Bank Overflow

Good morning you happy people.  Today is a day for rampant forced cheeriness because quite honestly I feel like crap.  My sleep patterns have been off for the majority of this week, and it has left me completely drained most of the nights.  Last night for example I wanted to do many splendored things… but ended up slumped at my keyboard fighting sleep.  Hopefully I will adjust to the environmental changes, like my wife starting the new school year…  but whatever it happens to be it is a pain in the butt.

Bank Overflow

rift 2013-08-15 06-17-12-54

My life’s mission… at least as far as gaming is concerned… has been to try and gather as many awesome and community minded people as I could together.   Then I abscond with them and stuff them neatly into House Stalwart.  My guild jokes that my “panel van has the best candy” as I am constantly finding someone else in need of a good home.  Last night yet again we welcomed a new member, and I am hoping he enjoyed himself.  I was a little off my game in the whole engaging people thing…  it was all I could really do to stay vertical.  In fact at one point last night I decided I was done being vertical… and went downstairs to try playing on the sofa.  Unfortunately that only hastened sleep… and roughly thirty minutes later I was logging out.

One of the negative side effects of putting all these awesome people in one place… is they tend to be extraordinarily generous.  The above image is a shot of one of our bank tabs.  They are absolutely stuffed to the brim with random things our guildies thought might be useful to other guildies.  As a result I am going to need to do a massive cleanout.  Some of the items are pretty easy… for example all that raw meat I will just ship to my survivalist and convert to level appropriate food.  Other things like the gear… I would really prefer to see them find a home.  The other option is to runebreak them and turn them into level appropriate runes.

We have long used tab one as an artifact exchange program.  Essentially the idea is that as you are out collecting artifacts, you dump the ones you already have in the guild bank and then extract the ones you need.  This has been a great program, the problem is… there are a lot of people that put in way more artifacts than they extract.  So hopefully we can induct a few new members into the practice that will hopefully soak up all the unused artifacts so we can start fresh.  I funded the first two bank tabs but unfortunately the third one is just too far out of reach.  I don’t have anywhere close to the 1500 plat needed to buy it.  So for the time being we are going to have to make due with the limited space we have.

Granted having a guild that helps each other so freely… is the kind of problem I enjoy having.  I think tonight I might start packaging up various tidbits from the bank into care packages and just sending out to guild members that are in the appropriate level ranges.  There are a lot of things in the bank that I view as clutter… like the on use scrolls that give a short term stat boost.  But if packaged with a rune and maybe some food…  it becomes a nice care package for a leveling guild member.  I just don’t want the generosity of the guild to go to waste.

Cthulhu Expansion

I am extremely late to the bandwagon of even bringing this up… but a few days ago Blizzard trademarked the name “The Dark Below” and that set the world a twitter…  pun intended.  At first there was some debate as to whether or not the name belonged to World of Warcraft, or if it was intended for the upcoming Diablo 3 expansion.  However additional data came out yesterday that pegs the name of the D3 Expansion as “Reaper of Souls”.  Prior to this however…  I assumed that Dark Below was going to be the 5th World of Warcraft expansion simply due to the fact that the name has roots in the Warcraft universe.  Apparently the term “Dark Below” was mentioned in the original Warcraft: Orcs vs Humans manual… as well as a section in the Warcraft roleplaying books from which WoWWiki References this quote.

The Dark Below is a place inhabited by demons, devils and infernal creatures, from where some sorcerers take their power directly and sometimes have a patron beast to foster their magic

So on that alone I assumed that this would be the beginning of the fabled “Burning Legion” expansion.  I hate to bring this list out… but I still find it curious just how closely the franchise has followed it all these years later.  This list first started circulating before the release of The Burning Crusade, and more or less was pretty accurate until Cataclysm.  I feel like the whole idea of rebooting the world was a complete monkey wrench thrown into the “master plan”.  But I am wondering with the release of Pandaria… are we going back to trying to pick up items from the list?

The Pre-Burning Crusade Expansion List

Draenor Set

Azuremyst Isle – 1 to 10
Bloodmyrk Isle – 10 to 20

Eversong Forest – 1 to 10
Quel’thalas – 10 to 20
Hellfire Peninsula – 58 to 62
Zangarmarsh – 60 to 64
Terokkar Forest – 61 to 65
The Deadlands – 63 to 67
Nagrand – 64 to 68
Blade’s Edge Mountains – 66 to 70
Netherstorm – 67 to 70
Shadowmoon Valley – 69 to 70

Northrend Set

Borean Tundra – 67 to 70
Howling Fjord – 67 to 70
Dragonblight – 69 to 72
Grizzly Hills – 70 to 73
Crystalsong Forest – 72 to 75
Zul’drak – 73 to 76
Sholazar Basin – 75 to 79
Storm Peaks – 76 to 80
Icecrown Glacier – 78 to 80

Maelstrom Set

Gilneas – 77 to 80
Grim Batol – 78 to 81
Kul Tiras – 79 to 82
Kezan – 81 to 86
Tel Abim – 83 to 85
Zandalar – 84 to 87
Plunder Isle – 86 to 88
The Broken Isles – 87 to 90
The Maelstrom – 89 to 90

Plane Set

Pandaria – 1 to 10
Hiji – 10 to 20

Wolfenhold – 1 to 10
Xorothian Plains – 10 to 20

The Green Lands – 88 to 91
The Dying Paradise – 91 to 94
The Emerald Nightmare – 94 to 97
The Eye of Ysera – 97 to 100

Deephome – 88 to 91
Skywall – 91 to 94
The Abyssal Maw – 94 to 97
The Firelands – 97 to 100

Legion Set

K’aresh – 96 to 99
Argus Meadowlands – 97 to 100
Mac’Aree – 99 to 100
Maw of Oblivion – 100+
The Burning Citadel – 100+++

Ozumat

As you can see from the list… up through the close of Wrath of the Lich King… everything pretty much synced with what we were seeing in the game.  Some of the zone names were inaccurate, but the list is too close for it to be a complete aberration.  So as I said above… when I saw the name and the reference from WoW WIki… I immediately thought this was going to be what is mentioned above as the Legion set.  But further evidence has come out that leads elsewhere.  Yesterday an article caught my attention pointing out that Ozumat the fiend in Throne of the Tides was in fact from the Dark Below.

So now I have to wonder… is this finally them doing a proper treatment of Nazjatar and Queen Azshara?  I almost immediately ruled out this concept when the name first started circulating… because just among my friends Vashj’ir was pretty much a hated experience.  So I really could not see blizzard returning us to an underwater setting again.  However so far the evidence points in that direction.  If the Dark Below lies beneath the crust of Azeroth… then it would make sense that the entry way would be some underwater trench.  My biggest concern would be if they do another confused expansion like Cataclysm where there is content scattered throughout Azeroth without one central point of focus.

As bored as I got with Pandaria… it was less about the content and more about my general malaise with World of Warcraft.  Everything about that expansion was well done… and had I really cared about the game I probably would have enjoyed it much the same way as I enjoyed the hell out of Northrend.  Cataclysm on the other hand felt like a haphazard journey across existing areas of the world.  I hope whatever they do for this expansion that they give the players an entire world to explore rather than more piecemeal crap.

Wrapping Up

Well I need to get on the road.  Today was a multiple cup of coffee day as my mind wandered quite a bit through the course of this post.  While I don’t play World of Warcraft, and I really have no intent of returning… I am still a sucker for Azeroth.  You can’t spend a decade immersed in a world and not care about its evolution.  I keep hoping that Blizzard will “do the right thing”, but they always seem to make decisions that are half-hearted.  It will be interesting to see what Blizzcon provides.  I hope you all have a great day, and I hope I make it through the day without falling asleep at my desk.

3 thoughts on “Bank Overflow”

  1. I just logged in real quick after fixing my conflict with the Win7 update. Got 190 Plat out of the mail from selling low level crafting mats that were filling my personal bank, so I dropped half of the funds into the gbank. Coin isn’t really used for much in this game beyond crafting and auction house (and dimension items), so I don’t mind giving some of it up for the guild.

  2. Something that might help in a couple of different ways: the Auction House. Recently Psyn and I discovered that certain unprocessed crafting materials do actually sell for profit on the AH. If there are some that have been gathering dust, you could relieve some space by selling them off, then put the proceeds right back into the guild bank to help build toward the next tab. Obviously, if something could be used, that would be ideal. However, if no one is using it and it could be sold to help build towards the next tab, that could be a great solution too. Just this morning, I pulled over 100 plat out of my mailbox from auctioning some of the materials my characters no longer needed. Possible help, anyway. 🙂

  3. Regarding the bank overflow problem, I’m more than willing to deposit 100 plat or so into the bank if anybody else wants to do it with me, see if we can get Vault 3. I don’t see myself using plat a ton atm, since I’m mostly worried about planarite, infinity stones, and the such.

    Regarding the World of Warcraft expansion, I’m torn. I’d like to give WoW a try if only because its the game everybody returns to when they’re done with whatever MMO they use as their escape from it: friends, guildmates, etc, all go back to WoW after they tire of whatever random MMO. I’d like to be able to be a part of dungeons and raids even if SWTOR, TSW, and Rift lose their luster for players.

    The problem I have with WoW atm though is that I’m broke. Or cheap. Or both. I love Rift because its a free to play title, and an amazing free to play title at that. Additionally, with WoW I’d have to worry about being on the right server, the long leveling path I’ve never completed (my previous experience is after the game was big, and on an old server with nearly no other low level toons… Luckily I got leveled to near top with a resurrect-a-friend awhile back…) If it went free to play or I was able to jump on a new server and level with friends/guildmates, I’d seriously consider giving the game a try. Luckily, I’m extremely happy with Rift and TSW right now.

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