Tillers Tip! Podcats and Heriloom Transfers

First off, I am aware that nobody reads this blog, and really I don't see why someone would follow me. I have only just started to post again after two years, that said, I still want to talk about this game, I still want to post information and tips that I find helpful. Maybe on day someone will read my teeny portion of the internet, but for right now, I just enjoy having an outlet to talk about WoW on.

Tillers Tip!

http://www.wowhead.com/object=210582/dark-soil#.

When you're out looking for the Dark Soil to in the attempts to get all of the Tillers to be your best friend, turn the Ground Clutter and Environment detail settings all the way down
(Esc > System > Graphics > Environment section > Pull-downs for Ground Clutter and Environment Detail ). What this will do is take away detracting pretty things on the ground while you are flying around! Some of the clutter and detail can end up hiding the Dark Soil or at least make it a bit difficult to see!(not all of the time mind you)

I tried to be all awesome and get some good screenshots of the difference, comparing full ultra settings to turning down the Ground Clutter and Environment Detail. Unfortunately for me, at the time I was trying to do this, there were other people looking for the Dark Soils as well! Most of the time when I found one and got ready to take the screenshots this pesky priest of the opposite faction would fly up and take it. Sigh.

Podcasts

So its obivous that I am a WoW nerd here, I am blogging about the darn game and all! So I might as well also say that I listen to WoW podcast during my commune on the oh so amazingly wonderful public transportation system of Vancouver. Just want to give a heads up to anyone who reads this, that they should 1. Start listening to podcasts, they are awesome, and 2. Listen to The Twisted Nether Blogcast AND TwizzCast.

I have been a faithful listening to The Twisted Nether Blogcast (TNB) since Wrath.  Yeah. its been a while, but the hosts are still awesome and as entertaining as ever! Now for Twizzcast! It took me a while to find a podcast that I really liked beyond TNB, I spend a lot of time on the awesome public transportation and the recently bi-weekly shows of TNB wasn't enough. BUT! Thanks to TNB I came uppon an amazing weekly podcast. The three hosts have great complementing personalities, and each of them brings something different to the table, when it comes to their WoW knowledge and experiences.  Twizzcast is a newer podcast, under 40 shows as of right now (I think), but the quality and the popularity that this show has is amazing. The guests are unique and (I am going to say it again) amazing. They aren't just bringing guests that are a part of the community, but have in the past had the actor who did the voice of Illidan from WC2, a member of the Blizzard Dev team, the owner of Icy-Veins (extremely popular raiding and class resource site), and that is just to name a few. Now they don't always have famous or industry people on, they also bring in players, and have some amazing talks about classes and raiding and the game in general. All in all this Podcast awesome and I can only see it getting better. If you need something to listen to, please check out Twisted Nether Blogcast (http://www.twistednether.net/) and TwizzCast (http://www.twizzcast.com/)

There is one teeny gripe that I have with one thing in one episode that came up. The hosts were talking about the possibility of heirlooms being transferred from server to server, there is a blue-post out somewhere in the interwebs that says this doesn't look like it will be happening within the MoP time frame. Two of the hosts feel that the code to make this happen is simple, and that Blizzard keeps pushing the implementation of this feature back because of business.

Heriloom Transfers

There has been talk about the possibilities of this feature since before Cata, Unfortunately making this happen is a lot harder than most people think. Now, I am not a programmer, and I am still a student just studying game design, but a part of learning how to make games means learning how to program for various game engines. With my experience, networking is a nightmare! Creating the algorithm that would allow a player within game to send an account bound item to a different server is a task that I would never wish upon my greatest enemy. I understand that the quality of programmers and technicians that Blizzard has would be of a higher caliber than most companies in the game industry, but still, it would not be an easy task.

Items generated on a server, most likely have some sort of server ID which locks them to that specific server.  Right now item ID's are complex and quite large. They will have information like servers, whos account they are connected to, what character they are soulbound to, enchants, gems, reforging.  Anything that makes that item unique in any way will be in that item's ID. These large ID are probably also a reason why Void storage as it is now, removes all unique enhancements to that item (gems, enchants, reforging, transmog).

The state that servers are in right now, do not communicate on the level that would be required to transfer item ID's. People can bring up the argument that as a player can be pulled into another server and play there for a while, including killing world bosses, rares, and well.. other players. I don't know for sure, but the way blizzard MAY handle this is by treating that host server as a temporary instance, similar to something like LFR or a Heroic. The rules are still the same. A player cannot trade gold, or items from their respective servers, they however, can trade items for up to two hours that have the same Instance ID. Now, items that are generated while in a group with someone from the host server will generate an instance ID, allowing the players to trade. Special items like herilooms and crafted BoE's, are not generaged by killing mobs, or found in an instance. They never have an instance ID, meaning they can't be shared in the same way.

You can look at it in the same sense as Realm Transferring a person's character. There is no way for a player to do this, it is a paid service because someone has to do it. It is not done with a single click of a button. Someone has to actually move all of the information associated with that character from one memory server to another. Like I said before, servers just don't communicate on the level of complexity that would be required to transfer special items.

This is a feature that  people have wanted for a long time, and it is something that Blizzard has said that they are working on it. But to be completely honest, would you rather have programmers and technicians working on heirloom transfers for a percentage of the player population, or generating new content for a much larger audience?