Author: korenwolf

Currency & Gear, pt2

The blues have been out giving us some more information on the currency changes, particularly the conversion rates

http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=14574620792&sid=1&pageNo=3#43

and the important bits are…

The following items are immediately converted to gold:

  • Emblem of Heroism = 5.5 gold each
  • Emblem of Valor = 5.5 gold each
  • Emblem of Conquest = 5.5 gold each
  • Badge of Justice = 1.833 gold each

Your New Honor Points total will be the sum of the following amounts:

  • Old Honor * 0.024
  • Old Arena Points * 0.85
  • Battleground Mark of Honor * 2.976
  • Wintergrasp Mark of Honor * 19.08
  • Stone Keeper Shard * 1.6
  • Venture Coin * 3
  • Spirit Shard * 1


Your Justice Points total will be equal to (Emblems of Triumph + Emblems of Frost ) * 2.75

Again, the softcap for both Honor and Justice conversions is 4000 points. This means that if a character converts to above 4,000 points, it will not be possible for them to earn more until they fall below the 4,000 cap.

A hardcap will be implemented in a following patch before Cataclysm’s release. At that time, any excess points above 4,000 will be converted as follows:

  • Honor points above 4,000 are converted to gold at a rate of 35 silver per point of Honor.
  • Justice points above 4,000 are converted to gold at a rate of 2 gold per point of Justice

So, not looking too bad, though no clarity yet on what will happen once the hardcap is implemented for those who earn points at the cap (lost, gold, weasels or hamsters?).  How is this going to affect my alt farm, virtually no impact, none of them are anywhere close to the cap.

There is a money making opportunity for those without a need for the points, convert to conquest or lower… profit!

The Tier set in the room

It’s not explicitly stated by any of the blues but the subject of gear has to be considered, this change removes the split between Frost & Triumph and from the mood music I can only assume this means all the current frost level gear is about to be re-priced in Honor points, so the 251 & 264 Frost gear is about to be available to anyone who wants to splash out the points.

Impact, well the gear is about to be junked anyway, once Cata drops we’ll be exchanging our pretty purples from heroic LK and drooling over the pretty quest greens.  What it might do is in the last few weeks of the expansion open up the back end of ICC to a few final groups, allow some people to get in their LK kill for the title and so on.  To the hardcore raiders this devalues their achievement, but to be frank I can tell the quality of a raider from how they perform in a raid not from the quality of their gear or their titles and even with the extra opportunities at gear the backend of ICC is not an easy place to fight, Arthas is a tricksy undead thing and a competent well geared group who’ve taken him down before can spend most of an evening wiping on him.

So, enjoy the purples while they’re still useful, have a pop at those encounters you’ve not cleared and clear out those bags ready for the coming destruction of the world.

4.0.1

Apparently it’s on the background downloader, with the first part clocking in at a mighty 1.5Gb or so.  Given recent history I guess we’re looking at two weeks or so before it drops.

Currency

So the web is abuzz with the latest bit of news to drop from the 4.0.1 PTR, currency cleanup

As of 4.0.1 we’ll have

  • Justice Points (equivalent to Emblems of Triumph at the moment)
  • Valor Points (equivalent to Emblems of Frost at the moment)
  • Honor Points (equivalent to Honor Points)
  • Conquest Points (equivalent to Arena Points)

As the tiers are released existing Valor points will be converted to Justice points, so all players enter each new tier with zero Valor points.

All of this has already been announced, so what’s new?

As of patch 4.0.1 (on the ptr now, get your copy while it’s fresh) all Emblems of Triumph & Frost will be converted to Justice points.  All other emblems and badges will be converted to gold.  All PvP currencies will be converted to the new honor point system.  Initially the conversion will be done with a ‘soft’ cap, where the conversion will allow players to have more than the maximum number but no new points can be earned until enough are spent (this will change later and any excess will be converted to gold).

Points will only be awarded for kills made at an appropriate level, so no killing Hogger in Cata at level 85 for points.

I’m completely happy with this, let’s be honest badges learnt at the lower levels are now pretty much junk which just clutter up the currency tab, they’re bloat from the original release and two expansions, so things were well overdue for a clean up.  This also ties nicely in with the new points based system for PvE and PvP rewards.

I do want to see what’s in the pipeline for costs of items, how the older items are going to be priced, whether the pre-wrath badge gear is going away or will be available for gold and so on.  It’s currently unclear how stone keeper shards are going to be handled, or whether they’re included in the “PvP currency” being converted.

What about the cooking awards, will these be converted into something else, I’m not sure at the moment, I strongly suspect not.  They’re sat aside in their own little world and unless Blizz are going to remove the tie in with the daily quest to get the wrath recipies then I think they’ll stay.  Though there is an argument to do so, realistically how many players coming up through NR are going to do the wrath cooking quests to level up their skill.  It would make sense to change this to streamline the cooking skill development chain and not create a speed bump for no good reason.

Team Pirate: Weekly raid quest

We’re skipping it this week.  It’s Eye of Eternity and given it’s habit of bugging harder than an ants nest with the group on Phase three I am unilaterally declaring (unless I get a roar of protest) that we’re going straight into Ulduar.

Guild Master – rank change for Cata

http://www.wow.com/2010/09/15/cataclysm-beta-guild-ranks-can-be-set-to-require-authenticator/

This has to be possibly the single killer change for Guild leaders in Cataclysm, forget guild perks, forget the extra gold flowing into the bank without having to do anything.  Mass summoning, a gimmick nothing more.

Allowing guild ranks to be setup to require an authenticator, now this is something special, no accessing the guild bank for Mr “I can’t be bothered to protect my account”.

No this will not stop players from looting the bank and changing realms, it won’t stop stupid players from getting hacked but it helps raise the bar another notch to make other guilds easier targets and provide some level of extra protection for GMs.

No details on what happens to members who have removed the authenticator from their account.