Author Archives: Saate
Asuka’s Dress Collection
If you had read the title of this article twice, you’re probably not alone! Wonderfully unusual collections like Asuka’s are one of my favourite things to learn about. So when I got to chatting with Asuka about his ever growing collection of Dresses, it became clear this was something that needed to be shared with the world!.
To date Asuka (a crazy, troll-loving Swede) has amassed a collection of 87 dresses. I caught up with him to learn a bit more about the collection.
..and we’re live. New site launched!
I suppose that’s a bit obvious, eh? What do you guys think?
I’m pretty happy with how its all looking and I’ve managed to sort out about 90% of the tiny little things that had been bugging me. In the next week I’ll continue to fine tune a few final things including the formatting of the forums and general content linkage.
I’ve wanted to do my own wholly new design for a long time but as I’ve now learned it’s no small task. I really like the move from black background to white background, too. It was difficult to figure out how to do it and not have it look terrible but in the end I think a good balance has been achieved. For anyone curious I went through my old pictures and dug up different screenshots of the site over the years:
I actually had saate.com once upon a time (2001 – that’s 10 years ago, ugh!) and had hoped the waybackmachine internet archive might have stored more of it. It did get a few grabs of the splash page but nothing else unfortunately.
On to the prizes!
[Landro's Lil XT] – Sephrenia
[Landro's Lil XT] – Tsubakai (Totally deserved it too – Check out his post here.)
[Landro's Lil XT] – Cruelmalice and Missus, old friends from US-Shadowsong, came up as a tie which I thought was delightful. They need to flip a fountain coin in-game to decide the winner and link the screenshot :)
To further celebrate I’ve sent out a bunch of cards to other bloggers to have their own competitions. Keep an eye on [SRSBusiness], [Anaalius' Hunt for Gold], [Bangkok Bill's World of Goldcraft], [Alto's Goldish Advice], [Trading with Zoxy] and [The Consortium] blogs in coming days for more competitions!
Thanks again for all your support to date!
One day left – 3 more loot cards to win!
Are you guys sick of me giving away stuff yet? :)
In another day the new site design will launch and I can celebrate 5 years of saate.net in style.
The memories that December 2005 post bring back are strange, too. I can remember that at the time I was making my gold by doing stealth mining runs in BRD and then stealthing all the way to the Black Forge. With a [Greater Fire Protection Potion] I could only JUST solo the fireguard that was next to it. Being able to do this paid massive dividends though and I was practically rolling in it (I’m talking a thousand gold here folks!).
The biggest gold sink in the game at the time was getting your epic mount. I decided to take the extremely uncommon route of gaining exalted with Stormwind and buying a horse as my first epic mount. It was worth it for all the whispers I got about it – “What the hell, a night elf on a horse?”. I’d later go on to buy an epic ram and an epic tiger – you better believe people talked about my mount collection!
If it sounds strange for you to imagine any of that it’s even stranger for me to remember it. We’ve come a long way from those days eh?
On to the winning of things!
Let’s go in a different direction today. Since I’ve been posting these around midnight my time I tend to read all the comments when as I have breakfast and it’s a great way to start the day. So today there are two ways you can win:
1) Everyone has something they’re good at – I want to know what your special talent is. What is it that you’re better than most people at? (Yes, sigh, I suppose counting to 31 in binary on 1 hand in 9 seconds counts… :p)
2) One of the big focus points of the new layout will be the forums. Although they’ll look different in appearance the coding will largely be the same. Create an account on the forums and make a post – if anything seems broken or not working it’d be great to know via a forum post or email.
3) Bonus Method – Combining 1 & 2 totally blow my mind by posting about your special talent ON the forums…woah!
(Note to Dregor – Since you’ve established the pattern now you also need to post a boring fact first :ppp)
Thats enough from me I think, night!
Two days to go! More loot cards up for grabs today
Loved the responses from yesterday! The random facts were all great :) Let’s keep things moving eh? I’ve got another 3 x [Landro's Lil XT] up for grabs again today.
Update: Another round of winners!
Congratulations go to:
[Landro's Lil XT] – Bob
[Landro's Lil XT] – Bernilyn
[Landro's Lil XT] – Keops
Will get the redemption codes out to you guys now :)
For a chance to win you can:
1. Like MassivelyObsessed on Facebook
2. Follow me on Twitter
3. Leave a comment with your favourite quote of all time
I think that should just about do it! I’m off to do a bit more work and then bed – I’ll look forward to reading all your quotes in the morning :)
Three days until launch! Three in-game pets to win today
It’s all getting a bit exciting! The new website design that I’ve been working on goes live 3 days from now. To celebrate the new look and me having had saate.net for over 5 years now (in some form or another!) this is going to be a big event. I’ve got a swag of WoW TCG Loot cards to give away so keep checking the site each day for your chance to win.
Update: Winners are in!
Congrats to:
[Landro's Lil XT] – Rogrutamaz
[Landro's Lil XT] – Aaron (Facebook)
[Landro's Lil XT] – Frankieheart
Redemption codes are on their way to you!
Today I’m giving away three [Landro's Lil XT] pets. Here’s how you can win:
1. Like Massively Obsessed on Facebook.
OR
OR
3. Leave a comment containing a boring real world fact. I’ll let you guys be creative here and hope we get some amusement out of it :p
You can do all three for triple the chance, too. Since I’ve just added the Facebook page I need a certain number of ‘Likes’ before I can choose a nicer URL so this will be handy :)
Update from Saate (hey, that rhymes!)
Hey folks! You may have noticed I’ve been conspicuously quiet the last month. I’ve been working away on the new website design which is set to go live soon!
I thought I might make a quick post tonight to give you all a few updates on some recent hightlights:
- After getting the realm first archaeology titles kept at Archaeology until I got my Professor title. Still doing bits and pieces toward Tol’vir lately but dialled it down a lot.
- Picked up a [Vial of the Sands] for 42k.
- After some great negotiating managed to buy a [Reins of the Spectral Tiger] for 45k. Since the Cataclysm riding changes even the 60% version functions as a 100% so this was a bargain! <3 Quey
- Managed to get code working to insert ‘recent forum posts’ into the new website design. (Massive progress for me!)
- Had 60 WoW TCG loot cards delivered for us to use in competitions for the new site design launch. Looking forward to that :D
- Had my new desk delivered – its 1800x900mm in size and finally fits my triple 27″ screens the way I want. Looks GREAT and I’ll definitely be making a post to show you my new setup soon.
Apart from WoW and website activity I’ve also been busy at work, so a huge thanks to Zevia for helping fill the posting gaps!
On top of everything else we were unfortunate enough to suffer an aggravated break and enter on Wednesday night this week. Someone broke into our home as we slept and robbed us – quite a scary thing to wake up and realise someone has been in your home! I think it must have been one person and it appears they were in and out pretty quickly because only Suzie’s bag and an old laptop of mine were stolen.
I think it might take me a few weeks before I can get rid of this eerie feeling and feel comfortable at home again. Anyone had similar experiences?
Posted in General
Archaeology commons selling for up to 1000g next patch
In the coming patch 4.0.6 some readers may have seen the following note:
The sell value of all common artifacts has been doubled, while a small subset of common artifacts have had their sell value increased far beyond that.
Curious to follow the specific numbers I’ve been keeping an eye on PTR numbers for specific prices. You can click here to check out the current data Wowhead PTR has. Keep an eye on it and as new data becomes available you’ll see it there in that link.
I also put together the following dodgy looking table based on the above and an excellent post here by Rack of Mal’Ganis.
Can’t wait to see what the values of everything else are – particularly Tol’vir! Needless to say I’m saving all my greys at the moment :)
Posted in Archaeology
Tagged 1000g, archaeology, artifact, common, empress, vendor, zoe
Can gold making skill translate to the real world?
Happy new year folks! I’m going to kick start posting for 2011 with an interesting one for you. A topic that comes up often in reader emails and in-game chats is transferring gold making skills to the real world.
It’s easy to see how this could be a frustrating issue for some. The economies of online games can be incredibly complex and data-rich beasts. Mastering the knowledge and techniques to best your fellow gamers and profit is no small feat! So what stops this talent translating to real world profit and riches?
I think the best answer to that question is that it is at once both as simple and as difficult as you think. As simple because the underlying key to making money is what you’ve already mastered online. Acquire a product at one price then resell it at a higher price – that’s it.
The complexity (and the roadblock) is in the detail. In real life product availability and pricing are much less transparent. There’s no auction house search option that instantly tells you if the price you’re looking at is the best one you’ll find.
What should you sell? Where will you source it from? Where will you store it? How will you sell it? Who should you sell it to? How much should you sell it for? How much do others sell it for? How much do you have to sell to cover costs? How much do you have to sell to profit? Is that worth your time? What’s your backup plan?
Provided there’s sufficient interest I’d like to use this series of articles to encourage discussion and promote learning around real world markets. I’ll post about noteworthy real world examples that I encounter or that people leave comments about and we can explore the mechanics behind them together.
Market Saturation and the Glass Jar Paradox
I really like this first example. I don’t plan on providing all the answers along with the examples – that’d defeat the point wouldn’t it! Instead I’d like to present information, maybe with a little direction, and get you thinking.
Leading up to the holiday break my girlfriend and I few batches of Jam to give out to friends as gifts. When it came to looking for glass jars to put the Jam in we checked out a few stores looking for the right kind of jars. After visiting a variety of stores to find the right jars the prices ranged from around $2.50 up to $5 per jar depending on the quality and the type of store. Nothing struck me as terribly unusual about the prices and we continued on to our grocery shopping.
With jar hunting still fresh on my mind, I noticed something interesting when we arrived at the condiment aisle. There were quite nice jars on the shelves there, filled with jam and various other things, for as little as $1.30!
So what’s going on? How can an empty jar sell for more than a full jar? How is it possible that the process of making a product and putting it IN the jar has lowered the sale value?
I’ve pointed toward the answer above and I think it’s a fantastic one to ponder. Let me know how you go! If anyone has similar observations to add leave a comment or send me an email.
WoW triples search volume for ‘Archaeology’ in 2 days
Thought you guys might find this one interesting – thanks to Cabac for emailing it through.
The graph below shows google searches that include the term ‘Archaeology’ over the past few years. Check out the impact that Cataclysm Launch had (all the way over on the right). Pretty interesting eh?
Google Trends: Archaeology
Here’s a bonus one for you, too – remember the shock Blizzcon announcement about insane? Check out how it impacted google search results:
Google Trends: Insane in the Membrane
That’s all for the moment. Lot’s coming! :)
Formula for getting Archaeology rares
I’ve spent a little time recently thinking about how rares in Archaeology work. What’s the formula? How often are we supposed to get them? Why do there appear to be patterns in what rares people get?
Although admittedly it’s early days in terms of useful datasets I thought I might share my thoughts so far and ‘best guess’ at how the rare chance works.
I’d guess that it’s a two-roll system that works something like this:
1) Common project is completed
2) Hidden roll to determine if next project is a rare:
(Total Race Rares – Recovered Race Rares) / (Total Number of Commons for Race)
So if you’ve never completed a fossil rare then your chance after completing a common might look something like this:
(2 – 0) / 12 = 16.6% Chance for your next project could be a fossil rare
3) If next project is a rare, then there’s a second hidden roll to determine what it is. My theory here is that Continue reading