A thousand words could be summed up in one sentence.
"The whale is generous!"
After recovering from their shock, everyone could only use that line to express how they felt.
A thousand dollars really was not much to him. If Gabryell got a Staff of Jordan, he would sell it for at least 300 gold, which would be around 1,200 dollars at the current gold price.
Gabryell checked HealsForAll's info.
A level 32 Dwarf Priest. His level was not low, though Gabryell had no idea who had invited him. Not only had the guild gained a precious Dwarf Priest, it had also gained a whale who did not lack money.
"You said you might have been scammed. Was it because Staff of Jordan was too expensive?" Windrush had long since stopped caring about the four 10-slot bags he had lost. Right now, he only cared about Staff of Jordan.
HealsForAll said, "No. A thousand dollars for Staff of Jordan was within my budget. Even if it had cost a few hundred more, I still would've bought it."
The Hallelujah player who sold him Staff of Jordan would probably be devastated if he heard that.
"Today, I saw someone in the city running a /roll gambling game. They said it was high-low, so I got curious and played for a while."
HealsForAll explained what had happened. "When I joined, there were already more than ten people in the raid. The leader said it was a roll group betting on high or low. 1 to 50 was low, 51 to 100 was high, and doubles like 11, 22, all the way to 99 were triples."
"Whether you bet low or high, the payout was 2-to-1. If you bet on triples, it was 5-to-1. If no one bet on triples and the raid leader rolled triples, the raid leader took everything."
By this point, anyone who understood gambling had already figured out why he thought he might have been scammed.
"Damn, that wasn't a scam. You were straight-up gambling."
"Nine out of ten gamblers lose, man. You got cleaned out by a capital-city /roll game."
"Gambling ruins lives. For your own happiness and your family's, stay away from it."
Windrush asked, "There are gambling groups in the game already?"
"Yeah. A friend of mine lost over ten gold to one of those groups and almost quit."
The speaker was a Paladin named Warquell. He was already level 33. For the sake of his dream of becoming a Protection Paladin, he still refused to run dungeons and was temporarily leveling through quests as Retribution.
World of Warcraft roll gambling groups had already appeared during open beta, and even more would pop up after launch. Around level 30, that poor soul in Orgrimmar had been cleaned out by one of those groups until he sold all his gear and ended up penniless.
HealsForAll said, "That's why I'm not sure whether I got scammed or just baited into gambling. At first, I won a few times. Then I bet bigger and bigger, and slowly I started losing more and more. Before I knew it, I'd lost over a hundred gold."
Seeing this, Gabryell, as guild leader, had to step forward and say something.
"Everyone in the guild, listen up. Don't get involved in /roll gambling in capital cities. Nine out of ten gamblers lose. Every one of those games has shills baiting you in, pushing you to bet bigger and bigger until they clean you out."
Gabryell exposed the trick behind roll gambling groups.
"From a probability standpoint, the chance of a player rolling a winning result is always worse than it looks. For example, if 1 to 50 counts as low, 51 to 100 counts as high, and doubles like 11, 22, all the way to 99 count as triples, it looks fair. In reality, the odds are stacked against you from the start. No matter what you choose, the house always has the edge."
Gabryell felt he needed to add another rule.
"No one in Fearless is allowed to run roll gambling groups. Anyone caught doing it gets kicked. No exceptions."
After reading Gabryell's explanation, HealsForAll suddenly understood.
"You really are amazing. One sentence woke me up. As expected of a top beta player. Respect. I'll give you Staff of Jordan. This staff can only show its full value in your hands."
Gabryell felt embarrassed. "You can use Staff of Jordan yourself. After level 40, Priests can respec Shadow, and high spell damage will improve your leveling speed."
He was willing to casually give away Staff of Jordan. This HealsForAll really was a true whale. Otherwise, how could anyone lose 100 gold in one go and not even care? An ordinary player who lost a dozen gold would definitely want to quit the game, just like Warquell's friend.
HealsForAll said, "Alright. Since you don't want it, I'll keep it until level 40 and use it then."
"Everyone, hurry up and level. The level 45 cap is only temporary. Once the game officially launches, the cap will rise to 60. That's when the game truly begins."
World of Warcraft only truly began at max level. Gabryell hoped that after launch, more guild members would reach level 60 as soon as possible so they could quickly form the strongest possible 40-player raid team and compete for the first clears of Molten Core and Onyxia's Lair.
It had to be the strongest possible roster. They could not just grab any forty level 60 players and go. With a poor composition, clearing the raid would be hard enough, let alone fighting for first clears.
Since the guild leader had spoken personally, the guild members did not dare mess around anymore and went back to leveling.
"Hey, this is my first time playing World of Warcraft. Please guide me in the future," HealsForAll sent in a private message.
Every Dwarf Priest in the guild deserved careful care.
"If there's anything you don't understand in the future, just message me directly." Gabryell added HealsForAll as a friend.
HealsForAll was rich, but his attitude was very humble. "Thank you, Leader. If there's anything I don't understand, I'll definitely ask you first."
After finishing with guild matters, Gabryell continued grave farming and leveling. Two wipes did not make his luck any better. After farming for another hour, he still did not get the second BoE epic he wanted.
Aside from the Tier 1 belts and bracers dropped by trash mobs in Molten Core, other BoE epics were world drops. As long as a mob's level was high enough, it had a chance to drop them. The drop rate was uniformly 0.03%.
Zul'Farrak scarabs had Edgemaster's Handguards on their world drop table. Whether for the several thousand XP or that absurdly low dream of a drop chance, Gabryell wasn't going to skip the scarabs.
"Gabryell, after you finish this scarab pull, you'll be level 45."
Igor paid the most attention to Gabryell's solo farming, mainly to see whether he could farm up a BoE epic a Paladin could use.
Gabryell's XP bar was almost full. Once he killed the scarabs, he would reach level 45.
"How far are you guys from level 39?" Gabryell asked.
Igor said, "One more Armory run and we'll hit 39."
Gabryell said, "I'll come to Scarlet Monastery in a bit. Once you guys are 39, we'll go to Cathedral and kill those two lovebirds."
Igor glanced at the time. "I booked a private room at the restaurant by the school gate. Tonight at 7 is the first gathering for our World of Warcraft club. I'm the president, so I can't be late."
Gabryell kept moving as he pulled every scarab he could into the graveyard area. "Relax. Cathedral won't take long. You'll still make your meetup on time and preserve your legendary image as club president."
Scarabs did not have much health. After grouping them with Ice Block, he used Frost Nova, Blink, and max-rank Blizzard to kill them. His efficiency was extremely high.
When most of the scarabs died, golden light flashed around Gabryell's Mage. He reached level 45, the open beta level cap.
Gabryell was not going to leave the scarab corpses untouched. He had set looting to mouse wheel down, so his looting speed was extremely fast.
"Blue gear. Not bad, Gabryell. Your luck is insane today."
Igor had the sharpest eyes and once again noticed it before Gabryell did.
Gabryell looked at the system loot notification. Sure enough, he had looted a blue item from the scarabs.
Blazing Emblem (Rare)
Binds when equipped
Trinket
+15 Fire Resistance
Requires Level 38
Use: Increases Fire Resistance by 50 and reduces damage taken from Fire spells by up to 25 for 15 sec.
10 min cooldown.
It was a trinket. At first glance, its stats did not look impressive, but that was not the case. The trinket made Gabryell's eyes light up, and the surprise was no less than when he had looted Gut Ripper.
"What the hell? These stats are trash. What's the use?"
Igor was extremely disappointed. In his mind, +15 Fire Resistance was a useless stat.
Gabryell did not explain. Right now, probably no one understood the value of Fire Resistance. Only when everyone entered Molten Core would they realize how important it was.
"Not bad luck. I'll put it in the bank for now and use it to boost Carlos and the others' Fire Resistance when we start progressing Molten Core."
When they started progressing Molten Core, Dire Maul definitely would not be open yet, so there would be no class trinkets. Blazing Emblem would be one of the important trinkets for Fire Resistance tanks.
Other options included the Engineering-crafted Hyper-Radiant Flame Reflector and Drakefire Amulet, which was tied to Onyxia's Lair attunement—assuming, of course, they had already cleared Onyxia's Lair.
Every main tank who chose Drakefire Amulet instead of a necklace reward deserved respect. They were the first generation of Fire Resistance tanks. Without their sacrifice, how could anyone talk about clearing Molten Core?
Two Blazing Emblems could be equipped at the same time, making it the easiest Fire Resistance trinket for main tanks who had not learned Engineering to obtain. Once the main raid force pushed into Molten Core, this seemingly worthless trinket would rise with demand and become valuable, hard to find even at a high price.
Looting Blazing Emblem at the last moment let Gabryell return to town in peace. At least the luck he had built up from wiping twice had not gone to waste.
After returning to Ironforge, Gabryell had not even left the Mystic Ward when a mail icon appeared on the minimap in the upper-right corner.
"There's mail."
Gabryell thought it was payment from the Auction House, so he ran to the entrance of the Stonefire Tavern and opened the mailbox to check.
He had no idea until he looked, and once he did, he was shocked.
It was not Auction House payment mail. It was mail from HealsForAll, and there was an attachment in it.
The purple Staff of Jordan stood out sharply.
HealsForAll had secretly mailed Staff of Jordan to Gabryell!
The whale really was generous. A staff bought for a thousand dollars, given away just like that, without even blinking.
Gabryell stared at Staff of Jordan and froze.
Desire urged him to click accept, while reason told him to return the mail.