{"id":8766,"date":"2010-07-26T06:15:28","date_gmt":"2010-07-26T11:15:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=8766"},"modified":"2010-08-23T06:00:19","modified_gmt":"2010-08-23T11:00:19","slug":"postcards-from-wow-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=8766","title":{"rendered":"Postcards from WoW, Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

wow_legit.jpg<\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\n

Uh oh! Blizzad say my account is complains and I need to site validate my information or else will stop! <\/p>\n

Sounds legit!<\/p>\n

Which is more grotesque: That someone is stupid enough to perpetrate such a feeble and transparent scam, or that people fall for it?<\/p>\n

wow_barrens.jpg<\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\n

The Barrens is an amazingly beautiful savanna belonging to the Horde side, although Alliance players can slip in through a couple of different ways. I decided to sneak in and explore the place because that’s what I do. <\/p>\n

wow_flying_lion.jpg<\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\n

I picked up a lion companion while I was there. He’s fun because lions don’t appear on the Alliance side so this is a rare pet for us. On the other hand, I don’t really use him because I prefer my turtle.<\/p>\n

In this picture he’d climbed up onto a mineral node. I mined it and the node disappeared out from under him, but he didn’t fall. He floated there until I moved. Interesting to see some of the CPU-saving shortcuts<\/a> in action. <\/p>\n

wow_chopper.jpg<\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\n

The motorcycle. Blizzard is evidently adopting a very liberal interpretation of the term “fantasy setting”. This is not a bad thing, although some of their non-traditional elements fit better than others. A rare motorcycle is fine, but it would be disappointing if these things proliferated. On the auction house, one of these babies will sell for about 16,600 gold. Which is just crazy money. <\/p>\n

As the level cap goes up with each expansion, more people will be spending more time leveling at the top end, and naturally the supply of money will continue to increase. I don’t know if this will lead to previously exotic items becoming more commonplace or not. There might be other factors keeping a lid on the supply of motorcycles. Perhaps they require items which have a carefully regulated supply. (I have no idea, I’m just thinking out loud here.) In that case these things would actually get more expensive as the supply of motorcycles remains flat and the amount of money in the hands of high-level players goes up.<\/p>\n

wow_sparkles.jpg<\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\n

On the other end of the spectrum we have sparkles the wonderhorse. The Celestial Steed is available at the Blizzard store for $25 of real money. It scales upward with you. At level 20, it’s just a regular mount. But once you have fast mount training it will go fast, and once you have flying mount training it will fly. If you buy it, all characters on your account have access to it. <\/p>\n

Despite the different means of regulating their supply, the motorcycle and the Celestial Steed are about equally rare in my experience. <\/p>\n

wow_achievements.jpg<\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\n

The achievements system. Unlike single-player games where achievements will be tied to your profile, these operate on a per-character basis. You can really see what parts of the game interest me here. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Uh oh! Blizzad say my account is complains and I need to site validate my information or else will stop! Sounds legit! Which is more grotesque: That someone is stupid enough to perpetrate such a feeble and transparent scam, or that people fall for it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pictures"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8766"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8766\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}