Month: January 2012

At the beginning of October I set myself a challenge of “just how easy is it to make gold in this game”, prior to this point gold had come in through a mix of dungeons, selling stuff picked up, flogging off stuff farmed up and so on.  Nothing special and over the course of the expansion I went from ~30k at the start to 100k.

From the start of October the money machine was put into gear, investing daft amounts of gold into ore, grinding it through the JC and Enchanter and selling on blue quality cuts and enchanting mats.

As of last night (just under four months on) the gold loving dwarf had half a million to go impersonate Scrooge Mcduck with.

Naturally the alts were not impressed with having their savings raided so he could strut his stuff, but would you argue with a plate covered tankadin on a mission to pub crawl his way around Ironforge (I say crawl, what I mean is dive into the first in and drink it dry and pass out of course).

So, where next.

Firstly to everyone who claims it is too hard to make gold, I respond “rubbish”.  Just from questing, farming and selling anything which moves everyone can have enough gold for mounts, riding skill and repairs.  The game is designed that way, long gone are the days of epic gold grinds to get that first mount.

Secondly begging in Stormwind, not classy particularly in the time you spend begging it is possible to make the gold through questing / dungeons etc etc.  Just get a grip and be self supporting.

Finally, yes I have plans for the gold.  No I’m not telling you yet.

The problem, a house which is ~250 years old, with at least 100 years of DIY slapped on top, some network cabling retrofitted on top of that and 2′ thick walls which are a right pain to drill holes through.  On top of which a second hand Shuttle box running as the house server, backup MX for a bundle of personal domains which currently relies on a 9″ desk fan to deal with the fact the internal cooling wasn’t doing it’s job properly.

It’s a noisy thing to have in the dining room.

Enter some birthday money and some decent recent reviews on Amazon for the TP-Link.

Installation

In short, a doddle.  Plug one in, press the button for 2-3 seconds.  Plug the other in, press it’s button for 2-3 seconds, watch until the lights calm down.  That was it, all working.

Performance

On the ethernet (100Mbs switch) 9-10Mb / sec transfers from Windows 7 to the server were the norm.  These drop off to ~7.5Mb/sec when running over the adapters, however that’s an acceptable loss given it’s new location shoved in the spare room.  The documentation recommends not spanning across different rings, or plugging into extension cables etc etc.

Naturally I’m doing both, the connection has to jump across different power rings (two MCBs) and 4-way extension cables at both ends.

Summary

As with all technology things vary, but given the nature of the house, it’s power setup etc etc I reckon this is a solid test.  I’d buy it again.