Tea Times Two with Thomas Lionblood

Man, I've been wanting to post a thing or two on my blog for a week now, and I just haven't had the time or motivation. I've either been busy with holiday stuff or sick, but as long as I'm here typing, let's just see what I can do to dump out all my thoughts RIGHT NOW! 

Let's start with the Wizard Tea. Bazaar Sniping, a thing that's been in the game since the beginning, is now (from what I hear) a thing of the past. I haven't tried bazaar sniping since I was actively working on crafting.  We always used it to transfer metal scraps and random reagents back and forth between me and Bailey.

I remember asking Professor Greyrose about it once waaaaay back and she noted that it wasn't an intended thing for players to do, but because everyone liked it, they just kept it in the game.

Fast forward to today, players several years ago realized that Empower treasure cards were a stable drop in the game economy that could be traded back and forth in exchange for other things. Think of it like a player invented monetizing system.  In Everquest, they have Krono (which happens to be company controlled and monetized btw -- KingsIsle, if you're reading, look into it . . . I'm pretty sure you could monetize trading with something similar -- players would hate it and call you money-grubbing, but they do that anyway). In Wizard101, they have Empower Treasure Cards.

Anyway, they finally fixed the sniping bug and as expected, people went nuts.

At first I didn't even remember the Empower Treasure Card facet of Bazaar sniping, but @Karlicai broke it down for me.

WHEW! Man, everything KingsIsle was trying to avoid with allowing player trading in the first place was circumvented by players in a super ingenious way. By allowing this to exist for 16 years, players created a discord channel for trading and a whole sub-economy using Bazaar sniping as a method to trade valuable items and bank gold. People going to do people things I suppose.

One of the major problems to the above method is the presence of bots in the bazaar. It defeats the whole system. You want to trade something with someone and bam, a bot snipes before you can snipe. The new system they implemented was that after you deposit an item in the bazaar, there's now a time delay and you can't predictably snipe anymore. In fact, players are saying the new system favors bots now.  Whoops. Not the best fix.

A lot of players seem pretty upset by this, and I get it. KingsIsle will work it out somehow. I have faith. Ultimately, they're trying to avoid gold sellers and spammers in zone chat. If you've played any other MMO, you'll know what they are. They're annoying.

So there you go.  That's the T in Wizard101 lately.

We used to track time in Community Management by what the recent drama was. We seem to be in the Post-Hawkules/Sparck-tell-all and entering into the season of bazaar-sniping-fix. All in all, still not as glorious as the age of Glowing Mushroom Exploit. 

AAAANNNNYYWWWAAYYYY . . . I finished all my quests for the Selenopolis trees and got my new cool blade.

Woot!

Also spent a bunch of Crowns trying to get the full outfit from the new Christmas pack. It's not a bad pack, I might actually stitch this new robe on to my outfit.  The Krampus banner is pretty great as well.

I like that Krampus banner!

I didn't keep going to see if I could get the new mount. It's a little weird and I already have far too many mounts to even think about wanting a new one. Still debating about this new pet. I kinda like it.

Smelly Gracie seems neat, but nothing will ever top my precious Lady Dexter.

Anyway, hope you all are enjoying Wizard101 and the holidays. I need to find some time to log on and finish up a few more of the quests in Selenopolis and hopefully convince my wife to play again. I WILL FINISH KARAMELLE!

Happy Dueling!