (before I start ranting) that I’m still somewhat undecided on this issue. Originally in my time on Bloodfeather I objected to attacking a member of the opposing faction who was even two levels lower than you. Recently though I’ve been experiencing more and more PVP action and I’ve been ganked more frequently. Sometimes…sometimes I feel that I might just start ganking myself…

As of yet I’ve never attacked a horde player who was more than 5 levels lower than me (unless he attacked me first). This has more or less been my ganking guideline so far, and I’ll probably carry on like this for a while since it seems a healthy enough a philosophy.

But wait! There’s a problem with that rule (even though its an extremely rough rule); I’m not necessarily showing mercy to players who think like me. Let’s examine how my philosophy can work or not work…

Here’s the situation; I’m walking along in Hillsbrad, there are trees, bears, wild cats and such. All good so far, then I see a level 25 Undead Rogue strolling along a little way in front of me. ‘He’s probably just questing’ I tell myself ‘leave him alone’ and as per my general opinion concering ganking, I do.

Ok now several things can happen as a result of my letting him go:

Case 1: He tentatively wanders past me, then goes toward his quest blah blah blah.
Case 2: He wanders on for a bit, then finds a higher-level Horde, tell’s the level 45 Tauren about me…the Tauren finds and ganks ME.
Case 3: He wanders on, gets a few friends together (of his own level), they come back and swarm me.
Case 4: He wanders on, spots a level 15 Dwarf Paladin, and ganks HIM.

Now you see my philosophical predicament! A lot of the above cases are quite undesirable from my point of view! I’d like to think that all those who I show mercy to follow the admirable Case 1, but I’m not a fool; there are a lot of bastards in the Horde! Inevitably many are going to follow 2, 3 or 4.

Now you’ve heard my predicament, I’d like to just throw in the only idea for changing PVP which I think is valid. What needs to be changed is the honour system.

Now I’ve had many arguments with Raedwulf about this and he doesn’t think much of my idea, but I’m going to post it anyway. Please bear in mind that this is just an idea, it’s not completely ‘fleshed-out’ so to speak; it’s a concept.

I think that the PVP system should be utterly revamped to be player-centric. The players should be the ones who control the amount of honour that someone gets (whether honour points in their current form would translate into a player-centric system or not I don’t know). As I say I don’t quite know how this would work. Maybe there could be some sort of honour point system but the players give points to each other (obviously there are so many problems I can forsee with this).

In the end I suppose my conclusion must be that PVP is…dodgy, it’s fun, but still dodgy.

Hope I didn’t bore you with my rant, and thanks for reading.

Eldilor