Grinding for mats

Back in the day, I used to run around collecting mats for hours at a time to then convert those mats into items through crafting. Sometimes it would be to then convert those crafted items into even more crafting mats. Here's an example:

In Howling Fjord, I studied the pattern of Cobalt Ore veins and figured out that they were in groups of 3, only one of which could be spawned at a time. So I mapped the location of all ore veins in a path that took spawn time + 1 minute to fly. I could go past 12 sets of 3 possible spawn points for ore veins in that time. Once I made a few passes of the loop, the ore spawn time would be synchronized with my flight path such that ore would spawn and I would always be there to mine it within a minute.

What can I say, I like analyzing systems and solving puzzles.

Today I can't do that. At 9:00 after I put up a blog post, I log onto WoW and run my 2 current characters through their Garrison routine. I make crafter items if I have enough mats, and I go to the AH and relist everything with a price 5% lower than the day before. I'm done in half an hour, 45 minutes tops.

And... that's... it. There is no point in trying to collect more mats. There is nothing to search for or find to further crafting. And I find that lacking. Sure, I have more time on my hands, which I should probably spend getting a PhD online, but instead I'm spending it writing blog posts no one reads. One could argue that at least doing this helps to organize my thoughts on the subject more coherently, and that it's a more productive use of my time that mining Cobalt Ore to craft into breastplates to DE into dust.

So, I have to study the system, because that is what I do. Why has WoW derailed the gathering / crafting connection? Well. It's because of assholes like me. People that would analyze the system and optimize their interaction with it to extract more resources from it. Normal people would be going around Howling Fjord finding no ore. Then they see one pop and immediately this asshole descends from the sky on the fastest flying mount possible and mines it, then flies off. Must be a bot or hacker! How could he know that ore was about to spawn?

And I'm just a minor asshole. I'm not cheating in any way to mine that ore. I just reverse engineered the algorithm that spawns the ore and positioned myself to get all of it. If I really wanted to be an asshole, I would spend 8, 10 hours a day doing it as my job, like gold farmers do. Or, I could go right to maximum asshole and write bots to harvest resources. No no, I strictly follow the rules.

So Blizzard has set up a system where everything is on cooldown. Then, in a jaw dropping display of “wuuut?” (Spoken in the voice of an Alliance Peon) allowed people to completely abuse that system by having up to 11 garrisons per account.

I want to see Blizzard step back a notch and increase the number of recipes, some off raids or drop off mobs in the world, and bring back SOME mats grinding to sink time in conjunction with the Garrisons, which would have a limit of one instance of a each crafting building per account.

And for god's sake, untie the wings on my flying mount when I get to level 100 and complete a quest!