“Gold Rush”
It’s amazing how economies thrive on virtual worlds like Azeroth. One can buy and sell wares at an auction house to bring in money and spend money. Unfortunately, on my return back to Azeroth after a large siesta from the virtual world, many things seem to have changed… it costs an arm and a leg for almost everything. Perhaps the Burning Crusade expansion has set a new level of cost?
Here’s the deal. If you’re a brand new World of Warcraft player, you’re going to find yourself having to harvest the materials of the world (known as “mats”) for yourself because the auction house is way too expensive for everyday items. Inflation is out of control, imagine going to the store to purchase a leather jacket for the price of a car. You’d go cold wouldn’t you?
Once upon a time things were different, “low-bee” items (items between 1 and 15 let’s say) were a reasonable price, usually in the silver range of money. Today, they’re weighted in gold. The concept of supply and demand is at work but how is it we can purchase the supply at such a high cost? Because we’ve got friends or other characters with a lot of unused cash!
With Burning Crusade we saw basic quests tossing around gold as if it were common place. A character would save up thousands of gold for mounts and then horde the gold as if it were precious until they realized it was nearly infinite in supply and would start passing it around their guild or to other low level characters in their account. The end result, a low level character can go into the auction house with 100 gold in hand and buy whatever they need for basic materials no matter the price.
The laws of supply and demand take on a whole new meaning when people buying have nearly infinate supplies of cash. For me, I’ve decided to purchase some materials while “grinding” for others because they’re just too costly to purchase. However, I’ll do what needs to be done to also exploit the high prices when selling items back to the auction house and contribute to the over-inflated economies.
Perhaps, over time, Blizzard will create a platinum piece to replace the common nature of the gold as it depreciates in value. Although that’s said more in jest, it’s unfortunate that brand new gamers to this MMORPG won’t be able to take full advantage of the auction house as they could years ago with the influx in gold deposits.
If you’ve got Microsoft Windows or an Xbox 360 you’ll be eligible for the public beta of Call of Duty: World at War by Activision. Although the game is set to deploy on the 11th of November, many of us will be able to get a taste of the multi-player action early by entering into the beta.
Medal of Honor: Rising Sun
or
The Godfather
Mass effect 2
I’m just going to answer the QOTW seeing that I’m going to write a lot.
QOTW: Why did you have to choose this question? I have such a big problem with picking favorites, everything has its good and bad, and sometimes they are so different that I just can’t compare them.
At least I don’t have such a huge list, seeing that I only really got into gaming in 2009, but I still went back to play plenty of old games.
Looking through lists and lists of best games of that decade, I have narrowed it down to Super Smash Bros Brawl, LoZ: Twlight Princess, Super Mario Galaxy and Batman: Arkham Asylum. 4 completely different games, don’t even know where to start.
*Back after watching a couple of videos, refreshing my memory on each of the games*
While watching Super Mario Galaxy, I couldn’t help but think how much better the sequel was, which also removed a lot of the already little cons it had Seeing that, I’m going to have to rule it out.
Comparing the most similar games, Twilight Princess and Batman, I’m going to have to go with Batman by a few marks, I’ll list the reasons if it wins out in the end.
Super Smash Bros. Brawl is great and all, but I’m going to have to go with Batman simply because fighting is not one of my favorite genres and Action/Adventure is actually at the top to me.
Batman: Arkham Asylum. It is an all-out great game. It never outstays its welcome, the pacing is almost perfect. Awesome and intuitive combat, stealth missions that make you plan a whole attack, very original boss battles, good storyline, tons of interesting secrets to collect, lots of cool gadgets at your disposal, upgrades that actually matter, and overall making you feel like a badass. I have a hard time remembering if I ever played a game twice, but I’m glad to say I did with this one.
I’m sorry that I wrote so much on this topic, but it needed to be done. You may skip reading out all the rambling parts during the podcast.
@QOTW
Morrowind. I don’t even know where to begin expressing my love for this game. I will attempt to keep it short.
When I was 15, I had no job. My mother was convinced that wasting £40 on a game was bad. So I bought games that would provide me with enough content to keep me busy for a while. Morrowind was a gold mine.
I bought it for Xbox. It had everything I ever wanted. A large explorable world full of NPCs. Hundreds of quests. Dozens of guilds. And freedom. Freedom to do anything you ever wanted. Be whatever you wanted. That’s what I loved the most.
Too keep things short I will bullet point the most notable features that I remember:
-Every item had a shape and form. I remember stacking my looted gems on a shelf because they looked fantastic.
-The rich Elder Scrolls lore. The races. The continents. Everything was well thought through, well described and well implemented. The world of Morrowind was truly alive. And interesting.
-You assumed the role of Nerevarine, the incarnation of an ancient war chief. Your coming was predicted by a prophecy. However, unlike in other games where you just fit the prophecy from the start, in Morrowind you had to twist and bend the whole political world to be accepted as an incarnate. Made you feel important.
-The world of Morrowind was dark. Depressing. Alien. Nothing that it’s sequels can ever match. Everything was going to hell fast and you were at the front of it all. And the dungeons with the Sixth House Cult could be as scary as a survival horror.
-A few years later I purchased the game for the PC. Bethesda bundled it’s Game of the Year with the TES construction set. The number of fan made mods available was amazing. It was like playing a whole new game.
-Real world issues. Racism. Bullying. Homosexuality. Stuff you don’t find in your average Zelda game.
I still have lots to say, but that would take to long. As an after word, Morrowind was my favourite game not just of this decade, but ever. Although I enjoyed Oblivion and Skyrim, they can never match the delight I experience from playing Morrowind.
@QOTW Kingdom Hearts. it just has a charm that was never matched by its sequels along with solid gameplay and story and a certain wow factor compared to other action rpgs at the time. ive clocked over a hundred hours with mulitiple playthroughs and its enjoyable every time.
Battlefield 2 is still my all time favourite game of this decade
There’s been a lot of great releases over the 2000’s decade. Thinking back, there were soooo many possibilities over several different consoles so it’s difficult to really chose. So, here’s a breakdown
PC: Counter Strike (Original Addon Version)
Xbox 360: Modern Warefare (the first)
Playstation 2: Katamari Damachi (Soo addicting)
Sega: Streets Of Rage or Kid Chameleon
SNES: Street Fighter
NES: Blaster Master / Metroid (I was in love with those 2)