I’ve been perusing the various comment threads of people’s posts regarding the rumours about the Cataclysm expansion, and a couple of things have come to my attention.
There seem to be a few categories* into most of the commenters seem to fit (although some manage to fit into more than one), and here’s what they look like from my perspective. (Consider my tongue planted ever so slightly in cheek while you read this)
- The Lore Lawyers – These people are very much fixated on what currently exists in-game (and sometimes in previous games such as Warcraft 3), and refuse to entertain the possibility of anything that hasn’t been seen already. They can use their knowledge to both support and refute any rumoured changes (sometimes simultaneously). Can end world hunger if they use their powers for good.
- The Druid Denialists – A sub-category of Lore Lawyers, they may be much more open-minded about most things, with the exception of non-Night Elf and non-Tauren druids, which Blizzard would obviously never do.
- The True Believers – If it’s on the internet, it must be true. They take the rumours as gospel, and have a lot of posts containing “ZOMG!!ZOMG!!”
- The Imagineers – A sub-category of True Believers, they love what they’ve read, and then they take the ball and run with it. Posts which expand on the rumours with a lot of wild speculation (sometimes reading like a fan-boy’s wish-list) can usually be traced back to them.
- The Pessimists – Another sub-category of True Believers, they can usually be recognised by their “-Change X- sounds awesome, but Blizz will ruin it like everything else they do” posts. Firm believers that every silver lining has a cloud.
- The Skeptics – They may admit that the rumours look interesting, but they don’t believe anything until it’s confirmed officially. Possibly the most boring to read (Kidding! I’m kidding!), but they help keep the True Believers grounded.
- The Denialists – A sub-category of the Skeptics. While they may say the rumours look interesting, they don’t believe Blizzard would ever make changes so sweeping to a game as established as WoW. If the rumoured changes are confirmed, may still not believe them until they’re actually playing the expansion.
- The Logisticians – A sub-category of Denialists (which makes them a sub-sub-category of the Skeptics, I guess), they believe the reason Blizzard would never make the rumoured changes is due to technical issues. (“Instance full”, anyone?)
- The Politely Hopeful – With no visible sign of hyperbole, they just say “It sounds good, and I can’t wait for official information at Blizzcon.” (Probably your favourite category if you’re an over-worked forum moderator)
I’m sure any number of my more literary readers could add more categories (and probably more amusingly).
Personally, I’m somewhere between a True Believer (my inner fanboy is going “ZOMG! Dwarf Shamans and Mages!”) and Politely Hopeful (a new, old Azeroth sounds verrrry interesting).
One thing that I think gets missed by a lot of the people who’re saying Blizzard would never do “X” because of existing lore, is that it’s Blizzard’s sandbox and they can do anything they want with it. If they disagree, I’d suggest taking a good look at the Draenei, pre- and post-TBC. Ret-con much?
Do they want Space Goats arriving on Azeroth to bring Shamanism to the Alliance? Done. Elves joining the Horde, giving them Paladins? Done. Compared to that, are Troll Druids and Gnome Priests really all that outlandish?
Anyway, on a completely unrelated matter, as it’s the start of a new week it’s time to gloat over sum up my glyph sales for the week just finished.
For the seven days from 10rd August – 16th August:
Total glyphs sold: 2073
Average price per glyph: 8.84g
Average sales per day: 2616g
Total income from the AH: 18,312g
The irritating undercutter who was listing glyphs at a flat 3g/ea has been and gone, and been replaced by another merchant who sits in the AH and undercuts almost immediately upon my posting. I have a contingency plan for this situation, but time will tell if it’s actually needed.
Needless to say, I’m kind of overwhelmed by the sheer volume of gold that’s passing through my hands currently (even after taking into account the expense of restocking). The only down-side is the amount of time it takes to mill herbs and make inks – thank heavens for updates to Skillet and Panda.
I invested a few thousand in retraining Bingle in the noble arts of Transmutation-Specialised Alchemy last night – about 3.5k in mats and training to 450, and 1k for a Tome of Cold Weather Flight so she could get to Dalaran for the epic-gem transmute quest. I don’t think I’ll be making the training costs back from transmutes any time soon, but on the positive side it gives me an additional transmute cooldown to play with (and completes the trio of specialists, with Elixir-specced Kringle and Potion-specced Fingle).
As I mentioned in my previous post, Pringle is now a happy little level 80 rogue (and is still nursing a hangover of world-shaking dimensions, but Dwarves are used to that – it’s the reason they’re stereotypically so dour). I’m looking at gearing him up for PvP, and in the crafted gear he’s wearing so far, my experience is that rogues are ridiculously squishy. Seriously. you’d think he was wearing cloth. Or possibly was naked. Rogue PvP is nothing like the fun of disc priest PvP, at least in his beginner-gear.
Also, in the mail today (the RL mail, not in-game) my Authenticators arrived. Yes, I’m practicing an additional layer of account-protection (and it was pretty painless to setup). I’ve taped it to the keyboard, as it’s not something you want to lose.
Well, my chores await (not least of which is milling my fingers to the bone), so it’s time to go fake productivity.
/wave
* – There are two types of people in the world. Those who divide the people of the world into two types, and those who do not.
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