In Search of Fortune: Opportunity Cost
Welcome to ‘In Search of Fortune’, a new monthly series where I discuss my gold goals and in-game money making strategies.
So many times I’ve been told by friends about how their farm is “free”. I specifically remember early on in the World of Warcraft Cataclysm expansion, I was making money hand over fist by buying all the herbs on the AH and crafting Darkmoon cards… then eventually buying all the cards to make all of the decks. Ignoring the fact that I was making more gold overall, he insisted that his farming ore was at least as good because it didn’t cost him anything. His logic was that I had to spend gold to make my gold, whereas farming is didn’t cost any and therefore was as good.. However, I explained that my gold making took 15 minutes a day and he needed to farm ore a several hours per week to even come close to the amount of gold made.
This was when I first told him about opportunity cost:
(more…)Streamer Report: Valactra
Welcome to Streamer Report! Here we take a look at a streamer and break down their style, the games they play, schedule (if available), achievements, and my 2 cents at the end. Subscribe/bookmark/etc here to find new streamers to watch. Also, if it’s someone you’ve seen, comment your thoughts at the bottom of this post.
Link: https://www.twitch.tv/valactra
Games: World of Warcraft.
(more…)Shadowlands Release Delayed & Pre-patch Date
Wow… so, in the end, while my release date prediction was originally spot on… the pre-patch guess was horribly wrong (it’s now slated for October 13) and with todays announcement, I’m retroactively wrong about the release date too (see wowhead post). More importantly, though, we now have more BFA than we expected and a longer wait until the new expansion… is this good?
I was just today watching this new Bellular video and… well his thoughts on the expansion state echo mine (though, since I just got beta 12 hours ago, my opinions are mostly from streamers, youtubers, and friends feedback) and probably say it better than I could… so I’ll just link the video below.
(more…)Gamer Art: September 2020
Honestly, I don’t know if this will end up being a regular feature, but, if it is, you could expect a random selection of cool gaming-related artwork I’ve seen in the past month or so. Share/comment if you like.
Without any adieu whatsoever, here’s the art.
Color Cosmology Chart v2 (World of Warcraft). Art by ATJ2K19 on Reddit. Originally found HERE.
What to do Before Shadowlands: A Compilation
Given that the expansion prepatch has to be soon… right?… right!? Every content creator is taking their shot at telling us what to do before then… and it seemed to me that bringing a bunch of these together was better than rehasing the same ideas myself. Here ya go.
Wowhead’s Overall Guide: https://www.wowhead.com/what-to-do-before-shadowlands
Then a bunch of specific things they thought you should focus on:
(more…)Is It Pay to Win?: Defined
This one will probably end up being controversial. Some people consider a game pay to win (p2w) if there are any microtransactions built-in whatsoever. Others will argue against a game being p2w unless you’re able to buy a level of in-game power that you cannot earn in game. Of course, there is a whole spectrum in between those two extremes.
For our purposes, we’re going to let the idea of pay to win be incredibly broad, and then we’ll break down what that actually means to the player bit by bit. Buy to play – buying the box/license – is not pay to win because everyone must pay the same amount (ignore sales, etc) and gains no advantage in any scope of the game. Pay to play – such as with a subscription – is not pay to win, because again, everyone is paying and one player cannot necessarily pay more in order to gain advantage. Pay to win elements are present if a player can spend additional money to purchase something in game. However, it shouldn’t be said that the game is inherently pay to win because of this. Having elements of a thing, pieces of a thing, doesn’t mean the whole of the game is that. For example: a game could allow duels (PVP) and not be considered a PVP game, despite having a piece that is.
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