My room

Althals said: "I often try to imagine what Gevlon's apartment would look like if he truly followed all the things he says here. The living room has a desk with his computer with a decent chair. Maybe a TV on a small stand, and nothing else. How do you justify luxury items in your own life when you pound on them in WOW terms? A vanity pet is exactly that, vanity something someone wants. You call it a waste."

My living room is even worse than you could imagine. There are two 1.6x0.9m (5x3ft) office-desks (from the local office outlet) at the wall by each other, with the two monitors (21' and 19'), keyboards, speakers and mice. At the opposite of my desk there is our double bed where we use to watch DVD (on my computer screen) and also sleep. Next to it a big empty space with a carpet (often covered by clothes, bags and other things waiting for the week's big cleaning).

The closets with our clothes and stuff are in another room that we just call "the warehouse". It's really a mess, but no one cares as we are never there for more than minutes to pick up stuff.

Oh, and the computers themselves with their noisy fans and 2x450W heat emission? They live in the kitchen:


Do our visitors like it?

We couldn't care less. It's our home, we live the way we want. The home serve us well for less than 3-4 hours/week housework.

Vanity: stuff you don't use, but work for hours to get, just to look cool.

BTW the first thing we bought when we got together (yet we did not have much money) was a dishwasher. No one likes to grind the dirty dishes.

Although I wrote it several times, commenters keep asking why am I against the bike/mammoth. Simple: it's useless and costs money = time. I make 3-4K G/hour. So buying a mammoth would take 5-6 hours from my life. Could I do it? Of course I could, just like I could wash the dishes with my hand. I just don't want to. Time is a limited resource. You are mortal, you have just X hours before you die. Don't make it X-5 just to have a completely useless thing!

If you make less than me (and it's quite possible), then it's even worse. For someone who makes only 1K/hour, the Mammoth costs 18 hours. Does that thing worth it? Or rather: is your time is so worthless?


Bagmaker wrote that "If the mammoth cost 2 copper surely you could justify buying it; the question is whether the (opportunity) cost of the (gold you spend to buy) the mammoth is worth the utility you gain from it". Completely true. The problem is that the Mammoth is so expensive that time won by it would never be equal to time spent, even with my G/hour. Any other "utility" is vanity as it does not have teaching or challenge value.

Others suggested that the Mammoth worth for the "fun" it gives. That's nonsense. Activities can be fun. Raiding, arena, BG, questing can be fun. Items cannot be fun. Items are tools for activities. For example without high level arena gear, arena PvP is not fun but "being ganked". But itself the gear is not fun.

We shall ask what kind of activities need a Mammoth? I know two: blocking objects and standing front of the Dalaran bank to let others see how rich you are. So one can say "The Mammoth worth its price because I have so much fun blocking the fountain". That can be true. But then say this. (and don't be suprised if you are not perceived awesome).

The first apprentice

As I wrote I got 60 (actually 59) applicants for the goblin moneymaking school. I don't mean 59 letters. I mean 59 applicants considered after screening out "plz help me make gold" letters and dozens of letters from US or non-English-EU reals. Please read the post before apply.

From the 59 at first I excluded those who were already rich (10K+), and wanted more. It's really nice and good luck! However the point of these posts are to teach poor to be rich. There goes 5 letters.

I also excluded those who wanted money to buy mammoth or bike. (22 letters) These people need only one kind of help: a red-hot branding iron that burn "waste" to their butt so they remember it every time they sit down to grind elementals for those useless items.

I promised random roll, but I've cheated a bit: from the surviving 35 mails 14 contained "I'm tailor and that's a crappy job for making money". Since it seemed to be a widespread problem, I rolled from these mails.

The winner is Ydraisa of Argent Dawn EU.

If you have not been selected, don't worry. There will be several more rounds. Having 5K safety money and 1-200G/day income on the top of 280+cold flying and dual spec is the aim with the students. That can be reached quickly.


The first thing in making sure that this gnome lady gets her purse full is fixing tradeskills. (Note: if your character is female, you'll be a she, regardless of your own sex).

Both tradeskills are a big cry for help. The worse is the 294 mining. It's a pretty common error especially on DK-s to have a gathering skill below 375. Tradeskills are made for making money. Gathering skills are purely for this. Poor Ydraisa and other thousands quested all their way up to 80 passing by mining nodes, herbs and dead animals without being able to gather their resources.

Don't ever do that. If you have a gathering skill, level it up to the point that you can gather everything you pass by. Don't quest until you do it. Every node you pass by is a couple of gold that you could have with zero effort.

Ydraisa wanted enchanting instead of mining, yet she did not dropped it back then and leveled enchanting. Instead, she bought all the enchanting scrolls for her gear.

The surprising thing was that she knew the AH prices, had pretty good ideas how to make gold, she just not used them. She told "it annoyed me to no end when I saw a mining node I couldn't pick" yet she did nothing.

I think the keyword to Ydraisa's poorness was "later". I'll level mining later. I'll drop mining and level enchanting later. I'll make cloak that sell for 100G profit and give a skillup ... later. I'll get tailoring specialization later. I'll check the AH for netherweave cloth (for bag) later.

The time for making money is now.

Note: trolls insulting the (in their opinion lack of) achievements of Ydraisa or other apprentices will be deleted. She is not leeching on you. She does not want you to boost her any way. As long as someone is not bothering others can do whatever (s)he wants. There is nothing wrong with being casual. There is everything wrong with being a leech.

Moron of the week

Thanks for the photo to Christopher from financialaidpodcast.com.

If you have good stories or screenshots from our beloved M&S doing something that makes him M&S, feel free to send me. (Simple failure does not count, so don't send an SS with someone healing below the protpala or creating buffer overflow error on the failbot). If you insert picture, please make sure it's smaller than 800x600 because my blog provider does not allow uploading larger (or upload it somewhere and just send a link).

PS: if you don't understand why the picture is filed under "moron of the week", then you should read this.

PS2: at least he recognized that he is "mad". :-)

Sweet stories about sucking

Against my better judgement, I've followed Larísa's link to Ixobelle's blogpost. I've first "met" him after some reader directed me to a blog where he wrote a pretty hateful comment about me (lost the link). I've peeked into his blog finding nothing useful or informative about WoW. I forgot him until Larísa's link. The post was about great adventures into VoA, where they wiped again and again, until he broke his MH weapon, because reparing is luxory and the little yellow man icon is just for fun.

He got some comments and while there is no reader count on his blog, I assume he has several as he is pretty well-known among bloggers. The question is who the hell cares about such sucking? Why does anyone reads that crap? Why would anyone care for someone's opinion who does not care at all about performance?

Then it hit me. Every time I chat or talk with WoW players, the most positive feedback arrives not on reaching goldcap, or downing FL+4 or being able to raid according to my own schedule, or having 2K+ subscribers on my blog. The responses for these range from "meh I guess it's nice" to "it's not all about achievements you know, you could have some fun too".

If I want real, honest cheers, laughs and "yeah dude, that's how it is", I tell the fishing pole story. It goes: "I fished up Lurker since no one else could fish him up. After the beast arrived it was all a mess and I had to heal quickly. I recognized that I'm still having my fishing pole up after the fifth wipe on Vashj".

At first: the story is a lie. I recognized it after the first Lurker wipe, analizing the recount. When I saw my average lifebloom ticks, I immediately knew that I miss some gear or buff. Secondly I've never had a try on Vashj. I was in a social suckguild (and it was my fault being there). The story was true at first time but as time went on, I kept expanding it. Finally I could talk about it for five minutes including a very lively and empassionate sub-story about desperately trying to keep up the raid at Karathress but somehow my heals were too small and I had to chain-pot although I was always proud of my mana regen. I could talk about my feelings during that cursed raid (that never happened) while I was fighting with my magically decreased healing power.

The longer, the more colorful the story was, the more appreciation I got, so the story got longer every time. The story was a networking tool to get into the hearts of social (WoW-playing) people on social occasions.

Why was it so popular? Because social people hate success stories. The goldcap-story or the FL+4 story tells that I'm better, or just as good as them. Even if they have Yogg-3, they hear "I'm catching up on you, I'll reach your achievements before 3.2".

On the other hand the "I suck" stories are subtle ways of telling "you are better than me". This make the social person feel good and more attached to me. So if you write about "I suck", you'll have social readers who like the warm feeling they get while reading the story.

I don't want to spread warm feelings. I want to spread my ideas. No more sucking stories here.

If you see them somewhere else, be advised that you are just being "networked", subconsciously forced to do something stupid (waste your time on the site, increasing its reader count).

If you want something to read, seek success stories (like this great one) that proves that anything can be reached if someone is trying hard enough and has more than a lifetapping warlock and a holy pala in his brain.


And my success story for the week: Steelbraker is down. It is done by 1.4% of the raider population. We are included. I am too. This is a typical "DPS can win it, tank&heal can lose it" fight. 40K fusion punches and 30K normal melee on the top of the 3K on everyone nature damage. He shoots chain lightnings on 3 ranged DPS, increasing nature damage taken. On the top of that if he kills someone, he gains HP and damage, so when some DPS dies I can't agree with Runemaster Molgeim about "the world suffers yet another insignificant loss". Oh one more thing: in every 30 secs he surely kills the tank, needs to be taunted, tank ressed, healed and buffed.

On early tries tanks died upon resurrecting. Glyph of rebirth on. Then: tank died, tank died. OK, I have a tankhealer talent, let's do some tankhealing. Ranged DPS died, ranged DPS died. Back to raid healing. Tank died. Tank died. (we had more than 50 tries on him). Every tries I conjured up some change in healing. On some tries I blindly spammed rejuv+WG almost reaching the #1 superspammer druid on the meters (tank died). On some tries I kept LBx3, all HoT, Nourish-spam on tank (random raidmembers died). On every try I get closer to the optimal. On the last I reglyphed to regrowth (+rebirth+WG) and kept RG on tanks and the 3 ranged, otherwise rejuv+WG, and tranquility on the tank transition. And he went down.

Does it looks like I did the key job? For me it did, though it's surely not the case. If the shaman would write this entry he would tell a similar story about CH, LHW, HW. The tank would have his story about using his mitigation CD-s better and better to avoid fusion punches. The ranged would have his stories about balancing lightning mitigation and DPS. The rogue would have his story with balancing anti-heal poison and DPS.

Everyone would have his story about adapting to the situation what changed every tries due to the changes made by others. And all stories would end with a dead Steelbraker. My story is not better or more true. It's just mine.

How about you? Are you making the first steps into your success story, or waiting for some "freindly heplfull ppl" to do it for you?

A new challenge for making gold!

After 60 e-mails in only 24 hours the application is closed. I'll /roll for someone and contact him.

There are several great ideologists of the idea of the self-made man. Yet none of them could reach popularity among the public. The reason: they are so far from the common people in lifestyle and wealth that the people find their statements hypocrital at best and "finding excuses for crimes" at worst.

Once upon a time a French princess was informed that the peasants have no bread and hungry. "Let them eat cake!" - she responded, proving that she have no clue that "having no bread" is not a logistical error of the bakery but the sign of poverty beyond imagination. When someone like George Soros talk about solutions to the economy, the common people hear "Let you eat cake!"

My plan with this site was to prove that with work and brain you can reach anything in this game. I kind of succeeded. Too bad that by succeeding, I got so far from the targeted audience as I could. I mean I sit on 200K+ without making a single trade in a month and I raid the top content in a way that I don't even show up on nights that doesn't offer firstkill attempts of hard modes.

The reader could look up old posts, seeing how did I got from "having 8K in a suckguild" to "goldcap and do hardmodes". The reader could look up my experiments when I started some new character on a realm with no help and reached epic flyer cost in couple of weeks, less than 1-2 hours/week play.

The reader does not want to look up. The reader wants to read now. And what he reads looks like "let them eat cake". The rantings of a lazy millionaire who surely have no idea what life is.

The site slowly shifted out from a useful tool for people who want to be self made man to a meeting place of already rich goblins (and unchangeable goblin-haters). I get letters like "I already have triple goldcap, c'mon Gevlon, beat that". Is it bad to have a meeting place for us? Hell no. I love you and I am really happy that there are so many of us out there. Love? Happy? They sound so social! Does this site serves any purpose? Can it reach any "common" players to change his "I help friends because it feels good and everyone needs help" attitude into "I work for myself and others could do it too"?

And more fundamentally, can the effective blog be created at all? I mean if I earn money and bosskills, I consequently move away from the average, therefore become a stranger who "surely have no idea what's going on down here". On the other hand if I stay in the average by wasting my money on mounts and pets, all I could say is "do the very opposite I'm doing to be successful!". Great perspective.


Then the solution for the problem just hit me: I need real people's story for this site, to give a proof that money can be made. So here is the plan:

1. You have not enough gold. You are not lazy and don't afraid of learning.
2. You volunteer in a mail.
3. I pick an applicant, mostly randomly, keeping it in mind that the story must be interesting to the people. So no "I want to reach goldcap before my buddy, please help reaching 15K/week from 12K/week" please.
   
4. I roll a lvl1 on your realm/faction to see the prices.
5. I give you advices how to make gold but don't do anything myself.
6. You become rich with less than 30 mins/day work. In the first days you may have to farm seed money or reroll a profession or roll a DK alt or something to get a start, that's a one-time time investment. (I won't ask you to reroll a profession you need for PvP/raiding)
   
7. The story gets here, to the blog, day by day.

So if you want gold, send a mail. Be noted that every communication we do, including mails and ingame chat can be used here on the blog, so if you don't want 2K people to see "how could you waste 1.2K on a dragon while you can't repair your stuff?!", don't apply.

If you know someone in need of gold, convince him to apply. So goblins of the world, this is your chance to get rid of "pls help making gold" friends. Instead of sending them to Hell, you can send them to a worse place: here!

You must be on an EU-English speaking realm and be able to be online in the afternoon-early evenings Paris time to apply, because I cannot meet you otherwise.


PS: I still love trolls. They are able to formulate the same nonsense that the other socials believe, who are smart enough to not tell it openly. The troll of yesterday said: "Gevlon, with your ideals, anyone that is new to the game should and would never progress. Then they would be constantly berated for not being the absolute best." Yes! Success only depend on luck and position. If you have no status (beginner), you have no other chance than the help of the "freindly heplfull ppl".

Well punk, I hope you stay to see how will an ordinary guy gains enough money for everything he may need in WoW without getting a single copper from anyone.

PS2: a bit personal comment, but also a message to all "can't do, impossible, need help" people: Steelbraker is so dead!

Why Blizzard doesn't sell Honda Accord?

Elnia, contributor of Pink Pigtail Inn wrote an interesting post. Detroit crafted cars that were all nice and fancy, but last only 3 years. They were slowly beaten by Japanese car manufacturers who created cars that last 10+ years. They were simply more economical. Elnia prefers Japanese cars. Me too.

Still, Detroit was pretty fine with its "3-years of fancy" method until the economic crisis. Elnia, me and several others see cars as means to get "from point A to point B, worn out or broken cars become nothing but expensive lawn ornaments". However most people see their cars as status symbols. They love their shiny and new car, and they prefer this over those "boring econoboxes". If it was up to them, Detroit would still be making billions of dollars in profit.

They lacked not the will, but the mean. The people who would pay a load of money for and expensive lawn ornament simply no longer could afford it. Oh wait, they never did, but banks gave them loans. Not anymore. Now these people are riding used Japanese cars. Not because they no longer want to show their new epic mount. Not because they were convinced that they should be more frugal, due to the recession. Simply because they were forced. They must get from point A to point B, so they must have a car. And they could not afford a better one.

Elnia would love a long-lasting MMO, where previous achievements are not meaningless things in an "obsolate abomination". I would love that too. But we, - who love Japanese cars - are a minority. The majority wants shiny and new things for no effort.

There is no such thing as "economic crisis" in WoW. Blizzard can give all titles and top gear to anyone with a click (and in 3.2, they will do). Blizzard could create a great game. It would have 1M subscribers. I would love it. Blizzard executives wouldn't.

Are we hopeless then? Can't we do anything?
Of course we can. After all, the social does not want the shiny and new car/gear itself. He wants the "coolness" feeling. He wants to be observed as "winner", "cool", "pro" by peers. We are the peers. We can control this resource. All you have to do is:
- LFM HC Violet hold, link [The Fall of Naxxramas]
- lol dud why cant I go, I can do VH :DDD
- everyone can do VH, we could 4-man it, I just don't want to play with you
- rolf why?
- because if you don't have [The Fall of Naxxramas], you are either a new player/casual, who should beat the content with similar players, and not boosted by Ulduar raiders. Good luck, have fun, and be proud when succeed! If you are not new/casual, you are a complete failure and I don't want to be with you.
- cmon, don't be jerk, I need epixLOL
- what you need is brain. Now piss off!

The reign of the fancy cars ended when people stopped handing out loans to everybody. The reign of free epix will end when people stop handing out "respect" to the M&S. In a world where only successful efforts are respected, the "cool dudes" could not exist and leave. Of course Blizzard could keep them, by removing all content, making sure that every breathing person can reach anything, but that way they would only make their game "not cool", I mean "You play WoW? What a sucker?"

Want a Honda-Game? Stop handing out subprime respect!

PS Something great in 3.2: extended raid lockouts. So if you are a casual (play little), you can still beat anything, in your own pace. So there goes "I have a healthy real life, that's why I can't have [The Fall of Naxxramas]".

What's wrong with networking skills?

Kevin asked: "You look disdainfully at anyone who gets into raids because they know someone rather than have the skill to be there. That's exactly who you are except the someone you know is gold and you waved it in front of a guild's face and it got you into a raid that you didn't have the skill to get into without the gold. So why is buying your way into a raid legitimate when networking your way into a raid makes you a slacker?"

It's a common question, I get it often in several forms. The short answer: there is nothing wrong with networking. There is everything wrong with "being networked".

I pay something for my raid spot, namely gold (= time not spent earning it for the recipient). The "networking" person gives nothing in return for the services he receives. He merely uses loopholes in the thinking of his victim.

It's quite common that I ask a question from the "cud u boost me in RFC" people: "why should I do it?". The common answer is "being sweet" (I assume it's a small talk for "being nice"). The loophole is simple: social people want to be perceived positively by peers, though this is pointless and useless.

The networking also relates strongly to M&S behavior. I try to be as useful in raids as I can, not only because I'd like to meet challenges but also because I know that by underperforming, I make the "raid for gold" deal worse for them, increasing the chance of termination on their side. If I would wipe the raid every time I get a light or gravity bomb, I could pay a million G, they would still kick me as I destroy the very reason they need gold. Simply speaking the contract lives as long as having me pulls them back smaller than having my gold pushes them forward.

On the other hand the networking person does not have to care about his performance. There is no contract, just parasitism. The victim does not calculate any kind of cost/reward, he simply acts according to his ape-subroutines controlled by the networker. He already rationalizes his behavior like "friendship is more important than bosskills", so why should the M&S bother to run away with the light bomb?

Claiming that "dumb people are dumb people" is simply dumb. Verbally lashing the M&S is pointless and doing this would make this site useless. The purpose of this site is to increase the resistance of non-M&S against "networking".

If you can run away from the light bomb and raid with people who cannot, you are the idiot and not them. They get loot from your efforts. You get nothing for lot of work (as you are already geared and they need it more).

This site is not against the M&S behavior. This site is against the social behavior, feeding, protecting, carrying the M&S just for "being nice", "being friendly", "being ethical". If some magic trick would remove all M&S from the game, they would reappear in months from new players and people getting lazy. If some magic trick would remove the socials, the M&S would disappear (saying "everyone here are arrogant elitist jerks") and would never come back.

Yes, even the badge loot couldn't keep them here. After all, they need someone who holds aggro and some other who heals him while he AoE down the 5 man in the middle of the only fire patch of the instance. Without socials, the badge loot would be easy gear for good beginner players and good player's alts, while would be endless sucking for the M&S. You know what does 5 M&S do in an instance? Blame each other for the wipe.

This is probably the reason why I personally hate the badge loot. After all it does not harm personally me, and makes the recruiting process for raiders just a bit harder (as both beginner good players and M&S will have the same gear and no achievements). What made me angry on this change is that I know that many good, but social people will be doomed to boost M&S during 90-100!!! 5-man runs. Actually it's quite un-goblinish. They get exactly what they deserve. Sucking 100 5-mans with the M&S is proper punishment for being social.