How’s the Money Game Going?

Sales have taken a bit of a dip for me lately, and I’m not sure if that’s because my desirable items have all sold, or because I’m pricing items wrong now that the API is up, or it has just been a slow week or two for me. I mentioned before that one of the key points to making gold in WoW with my method was patience – and that’s not usually something I have a lot of but I’m trying. I’ve also been playing the game with my husband lately, and we’re not really doing anything that makes a lot of money, he’s getting familiar with things again and I’ve been flying him around Legion since I have a two person mount. We did duo the first Legion dungeon yesterday which was a lot of fun. I needed it for my alchemy quest, and I suggested we try it together instead of in a group because why not.

I still make a couple of thousand gold a day, but at this rate it will take me a lot longer to earn the gold for a token or two, and if it keeps up I’m sure three is out of reach completely. Since I’ve already bought the “essential” things I wanted it’s not a huge deal and I certainly don’t mind paying for my account with real money instead of blizzard tokens, it’s just something that would be really nice. I’m selling on three servers at the moment, two low population servers and one high. Things tend to sell faster on a higher population server, but you also have a lot more competition. One server I just added into the rotation yesterday, so I haven’t gotten a good feel for the market yet. One I’m pretty comfortable with, and my main server I’m still also trying to figure out. We’ll see how it goes.

I’m still really enjoying the market game, but taking a break is nice too so you don’t get burnt out. Finding a balance of everything I want to do can be tricky but I know I’ll get there.

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

What if we all played what we wanted?

My game time is precious. I don’t have a huge amount of it any more, and I don’t mind that. It has made me optimize what time I do have, and appreciate the gaming that I do. One thing I still see gamers doing to other gamers is berating them for not playing the “right” games. Talking down to them for their games of choice. I wonder how many people are playing games they truly want to play, and how many are playing due to social pressure, or even fears.

I still hop from game to game and get excited about new releases, but for the past 7 months I’ve been playing WoW quite steadily. My husband returned from 6 months at depot and started playing with me, which reinforced my desire to be in Azeroth. I’ve gotten some flack for playing and enjoying it, but I haven’t let that stop me. I don’t care what people say. I don’t care if others think the game is beneath me. I’m having fun, it’s relaxing, the world (for me) is amazing, and again my husband is playing with me, so that’s just one more hook. There are so many awesome games out there that I like to think there’s something for everyone and we don’t have to put down folks who are not interested in playing the same games as us. I don’t care if someone decides that Hello Kitty Online is their main game, more power to them.

The world is filled with some really scary things. Video games give us a moment or two to get away from that, to be a part of something magical, to suspend reality for a brief while. Lets not take that away from anyone by being negative to them about what they’re playing. We don’t have to like the same things, but we should certainly learn a bit more tolerance, in every aspect of our lives.

My first FPS ever

Even though I’ve owned a few first person shooter games in my time, I’ve never actually managed to play them (that includes a lovely copy of Fortnight I was super excited about that a friend gifted me). FPS has been one genre of game that I have avoided, for no real reason other than it simply didn’t appeal to me. I am not a fan of guns, violence, or killing even in a video game. I don’t like realistic games where you play at war. I admire the skills required but that’s about all.

Slowly, games started hitting the mainstream market that appealed to me a bit more. Bright colourful games without blood, characters that had personality and were more than just army characters. Cartoon like graphics that help take some of the edge off of the genre for me. Of course I’m old enough to understand the difference between a video game and real life, and I don’t worry about me being influenced like that – but it has still always made my stomach a bit queasy.

When Overwatch came out I was interested in it right away, but the price tag and the fact that I had no idea if I would even enjoy a FPS kept me from buying in. There was an awesome sale around Christmas where I almost folded and picked up the Game of the Year edition for half price, but life got busy and I balked. When I started turning my gold into tokens and adding them to my Blizzard balance I waited to see if it would go on sale again, and as my luck would have it, this weekend they also offered a free trial for people along with a 50% off sale.

My PC is still having issues with FPS in games even after trying a new video card, so I knew playing would be awkward at best, but that didn’t stop @scopique, myself, and my husband from jumping into game and playing a few rounds against the AI on medium difficulty.

It. Was. A. Blast.

I had so much fun, despite the lag (playing at 13 frames a second is really hard in an FPS). I played a bunch of different healers which as it turned out, is something I really love doing. I got to level 5, got some lunar loot boxes, fell in love with the different skins you can collect, and because I had enough coin saved up in my blizzard balance, bought the game of the year edition.

Being able to convert coin into WoW tokens into $19 CAD has been amazing. I had enough in my balance for Overwatch, and I also moved my alliance hunter to the server my husband and I are playing on. With future coin I’ll pay for game time for my account, though it’s not needed. It’s just nice. Sales have been a bit slow lately, but that’s alright I don’t expect every week to be huge, I’d rather look at a monthly picture, and I bought 5 tokens last month, which (to me at least) is a lot.

I’m really eager to solve whatever issue is going on with my PC and be able to game properly. I know playing against the AI isn’t the “real thing” in Overwatch, but for my first time ever playing that sort of game, I think I did OK. As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Back At It!

Shew! After nearly two weeks I’m finally back online, moved into my new home, internet set up. The drive from British Columbia to Saskatchewan was pretty amazing even if we did have to take part in a 5 hour detour due to avalanche control. We drove through Jasper instead of our original plan through Banff, and while it wasn’t quite as spectacular, it was still pretty special. Unfortunately along the way the husband got sick, and then shortly after myself and my little one caught what he had (the joys of driving for four days along with living in a hotel for two weeks). We’re slowly getting over it, but I stress the word slowly. The flu this season is nothing to laugh at, that’s for sure.

Now that we’re getting settled, I’ve had some time here and there to do a little gaming. Or at least, I would, if things had worked out with my computer. Something (I have no idea what) happened during the move and now my computer suffers from FPS issues any time I play any games, and it also lags out typing in programs like discord. I get no errors, my drives all seem OK, and at this point in time I haven’t narrowed down if it’s my SSD, my power supply, or my video card. I’m hoping to swap some parts out with my husband’s computer to try to figure it out, but again we’re just getting settled and that’s a lot of work to jump right into. Needless to say, I’m frustrated. I would replace whatever was broken if I knew what it was, but without any errors to follow I’m just running various monitoring programs and trying to make sense of what I see.

That being said, I DID manage to get into WoW and do some auction house business, a game where FPS isn’t a big deal and won’t kill me unless I miss click on an expensive item. Blizzard finally brought their API back online yesterday, and there was much rejoicing from everyone who uses the remote auction house, The Undermine Journal, and TradeSkillMaster. I haven’t been making a ton of coin lately, but 15-20k a day is not too bad and I’m content with that.

This weekend is a free play weekend for Overwatch, a game that I have wanted to purchase for ages now – I’m HOPING with this free weekend it also goes on sale, and I’m impatiently waiting for that to happen so I can snag the game. I want to try streaming some of my initial attempts, of course with my computer under the weather that may take some time. We’ll just have to see.

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself. I have missed everyone dearly and I’ve missed writing here – so expect more posts coming in the future, hopefully on a better schedule than I’ve kept over the last year or so.

Sales Round-Up

Not every day starts off with opening the mailbox to a nice number in sales, but some days do, and it’s lovely. I’m 10k short of buying my 3rd WoW token for the week. I’d normally be able to afford it now, but the price really shot up over night. I’m hoping I can make 10k today so I can buy it before it goes up any further, but I don’t always have the best of luck. I know some of you (all of you?) are probably already bored of these posts where I just go on about making coin in world of warcraft, but I’ve been writing about it just because I find the whole idea of it so fascinating. The fact that I’ve made more gold in this single week than I have in the entire time I’ve played WoW (10+ years off and on) honestly surprises me.

Of course I also get a bit bored of it after some time. Making money is great, and it will be wonderful to purchase Overwatch and BfA and maybe a server or faction change or two with coin that I’ve earned instead of having to pay out of pocket for it, but it’s a lot of repeating the same actions over and over, hoping for a good day, and patience. Lots and LOTS of patience.

I have no patience. Well, OK, I have a BIT of patience, a little more than I started out with before I had my son, but I’m still lacking. I (like many others) like instant gratification in my video games, and playing the market in WoW is NOT about instant gratification. At all. So I find that I’m a bit at odds with myself.

Anyway. Sales over the weekend were slow, and spread out. More people playing on a weekend means more competition, and less people shopping (from what I’ve seen, YMMV). I’m hoping sales pick up a bit more over the upcoming week, but since I’ll be moving I will have to step back from making gold for a bit until we’re settled. I made just shy of 600k in the last 7 days, and it’s a really nice feeling. Even if it is just virtual currency in a video game.

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!