We are getting close to that point where we need to start watching for the next patch. Here are some important details to keep in mind when trying to guess when the patch will arrive.

Battle.net account merger is required next week. Support will be flooded with people that don’t understand why they cannot log in. The smart thing to do would to be wait for that to settle. The patch will not be next week.

2 week notice for when the 310 achievement mounts will go away. This needs to happen this next patch. With the next tier of content, this will be that much easier to get. The ideal time to remove this is during the 3.3 patch. They did say they would tell us 2 weeks before the change and I did not hear them announce that yet.

Activity on PTR. There is a lot of activity on the PTR at the moment. Play testing the encounter like they did for ulduar. They recently had a developer event on the ptr where players can join the new LFG tool and play with a blue. This type of activity indicates major features are done and they are doing bug resolution passes. This is why I think the patch is getting close.

Major holiday is getting close. They will not release the path the week of the holiday. In the event that something needs to get immediately fixed, they do not want the holiday in the way. It will either be a week before the holiday or 1-2 weeks after. If they wait until after, they get a good deal of ptr test data from the people on break. This fleshes out any uncovered bugs and gives them a week for a dev/test cycle.

Historic release dates point to the first week in December. If you look back at patches going live, you will see that the first week in December has been a popular one. Part of that could be the position of Thanksgiving in the week before. Looking at the time between patches would indicate we would not see this patch in November. Does not make it impossible, but its way to close to the releases behind it.

Arena season for the last 3 seasons were around 17-18 weeks. They tend to release a patch just before the end of the season (1-3 weeks). That gives them a bit of time to uncover any balance issues in arenas before the next season starts. This season started Sept 1 and a patch early Dec would put that 13 weeks into the season. 4 weeks before the end of the season is pushing it. They may cut a week off of the season or release the patch mid Dec is this is any kind of indicator.

Before I started looking at all these details, my gut was saying to keep an eye for the patch as early as one week before thanksgiving. Now that I looked into it a bit more, I am favoring early December. Looking at the 8th from everything else I looked at.

How close do you think it is?

It was such a long time ago, but I still remember my first pet. I was a fairly young priest at the time. New to the game and struggled to save every silver. I remember looking at the snake pets in org when I would visit my trainer.

One time I chatted with the snake vendor looking over the pets he offered, I actually had 70 silver. I was a little excited at the idea of having a pet. For 50 silver it had to be good. My mind was filled with visions of my snake attacking my foe. It would be such a great thing for the weak class that I was playing.

So I forked over the 50 silver that I saved so hard for. I got the pet out and was kind of hoping it would be a bit bigger. But as long as it did sick damage to the mobs it would be worth it. I headed back out into the wild to check out what my new helper would do.

The stupid thing just stood there. No attack command, so way to control him, and he would still just stand there as I was attacked. It was such a worthless pet. It didn’t actually do anything. When I went to get my silver back, the snake guy wanted to rip me off. So I kept the snake.

Not only was this thing not helping me, he actually got in the way of my healing. Sometimes when I would go to click on my self or a party member to heal him, I would get the snake instead. I would try to heal over and over and it would never go off because I had the stupid pet selected.

It also took up a whole slot in my bag. I eventually just tossed him away because I needed the room for something important like a pair of grey leather boots off of a ghost in SM graveyard. That was the last time I ever paid for a pet. No way was I ever going to make that mistake again.

I am working on rebuilding this into a website. Picking out domain names, crafting a new look, setting up a web server, and thinking up new content. I have several mods or programs I want to focus on a bit more and need a home for them. Not all of them are related to making gold. I have one big idea that is related to making gold and it will need a better home than a post on my blog. (more on that later).

I have been thinking about these things and have let them distract me from the blog. That happens from time to time.

I have a hand full of things I am working on. I am manipulating the AH in a few ways that’s too soon to talk about yet. Just put in place some revisions to our loot system. Making updates to the KevTool NoobDetector.

I have been running my KevTool NoobDetector for a long time now and got to thinking about other things I can do with it. What if it had a feature to give you a report on the raid you are in? You get into a group or raid and have it do a raid check. It reports back how the group averages and possibly points out the top 5 noobs for you to watch.

My loot system changes were just an increase in weekly decay and to add a minimum decay amount. People raiding normally will not feel much of an impact. People that miss raids will feel it more. Also adding an attendance tracking component to it. Already have that written, but need 6 raids worth of data to make it accurate.

I am also cutting back my auction house time as much as I can. Trying for no camping in a few markets. I also don’t have many idea to post about while I work out some details on a few other things. I hate to spoil any of my ideas by talking about them here to my competition.

People constantly look for ways to improve the glyph making process. One question that people bring up a lot is auto milling (or auto prospecting). There are technical ways to do this but they exist outside of wow and at face value they break the ToS. These other methods are a use at your own risk. It is a very gray line where usage of these ticks will and will not get an account banned.

I also want to mention that I am not a lawyer and this is my interpretation of the ToS and other information I have found. These are my opinions on the topic and you should form your own opinion.

The Jedi Magic that I am talking about are the ways you get around Blizzards built in limits on macros and actions to get wow to do more with less effort. Auto milling is that example. Many people look for ways to automate the milling process. Some external scripting/macro programs will simulate key presses, some hardware is programmable and will allow automated key presses, some hardware support turbo options to repeat a single key over and over while it is held down. These are all tools and some are very common.

As tools they do not break the ToS, but you can break the ToS with them. Just like carrying a hammer does not break the law, but swinging it at someone does. AHK is used by multiboxers, G15 sits on the desk of many gamers, many control pads have turbo button options, and every computer has vbscript installed. There are ways all of these can be safely used and ways they can all get your account banned. This is why this subject becomes very grey.

The closer to that line you go, the higher your risk is. Because the devil is in the details and the line is not so clear cut. You don’t know if the guy checking on your activity understands these details. Just because you think your within the ToS the other guy may not agree.

Here is a good rule of thumb. If your are sending actions to your character and you are not at the keyboard then you have broken the ToS. If you have something making game decisions for you then you have broken the ToS. This is why AHK is allowed for multiboxing. Each keystroke is done by the user at the keyboard and AHK sends it to the other windows. If that same user put timed actions into AHK (like self buffing every 30 min) then he is breaking the ToS. If he sets it to press his mill macro every 3 sec for 15 min and he walks away from the computer, he broke the ToS.

It is hard to tell if they will ban you for auto milling/prospecting. If you auto mill but stop to chat with the GM when he pops up, I would guess you could save your account. This is why its a use at your own risk. If you are looking for help on how to do this automation, please look someplace else. I will remove comments asking about or giving too much information on how to do this.

The Recruit a Friend program is a great way to power level some alts. I saw the power of this and decided it was so broken that I had to take full advantage of it. I even sold a few friends on the idea. The result was a power leveling marathon that got me 11 chars over level 60 and several alts for my friends.

Let me give you a short overview of what RAF is. It is 2 accounts linked together that gain 3x xp while they are playing together (and are close in level). Also every 2 levels the recruited account gains, he earns one free level he can gift to the recruiting account. So it works out to about 30 levels that can be gifted. These bonuses stop at level 60.

Because this stops at 60, you can take advantage of all of these things with just the original Warcraft. So for $20.00 it costs to pick up a 2nd account, you can level a pair (or several) chars to 60 very quickly. If you pay for one month on the 2nd account, the first one gets a free month. So that $20.00 gives you 60 days to use this as much as you want.

Leveling at triple xp is so fast. I was able to quest to level 10 with minimal work. I would spend 10 to 20 in sfk. Every full clear of SFK would ding a level on both chars. After SFK I would go off to SM. The problem with these low level instances is running them too quick and being forced to take a break. Once we got the system down, we were able to get that last pair to level 36 in one day.

I mentioned all my SM tricks the other day. If you read over those, you can tell I spent good deal of in there. I would go to zf or brd after SM for a few levels and finish out in strat. Once I got into strat, I found the best pulls to make in 12 min and then would reset. I would hold out in here all the way to 60. Most leveling guides take you to outland instances at 55 but you need tbc for that and I was doing this on the cheap.

Don’t forget to fill the group when doing instance runs. There is a bonus xp for having more people in the party that most people overlook. It adds up and makes a difference.

The gifted levels can only be given from the recruited account to the recruiter. The person receiving the levels must be lower than the person giving them. You can also save these levels up and spend them at once. You can take a level 1 and just hand him 29 levels. If you are smart, you will power him to level 31 and then grant him the 29 levels to get to 60.

There is also a special trick you can do to basically skip level 60. You still have to get to 60 on the 2nd account first. On the first account, get as much xp as you can with out hitting 60. Stop at 59.999. You xp bar should be as full as you can get it. Then have the 60 grant the 59.999 a level and he will be 60.999. Your XP bar will still be just as full as it was. You basically got to skip level 60.

I know that this is information overload on RAF. Like I said, I walked out of the RAF program with 11 chars over level 60. Yes, that is on 2 accounts. Yes, I did some how end up with 2 mages and 2 warlocks. Yes, I still have not purchased spell or spent talent points or have any gear on most of them. Yes, I have classed that I probably will never play. But if I get the urge to play one, I start at 60.

PS: Slates had some updated information for me about an old bug with linked accounts. I used raf the first month it was out over a year ago and it sounds like they fixed a few things. Before I would make sure the level 70/80 char was not linked to the others, but it sounds like that does not matter anymore. Also I heard that you get 30 free levels now instead of 29 to gift.

Marco over at JMTC posted some good places to power level someone. I abused the RAF program as hard as I could. Once of my key spots was SM. From lvl 20 to low 40s I would grind SM Armory and Cath for XP. Here are some important things to remember.

All 4 wings are on the same instance ID. For as short as each one is, you should do 2 wings before you reset. Even then you will run into the lockout timer. I joined a XP farming group in SM cath once. Prot pally would do 1-2 pulls and kill everything. We did it 5 times and they said they would be back in an hour. After talking with them, I realized they had no clue they could also go clear armory between resets.

Do 12 min resets. If you are resetting in less than 12 min, you will run into the instance lockout. You should be able to do both armory and cath in 12 min. If it takes you too long, consider skipping the bosses. The little bit of xp they give for that extra 1-2 min they add slows you down. You are doing raw xp per 12 min here. If you blow away that 12 min mark, do the hallway in the graveyard (not the courtyard). That first room has 12-15 mobs that are quick to get too.

Avoid the library. Do it for the gear and the key and leave it alone. The mobs reset easily and respawn quickly at the start. It is just extra trouble for you low level chars.

Remember that a lvl 20 has an insane agro range. If the low level can see a mob, he will probably agro it. In both cath and armory, you have to kill the first mob before the lvl 20 zones in. If not he will usually die before the loading screen is gone. Remember you can get xp from behind walls and at a long range. There are safe spots

The first safe spot in the armory is in that first room. Stand to either side of the doorway. I prefer the right corner with back on the wall. I run the main into the courtyard and grab the mob on the stairs and round up the whole room. I pull them too that doorway and kill them just far enough away that the low level cannot see the mobs.

The second is on the other side of the courtyard in the far right corner. Put your face in the corner of that room. take the main down stairs and round up all the mobs on the lower level. If you kill them all near the bottom of those first stairs you ran down, that low level will get all the xp from them.

The third and final spot is down stairs. Go to the set of stairs that goes up and left along that wall in the corner is where you want to stick him. Not the little corner next to the stairs, but the corner of the room to the left. Run your main up stairs and agro the rest of the instance and pull them back near the top of the stairs.

In Cath I run the main in first and drag the mobs in the all into the courtyard. The alt runs in behind and stands to the left of the courtyard about 10-20 yards. Looking at the mini map, have him stand near the corner of the courtyard. With the main, drag everything to that corner on the inside and kill them there. If you have to do it in 2 pulls, move the alt up near the waterfall but make sure you kill the pat. (That pat would kill me all the time)

After the courtyard in clear, park your alt in the left corner next to the cath doors. I put the face in the wall. Run in with the main and agro the boss. Pull the mobs to the middle of the walkway you ran down to agro the boss. Killing the mobs here will give your all xp even when he is standing outside the room.

I was using a 70 mage to do my power leveling. I had to do the armory in 3 pulls and cath in 3-4 pulls. With a level 80 you can much larger pulls. I knew some 70 that could 2 pull cath but dying just a few times slowed me down too much. I have 11 chars over lvl 60 from RAF and I never ever want to step foot in SM again.

I checked the AH mid day on sunday for de items and purchased 440g worth of them in 29 items. I got 25 Grater Cosmic Essences at 11g, 71 Infinite dust at 3.9g, and 2 dream shards at 20g. That gave me a DE value of 591.90g.

At the moment that is way over inflated and I expect the prices to drop way down on those mats. I bet infinite dust will settle under 3g each and the essences under 9g by the end of the week.

At the moment I am flipping everything as fast as I can before the price drops too much.