One of the World of Warcraft mods I picked up early on in my playing is one put out by WarcraftRealms.com - Census+. It doesn’t enhance my playing at all, but it does give me a “good samaritan” feeling, and contributes to my apparent love of statistics.

All the addon does is make a series of “who” calls in the background every half hour while you’re playing, and then records the population information into an LUA file which you can upload to the WarcraftRealms.com website manually or with an automatic uploader they reference on the site. From there, your LUA file data is merged with all the other submissions, and is (usually) processed within a day or two and your population information becomes part of the huge pool of population information WarcraftRealms has been collecting since near WoW’s original launch date.

There’s no guaranteed reward for submitting to this site, but every month the site owner buys Amazon gift certs and the likes and then assigns all submitters for the previous month “ticket numbers” from which he then draws winners from. I actually won one month, and won a $75 gift cert from Amazon, which rocks pretty hard!

As a guild recruiter, the WarcraftRealms site was pretty helpful in helping avoid recruitment of “guild hoppers”, because as long as there’s regular Censuses being taken on your realm, there’s a pretty decent history of any one player in that realm in terms of how long they’ve been playing that toon, what guilds they’ve been in and how quickly they’ve progressed through the levels thus far.

As a regular player, the stats aren’t as “helpful” but they’re still fun to pour over on occasion. If nothing else, I like to see my personal submission stats for the site itself improving… seeing my name climb higher on the top contributers lists.

I made a list today of Horde and Alliance realms that have been up for more than 6 months but still have very limited representation in the Census submissions. If you’re on one of these realms, consider picking up the addon and contributing!

Horde side:

Anetheron
Blackrock
Chromaggus
Crushridge
Eredar
Gul’dan
Icecrown
Jaedenar
Kel’Thuzad
Korgath
Lothar
Magtheridon
Mannoroth
Ner’zhul
Onyxia
Shadowmoon
Spirestone
Stonemaul
Stormreaver
Tichondrius
Zuluhed

Alliance side

Andorhal
Anetheron
Blackrock
Chromaggus
Crushridge
Darkspear
Eredar
Gul’dan
Icecrown
Jaedenar
Kel’Thuzad
Korgath
Magtheridon
Shadowmoon
Spirestone
Stonemaul
Warsong
Zuluhed

I found this post that I thought was funny and thought to share. Originally written by ThatGuy on alt.games.warcraft:

1. All animals can breathe underwater.

2. It is possible to shoot bullets or arrows through huge trees, rocks and even small hills without changing their trajectory or even slowing them down.

3. It is impossible to eat or drink while standing up.

4. Banks store your items, not your money; and they use teleporters so you can instantly access your stuff from any bank in the world.

5. If you drink a magic potion that heals you or gives you some special ability, you won’t feel thirsty again for 2 minutes.

6. All (human) women are totally hot, and all (human) men look like they spend about six hours a day working out.

7. Don’t walk, always run. You’ll get there faster. Even if you’re only going two steps away.

8. You can not only send mail from mailboxes, you can receive mail from them as well.

9. If he’s had enough experience, a 35-lb naked and weaponless midget can totally whip ass on a guy who’s seven and a half feet tall, 275 lbs of solid muscle, wearing full battle armor and wielding a battle axe in each hand.

10. An entire gold bar costs only a few small pieces of gold.

11. If an animal attacks you, it will hit you, then stand there looking at you for about a second, then hit you again, and repeat until either you or the animal is dead.

12. Ghosts can walk on water, but they can’t go through rocks or trees.

13. It is possible to get temporarily stuck on a door frame, fence post, tree, rock or other such object.

14. If you have something that’s basically crap and want to sell it, you can sell it to anyone, but if you have something good that you’ve used, you can only sell it to a shopkeeper.

15. Death is only temporary, but it’s hard on your armor.

Fishing, cooking and first aid were three professions I didn’t fully “get” when I first started this game. My first toon didn’t do either first aid nor cooking for the longest time, but fishing was something I got into at about level 22, when I started playing the Battlegrounds.

Of course, back then there weren’t 24x7 battlegrounds with seconds to entry from the Horde side, so I’d sometimes have 10 or 15 minutes between rounds. I’d sit in Thunder Bluff and fish in the pool on the main bluff, to pass the time.

I joined a cool levelling guild before level 25, and while doing the Wailing Caverns instance with my new guildmates, someone handed out Savory Deviate Delight to everyone in the party, and that’s when I learned what silly but neat trick one could perform with that meal. I asked where to get some of that myself, and was told that Deviate Fish could be caught within WC or in the various Oases within The Barrens. The fish would then have to be cooked by a level 85 recipe for Savory Deviate Delight.

Deviate Fish were probably the first fish I fished for within the “oil slick” spots in the water. To my delight, I also caught other random things at times - equipment, potions, and sealed trunks of various qualities. The trunks often contained bolts of cloth and leathers that matched my level of fishing, but at times there were true gems - profession recipes and equipment with low drop rates elsewhere, both which sold quite well to other players in the Auction House. As my fishing level increased and I fished in higher level areas, the cloths and leathers I pulled out could be sold for more than a few gold, too!

Oily Blackmouth are another fish type whose pools I made sure to fish out when I’d run across them in my adventuring. Low level alchemists use quite a bit of it, so it’s something that will always sell, and since Fishing is a skill that is advanced through number of fish caught, not level of fish caught/difficulty of fishing area, any kind of fishing is good for advancement, which lets me focus more on the money that can be made by the fishing itself.

As a Hunter, I also found that fishing was a great way to keep my pets fed and happy. In fact, I often found it was too inconvenient to keep a pet that wouldn’t eat fish - canines and gorillas, for example - and thus I stuck to cats and turtles past level 40 or so. For my lowbie toons that don’t need the fish themselves, I’ve often sent stacks of cooked fish off to random Hunter toons between level 10 and 15, hoping my donation would help them keep their pets happy for longer.

Today I’m fishing Floating Debris pools and the occasional Sagefish pool when I run across them with my level 15 Priest. I’ve pulled out 5 bolts of linen and about the same light leather, plus a few bits of equipment I can sell for 50s or so each, and got some Stranglekelp as well, which looks like it’ll sell for 50s as well. Nothing major, and I wouldn’t want to sit and fish for hours on end to “grind” my fishing level up, but when I do it as I run across the promising pools during my natural course of battle, it’s nice to know it pays off and helps me cover my training and equipment upgrade costs!