WoW Journal - 3-May-2006

I logged on my level 60 priest yesterday night and flew to Silithus, because my 4-day mooncloth producing timer was ready, and Silithus has a moonwell right next to the flight master. But once there I promptly got invited into my guild's AQ20 raid, which was seriously lacking warriors and priests. I wasn't keen on going. Not that I don't like my guild mates, but Ahn'Qiraj is my least favorite raid dungeon, and playing late on a weekday evening when I have to get up at 6:30 am the next morning isn't really a good thing to do. So I was quite happy when another guild priest logged on later, one who was eager to go, and I was able to leave the raid. I'm not really feeling good about not helping my guild, especially since with only 2 warriors and 3 priests even just the first boss will be very hard. But I don't want to be dragged by loyalty into every single guild raid, when raiding is something I don't really enjoy much. And I especially don't want to compromise my Real Life®, going to work tired after raiding late.

So I logged my priest out, and just played a little bit with my paladin before going to bed. But Ahn'Qiraj kept haunting me that day, it just happened that on Eonar, where my pally is playing, the Ahn'Qiraj war effort event just started. Seems that it is scheduled to start 4 weeks after a server opens, which is reasonable. It was interesting to see the war effort event on a relatively young server. Only few players are level 60 yet on Eonar, and the majority of players is still below level 30. So things like linen cloth or light leather were dirt cheap in the AH until yesterday. Suddenly the war effort makes them more valuable. Everybody has at least an interest to hand in one stack of light leather and one stack of linen bandages. The first stack of everything you hand in gives you 10 signets, plus a war supply crate. The content of the crate is a green item, whose level is related to the level of the stuff you did hand in. Thus handing in linen bandages gives you a crate with some crappy low level item, while handing in silk bandages gives you a green item around level 25. But as I said, handing in the first stack of anything gives you 10 signets, while handing in more stacks gives you less signets, depending again on the level of what you give. Linen bandages later only give 1 signet, silk bandages 5 signets. The interesting thing is that the signets can be exchanged for another war supply crate, the level of which is related to *your* level, regardless of how you got the signets. So my level 29 could hand in 20 linen bandages and 10 light leather, get 20 signets, and exchange those for two crates of level 29ish green items. Okay, I wasn't lucky and only got leather stuff for sale on the AH, but even there I can probably sell them for more than the linen and leather was worth. And with some luck I could have gotten a useful item to wear myself.

So the war effort is quite nice for the lower level people. Over time you hand in everything at least once, and then the war effort rewards become less interesting in comparison to the cost of the resources. But even then it helps the lower level players, because some people still buy resources to hand in, which increases the demand for low level stuff, and thus makes gathering linen, light leather, or copper more profitable for low level people. And if everybody puts up the green items he finds in the crates in the AH, it becomes easier to find an item you need in the auction house. So in spite of the opening of the gates of Ahn'qiraj being far away, and my pally being unlikely to ever go there, I'm happy enough with the effects of the war effort.
- posted by Tobold @ 8:35 AM Permanent Link