Interface Revamp Pt.1

I finally broke down and bought the parts to build a new computer. So on Christmas eve, I had a brand spanking new computer whose entire reason for being was WoW! (sad isn’t it? =p) Now I can run at 60 fps in Dalaran. It’s like a whole new game, now that I can actually see out to the horizon, instead of 15 ft. of front of my face.

Over the past few weeks – with the new found beauty of WoW – I find myself wanting to see less and less of the buttons, bars and general clutter on my UI. So once again, I’m going to dedicate far too much time to getting everything exactly as I want it in my layout. I had it pretty clear before as you can see. But I want even less. That means that I’ll have to bind my keys to do what once used to be a clickable action. So the trick will be to get all the bindings setup in such a way that I don’t really have to move my hand from the WASD position. This should also help my reaction times, since I shouldn’t be looking for a button or key at a time when I should be casting a heal. The first thing I have to do, is figure out what needs to be bound where. I think I’m going to assign a rank to all that I’d need a key bind for and work from there. Something ranked zero would be something bound to the first tier of the button, or something that happens when I press the key alone. Like moving forward when I press the “W” key. Rank one items will be shift-key and rank two will be ctrl-key binds. Perhaps I won’t need the ctrl-shift-key bindings.

I already have a general idea of where to place a couple of the bindings, like PW:S will be assigned “E”.

I also bought the SteelSeries WoW Mouse (that’s whole other post, i think) so that will be included in the overhaul plan. I already have use of the two buttons near the scroll button.

Higher Learning

Repost of old article

So I’ve been after this achievement pretty much since I set foot in Dalaran. So far, I’ve only found like 3 of the books. I finally broke down and looked on wowhead.com and found a nice map and a potentially super tip. That tip being joining the “books” channel. I did the “/join books” and to my surprise there was actually a books channel on my server. (not that I’ve seen anyone actually use it yet) So the thing one of my guildies was saying the other day about a channel made sense after that. I have confirmed that at least some of the books do seem to respawn after about 3 hours. Of course, I haven’t watched them enough to know if it changes. (I do have raid things to do. =P) But I have gone back and checked a few times after seeing one of the junk books show up to see if another book spawned at the 3 hour mark. Of course, that meant getting up way early to login and check it out. (perhaps I don’t have that much to do after all) I hope this helps you in your endeavors to confuse future warlocks as to how you have a version of their void walker. lol

WoWEcon.com

The other day I was looking to see if there was a way for me to get the current auction house prices without actually having access to the game. You know, so I could plan out my AH strategy for when I got home from work. Of course, I was eating lunch at my workstation so it’s not like I was on company time or anything. :/

After trying several google searches, i finally came across wowecon.com. This is a free database of auction across all realms, at least that’s what they say. They also have an addon that is supposed to show the latest auction prices in the item’s tooltip. Which is similar to what some of the other auction addons do. While I haven’t actually downloaded the application yet, it does appear that wowecon’s information is updated outside the game. Depending on how long that takes (I’m thinking about a minute or two), it could save countless hours standing in the auction house waiting for something like auctioneer to scan.

I’ve decided to see how up to date the information is on the site, so I’ve come up with a small test. And I mean very small. I’m going to start with enchanting scrolls, using the following criteria. The scrolls have to have a minimum of volume of 100. A quick search of my realm showed me about five with a volume of a 100 or more.

The scrolls I found are

• Scroll of Enchant Weapon – Greater Savagery: median price – 76g 37s 43c, volume 100
• Scroll of Enchant Boots – Icewalker: median price – 38g 95s, volume 149
• Scroll of Enchant Chest – Super Stats: median price – 50g 17s 76c, volume 161
• Scroll of Enchant Gloves – Exceptional Spellpower: median price – 51g 90s, volume 130
• Scroll of Enchant Weapon – Crusader: median price 134g 95s, volume 108

I’m going to check the AH later today and see how close the prices are. I’ll even throw some in the AH, just to see if they sell well enough. After that, I’ll have a better idea about adding this to my gold making strategy. I’ll give it this, it’s much easier on the eyes than looking at the AH interface in the game.

My main complaint with the website at the moment, is there is no real way to search by volume. This would be useful for finding items that have a high turnover rate.

In the interest of thoroughness, Blizzard does offer something that will let you look through the most auctioned items. It’s not realm specific but at least you can see what the most auctioned items in WoW are quickly. Most auctions sold

update: I just noticed that the prices listed on wowecon.com do not have prices for my realm, the prices listed are for all realms. /cry