Art for gold, saving up for christmas

As some of you know, both my parents play wow on ssl. This year, I had the idea that I'd get them an in-game christmas gift each. But what to give them? All the really nice things are bop. While my mother enjoys little toys and pets as much as I do, my father prefers gear and practical things. After some thinking I realised; what fulfills both those criteria better than mounts? But most mounts are bop as well. Except for a few. And I happen to be an engineer... Mechano-hogs!

And so, I decided to give them a bike each for christmas. There is one problem though, that costs a lot of gold. I doubt I could farm that much in time. And if I could, there would be no time left for anything else, such as enjoying the game and the new expansion. But perhaps there is another way? I do a lot of painting and drawing, I'm currently in art school. In the past, it's been very popular when I make portraits of people's rp characters. Surely, wow rpers aren't very different?

If this sounds interesting, you can take a look at some of my previous art at: http://aldriona.deviantart.com

Considering the amount of gold I need to collect, I can take no less than 500g for one painting. If you would settle for a black and white sketch, a lower price can be discussed. It is also possible to pay in parts, I will track my progress in the next post.

You can contact me either by responding to this thread, ingame (my characters are: Ryleen, Cloudsong, Emeline and Tahle) or by msn (aldriona@hotmail.com), and we will arrange proper screenshots and discuss the details of the painting.

My progress so far

Exalted with Horde Expedition to build schematic: 4067/21000

Engineering: 414/450

Schematic: 400g

0/24 Titansteel Bars
1/72 Titanium Bars
2/24 Eternal Fire
3/24 Eternal Earth
7/24 Eternal Shadow

0/80 Handfuls of Cobalt Bolts
54-160 Cobalt Bars

4/4 Arctic Fur (Kindly donated by Stargaazer)

0/2 Salvaged Iron Golem Parts
6000 g

0/16 Goblin-machined Pistons
16000 g

0/2 Elementium-plated Exhaust Pipes
3000g

I would love to help you out, but the only gold grinder I have access to is my dwarf on my other account. And he's only got money because he's still only a TBC account!

One option you could try is create a DK and level through to leaving Ebon Hold for the first time to Light's Hope by skellygriff, and then send the gold gained and delete and start again. The bonuses from this are that you get to kill Scarlets, with pretty much all of the gold coming from what you loot from them, you can do a decent run of grinding (killing more than the quests require but all as part of the random wandering you do to complete them) that will take no more than 2-3 hours and in that time you can probably make 100+ gold easily. If you are even quicker at this sort of thing then you could make even more from the grinding or just manage more runs with your DKs. And, of course, the major bonus is that twatting Scarlets is about as fun as anything I have ever found in this game!

Your drawings are actually pretty nice, and I'm quite wealthy anyhow, and I'd be helping a good cause!

Draw my character; she's exactly like on my avatar, uses merciless. Don't forget the chains that are included with the set

If you can include the bonus of like, having her on a drawing while torturing someone, with something like a rusty hook or so, it would be even greater!

It sounds like a big request indeed; but the reward will be so too! If you manage the above I'm willing to pay no less than 1,500 gold ^^

Oh btw I don't know if you're into drawing quite violent stuff so if you aren't nvm it, I can just donate a small sum ^^

Gurf: Too bad I already have a death knight, the only one I can have since I only have one char above lvl 55. And he's already done in the starting area.

Xari: Sure, that sounds like something I could do. I would prefer to meet you ingame to take some screenshots though. Your avatar is very very tiny and not much of a help.

Seeing as you are a miner, I would have thought that would be the quickest way to make quick cash.

I've heard of people with it making a small fortune farming Sholanzar Basin for the Saronite... I guess the problem is however that you need to level engineering to max as well as stockpile the mats.

Still, I would recommend to sell stock now whilst prices are going to still be relatively high... the more time passes the more high level miners will be around and the lower the price will drop. You'll also have people still wanting to level their profs atm.

I don't know how much of a grinder you are, but I would say it's a pretty ambitious goal tbh, but good luck.

I would probably buy one of you but tbh I am also trying to build one before xMas, and I don't have mining on any of my horde chars...

The thing is, I need all the mats I can get to level engineering right now. The only schematic I can level on atm requires ten bars of saronite, and I've only found one so far.. Also, there's the matter of needing to level, and gain rep with horde expedition... <.< this will be difficult. and doing some math, I realise I'll have to make more than 50 paintings, unless people are nice and tip a lot.

Well Ryleen, I can include you in my feature story about WoW Families for the Times Magazine, some time after Christmas though. It'll make you and your folks famous!

Add me to MSN Rlyleen so I know when you're around when I can show up for some screenshots: -snip-

This morning when I tried to log in, it said my password was wrong. I went to the password retrieval page, it didn't work. I called Blizz's support, and was informed I had a three day ban. The guy I talked to couldn't tell me why, it's in an email I was supposed to get. But the email on my account was an ancient one I don't have access to anymore. So I wrote a letter to the support, and as soon as they get around to read it, I'll get the email with the explanation and my new password. Which, with my luck, won't be any time soon...

But doing some thinking, I realised I've only done one thing that's against policy and would earn me a full three day ban. This project. And I did discuss it in my guild chat and the lfrp chat. Someone there must have taken offense and decided to report it.

Doing some more thinking, I realised that there's no way I'll get all this in time of christmas, even if people would buy pictures. Also, I would just get reported again and have to spend more time banned.

I give up. It was a foolish project to begin with, and with this it is impossible.

Some people are just fucking lame. Sorry to hear about the ban, Ryl.

If it is for this then it's bloody pathetic! It's not like you are forcing people to pay up, they can choose to if they want to. It's like friends giving you gold to get something you are a little short for. If this is true then I class it as a new low in Blizz mentality!

Leaf wrote:

Some people are just fucking lame. Sorry to hear about the ban, Ryl.

What Leaf said.

Please find out who it is and I promise to camp them with my dwarf rogue until they log out.
Absolutely pathetic.

So sorry to hear about this Ry. Not nice to think that the person who did this is most likely one of our fellow rp-ers

Deja vu tbh, I had my horde account unavailable for a frigging month when some asshat from horde lfrp reported me for pedophillia or something

Then after that month, I got the account back, and only an apology that there was nothing wrong

Sad to hear you give up though, I adored your project. But there are alternatives, I guess...

Hmm..

I guess I knew this was against the rules to begin with, but I thought that considering the cause this would be innocent enough. And I can't really blame Blizz for enforcing their rules, once someone went through the work of reporting it. That person however, is another story.

I probably shouldn't, but I feel really hurt that someone would do this to me. I would have preferred it if ey had talked to me about it instead, if what I did was such a problem. But I suppose the anonymity of reporting it is tempting, rather than confronting me.

I've no idea who did this either, Ryleen. Unless you posted somewhere public and a Blizzard employee (CM) saw it ..? Anyway, it's a salutory lesson (sadly), one of many knocks you sometimes receive in life! Don't worry, I'm sure there's a way we can get around this.

Btw, I'm going to be running an investigation into gold-selling for a big gaming website shortly. Not that this is related, but thought it might be of interest to go after the 'real' culprits!

Ryleen wrote:

Blizz for enforcing their rules.

lol

I can't possibly figure out what someone would have against that project, Ryleen, I'm pretty sure it was just an ass that didn't like you. :/

It turns out I was wrong. When I got back on my account today, my bags where empty. So was my bank. And most of the guild bank, which I as treasurer have full access to. It seems that somehow, someone got into my account. How, I do not know. The account got locked down because they were doing, as the gm put it, "naughty things" with it, I'm guessing selling my gold or something similar. I have talked to a very friendly gm, and all my things will be restored.

The good part of this is that it means I wasn't reported for the thing with the paintings, which means everyone is as trustworthy as they always seemed, and so on. I'm really relieved by this, and I'm really sorry I went around and assumed things before I knew the entire story.

Ryleen wrote:

It turns out I was wrong. When I got back on my account today, my bags where empty. So was my bank. And most of the guild bank, which I as treasurer have full access to. It seems that somehow, someone got into my account. How, I do not know. The account got locked down because they were doing, as the gm put it, "naughty things" with it, I'm guessing selling my gold or something similar. I have talked to a very friendly gm, and all my things will be restored.

The good part of this is that it means I wasn't reported for the thing with the paintings, which means everyone is as trustworthy as they always seemed, and so on. I'm really relieved by this, and I'm really sorry I went around and assumed things before I knew the entire story.

Good to know though you would think Blizzard would be better at keeping their customer informed of investigations...lol

I don't think anyone minds Ry, that you felt you'd been betrayed - I think many of us would have felt the same way. It's just saddening to hear that your account was hacked (which seems to be happening with increasing frequency), and I hope it's rectified soon.

While its still terrible that this happened, i think we can all feel releived that it wasn't what we all suspectected. Either way, its good to have Ryleen back online again

I agree with Lyranne and Vypra.