tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27643578820398354112024-03-20T09:40:46.879-04:00Looking for Morejeffohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09708074863929831135noreply@blogger.comBlogger53125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2764357882039835411.post-25846230769137978342010-12-24T06:11:00.002-05:002010-12-24T06:48:24.199-05:00The Short BreakIf you're one of the three people that follows this space, or one of the (and I kid, I kid) thousands that follows me without Following Me, you know that since the beginning of this blog the one thing I've been is inconsistent. My posting schedule has been all over the map, with the quality of my posts being even further afield than that. I realize that the only surefire way to lose readers is to not post. There's ample evidence from the blogosphere, radio and TVland, movies, etc., that support the fact that you can churn out utter crap and still be popular, but if you stop and lose momentum it's harder to get that audience to come back when you get back to producing crap.<br /><br />Back in November I participated in <a href="http://www.nanowrimo.org/">NaNoWriMo</a>. If you're unfamiliar with it and don't want to follow the link, the long and the short of it is it's a challenge to write a 50,000+ word novel between November 1 and November 30. Not only did I participate, but I 'won', managing to crank out a prodigious amount of...well, something that was semi-coherent, anyway. It put a fair amount of pressure on me and there was many a day where I sat at this keyboard frustrated with the lack of progress. It was also a lot of fun and ultimately rewarding. If anyone reading this has a writing bug and can't seem to get started, I recommend NaNo.<br /><br />Somehow during the month of November I also managed to produce approximately a post per week for this blog, which carried through into the first week of December. Maybe, after all this time, I had finally found my blogging groove. I even was starting to think posts ahead, something I've never been good at. Maybe, just maybe, this would be a new era for '<span style="font-weight:bold;">Looking for More.</span>'<br /><br />Apparently not. <span style="font-style:italic;">Cataclysm </span>hit, which sucked up a lot of time. I was going to do a first impressions post after hitting 85 (which occurred Sunday after release, while turning in Grim Batol quests) but that got sidetracked. Another week went by, then another, and now we find ourselves on Christmas eve, with only this post that really won't tell you much by the time that it's over. What's going on?<br /><br />In the last week or so, my desire to read and write about WoW has dropped almost off the table. I've been skipping my favorite blogs and forums. More surprising, my desire to actually play the game has waned considerably. Normally when things get a little stale on my main I jump to my warlock, or roll a new alt -- I've got a mage at level 30 that I started after The Shattering. A perfect time, maybe, to roll Worgen or Goblin and see what all the fuss is about, you say? Normally, yes. Yet I just don't feel like it.<br /><br />There are WoW reasons for this, which I will hopefully recount in another post on the other side of the New Year. I will throw some of the blame on Christmas, but the biggest, non-WoW reason for my apathy towards the game right now is because I'm writing. NaNoWriMo helped unplug a bit of a creative block and now I've got words fairly flowing out of my brain onto the screen. It's a story that I've really sunk my teeth into, one that has very personal elements in it. I find myself chewing over this story, composing it in my head when I've driving, or showering or washing the dishes. When I've sat down to play WoW, part of me is thinking 'I could be writing.' It's been a lot of fun, and the story is almost 'finished'. Where it will or can go from here is beyond me; I can dream about publication and best-sellers, etc. All I know is that it's an itch that has to be scratched. When it is then maybe I'll find that I enjoy WoW more again.<br /><br />In a way I feel a little bit like Hal from this excellent <span style="font-weight:bold;"><a href="http://www.spike.com/video/malcom-in-middle/2781913">Malcolm in the Middle</a></span> episode (one of the greatest comedy series ever, in my opinion. If you've got 22 minutes to spare, give it a watch). It's almost like an obsession, and it's a little scary. Hopefully it won't end in quite the same way.<br /><br />At any rate, just wanted to give you a heads up on where I've been. Happy Christmas and New Year to all! Thanks for spending some time with me on this blog.jeffohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09708074863929831135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2764357882039835411.post-13420690121025116462010-12-06T09:56:00.002-05:002010-12-06T10:03:28.736-05:00No Portals? No Problem!<span style="font-weight:bold;">The Shattering</span> gave us lots of great things: new quests for low levels, some new dailies, the ability to level up for picking flowers (hmm, I actually think that should go; my wife was getting 5K for picking flowers the other day). It’s given us rifts and lava flows, ruins in Stormwind, new construction almost everywhere else, and green – actual green – in Western Plaguelands. There’s also been one of the funniest quest lines in the game (<a href="http://www.wowhead.com/quest=27713">The Day that Deathwing Came</a>) and <a href="http://lkingformore.blogspot.com/2010/11/you-have-got-to-be-kidding-me.html">a lot of hullabaloo about getting roasted by the mighty dragon himself</a> (note that the thread I quoted in my last post has been deleted by Blizz. Not sure if they object to people helping each other that much, or are embarrassed by the notion of people spending close to 60 hours of continuous camping in an effort to die).<br /><br />Of course, probably the biggest hullabaloo since the Shattering has been over the removal of portals from Dalaran and Shattrath. Apparently a large portion of the player base either fails to read about the game or has very bad retention, for it seemed to catch a ton of people by surprise. Trade chat was filled to the brim with variations of ‘Can someone port me to…’ and ‘WTF happened to the portals?’, along with all manner of complaining about how rotten Blizzard is for removing them. No one seemed to mention that you can’t swing a dead cat without running into a gryphon master or bat handler, or the fact that said aerial transportation definitely seems faster than it used to. Even mages, who stand to make a killing porting people, are irritated over the constant interruptions and rude behavior of people either demanding portals or not tipping/paying once they get one.<br /><br />Yet it really isn’t all bad. I spent several hours riding, flying and boating around the world to see the changes that Deathwing wrought with his <span style="font-weight:bold;">'Renovation Breath'</span>, as my daughter calls it, and enjoyed the hell out of it. It wasn’t just because it was fun to see changes; in fact, some of the changes are downright startling and upsetting (see the <a href="http://www.wowhead.com/npc=237">Furlbrows</a> and <a href="http://www.wowhead.com/npc=582">Old Blanchy</a> in Westfall, for example). No, it has been fun to be actually in the world again, to be a part of it. For too long my WoW world had been Dalaran (Stormwind as of Patch 4.0.1); occasional forays to Icecrown glacier for tournament dailies to make some extra cash; and the summoning stone of whatever raid we were doing that night, which have been relatively few in November (though we did finally go back and kill Yogg Saron, hooray!). Even when I flew around Northrend in search of some extra herbs I really wasn’t part of the world – I was above it, cruising around and only descending upon the appearance of a yellow dot.<br /><br />Don’t get me wrong, I love flying, and tomorrow morning I will make straight for the flight trainer in Stormwind in order to learn ‘Old Weather Flying’. Still, there’s something about riding through the land that makes you feel more a part of it than flying above it. It’s been an enjoyable couple of weeks.<br /><br />I also had an interesting bit of <span style="font-style:italic;">déjà vu</span> the other day, an experience that sort of bookends the beginning and end of <span style="font-style:italic;">Wrath </span>rather nicely. We were heading off to Icecrown Citadel’s five mans to help my wife get her latest 80 some gear, and the Dungeon Finder wouldn’t let her queue for them, due to her poor gear. We had to actually go to the instance entrance itself. Normally from Stormwind I would use my <a href="http://www.wowhead.com/item=46874">Argent Crusader’s Tabard </a>to go to the Tournament and fly over; for some reason I opted to take the boat from Stormwind to Valiance Keep and fly (I’m not sure why – I guess I was in no hurry or my tabard was already on cooldown). I got on the boat to find two of my guildies already there, as well as about 10 or so other people heading off to Northrend. It reminded me of opening day of <span style="font-style:italic;">Wrath</span>, when the boats were jammed and the excitement was high. It’s good to have that excitement back again. Enjoy it while it lasts, and have a great time tomorrow.jeffohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09708074863929831135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2764357882039835411.post-69426624793419119312010-11-30T11:56:00.002-05:002010-11-30T12:18:03.893-05:00You Have *Got* to be Kidding Me!The <span style="font-style:italic;">Cataclysm </span>achievement (soon to be a Feat of Strength) <a href="http://www.wowhead.com/achievement=5518/stood-in-the-fire">Stood in the Fire</a> has caused the World of the World of Warcraft to sink to an all-time low. I really can't comment at this point, so I'll let everyone speak for themselves. These are all actual quotes from <a href="http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/1074088267">this </a>thread on the official forums. I'm leaving out names, you can go and read them all if you're that interested. They are pulled in chronological order.<br /><br /><br /><blockquote>So the best bet to getting this would be to just watch the video linked earlier in the thread, try to figure out his path in wetlands, and sit there for hours?</blockquote><br /><br />In response to this: <br /><br /><blockquote>thats what I have been doing for about 4 hours now</blockquote><br /><br />These posts appeared on November 25, two days after the patch hit the servers. As the week progressed, so did the madness.<br /><br /><blockquote>I wasted all of today sitting around wetlands on Malygos and not a sighting</blockquote><br /><br /><blockquote>I camped Tanaris on Malorne for over 6 hours and never saw DW =(</blockquote><br /><br /><blockquote>9 hours of waiting in the wetlands</blockquote><br /><br />And a fun little exchange:<br /><br /><blockquote>I'm on hour 14...<br />Shoot me...</blockquote><br /><br /><blockquote>when u get to day 4 then call me i'll come shoot u. That's how long it took me.</blockquote><br /><br />Allow me to beat the dead horse some more:<br /><br /><blockquote>Stood in wetlands for about 14 hours yesterday,</blockquote><br /><br /><blockquote>Going on 26 hours of camping one spot in the wetlands. </blockquote><br /><blockquote><br />54 hours in the wetlands since the time I missed him by an inch.</blockquote><br /><br /><blockquote>i was there for almost 48 hours straight.</blockquote><br /><br />Am I the only person in the world who hasn't completely lost his mind?<br /><br />Moving forward, Blizzard is clearly going to have to be careful with achievements and feats of strength. It's clear to that there's still a large segment of the WoW playberbase that has no self control when it comes to the game. Consider this comment from a player very early in the thread:<br /><br /><blockquote>Sigh, this achievement is going to be awful. Wish there wasn't an achievement for it.<br /></blockquote><br /><br />Folks, just because there's an achievement doesn't mean you have to try to get it.jeffohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09708074863929831135noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2764357882039835411.post-4050076867437032882010-11-24T08:42:00.004-05:002010-11-25T07:08:31.223-05:00Wow for WoWI have seen the cinematic before, several times.<br /><br />I watched it when it first came out. And then I watched it several more times with my wife, who was quite taken with it. I didn't go out of my way to watch it over and over again, but when she put it on her computer, I tended to stop what I was doing and take a look.<br /><br />So I'm quite familiar with it, to say the least.<br /><br />And yet, when I clicked 'Play' on my launcher and, instead of the normal log-in I got the big blue Blizzard logo, and the cinematic started -- I felt an undeniable thrill, and I watched it again.<br /><br />I have to hand it to Blizzard, they really know how to do these things right.<br /><br />I'll also pat myself on the back. Watching guild chat and city chat explode with 'WTF? Where are the portals?' over and over again, I was glad that I had moved to Stormwind three weeks ago. <br /><br />And speaking of Stormwind, it's beautiful. Except for the charred parts, of course. And maybe I could do without the super-enormous Varian statue in front of the Keep -- that's a bit over the top.<br /><br />I was delighted to see the boys continuing to fish in the canals, but I am a bit worried. So far I have not seen any signs of Brom and Christoph, and Karlee, Paige and Gil are missing, too. I hope that I've just not run across them yet. The city feels bigger now.<br /><br />'Bigger' also applies to Tirion Fordring's ego, apparently. I love the guy as much as anyone, and respect the fact that he brought Alliance and Horde together to help defeat Arthas, but come on: Not one but TWO giant-sized Tirion statues? Is that really necessary? One is in Hearthglen, the other by Light's Hope chapel. I stopped by his old house along in Eastern Plaguelands and found it abandoned. After seeing the two statues, I have expected to find it restored, with historic marker signs and volunteers in costumes telling us about the life and times of the World's Greatest (living) Paladin.<br /><br />Back in Stormwind I noticed there's a monument of sorts behind the Cathedral that bears a striking resemblance to Uther's tomb, but there's no statue. I wonder who that's for. Also a nice monument to Varian's wife.<br /><br />Anduin got a makeover. I understand three or four years have passed, but it sure looks like more. Anduin must have gone to one of those boarding schools that kids on soap operas go to. They leave as a first grader and come back two years later as a teen. He has a normal voice now, too. Only two days ago he sounded like Charlie Brown.<br /><br />My wife got roasted alive by Deathwing in Wetlands. She had gone afk to watch some TV. I heard a strange sound behind me followed by the 'Augh!' death sound. When I turned around she was dead and her screen was in flames. No achievement of Feat of Strength for it and, unfortunately, I didn't have the pleasure of seeing the mighty dragon fly by.<br /><br />I was disappointed to discover that my Keymaster achievement is no more, and a lot of the keys (Scholomance, Stratholme, the Scarlet key) are just plain gone. I don't know if that means there's a new Keymaster achievement lurking out there somewhere or what, but it was rather disappointing. I finished that achievement in Gnomeragon, where I also got my Knuckle Sandwich and Four weapon skills to 400 achievements by punching leper gnomes to death. Maybe they'll bring it back.<br /><br />Gosh, I sure hope Karlee, Paige and Gil are alright...<br /><br />Why the hell am I writing like Mike Lupica today?<br /><br />Happy Thanksgiving!<br /><br />ADDENDUM: As of this morning I have located the boys still fishing, Christoph and Brom are still sucking down ale at the Pig & Whistle, and Donna has turned the tables on William, wondering if she can throw his Grindgear Gorilla completely across the hole formerly known as 'The Park.' Still no sign of Karlee and Paige Chaddis, and Gil. I was hoping maybe they'd found a nice home back by Stormwind Lake or Olivia's Pond, but I have yet to find them. The search continues....jeffohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09708074863929831135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2764357882039835411.post-143578131212979112010-11-17T09:47:00.002-05:002010-11-17T10:02:57.018-05:00People Watching in StormwindI am gifted with foresight. Shortly after 4.0.1 dropped, I read the writing on the wall and reset my hearthstone to Stormwind, where I am a guest at the <span style="font-weight:bold;">Gilded Rose Tavern</span> (conveniently located in the heart of the Trade District! Great Rates!). There I could wait for the coming Cataclysm and not get stuck in Dalaran when the portals are replaced with profession trainers. My tabard of the Argent Crusade allows me to teleport quickly to the Tournament grounds in Icecrown so that I can still be the first one to the Citadel summoning stone on raid nights, even though everyone else starts out much closer (grumble).<br /><br />I admit it, I am a bit smug about it all. When Phase I of the elemental invasion began, there I was, spitting distance from the Earthen Ring questgiver – not that I would spit on him, mind you, but I could if I wanted to. Not that I wanted to.<br /><br />It’s been a while since I last spent any appreciable time in Stormwind. My largely abandoned (and soon to be deleted to make room for a worgen) bank alt was only online for seconds at a time; in fact, I was on him so infrequently that the Jack O’Lantern head he got last year at Hallows’ End stayed in place for over a month! My Warlock alt has lately been spending more time in Ironforge, which provides slightly more convenient access to Stratholme where he’s been trying to land <a href="http://www.wowhead.com/item=13335">Baron Rivendare’s goat horse</a> (unsuccessfully, though he did get exalted with the Argent Dawn). Even my Paladin tends to go to Ironforge when the Auction House calls, I’m not quite sure why.<br /><br />What I had forgotten in my absence is how rich Stormwind; how much stuff is happening in the background. There’s people everywhere and, unlike Ironforge and Darnassus, they’re actually doing things (I confess I haven’t been to Exodar enough to observe the folks there; Exodar gives me a headache, and I get lost every year during Children’s Week). The things that people say and do make it worth your while to watch them and listen – err, read their chat bubbles – to them while you’re going about your business. Instead of sitting on a mammoth in the center of the Trade District while waiting for the next invasion to begin, I suggest you walk around a bit and find them. Here are some of my favorites:<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Lisa Pierce, Janey Anship and Suzanne</span>. These ladies are frequently found sitting at the foot of the tower or roaming around between the mage quarter and the Cathredral District. They have a wide-ranging discussion on matters of the arcane which includes a <span style="font-style:italic;">Ghostbusters </span>reference. Apparently they’re attempting to concoct a love potion.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Roman, Brandon and Justin</span>. These kids fish in the canals and have some amusing conversations about monsters, orcs, crocolisks and worm guts.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">William and Donna</span> are a little more obnoxious than most. William steals Donna’s dolly and they run all around the city. Energetic little buggers, but a little tiresome.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Aedis Brom and Christoph Faral</span>. You’ve got to love two guys who walk around the city with tankards in hand. These two fast friends and drinking buddies have some hilarious conversations about past military campaigns, war wounds, and the Glustewelt twins. They frequent the trade district before bellying up to the bar in the <span style="font-weight:bold;">Pig and Whistle</span> in Old Town. I happened to notice them for the first time shortly after stalking my current personal favorites:<span style="font-weight:bold;"> Karlee and Paige Chaddis, and Gil.</span> <br /><br />I ran into this trio quite by accident, noticing first Karlee’s eye-catching red and blue ensemble (Yeah, it sounds a little weird, I know). Paige Chaddis and Gil are rather ordinary children: Paige skips along like the little girl in Grizzly Hills that you have to escort to the Westfall Brigade, and Gil looks like my squire. Or the Prince. Gil is the only one who talks, and when he asked ‘Where we going?’, I found myself wondering right along with him, so I followed them. From Old Town, through the Trade District, a quick swing past the Cathedral district and on into the Mage Quarter. All the while, Gil keeps up a running commentary (‘My feet hurt’, ‘Why do we always go the same way?’, ‘Are we there yet?’). Paige and Karlee are silent. Eventually they arrive at their final destination: Ancient Curios, in the mage district, where Karlee asks for everything on the list, ‘especially the last ingredient.’ Hmmm, the last time I looked, the 'last ingredient' that Charys Yserian, the proprietor of the shop, had was either <a href="http://www.wowhead.com/item=37201">Corpse Dust</a> or, more ominously, <a href="http://www.wowhead.com/item=4826">this</a>.<br /><br />By this time, I was quite curious, and my kids were actually wondering what was going on. I had already noticed something odd: Karlee and Paige are both identified as ‘Chaddis’, as in ‘Karlee Chaddis’ and ‘Paige Chaddis.’ Gil is just…Gil. Was he just some random boy tagging along? An illegitimate son? An orphan of Stormwind? And what is that last ingredient? Interestingly enough, in the shop, Karlee talks to Paige – but not to Gil. When business is finished, they walk out and continue their journey, looping around Stormwind and back to Old Town, while Gil's comments and complaints are ignored.<br /><br />Very mysterious, all of it, and something I hope to get to the bottom of someday. Following Karlee, Paige and Gil inspired me to follow Aedis and Christoph. I’ve also started peeking in and following other NPC’s around Stormwind, and have to say I feel a bit like a creepy stalker. I’m sure there’s more of them out there that will provide some amusement, that I’ve never noticed before, and I hope to find them.<br /><br />I do have to say I’m concerned, though. What happens when Deathwing comes along and wrecks half of Stormwind? Will Karlee, Paige and Gil still be able to get to Ancient Curios? Will Janey, Suzanne and Lisa have someplace to discuss love potions? What about Christoph and Aedis? Will they still enjoy drinking, and will they have a new story to add to the repertoire? ‘Deathwing burned me all over my body!’ ‘Hehe, wimp’, perhaps?<br /><br />It’s been fun watching and listening to these folks, one of the nice touches that Blizzard has put into the game. Time may be running out for some of them, however. Here’s hoping Blizzard finds a way to keep them in the game <span style="font-weight:bold;">and </span>entertaining. And maybe throws some more of them into the other cities.jeffohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09708074863929831135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2764357882039835411.post-71761879674670103112010-11-10T14:08:00.003-05:002010-11-10T14:29:19.338-05:00A Week of QQ Will Get a Buff<blockquote>The Paladin tugged off his plate gauntlet, and placed his hand gently on the shoulder of the sobbing priest. <br /><br />‘There, there,’ he soothed comfortingly. ‘You did great. And besides, we all know that meters don’t matter.’<br /><br />The priest looked up, tears streaking her face. She sniffed. ‘They – they don’t?’<br /><br />‘Of course not,’ cooed the Paladin. <br /><br />The priest bowed her head, drying her eyes on the hem of her cloak, cheered by his words. The Paladin caught the eye of another Holydin standing off to the side. He winked. The other Paladin laid a knowing figure along the side of his nose, nodding.<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Of course they matter</span>, said the look they exchanged. <span style="font-style:italic;">We just like to pretend that they don't</span>.<br /></blockquote><br />Almost exactly one month ago the first shots of <span style="font-style:italic;">Cataclysm </span>were fired: Patch 4.0.1 went live, and our world was turned upside down. Apparently, nobody’s world was turned upside down as much as Holy Paladins, and the forum threads reflected this. Quite possibly the very first QQ thread of the patch came from Paladin Yoshimoto, who launched a tirade at 12:27 AM on October 13:<br /><br /><br /><blockquote>I did love my holy pally.(did). After the patch for cata came out and my class was hit by the nuclear bomb of nerf i decided to try it out and i did i used to be good and top charts on healing my tanks. I liked to be the one making the raid possible with my tank healing that had been going on for years and years.<br /></blockquote><br />First, I wasn’t aware that raids weren’t possible without Holy Paladins -- how did anyone survive before I came along? But wait! There’s more:<br /><br /><blockquote>So i went into a raid on my 80 holy pally and guess wat the tanks died. and died. and died. until the grp. well apart saying that they really hit the wrong class the class that made raids possible with large healz that cost a fair amount of mana,<br /></blockquote><br />Apparently the spelling errors were the results of typing in an apoplectic rage; later on in the thread he said:<br /><br /><blockquote>…I'll try my best to keep the raid up, its just the healing meters are depressing me.</blockquote><br /><br />And so we come to the crux of the problem. We can tell everyone that meters don’t matter. We take the high horse and say it all the time, and bash raid leaders when they toss someone for not ‘doing better on the meters’. But when push comes to shove, and the world (of logs) is turned upside down, the truth comes out.<br /><br />This theme was repeated over and over again in the week following Patch 4.0.1. For any post that thoughtfully examined the state of the Paladin (or, shockingly, praised the changes), there were 2, 3 or 4 posts that went along the following lines:<br /><br /><br /><blockquote>I've topped meters on pretty much every fight pre-4.0.1 and now I'm at the bottom doing 3k HPS , straining my brain and my fingers, I'm pretty much full 277…The 'mastery' is completely bugged because the absorb isnt getting registered by my meters…while the rest of the healing team are doing 7-8k hps im sitting down with my 3k HPS feeling like im not even contributing to the raid.</blockquote><br /><br /><blockquote>Just did a voa 25 with my holy pally, there was another holy pally in there. Both of us were bottom of the heal chart as well as top of the over healing chart.</blockquote><br /><br /><blockquote>We have gone from being top healers to bottom healers in one fell swoop.</blockquote><br /><br /><blockquote>Have to spam FoL outside of the HS rotation in order to pull half decent HpS.</blockquote><br /><br /><blockquote>We may of deserved a little nerf, but we got pushed to the bottom of the healing charts. I use to be able to do 30k crits. Now my highest is 24k if I am lucky.</blockquote><br /><br />These are all comments pulled from the Official Healer forum in the week following the launch of 4.0.1. The forums ran deep in Paladin tears, and the Paladin Class forum was even worse, given that it was filled by three specs of Paladins, all crying rivers at the patch and what it wrought. Paladins were ruined. We were the worst of the worst. There were lots of locked threads, and no doubt Ghostcrawler wielded the banhammer quite a bit in that time period.<br /><br />Well, Blizzard was apparently paying some attention, and some of the signal must have cut through the noise, because after one week, intelligent observers noticed a change, and Ghostcrawler confirmed: <a href="http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=27291817542&pageNo=1&sid=1#15">Holy Paladins got a buff</a>. The effect was immediate.<br /><br />In-game, I noticed right away that my heals were hitting harder. My Holy Lights were landing for about 2200 per heal more than patch day, a substantial increase. That type of change went across the board, and with it, I saw my own place on the meters rise. Now, I will say that I believe Paladins did indeed need a buff. The simple truth is, healing just didn’t <span style="font-style:italic;">feel </span>right, and it wasn’t simply a matter of getting used to some new spells, working with an incomplete UI, or dealing with tanks who suddenly seemed to be taking more damage. In truth, I’m OK with the notion that people will have to exist at less than full health, that I won’t be able to carpet bomb the raid with my biggest, most expensive heal, that Beacon is no longer an ability that I can lean on like Tiny Tim and his crutch. But in fact it felt like a struggle at times to even keep people at half health. We’re in farm content, killing bosses that we outgear by a large margin. We shouldn’t be struggling with it, especially when the raid is blowing these things to absolute smithereens (we killed some bosses last night in about half the time it took to kill them on 10/14). But we were struggling, and Blizzard listened.<br /><br />I also noticed a change in the forums following the 10/18 patch. Suddenly, Paladin QQ was now largely coming from priests, including this particular favorite (that I believe drew a ban from the mighty crabman):<br /><br /><blockquote><a href="http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=27300879028&sid=1">Proposed new Paladin ability: <br />Whining Wave = The collective force of the Paladin community's complaining smashes into your enemy knocking him back 60 yards and forcing him to throw buffs at you in a vain attempt to make it stop. Player force emotes /beg and screams, "Torment me no more!"</a></blockquote><br /><br />The good news about this change is that now the intelligent Paladin posters, the ones that can analyze what we need and talk about it rationally, now have the ability to do so, without being drowned out by posters like <a href="http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=27303220119&sid=1">Snakux</a>. We can focus now on how we’re going to fit into <span style="font-weight:bold;">Catacontent</span> when it comes out, and discuss whether or not you should reforge your crit into mastery or haste. As Kurn put it in her blog <blockquote> <a href="http://kurn.apotheosis-now.com/?p=1483">it allows me to worry less about whether or not I CAN keep a target up, which lets me acclimate to the new ways of keeping my target up.</a></blockquote> And that’s a Good Thing. <br /><br />However, I can’t help but wonder about the Paladin community, and healers in general. Are we getting so competitive that we’ll be happy with anything, so long as it puts as at the top of the charts? What are we healing for? And if meters truly don’t matter, why do so many people get so upset when they find themselves at the bottom? Gutbukit, a level 1 warrior, may have had the most insightful post in Yoshimoto’s thread:<br /> <br /><blockquote>Holy paladins are fine, nothing wrong with them other than being dead last on healing meters.</blockquote><br /><br />In the end, all that matters is that we have fun and down content. The meters don't matter. Or is that just what we tell people so they'll feel better?jeffohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09708074863929831135noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2764357882039835411.post-11296065983472992382010-11-02T11:29:00.002-04:002010-11-02T11:59:21.780-04:00Wrath of the Lich King: Hits and MissesI'm always thrilled when I see a new post from Rohan. Blessing of Kings was the first WoW blog I ever read, back when I was looking for some good Holy Paladin information. Today, Rohan asked ‘<a href="http://blessingofkings.blogspot.com/2010/11/how-was-your-wrath.html">How was your <span style="font-style:italic;">Wrath</span>?</a>’ I was going to answer her over there, but it would take up too much space. And I was due for another post, anyway, so here we go, with my own personal <span style="font-weight:bold;">Hits and Misses</span>. <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Hit: The Scourge Invasion</span><br /><br />Much as we started playing <span style="font-style:italic;">Cataclysm <span style="font-weight:bold;"></span></span>about three weeks ago, <span style="font-style:italic;">Wrath<span style="font-weight:bold;"></span></span> began around October 15, 2008 with patch 3.0.2. New talents, revamped specs, achievements – and major nerfs to BC content. The first patch effectively killed my interest in raiding; content that was still challenging for us as a guild became trivial after the patch. And so I began exploring, and playing with my new abilities. <br /><br />The real start to <span style="font-weight:bold;">Wrath<span style="font-style:italic;"></span></span> began with a bang with the arrival of mysterious crates that touched off the highly-controversial<a href="http://wow.joystiq.com/2008/10/22/zombies-in-azeroth-a-night-of-terror/"> Scourge invasio</a>n. The ensuing ghoul-fest was the highlight of the pre-<span style="font-weight:bold;">Wrath <span style="font-style:italic;"></span></span>period for me: Cleansing infected souls (at first by request only. Later I cleansed anyone whether they asked for it or not), killing those that transformed, and attempting to eat others when I found myself zombified. After a few days I decided to do my best to stay ‘clean’ and did not deliberately try to transform. All this while running the Hallows’ End quests.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;"><a href="http://wow.joystiq.com/2008/10/27/the-undead-plague-ends-today/">Miss: The End of the Scourge Invasion</a></span><br /><br />The simple truth was, as much as I loved the event, a lot more people hated it even more, and were very vocal about it. Blizzard has said they didn’t end the event early, but it sure felt that way to me. Once the cure for the plague was found, the remainder of the pre-expansion period was anti-climatic. I did globetrot in pursuit of Scourge necropoleis, or ziggurats, or whatever they were, but that scene was far less fun to me than the chaos of the ghoul invasion.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Hit: Leveling</span><br /><br />As much as I enjoyed <span style="font-style:italic;">Wrath <span style="font-weight:bold;"></span></span>leveling and how it was done, it really wasn’t until I recently started pursuing (albeit halfheartedly) Loremaster that I truly appreciated how greatly Blizzard improved things for <span style="font-style:italic;">Wrath<span style="font-weight:bold;"></span></span>. Quest hubs are better designed – I think the pinnacle may be Zul’Drak in terms of hub design. And the stories – on the whole it was wonderfully done. I’m not a role player or a so-called lore nerd, but story is important to me. I read quest text, I watch cut scenes, I like to know what’s going on and why I’m doing it. There was a feeling of urgency about much of the questing, especially early on, and I felt like I was part of something bigger. <br /><br />Drop rates for quest items improved (for an understanding of how truly bad old drop rates could be, go quest in the Blasted Lands before it changes), the Lich King was everywhere, and there were some epic questlines involving the major players in the game: Tirion, Bolvar, Thrall, Saurfang. Yes, there were some sidetracking (*<span style="font-style:italic;">cough</span>*Nesingwary*<span style="font-style:italic;">cough</span>*), but as a whole there was a tight theme running throughout.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Hit: Vehicle quests/combat</span><br /><br />Ride an elephant and trample the bad guys! Drive a siege engine around Wintergarde Keep! Fire Chain guns to let the good guys get away! Wrath gave us vehicles up the wazoo, and it mostly worked. Some were a little clumsy to work, others nice and easy. By and large vehicles were fun, a nice diversion to smashing with maces and firing spells. But…<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Miss: Eye of Eternity</span><br /><br />In my view EoE misfired because of the design that had you fighting as yourself for the first six or seven minutes before mounting up and fighting as a dragon. With a completely different set of abilities. In an environment that was hard to ‘see’ in (I’ll note that I have some issues with depth perception in-game. Vile Spirits on LK are tough for me, too). I actually love phase 2 of that fight, where you’re frantically running around trying to stay in anti-magic bubbles while trying to knock floating blood elves out of the air. I don’t mind vehicle fights in general, and Blizz got it right for Ulduar and Oculus, where you can get used to your vehicles before fighting the boss. It was not well-executed for Malygos. Little wonder that we pretty much stopped going after we killed him for the first time.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Miss: The Argent Tournament and ToC</span><br /><br />I’ll admit that I ground my way up to exalted with the five families of the Alliance and earned my Argent Crusader title, tabard and mounted squire. I’ll admit that I made a lot of gold doing so, and that the heroic ToC 5 man was a challenge on release. I’ll admit that I liked fighting Jaraxxus, the Twins, and Anub’arak. I can admit these things.<br /><br />On the whole the Argent Tournament was a miss. The raid itself, while providing some challenge, was dull and lifeless. I like trash, I like movement in my raids, I like feeling like I’m going somewhere. On top of that, the whole tournament felt like a terrible diversion. Shouldn’t we have had this tournament before embarking to Northrend? The whole expansion has been about fighting Arthas, hurry, hurry, hurry. Now we’re taking a break for the Olympics? Sorry, didn’t work for me.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Hit: Ulduar, OS, Naxx</span><br /><br />Some say Naxx was too easy. It sure kicked our butt initially. I found the size of both Ulduar and Naxx to be appropriately epic. As someone who had only been in Naxx once (and that was the night before 3.0 dropped) the fights were fresh for me. And I love fighting undead. <br /><br />Ulduar just felt epic all the way. It looked great, there was lots to do, and a lot of interesting fights. I think Blizzard scored big-time on this one.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Hit: Icecrown Citadel</span><br /><br />I think Blizzard really hit the mark well here. The instance is big, with plenty of trash (although you get to fight three bosses – LDW, Gunship, and Saurfang – with only three trashpacks in between) and some really interesting and entertaining fights. The encounters really showcase a breadth of skills that required good teamwork and communication from the raid. You might be able to crank out the dps and healing required to down Festergut, and then find yourself utterly unable to master dodging slime spray on Rotface. Extremely well done on Blizzard’s part.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Hit: The Strength of Wrynn/Song of Hellscream</span><br /><br /><a href="http://lkingformore.blogspot.com/2010/05/buffs-nerfs-why-no-ones-griping-about.html">I’ve covered this one before</a>. I think this was a very elegant way for Blizzard to allow guilds like mine to progress without straight-up nerfing. Yes, while increasing damage output equates to a nerf of the boss’s health, it’s not the same as increasing the cooldown on Defile, for example. There is a bit of a miss in here, though; as the buff increased, it did encourage sloppy play. At lower buff levels you still had to get out of Death and Decay. At 30%? Not so much.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Hit: Gunship</span><br /><br />As much as this was decried as ‘Lootship’ right from the get-go, I found this one to be amazingly taxing on my supposedly limitless mana pool. This fight was so different from the others, and a lot of fun. And now I can’t listen to Muradin without thinking of this gem of a video:<br /><br /><iframe title="YouTube video player" class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="560" height="345" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/CX0hvBZ0epM?rel=0" frameborder="0"></iframe><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Miss: Gear inflation</span><br /><br />Simply put, I feel that our gear escalated far too fast. At the risk of trotting out this old BC argument again, it felt like BC heroics remained a challenge far longer than <span style="font-style:italic;">Wrath </span>heroics. It could be that I never geared up far enough in BC (attaining T4/5/BoJ levels) to trivialize the heroics, but even the ‘easy’ BC heroics like Ramparts and Slave Pens could put a big hurt on you if you weren’t careful. By the time we had cleared Naxxramas for the first time pretty much all the on-release heroics were easy. <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Hit and Miss: Achievements</span><br /><br />Yes, there’s something fun about falling off a zeppelin, surviving, and seeing an ‘<a href="http://www.wowhead.com/achievement=964/going-down">achievement</a>’ pop up. Or riding around the world and trying to get into the enemy’s capital city for a world explorer title. Yet achievements have a downside. First it was ‘LFM <insert dungeon here> link achievement’. While I understand group leaders want to be successful, this sort of thinking led to the exclusion of capable players from groups. Next, I think that Achievements encourage a more selfish playstyle, which is not something you want in a group game. Fun overall, but sometimes annoying.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Miss: Emblem of What?</span><br /><br />Back in Burning Crusade, we had <a href="http://www.wowhead.com/item=29434">Badges of Justice</a>. In <span style="font-style:italic;">Wrath </span>we’ve had Emblems of Valor, Heroism, Triumph, Conquest and Frost. I think Blizzard maybe even confused themselves with this one. Instead of having different badges for each level of gear, I think it would have been better to stick with one type of badge, have less gear available for those badges, and simply make higher-level gear more expensive.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Hit: The Lich King</span><br /><br />What a great fight. And what a feeling to beat him. I hope the <span style="font-weight:bold;">Deathwing</span> fight is as good.<br /><br />On the whole, <span style="font-style:italic;">Wrath <span style="font-weight:bold;"></span></span>was a big hit for me. I loved it on the overall. I had a blast. I know I’m missing some things from this list, but it’s already too long and I’ve taken too much time to write this. What about you? What are your hits and misses from <span style="font-weight:bold;">Wrath<span style="font-style:italic;"></span></span>?jeffohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09708074863929831135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2764357882039835411.post-46529529754782691632010-10-12T14:18:00.003-04:002010-10-12T14:52:51.483-04:00Follow the Gourd!Fans of Monty Python may recognize the title from <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079470/">Monty Python’s Life of Brian</a></span>. As a quick summary, Brian is mistakenly thought to be the messiah. In this scene he’s being chased by his followers, one of whom holds aloft a gourd that Brian had held earlier. As he’s running, one of his sandals flies off his feet. With the crowd hot on his heels, Brian is forced to abandon the sandal, and runs on. The shoe is held up: “Follow the shoe!” they exclaim. Soon most of the followers are running around with one shoe held up in the air (or tied to the end of a stick), looking fairly ridiculous.<br /><br />In the world of the World of Warcraft there is a cult that is every bit as rabid as the followers of the shoe. They stay quiet and out of sight most of the time; sometimes there’s not a peeop out of them for weeks or even months; sooner or later, they come back. They always do. You’ll be minding your own business in one of the cities when they appear, unbidden. It is the cult of [Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker].<br /><br />The Thunderfury cult had been pretty much underground on my server for quite some time, until last week. I’ve seen them pop up several times in the last week, probably due to boredom. With 4.0.1 being deployed even as I type this, it’s likely that the Thunderfury cult will be too busy relearning the game (and asking ‘Why can’t I roll a Worgen?’) to link the legendary for some time. But when they do, I’ll be ready for them. And I think I’ve got help in toppling the legend.<br /><br />It started simply enough. Following a raid I found myself in Ironforge, when someone started it:<br /><br />[<a href="http://www.wowhead.com/item=19019">Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker</a>]<br /><br />[<a href="http://www.wowhead.com/item=19019">Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker</a>]?<br /><br />[<a href="http://www.wowhead.com/item=19019">Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker</a>]!<br /><br />Did you say [<a href="http://www.wowhead.com/item=19019">Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker</a>]]?<br /><br />I rolled my eyes at first, but then realized I had something in my bags…something that had somehow hidden amongst the flasks and extra trinkets and fish feasts and, in so doing, had avoided getting sold off along with the detritus of low-level drops. I looked, and there it was: <a href="http://www.wowhead.com/item=33426">Chipped Timber Axe</a>.<br /><br />Having discovered this marvelous weapon in my bags, I was ready. When the next fan boi posted ‘I think he said [<a href="http://www.wowhead.com/item=19019">Thunderfury</a>]’ I was there:<br /><br />[Me]: No, he said [<a href="http://www.wowhead.com/item=33426">Chipped Timber Axe</a>]. (and yes, I really do use commas, periods and capitals in-game).<br /><br />I was a bit disappointed that first time. The only acknowledgement I got from anyone was one of my guildies, who still happened to be in vent with me. He got a kick out of it.<br /><br />A few days later, it happened again. The Chipped Timber Axe, now safe from vending, was ready at the first sign of Thunderfury spam. And this time, it was noticed.<br /><br />[Randomguy]: [<a href="http://www.wowhead.com/item=19019">Thunderfury</a>]!<br />[Me]: [<a href="http://www.wowhead.com/item=33426">Chipped Timber Axe</a>]<br />[Another random guy]: I’ll have the [<a href="http://www.wowhead.com/item=33426">Chipped Timber Axe</a>].<br /><br />There’s also my guildie, who linked [<a href="http://www.wowhead.com/item=25402">The Stoppable Force</a>] (an excellent choice, by the way, and one of my favorites), prefers the [<a href="http://www.wowhead.com/item=33426">Chipped Timber Axe</a>] and is going to join my crusade against [Thunderfury] spam. And with that, I think it’s entirely appropriate to paraphrase Arlo Guthrie and part of his epic <span style="font-style:italic;">Alice’s Restaurant</span>:<br /><br /><blockquote>You know, if<br />one person, just one person does it they may think he's really sick and<br />they won't take him. And if two people, two people do it, in harmony,<br />they may think they're both faggots and they won't take either of them.<br />And three people do it, three, can you imagine, three people linking [<a href="http://www.wowhead.com/item=33426">Chipped Timber Axe</a>]. They may think it's an<br />organization. And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day,I said<br />fifty people a day linking <a href="http://www.wowhead.com/item=33426">Chipped Timber Axe</a>. And friends they may thinks it's a movement.<br /><br />And that's what it is , the <span style="font-weight:bold;">Chipped Timber Axe Movement</span>, and<br />all you got to do to join is link [<a href="http://www.wowhead.com/item=33426">Chipped Timber Axe</a>] the next time someone says [<a href="http://www.wowhead.com/item=19019">Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker</a>]</blockquote><br /><br />Cast off the shoes! Follow the gourd!<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/Ym-k5viJ7tA?fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Ym-k5viJ7tA?fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>jeffohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09708074863929831135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2764357882039835411.post-87140908469469517262010-10-07T09:24:00.004-04:002010-10-07T09:54:04.181-04:00Blogging John MalkovichMalkovich malkovich malkovich, malkovich malkovich malkovich <a href="http://www.pinkpigtailinn.com/2010/10/timeout.html">Malkovich</a> malkovich; malkovich <a href="http://tobolds.blogspot.com/2010/10/blog-changes.html">Malkovich </a> malkovich. Malkovich malkovich <a href="http://trollshaman.blogspot.com/2010/10/negativity-in-blogosphere.html">Malkovich </a> malkovich, <a href="http://tobolds.blogspot.com/2010/10/i-hate-you-all.html">Malkovich </a> malkovich malkovich malkovich. Malkovich malkovich malkovich malkovich<a href="http://tobolds.blogspot.com/2010/09/thread-for-personal-criticism.html">Malkovich </a>.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Malkovich, malkovich malkovich malkovich malkovich malkovich malkovich?</span> Malkovich malkovich malkovich malkovich malkovich (malkovich <a href="http://greedygoblin.blogspot.com/2010/09/sanity-competence-and-not-being-moron.html">Malkovich</a> malkovich malkovich malkovich). Malkovich malkovich.<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/OIUWGQMOVJ4?fs=1&hl=en_US&start=44"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/OIUWGQMOVJ4?fs=1&hl=en_US&start=44" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>jeffohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09708074863929831135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2764357882039835411.post-46113855330507746892010-09-28T12:32:00.009-04:002010-09-28T13:17:59.665-04:00What's in a Name, revisitedI’m not good-looking like Indiana Jones. I don’t swashbuckler my way across all seven continents, hitch rides on U-boats, or solve the mysteries of the past. I can’t use a whip to swing across a gaping chasm or knock a pistol out of a bad guys’ hand. And I don’t look good in a fedora.<br /><br />I do, however, have one thing in common with Indiana Jones:<br /><br /><object width="420" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/1XuL4HHIyic?fs=1&hl=en_US&start=16"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/1XuL4HHIyic?fs=1&hl=en_US&start=16" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="420" height="355"></embed></object><br /><br />For the record, I don’t hate Nazis because of personal loss or injury. I can’t count anyone in my family who died in concentration camps. I had relatives (uncles and great uncles) who fought in the war – an uncle who flew a P-38 in Europe, two uncles who were in the Navy – but none that died in it. One friend’s father came back from the Battle of the Bulge seriously messed up, while another came back and picked up as if nothing was wrong. So it’s not personal in that sense. I hate what the Nazis – past and present – stand for, and I find it reprehensible when I see Nazis parading around on TV, baring swastika tattoos, carrying flags and spouting hatred. When it comes down to it, I guess you could say that I hate hatred (not just Nazis – there’s plenty of hate groups out there to hate). Rather ironic, I suppose.<br /><br />What does this have to do with WoW?<br /><br />Last week my wife and two friends jumped into the dungeon finder. Tank/healer combination = instant queue and she found herself in a group with…Hitler. She had to heal Hitler. She was not happy about it, she did not like it, and I know she debated whether to stay or not. I suggested she not heal him, and not rez him when he died (which he did, once). As far as I know, Hitler was not Sieg, Heil!-ing around Gundrak, nor spouting off any kind of Nazi crap. It was probably a typical, silent LFD run, and she was quite happy when it was over.<br /><br />It made me wonder about this guy, and I tried to find him, so I started searching the armory, and the results were surprising. Did you know…<br /><br />There are 3 arena teams and one guild named ‘Hitler’ (actually, one is named HITLER – guess they felt the need to shout). No players on the armory (US) currently have the name Hitler. I haven’t tried naming a character ‘Hitler’. I wonder if I could.<br /><br />So I decided to start playing with special characters. There are 8 Hitlërs, 6 Hìtlers, 3 Hítlers, 11 Hîtlers, 9 Hìtlêrs. The big winner was Hïtler, with 12 entries. Somehow I never found the one that my wife ran with; I guess I didn’t hit the right combination of special characters. <br /><br />So right off the bat we have 49 assholes in the World of the World of Warcraft.<br /><br />But now my curiosity was piqued, and I decided to start searching for other big Nazis in the WoW-niverse. I came up with 64 Himmlers. For those of you who aren’t familiar with him, Himmler was in charge of the SS (more on that in a bit), While poking around some of the guilds associated with one of the Himmlers, I came across a toon named Göring. There were 20 Görings, and 60 Goerings. Herman Göring (frequently spelled Goering in history books) was commander of the German Air Force and was designated as Hitler’s successor by Hitler himself in 1941 (In fact, Göring likely would have taken power in 1945 while Hitler was trapped in his bunker in Berlin if not for the subterfuge of Martin Borman. The tricky Borman outmaneuvered Göring, resulting in Göring being kicked out of the Nazi party). He profited greatly by plundering the wealth of conquered nations and German Jews who were stripped of their possessions. Göring was executed for war crimes.<br /><br />The guild that I found Himmler and Göring in together was called Der Deutschen Orden, on Cho’gall. And speaking of guilds, how about this? I came across a guild called Nazì Storm Troopers on Gurubashi. Göring was the GM. I guess he managed to come to power after all.<br /><br />Speaking of guilds, I found a whole lot of Nazi-themed guild out there. There are 18 guilds named Totenkopf (Death’s Head, in German). That was the name of the SS division who’s founding member served as Inspector General of Concentration Camps. The original cadre of the division was made up of camp guards (to be totally fair, this was before they became extermination camps, but the tradition of brutality and dehumanization began on their watch), and SS Totenkopf committed one of the first war crimes on the Western front, when they gunned down 97 British POWs in France in May of 1940. No coincidence, by the way, that most of the Totenkopf guilds sport a skull and crossbones on their tabards according to my informal survey.<br /><br />There are 126 characters named Totenkopf. One of them sits in a guild all by himself: Der Schutzstaffel. Do you know what Der Schutzstaffel is? It’s the SS, gang. The SS was responsible for overseeing concentration and extermination camps, the secret police, and security in Nazi Germany. The SS also administered units known as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einsatzgruppen">‘Einsatzgruppen’</a>, ad hoc units that were responsible for the massacres of thousands, particularly in Poland and the Soviet Union. There are four guilds that carry this tag. Feeling queasy yet?<br /><br />Do I believe that there are hundreds or thousands of Nazis running around World of Warcraft? Probably not in the thousands, but certainly plenty. At least in the United States hate group activity is on the rise, which includes racist skinheads and neo-Nazis, among others. With 11 million players world-wide you’d be naïve to think at least some of those people aren’t Nazis or similar. Who knows, I might even have one or two in my guild. IF so, they’ve kept their nasty thoughts to themselves. <br /><br />At the same time, I don’t believe that most of these people, even with names like Hìtler and Göring, and guild names like Totenkopf and The SS (7 guilds, by the way) are Nazis. Some of them, yes. I don’t believe it’s any accident that one of the Hïtlers is in a guild called Brotherhood of Hatred with an asshole named Coontakinta. This name is a racist spoof on the name Kunta Kinte, who is a central character in Alex Haley’s ‘Roots’, a book that chronicles the lives of several generations of slave in the American South.<br /><br />No, <span style="font-weight:bold;">I think that most of the 200 or so Nazi types I found in this search are simply guilty of stupidity, ignorance and, perhaps most of all, insensitivity. It’s a bit different than the stupidity, ignorance and insensitivity displayed by real Nazis.</span> Some of these folks may just be undereducated: They may know who Hitler is, and shy away from that name, but do they know Göring or Himmler? Maybe it’s a family name, or something that sounded cool, I don’t know. I suspect that most of the WoW-Nazis are likely kids doing some of the silly stuff that kids do – trying to be cool, thinking that a guild tag like ‘Blitzkrieger’, ‘The Panzer Korp’ or even ‘Totenkopf’ looks bad-ass. They’re really not all that different than I was when, in ninth grade or so, I sang <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Valby">John Valby</a> songs with my friends on the school bus going home. A lot of things I did back then make me cringe when I think about it; I certainly never thought that I might be hurting anyone by singing ‘Bang, Bang, Lulu’ or ‘The EatBite Song’.<br /><br />I grew out of that stage, without getting thrown off the bus, suspended from school, or having my ass kicked. In my informal survey, I see some encouraging signs. Most of the blatantly Nazi-named players are low-level and show very limited activity (e.g., Totenkopf in Der Schutzstaffel shows his last activity of December, 2008). A lot of the toons that come up on name searches can’t be found, and many of the guilds are empty shells. I’ll also add that most people show good sense and steer away from these players. Most guild with a Hitler have 10 members or less, and the 2 Der Schutzstaffel guilds have three players between them. A large number of these toons are unguilded. You’re known by the company you keep, and it seems most people don’t want to be known in this manner.<br /><br />At least there’s hope for the misinformed, undereducated and the offensive for offensive’s sake. <span style="font-weight:bold;">Misinformation and undereducated can be corrected.</span> The deliberately offensive can grow out of it, like I did. I don’t know how much hope there is for the hopefully few who really believe in Hitler and the shit that he stood for. I don’t like seeing it in the real world, and I don’t like seeing it in the game world.jeffohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09708074863929831135noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2764357882039835411.post-49728598301584811222010-09-21T13:59:00.003-04:002010-09-21T14:20:08.710-04:00Time for FunOne of the bosses I loved to hate back in the Burning Crusade era was Blackheart the Inciter, second boss in Shadow Labyrinth. One thing I loved about him was that he was an ogre, and ogres are always so good-natured when they decide to kill you that it's almost charming. I also hated him because he was, at the time, damn hard to kill, in what was one of the most annoying and difficult instances of its day.<br /><br />Blackheart has a little ability that he casts once each minute called 'Incite Chaos'. When he casts this you lose all control of your character and run around madly for 15 seconds, beating on your party members, healing, blowing cooldowns, all while Blackheart stands in the room <a href="http://www.wowhead.com/npc=18667/blackheart-the-inciter#screenshots:id=22899">laughing his ass off at you</a>. You then spend the next forty seconds trying to undo the damage you did to each other while under his control, hoping you can mange to damage him in those forty seconds before the next time he starts Incite Chaos, with his signature call: 'Time for Fun!'<br /><br />‘Fun’ has been getting quite a workout in a number of WoW-related places lately, particularly as it relates to the healing game. A poster by the name of Carbonic started a thread on <a href="http://plusheal.com/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=6915&start=40">Plus Heal that expressed concern about healing</a> -- especially the changes coming down the pike for Holy Paladins. This discussion spilled into a second thread in which Carbonic asked ‘is it fun?’ And this also spilled further into <a href="http://kurn.apotheosis-now.com/?p=1403">Kurn’s Corner</a> a few days later. Before we get into that, let’s take a look at the healing game in <span style="font-style:italic;">Wrath </span>for just a second.<br /><br />For most of <span style="font-style:italic;">Wrath </span>(i.e., the part we don’t outgear) healing has been like a white-knuckled ride on an amusement park thrill ride. We basically need to cast as much as we can, almost constantly using our biggest heals, knowing that a single missed GCD can cause a wipe. I shudder to think of the number of times I lost a tank because I tossed what I thought was a spare Flash of Light or even Holy Shock on someone not named 'tank' or 'off-tank', or because I let Beacon fall off during the ‘now we run around and scream a lot’ phase. At this point nobody’s really sure whether Big Boss Damage came before Bottomless Mana Pools or vice versa, and it doesn’t really matter. The two have been chasing each other around and around, getting bigger and bigger with each tier. <br /><br />If you look at people on a roller coater, most of them don’t actually look like they’re having fun, do they? They look and sound pretty damn terrified, in fact. The fun of a roller coaster is often found when it stops, and everyone gets off on wobbly legs, laughing – with more than a touch of hysteria – and staggering off to the next ride. <span style="font-weight:bold;">THAT’S</span> when they talk about how fun it is. I think this applies pretty well to healing in a raid, except that much of the terror comes from not wanting to let your raid team down.<br /><br />Is it fun? Ghostcrawler and the Blizzard development team don’t seem to think so. Our favorite crab spends a lot of his time on the forums talking about fun, and what he thinks fun is. I wish I had some direct quotes to throw in here, as this would give me a bit more credibility, but here’s where I paraphrase what I’ve learned from GC over the last two years of his forum involvement:<br /><br /><blockquote>- Passive abilities are not fun. So, things like Divine Intellect and Holy Guidance are not really fun. We’ve seen a lot of passives swept away in the Cataclysm trees.<br />- Stacking one stat to the exclusion of all others is not fun. Holy Paladins loading on Intellect gems, this is aimed right at you.<br />- Mindlessly spamming one spell almost exclusively -- whether it’s because you can or because you have to – is not fun. <span style="font-style:italic;">Wrath </span>for Paladins has been a bit of both at times.</blockquote><br /><br />The last two items in particular relate to choice. Ghostcrawler wants us to have to choose more than we do now. Most Holy Paladins in <span style="font-style:italic;">Wrath </span>will choose to stack up on Intellect; many will choose to spam one spell, be it Holy Light or Flash of Light, as a playstyle (I personally stack Int, but I’ve always been a multi-spell guy). This philosophy is leading to the following changes in Cataclysm healing:<br /><blockquote><br />- Mana will matter, as will its management.<br />- Damage will continue to be big, but will be less spiky<br />- All healers will have more spells to use but, given the first two points, will need to choose heals more carefully than we’ve had to in Wrath.<br />- Due to the first two items on the list, people will have to get used to life with an only partly-full health bar.</blockquote><br /><br />‘Choice is fun’ says Ghostcrawler. So we have reforging to allow us to screw around a bit with our gear to get it to work ‘just so’. Holy Paladins will essentially have four direct, single-target heals available at any given time: two big hitters that cost a metric ton of mana, and two lightweights that are pretty cheap but borderline ineffective. I believe this is roughly similar to what other healers are getting.<br /><br />The problem for this vision is that <span style="font-style:italic;">Wrath </span>has taught many of us to be roller coaster riding adrenaline junkies. Telling people that the pace of healing is going to be slower, that our heals are going to be smaller (right now on the PTR this is definitely the case) is a bitter pill for many to swallow. It doesn’t jibe with their sense of fun. Consider Carbonic (remember him from the first paragraph?) and what he had to say:<br /><br /><blockquote>[DPS and tanks] have enough health that you as a healer make much less of a difference. <br /><br />Lets face facts, someone that has little chance of death for a healer is not very nerve racking.<br /><br />Fun is not being weak and slow.<br /><br />I play games to feel heroic or super or god like. If I wanted to feel normal I would play SIMS.<br /><br />I want to make a difference everytime I cast a spell and feel like it.</blockquote><br /><br />Despite his claims elsewhere in that thread to the contrary, I think it’s pretty clear that Carbonic <span style="font-weight:bold;">WANTS </span>to be overpowered. And why not? It’s fun to be OP once in a while. Who doesn’t like to pull all of Scarlet Monastery once in a while, or lay waste to the murloc village on the edge of Eastvale Logging Camp (those little bastards made my life miserable at level 9! DIE!)? As a Paladin healer, I often feel overpowered. Yet at the same time, bludgeoning every encounter with a sledgehammer can be unsatisfying. It might be time for finesse.<br /><br />The new healing model often draws comparisons to vanilla or BC era healing. What I remember about 25 man healing in BC was the often very complicated instructions for healers (‘these guys are on the tanks’, ‘heal your group’, ‘so and so is on melee’); I can’t remember the last time I got anything more complicated than ‘Paladins work out your Beacon targets, Disco priest shield, everyone else is on raid.’ And it works! Is it fun? Carbonic doesn’t think so. He wants to heal, dammit! He doesn’t want to talk about it, or have to think about it:<br /><br /><blockquote>My idea of fun is fast paced with little time to think<br />I really hated Vanilla healing, it was like chess. You talked for more time doing nothing but planning[sic]</blockquote><br /><br />In the end, there’s no way for the developers to win, and I don't envy Ghostcrawler. What’s fun for Carbonic is not necessarily fun for me, or you. I’ve greatly enjoyed <span style="font-style:italic;">Wrath </span>healing for the most part (and I really don’t like roller coasters in general!), yet I also look forward to a return to the more strategic, team-oriented style that the changes might force us to adopt (one thing I think <span style="font-style:italic;">Wrath </span>has done is erode the team ideal to a great extent). As much as I will be sad to be knocked off the throne of King of the Tank Healers, I think the changes will breathe new life into the class, the role, and the game as a whole. Unless Blizzard has missed the mark completely, it should be fun learning to play a Paladin all over again. And really, isn’t that what it’s all about?jeffohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09708074863929831135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2764357882039835411.post-75826524346617459632010-09-10T12:12:00.003-04:002010-09-10T13:14:08.794-04:00What’s in YOUR Wallet?(Author’s note: this is part of the Blog Azeroth <a href="http://www.blogazeroth.com/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=2512">‘Shared Topic’</a> for the week of September 6-12. I expect to complete the ‘Confidence Game’ series next week)<br /><br />The life of a hoarder is a continual balance of good news, bad news. The bad news for hoarders is that you find yourself running out of space as the continued build-up of things from your life eats away at open space and storage. It's especially bad for disorganized hoarders. We have to deal with a mess and general clutter, and a decreasing ability to find things when you need them (on the other hand, you can Amaze your Friends and Baffle your Enemies when you somehow, someway, pull that critical piece of paper out from underneath a mountain of paper, files and unopened mail. It’s quite fun, really.). The positive side for a hoarder is coming across something from the great past that triggers happy memories of an event and days gone by.<br /><br />I can imagine my Paladin sitting in his vault in Ironforge, looking around in equal parts disgust and resignation at the piles of junk accumulated over 80 levels, countless dungeons and raids, and thousands of quests in the last 2-1/2 years. Since the Lich King is finally dead, this would seem to be a perfect time to clear the vault, right? And so he starts to sort things out into piles. Perhaps there are two piles initially. The 'Serves a current purpose' pile includes things like the infinite dust and cosmic essences, herbs and eternals, gems and the like. They serve a current purpose, and are kept. The rest of it goes in a 'Serves no current purpose' pile. As he sorts through that pile, maybe he subdivides them something like this:<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Things That Aren’t Going Away…Ever</span><br /><br />There are a few things that immediately get put into this box. He will <span style="font-weight:bold;">not </span>throw them away, or donate them to charity (maybe for display in a hometown museum, like Bilbo’s things went to Michel Delving). They will not be disenchanted or vendored, no matter what.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.wowhead.com/item=6953"><span style="font-weight:bold;">Verigan’s Fis</span>t</a>. I think every Paladin with any sense of lore or sentimentality likely still has this. This 2-handed mace is the end result of <a href="http://www.wowhead.com/quest=1793">the first epic questline in a Paladin’s life</a> gained at level 20. For better or worse (worse, in my opinion) Blizzard has moved away from Class quests. This particular questline took you all across the world, from Blackfathom Deeps (which you didn’t actually have to go into), to Shadowfang Keep and Deadmines, with side trips to Loch Modan. By far my favorite part of the quest (besides actually having Jordan Stillwell hand me my completed mace) was defending <a href="http://www.wowhead.com/npc=6182">Daphne Stillwell</a> from waves of Defias thugs that were trying to drive her out of her little patch of ground in the remotest of remote areas in Westfall (must have been because it was so close to the exit of Deadmines). It was a source of pride for me to defend the lady’s honor, though I have to say she kicked butt. If Blizzard ever decides to implement player housing (and I have to say, I really can’t understand why so many people really seem to want this so badly; whatever floats your boat), this item would be hung over the mantelpiece.<br /><br />Verigan’s Fist at least got some use. The next item in my Paladin's 'Keep Forever' box is one that has never been used, as it is consumed on use. Of course I’m talking about that other famed Class item, the <a href="http://www.wowhead.com/item=20620"><span style="font-weight:bold;">Holy Mightstone</span></a>. This nifty little trinket was the result of the level 50 Class quest – the one that sent you to Sunken Temple. As I recall I had to run ST a second time because I missed one of the <a href="http://www.wowhead.com/item=20608">voodoo feathers</a> the first time through. Oy. As far as epic questlines, this one wasn’t on a par with the Verigan’s Fist chain OR the Charger quest, but look again at that trinket: 300 attack power, 400 spellpower against undead – for 10 minutes! Even by today’s standards, that’s a pretty fine buff.<br /><br />The <span style="font-weight:bold;">Mightstone</span> is unused because I could never quite figure out where or when I wanted to use it. It might have come in handy against Araj the Summoner, but we got a special item for fighting him. Maybe Scholo or Strat, or Naxx 40 when it was endgame. It could have come in handy against Arthas, many players promised to save it for him, but I doubt anyone actually used it. It’s just too cool to throw out, so it will also get displayed on the mantle. Until that little brat <a href="http://www.wowhead.com/npc=247">Billy Maclure</a> wanders into my Elwynn forest retirement home and breaks it. I should have sent <span style="font-weight:bold;">HIM </span>into the Fargodeep Mine to get that necklace back!<br /><br /><a href="http://www.wowhead.com/item=32864"><span style="font-weight:bold;">Commander’s Badg</span>e</a>. About the only thing better than riding a Netherdrake is having a little Netherwing Ally pop out and fight by your side. Like the Mightstone, this was never used in combat (+45 stamina was nice, but not really a Holy Paladin thing), but how can you destroy a Netherwing Ally? It just ain't right. <br /><br />Going back deeper, my Paladin finds the <a href="http://www.wowhead.com/search?q=Argent+Dawn+Commission"><span style="font-weight:bold;">Argent Dawn Commission</span></a> and he moves it toward the 'discard' pile -- and pauses. This trinket became useless the second he hit exalted with the Argent Dawn, yet he can't quite part with it. He recalls, perhaps, the excitement of riding into Chillwind Point for the first time, the feeling that he was doing important work throughout the Plagelands. Despite the awful blight upon the landscape, and the horrible creatures roaming throughout, the Plaguelands was one of the Paladin's favorite regions. The trinket holds too many good memories. It stays.<br /><br />Carried in the Paladin's bag is <a href="http://www.wowhead.com/item=43629"><span style="font-weight:bold;">Uther Lightbringer’s Gold Coin</span></a>. How can a Paladin throw away something once held by Uther? He can’t.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.wowhead.com/item=34827"><span style="font-weight:bold;">Noble’s Monocle</span></a>. It’s just a shame you can’t equip this in addition to a head slot item. It would looks super spiffy paired with a Battered Jungle Hat. I once healed half of Karazhan with this equipped. I guess we were getting better at that point in time.<br /><br />The Paladin has come to the end of the 'Things that aren't Going Away...Ever' pile. The next pile is called<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Things I’m <span style="font-style:italic;">Sure </span>I’m Going to Use…Eventually</span><br /><br />These things are taking up lots of space in my bank, but my intention is to use them. Or to at least have them in case I need them. They are:<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">My Ret Set</span>. First a confession: My second spec is also holy. Still, when dps plate drops and nobody needs or wants it, it tends to come your way. Maybe when <span style="font-style:italic;">Cataclysm</span> comes I’ll finally build a ret spec, but by then the Ret gear will likely be useless, <span style="font-style:italic;">and </span>I’ll be choosing all holy gear for quest rewards anyway. Sensibly, I should just dump it and take the cash. But I won’t. I’m going to use it. Really!<br /><br /><a href="http://www.wowhead.com/item=13624"><span style="font-weight:bold;">The Soulbound Keepsake</span></a>. As stated above, I am a huge fan of the Plaguelands and pretty much everything associated with them. I started this <a href="http://www.wowhead.com/quest=5461">questline</a> some time ago, but never managed to finish it off. As a result, this stays in my bank. There is a much greater chance of me using this than my ret set, though I’d better do it soon, before everything changes.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.wowhead.com/item=29905"><span style="font-weight:bold;">Kael’s Vial Remnant</span></a>. You need this to get attuned for Mt. Hyjal (the old one, not the one that will be coming with Cataclysm). Of course, Blizzard threw out attunements quite some time ago. I gathered this with some notion of getting the Hand of Ad’al title, but never followed through. The title is no longer available for me, and there’s no need for attunement, so why do I still have this?<br /><br />Surprisingly, there's not too much in that pile. Now there's one more left:<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Things that I have no Good Reason to Keep…but do</span><br /><br />These things are utterly useless now, yet I still have them. I can actually see myself getting rid of them though.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Arcane Runes, Sanguine Hibiscus, Coilfang Armaments</span>. I built up a lot of these back in BC era. I didn’t dump the runes because the Scryer enchants were still too good to pass up initially, but once I hit exalted with the appropriate <span style="font-style:italic;">Wrath </span>factions, there’s no reason at all to keep them. The hibiscus and armaments, on the other hand, might still come in handy if I’m trying to get rep up with <span style="font-weight:bold;">Sporeggar </span>and <span style="font-weight:bold;">Cenarion Expedition</span> (Note to self: exalted with CE, time to dump the Amrmaments).<br /><br /><a href="http://www.wowhead.com/item=37863"><span style="font-weight:bold;">Direbrew’s Remote</span></a>. <span style="font-weight:bold;">Brewfest </span>is just around the corner, but I believe changes to the dungeon system mean that this item is totally useless; unless I just feel like popping into the Grim Guzzler for kicks and giggles. Maybe I'll throw it away when Brewfest is over....<br /><br />Finally, there's <a href="http://www.wowhead.com/item=30721"><span style="font-weight:bold;">Spectrecles</span></a>. This quest line is long over and done with, but who <span style="font-style:italic;">doesn’t</span> want to see ghosts in Shadowmoon Valley? <br /><br />And so, after spending several hours sorting through his bank, my Paladin takes each pile and places them into their respective boxes. Instead of selling, auctioning, and just plain destroying a bunch of useless junk, he puts them back on their shelves and runs off to help High Tinker Mekkatorque take back Gnomeragon, where he earns a <a href="http://www.wowhead.com/item=53097">new cloak</a>. Which he puts in the bank. How can you get rid of something earned after such an epic battle?jeffohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09708074863929831135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2764357882039835411.post-47780447968970529062010-08-31T10:20:00.003-04:002010-08-31T10:44:09.354-04:00The Confidence Game, Chapter 1: Self-ConfidenceBob Weir of the Grateful Dead once said of the band ‘We’re not afraid to go out and fall flat on our faces.’ By their own admission, the Dead did that many times (‘We usually do pretty bad at all the big ones,’ said Jerry Garcia in reference to Monterey, Woodstock and their shows in Egypt). Despite failing on some of the biggest stages of their era, the Dead continued on for 30 years as one of rock’s most successful and enduring acts, confident in themselves and in their fans’ unwavering loyalty.<br /><br /><object width="435" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/PiEaH4LVpDQ&start=302"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/PiEaH4LVpDQ&start=302" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="435" height="385"></embed></object><br /><br />Self-confidence ultimately starts at home. The way we are raised by our parents or caregivers likely plays the biggest role in whether we have it or not. Grow up in an environment that is encouraging and not overly critical, with people that accept mistakes and love you anyway, and you are more likely to have a solid foundation of confidence. That foundation is either further built up or eroded based on our experiences moving along further in life.<br /><br />In many ways confidence is less about our self-assuredness and comfort with our own skills as it is about not being afraid to fail, to fall flat on our faces, as Weir said. If you think about the times you’ve NOT tried something – like asking a girl out, trying out for a sports team or the school play, submitting an essay for a contest – no matter how you rationalize it, it’s almost certainly because you’re afraid to fail. You may tell yourself that she’s probably got a boyfriend, or you don’t have time to commit to the team or whatever. It comes down to fear of failing, of being rejected, which is a lack of confidence.<br /><br />Confident people, on the other hand, have little to no fear of failure and are willing to take chances as a result. Psychologists note that there’s no direct correlation between skill/ability and confidence (and I’m sure we’ve all seen examples of this): there are plenty of competent people who have no confidence, and lots of confident people with no competence. One doesn’t need a track record of success to be confident.<br /><br />It’s somewhat surprising then that we see so many people who lack confidence in the world of the World of Warcraft. When you come right down to it, there’s no real risk involved. We’re talking about a computer game here, not trying to stem the flow of millions of gallons of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico, or finding a cure for cancer or AIDS, or running a country. There are no risks to take in WoW. You wipe a group, so what? You didn’t just make a gaffe that’s plunging the world into nuclear war. Nobody gets fired, no one’s marriage ends, nobody gets killed over a mistake made in the game. Given that, we should all be playing with confidence – a willingness to fall flat on our faces.<br /><br />And yet I constantly see examples of people with no confidence in the game and, I confess, I sometimes exhibit this a bit myself. I see tanks who are more than willing to let the other tank do the hard jobs (kiting Rotface slimes and grabbing adds, Bumble-driving on Putricide), I see healers running their mana tank dry 1/3 of the way into a fight because they’re so afraid of screwing up, I see dps who panic and lose all semblance of a decent rotation (or get so wound up trying to maintain that rotation that they forget to move out of the fire or interrupt or dispel the debuff of almost instantaneous death, etc.). So many people out there need to loosen up and find some confidence. Unlike real life, if you die you get to come back and try again. What’s the worst that can happen?jeffohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09708074863929831135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2764357882039835411.post-53156240775755985632010-08-20T09:49:00.002-04:002010-08-20T10:00:36.253-04:00The Confidence Game: PrologueWhen <a href="http://www.wowwiki.com/Ruby_Sanctum">Ruby Sanctum</a> came out near the end of June my realm was down for the <span style="font-weight:bold;">Super-Extended Maintenance (24-hour variety)</span>. The following day was a regular Icecrown run, so we didn’t set foot in there until a whole 2 days after its release. We didn’t do so well. Actually, we did quite well on the trash and the mini-bosses, although I think there was at least a <span style="font-style:italic;">little </span>bit of luck involved with <a href="http://www.wowhead.com/npc=39747">Saviana Ragefire</a>: we killed her without really knowing how we did it, which was evident the next time we went in there. Halion was a different story. The big lavender dragon ate us alive during phase 2. We took several shots at him over the night and crawled away, vowing to get him the next time.<br /><br />Over the next three weeks we took several shots at Halion, but they were half-hearted attempts at best. At that time we had another dragon on our minds: <a href="http://www.wowhead.com/npc=36853">Sindragosa</a>. We were working hard with a <span style="font-weight:bold;">Super-Extended Raid Lockout (2 month variety)</span>, and Sindragosa was all that stood between us and the big boss, Arthas. Our raid group was spending 2 nights a week, about 3 hours each night, working on Sindy. As much as people were excited about ‘new content’, the truth was most of us were really focused in on Sindragosa, Arthas, and claiming Icecrown Citadel as our own. <br /><br />So we would go in and take our shots at Sindragosa, and we made our progress, finally conquering her on July 8th. For the rest of July (one week off for vacation) we went in and worked on Arthas: 10, 11, 12 attempts or so per night, sometimes more, once less when we just had absolutely no mojo whatsoever. Halion? Well, we would pop in once a week and get him to phase 2 and die. Four, five attempts, no real nights of bashing our heads against the wall like we were doing with Arthas. Our minds were really on killing Arthas and, on the odd week or two where we didn’t try Ruby Sanctum, no one really seemed to care at all.<br /><br />On August 11 we finally vanquished Arthas along with some personal and guild-wide demons. We did it on our second attempt for the night, which left us, once all the screen shots, rehashing the fight and running up and sitting on<a href="http://www.wowhead.com/npc=37183#screenshots:id=171306"> Bolvar’s</a> lap (well, not really. That would be kind of disrespectful, don't you think?) was finished, with about 2 hours of raiding time. What to do? Ruby Sanctum! Why not?<br /><br />I think it’s no surprise that, buoyed by our conquest of Icecrown, we went in and had little trouble with Halion. On our second attempt we hit phase 3 (which I think we had done maybe once before), though all the dps for the physical realm were dead. Our third attempt was magic, and down went Halion. Two guild firsts, two big bosses in the same night. Kingslayers! Twilight Vanquishers! There’s nothing we could not do!<br /><br />The confidence we gained that allowed us to roll over Arthas and Halion as easily as we did started the previous Monday when we wiped to Arthas 12 times. The progress made that night in particular fueled us. We walked into Icecrown Wednesday <span style="font-style:italic;">knowing </span>that we could do it, feeling pretty strongly as a group that we would do it, but not being so cocky as to set us up for failure.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Confidence in yourself and your raiding team is such a key ingredient to success in WoW, yet it easily the most fragile</span>. Over the next few posts I’m going to look at some of the elements of confidence and the effects they have on the group and the individual. I’m going to leave off here today with this gem of a commercial from a few years back. While it’s about ‘experience’, most of it applies to confidence as well. Enjoy!<br /><br /><object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/Af1OxkFOK18?fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Af1OxkFOK18?fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object>jeffohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09708074863929831135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2764357882039835411.post-57593209095630003372010-08-12T12:03:00.002-04:002010-08-12T12:20:01.090-04:00The Sounds of SilenceBack in February while traipsing through Dalaran on some important errand, I came across something new: a giant statue of Tirion Fordring. ‘What the hell is this all about?’ I wondered, before realizing that it must signify a Lich King kill. I clicked on the plaque on the statue, expecting some kind of written explanation. Instead, I was treated to <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yA29HFLOADI">the video of Arthas’ last moments on earth</a> (included here because I’m sure you’ve seen it by now, one way or the other). I almost closed it without looking, as I wanted to be surprised for the eventuality of my guild killing Arthas, but curiosity got the better of me, and I watched it through. At the time I thought it was a good scene, well-crafted by Blizzard and, seemingly, a fitting end to the story of Arthas (and a surprise to me. I was <span style="font-style:italic;">sure</span> that Tirion would become the new Lich King). While I never went out of my way to watch the video (i.e., I didn’t sit around in Dalaran for hours clicking on the statue), I didn’t avoid it if it happened to come up somewhere else, though I was afraid that overexposure might lessen the impact if we ever did manage to kill Arthas.<br /><br />Last night my guild finally, finally, finally killed the Lich King. We’ve been extending this lockout since the end of May, when we emptied <span style="font-weight:bold;">Putricide’s Laboratory of Alchemical Horrors and Fun</span> (has there ever been a better name in this game?) of the Not-So-Good Doctor and his ‘experiments’. We spent the month of June re-clearing the Blood wing, which actually went much easier than it had the first time, and playing with Sindragosa. Sindy was vanquished on July 8th, and it was on to Arthas.<br /><br />By my count we spent some 60 attempts on Arthas. We made good progress into phase 2 our first two full nights there; following a week off, we found ourselves set back to dying in phase 1 transitions. Would we never get it? On Monday of this week we actually twice ventured into the previously uncharted realm of phase 3, where we died insanely fast – nobody saw the inside of Frostmourne, nobody even got the chance to kill off or kite or soak vile spirits, that’s how bad it was. But it was a good kind of bad, because we were back to making progress.<br /><br />Three days later, our first attempt ended in phase 3. We were very positive and hopeful that maybe, just maybe, this would be it, though experience tells me that we’re often very good early and decline over the course of the night. Would this be a case of ‘first, best attempt’? No! Our second attempt yielded a victory. Arthas’ health seemed poised at 11% for a ridiculously long time, and when I died I wasn’t sure if I was killed by his <a href="http://www.wowhead.com/spell=72350">Uber Spell of Instant Death</a> or the bucketload of Vile spirits that were chasing me around.<br /><br />Once it was clear that we had killed him, there was a lot of chatter in vent. While all of us had read strats and watched videos, nobody was 100% sure what would follow, except that we did not want to release. While Arthas boasted to the still-frozen Tirion about how he was going to create the 'greatest fighting force the world has ever known' out of us, vent was full of chatter: ‘dps and heal’, ‘watch out for defile’, ‘did we win?’, ‘I don’t think there’s defile on this phase’, ‘we’ve won’, ‘I think there’s still defile’, etc. But Tirion broke out and smashed Frostmourne, Terenas brought us back from the dead, and we went to town, unleashing the months of pent up frustration (1650 holy paladin dps, ftw!) on the incapacitated Lich King. The achievements popped up, and there was much whooping and rejoicing, and the cinematic kicked in.<br /><br />As I said, I’ve seen it before, I know how it turns out. So did everyone in my raid group. But I watched it anyway (and had to turn up the sound for my wife, who must have hit something on her keyboard and skipped the scene). As Tirion picked up the helm and pondered his future as the next Lich King, I had a sudden realization:<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Vent was absolutely silent.</span><br /><br />Our group had been extremely chattery in vent between attempts, caught up in the excitement and adrenaline no doubt of feeling so close to victory. Defeating Arthas as a guild was the pinnacle of the expansion, literally eight months of sometimes ridiculous levels of angst and frustration. This was the moment to bask in the glory, to revel, to party.<br /><br />And no one said a thing.<br /><br />We watched from our computers in New York, Florida, Manitoba, Texas, California as the drama played out once more. Separated by hundreds or thousands of miles, yet completely together. Despite the lust for loot that drives so many to play the game (and soon raid chat was filled with people linking their hoped-for drops from the soon to be attempted heroic fights), the moments of silence as we watched the cut scene told me a lot about my guild members, and why we were there. And it wasn’t for the loot. <br /><br />The King is dead. Long live the Kingslayers! <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqCJbpFS50oJS__OmvqaiVs20PgDXUF0L46NXuWSruYuKFTcpDYAF0h3YsRbXiKzj4C5ZbLxgQgKnQnQkKgS-kndIQqsESzZJ9IoMuN2dslQYbZyxml0nAN1NlyxEn-xDB5N9N7t2MAAY/s1600/kingslayers1.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 215px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqCJbpFS50oJS__OmvqaiVs20PgDXUF0L46NXuWSruYuKFTcpDYAF0h3YsRbXiKzj4C5ZbLxgQgKnQnQkKgS-kndIQqsESzZJ9IoMuN2dslQYbZyxml0nAN1NlyxEn-xDB5N9N7t2MAAY/s320/kingslayers1.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5504558713393002178" /></a>jeffohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09708074863929831135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2764357882039835411.post-38699703583583975932010-08-04T08:13:00.004-04:002010-08-04T08:23:32.836-04:00Blood Elf Porn!<span style="font-style:italic;">Note: With thanks to <a href="http://greedygoblin.blogspot.com/2010/08/fall-of-social-king.html">Gevlon </a>for trolling, and <a href="http://tobolds.blogspot.com/2010/08/blood-elf-porn.html">Tobold </a>for actually taking the challenge.</span><br /><br /><br />Pst! Hey, you! Come over ‘ere, I’ve got something to show you.<br /><br />You heard about this little gizmo? The <a href="http://www.wowhead.com/item=9328/super-snapper-fx">Super Snapper FX</a>? Yeah, that’s the one. You – what? <a href="http://www.wowhead.com/quest=2944">You’ve used one</a>? What for?<br /><br />Huh, well how about that? Well, it turns out you can take pictures of things <span style="font-style:italic;">besides </span>turtles, too. Here, check this out.<br /><br />Eh? Eh? What do you think, you like that? No? OK, OK maybe dwarfs <span style="font-style:italic;">should </span>keep their clothes on. But wait, you look like a worldly-type man, eh? You’ve been around. Maybe you like things a little more…exotic, am I right? Eh? Eh?<br /><br />Yeah, I thought so. Take a look at this! Troll women are pretty nice eh? If you get past the tusks that is. And those hands…heh heh. Wait, wait! Don’t go anywhere! I can see you are a man of the <span style="font-style:italic;">highest </span>taste, and I have some very tasty – err, tasteful, yeah that’s it – <span style="font-style:italic;">tasteful</span> pictures right here. <br /><br />Check this out. These came direct from the pleasure palaces of Quel’Thalas itself! Eh? What do you think, you want to buy some? <br /><br />Eh? What’s that?<br /><br />Well, <span style="font-style:italic;">sure </span>they’re girls.<br /><br />I mean, look at that, right there! It’s clearly…<br /><br />...<br /><br />Well, I <span style="font-style:italic;">think </span>they’re girls.<br /><br />Ah, what the hell, you'll never know the difference, anyway. Am I right? Eh? Eh?<br /><br />Wait! Come back! I've got goblins and gnomes with a worgen, I've got...damn.<br /><br />...<br /><br />I <span style="font-style:italic;">think </span>they're girls....jeffohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09708074863929831135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2764357882039835411.post-56577632336516310102010-07-27T09:00:00.005-04:002010-07-27T11:06:17.074-04:00The End of an Era, Part IIBefore my vacation I posited that Wrath of the Lich King was really The Golden Age of the Paladin. I pointed out in Part I how Paladins (living, dead, and somewhere in between) dominated most of the story-telling and lore of the expansion. While Horde players only see a bit of Bolvar's heroics at the Wrathgate, Tirion and Uther's presence are felt throughout the expansion (and Arthas, of course). Even the few backhand slaps at Paladins that Blizzard delivers -- Champions <a href="http://www.wowwiki.com/Champion_Isimode">Isimode</a> and <a href="http://www.wowwiki.com/Champion_Faesrol">Faesrol</a>, and of course <span style="font-weight:bold;">Eadric the Pure</span>):<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/BZwuTo7zKM8&hl=en_US&fs=1?&start=62"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/BZwuTo7zKM8&hl=en_US&fs=1?rel=0&start=62" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br />-- couldn't take the shine off of Paladins.<br /><br />But Paladins didn't just rule the lore in this expansion. Among the playerbase, Paladins have never been more powerful or popular than they are now. Just three years ago, <a href="http://www.wow.com/2007/04/23/why-does-everyone-want-to-dps/">WoWInsider showed Paladins lagging behind all but shaman in popularity</a>. Today, Warcraft Realms shows <a href="http://www.warcraftrealms.com/census.php?serverid=-1&factionid=-1&minlevel=80&maxlevel=80&servertypeid=-1">Paladins in a dead heat with Death Knights</a> for most popular class, with Death Knights having a slight edge at level 80. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRVAQHDuQ3URSNJyCeA1ihO2PmDxuK0USDegC5ecLltioIKL0zifYp865KKz2hOI5SNbhApCjs9ETNJR-uiZh24WjeNCvcXJFkg-abcvHdz9RGUozLmTj0vuqKFE7U2PqX5laO0KAPx9U/s1600/Censuspic.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 178px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRVAQHDuQ3URSNJyCeA1ihO2PmDxuK0USDegC5ecLltioIKL0zifYp865KKz2hOI5SNbhApCjs9ETNJR-uiZh24WjeNCvcXJFkg-abcvHdz9RGUozLmTj0vuqKFE7U2PqX5laO0KAPx9U/s400/Censuspic.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5498601687013596994" /></a><br />(Census data provided by <a href="http://www.warcraftrealms.com/index.php">WarcraftRealms.com</a>)<br /><br />WoW players are not that easily influenced by storylines. That is to say, having Tirion running around kicking ass is not going to cause such a large increase in Paladin representation. Instead, it's due to the fact that we now have three viable, powerful specs to choose from.<br /><br />Back in the days when I started playing (around the same time those numbers were published by WoWInsider), people looked to Paladins mainly for two things: tank healing, and trash tanking. If you wanted to run heroic Shattered Halls, or needed someone to pick up Hyjal trash, you looked for a Paladin. Bosses were tanked by the warrior or the druid. Paladin healers were fine, as long as you only had one, by and large, and I don’t think anyone wanted to take one into heroic Magisters’ Terrace, at least not on release. Ret? Generally dismissed as Retardins, lolret, or Retnoob, they might find themselves parked outside the raid in case someone else D/C’d or had to leave early, and to maybe throw some buffs. <br /><br />With the arrival of <span style="font-style:italic;">Wrath</span>, however, all that changed. Ret was so strong coming out of the chute that Ghostcrawler felt compelled to make his infamous ‘<a href="http://www.wow.com/2008/10/15/ret-to-be-nerfed-to-the-ground/">to the ground, baby!’</a> comment within a week or so of Patch 3.0. Seems that folks were pretty upset about being absolutely destroyed by a class they used to laugh at. Despite the nerfs, Ret is pretty well-represented at this point, and can do some pretty good damage, while bringing important buffs, including secondary healing through Judgment of Light and Divine Storm; oodles of mana regeneration through replenishment and Judgment of Wisdom, and, depending on subspec, can provide damage mitigation through either Divine Sacrifice or Aura Mastery. While you won’t usually see Retadins topping the damage charts over the course of the night, they can definitely hold their own, and it shows in the numbers of Paladins raiding today.<br /><br />Tankadins were concerned heading into <span style="font-style:italic;">Wrath </span>that they might be supplanted not only by a new tanking class, but by changes to threat mechanics and buffs to warrior and druid AoE threat. It hasn’t seemed to happen that way at all. While Warriors and Druids in particular are better now at large-pack tanking, Paladins are still very strong in this department, have gotten better at single-target tanking and boss tanking, and have been given an insanely <a href="http://www.wowhead.com/spell=31852">good life-saver</a>. Palatank threat generation may have been boosted a bit by the bucketloads of undead we’ve faced throughout the expansion, but they’ve also done quite well against mechanical monsters, tentacled Old Gods, beasts and dragons. No problems here at all.<br /><br />And finally we have Holy Paladins. While still ‘relegated’ largely to tank healing, it’s safe to say that Holy Paladins are the current Kings of Tank Healing. Like our damage-dealing and meat-shielding brothers-in-arms, the healers of the class were concerned coming into the expansion. Holydins quickly got their feet under them in the new landscape of Sacred Shields, Beacons and splashy glyphs. Initially powered by stacking Intellect and Crit out the wazoo, Illumination provided a nearly-limitless mana supply as early as Naxxramas and, even after it was nerfed massively, mana was still not an issue. When Beacon of Light was buffed to work off of total healing, Paladins were able to easily keep up two targets at once (which still drives meter-hounds crazy, either with delight or jealousy, depending on what class you are). While Holy Paladins are still not the best at healing on the run, or dealing with mass party/raid damage, they’re far better at it now than ever, and you’re not crippling your raid if you have to throw a Holydin on raid damage.<br /><br />Will it last? Sadly, it cannot. As Terenas said to Arthas, ‘No king can rule forever’, and surely the reign of the Paladin is about to end. <span style="font-style:italic;">Cataclysm’s</span> just around the corner, with a new paradigm for everything: tanking, healing, damage dealing; the whole world is going to change. And while another class will rise to the top of the 'most played' charts, I doubt we’ll see the kind of complete domination of any class moving forward as we've seen with Paladins. And if I'm wrong and we do? That's fine by me -- let someone else have their day in the Light. Just don't nerf me 'to the ground, baby'.jeffohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09708074863929831135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2764357882039835411.post-717549742199286482010-07-15T13:34:00.002-04:002010-07-15T13:48:37.884-04:00AFKThose of you who are waiting for my follow-up to <a href="http://lkingformore.blogspot.com/2010/07/end-of-era.html">End of an Era</a> -- it's coming. Really. As I mentioned last week, it's written, but needs a bit of an editing job and formatting. Unfortunately, my blogging time has been extremely limited this week, and to top it all off I'm going AFK for a week starting tomorrow. So it was much easier to drop this off the top of my head than spend the kind of time needed for Part II. But it <span style="font-style:italic;">will </span>be here.<br /><br />A couple of other things are popping around in my brain lately too, and if I can sort out my thoughts those will hit this blog in August. I think it's always good to examine why we play the game the way we do. Some recent events (I finally got myself a new shield, woohoo!), some soon-to-be events (I may well come back from vacation and find 10 guildies sporting nice new Kingslayer titles. <a href="http://lkingformore.blogspot.com/2010/04/title-at-what-cost.html">It's like those broken ribs all over again</a>!), and the expected reaction of those in and out of the group to that soon-to-be event are definite fodder for thought.<br /><br />And then there's the Betaclysm. As I see the end in sight for Arthas I find I can pay more attention to this. Maybe I'll jump in the beta and blog about it. Maybe I won't. Maybe I'll just speculate on the sweeping changes that are in store for all of us. I've come a long way since Whiny Post Day, that's for sure. We'll see. For now, there's a vacation to pack for. Have a nice week, see you soon. Enjoy the summer, enjoy the game!jeffohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09708074863929831135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2764357882039835411.post-69372303676348395252010-07-09T15:45:00.003-04:002010-07-09T16:25:17.898-04:00The End of an Era, Part 1Two years ago at this time the World of the World of Warcraft was abuzz with talk of the coming expansion. The beta was open, talents were previewed, many of the games systems were being consolidated, and classes were being overhauled. Much of the buzz centered on the new ‘hero’ class, the Death Knights, and everyone and his uncle was going to roll one. <span style="font-style:italic;">Wrath of the Lich King</span> was going to be all about the Death Knights.<br /><br />As <span style="font-style:italic;">Wrath </span>winds down, we find ourselves in a very similar situation. Arthas has been killed by many (though not my guild, not yet, though we did finally kill Sindragosa and took Arthas down to 70% in our one and only half-assed attempt on him the other night. I suspect that the 70% to 10% is going to be much, much harder), the last raid of the expansion is finally open, and Bizzard has been dropping all kinds of bombshells of late. As much as we look forward to the expansion and speculate on what it will bring, we also can’t help but take a look back and reflect on what has been.<br /><br />And what has it been? As much as <span style="font-style:italic;">Wrath </span>*seemed* to be about Death Knights, the fact is, if you had to put a subtitle on it (which would be pretty silly, when you consider the fact that <span style="font-style:italic;">Wrath of the Lich King</span> is itself a subtitle, and it wouldn’t be good form to have two subtitles for one title), I think that <span style="font-style:italic;">Wrath’s</span> would be <span style="font-weight:bold;">The Golden Age of Paladins</span>. The closing of the GAP (see what I did there?) and the overhaul coming with <span style="font-style:italic;">Cataclysm</span> makes me a bit sad, as it will mean the end of the dominance of Paladins, in all likelihood, but it was one hell of a run.<br /><br />No class, not even Death Knights, dominated in <span style="font-style:italic;">Wrath </span>in terms of lore and gameplay like Paladins. From a lore perspective, the four most dominant figures (in terms of screen time and game importance) were Paladins. Who are they?<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Arthas</span>. <span style="font-style:italic;">Before </span>he was the Lich King, <span style="font-style:italic;">before </span>he was a Death Knight, he was a Paladin. Arthas is of course the reason why we’re in Northrend in the first place, and his presence was felt throughout. While we saw him mainly in his current, evil guise, we also got to see Arthas the Paladin in Caverns of Time and in some really cool flashback quests, and even met what was likely the remnant of the <a href="http://www.wowhead.com/npc=32497">innocent child</a> that he once was. The expansion was all about Arthas.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">The World’s Greatest (Dead) Paladin, Uther the Lightbringer</span>, makes several appearances in <span style="font-style:italic;">Wrath</span>, two that are critical to the story. Previously seen in WoW as a ghost in the Western Plaguelands (the result of <a href="http://www.wowhead.com/quest=9446">a quest</a> that will be gone come Cataclysm, go get it now if you haven’t done it yet), we get to see the living Uther at his best, and worst, moment in a pivotal scene in Old Stratholme: refusing to carry out Arthas’ order to kill every living man, woman and child in the city, and being sent home in disgrace. This is a pivotal moment in the game’s lore. We later meet up with Uther’s ghost in Halls of Reflection, where he reveals a terrible secret that is then fulfilled by – surprise, surprise -- another Paladin (see further down).<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Tirion Fordring</span> quickly took up the mantle of <span style="font-weight:bold;">World’s Greatest (Living) Paladin</span> in <span style="font-style:italic;">Wrath</span>, which represents a big step up from where we first meet him: as a lonely hermit living hard by the Thondroril River in the Eastern Plaguelands (this is another <a href="http://www.wowhead.com/npc=1855#starts">questline</a> that will disappear with <span style="font-style:italic;">Cataclysm</span>; grab it now while you can. It starts off slowly, but is well-worth it in the end, and provides a glimpse of how kick-ass Tiron can be when angry). When I say ‘big step up’ I’m not just talking about his height. Evidently, getting off the diet of worm meat did him some good. Tirion has more key moments in the game than anyone, with the exception of Arthas. Not only is Tirion a great fighter, he’s also a visionary, recognizing the importance of uniting Alliance and Horde in the fight against Arthas, and welcoming the Death Knights into the fold after chasing Arthas from Light’s Hope Chapel. Like Dumbledore and Voldemort, Tirion is the only one Arthas fears, and with good reason. Tirion is so cool I can even forgive him for the mess that was the Argent Tournament – even Dumbledore made mistakes -- though that gives him one of the best-delivered voice lines in the game following the Jaraxxus encounter (sorry, can’t find the sound file or I’d link it here). <br /><br />Finally, there’s the <span style="font-weight:bold;">World’s Greatest (Not Quite Dead) Paladin, Bolvar Fordragon</span>. I never did the old Onyxia questlines, so Bolvar was just a guy standing next to the Anduin all that time. Yet Bolvar was central to three of the greatest story-telling moments in an expansion that has been full of them (this is something that I think Blizzard has done exceptionally well in this expansion, and I hope they can keep it up moving forward): Showing up to rally the troops and save the day against Thel’zan in Wintergarde (which I guess Horde players do not get to see); the absolutely epic event at Wrathgate: his ultimate fate atop the Frozen Throne. While the Horde’s hero ultimately became <a href="http://www.wowwiki.com/Deathbringer_Saurfang">A boss</a>, the Alliance hero ultimately becomes THE Boss, the one who is strong enough to keep a lid on the Scourge (until two expansions or so down the road when we have <span style="font-style:italic;">The Return of the Wrath of the Lich King</span>). <br /><br />So there are three Paladins and one former Paladin who played key roles in <span style="font-style:italic;">Wrath</span>. But it wasn’t just the NPC section that Paladins ruled. In my next post on the subject, I'll cover briefly where Paladins have excelled as player characters. This was just getting a little too long to survive as one post. The rest will go up early this week. Thanks for reading!jeffohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09708074863929831135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2764357882039835411.post-50472699366022736882010-06-22T10:15:00.003-04:002010-06-23T07:01:24.917-04:00Some Hopes for Cataclysm<a href="http://www.wow.com/2010/06/22/world-of-warcraft-patch-3-3-5-patch-notes/">Ruby Sanctum goes live today</a> [Edit: not today, but 'soon'], which means we are one step closer to the great upheaval that will change the world of the World of Warcraft once more. In the past, I’ve stated that <a href="http://lkingformore.blogspot.com/2010/03/whiny-post-day.html">I’ve had enough of the Cataclysm talk</a>, and it’s mostly true. However, now that my guild can actually, finally see a glimmer of light at the end of the Citadel -- I expect we’ll get Sindragosa down tomorrow and will be able to start working on Arthas himself pronto -- I can actually peek ahead just a little bit. Here are some things that I hope for from Cataclysm:<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">An enjoyable leveling experience.</span> I’m not looking to race through five levels like ICC-geared groups through Drak’Tharon Keep. What I’m hoping to see is what I found in <span style="font-style:italic;">Wrath</span>: a series of well-designed quests that really told the story. While there were a few side trips and diversions in Wrath (<a href="http://www.wowwiki.com/Hemet_Nesingwary">Hemet Nesingwary</a>, anyone?), there were so many, interconnected quests and questlines that created a cohesive experience with a definite story. Hand-in-hand with that…<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Keep the bad guy front and center</span>. Remember doing that quest for Thoralius the Wise in Howling Fjord? You smoked some dope – err, inhaled some incense – and went into the spirit world. All of a sudden, standing in front of Utgarde Keep, was – Arthas, the Lich King himself. That was the first of many times that Arthas appeared before the players. Like the connected questlines, the frequent appearances of Arthas helped remind you of the whole point of coming to Northrend. I don’t know if we’ll see the same sort of thing with Deathwing, though I suppose we'll have plenty of reminders like the new port of Gadgetzan, North and South Barrens, and a partly-ruined Stormwind.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">A Killer World Event</span>. The <span style="font-style:italic;">Wrath </span>lead-in was unforgettable. It was disruptive. It was in your face. It was brilliant. For me, it gave the game a shot in the arm that it desperately needed at that point in time (NOTE: I’m talking about players getting infected and turning into ghouls; the bit with the ziggurats or necropolis beaming down scourge for us to kill was not nearly as entertaining in my book). Unfortunately, too many players hated it, and I can see where they’re coming from. Still, I believe it was an incredible way to get things rolling. Let’s hope we can have a world event that is entertaining and involving, and doesn’t feel like some random holiday event.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Heroics that are relevant for longer</span>. Back in BC days, we found that, even when we were steaming through Kara, had farmed ZA, Magtheridon’s Lair and Gruul’s Lair; when we had the best gear that <a href="http://www.wowhead.com/item=29434">Badges of Justice</a> could buy, and were flirting around a bit with Hyjal and Tempest Keep, that places like Heroic Shadow Labryinth, Arcatraz and Shattered Halls were still a challenge, and that even the lower tier heroics required care and attention to detail to execute well. Yes, Lich King heroics were difficult; <a href="http://www.wow.com/2008/12/04/loken-the-most-dangerous-mob-in-the-game/">heroic Loken was deadly, for a time</a>. But the lifespan of these heroics was very, very short. Similarly, when the ToC 5 mans came out, heroic Black Knight was very hard on this Holy Paladin. For maybe two weeks, and then it quickly became trivial. Heroics are largely so dull that I hardly ever do them anymore. If they were more challenging, I’d do them more. And that’s directly related to:<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Curb Gear Inflation</span>. This is not about being a gear snob, elitist type. Hey, I’ve benefited as much from emblems and intermediate heroics and gear resets as much as the next man. I also support Blizzard’s efforts to make raiding more accessible. AND I know that a lot of people raid for gear upgrades, and that not getting upgrades for a while can be discouraging (says the guy who lost yet another roll for the Bulwark of Smoldering Steel this weekend), and make you wonder why you’re doing this over and over again. That said, it feels as though gear sometimes just positively rains from the skies (except for shields). This is compounded by Blizzard’s decision to release slightly upgunned instances with some of the new raiding tiers. So Trial of the Crusader was released with its own five mans that had higher level gear than the ‘original’ Wrath 5 mans, as was Icecrown. While it makes it easier for folks to get geared up for the new raid content, it tends to completely eliminate the need or desire to run the immediately preceding content. I’m not sure this is a good thing.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Crowd Control</span>, please. Just about every class has some form of CC. Let’s give them a chance to use it. And <a href="http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=24702232902&pageNo=7#126">it sounds like they are heading in this direction</a>. Good. I find AoE fests to be uninteresting.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Duskwood</span>. The world is going to change, in some places radically. Still, there are some places that I’m quite fond of that I hope won’t change very much, if at all. That will probably be a subject of another post, but Duskwood is one of my favorites. May it always be a dank, dark, spider-infested house of horrors.<br /><br />That’s it for my list, at least so far. Now I can get back to finishing off Arthas. And maybe helping Alexstraza out of a bit of a bind.jeffohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09708074863929831135noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2764357882039835411.post-38831746171560214382010-05-26T11:56:00.002-04:002010-05-26T12:19:55.254-04:00Buffs > Nerfs: Why no one’s Griping about the ICC Raid BuffsWhen my guild sets foot into Icecrown Citadel tonight we will find that Varian Wrynn, impatient with our progress against the forces of the Lich King, will have increased his assistance to us by another 5%. <a href="http://www.wow.com/2010/05/25/icecrown-citadel-raid-buff-to-20/#comments">The Strength of Wrynn will now grant us 20% increased health, 20% increased damage, and 20% increased heals</a>. I expect my World of Logs ranking for Marrowgar-10, initially 14th, will drop even more as more Holy Paladins blast out ever-larger heals.<br /><br />On the face of it, a buff to a player’s DPS is pretty much the same as an equivalent nerf to a boss’s health points. When Blizzard dropped the pre-Wrath patch on October 15, 2008, they were roundly blasted by the community for cutting all existing raid boss’s health and damage by 30% (never mind that the nerf was needed since those bosses were designed to square off against players with talents, spells and special abilities that were changed or gone entirely). Many players on the forums to this day define themselves as having killed this boss or cleared that raid ‘pre-nerf’ as opposed to ‘post-nerf’, and I can think of at least one guild leader on my realm who was roundly ridiculed on the forums and in trade chat for getting his Kael kill a week after 3.0.2 dropped (I was actually there for it). Even today you’ll see people establish their raiding credentials by proudly proclaiming that they got <a href="http://www.wowhead.com/achievement=3189/firefighter-25-player#comments">Firefighter</a> ‘when it mattered’ (i.e., pre-nerf).<br /><br />Interestingly enough, this sort of posturing and positioning does not extend to Icecrown Citadel, at least not on my server. The day the first 5% buff went live, a thread popped up on our realm: ‘Icecrown raid buff today – will you use it?’ The overwhelming response? ‘Hell, yes!’ The most tempered response from one guild was ‘If everyone else uses it, we will, too.’ By and large there was no complaining about it, no grousing about Blizzard trivializing content or making it so that everyone could get the epics that only the cream of the crop should have. This is in quite the contrast to the response to many boss and raid nerfs of the past, or increases in Badge/Emblem drop rates for that matter. My own guild only briefly considered the question when I threw it out there, and voted overwhelmingly to run with it. (And here’s a caveat: We were 6/12 when the first 5% went in, having killed Rotface for the first time the night before; it took us another 2 months and an additional 10% buff to get our next two bosses. /shame)<br /><br />What is the reason for this relative silence on the matter? For my realm I suspect at least part of it is because, at the time of the first buff, no guild had killed Arthas on 25, and only 4 had succeeded in 10’s. Since most hardcore raiders view 25’s as the Gold Standard, no one had the ultimate bragging rights, no one could talk shit about anyone else. As the number of guilds clearing the instance rose with each successive buff, there was no slagging in either the official progression thread or in trade chat, likely because everyone needed at least some buff to get the kill in the first place. For once people seemed to follow the maxim about glass houses and stone throwing.<br /><br />Second, and maybe more importantly, is that this was a buff to players, and not a nerf to the encounters. The people that it mainly helped were the people who were skirting the edge. Consider Festergut-10 for example. Ignoring the dps contributions of tanks (which is considerable with 9 stacks of<a href="http://www.wowhead.com/spell=72219"> Gastric Bloat</a>) and healers (which is pretty insignificant, for the most part) the six dps (assuming a 2-2-6 composition) have to average 5229 dps to kill him at the enrage timer. The original 5% buff would give groups that were stuck and averaging 5000 dps just a little bit of a boost, perhaps enough to get the kill, provided that they did everything right. A raid team that is either far under geared, or far under skilled and was doing 4500 dps would still not be able to kill him, as that 5% buff would only up their dps to 4752 – not enough. Even at 15%, players eking out 4500 dps without the buff wouldn’t be able to push it up enough to get a kill, though the new 20% should allow them to. The 5-10-15 buffs were enough to help push some folks over the bar, but if those groups were barely killing Festergut with the buff, they would likely not be able to kill Putricide or the other end bosses, at least not until they farmed some more gear or figured out how to do 5K dps unbuffed.<br /><br />At the same time, the boss’s abilities have stayed the same – in other words, they are hitting just as hard and fast as ever, and using all of their special abilities in the same manner. What has changed is they are hitting players that have been buffed by a little bit in health. Consider Festergut again. On a recent fight at 3 inhales our tank took the following damage:<br /><br /><blockquote>[21:37:25.167] Festergut hits Tanky 15097 (B: 3078)<br />[21:37:26.086] Festergut Gastric Bloat Tanky Absorb (8275)<br />[21:37:26.086] Tanky afflicted by Gastric Bloat (3) from Festergut<br />[21:37:27.179] Festergut hits Tanky 16712 (A: 2044)<br />[21:37:28.114] YoursTruly Holy Light Tanky +15815<br />[21:37:28.114] Festergut hits Tanky 16381<br />[21:37:28.940] Retadin Divine Storm Tanky +1124<br />[21:37:29.113] Festergut hits Tanky 17803</blockquote><br /><br />Without the 15% health buff, Tanky stood at 48,592 health; with the buff 51,168. The first three hits did a total of 48,190 damage. Tanky would have been hanging by a thread without that key heal (and the block and absorbs), but it would have taken the exact same number of hits, with or without the buff, to kill him. Sometimes the buff will make a difference, sometimes it won’t, but the difference between life and death is small. Up to this point, <span style="font-weight:bold;">the raid buff to health may save a life for one more hit or one more tick of the DoT, but it hasn’t allowed most groups to sail through the content.</span><br /><br />Ultimately I believe that’s why the raid buff has been largely shrugged off by the masses: Because it hasn’t to this point trivialized the content. You still have to execute, in some cases to perfection, to beat the raid encounters. Even with 15% extra health you have to kill the Bone Spikes, stay out of Death and Decay, kite the Gas Cloud and avoid the Malleable Goo. You have to heal through the Mark of the Fallen Champions and pass on the Vampire Bite, and kill the Suppressors. The buffs have given us just a little bit of a boost; given us just a hair more time to live and get out of the fire, but they haven’t just picked us up and carried us through, and that’s a good thing. I expect as the buffs increase there will come a point where you really will be able to ignore some of these effects, and then we’ll hear some complaining. Hopefully I will have earned my Kingslayer title before that day comes, or before Blizzard decides that they really DO need to increase the cooldown on Gastric Bloat, or change Putricide so that he only casts one Unstable Experiment per phase – you know, when they nerf it for real. THAT’S when you’ll see the real complaints.jeffohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09708074863929831135noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2764357882039835411.post-50658819939539498062010-05-11T10:34:00.002-04:002010-05-11T10:56:27.418-04:00Progression BluesEverywhere I look these days it seems I see the same thing: <a href="http://trollshaman.blogspot.com/2010/05/i-hate-mondays.html">raiders complaining</a> about a <a href="http://plusheal.com/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=5502">lack of participation on progression night</a>. It seems that folks show up for farm night but, when new bosses are encountered, a lot of people suddenly discover <a href="http://www.watching-grass-grow.com/">they have far more compelling things to do</a>. Raids end up getting canceled, people get ticked off, and who knows where it leads to, maybe even guild break ups. While some would argue that it’s really a sign of ‘pre-Expansion Blues’, this has clearly been a problem for some guilds for some time going back to vanilla.<br /><br />When people don’t show up for ‘progression night’ it makes me wonder: <span style="font-weight: bold;">Why do they raid?</span> I did a bit of digging around the blogosphere; my unscientific study of the question reveals three main reasons (in no particular order):<br /><blockquote>Loot<br />Camaraderie<br />Challenge</blockquote><br /><br />There are others, of course. ‘Experience more content’; ‘Nothing else to do’; ‘The guild/girlfriend/boyfriend want me to’ – but I think the three listed are probably the most frequently-cited. Some people will try to slip in ‘Character progression’ but in my view, that’s a euphemism for ‘loot’. You tell people you’re in it for ‘Character Progression’ because, if you tell them you’re in it for the loot, you’ll look like a greedy bastard. Who wants that?<br /><br />At any rate, if you’re in it for any of these three reasons, then skipping progression night seems pretty counterproductive overall. If you raid for Loot, it’s in your interest to suck it up and go on progression night, because that’s where your upgrades are likely to be. After all, unless you’re extremely unlucky with drops or rolls, loot from farm bosses has pretty much been exhausted at this point, and most of it is getting DE’d or vendored for gold. Farm content isn’t challenging at all, unless you’re going for a difficult achievement or playing around with ‘let’s see how much dps the healers can do’. Maybe the real ‘challenge’ in farm content is in seeing how long you can maintain the group’s interest in running content that is ridiculously easy.<br /><br />That leaves camaraderie. Camaraderie really seems to be the only frequently-cited reason for raiding that can suffer on progression night, particularly when the group struggles. Repeated failure makes it much easier for the group to break down, for fingers to get pointed, and for people to get sulky (although we all know that happens with loot, too). If you raid for Camaraderie you may well find your lovey-dovey feelings put to the test when you get firmly stuck; then you get a new challenge – keeping your group together when the going gets tough, maintaining the proper ‘group mind’ and morale to find a way to overcome the challenge. It’s certainly not easy, but when you do finally break through there’s a tremendous feeling – relief and accomplishment mixed together – that is greater for the effort the entire group put in than you get from completing a difficult solo task.<br /><br />For me and I think for most members of my guild, the camaraderie and challenge are the top reasons why we raid. As such, I have a hard time understanding why people don’t show up for progression nights. My raid group would actually like to ‘farm out’ the farm content to new raiders or alts and let them get the gear and experience. We could then go in and work on the progression bosses. One of the problems that we have had is we often get to the new bosses late in our raiding night when everyone is tired and we don’t get as much time to work on them as we’d like (and our ‘continuation night’ is running into conflicts with changes to real-life schedules). I think most of us would be quite willing to sacrifice a few <a href="http://www.wowhead.com/item=49426">Emblems of Frost</a> and the odd BoE epic in order to make some real headway on bosses we’ve barely gotten any attempts on.<br /><br />Of course, there’s no guarantee that the newer folks wouldn’t want to just keep going, and then we’d have to run the farm content ourselves anyway. That might actually set up a new challenge: a race to the next progression boss. A little competition within the guild might not be such a bad thing, <a href="http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=24038450978&sid=1">as long as it doesn’t get out of hand.</a><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">What about you – do you show up for progression night? If not, why? I’d like to know.<br /></span>jeffohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09708074863929831135noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2764357882039835411.post-14844015903357359902010-05-10T13:57:00.005-04:002010-05-10T14:09:07.832-04:00Re: A Title at What Cost?Just as an update to <a href="http://lkingformore.blogspot.com/2010/04/title-at-what-cost.html">my last post</a> -- I was cruising around in Dalaran when I saw the following advertisement:<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi35HSLNVNrIhWBxacQRbuMncfO8dvezg4c_XUPiGADUJiNdKdKnKiwRox-peLpGK-vBjtvdoGd_L9PCqwNNdvooOmWO3VRE44kENqSkHhBMUoWQrG2hUYH0oSihEBkaaHJTzrE9Fp85K4/s1600/LKKill.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 145px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi35HSLNVNrIhWBxacQRbuMncfO8dvezg4c_XUPiGADUJiNdKdKnKiwRox-peLpGK-vBjtvdoGd_L9PCqwNNdvooOmWO3VRE44kENqSkHhBMUoWQrG2hUYH0oSihEBkaaHJTzrE9Fp85K4/s320/LKKill.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5469702958440877346" /></a><br /><br />I did some investigative work and found the guild's website. Those are indeed the instructions, and they are serious. The 25,000 gold gets you the title and achievement, but no loot. Guess you can't ask for too much! As of today, one person had applied for himself, and was suggesting that his brother might also want to pay. What the heck, it's only pretend gold, right? Still, I can't imagine feeling too good about a Kingslayer earned this way.<br /><br />I expect I'll actually have something more useful to say about other topics later in the week. My brain is once again not cooperating too much with me.jeffohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09708074863929831135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2764357882039835411.post-6591648808483783702010-04-28T14:19:00.001-04:002010-04-28T14:32:43.221-04:00A Title at What Cost?Years ago when I was young and in shape, I was an avid player of <a href="http://www.idtadekhockey.com/Home/tabid/36/Default.aspx">Deck Hockey</a> (a form of floor hockey played on a special rink with boards, regulation-size goals, referees). I played for many years with a tightly-knit group of friends. We had some great seasons and some forgettable seasons, but I always had a lot of fun playing, and I miss the competitiveness, the activity, and the camaraderie of playing on a team.<br /><br />One magical season everything came together for us and we won our League Championship. Unfortunately for me I took a (very deliberate) knee to the side while diving to keep a ball in the offensive zone during the second round of the playoffs. The blow ended up cracking 3 of my ribs and ended my season. In WoW, it’s akin eating a <a href="http://www.wowhead.com/spell=72494">Shadowcleave</a> from a nasty Igor-type in the first wave of adds on the Deathwhisper fight without a Soulstone, and Battle Rez on cooldown. Still, I came down to every game of the playoffs and contributed how I could: I sat on the end of the bench, opened the door for line changes, shouted encouragement, offered my observations, handed sticks over the boards if someone broke one, I even tied a couple of shoe laces. When the final horn sounded during our championship-winning game, I ran out on the deck with everyone, jumped up and down (painful), gave and received hugs (even more painful). I had beer poured over my head, hoisted the trophy like it was the <a href="http://www.nhl.com/cup/cup.html">Stanley Cup</a> itself, and partied into the wee hours of the morning. Despite my lack of playing, this championship was as much mine as it was anyone’s on the team, and while there was a touch of regret over not being able to play, it was tiny compared to the joy I had for me and my team.<br /><br />Something happened last night that made me think on this a bit today. A guild member mentioned that <span style="font-weight:bold;">the top guild on our server was selling Lich King 25 kills for 25,000 gold a pop</span> (seems like they could do better; I recall guilds selling Amani War Bears for 25K in the not-as-long-ago-as-my-hockey-story). According to my guild member, their instructions to the buyers were to be as follows (and I’m not sure how he knew this): <blockquote>‘When the encounter starts, jump off the ledge.’</blockquote> Knowing the kind of people that are in this guild (a number of first-class assholes, which was further confirmed in an incident in a ToC-25 pug later that night), I quipped ‘And for an extra 25K, they WON’T shout all over trade and the official forums how you got your title’.<br /><br />In terms of my hockey championship, I could be happy despite not playing in the Finals, because these were my teammates and friends. I had contributed to our drive to the playoffs; I had played a key role in our first-round victory and, even though I was sitting on the bench for 4 games, I contributed something to the team during our eventual victory. It sucks to be dead on the floor for ¾ of a fight, but you can still be happy when that boss goes down for the first time, and you can take pride in your group, even if your own contribution was small.<br /><br />How much pride can you take in a title that you buy? At least Gevlon, who <a href="http://greedygoblin.blogspot.com/2009/05/best-investment.html">bought himself into a top-raiding guild</a>, was a competent player who was able to contribute to his guild’s success. Maybe he only got into the guild in the first place because of his cash supply and business acumen, but they wouldn’t have tolerated his presence if he was a complete and utter failure (or would they?). The Kingslayer-selling guild is assuming that their ‘customer’ would be a hindrance alive, incapable of making a positive contribution (and maybe they're right); it’s a pretty good bet that they’ll treat that person with the contempt and disdain that I witnessed last night, wherein one of their members joined the group, zoned in, and immediately asked ‘Who’s dick did [undergeared player] suck to get in this raid?’ In my view, any title or ‘achievement’ that is ‘earned’ by deliberately killing yourself so that you don’t fuck up is not worth having. I personally don’t even feel comfortable wearing the ‘Of the Nightfall’ since we zerged it a month ago. Having people congratulate me on my ‘Kingslayer’ title, or my ‘Glory of the …’ mount if I had to get it this way would be worse than hollow, it’s downright humiliating, and I will not debase myself like that for a mere title or mount.jeffohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09708074863929831135noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2764357882039835411.post-60691052572137561692010-04-26T14:28:00.002-04:002010-04-26T14:38:34.010-04:00The Crowd Control CureThis weekend, I healed a partial Heroic Halls of Reflection with some guildies.<br /><br />I say ‘partial’, because we flamed out after multiple wipes on Falric/Marwyn. We’d made it past Falric with one wipe on trash, but then got repeatedly slaughtered on the second set of spirit waves. Given that we were running with three solid dps, it’s safe to place the blame on me or the tank, who is a bit undergeared (we had to enter the dungeon the Old Fashioned Way – by flying to it and walking through the door, as we were not allowed to queue for it due to her gear). I was disappointed at our failure, but had a realization:<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">I worked harder healing this heroic five man than I had healing an Icecrown 25 the previous night.</span><br /><br />This realization, along with some other things I’ve been reading, overhearing in vent, seeing in guildchat, etc., made me wonder: What are we looking for in this game, and will we be happy when we get it?<br /><br />I had read something on WoW.com recently in which everybody’s favorite former marine biologist stated that Crowd Control would be making a bit of a comeback in <span style="font-style:italic;">Cataclysm</span> (and for the life of me, I can’t find that thread now). This was met with a ‘yay’ from a responder, and in general a lot of positives from the community. In searching (unsuccessfully) for that, I also came across <a href="http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=22748816028&postId=227467593354&sid=1#0">this O-boards plea for more CC</a>. Seems like there’s definitely some support for it.<br /><br />So what do we want? Do we want to continue playing a game where you can clear a heroic in under 10 minutes? Or do we want to have to take our time, plan out pulls, single-target mobs down, and use <a href="http://www.wowhead.com/spell=12826">Polymorph</a>, <a href="http://www.wowhead.com/spell=51724">Sap</a>, and <a href="http://www.wowhead.com/spell=18647">Banish</a>?<br /><br />Personally, I feel that more Crowd Control, and more need for strategic pulls can only improve the game, even if it requires a little more time. ‘Idle hands are the devil’s workshop’, they say. In WoW, idle hands lead to <a href="http://lkingformore.blogspot.com/2009/06/what-do-people-do-all-day.html">trade chat heroes</a> and LFD terrors. I honestly believe that if dps were more engaged in heroics (i.e,, had to do something besides spam their biggest, bestest, AoE ability) then maybe groups would actually function like, well, a group. Of course there would be some inevitable conflicts when someone breaks CC early, or if someone forgets to re-sheep, etc., but I think in the long run, we might actually have more interesting experiences, and it would not be as much of a snore-fest as they can be now.<br /><br />Sadly I’m not sure how well it would go over in practice. WoW heroics have evolved (or maybe DE-volved) into a race to the finish. This is both good and bad. I can recall turning down the opportunity to heal BC heroics because ‘we’ve got a raid in an hour’. It was a legitimate possibility that an hour would not be enough, especially if they were asking for something like Shadow Labrynth (heh, you could easily spend 2+ hours in there and not succeed). I think our top speed for things like Hellfire Ramparts and Underbog in T5 and Badge of Justice level gear was around 40 minutes. Nowadays we’re looking at <a href="http://www.warcrafthuntersunion.com/2010/03/draktharon-speed-run-630/">six and a half minute clears of Drak’Tharon Keep</a>. Raid in one hour? Sure, I’ve got time for three or four heroics! Our current WoW culture may not really accept spending more time in a measly heroic, and if there’s one thing that Crowd Control requires, it’s time.<br /><br />It <span style="font-style:italic;">also </span>requires communication. Even if it’s a simple ‘Mage sheep moon, Rogue sap star’ in party chat before a pull or at the start of the dungeon, you have to communicate with your party members (and boy, do I hate it when people say things like that. ‘lock, summon’, ‘mage make table’. Even when they insert a ‘please’ or ‘thank you’ it strikes me as rude, and I hate rude). As far as I’m concerned, any form of communication that doesn’t involve variations of ‘nub’ or ‘lrn2p’ (or some of these) are positives compared the silent runs we’re currently experiencing.<br /><br />Balance is the issue. I don’t think anyone wants to see a return to the days where you can’t complete something if you don’t have 3 mages. Then again, most dps classes ended up getting fairly reliable forms of Crowd Control heading into <span style="font-style:italic;">Wrath</span>, but they never gave us a chance to use them. Let’s see it come back, at least a little bit. I feel that the increased engagement of all players, and the need for more effective communication in the party, will combine to make the world of the World of Warcraft a bit of a better place to be, even as the Cataclysm tears it apart. Sheep the Moon in 3…2…jeffohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09708074863929831135noreply@blogger.com2