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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsThe real Griftah story
by Robin Torres 
Sep 26th 2007 at 11:00AM
Griftah has now been exiled to the outskirts of Shattrath in Patch 2.2.
Players complained loudly on the forums after realizing they paid over 30 gold for an amulet that allowed them to resurrect when they died and were not mollified when informed that they should have shown a bit more caution before buying items from a character named after another word for con artist. Everyone (including me) assumed that Griftah was being exiled from Shattrath because of these complaints.
His creator, World Designer Kisirani, says otherwise. Though we don't know how the story is going to unfold, Kisirani says that Griftah is kind of a progressive content guinea pig. He explains:
It's a shame you're unwilling to believe what is, in essence, the truth -- that Griftah has been a small foray in progressive content as we gauge certain things.
I'm the person behind making the content. I've no reason to deceive you.
It's one of the goals of my job, at the heart of it, to make the world feel more alive. The larger parts of it primarily contain holiday content and world flavor; this was a small bit of the latter.
Griftah's story is incredibly small in the extensive lore of the Warcraft world, but many of us have grown fond of him and his delightfully redundant amulets. He began by selling his wares unmolested in the crafting area of the Lower City in Shattrath. Then Peacekeeper Jadaar started harrassing him and warning potential buyers of alleged fraudulent claims. And now, in patch 2.2, he is hanging outside of the Lower City, up the hill from where the Darkmoon Faire appears. He sells some of his former wares plus a couple of functionless offhands.I hope to see a lot more significant progressive content in the future to make the world seem less stagnant. I particularly would like to see the older worlds change when expansions come out. I hope the moving of Naxxramas and Dalaran are just two examples of the kind of old world changes we'll see when WotLK is released.
In the meantime, if Griftah is supposed to be progressive content instead of a reaction to people spending a lot of gold on useless amulets, then I hope his story unfolds with each new major patch.
Did you get grifted by Griftah?
Filed under: Patches, Analysis / Opinion, Humor
Reader Comments (Page 2 of 3)
Todd Sep 26th 2007 12:57PM
I bought the lucky charm amulet, which helps increase your chances of finding rare drops, and sold it for a huge amount of money on the AH.
Yeah, I grifted.
One would love to see such cool new, changing content like this in the old lands. However, I highly suspect that old Azeroth (and eventually Outland) will be forgotten by the Devs once the next expansion comes out. The old worlds, old content, will fade away as the Devs move on and on.
Awann Sep 26th 2007 12:58PM
When Griftah wasn't yet being investigated by Shattrath City vice, a lower level in my old guild tried to borrow gold from me to get one of the amulets. I think he was heartbroken when I carefully explained the joke to him.
Paul Sep 26th 2007 12:59PM
frankly, i don't believe that this is progressive content, i think enough rubes got conned and complained enough, so blizz caved. and that makes me sad.
IMO there should be more stuff like this in game. yes, having progressive content like finishing the bridge in lakeshire would be awesome, but in addition having things like grifters makes the game more unpredictable, and therefore more like life.
if you can't always trust that you're getting a good product, or if 1 out of 500 times you walked down a deserted alley in SW you got attacked by thieves who would take some (not all) of your gold if you didn't defeat them, or if the weather actually closed travel routes, like from a snowstorm or maybe even a lava flow in the zones with lava, any inconvenience to me would greatly be outdone by the more realistic feeling i would get from the game.
Gimmlette Sep 26th 2007 1:02PM
@15 ROFLMAO "Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler". Yes! He could be a wanderer, like the faire, who goes through all the towns on a regular circuit. I never bought anything from Griftah although I did look at his wares.
John Sep 26th 2007 1:04PM
What would be more like it is if when we find that the stuff we buy does not work we could go back to him and demand our money back. If he refused a fight happens. If you are not good enough to beat him you get no money back. If you could beat him then you would get your money back but you would loose the item.
Zarra Sep 26th 2007 1:08PM
I think he was one of the most hilarious things i discovered during my first week of TBC... and he also serves as an excellent Idiot-detector :D - I mean, come on, the items are gray quality, the descriptions are silly, the names make it obvious that they are jokes, and they have no stats. If you still buy them, then you are a bit dumb. Please complain in /trade so we can laugh at you :)
Aeonis Sep 27th 2007 11:26AM
How can you resist to not buy Soap on a rope :D
Zach Sep 26th 2007 1:53PM
I buy the Tikbalang Ward and give it to friends who start playing World of Warcraft. The Tikbalang is a half-horse half-man creature from Philippine Mythology and I was so thrilled to find that it found its way into WoW. I'm Filipino so I found this pretty cool. Now, whenever a fellow Filipino starts playing WoW, I make it a point to send them a gift-wrapped Tikbalang Ward as a sort of welcome present to the game.
i.p.freely Sep 26th 2007 2:40PM
@22 Paul....
So let me get this straight... you are sadden because you do not believe what the developer said... You want to continue to believe what you want to believe even though you have no evidence of this to back up your beliefs...
Back to the topic...
they should have made a quest out of it.. The peacekeeper should have given a quest for you to find the missing Griftah, piece together clues and find him. Make you go to all of Outland and find him then report back to the Peacekeeper for Lower city rep.
lori Sep 26th 2007 3:18PM
So, why not have new quests involved with the Redridge Bridge or the Westfall Inn repair where players need to gather materials or craft items for level appropriate rewards. As an example, people could gather Hellfire lumber to donate to the inn repair or miners could donate stone for the bridge repair. The quests would be available for a week or so when the repairs would be complete and the construction crews move on to something else. The Thandol Span, perhaps.Or lets permenently kill off the Ogers and rebuild the Ruins of Alterac. Rebuild Lorderon to a fine, beautifull Horde city.
And there could be new construction. A blacksmith shop for Auberdine comes to mind so the blacksmith there doesn't have to work outside in the rain.
Such content could revitalize Azeroth by giving lvl 60 - 80 a reason to come back there. Certain areas could be sliding scale aggro zones so that all level characters can go there. Mobs more than ten or more levels higher, for example, ignore lower levels as being too insignficant to bother with.
franz Sep 26th 2007 3:30PM
Make the world feel more alive??? I thought it was all about min/maxing!
MechChef Sep 26th 2007 3:56PM
"IMO there should be more stuff like this in game. yes, having progressive content like finishing the bridge in lakeshire would be awesome"
Yeah, I'd really like to see the Forsaken begin cleaning up Lordaeron and rebuilding. With the release of BC, they basically knocked down a wall and found an orb of translocation. Surely there are some undead masons living in the surrounding areas who could build the city upwards again. Maybe convert the new area into office-space and loft-apartments.
Paul Sep 26th 2007 4:23PM
@28
"So let me get this straight... you are sadden because you do not believe what the developer said... You want to continue to believe what you want to believe even though you have no evidence of this to back up your beliefs..."
ipfreely, did i insult you a while back and you're just picking on the smallest thing (under the anonymity of a new handle) to try to insult me? i'm confused!
i'm not saying that I believe in something that has huge real world consequences, like whether jebus exists or something. So why apply your incredible philosophy skills to something as inconsequential as this?
But if you must know about my "evidence":
I don't believe this was originally planned as a progressive event because I think Blizz caved to a bunch of people complaining about being grifted, and Blizzard does have a history of caving to pressure/crying, or at least you can make the argument that they do. Also, businesses in general have a poor history of admitting mistakes, however small, so I could easily see how they would cover up the change by calling it "progressive content".
So there's the evidence I am basing my belief on. Is it more likely that they had been planning to oust Griftah from Shattrath since day one of the expansion? I think a reasonable person could see that as even less likely, which makes my belief pretty far from baseless, and your assertion that I'm believing stupid things- well, pretty stupid in of itself.
Metaphyzxx Sep 26th 2007 4:24PM
Maybe this means that they WILL change some of the world content... It'd be nice if the Gnomes eventually get some of Gnomeregan back, or the Trolls get to live back on echo isles.
Or maybe jaena proudmoore would eventually get back in contact with me like she promised after got that traitor for her...
Jack Sep 26th 2007 4:26PM
@15- That would be awesome! And bonus points for the Terry Pratchett reference :)
It's funny, and also kind of sad, that people buy stuff from this guy thinking it'll work, but as they say, a fool and his money are soon parted.
Paul Sep 26th 2007 4:58PM
i love that people thought that the Marvelous Madstone of Immortality would rez them, but if they just read the quote carefully, it says it allows you to rez once you return to where you died, which of course is how it's works already.
"... allow[s] you to come back from the most dreadful of demises once your essence returns to where you perished!"
Addie Sep 26th 2007 6:20PM
Once in a while I log Addie in her fishing gear, which includes the funniest stuff I could get for her. The One Ring, a Tikbalang Ward, a Mood Ring... still collecting silly equipable stuff.
Unregistered Sep 26th 2007 10:22PM
blizzard had no choice. they did a survey of those who fell for this sucker and found that 50% of them stopped subscribing. the other 50% are still buying stuff.
Bachus Sep 27th 2007 5:21AM
Griftah is fun, but he's no Cro Threadstrong. Cro's my hero. I hope he recruits me for his war on the fruit vendor.
Pook Sep 27th 2007 8:35AM
I still don't understand how a tax on the stupid is bad....