Looking for More

The Short Break

2010-12-24T06:11:00.002-05:00

If 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.

Back in November I participated in NaNoWriMo. 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.

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 'Looking for More.'

Apparently not. Cataclysm 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?

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.

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.

In a way I feel a little bit like Hal from this excellent Malcolm in the Middle 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.

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.

No Portals? No Problem!

2010-12-06T09:56:00.002-05:00

The Shattering 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 (The Day that Deathwing Came) and a lot of hullabaloo about getting roasted by the mighty dragon himself (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).

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.

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 'Renovation Breath', 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 Furlbrows and Old Blanchy 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.

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.

I also had an interesting bit of déjà vu the other day, an experience that sort of bookends the beginning and end of Wrath 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 Argent Crusader’s Tabard 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 Wrath, 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.

You Have Got to be Kidding Me!

2010-11-30T11:56:00.002-05:00

The Cataclysm achievement (soon to be a Feat of Strength) Stood in the Fire 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 this 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.

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?

In response to this:

thats what I have been doing for about 4 hours now

These posts appeared on November 25, two days after the patch hit the servers. As the week progressed, so did the madness.

I wasted all of today sitting around wetlands on Malygos and not a sighting

I camped Tanaris on Malorne for over 6 hours and never saw DW =(

9 hours of waiting in the wetlands

And a fun little exchange:

I'm on hour 14...
Shoot me...

when u get to day 4 then call me i'll come shoot u. That's how long it took me.

Allow me to beat the dead horse some more:

Stood in wetlands for about 14 hours yesterday,

Going on 26 hours of camping one spot in the wetlands.

54 hours in the wetlands since the time I missed him by an inch.

i was there for almost 48 hours straight.

Am I the only person in the world who hasn't completely lost his mind?

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:

Sigh, this achievement is going to be awful. Wish there wasn't an achievement for it.

Folks, just because there's an achievement doesn't mean you have to try to get it.

Wow for WoW

2010-11-24T08:42:00.004-05:00

I have seen the cinematic before, several times.

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.

So I'm quite familiar with it, to say the least.

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.

I have to hand it to Blizzard, they really know how to do these things right.

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.

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.

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.

'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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Gosh, I sure hope Karlee, Paige and Gil are alright...

Why the hell am I writing like Mike Lupica today?

Happy Thanksgiving!

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....

People Watching in Stormwind

2010-11-17T09:47:00.002-05:00

I 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 Gilded Rose Tavern (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).

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.

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 Baron Rivendare’s goat horse (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.

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:

Lisa Pierce, Janey Anship and Suzanne. 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 Ghostbusters reference. Apparently they’re attempting to concoct a love potion.

Roman, Brandon and Justin. These kids fish in the canals and have some amusing conversations about monsters, orcs, crocolisks and worm guts.

William and Donna 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.

Aedis Brom and Christoph Faral. 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 Pig and Whistle in Old Town. I happened to notice them for the first time shortly after stalking my current personal favorites: Karlee and Paige Chaddis, and Gil.

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 Corpse Dust or, more ominously, this.

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.

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.

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?

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 and entertaining. And maybe throws some more of them into the other cities.

A Week of QQ Will Get a Buff

2010-11-10T14:08:00.003-05:00

The Paladin tugged off his plate gauntlet, and placed his hand gently on the shoulder of the sobbing priest.

‘There, there,’ he soothed comfortingly. ‘You did great. And besides, we all know that meters don’t matter.’

The priest looked up, tears streaking her face. She sniffed. ‘They – they don’t?’

‘Of course not,’ cooed the Paladin.

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.

Of course they matter, said the look they exchanged. We just like to pretend that they don't.

Almost exactly one month ago the first shots of Cataclysm 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:

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.

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:

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,

Apparently the spelling errors were the results of typing in an apoplectic rage; later on in the thread he said:

…I'll try my best to keep the raid up, its just the healing meters are depressing me.

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.

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:

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.

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.

We have gone from being top healers to bottom healers in one fell swoop.

Have to spam FoL outside of the HS rotation in order to pull half decent HpS.

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.

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.

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: Holy Paladins got a buff. The effect was immediate.

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 feel 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.

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):

Proposed new Paladin ability:
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!"

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 Snakux. We can focus now on how we’re going to fit into Catacontent 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

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.

And that’s a Good Thing.

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:

Holy paladins are fine, nothing wrong with them other than being dead last on healing meters.

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?

Wrath of the Lich King: Hits and Misses

2010-11-02T11:29:00.002-04:00

I'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 ‘How was your Wrath?’ 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 Hits and Misses.

Hit: The Scourge Invasion

Much as we started playing Cataclysm about three weeks ago, Wrath 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.

The real start to Wrath began with a bang with the arrival of mysterious crates that touched off the highly-controversial Scourge invasion. The ensuing ghoul-fest was the highlight of the pre-Wrath 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.

Miss: The End of the Scourge Invasion

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.

Hit: Leveling

As much as I enjoyed Wrath 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 Wrath. 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.

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 (*cough*Nesingwary*cough*), but as a whole there was a tight theme running throughout.

Hit: Vehicle quests/combat

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…

Miss: Eye of Eternity

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.

Miss: The Argent Tournament and ToC

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.

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.

Hit: Ulduar, OS, Naxx

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.

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.

Hit: Icecrown Citadel

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.

Hit: The Strength of Wrynn/Song of Hellscream

I’ve covered this one before. 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.

Hit: Gunship

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:

Miss: Gear inflation

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 Wrath 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.

Hit and Miss: Achievements

Yes, there’s something fun about falling off a zeppelin, surviving, and seeing an ‘achievement’ 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 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.

Miss: Emblem of What?

Back in Burning Crusade, we had Badges of Justice. In Wrath 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.

Hit: The Lich King

What a great fight. And what a feeling to beat him. I hope the Deathwing fight is as good.

On the whole, Wrath 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 Wrath?

Follow the Gourd!

2010-10-12T14:18:00.003-04:00

Fans of Monty Python may recognize the title from Monty Python’s Life of Brian. 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.

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].

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.

It started simply enough. Following a raid I found myself in Ironforge, when someone started it:

[Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker]

[Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker]?

[Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker]!

Did you say [Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker]]?

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: Chipped Timber Axe.

Having discovered this marvelous weapon in my bags, I was ready. When the next fan boi posted ‘I think he said [Thunderfury]’ I was there:

[Me]: No, he said [Chipped Timber Axe]. (and yes, I really do use commas, periods and capitals in-game).

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.

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.

[Randomguy]: [Thunderfury]!
[Me]: [Chipped Timber Axe]
[Another random guy]: I’ll have the [Chipped Timber Axe].

There’s also my guildie, who linked [The Stoppable Force] (an excellent choice, by the way, and one of my favorites), prefers the [Chipped Timber Axe] 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 Alice’s Restaurant:

You know, if
one person, just one person does it they may think he's really sick and
they won't take him. And if two people, two people do it, in harmony,
they may think they're both faggots and they won't take either of them.
And three people do it, three, can you imagine, three people linking [Chipped Timber Axe]. They may think it's an
organization. And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day,I said
fifty people a day linking Chipped Timber Axe. And friends they may thinks it's a movement.

And that's what it is , the Chipped Timber Axe Movement, and
all you got to do to join is link [Chipped Timber Axe] the next time someone says [Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker]

Cast off the shoes! Follow the gourd!

Blogging John Malkovich

2010-10-07T09:24:00.004-04:00

Malkovich malkovich malkovich, malkovich malkovich malkovich Malkovich malkovich; malkovich Malkovich malkovich. Malkovich malkovich Malkovich malkovich, Malkovich malkovich malkovich malkovich. Malkovich malkovich malkovich malkovichMalkovich .

Malkovich, malkovich malkovich malkovich malkovich malkovich malkovich? Malkovich malkovich malkovich malkovich malkovich (malkovich Malkovich malkovich malkovich malkovich). Malkovich malkovich.

What's in a Name, revisited

2010-09-28T12:32:00.009-04:00

I’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.

I do, however, have one thing in common with Indiana Jones:

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.

What does this have to do with WoW?

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.

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…

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.

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.

So right off the bat we have 49 assholes in the World of the World of Warcraft.

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.

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.

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.

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 ‘Einsatzgruppen’, 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?

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.

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.

No, 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. 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 John Valby 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’.

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.

At least there’s hope for the misinformed, undereducated and the offensive for offensive’s sake. Misinformation and undereducated can be corrected. 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.

Time for Fun

2010-09-21T13:59:00.003-04:00

One 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.

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 laughing his ass off at you. 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!'

‘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 Plus Heal that expressed concern about healing -- 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 Kurn’s Corner a few days later. Before we get into that, let’s take a look at the healing game in Wrath for just a second.

For most of Wrath (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.

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. THAT’S 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.

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:

- 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.
- Stacking one stat to the exclusion of all others is not fun. Holy Paladins loading on Intellect gems, this is aimed right at you.
- Mindlessly spamming one spell almost exclusively -- whether it’s because you can or because you have to – is not fun. Wrath for Paladins has been a bit of both at times.

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 Wrath 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:

- Mana will matter, as will its management.
- Damage will continue to be big, but will be less spiky
- 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.
- Due to the first two items on the list, people will have to get used to life with an only partly-full health bar.

‘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.

The problem for this vision is that Wrath 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:

[DPS and tanks] have enough health that you as a healer make much less of a difference.

Lets face facts, someone that has little chance of death for a healer is not very nerve racking.

Fun is not being weak and slow.

I play games to feel heroic or super or god like. If I wanted to feel normal I would play SIMS.

I want to make a difference everytime I cast a spell and feel like it.

Despite his claims elsewhere in that thread to the contrary, I think it’s pretty clear that Carbonic WANTS 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.

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:

My idea of fun is fast paced with little time to think
I really hated Vanilla healing, it was like chess. You talked for more time doing nothing but planning[sic]

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 Wrath 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 Wrath 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?

What’s in YOUR Wallet?

2010-09-10T12:12:00.003-04:00

(Author’s note: this is part of the Blog Azeroth ‘Shared Topic’ for the week of September 6-12. I expect to complete the ‘Confidence Game’ series next week)

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.

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:

Things That Aren’t Going Away…Ever

There are a few things that immediately get put into this box. He will not 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.

Verigan’s Fist. I think every Paladin with any sense of lore or sentimentality likely still has this. This 2-handed mace is the end result of the first epic questline in a Paladin’s life 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 Daphne Stillwell 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.

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 Holy Mightstone. 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 voodoo feathers 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.

The Mightstone 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 Billy Maclure wanders into my Elwynn forest retirement home and breaks it. I should have sent HIM into the Fargodeep Mine to get that necklace back!

Commander’s Badge. 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.

Going back deeper, my Paladin finds the Argent Dawn Commission 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.

Carried in the Paladin's bag is Uther Lightbringer’s Gold Coin. How can a Paladin throw away something once held by Uther? He can’t.

Noble’s Monocle. 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.

The Paladin has come to the end of the 'Things that aren't Going Away...Ever' pile. The next pile is called

Things I’m Sure I’m Going to Use…Eventually

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:

My Ret Set. 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 Cataclysm comes I’ll finally build a ret spec, but by then the Ret gear will likely be useless, and 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!

The Soulbound Keepsake. As stated above, I am a huge fan of the Plaguelands and pretty much everything associated with them. I started this questline 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.

Kael’s Vial Remnant. 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?

Surprisingly, there's not too much in that pile. Now there's one more left:

Things that I have no Good Reason to Keep…but do

These things are utterly useless now, yet I still have them. I can actually see myself getting rid of them though.

Arcane Runes, Sanguine Hibiscus, Coilfang Armaments. 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 Wrath 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 Sporeggar and Cenarion Expedition (Note to self: exalted with CE, time to dump the Amrmaments).

Direbrew’s Remote. Brewfest 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....

Finally, there's Spectrecles. This quest line is long over and done with, but who doesn’t want to see ghosts in Shadowmoon Valley?

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 new cloak. Which he puts in the bank. How can you get rid of something earned after such an epic battle?

The Confidence Game, Chapter 1: Self-Confidence

2010-08-31T10:20:00.003-04:00

Bob 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

The Confidence Game: Prologue

2010-08-20T09:49:00.002-04:00

When Ruby Sanctum came out near the end of June my realm was down for the Super-Extended Maintenance (24-hour variety). 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 little bit of luck involved with Saviana Ragefire: 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.

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: Sindragosa. We were working hard with a Super-Extended Raid Lockout (2 month variety), 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.

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.

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 Bolvar’s 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?

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!

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 knowing 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.

Confidence in yourself and your raiding team is such a key ingredient to success in WoW, yet it easily the most fragile. 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!

The Sounds of Silence

2010-08-12T12:03:00.002-04:00

Back 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 the video of Arthas’ last moments on earth (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 sure 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.

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 Putricide’s Laboratory of Alchemical Horrors and Fun (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.

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.

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 Uber Spell of Instant Death or the bucketload of Vile spirits that were chasing me around.

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.

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:

Vent was absolutely silent.

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.

And no one said a thing.

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.

The King is dead. Long live the Kingslayers!

Blood Elf Porn!

2010-08-04T08:13:00.004-04:00

Note: With thanks to Gevlon for trolling, and Tobold for actually taking the challenge.

Pst! Hey, you! Come over ‘ere, I’ve got something to show you.

You heard about this little gizmo? The Super Snapper FX? Yeah, that’s the one. You – what? You’ve used one? What for?

Huh, well how about that? Well, it turns out you can take pictures of things besides turtles, too. Here, check this out.

Eh? Eh? What do you think, you like that? No? OK, OK maybe dwarfs should 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?

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 highest taste, and I have some very tasty – err, tasteful, yeah that’s it – tasteful pictures right here.

Check this out. These came direct from the pleasure palaces of Quel’Thalas itself! Eh? What do you think, you want to buy some?

Eh? What’s that?

Well, sure they’re girls.

I mean, look at that, right there! It’s clearly…

...

Well, I think they’re girls.

Ah, what the hell, you'll never know the difference, anyway. Am I right? Eh? Eh?

Wait! Come back! I've got goblins and gnomes with a worgen, I've got...damn.

...

I think they're girls....

The End of an Era, Part II

2010-07-27T09:00:00.005-04:00

Before 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 Isimode and Faesrol, and of course Eadric the Pure):

-- couldn't take the shine off of Paladins.

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, WoWInsider showed Paladins lagging behind all but shaman in popularity. Today, Warcraft Realms shows Paladins in a dead heat with Death Knights for most popular class, with Death Knights having a slight edge at level 80.

(Census data provided by WarcraftRealms.com)

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.

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.

With the arrival of Wrath, however, all that changed. Ret was so strong coming out of the chute that Ghostcrawler felt compelled to make his infamous ‘to the ground, baby!’ 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.

Tankadins were concerned heading into Wrath 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 good life-saver. 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.

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.

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. Cataclysm’s 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'.

AFK

2010-07-15T13:34:00.002-04:00

Those of you who are waiting for my follow-up to End of an Era -- 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 will be here.

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. It's like those broken ribs all over again!), and the expected reaction of those in and out of the group to that soon-to-be event are definite fodder for thought.

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!

The End of an Era, Part 1

2010-07-09T15:45:00.003-04:00

Two 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. Wrath of the Lich King was going to be all about the Death Knights.

As Wrath 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.

And what has it been? As much as Wrath *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 Wrath of the Lich King is itself a subtitle, and it wouldn’t be good form to have two subtitles for one title), I think that Wrath’s would be The Golden Age of Paladins. The closing of the GAP (see what I did there?) and the overhaul coming with Cataclysm 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.

No class, not even Death Knights, dominated in Wrath 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?

Arthas. Before he was the Lich King, before 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 innocent child that he once was. The expansion was all about Arthas.

The World’s Greatest (Dead) Paladin, Uther the Lightbringer, makes several appearances in Wrath, two that are critical to the story. Previously seen in WoW as a ghost in the Western Plaguelands (the result of a quest 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).

Tirion Fordring quickly took up the mantle of World’s Greatest (Living) Paladin in Wrath, 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 questline that will disappear with Cataclysm; 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).

Finally, there’s the World’s Greatest (Not Quite Dead) Paladin, Bolvar Fordragon. 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 boss, 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 The Return of the Wrath of the Lich King).

So there are three Paladins and one former Paladin who played key roles in Wrath. 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!

Some Hopes for Cataclysm

2010-06-22T10:15:00.003-04:00

Ruby Sanctum goes live today [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 I’ve had enough of the Cataclysm talk, 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:

An enjoyable leveling experience. 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 Wrath: a series of well-designed quests that really told the story. While there were a few side trips and diversions in Wrath (Hemet Nesingwary, anyone?), there were so many, interconnected quests and questlines that created a cohesive experience with a definite story. Hand-in-hand with that…

Keep the bad guy front and center. 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.

A Killer World Event. The Wrath 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.

Heroics that are relevant for longer. 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 Badges of Justice 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; heroic Loken was deadly, for a time. 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:

Curb Gear Inflation. 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.

Crowd Control, please. Just about every class has some form of CC. Let’s give them a chance to use it. And it sounds like they are heading in this direction. Good. I find AoE fests to be uninteresting.

Duskwood. 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.

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.

Buffs > Nerfs: Why no one’s Griping about the ICC Raid Buffs

2010-05-26T11:56:00.002-04:00

When 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%. The Strength of Wrynn will now grant us 20% increased health, 20% increased damage, and 20% increased heals. 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.

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 Firefighter ‘when it mattered’ (i.e., pre-nerf).

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)

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.

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 Gastric Bloat) 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.

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:

[21:37:25.167] Festergut hits Tanky 15097 (B: 3078)
[21:37:26.086] Festergut Gastric Bloat Tanky Absorb (8275)
[21:37:26.086] Tanky afflicted by Gastric Bloat (3) from Festergut
[21:37:27.179] Festergut hits Tanky 16712 (A: 2044)
[21:37:28.114] YoursTruly Holy Light Tanky +15815
[21:37:28.114] Festergut hits Tanky 16381
[21:37:28.940] Retadin Divine Storm Tanky +1124
[21:37:29.113] Festergut hits Tanky 17803

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, 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.

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.

Progression Blues

2010-05-11T10:34:00.002-04:00

Everywhere I look these days it seems I see the same thing: raiders complaining about a lack of participation on progression night. It seems that folks show up for farm night but, when new bosses are encountered, a lot of people suddenly discover they have far more compelling things to do. 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.

When people don’t show up for ‘progression night’ it makes me wonder: Why do they raid? I did a bit of digging around the blogosphere; my unscientific study of the question reveals three main reasons (in no particular order):

Loot
Camaraderie
Challenge

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?

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.

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.

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 Emblems of Frost and the odd BoE epic in order to make some real headway on bosses we’ve barely gotten any attempts on.

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, as long as it doesn’t get out of hand.

What about you – do you show up for progression night? If not, why? I’d like to know.

Re: A Title at What Cost?

2010-05-10T13:57:00.005-04:00

Just as an update to my last post -- I was cruising around in Dalaran when I saw the following advertisement:

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.

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.

A Title at What Cost?

2010-04-28T14:19:00.001-04:00

Years ago when I was young and in shape, I was an avid player of Deck Hockey (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.

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 Shadowcleave 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 Stanley Cup 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.

Something happened last night that made me think on this a bit today. A guild member mentioned that the top guild on our server was selling Lich King 25 kills for 25,000 gold a pop (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):

‘When the encounter starts, jump off the ledge.’

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’.

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.

How much pride can you take in a title that you buy? At least Gevlon, who bought himself into a top-raiding guild, 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.

The Crowd Control Cure

2010-04-26T14:28:00.002-04:00

This weekend, I healed a partial Heroic Halls of Reflection with some guildies.

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:

I worked harder healing this heroic five man than I had healing an Icecrown 25 the previous night.

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?

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 Cataclysm (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 this O-boards plea for more CC. Seems like there’s definitely some support for it.

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 Polymorph, Sap, and Banish?

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 trade chat heroes 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.

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 six and a half minute clears of Drak’Tharon Keep. 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.

It also 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.

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 Wrath, 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…

'Good' Loot, 'Bad' Loot

2010-04-05T10:02:00.003-04:00

Last week something happened which has made me look at how irrational I can be about loot, and reopened feelings I haven't really had for two years.

One of my guildies asked me if I needed Marrowgar's Frigid Eye. He'd found it in his frosty sack of treasures the previous week when we had rescued Darnavan (who somehow found himself, like Kul and Corki, in hot water again this week). I guess he didn't need it, and didn't want to vendor it or put it on the AH. He needed bag space for the expected haul and thought I might like it. Best of all, it was free.

This is a dream ring for a Holy Paladin. Nice Stam/Int, good spellpower, and HASTE, which I am currently pushing as much as I can. Oh, and a yellow socket. Nice. So I took it, and after the raid I went to my bank, took out one of several Brilliant King's Amber that I keep stashed away, and socketed and equipped the ring. It replaced the very nice Signet of Putrefaction.

Yet as I equipped the ring, I felt a moment of hesitation -- I didn't really want to replace the putrid ring from Festergut (no way am I replacing the Ashen Band of Exaltedy Goodness -- I wouldn't want to make Tirion angry). There was something about picking up this ring that I really didn't deserve, even though my healing made it possible for my guild member to win the ring in the first place.

It's made me think a bit of my first gear purchases from the Auction House. We had been thoroughly, completely humiliated in Karazhan, and it was clear that we weren't ready. After a bit of searching I had found an excellent pre-raid gear guide for Holy Paladins over on Allakhazam, which did a great job of laying out what I should get and from where. I ran all the heroics I could to get some of the great drops, boosted my Lower City Reputation so I could get not one but two copies of the Lower City Prayerbook, and even went and did the painful Nesingwary Nagrand quests for the best available libram. But I still needed a weapon and a shield, and the guild directed me to the auction house, for the Essence Focuser and the Crystal Pulse Shield.

I was happy to have these items, to be sure, and they served me well. Yet I didn't take the same satisfaction in toting them around as I did from my Breastplate of Many Graces or my Justice Bearer's Pauldrons (I loved that so-called purple judgment set, though the Mask of Penance was pretty creepy). For me, buying those items diminished them in a way. It was good that I had bought them; it sent a message that I was willing to do whatever it took to raid, yet I felt like it really said 'Ha, you can't get decent gear the right way.' In the same way, wearing Festergut's ring was like a badge of honor. Using a ring that was given to me, even though I played a role in it's acquisition, felt almost like a cheat.

The funny thing is that I'm not really a gear snob. I don't look down my nose at crafted gear or emblem gear, or the people who use it (I have plenty of emblem gear, I have no right to look down on anyone!). I had no problem shelling out big bucks for Je'tze's Bell or for the Darkmoon Card: Greatness, or the battered hilt, so it's funny that this little ring would make me feel so uncomfortable. I think it's likely because Festergut caused us so many problems (I believe it was > 40 attempts total before we bested the bumble) that his ring was like some sort of trophy, like a way to thumb my nose at him.

So I've equipped the ring, and I've used the ring and it's been another little buff to my stats. I suppose I can forget about how I got it and tell myself that it's payment for all the bone spikes, coldflames and Saber Lashes I've taken since Icecrown was released and be satisfied. But I'm already checking Atlas Loot for something to really earn.

Yesterday's News: Tomorrow's Problem?

2010-03-26T11:29:00.002-04:00

Yesterday, after struggling vainly to write a meaningful post, I visited WoW.com where I found the following video, 'Yesterday's News'. If you have not seen it, take three minutes to watch it. If you've already seen it, do it anyway. I'll still be here.

I found this video quite touching. In fact, I'll admit it -- it brought a tear to my eye, and that tear managed to find it's way down my cheek to, and I alternately laughed at and cursed myself for being such a mush.

The initial emotional reaction on my part was at the sheer sadness embodied in our little dwarf as he saw his life's work trivialized. At the end it was uplifting to see him pull himself out of his own misery and extend a comforting hand to someone who found herself in the same situation. A simple act of kindness, the ability to heal and move on -- these are wonderful traits. But that's not what I want to discuss here. I want to look at what we've lost in WoW with some of the new convenience features like 'Teleport to Dungeon.'

There's no question that teleporting to and from dungeons saves us tremendous time. I didn't run too many instances on my main until I hit level 70; I did more on the way up on my lock and, quite frankly, it was frequently a pain in the butt. There were too many people who'd look at the map upon joining a group and think 'eh, those guys are much closer, I'll wait for a summons.' There were also plenty of times (with my lock) where I'd spend 25 minutes trying to actually find a group, then spend another 15 minutes schlepping from Stranglethorn Vale all the way to Tirisfal Glades only to have the group fall apart before even getting inside the instance (it's always the worst with Scarlet Monastery, by the way, have you noticed that?). It's certainly much more convenient to port directly to the instance, and then to be able to port back out right where you were. No more spending another 20 minutes flying back to STV!

Yet watching the film brought back certain memories -- good ones. The film communicates a certain joy in the summoning process, as characters come together for a common purpose. Running or riding up to the stone, a wave, a 'hearty hello', hugs -- followed by a group effort at getting the rest of the group (even if they are lazy and inconsiderate for not trying to get there) together. The summoning process requires interaction, even if it's as simple as 'type 1 for summon' or 'clicky plz'. Note again how the characters come together and act as one. Compare that with how the characters just disappeared from the streets of Stormwind -- they're all standing apart as individuals. No interaction, no warmth, nothing. One second they're there, the next...gone. Instead of working to bring the group together, of bonding, however tenuous it might be at the summoning stone, we suddenly find ourselves in a dungeon with a group of strangers. And half the time they're already halfway through the first pull when you zone in.

I've only been playing WoW for about three years yet I've seen it become increasingly individualized. The rise of meter watching (which includes World of Logs ranking dps and heals), gear score and achievements are all things that serve to break down the group aspect of play. The new LFG system and it's Teleport to Dungeon feature, while convenient, further erodes the social structure of the game. Less talk, less interaction, less seeing other players as people. Let's just hope that we can continue to reach out and connect with other players, the way the Stonemason did with the Flight Master, as the game continues on this path.

Is it in my head?

2010-03-25T14:18:00.002-04:00

Yes. Yes it is in my head. And that's exactly what the problem is. It's in my head, and not on my computer screen.

All this week I've been writing and writing and writing, with nothing to show for it. 'half a page of scribbled lines' as Pink Floyd would say. For whatever reason, the things I'm trying to say just keep getting stuck somewhere between my brain and my fingertips.

Perhaps I change my system. Normally I sit down with either a notebook and physically write (shocking, isn't it?) or at the computer on Word and write, and rewrite, and consider. Right now that system isn't working. If I'm at the sink washing dishes, or driving to the store, or doing just about anything else, the ideas flow like water and posts practically write themselves. All in my head. When I sit down and try to put them out on the paper or screen, it just shrivels up and dies. Not fun.

Maybe I should just sit here and type it directly onto the 'compose' pain of my blog page, the way I'm doing now. Maybe it would flow better that way and would make some sense. Isn't that, in many ways, what the spirit of blogging is all about? It's funny that blogs have become such 'serious journalism' in some ways. It seems to me in many ways that a blog should be a place where you kind of 'speak' extemporaneously. Instead we have blogs that are carefully planned, composed, written, edited and revised. This is serious work! Maybe I'll try that, but no time right now.

So, sorry. Hopefully soon I'll be able to get my WoW thoughts out of my head and into this space.

Whiny Post Day

2010-03-17T11:20:00.002-04:00

Klepsacovic threw down the gauntlet, and I’ve decided to pick it up. The challenge was in finding something to whine about. First I thought I’d whine about losing a roll for the Bulwark of Smouldering Steel to a pug, since I’m still rocking with the Voice of Reason. I’ve got a long, bad history with shield drops going back to Kara, when I ran around with a flashlight on my back for what seemed like forever, and the damn shield from Chess (which was even more of a slam-dunk than the gunship battle) wouldn’t drop – except for the one time when I wasn’t there, of course, and it got sharded. The one stinking time ToC25 dropped the Bastion of Purity I was outrolled by a shammy – the only person that rolled against me. Sure I have the Vigilant Ward, but that was after passing on it three times or so because, quite frankly, it’s not as good as Kel’Thuzads’ shield. Which is mine now and has been for about 11 months, with no end in sight.

Anyway, I’m not going to whine about that.

No, my main problem right now is with Cataclysm Saturation. Sure I’m going to buy it. Sure my world will be rocked when everything I’ve known about Holy Paladins gets turned on its head with the great stat upheaval. Sure I’m interested in how the world will change, what new quests and dungeons and items will be in the game, and if they will actually add anything useful to my crafting profession of alchemy, which has been the red-headed stepchild of professions for quite some time now (apologies to any red-headed stepchildren out there – you are loved!).

I’m interested, but I don’t want to be buried in it.

I’m not playing Cataclysm now – I’m playing Wrath of the Lich King. Spirit is not currently a mana regeneration tool for Holy Paladins. I don’t have Mastery. My guild hasn’t leveled. So, while I’m keeping an eye on the Cataclysm news, in a lot of ways I just don’t care. My focus now is on improving my character – not for Cataclysm, but for Wrath. Not to beat the big-ass baddie at the end of Cataclysm, but to beat Arthas – you know, the current big-ass baddie that has been downed by all of 5 guilds on my server (10 man) and once on 25.

The problem that I see with all this Cataclysm reportage is that it infects the WoW playing population like some kind of insidious, sneaky virus. Larísa at Pink Pigtail Inn reported a bit of ‘late-into-expansion apathy’ setting into her guild, and further states ‘it’s in the blogs, it’s in the podcasts, it’s everywhere.’ Suddenly nobody wants to run heroics anymore, nobody shows up for raids anymore – why should they? Cataclysm’s coming and everything’s going to change!

The infection comes from WoW.com, WoWhead, MMO-Champion, and directly from Blizzard. With every forum posting from a top Blizzard flunky about Cataclysm, the infection spreads and works its way deeper into the masses. Every blog post that says ‘Ho hum, I just don’t care anymore, Cataclysm’s just around the corner’ is like an uncovered sneeze on a crowded subway. Cover your nose, for Gods’ sakes! We likely have six months or more to go before Patch 4.0 changes the world and I want to kill Arthas before then. Give the Cataclysm stuff a rest and focus on the game we have now: Wrath of the Lich King.

Batman!

2010-03-10T14:20:00.003-05:00

That pretty much sums up last night’s raid.

Let’s see, things seemed bad when, during Icecrown trash fights, we twice pulled mobs from the center of the room either due to mistargeting or someone getting too close to a something. Careless.

Prior to our first Marrowgar pull we had an 18 minute break while we waited for our 25th player to log on -- her boyfriend* insisted she was logging on, then she was having trouble, then she was switching computers, then she was replaced. Short of a wipe, nothing kills raid momentum faster than a break like this.

Following this break, we wiped. Twice. The proximal cause was an STD – Sudden Tank Death. As a tank healer, I take a lot of the blame for it. However, on each wipe we also had at least four dps down by the time the tank went down, putting the whole operation in jeopardy anyway.

Following these two wipes, we had a 19 minute break. One of our healers had to leave unexpectedly (not a nerd rage quit). A second one took advantage of that to also drop due to child aggro. Once everyone was replaced we still had to deal with a few straggler afk's, and people who discovered after 15 minutes of doing nothing that they had to go walk the dog or something after all.

We wiped two more times. For real.

At that, we decided to go to Ulduar to kill Ignis for the weekly. Keep in mind that we haven’t set foot in Ulduar since November, and that we typically bypassed Ignis in favor of going after Crybaby and the Keepers. And we haven’t been in Ulduar on 25 man since…August.

Flame Leviathan was easy. Until a few rogue flying machines snuck in and killed us after we defeated FL and got kicked out of our vehicles. I should have been laughing at this point, but as Jules Winfield might have said, I was close to being ‘a mushroom-cloud-layin' motherfucker, ...Superfly T.N.T., ... the Guns of the Navarone!’

We proved how rusty we were on Ignis trash. Though we didn’t wipe, the tanks did not properly position the Molten Colossi, which resulted in some close calls due to silence. We also seemed to have four people tanking at one point, and maybe four healing.

On Ignis himself, while the RL was talking about shattering Golems, someone said ‘why aren’t we just burning down the boss?’ It was decided to ignore the golems and burn down the boss. The problem? This is not a heroic. We got him to about 70%.

Our second attempt on him was a disaster as well. I think we had four healers.

Sum total for the night? An emblem of triumph, a big repair bill and a ton of aggravation.

Some days you just can’t get rid of a bomb.

*She's married, with children. He's married, with children. They're not married to each other. They've never met in real life (AFAIK). Yet they're one of those odd 'couples' that you come across from time to time. He was apparently exchanging texts with her while she was trying to log in. These crazy kids and their internet relationships!

What’s in a name?

2010-03-01T14:18:00.002-05:00

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” – George Santayana

I had been planning to use this quote in a piece about how I feared my guild was about to stumble into a tiger trap that we’ve been in with Kara, Naxx and Ulduar, a trap mentioned last week in Cold Comfort’s ‘The B Team.’ I didn’t get to it yet (if you actually read this blog with any regularity you know that posting with regularity is not one of my strong points), and I’ve since been derailed by something that I came across today while reading the Guild Relations Forum.

The thread, if you choose to look, can be found here. To sum it up, the Original Poster (Bobbow) wonders why his guild name got changed and why Blizzard used the word ‘racist’ in their note of explanation to him. The guild name: For the Reich.

According to Bobbow, his family name is Reich, and he claims complete innocence in the matter. Most of the responses could be summed up as follows: Get a clue. No one calls him a Nazi outright; most seem to think that he should educate himself further on why it’s offensive to many people. There are one or two notes of support for him. Gabrielus tries to claim that ‘Reich’ is not specific to Hitler’s Germany, and that our association of it with Hitler is due to ‘too many people learning history from Hollywood.’

This thing has been bugging me all day. I drafted – and canned – several responses. I don’t know that I will say anything over there at all, but I feel it can’t go without some kind of a response, and what are blogs for? So here’s my take on it:

I’d like to believe that Bobbow is just a clueless kid. His writing style pegs him as someone who’s either young, or a little undereducated. I’m guessing young. Gabrielus comes across as a little older and more mature. He’s got the thread of a good idea in there; unfortunately, he goes in the completely wrong direction. He’s right when he states that the word ‘reich’ in and of itself is non-specific, and is largely defined as referring to the German state or empire. ‘Technically’ he’s right. On the other hand, ‘technically’ I could walk in and call my boss ‘Der Fuehrer’ and have it mean exactly what it means: The Leader. Still, if you call anyone ‘Der Fuehrer’, there’s no doubt who you are referring to. Unless I was so comfortable with my boss, calling him Der Fuehrer might give me a quick trip to the unemployment line, as there's only one person who is known universally by that title. 'For the Reich' is a phrase with similar connotations.

I am an amateur WWII historian. I find the time period fascinating on many levels. One of my non-WoW hobbies is to play ‘histsorical conflict simulations’ (i.e.,, I play wargames). I don’t know if the German soldiers cried ‘For the Reich’ when they fired up the panzers on September 1, 1939 or not. What I do know is that ‘For the Reich’ is so closely associated with Hitler and the Nazis that that question is totally irrelevant. To many people, hearing a phrase like 'For the Reich' is going to call up images of Hitler, Nuremburg rallies, concentration camps -- Blizzard really had no choice but to drop the Ban Hammer on this one.

Finally, I guess what really bugs me about this is not that someone would try to slip a joke past Blizzard, or even that someone might think it’s clever and/or amusing to use a name like this – as Carol Burnett said, ‘Comedy is tragedy plus time’, and John Cleese and many others have proven that you CAN laugh at the Third Reich and Hitler. No, it’s that Bobbow and Gabrielus seem to be so utterly ignorant of the way people can perceive the name. Every day we have another WWII veteran die. My grandfather and two uncles were in the Navy in WWII. Another uncle flew a P-38 in Europe during the war. Two of my friends’ fathers fought at the Battle of the Bulge, and my father-in-law was a Pearl Harbor survivor. They’re all dead now. The memories grow a bit dimmer and, as this happens the voices of the Holocaust deniers get a little louder. I am afraid of what the lack of understanding exhibited by folks like Bobbow and Gabrielus means for us. Laugh at the past where appropriate, but don’t forget it.

'I'm Just Sayin' and Other Words of Hate

2010-02-23T13:50:00.000-05:00

Back in high school my group of friends developed our own language. It was not a conscious action; we never set out to create a series of ‘code words’ to hide our nefarious deeds from our parents or anything, it just happened over time. Like any language, the ‘lingo’ or ‘verbiage’, as we called it, changed over time as phrases and words replaced others. Thirty years later we still use it a fair amount when we get together, and I’ve even passed some of it on to my wife and kids. I’m not sure if I’m pleased or disgusted by that fact.

The World of the World of Warcraft has its own ‘lingo’, and, like my high school verbiage, it has changed and adapted somewhat over time. A word like ‘Mob’ which generally refers to ‘bad guys’ came from an old programming term – Mobile Object Block – that really refers to any moving NPC (and there’s another in-game phrase). Other phrases have been adapted by WoW players from elsewhere, such as the largely-awful ‘leet speak’, like the various ‘lol’, lulz’ and ‘n00b’.

As a new player who had no experience with MMOs when I started playing WoW, the in-game language was initially quite confusing and sometimes intimidating. By the time I was in my first 'serious' guild, I knew enough to know that MT = Main Tank. Whenever someone in my guild would type ‘MT’ in guildchat I’d assume they made a mistake, that they were addressing the ‘Main Tank’ in their party, and I'd sometimes type back 'Wrong Chat'. It wasn’t until someone actually typed out ‘mistell’ that I realized my error, and stopped my silly behavior.

Another one that confused me was ‘FTW’. I pored over this one in my head for several minutes until I realized that it could only mean one thing: ‘Fuck the World!’ This meaning, both defiant and victorious, was drilled home to me the moment I first hurled my Hammer of Wrath at a fleeing Southsea Freebooter in Tanaris. I cranked it up (1.5 sec cast time back then) and watched that silver streak drill him in the back: ‘Hammer of Wrath, Fuck the World!’ It definitely works this way, doesn’t it? As certain as I was of FTW, I was utterly mystified by FTL, and I just couldn’t figure it out. Like ‘MT”, it wasn’t until someone actually spelled out ‘For the Loss’ in guild chat that I understood. That was also the moment I realized how wrong I was with FTW. Of course, Fuck the World still works just as well (if not better) than For the Win.

As much as I like Fuck the World (and now you’ll never think of it quite the same, will you? Power of Suggestion, FTW!) there are three phrases/ words commonly used in WoW these days that I just can’t stand. Here they are:

I’m just sayin
I’ve seen this for quite some time in both trade/general chat and in various WoW forums (mostly on the O-boards), and I’ve never liked it. How much I didn’t like it was brought into sharp focus last week in ICC. We were clearing the hallway up to Valithria Dreamwalke for the first time, and we had just encountered Crok Scourgebane, Captain Arnath (who, if you’ve ever struggled through Alchemist Finklestein's daily, has some of the best lines in the game), et. al. After the first set of pulls, a member of our group says (in raid chat, he has no mic): ‘We should try and heal the npcs since they’re helping us. I’m just sayin.’ Why is it that it bothers me so much? To me, ‘I’m just sayin’ is typically code for ‘This is so obvious that any idiot should know it, what does that say about you since you didn’t?’ Is that what he really meant to say? I doubt it, yet it always reads that way to me. I felt like saying ‘Sure I’ll heal those 4 extra adds, but you’ll probably die. I’m just sayin’.

Meh
Whereas ‘I’m just sayin’ always rubs me the wrong way, ‘meh’ depends more on the use, but I’m still not a fan. At it’s best, it conveys a degree of ambivalence: “Hey, what do you think of the 2-piece T9 bonus?’ ‘An extra 10 seconds on my judgments is meh, I'm going straight for T10.’ That’s much better than ‘W00t! I just got [link piece of gear here]!’ ‘Meh.’ Used this way, meh just comes across as the ultimate dismissal. Here you have someone expressing happiness over getting a piece of gear or an achievement, and someone else taking a big, steaming dump on it. Thanks a lot!

. . .
I’ve had a deep hatred for this phrase since the first time I ever saw it, back in a completely disastrous Hellfire Ramparts run when I was level 63. It was deserved, I’ll admit, because I was completely awful, but the first time it popped up in party chat, I knew it was aimed squarely at me, and that it wasn’t good. Other notables that day were ‘I’ve NEVER had this much trouble here before’ and a real whopper:
[Party] [Pallytank]: O
[Party] [Pallytank]: M
[Party] [Pallytank]: G
In fact, I think the OMG might have come immediately AFTER the ‘. . .’ I really was that bad of a healer back then.

Fortunately I’ve never seen it directed at me since then, though I have seen it pop up in raids from time to time. PUG raids, particularly VoA, are prone to ‘. . .’ It almost always follows a wipe, and it generally means something along the lines of ‘OMG, this group is total fail, I can’t believe I’m in this group, did you all buy your accounts yesterday?’ It’s usually followed by ‘Player… has left the raid.’ Personally, I feel we’re better off with . . . out of the raid. Try to offer something constructive and give it another try. If the only thing you have to say is ‘. . .’ then good riddance. I’m just sayin.

My Class Choice

2010-02-04T10:20:00.004-05:00

Professor Beej did a nice little guest post over at World of Matticus recently asking ‘why did you choose your healing class? ’ It certainly has sparked a number of stories and responses from the readers, and I was going to add my own response in there, too. Unfortunately, I realized two things: first, that it was a fairly complicated answer that wouldn’t quite fit in the space available; second, I’m overdue for a post here (I could also add a third: this topic has been popping around in my brain for some time; Beej’s post has given me the push I’ve apparently needed to actually do my own. Thanks, Beej!).

I’ve already dealt a bit with how I got started in WoW. That post deals a little bit with my prior computer game experience, which was limited primarily to games like Grand Theft Auto, Indiana Jones, and the like. As far as WoW, I had pretty much no idea of the game and how it worked, beyond what I’d seen as my wife and daughter played. Probably the closest thing to WoW experience I had personally was a brief foray into Dungeons & Dragons in high school. We didn’t play all that much or for very long, and not very well (the most memorable point in it was our party being gang-raped by a kobold king – such is the mindset of a teenage dungeon master). Still, some of the role-playing elements of D&D influenced my approach to WoW and the character creation process, even though I wasn’t going to play on an RP server.

When I sat down at the computer with the intent to play that first time, there was nothing on my mind except knocking around a little bit and seeing what all the fuss was about. I had no real concept of what any class did, except that hunters had pets and mages threw fire around (I knew this from seeing my daughter and wife play, respectively). Unlike Spazmoosifer, who mentioned in his response to Beej that he rolled a priest because the guild he was going to join needed one for raiding, I had no plans for anything beyond that day. So I was ‘stuck’ with the information that Blizzard could present during the character creation process. It was all up to me and my whims.

One of the first things I realized is that I needed to be able to relate to the toon I was about to play. This actually made choosing a faction pretty easy, as I looked over the horde models, they just didn’t do it for me. Orcs, trolls, and tauren just didn’t do it for me. Blood elves? Hah! Undead? No, thank you. I found that I needed my character to be a little more…human. And that’s what I picked. I didn’t investigate the racials, didn’t know (or care) that humans have a passive ability that gains more rep than others. None of that mattered. I just needed to be able to relate to the toon that would be running around in front of me, and I didn't quite connect with what I was looking at.

With the choice of faction/race/sex made I now had to choose a class. As I read through the class descriptions I found that three jumped out at me initially: Paladins, Druids, and Warlocks. Why they appealed to me, and why I made my ultimate choice, is somewhat hard to put down into words. It partly comes from the ability to relate to the character, mentioned above, but it also came in part because of how, despite not being a Role Player, it was important for me to project part of me into the character.

The Druid and Paladin both offered diversity, which was something I liked. The Druid, as a described, ‘command nature’s wrath’ and are ‘masters of the wild.’ I’m a nature guy, a lover of the outdoors, a bird watcher – playing the druid would seem to allow me to express my personality in a particular way. The Druid is ‘who I am.’

The Paladin is ‘a mix of melee fighter and a secondary spell caster.’ Furthermore the Paladin ‘can withstand terrible blows in the thickest battles while healing their wounded allies and resurrecting the slain.’ Wow! They are ‘Guardians of the Light’ who ‘bolster their allies with holy auras and blessing to protect their friends from harm and enhance their powers.’ The Paladin sounded like the ultimate team player, and I’ve always prided myself on being a good team player. When all the other kids wanted to play forward in street hockey, I played defense (of course, my hero of the day was Bobby Orr so I guess it wasn’t that great a sacrifice. Watch this for some highlights of Orr’s ‘Golden Years.’), since we had to have defensemen. It sounded very noble. Like the Druid, the Paladin represented ‘who I am’, but as I read the description, it also seemed a lot like ‘who I want to be.’

Then there was the Warlock. Where Paladins are ‘Guardians of the Light’ and Druids are ‘keepers of nature’, Warlocks are ‘masters of demonic power.’ Warlocks ‘plague their enemies with disease or curses, hurling bolts of fire or shadow energy across the battlefield, and summoning demons to aid them in combat.’ How cool is that? Yet the appeal of the Warlock was not just in hurling fiery damage around (my wife was playing a mage, and I could see for myself how cool that is), it was in the fact that Warlocks seem ‘evil.’ They are the anti-Paladin. Playing a Warlock would be a way for me to live vicariously on the Other Side, to not just flirt with darkness, but to embrace it. Instead of being ‘Mr. Lawful Goody Two Shoes’ (another quote from my old Dungeon Master) I could let my ‘Evil Twin’ run around and wreak havoc – wouldn’t that be fun? In a lot of ways, the Warlock would seem to allow me to ‘get away from myself’ a bit; and after all, isn’t the point of a game to escape?

It actually took me much longer to write those three paragraphs than it did to make the decision. The notion of ‘rolling’ a Druid was discarded pretty much the moment I read the Paladin description. The real debate for me was between the Paladin and the Warlock: Play the good guy that I am/would like to be? Or play the guy that I keep locked away all the time?

In the end I suppose the need to play something that represents both who I am and what I aspire to be overcame the sick thrill of setting your enemies on fire: I chose the Paladin. Given my personality it’s no surprise that I gravitated towards the Holy tree – the ability to help others through healing is one of the things that appealed to me about both the Druid and Paladin (I couldn’t remember why Shaman didn’t appeal to me at the time. Then I reread Blizzard’s description of the class. Talk about damning with faint praise! Perhaps if William Shatner’s commercial had been out then …).I knew early on that I wanted to go deep into the Holy tree – as cool as Avenger’s Shield looked (it was the top of the protection tree at the time), Holy Shock just seemed that much better – even when level 70 was so far away as to be meaningless. Once I started healing I found that I liked it, even when the results were disastrous. Which they often were.

As for my Warlock: when I set about creating him, I admit that I had a vision in my head of what he would be like. I gave him an extra-stern face, and even thought that I’d play him with a different personality – one more befitting a master of the dark arts. Ultimately, I play him just like my Paladin – in other words, he’s like a mini-me. Poor sap!

There you have it. Not quite a direct answer to the question Beej raised, but something of an answer nonetheless. I’d love to hear your thoughts on why you chose the class you did: was it for reasons like mine, or because it looked cool, or because you knew you’d get raid spots? Does your toon represent who you are or who you’d like to be, or have no meaning at all? Let me know!

The Illusion of Parity

2010-01-22T14:41:00.003-05:00

Last week, Rohan of Blessing of Kings wrote a piece extolling the virtues of Blizzard’s ‘limited attempts’ on Putricide. She (He? I ‘m not sure, and I apologize if you read this and I'm wrong!) feels that the weekly limit helps separate the various grades of guilds, and also perhaps leads to more focus and determination during attempts. Limited attempts would likely help my own guild; we frequently come through with the clutch kill after much head-banging when our raid leader declares ‘one more try, then we’re going to call it.”

I’m really not 100% sure why Blizzard went with the limited attempts (first seen with Grand Crusader) or staggered boss/wing releases as we see now with Icecrown. Cynics would argue that it’s to keep the Royalty and Aristocrat guilds (from another Rohan post) from mowing through the entire thing in a couple of weeks, thus keeping people tied into the game a little bit longer. No doubt, had Blizzard released Icecrown Citadel in its entirety, we would have had several guilds reporting Arthas kills before Christmas, with significant progress made on hardmodes. Idle hands is the Devil’s workshop, they say; players who aren’t engaged may drift off to other games or, worse yet, engage in despicable acts of trade chat brutality (Oh, right, they're doing that anyway. Never mind). Blizzard may not mind Trade chat, but they certainly don't want defectors, so it seems a good policy from that standpoint.

Less cynically, one might argue that the staggered release of Icecrown is allowing Blizzard to look at how guilds are faring currently, and fine-tuning the next wing before release. If they see too many people ripping through the Plaguewerks they can ramp up the Crimson Halls. I’d like to think this is part of Blizzard’s idea, but perhaps I'm just being naive.

One thing I do like about the staggered release (or did like, until I got a hard, cold dose of reality) is the Illusion of Parity created by the staggered release schedule. My guild fits squarely into the gentry in Rohan’s hierarchy; I’m well aware of our place, and I try not to compare it with the top guilds on my realm. Yet when Icecrown's Lower Spire was released, I couldn't help but feel that everyone was even. It didn't matter that we hadn't done Grand Crusader: As far as Icecrown was concerned, we were in the same place as everyone else. It was strangely thrilling.

The Illusion persisted even after we failed to clear the Lower Citadel the first week, then the second, then the third. Saurfang held us up, yet the Illusion held: Even though others had mastered Saurfang, nodoby could get in those doors. Muradin was waiting just for us!

I was extremely agitated the night before the Plaguewerks release. My guild had all all night to take down Saurfang. I wanted to kill him in the worst way, so that we could maintain the Illusion. Killing him, getting the clear before the next wing, would be some kind of validation of the Illusion; it would show that we had a place at the table with the upper crust of the server. I wanted it. Bad.

We failed. I was sorely disappointed. We were now behind.

The world didn't end, however. We went back in two nights later and cleared the entire lower citadel, including the obnoxious, dead orc. We were in the Plaguewerks. WE were once again even. The Illusion was restored.

This week the Illusion has been completely torn away. Last week we finally took down Festergut, only to get stymied by Rotface (coordination is always problematic for us). We went in this week full of optimism, and were inexplicably and completely owned by Marrowgar. It was one of those nights where it felt like everyone forgot how to play. Even the Raid Leader's call of ‘one last chance then we call it’ failed to work its magic that night.

And here then is the downside of the Illusion of Parity: in my heart I knew that we weren't near the equal of the Royalty guilds, yet I allowed myself to believe on some level that we were. On some level I guess I want us to be on that level; I allowed my heart to convince my mind of something my mind knew wasn't true. Marrowgar gave me a good Saber Lash for my silliness, and I'll never fall for that again. Unless, of course, we should manage to catch up during the wait for the Frostwing Halls.

Firsts and Seconds

2010-01-15T14:40:00.002-05:00

Remember your first kiss? First date? First car? People love to celebrate firsts. Firsts are significant moments in our lives, and when they are long in the past we still like to look back and remember them, and hash them over with others.

In WoW firsts are also memorable and significant, particularly in the world of raiding. The first kill of a boss is often met with whoops over vent, gratses from guild chat, and commemorative screenshots showing the raid posed with the dead boss at their feet. It’s even more meaningful when it has taken you many attempts spread out over weeks or even months to kill that boss. The thrill of the kill is often accompanied by an overwhelming sense of relief: Relief that the hard work finally paid off.

Yet as important as that first kill is I believe the the most important kill is actually the Second Kill. Unfortunately, the second kill is rarely memorable: I remember our first Nalorakk kill not only because it was the first, but because both tanks dropped dead with the troll-bear under 10% health. We took him down because a quick-thinking Rogue managed to jump in for a spectacular bit of ‘Evasion Tanking’ while everyone left standing threw everything they had at him (including yours truly – ‘Hammer of Wrath’, FTW!). The second one? Sorry, that’s just not in my memory banks at the moment. I do however remember our second Kologarn kill. The only reason I actually remember it is because, after several weeks of being stymied by the VERY LARGE fella, we finally defeated him. Just prior to encountering him the following week, one of our guildies commented that he thought ‘it was a fluke’ that we even beat him the first time. We one-shotted him for our second kill, and proved to ourselves that it was no fluke.

More recently, we took down Deathbringer Saurfang for the first time on Monday. It was our 23rd attempt over multiple weeks when we finally beat him. We cheered, we took screenshots, the works. Privately I worried: it felt to me like we had gotten lucky in that he cast his one Mark of the Fallen Champion on one of our tanks. How easy it was to heal through that. I wondered if we would be so fortunate next time, and if we would be able to handle it. Two days later it seemed as if our first kill was indeed a fluke. We got a Mark on a non-tank much earlier than expected, and it ultimately lead to yet another loss to the ‘Lone Orc’. However, we regrouped and proceeded to execute a perfect kill the next attempt, without Saurfang casting a Mark at all. It seemed my concerns were unfounded after all.

And herein lies the importance of the Second Kill: The Second Kill validates the First Kill, proving that it was no fluke or result of good fortune, that you have the abilities to do it again. Anyone can get lucky once, but the Second Kill shows that you’ve mastered the boss, not the other way around. So next time you find yourself sitting around the fire with a tankard of ale and an audience, show a little love for the Second Kill. Besides, you’ve probably told the tale of the First Kill a hundred times already.

The Great Tank/Healer Shortage of 2010

2010-01-11T11:55:00.006-05:00

Gordon of We Fly Spitfires set off a bit of a blogostorm last week in his guest post on Matticus (Tanks and Healers Should Get The Biggest Rewards), an inciteful if not necessarily insightful post placing tanks and healers above the dps classes. Had he posted this on the O-Boards he surely would have been branded a troll (actually, at least one commenter did); as it was, he’s received some 90+ comments in 3 days, a direct response from Spinks on her blog, a kinda-sorta response from Klepsacovic (although he did say his post was written before the flap), and Larisa, to name a few. Most of the bloggers and commenters on the original post agree that special rewards for tanks and healers would be wrong, but I actually didn’t start writing this in response to the question-that-wasn't-really-a-question posed by Gordon. Instead, I wanted to address the root cause of the issue: the tank/healer shortage, and the reason for it.

Prior to implementing the Cross-realm LFG Blizzard had already taken steps to address the tank/healer shortage by introducing dual specs with the release of the Ulduar patch. This was designed as a way to encourage people to branch out into other talent trees without having to constantly pay for respeccing, reglyphing, regemming, etc. In raids it would allow a dps to not have to sit out a particularly healer-intensive boss fight, thus missing out on glory, loot and badges. Outside of the raid it allowed healers and tanks to switch over to actually do decent damage while questing or doing dailies. And it was surely hoped that it would alleviate some of the bottleneck that existed when trying to find tanks and healers for heroics or to fill that last spot in the raid. While dual-specs helped somewhat, the fact that Blizzard had to resort to Cross-realm LFG indicates the problem still exists. I see two reason for the tank/healer shortage: Numbers, and Mindset.

First the numbers. There are 10 classes available in WoW. Four of those classes can tank; four can heal. Four are ‘Pure’ dps classes. Looking at class breakdown based on census data from Warcraftrealms, about 47% play a tank-capable class. There’s fewer playing heal-capable classes: 39%. Based on this data, healers in particular would seem to be the choke point. However, there are no ‘pure’ tank or healer classes; just because 47% of the survey group plays a tank class doesn’t mean 47% of the players are tanks. Since the census data doesn’t currently show us who plays what role, we have to look at the different specs and make an admittedly big assumption: that there’s a roughly even breakdown of players by spec.

10 classes, 32 specs (druids get credit for 2 dps specs; Death Knights get credit for 2 dps specs and 2 tank specs*). If we look now at tanking specs, there are 5: Prot Warriors and Pallies; Bear Druids; Frost and Blood Death Knights. For healers we also have 5: Holy Paladins and Priests; Discipline Priests; and Resto Druids and Shaman. 10 tanking and healing specs vs. 22 damage-dealing specs: Is it any wonder there’s a tank and healer shortage? The options for tanking and healing are far more limited than for damage dealing, not just in terms of pure numbers of available specs, but also in play styles: DPS can be right up at the feet (well, rear end) of bosses or standing at a distance. Healers and tanks are always at the back or front, respectively.

The second issue causing the shortage is mindset. When dual-specs first came out, I spent a month hemming and hawing over what I would do. Finally I told my guild that I was going to take Retribution as my second spec (Holy is number 1) and I began picking up Ret gear on off-spec rolls, though I continued to defer to any other Paladin in the raid that might have even the remotest interest in it. I kept dragging my feet on actually getting the dual spec however, until the eve of patch 3.2. That night I finally forked over the gold for….a second Holy spec. I told myself then that I really needed time to experiment with the new ‘Bubble Spec’, but the truth is once I started using that spec, there was no going back, and no real reason not to change one spec over to Retribution, except for one thing: I’m a healer. It's what I do. I don’t like to dps on my Paladin, and I don’t like tanking. Having two or even three specs isn’t going to make me change that, and I’m guessing I’m not the only one who feels that way: you’re either a healer or a tank, or you’re not. Yes, there are players who are perfectly capable of excelling at any role, but I suspect most players are like me: we have a role that we like to fill with our toon, and we stick to it as much as possible. Unless Blizzard radically changes the nature of the game I don’t think you’ll see any great change in the numbers, and we’ll always have a disparity of numbers.

Finally, I have to wonder if this problem is even that great a problem at all. Maybe the current tank/healer shortage of 2010 is being caused by heightened expectations – we’ve all been suckered into believing Blizzard’s slick advertising pitch: ‘Use our New-And-Improved LFG System and make those irritating wait times *snap* disappear!’ In short, we have been sold on a belief that we wouldn’t have to wait, and this belief was upheld in the first two weeks when everybody and his uncle was running random heroics in an effort to get emblems, cheesy pets, and easy achievements. Now that the novelty has worn off, the wait times have gone up, and our patience has gone down. In a response to a comment on her post, Spinks said “…there is still an issue there of supply and demand, and keeping the customer base happy with regular instance runs rather than having to wait 15-30 mins in the queue.” I seem to recall having to hang around Dalaran sometimes for 30-40 minutes, spamming trade and general, while constantly refreshing the LFG/LFM window once the guild and friends’ list was exhausted. The current system is much more a ‘fire and forget’ and go back to whatever you were doing until the Ready Check pops up. Seems to me much of the problem is in our own minds and not with the system or lack of tanks and healers. But then again, so many of the problems in the world of the World of Warcraft are of our own making.

*I admit to knowing very little about Death Knights and how they work, as mine is sitting gathering dust in Hellfire Peninsula at level 60. I might have actually shortchanged them a tanking and dps spec.

Dungeon Blues

2010-01-06T13:20:00.003-05:00

Well, the new LFG system has been out for just about a month now, and the reviews are…decidedly mixed. It seemed that when the system came out, everyone jumped into LFG/random and loved it. Within a few days, heck, maybe even hours for some – people were gathering Emblems of Frost and were piling Emblems of Triumph at an unprecedented rate, and shelling them out again in an orgy of spending entirely appropriate for the season. Even the World’s Worst Paladin (who is in my guild, and no, it’s not me) decked himself out in 4 pieces of T9 in short order, though I doubt it will help him that much. The concerns about the potential clash of server cultures and the fears that people would use the anonymity of cross-server groups for evil seemed to be largely unfounded. Bosses went down at ridiculous rates, the emblems poured in The world was new again, and everyone was happy (unless you had the misfortune to get Oculus multiple times).

As the month wore on the cracks began appearing in the foundation of the new system. It started up with complaints in guild chat – ‘OMG, this group is FAIL’; ‘This tank can’t hold aggro’, ‘We wiped on the first pull so I dropped’. Perhaps the worst was my GM (Retired) who was Vote-Kicked from a PuG on his druid. Why? They didn’t like the way he was healing. Nobody died and there were no wipes to that point, they just didn’t like something that he was doing (disclaimer: he hadn’t played his Druid in a while and was admittedly rusty, but he’s Ulduar-geared and a good player). Meanwhile, forums and blogs began to fill up with horror stories: DPS running off and pulling mobs from all over; tanks who pay no attention to anybody; bossy healers teleporting out of dungeons mid-fight for slights real or imagined; tanks showing up in the wrong spec, with the wrong gear, and under the defense cap; players of all classes and roles who seem to show zero aptitude for the game, and either an inability or unwillingness to learn. Meanwhile, the tolerance level of skilled players for anyone not equally good sinks lower and lower, and we hear more stories of people being openly scornful of those who are not up to those standards.

It may not be as bad as it sounds. After all there are plenty of times my guildies make no comments whatsoever about the PuGs they’re in (and they pug a lot. There’s plenty who log on and jump right into LFG without ever checking to see if anyone in guild wants to join them, but that’s a rant for another time), and bloggers are more likely to blog about memorable experiences – which typically result from bad experiences. For myself, the few Pugs I’ve run have been brisk, business-like affairs: efficient, but with all the warmth of a politician’s handshake. I have no horror storiers of my own, but then again I’ve pugged with exactly 8 random people since the new LFG launched (yes, I do run random heroics, but I stick to guildies and friends).

Yet the ‘Dungeon Blues’ continues to be sung, and I think Starets Sayas may have put his finger on the cause in a comment he left on a Matticus post:

"When the dungeon finder first started, evidently there were a lot of powerful toons signing up and it was great. But evidently a lot of those toons are back to guild runs or something. Because the last few days, it seems like I’m being asked to carry more and more groups. I’m not always up to the task."

Read more: http://www.worldofmatticus.com/2009/12/22/i-can-carry-you/#ixzz0brGw8pUH

WoW players love new content, new achievements and pets. When 3.3 hit it brought a lot of players out of the woodwork; a large number of these were quality players who had cleared the old content and had little reason to play. Now they had a reason to play again, and these players flooded the LFG system. Within a few weeks however, things started to settle down again. I suspect that many of these players farmed the heck out of the emblems of triumph initially and used them to pick up whatever they needed from those vendors. At this point, top-end players are looking exclusively to the Icecrown raids and Emblem of Frost vendors for upgrades, not heroics, and they’ve already got their Perky Pugs. The loss of these players leaves a smaller pool with a higher concentration of ‘lesser’ players – this explains to me why we’re seeing more complaints of bad play. In the initial weeks, you were more likely to find yourself in with ‘better’ players because there were more of them in the pool.

While this can explain the declining quality of play reported in Pugs, it does not explain the declining quality of people. There’s no correlation between playing skills and people skills. It’s this decline that worries me more – I can handle being in a group with a bad players, but I can’t tolerate people who are rude, inconsiderate or downright mean. Perhaps it’s nothing unusual. Perhaps it’s just that the new LFG system has given the Trade Chat Heroes of the realms something to do besides the Murloc game. Maybe they’ll eventually get their fill of emblems and go back to doing what they do best and we’ll hear less about them. As for me, I’ll continue to avoid them by running randoms with my guild or my friends. I’ll still get my emblems, and I won’t have to put up with loot ninjas, name calling, or vote kicking. And if I never get a Perky Pug, who cares? I’ve still got Sleepy Willy.

Social Noob: The Story of Mick

2009-12-17T11:47:00.003-05:00

I must confess, when I saw the title of a recent post by Klepsacovic – ‘What to do with Social Noobs’ – I thought he was going to be taking potshots at Gevlon’s newest experiment. I was surprised instead to find it a post about people who may or may not be able to master WoW, the game, but are unable to master social interactions that are (mostly) necessary to gameplay. He examines a couple of different types of social noobs, from the outright selfish a-hole (i.e., people who are deliberately rude, disruptive, etc.) to people who may not mean harm, but are just unable or unwilling to communicate well with others. In the end he asks, ‘Can we save the social noobs from themselves?’

Last night we were forced to use the Booterang* (one of my all-time favorite in-game items and quests, by the way) on a guild member. He was a social noob. Is he an outright selfish A-hole or just stupid, and is there any hope for him? This is his story. We’ll call him ‘Mick’.

Mick was tanking an Ony-10 pug. The raid leader forgot to set MasterLooter. When the big girl fell, and the loot windows popped up, Mick rolled need. On everything. My first inkling that there was trouble came when I got the following whisper:

‘Who’s the GM of your f-ing guild?’

Talk about social noobishness! This is not usually the way to open a conversation. If he walked up to me on the street or in a place of business, I would have gotten defensive, or maybe hostile, who knows. Fortunately I stayed cool and responded politely. He told me about ‘f-ing ninja Mick’. After making some inquiries with Mick, the original whisperer, and one or two other folks in that raid, we kicked Mick out of our guild. I only hope that he had the decency to return the loot for proper distribution. The angry whisperer calmed down as the event unfolded, though he did apparently spam trade chat for a bit about the ninja (I have yet to see anything on our realm forum about it, hopefully that will be the end of it), and I think our guild reputation has remained untarnished.

There are multiple faults here. One of course is the Raid Leader, for goofing and forgetting to set Loot Master. I suspect we’ve all done this once in a while; in a guild raid it’s not an issue, but obviously can be trouble in a PuG environment. Mick for sure is at fault – you don’t exploit an opening like that just because it’s there. However, I also have to think that WoWsociety is also partly at fault: for assuming that all members of this society know the ‘rules’. I suspect that much of the social noobishness in the game comes from people who have just not learned the rules.

My own first run-in with WoW rules came back in Blackfathom Depths so long ago. We killed a boss, and a nice chest piece dropped. I rolled need and won. A little later something else dropped, I rolled need and won. Someone in the group said “You’re not supposed to roll on everything!” Thus chastised, I don’t think I rolled on a single thing for the entire rest of the run. But here’s the thing: How was I to know? This was my first toon, and probably my first real group. Nobody had ever explained the protocols of loot to me; there’s no real manual, maybe some guidelines on the Blizzard website, but at that point in time I wasn’t really using those kinds of resources. I had no friends or guild to guide me. I was completely on my own, trying to figure out how this strange society worked. I was both a WoW noob AND a WoW social noob. There I was, level 23 or so and already a loot ninja, though nobody called me that (and I might not have really understood if they had).

But what about Mick? Should he have known better? He’s no WoW noob, he’s been playing for about 3 years. However, he’s also a bit new to raiding and high-level heroics (from his character history, he never had a level-capped toon until hitting 80 last spring); is it fair to expect him to know those rules when he’s relatively inexperienced?

There would only seem to be two ways to learn these rules: From written sources (i.e., websites, magazines, etc.), or from other players. Written sources are not good for everyone – I’m amazed at the number of players I’ve run into who can’t seem to bother to look up information on the web for themselves, and while there are certain behaviors that cut across the entire game society, there are also many customs that are specific to each server. That leaves other players as the best source of the rules. For my part, I learned by taking cues from the people I played with, from paying attention to what party and raid leaders said, and from coming right out and asking. In this way I moved out of the rank of social noob even when I still played like a WoW noob. However, in order to raise yourself out of ‘social noob’ status you have to have the desire and the ability to learn. From what I observed about Mick, he did not have the ability to learn.

It’s a shame, too. Despite his annoying tendencies (in-guild he was a lot like Chester the Terrier: Anyone-wanna-run-something-let’s-do-something-are-we-raiding-tonight-we-should-raid-something-who-can-enchant/gem-this-what-enchant-should-I-get-for-tanking-where-do-I’AAAARGHHH!) he was enthusiastic about the game, and desired getting involved with raiding. His first actual guild run was Tuesday night; he did passably well, and spent a lot of time afterwards discussing tankie stuff with our other tank (on the other hand, one of the people from his fated Ony run told the GM how he was not using a tanking weapon while tanking. /sigh). I don't believe he's an 'outright A-hole', though the folks in the raid would disagree. In the end, it was his inability to socialize well and to learn from the people around him -- in short, his social noobishness -- that cost him a guild spot. Though not for long: I noticed by the end of the night he’d caught on with another. I wish them well.

*The Booterang is supposed to knock sense into worthless, lazy peons. I would like to think it knocked some sense into Mick, but we're more than happy to let his new guild find out.

'Let's Do It on Normal Mode'

2009-12-08T13:31:00.002-05:00

I’ve noticed a rather disturbing trend with my guild in recent months: a willingness to throw in the towel early. This popped up the first time our ten man group finally reached Yogg-Saron. That first night we took a whopping total of 9 shots at him (though that included our unintended ‘Alone in the Darkness’ attempt kicked off by someone stepping too far into the room) before we reached our time limit for the night. We actually got to Phase 2 once, but with so few players alive that there was no hope of getting anywhere. Most of those first nine attempts ended in Phase 1, but we were learning and progressing, even if it didn’t show in the final results.

A few nights later we went back with high hopes, sure that we would be able to down Yoggy in our three hour time frame. We had a couple of clunker attempts but found ourselves doing much better, getting into Phase 2 with everyone alive, which is where it fell apart. At that point, after six attempts in about an hour’s playing time, someone begged off claiming fatigue. ‘Have to work tomorrow,’ he said. When we discussed trying to replace him someone else said ‘I’ll stay, if we can actually get somewhere.’ I wanted to reach through the internet and strangle the guy – what did he think we’d been doing for the last hour? As it turned out, we ended up not getting replacements that night; we also elected not to extend the lockout, and we haven’t been back since.

A second recent event occurred last week when we decided to tackle 10-man Trial of the Grand Crusader. A month or so ago we had made an attempt at it, just to see what it was like. It was hard, and we weren’t ready. This time we hand-picked our top players (as opposed to the open invites for normal) and went in. The results were far better than our first time in – we were just a hair off on our dps on the first attempt, so that the worms were entering the arena while Gormok was still up. We gave it a credible shot, then had the obligatory 2-3 wipes due to stupid stuff. After our 4th attempt (30 minutes or so in) it happened: ‘Maybe we should switch over to normal mode.’ (NOTE: this was not one of the two principals involved in the Yogg bailout – neither of them is in the guild now) This angered me because I felt that leaving at that point would not be giving ourselves a fair chance. Ultimately the raid decided to continue on with the Grand Crusader. We stuck it out for 10 total attempts and, while we ultimately failed to take down the Beasts, we made enough progress so that we can say confidently ‘We’ll get them next time.’

I’m not really clear where the change in attitude has come from. In the last year as a guild we’ve worked hard. We’ve had our share of triumphs and cock-ups, we’ve wiped on fights that we should have considered ‘farmable’, and surprised ourselves with some unexpected wins. From the time we started raiding Naxxramas right up through most of Ulduar, our raiders were determined to see through to the end. What happened?

I think the issue here is with the content. It seems as if most of the non-hard mode encounters are very easy, once you’ve defeated it once. As an example, Kologarn gave us fits when we first went against him. And then we beat him for the first time. Next week when we went back to face him again he proved to be no trouble at all. This was very different from our experiences in Karazhan and Zul’Aman, where some bosses always seemed to give us trouble, no matter how often we beat them. Had we simply managed to get enough gear to make Kologarn (and Auriayah, and the Keepers) easy? Or had we just discovered ‘The Trick’ to beating each of them?

Crusaders’ Coliseum is largely the same on normal. Our first time in there it was Lord Jaraxxus who gave us all kinds of trouble. He’s trivial now. Aside from the Faction Champions we have no trouble whatsoever in normal 10 man mode. And, to be honest, though I don’t yet have the achievement for ToC-25 (the groups I’m in have all fallen apart by the time we get to Anub’arak), it’s really not that hard from a healers’ perspective. But hard mode – that’s another story.

Hard mode is supposed to be hard; I don’t object to that at all. Unfortunately I think the disparity between ‘hard’ and ‘easy’ (whether it be hard mode vs. normal, or a boss that’s simply ‘hard’ like Mimiron or Yogg vs. one that’s ‘easy’) is too great – not for me, but for some of my guildies. They’ve forgotten what progression means – wipes, frustration, repair bills, less emblems this week. They’ve also forgotten how thrilling it can be when you finally get that boss down after so much head-banging. Maybe when we start getting into Icecrown it will be different. Maybe they just got tired of Ulduar over and over again, or watching the same conga line of bosses run through the gates of the Coliseum. I certainly hope that's the case, because I’d hate to wipe a couple of times in Icecrown and have someone say ‘eh, let’s go back and do Ulduar, we need the gear.’ As much as I’d still like to finish off Yogg-Saron, I’ve got my mind on Arthas – and I don’t want to wait until Cataclysm to visit him.

Raid Healing: The Right Field of Raiding?

2009-12-02T14:19:00.004-05:00

"Hey, you're riding the short bus with me!"

These words were uttered by a Resto Shaman in my guild to another guild member last spring when I handed out healing assignments in Naxx-25 and put both of them on 'Raid Healing'. It was the second negative comment I'd heard from him in as many weeks when given that assignment. I let it go right then and there but asked him later about it. He said he was only goofing around, though I did take his point and tried to vary his assignments (indeed, all of the healing assignments) in subsequent raids, variety being the spice of life and all.

His comment was brought to mind today when I was cruising around the O-Boards and hit this post in the Healing section. If you don’t wish to read it, I’ll summarize. The poster commented about a Raid Leader who wanted to switch a Holy Paladin from tank healing to raid healing on Northrend Beasts. Seems the Pally in question was having some difficulty keeping the tank alive, so the Raid Leader ordered the switch.

Rather than debate the merits of putting a Paladin on this sort of assignment, I wanted to comment instead on one of the things the Shaman said to the Raid Leader:

“I said that in a raid environment, holy paladins were tank healers, end of story, and it'd be … insulting … to assign them to raid.”*

These two comments, separated as they are in time and space, still make me wonder how people feel about getting the assignment ‘raid heals’. Is it taken as an insult? Should it be taken as an indication that the Raid Leader or Healing Leader doesn’t have confidence in you? Is ‘Raid Healing’ the Right Field of WoW, where we banish the virtual Timmy Lupus where he can do the least harm?

There’s no doubt that ‘heal the raid’ doesn’t have the same sort of glamor that tank healing has. After all, a tank healer is responsible for keeping alive the one person that stands between the raid and that snarling, angry boss that will happily eat you for lunch. Make one mistake as a tank healer and the entire raid is strewn about the room taking a dirt nap. On the other hand, make a mistake as a raid healer and it’s just a dps dead. It’s not even like in Burning Crusade where that person might have been responsible for maintaining crowd control or anything, what’s the big deal? Yet the more that I think about it, the more that I realize raid healing may actually be a tougher assignment than people give it credit for, and we may vastly underestimate the abilities of the people we put in that role.

As a tank healer, I have the luxury of being able to focus exclusively on one target. Heck, in a good group I don’t even have to worry about my health, save for moving out of whatever will kill me in two ticks. Heal myself? Nah, that’s what the raid healers are for. I can happily spam away on the tanks, making sure that I avoid the bad stuff and do what I need to do to have enough mana to make it through. While I do pay attention to what’s happening with the rest of the raid, I’ve learned that Wrath bosses hit hard and fast enough that there’s often no such thing as a ‘spare’ global cooldown to spend on a threatened dps. My assignments tend to survive much better when I maintain my focus on them.

Raid healers on the other hand have to worry about everyone. They do keep an eye on the tanks and are expected to ‘help out’ when/if needed. They are the ones who have to take care of the dps (or healers sometimes) when they stand in Flaming Cinder. They are the ones who have to mitigate and clean up the mess of Tympanic Tantrum, Plasma Blast, Staggering Stomp and the like. They are the ones who have to somehow coordinate with four other healers when they’re given vague assignments like ‘just heal the raid’, and they are the ones who have to maintain range and LoS when 24 other people are running around like Elder Harkek’s chickens. Furthermore, with the various hard and soft enrage timers that many of Wrath’s bosses have, keeping those dps up is perhaps more important than ever: A bad tank healer usually results in a rapid wipe due to a rampant boss. Bad Raid healers often mean an agonizingly slow wipe as the result of an enrage 10 minutes later. As Tom Petty sang “I can’t decide which is worse”.

So rather than looking at 'heal the raid' as being Right Field, where the slow, uncoordinated, has-no-talent-but-the-rules-say-he-has-to-play-anyway kids go, we would do well to think instead of it as Right Field, where Hall of Famers like Hank Aaron, Roberto Clemente and Tony Gwynn played. And even if you do feel that it's the safest place for a less-skilled healer, remember that the ball gets hit to right field a lot, but even Timmy Lupus made a game-saving catch.

*full quote: "I said that in a raid environment, holy paladins were tank healers, end of story, and it'd be either insulting or incredibly ignorant to assign them to raid. "

Ups and Downs: 2-1/2 Years of WoW

2009-11-18T12:02:00.002-05:00

I’m a little late to this particular party thrown by Blog Azeroth – the ‘shared topic’ for November 2, which was relationships in WoW. I thought I’d throw a slightly different spin on things, and talk about my own relationship with WoW. Like a relationship with real people, the WoW relationship has changed in the 2-1/2 years that I’ve been playing.

First, a quick bit of background. Prior to WoW my computer gaming experience was mostly with ‘puzzle’ types of games and adventure games – the Monkey Island series, Tex Murphy, Myst, a couple of the Indiana Jones titles, and Grand Theft Auto III, Vice City and San Andreas (the GTA series is an extremely guilty pleasure – I loved them, but almost hate myself for that). WoW first broke onto my radar screen when someone posted the infamous Leeroy Jenkins video on a board-gaming site I frequent. I knew nothing about the game, but I know comedy when I see it, and that was gold.

My daughter brought WoW into the house. My wife and I grudgingly agreed to a trial account so that my daughter could play with a friend, whose entire family played. My daughter, cagey for a 12 year old, got my wife to try it out. We soon went from a trial account to a permanent account.

I kept my distance. However, over the period of about a month or so, repeated exposure to the game started changing my indifference to curiosity. Instead of shaking my head and walking out of the room, I’d ask my wife or daughter a question about what was going on and why. World of Warcraft had begun to work its way into my head the way a commercial jingle does. I guess it was inevitable that I’d end up trying it out. One Saturday morning I sat down at the computer and said ‘What the hell?’ I was now a player.

In the first few days or weeks of playing, the game was a (mostly) pleasant diversion, a nice way to escape from reality for a short time. I enjoyed the simple act of playing, with no goals whatsoever save to complete whatever task I was assigned by Marshall McBride or the other fine people I met in Elwynn Forest. Kill some wolves? No problem. Scout out the mines for kobolds? I'm on it. Lay a beatdown on some Defias Thugs? With pleasure. Even when it came down to finding the missing guards and killing murlocs near Eastvale logging camp ('Hey! That murloc drank a healing potion! Not fair!'), the game was still light fare for an evening or early weekend morning before everyone else got up.

The increasing complexity of the game is what drew me into what I think of as the Seeker phase of my relationship with WoW. This occurred when I realized I needed more information about the game than the in-game tutorials or the official web site could provide. Blizzard's site gives some nice overviews of the talent system, professions, etc., but not enough. Furthermore, the quests become a bit more involved as you progress (or maybe the quest text becomes more obtuse) and there are times when it's just not clear where you need to go to proceed. I quickly made a mess out of my talent tree and needed more help. I started seeking help from outside of Blizzard.

I think my wife found Thottbot first. It soon became a handy reference for me as I looked at the lengthy Verigan’s Fist quest chain. I tried not to abuse it (i.e., ‘hmm, I just accepted this quest, where do I go? Thottbot!’) as I much preferred to explore and discover on my own, but there were definitely times where quest text was so obscure, or defeating a mob or group seemed to have some trick that just eluded me, that it was necessary to consult other sources.

The Seeker Phase lasted a long time – in fact, in many ways I’m still in it as a raiding level 80. What is interesting is how this facet of the WoW relationship changed over time. Initially, I hit the Seeker Phase initially to understand the talent trees, but most of my Seeking thereafter was to help with quests. As I moved along in the game, however, I started seeking more out of a desire to better understand my class, and learn how to play it better. Perhaps not surprisingly it also developed as I became a more social player. I had joined a guild and started running a bit more in groups (for quite some time I avoided most of the social aspects of the game – largely due to self-confidence or lack thereof) and found that there was much more to know than how to navigate the elite Ogres in the Ruins of Alterac (back when they were almost ALL elite). At this point I started seeking advice on things that would make me a better player within groups, even though I was still ‘only’ in the 40-50 range.

The nice thing about this time in my relationship with WoW is that I was really living in the moment. I wasn’t looking ahead to ‘end game’ and raiding – in fact, it was something I had never even thought about. I also wasn’t rushing through to try to get to level 70 as fast as possible. I would occasionally push hard to get to a certain level if I knew something very cool was coming up – plate and a warhorse at level 40; class quest at 50; Charger questline at 60 – but I pretty much followed the quest givers and went happily on my way. I think I did push extra hard the final two levels to 70; happily, when I did hit 70 there was no ‘Now what?’ moment. For the time, my relationship with the game had not changed -- I was able to continue finishing up quests and exploring new areas, not realizing that I was about to change my relationship to the game again.

I soon had people asking if I wanted to heal Kara – some were people I knew, some were random strangers. It almost felt as if I had a Holy Paladin tracking device installed on me. I was definitely hesitant to get involved in the raiding scene -- my confidence was still shaky from a completely disastrous Hellfire Ramparts run (I was level 63, it was awful -- so bad that I don't think I healed another instance until I was 70!). However, quests were running out, and I began wondering what I would do now. I spent a lot of time ‘Seeking’ to see what I needed to do to raid. Once I did, my relationship with the game changed once more, and I quickly became a Raider. Aside from the month or so after Wrath hit where I had to level up to 80, I’ve been a Raider ever since.

This current relationship still involves a lot of seeking. However, it's much more 'serious' in most ways than my earlier days. Raiding has proven to be a different kind of fun, but one that I still enjoy. There are other changes as well: I’m not on my main quite as much as I used to be. Most of the time I spend on my main is spent either in raids or preparing for raids (thankfully, this doesn’t seem to take up quite as much time as it used to), which will include a few dailies to keep up the gold supplies. While I try to be helpful to guildies, I find that I have less patience for ‘can someone run me through ’ requests than maybe I used to; I’m definitely a bit more selfish with my time than I’d care to admit. On the flip side, I've also tried to help by advising other guildmembers both in-game and on our forums, and I've become much more involved with the greater WoW community as a whole. Interestingly I’ve also found that, while I liked leveling and loved most of the quest lines in Wrath, I definitely hustled much harder to get through 70-80 than I ever did anywhere else along the way. I think this is part of why I feel less of a connection to Northrend (even though I spend almost all of my time here) than to some of the older zones like Duskwood and the Plaguelands – my earlier self viewed these zones as important destinations, while my newer self sees these zones as places to travel through.

I sometimes look back at my earlier selves and my earier relationship with WoW with a bit of wistfulness -- the wide-eyed innocent stumbling into Mor'Ladim; the slightly more grizzled (but equally foolish) level 60 that poked his head into Stratholme for a quick peak -- and then discovered the gate was locked behind him; the guy that kept using Turn Undead in Shadowfang Keep -- and wondered where all those ghosts were coming from. It was a different time in my relationship with WoW, and a lot of fun. I find that I can't quite get back to that same relationship, even with alts (I'm always stuck now at the Seeker mode at the very least). On the overall however, I'm quite happy with where I'm at in the game, and look forward to seeing how my relationship will change moving forward.

Know-It-All Man

2009-10-26T12:39:00.004-04:00

He’s a real Know-it-All Man
Sitting in our gaming LAN
Telling us how we can all play better.

Thinks we haven’t got a clue
Prob’ly calls us noobies, too
Know-it-All Man has no respect for me.

Know-it-All Man, you’ve got skill
But your constant one-upping kills the thrill
Know-it-All Man, you’re heading for a guild chat ban!

Calls himself a WoWwiki
Tries to set our strategy
Even though he’s not leading the raid

Know-it-All Man, don’t be headstrong
Even you have been wrong
Remember when, you thought E-o-E needed no key?

Tells us how to play our toons
Right down to our choice of runes
Know-it-All Man I know what to do

Apologies to John Lennon and Paul McCartney

I suspect we all know a Know-It-All Man. It’s the guy that says or acts like he knows all about the game, usually isn’t shy about letting us know how we could be better, and makes it known that we would succeed if only we had more of him.

As I’ve thought on this subject, I actually have come to the realization that my guild has not one, but three Know-It-All Men, and that their Know-It-Allness manifests itself in three different ways. Furthermore, while the phrase ‘know-it-all’ is typically used in a very negative way, one of our Know-It-Alls is extremely helpful and a real asset to the guild. Here’s a look at three variations of Know-It-All Man that I have in my guild:

Know-It-All Man #1: Mr. WoWwiki
He actually referred to himself as the ‘Walking WoWwiki’ in guild chat on several occasions. He’s a very knowledgeable and skilled player, and he likes to let everyone know it. If the Raid Leader says ‘The boss will do an AoE shadow effect every 20 seconds or so’, Mr. WoWwiki will immediately interject ‘Every 23 seconds. It’s called and it does .’ He will make authoritative statements on how things should be done, even if he has never encountered the boss before. He tries to direct raid strategy even though he’s not the raid leader, and prefers to refer to WoWwiki even when the Raid Leader has actually experienced the fight before. He’ll go along with the Raid Leader, while leaving it clear by tone of voice that he thinks it’s sure to fail. He types faster than anyone in the guild and will go on and on at length to demonstrate his knowledge about any subject. While he does help people, it always comes across as if he’s doing it to show how much he knows, as opposed to out of a genuine desire to help.

Know-It-All Man #2: The Sniper
A good sniper is a master of covert operations, staying well out of sight until the target presents itself. One good shot and the sniper again disappears, and nobody is certain where the shot came from. Our guild Sniper spends long hours hiding in plain sight, saying much, but of little consequence. When he does take his shot, it’s either a completely irreverent answer, or it’s a straight answer delivered with such conviction and so little elaboration that it doesn’t really help anyone, but presumably demonstrates his expert knowledge. This guy drops unexpectedly into the raid vent channel when he’s not in the raid and listens in, telling us how his Horde toon has pretty much downed all of the content, so he knows of what he speaks, yet he offers very little of substance. He’s prone to making broad, sweeping statements about things that can’t be dis-proven, usually about upcoming changes to WoW, or games that he hasn’t even played.

Know-It-All Man #3: The Helper
The Helper has been playing WoW since release, and it shows where it should – in his play. He pays attention to what’s going on in the fight, can often figure out where the trouble is, and makes suggestions on how to fix it. If he’s asked to help someone work on their rotation, spec, enchants, etc., he does it willingly, nicely, and privately. He thinks about what he says and how he says it, and will actually take the (unprecedented, for WoW) step of apologizing to people if he thinks he’s overstepped his bounds. With just a touch of hubris he could very easily cross the line to become another Mr. WoWwiki, but he hasn’t fallen into that trap yet.

The Helper is very close to Mr. WoWwiki in several ways: both have a deep knowledge of the game and their class(es), and both have a great degree of skill in playing the game. The principal difference, however, seems to be intent. Where The Helper seems genuinely interested in helping individuals and the guild get better so that everyone can enjoy the game more, Mr. WoWwiki seems more interested in showing everyone how great he is. While The Helper switches toons because he thinks doing so will help us beat the encounter, Mr. WoWwiki appears to do it because nobody can do it better. Both may recount how their Rogue was able to lock down the shaman in Faction Champions: The Helper speaks of it with the relish of a war veteran recalling a great battle; Mr. WoWwiki seems to be saying ‘look at me, look at what I did!’ I don’t think I’ve ever seen The Helper link meters of any kind, even when he’s the top damage dealer (and he often is). Mr. WoWwiki will selectively link meters (i.e., when he’s on top): when he brought his Disc Priest into Ulduar and was last among the healers in healing done, not a peep. When his Disc Priest healed on faction champions, he linked the dispel meters, where he was far and away ahead of everyone. The Helper is about the group, Mr. WoWwiki is about 'me'.

Dangers of Know-It-All Men
While Know-It-Alls are not as dangerous to your guild as Drama Llamas, they can have a negative impact nonetheless, depending on the number and type of Know-It-Alls you have. As long as The Helper remains a helper he should be a great asset to the guild, since he acts in the best interest of the party/raid/guild and thinks beyond himself. He probably won’t slide into ‘Mr. WoWwiki’ territory, but it’s always good to keep an eye on him.

The Sniper is not particularly dangerous, but he can still have a negative impact. Like a sniper in the military, the guild Sniper is crafty; his Know-It-Allisms are borderline insulting and dismissive, but he never quite crosses the line to where he would be warned, demoted or kicked. Yet his flippancy, or his backhanded attempts at helpfulness when he ninjas into the raid vent channel sap the energy from the group. For our Sniper, I can’t quite tell if this is deliberate or not. His only value to the guild is what he actually does when the fight is in progress; he offers very little otherwise. Snipers do require careful monitoring to see that they push over the line to the point where they hamper the guild.

Mr. WoWwiki is probably the toughest to deal with. His game knowledge and play skill make him an asset to the guild. On the other hand, his attitude and delivery irritate the hell out of people. Our Mr. WoWwiki has been muted by several people in vent, has been /ignored and has had us occasionally pull in pugs rather than ask him in on one of his toons when our 10 man team has needed an extra. This is not a healthy state of affairs. While it’s unreasonable to expect everyone to get along all the time, muting or /ignoring can have disastrous effects on a raid. Mr. WoWwiki requires a much higher degree of maintenance, and ours has been told multiple times to think about how he says things.

As an officer in my guild it’s part of my responsibility to maintain both our progression and our sense of communities. Know-It-All Men are one of the challenges we face. How about you? Have you dealt with these types before? What did you do, and how did you solve it?

The New PTR is Here! The New PTR is Here!

2009-10-15T13:39:00.002-04:00

This year Blizzard has spit out patches faster than a haste-capped mage can spit out Arcane Missiles. Look at where we were a year ago at this time: waiting for the big pre-Wrath content patch that was going to rock our world, while clinging to every scrap of new information on the beta forums and from sources like MMO-Champion, WoWInsider, and all the various WoW-related blogs. Since 2008 turned into 2009, Blizzard has kept up a frenetic pace, particularly recently: Patch 3.2 dropped on August 4th. Just a week later, Blizzard announced the arrival of Patch 3.2.2, which came out on September 22nd. Now, with the paint barely dry on Onyxia’s Lair, the PTR for Patch 3.3 is up and running – less than two weeks after Onyxia returned. The World of the World of Warcraft is buzzing with news of the patch as PTR testers and data miners start spreading information. While I appreciate the efforts that these folks put forth, I have to wonder:

What the Hell happened to patch 3.2.1? And (seriously this time)…

What truly useful information will we learn from the PTR?

For the first question, who really knows? I’m not familiar enough with Blizzard’s naming conventions. Perhaps Onyxia had long been planned as a 3.2.2 release, and the designation of 3.2.1 was reserved for something that might have been needed in between. Maybe 3.2.1 was some sort of bug-fix patch, although since 3.2.2a got its own designation, I doubt it. Still, one wonders. Meanwhile, let’s consider the second question: What useful information will we learn from the PTR?

Well, from my first scan of the O-boards, I’m learning that:
-the PTR is glitched, buggy, and/or down
- a lot of people are having trouble logging in
- Jaina’s got a new model – and she is ‘hot’
- the PTR is still glitched, buggy and/or down
Strangely enough, there’s no complaining (yet) that we still don’t have new dances in place. I expect that will change.

Meanwhile, WoWInsider has a lot of Patch 3.3 goodness on it – most of it focuses on new UI features, achievements, dungeon/raid previews, tier 10 set bonuses, and Jaina’s makeover (and how ‘hot’ she is). Most of my favorite bloggers are giving pretty much the same info that WoWInsider is giving us, with a bit more info on how to fight the bosses and a little less (mercifully) on Jaina. In the coming weeks we’ll also get to see previews of loot, which is probably the most important thing to most people.

Personally I’m not really that interested in the new Jaina model (she looks too snobby), or where the best upgrade will be for me – I figure I’ll find out soon enough. What I really want to know from any PTR is How will the proposed changes to my class affect how my toon plays? To me it seems that this would be the most pressing concern of most people, yet it seems to be the least-reported aspect of any PTR cycle.

Granted, 3.3 isn’t necessarily bringing huge changes to most classes; it’s actually understandable that people are going to be more excited about finally breaking down the doors of the Citadel and squaring off with Arthas than they are about a change to a spell or two. However, even when there are big changes for classes, very little information about how it plays gets out to the outside world. Those of us who can’t or won’t go on the PTR are left to chew our nails and wonder.

A good example of this is with the Holy Paladin Illumination nerf that came in patch 3.2. The speculation leading up to release focused mostly on worst-case scenarios; the nerf sounded very, very bad indeed. In the end, the nerf didn’t turn out nearly as bad as the speculation and napkin math indicated, as I wrote in a guest post on World of Matticus. Some honest reporting from the PTR would have spared many a Holy Paladin an anxious month while testing was going on.

We’re seeing the same thing happening -- again with Paladins -- as 3.3 looks to be bringing a pretty big change to Divine Sacrifice and Divine Guardian. How big will these changes be? Right now there’s a great discussion happening on PlusHeal, complete with some substantial napkin math, but as of right now, nobody has stepped forward with any numbers or reports on how it’s actually working. This is not just a problem in the Paladin community, I might add. Most of the posts I read related to any class changes -- on the O-boards and elsewhere – focus on hypotheticals and gut reactions to new and revised abilities. This makes me ask a third question: Why do people sign up for the PTR?

Now I can hear my two readers asking ‘Hey Jeffo, if you want to know how this works so badly, why don’t you get your butt on the PTR and report for us?’ I should. I’ll also point out that as a beta tester for Wrath, I did in fact post hard numbers on the PlusHeal forums. I’m an educator at heart and I like to share news of this sort with my ‘colleagues’ where I can. Sadly, I find that I play too much as it is; joining the PTR means I’d either have to play even more than I do now, or I’d have to cut back on the amount of time I spend in the ‘real’ virtual world to participate in the virtual virtual world. I’d rather not do either, so I’m relying on others for my information. Maybe that’s a bit of a copout, but it is the reality of the situation. Perhaps in the future I’ll have more time to hit up the PTR’s and betas, or I’ll be more willing to forego ‘live’ time for the PTR. That day is just not here yet.

I realize that I will benefit from the work of those on the PTR on patch day, however, beyond the feedback they’re hopefully providing Blizzard as they go. On Patch night (should server stability allow it, that is), my guild is likely to send a group of brave travelers into the new 10-man raid. When we come to face-to-face with our first boss, we will have some idea of what’s about to happen because it will already be on Tankspot, or Bosskillers, or some other site – straight from the PTR to a Youtube video near you.

Can Recycling Save the World...of Warcraft?

2009-09-23T13:22:00.002-04:00

‘Meet the new boss
Same as the old boss’
-Won’t Get Fooled Again, Pete Townsend

Most people these days agree that recycling is good for the planet – it saves natural resources and landfill space, creates jobs, can cut down on pollution. With the release of patch 3.2.2 and the return of Onyxia, Blizzard is making a strong case for winning ‘Recycler of the Year’. In some ways, perhaps this last expansion should have been called Wrath of the Recycling King. Think for a second about what we’ve seen in the expansion so far:
- The first big raid was Naxxramas; recycled from patch 1.something
- Arugal was dragged out of Shadowfang Keep and resurrected to serve as a mini-boss in Grizzly Hills
- We got to revisit a scene out of Warcraft III in the Caverns of Time: Culling of Stratholme.
- We defeated the Black Knight in the Argent Tournament. Now we get to kill him again – 3 times!
- Trial of the Champions (or is it Crusader? I’m so confused!) brings us Anub’arak. How the Hell did Tirion dig him up? I can’t use Redemption on enemies.
- Confessor Paletress summons images of old bosses, though this doesn’t quite count because they don’t use their original abilities (if they did, this might actually be an easier fight)

Blizzard looks to continue the recycling with Cataclym, where we’ll be seeing heroic version of Shadowfang Keep (Arugal, part 3?) and Deadmines. I’ve heard rumors that Ragnaros will be somewhere in there, and Deathwing will be the featured baddie (since I have not played all that long, has Deathwing ever actually been faced down as a boss?). Given the recent history of the expansion, and the announcements on Cataclysm, I would not be at all surprised if Arthas throws some recycled bosses at us in Icecrown. Anyone for Patchwerk again?

While recycling is good for the planet, is it good for Blizzard? There seems to be a big difference of opinion on this. There are folks like Lodur over at Matticus who are very excited over these developments. These folks remember raiding Onyxia back when; who look back with fondness at the frustration of banging their heads against that particular wall, and are happy to relive those memories, and make new ones. They’re looking forward to seeing what new wrinkles Blizz puts into those old characters, and seeing how well their own new abilities match up. I think many of these folks are looking forward to these new encounters, not just because of the nostalgia factor, but also because they’re hoping they will be as challenging now as they were then. (Based on my first attempt at Onyxia last night, which was cut short by unstable servers, I think they’ll be disappointed – we didn’t get her down in the time we had, but it was not the 'holy-crap-this-is-impossible' event that I thought it might be. The difficulty right now seems to be in the unfamiliarity that most of us had with it.

Then there’s the other end of the spectrum, folks like my GM. They look at the recycling of content as laziness on Blizzard’s part, a further slide down the slippery slope that started with the whole change to the emblem system that came out in 3.2. Already feeling alienated by the direction WoW had taken, content recycling is pushing them further away from the game. They feel that the game has gotten too easy, that ‘epic’ gear is too commonplace, and that recycling is evidence that Blizzard is putting as little effort into game design as players have to put into getting those epics. While forum posts threatening to quit the game over one thing or another are not new, the case of my GM (well, former actually; he gave up the GM spot a couple of months ago) are representative of a general loss of enthusiasm amongst a set of the playerbase.

To be honest, I’m kind of mixed on the subject of content recycling. On the one hand, I do feel as if Blizzard is somehow slacking on the raids since Ulduar hit. The design of the Crusaders’ Coliseum, with its no-trash, no-scenery, four raids in one! approach feels like a bit of a ‘cheat’, even though some of the encounters in there are actually fun and creative. Taking an old encounter and just upping the HP and damage of the boss is not creating new content. Will Deadmines and Shadowfang Keep be exactly the same as they used to be? If we see Kel’Thuzad resurrected once again in Icecrown, will it be the same fight that we just did, with maybe one new wrinkle? If the answer to these questions is ‘yes’, then we are right to feel that Blizzard is cutting corners. BUT....

Does it really matter?

From what I can glean from the forums, the new Onyxia is pretty much the same as the old Onyxia. I wouldn’t know, as I never fought the old Onyxia. I never went into Blackrock Spire or Blackrock Depths; never raided Molten Core or Black Temple. Yes, I did Deadmines and Shadowfang Keep (as any good Paladin should – Verigan’s Fist, ftw!) but that was a long time ago. There are lots of players these days who have never done any of them, for whom these dungeons and raids are not ‘old news’, but the stuff of legend. Leveling is faster and easier than ever, and can be done with stunningly little group play (even less than when I started playing, which was in the spring of 2007). There is little reason or opportunity to run these instances at proper level; introducing them as high-level will play into the nostalgia factor for the folks who have been there, while giving others the opportunity to experience it for the first time. In many ways I prefer the prospect of facing van Cleef as a level 85 bad-ass more than I want to see yet another iteration of Anub’arak. When Cataclysm hits next year you can also expect that there will be plenty of people pushing through the levels that will not set foot in Naxx, Eye or Ulduar on the way up – will it be so terrible to have these people square off against Sartharion in a buffed-up version of Obsidian Sanctum? It might actually make a certain degree of sense given the importance of the Black Dragonflight in the expansion.

Recycling in and of itself won’t save the Real World; it must be part of a larger strategy that includes proper resource management, source reduction and changes in consumption. Recycling in the world of World of Warcraft has to be a part of a larger Blizzard strategy for breathing new life into a game that seems to be getting stale for many players. Time will tell if this is a winning strategy for Blizzard.

Patch 3.2: the Ten-foot tall Bug

2009-08-11T12:09:00.003-04:00

"Nothing is so frightening as what's behind the closed door.’ – Stephen King

In his book Danse Macabre, a treatise on horror movies, books, radio and TV, author Stephen King wrote an excellent passage about how monsters are always more frightening when we can’t see them – when they are a shape in the dark, or a sound under the bed or in the closet. The reason is that, while it’s hidden, it could be anything. As King writes ‘When you made the monster in your mind…it was a perfect monster.’ Good movies makers understand this principle, and will keep the monster in the closet as long as they can, to keep you and me on the edge of our seats as long as possible.

The weeks leading up to the release of Patch 3.2 (in fact, pretty much every major patch I’ve seen in the 2+ years that I’ve been playing WoW) is much like the walk a movie hero/heroine makes towards that closed door at the end of the hallway. Even though the patch notes tell us exactly what’s being changed, they still represent the ‘closed door’, because we really don’t know how much the change will affect us. In fact there seems to be an interesting progression in how the community deals with that closed door. It starts with the release of the patch notes detailing changes for each class. This kicks off an eruption on the official boards (and in blogs and other forums) of shock and disbelief, followed quickly by Righteous Indignation (sounds like a great Paladin spell, doesn’t it?) and outright rage. Typical posts go along these lines: ‘They’re making obsolete! You’ll never see us in raids anymore!’ followed closely by the ever-popular ‘This is a slap in the face!’ and the old standby ‘I’m quitting/rerolling’.

As we get closer to the door, we get into the ‘Desperate Prayer’ stage (in the movies, you’d be scrunching down in your seat, muttering ‘don’topenthedoordon’topenthedoordon’topenthedoor’. In this stage, the more thoughtful players fill the board with all manner of theorycraft and hard numbers from Actual Raid Parses from the live realms to demonstrate to Blizzard just how this change will gut Class X – the hope is that Blizzard will examine their numbers, and realize that the player base is far more knowledgeable about the game than their own developers, and will either:
a. cut out the changes altogether
b. mitigate the changes a bit (nerf the nerf), or
c. nerf the Hell out of the other guys

Of course threats, insults and player numbers aren’t enough to sway Blizzard. We don’t want them to open the door, but Ghostcrawler is there to fling open the door and shove us through. I’ll complete the King quote from the beginning to describe what happens next:

"Nothing is so frightening as what's behind the closed door. The audience holds its breath along with the protagonist as she/he (more often she) approaches that door. The protagonist throws it open, and there is a ten-foot-tall bug. The audience screams, but this particular scream has an oddly relieved sound to it. 'A bug ten feet tall is pretty horrible', the audience thinks, 'but I can deal with a ten-foot-tall bug. I was afraid it might be a hundred feet tall'.”

With the Monster of Patch 3.2 officially out of the closet, we can now think rationally. We can examine it in the bright light of day, size it up, and do what the heroes and heroines do in the movies: grab the nearest chainsaw, fireplace poker, or other conveniently-located improvised weapon and go kick some ten-foot bug butt. Learn to play with the new tools Blizzard has given us, because the next closed door is just down the hall to the right.

Does the Old World need and Overhaul?

2009-07-15T10:22:00.002-04:00

Well, look at this.

A month and a half into my blog, and I’m slacking already.

I have plenty of ideas for posts. I just seem to lack ‘finish’. I’ve also started plenty of posts, but find them all lacking. Usually they start out fairly well; then I stop and read over what I’ve written and think ‘what’s the point I’m trying to make? I can’t find it!’ and that’s where I grind to a halt – but not this time!

A recent-when-I-started-writing-this-but-not-anymore thread on Ten Ton Hammer suggests that Blizzard needs to update the Old World. Levels 1-60 are stale, they say. The quest hubs are poorly designed, the quests are boring, and that levels 40-58 in particular involve too much traveling. He compares the Old World with both Outlands and Northrend and finds, not surprisingly, that it is lacking. He further suggests that Blizzard streamlines some of the quests and questlines to make them more like the newer zones, and appears to say they should add in new quests (I may be reading into it. His exact quote is: 'What would be nice, is enough quests in a series of closely linked zones to level through 40-58, and then other alternative zones, so that with one alt you can level in one region (eg. the south of kali), and then another alt you can do different quests and kill different mobs in another place (eg. the north of east kingdoms), so that you don't end up doing the same quests over and over. It would make it a much more cohesive, varied and enjoyable experience that would match the rest of the game.'

Now, I have to say there are some valid points made here and in some other similar threads on TTH and elsewhere. The chief one is that the ‘modern’ world of the World of Warcraft is miles above the Old World in many ways: graphics and scenery, innovative quests involving vehicles, storylines, and quest hub designs. In particular, the hub designs are so much better than they used to be. I was reminded of this while questing in the Zim’torga section of Zul’Drak on my No-longer-Secret Warlock last week (Yes, I joined my main’s guild): I picked up a quest to go to the northeast and kill a nasty mob. Two nearby NPC’s then sent me to the same area to gather items and kill other mobs. This pattern is pretty typical of Northrend design, and while there’s a fair share of making multiple trips to one place type of quests, you can usually knock out two or more quests in the area at the same time. It’s a far cry from finding out that you need to kill Araj the Summoner for the key to Scholomance after you’ve already killed him as part of Alas, Andorhal (or vice versa); and don’t get me started on the multiple quests that have you running back, forth and back again between Westfall, Lakeshire, Darkshire and Stormwind – several times. While those particular quests served a purpose beyond getting booze or appealing for more help – they directed you into new areas with potentially new quests – they were a brutal time sink in the days before you could get a mount at level 20, especially the first time, before you picked up all the flight paths.

In general, I have little sympathy for Berniemac’s plea for updating the Old World. Why? Note again what Bernie said: ” so that with one alt you can level in one region (eg. the south of kali), and then another alt you can do different quests and kill different mobs in another place (eg. the north of east kingdoms), so that you don't end up doing the same quests over and over.” (emphasis added) Bernie and the others who agree with him are looking at it from the perspective of the veteran, someone who’s run multiple alts through that content. In fact, Bernie states in the very first line of his post that he’s leveling a Rogue AND a lock, and that they’re both in their 40’s – no wonder he wants the Old World redesigned! How many times can you run the same content and NOT find it lacking, especially if you have other toons that have been to the Golden New World?

The issue here is,to twist a phrase commonly seen on the forums ‘Old content is old’. If you’re like Bernie, you’re going to be bored with it, having run it a half a dozen times. If you’ve recently been running around Northrend (or even Outlands), it’s going to pale by comparison.

Does that mean it needs an overhaul?

In my view not at all. Beginning at least with , the XP needed to reach 60 was cut, along with an increase in XP gained/quest. We’ve seen more recent developments (mounts at level 20), heirloom items, recruit-a-friend, all designed to make the leveling process faster. How much faster? Upon reaching level 80, my warlock had completed 180 fewer quests in the Old World than my main, who leveled past 60 before patch 2.3. Around level 60, I bought my lock a set of heirloom shoulders and he sped through Outlands, only doing significant questing in Hellfire, Zangarmarsh and Nagrand. In comparison my Paladin, had to complete most of the quests in those zones, plus Terrokar and Shadowmoon Valley before hitting 70. Even without the benefits of a ‘rich uncle’ toon for heirloom gear, or recruit-a-friend speed, leveling is pretty speedy.

What about the other argument – the one that says Azeroth is ‘stale’? Again, consider that the people who are complaining the most are the people who’ve gone through it over and over and over. I had a recent conversation with a guildie who’s in his level 50’s on his first ever toon – he’s loving the game, and has no complaints. The world is certainly not stale to him and, while I’m sure he’s had some annoyances with some of the old quest hubs, they haven’t diminished his enjoyment of the game or his desire to play. I think that’s the most important thing here. Blizzard has catered very much to the Altoholic out there by making many of these changes already. They have to make sure that they don’t ruin it for the real rookies, the ones that have never been through this before. Leave the Old World alone, I say; it’s not broken. It kept me interested enough to play to end-game (twice!), and it’s still working for the rookies. Let’s not ruin it for the new kids coming up.

Epics for Nothing

2009-06-24T16:40:00.002-04:00

Now look at them newbies,
That’s the way the do it.
They run through Nexus and Heroic OC
That ain’t raiding!
That’s the way they do it
Get their emblems for nothing and their loot for free!

Now that ain’t raiding,
That’s the way they do it.
Let me tell you, them scrubs ain’t dumb.
Maybe get a tier piece and a brand new necklace,
Maybe get a trinket or a gun.

We had to raid through all of Naxxramas
Then kill Maly, Sarth plus 3
We got no freebies, we got no handouts
I had to spend all my effing DKP!

I should have known
To wait for the patch.
I should have held off ‘til 3.2
Look at that hunter, he’s decked out all in epics
But what achievements did he do?

And who is that? My GM’s alt?
He just dinged 80 and he’s rocking two one three’s!
Oh that ain’t raiding, that’s the way they do it,
Get their emblems for nothing and their loot for free

I had to raid through all of Naxxramas,
Then kill Maly, Sarth + 3
I got no freebies, I got no handouts,
I had to spend all my effing DKP!

With apologies to Mark Knopfler for destroying his classic Money for Nothing.

There's been a fair bit of hullabaloo over the upcoming patch, much of it focused on the changes to emblems. Not surprisingly much of the reaction to the 'new' emblem system is negative. Maybe I’m in the minority on this; maybe those who are filling blogs, O-boards and Trade chat with QQ over this are in the minority, just noisier about it, hard to say. Maybe I just think about my gear differently than everyone else: for the most part I don’t look at my gear as The End. To me it’s the Means to an End, and the End is downing the boss and completing the content. The gear helps me reach that end. I don’t go into Naxx and Ulduar so that I can parade around the streets of Dalaran brandishing my Horologist’s Wristguards and my Torch of Holy Fire, making others wish they were me. I don’t curl my lip at the guy wearing a BoE epic and think ‘Huh, he probably bought his’. So what if he did? Who is he hurting?

The only argument I might buy into about how so-called ‘welfare epics’ can hurt the game is the notion that ‘bad’ players can now get good gear with less effort. The thinking is that these guys will then worm their way into your raids due to their artificially buffed stats. Once in the raid they will quickly be revealed as being ‘The Mole’, and will cost you time and gold. I don’t even think that this argument holds up that well; it’s entirely possible for bad people to get good gear by being carried through raids and instances anyway. As an example I give you Badpaladin (not his real name). Badpaladin is a member of my guild who picked up 5 good Naxx/heroic Naxx pieces of gear (through pugs or a friend, I’m not sure) before the rest of us really got started, yet it didn’t help him heal his way through Azjol-Nerub. Regular. With an 80 tank and level-appropriate dps. They never made it past the first boss. My GM (who was there on one of his alts) reported a failure of Epic Proportions, as it was clear Badpaladin had no real clue how to heal. Yet he has good gear.

In some ways, this kind of ‘welfare epic’ may be worse than cheap badges. At least with the cheap badges it will take much longer for the ‘moles’ to farm enough emblems to get the gear they need to get into your raid. Maybe by then you’ll be well past the content they’re trying to worm their way into. In the meantime, I suggest you remember that gear is a tool, a way to help you get the job done. Enjoy the fights and the camaraderie involved in defeating raid bosses; that’s where most of the true fun in the game lies.

Still independent

2009-06-17T13:55:00.002-04:00

My Secret Identity is growing up – he just hit 73 and has moved into Dragonblight – and as he grows up, the Call of the Guild grows ever stronger. Despite the concluding line of my initial post on this subject, I have not yet made up a contest, and my Secret Identity is still somewhat Secret. I think part of it is that I like to maintain some semblance of independence, like George Costanza:

(Incidentally, this is the reason I jokingly gave when people would ask me why I wasn't in the same guild with my wife. We're in the same guild now, but we still joke about it once in a while)

Aside from the ‘Independence’ factor, staying out of my guild does provide me with some interesting experiences, which will hopefully translate into interesting blog posts! The following event occurred last night.

I was in Stormwind playing APS (Azerothian Parcel Service) between my Secret Identity and my bank when a Guild Charter popped up in my face. Now it’s an absolute pet peeve of mine when I get group invites, charters, trade requests and the like with no preamble, and this was one of them: No whispered ‘could you please sign’, no offer of gold in exchange for a signature, nothing. I closed it. It promptly opened again. I closed it. It opened again, with a whisper from the persistent, would-be GM: “You can just exit”. So I signed, wished him luck, and went back about my business. About an hour later I became a founding member of …err, ummm, well, I actually didn’t even notice the name of the new guild, except that it miraculously did not have the word ‘Knight’ in the title (If I had a gold for every guild name that includes ‘Knight’, I’d have enough for my epic flyer!). Instead of /gquit, I thought ‘well, let’s see what happens’ and delivered the first message in life (actually second, the first was that some other guy left):

Grats!

….

….

Not a good sign. A couple of minutes later, the GM wonders if anyone has any gold they can contribute for the bank tab.

My inner Deadly Boss Mods began flashing a warning across my mental monitor: ‘MoneyGrubber reaches for your gold!’ I deftly parried his thrust by admitting that my toon is poor – he’s leveling enchanting and tailoring after all. At this point one of the other new guild members chimed in with The Big Question:

“So, what are your plans for this guild?”

What would it be? A raiding guild? A leveling guild? A social, hang out and have fun guild? A hide from your guild guild? Wrong, wrong, wrong and wrong! His answer:

“I just want to use the bank tab.”

Well at least he had the guts (or maybe it was stupidity) to admit it. I wonder if he would have kicked us all had we ponied up the cash for the tab? I wasn’t going to hang around long enough to find out. I told him ‘Good luck with that’ and /gquit.

Independent once more, but for how long?

What Do People Do All Day?

2009-06-12T11:48:00.002-04:00

Every time I’m in a city for any length of time I think of the title of a book I used to read with my children when they were small: Richard Scarry’s ‘What Do People Do All Day?’ Not because I see Huckle Cat or Lowly Worm running around (wouldn’t that be frightening?), but because of all the junk flying around in the General and Trade chats. The murloc game, the anal [link] game, ripping people for asking questions, ripping people for inflating AH prices, accusing people of spamming for posting recruitment messages: It goes on constantly, and it’s the same people all the time!

What do these people do all day?

Now I understand that WoW is a social game, and I understand that people get their enjoyment out of it in different ways; still, isn’t there something better to do with your time than sit in Stormwind and tell Chuck Norris jokes?

A big part of the problem is that, even though there is a lot to do in the game, there’s also a lot of downtime: Waiting for the BG to begin, waiting for all your raid members to log on, waiting for that elusive healer for the heroic daily. It’s sad, though, that idle time and a large ‘audience’ results in such massive amounts of outright stupidity. Is it really that funny to type in ‘Raiders of the Lost Murloc’ or Anal [Wrath]? Especially when it’s been done over and over and over again? (I logged on in Dalaran the other day to a ‘Murloc game’ in progress. Someone boasted ‘lol, I left to take a nap two hours ago and it’s still going on!’ You’re proud of that???) I know, I know ‘QQ moar’ and ‘/leave trade, /leave general’. The problem with that is there are real questions out there, legitimate deals to be had, and people honestly looking for one more dps or healer out there – it’s a shame it gets pushed off the screen so fast that you miss it. So does guild and officer chat for that matter, and I frequently find myself scrolling back through the drivel to find the important stuff.

I suppose I should be thankful in a way that these people are taking their boredom out in what is ultimately a harmless manner. After all they could be out on the streets of the Real World harassing old ladies, or getting blitzed and puking on my lawn or wrapping a car around a telephone pole. So I guess I’ll just continue to deal with it by spending as little in-game time in the cities as possible, and hope that, when I do have to visit the city, that spammers will have come up with some new material.

My Secret Identity

2009-06-01T11:07:00.002-04:00

I have a confession to make: I have a Secret Identity.

No, it's not like Ferraro's Secret Identity (identities?), or the Secret Identity that Sarah Townsend didn't even know she had. Mine is an in-game Secret Identity.

It's a Warlock.

My Secret Warlock is and is known only to a handful of my guildies: my wife (of course); my GM and his wife; and three or four others. Ironically, my GM has his own Secret Warlock; we've done some quests together and we chat pretty extensively when we're both online at the same time. Our Secret Warlocks are secret: they are not in the guild.

When I created my Secret Warlock I had every intention of bringing him into the guild, but I figured I'd have some fun with it. I envisioned a 'Find My Alt' contest, with Fabulous Cash Prizes for the lucky guildie who was able to find me through clever clues posted on the website or by my wife in-game. The contest never materialized, however; I could never quite figure out how I wanted to do it, but I think the real reason it didn't happen was because....

It was quiet. And I liked it.

I love my guild. I really do.They’re a great bunch of people, and there’s always something happening in guild chat – frequently entertaining, often enlightening, never boring. Yet I found the peace and quiet refreshing. It was nice to be able to kill worgen in Duskwood without watching the constantly-streaming lines of green chat flowing by, or stopping to see what I missed while siccing my Voidwalker on Stalvan Mistmantle. I didn’t have to feel guilty for not dropping what I was doing to heal a heroic, or worry that I wasn’t being nice for not giving someone that run-through of Scarlet Monastery. So, I enjoyed the silence.

And then I got lonely.

Now, being a Warlock means you’re never really alone, but minions are generally poor company. They’re not much for conversation, they just grumble and complain, or slap their butts. I was looking for more than that. So, when someone asked if I could sign a guild charter for them, I thought 'Why not? It will be nice to have some company'. I also thought it might not be a bad idea to experience being in a different guild, with different people, so that I could be exposed to different ways of thinking and organization.

So I joined the new guild. And I hated it.

Here is a typical conversation in the new guild (actually, both of the ones my Secret Warlock has been in):
[Myalt] has come online
[Myalt] Good evening, all
[Guildie1] sup
[Guildie2] yo
[Myalt] What's everyone up to tonight?
[guildchat] /cricket

I find it interesting that as much as I liked the Sounds of Silence when I was unguilded, I hated it more when I was in a guild. If I’m in a social organization then I want to socialize. I’m not looking for run-throughs, or handouts, or a spiffy guild tabard. I don’t have to spend every minute of every session grouped up with you for no purpose; I don’t need an extensive detailing of your personal life – but I DO want more than ‘sup’ and ‘yo’. In short, I’m looking for more from my gaming experience and my guild, and I think I know what to do.

So, if you'll excuse me, I have a contest to design.

Old Tools, New Tools: Changing with the Times

2009-05-27T11:18:00.002-04:00

Lodur had a great post over at World of Matticus this morning on the state of Chain Heal and Resto Shaman. His post was a response to a now-23 page thread on the O-boards lamenting the state of chain heal compared to other AoE heals in the game. Lodur examines the shaman toolbox and concludes that shamans are not broken, it’s just a matter of reaching in and pulling out a different tool than the trusty old Chain Heal.

I don’t play a shaman so I’m really not qualified to comment on whether or not they’re broken. My guild is also not pushing the progression envelope of hard modes at this time (we’ve taken down Flame Leviathan in 25’s, woohoo), so I can’t really look compare our shammies with Lodur’s. What prompted this post was the following comment Lodur made near the end of his piece:

‘[Chain Heal] not the crutch it used to be. I think people should stop looking to it to be the spell it was in Sunwell, and should accept that it is one of many tools to be used with great effect.

Lodur’s point sums things up very nicely; I think the source of most of the complaints on the O-Boards is change, and how people adjust to change.

The game has changed since TBC. Classes have had major talent overhauls and upgrades (and downgrades and sidegrades), and things no longer work the way they used to; developers have made an endless series of tweaks and adjustments, i.e. change. Change makes us uncomfortable; it takes us out of our comfort zone and disrupts our routine. Even the anticipation of a change is enough to make the O-Boards light up with ‘OMG, NERF, I QUIT!’ When the change is actually implemented there’s usually a brief period of complaining, and then things settle down. We adjust. We move forward, we discover that the change is not so bad, and might even be a good thing!

I think particularly of Beacon of Light. When this shiny, new tool was placed in the Paladin’s toolbox there were tons of complaints: It’s not a true AoE heal, costs too much mana, doesn’t last long enough. There’s nothing really inherently wrong in any of these complaints, but much of the problem seemed to be that many just couldn’t figure out how to use it – the new tool didn’t have an instruction manual! Does it get used on the tank? A dps? Yourself? Should it be used all the time? Instead of asking those questions, the paladin community just blasted the tool itself – until we played around with it more and figured it out. Take a glance at the O-boards now, when’s the last time you saw a true ‘Beacon Sucks’ thread? The last Beacon-specific thread turns up on page 7 dated 5/14, and it’s not an ‘I hate Beacon’ rant. Once people figured out how to use it, the complaining stopped. It’s not a perfect spell, but it’s much more useful than most initially believed.

I suspect that many Shaman will come to the same conclusions about shaman healing as the Paladins did with Beacon of Light. Maybe Chain Heal doesn’t work the same way it did in Sunwell. It doesn’t mean the class or heal is broken. It just means it’s no longer the All-Purpose tool that it used to be; it’s time to reach into the toolbox and find something that will work for the job at hand. And when you do get a shiny new tool? Don’t look for the instruction manual. Just play around with it until you figure out how it works. It’s more fun that way, and you might even discover a use for it that the developers didn’t think about.

Gquit: The Ghost of Tom Joad

2009-05-21T14:28:00.004-04:00

My guild had a mini-upheaval this past week, a fair bit of drama that was the culmination of a two months’ worth of frustration for the members who left, and a fair bit of consternation for the officers as well. All told we lost about eight people in this bit of drama. Considering that our guild has over 400 members eight doesn’t seem like such a lot. However, two of the people were good ‘in-game friends’ of mine; we share history, we do, and each departure hurts in a way. Each person has their own story; since they’re not here to tell it, it will be up to me to do so. The first installment is the story of Tom Joad. I call him Tom Joad because, like Steinbeck’s hero of The Grapes of Wrath, this guildie was always there:

When we walked into Kara the very first time as a bunch of severely undergeared and overmatched 70’s, back when the guild had to PuG 2-5 slots just to get in the door (which is how they ended up with me), he was there.

When we had to kill Attumen’s trash twice each week because we were so bad (and slow), he was there.

When Moroes served us for dinner – over and over and over again – he was there.

When we decided that we really needed to run more heroics for better gear, and when you needed to make just one more run of Shadow Labs to get you exalted with Lower City; when we ran more guildies through the arduous ‘Kara Keying’ process to get a solid team – he was there. When we finally broke through and started downing bosses, and when we finally claimed Kara as our own, he was there.

He was the guy that got us into another guilds’ weekly ‘organized pugs’ of Mags/Gruuls, and when we actually managed to form our own, full-guild 25-man team, he was there. He was the one who started pushing us to Zul’Aman, and he was there when Nalorakk first cleaved his way through our ranks. When we started to figure out how to beat the bosses in ZA, he was there.

And then, he wasn’t.

When we set foot into Naxx 10 as a bunch of severely undergeared level 80’s, and couldn’t even best Anub’rhekan, he wasn’t there. He wasn’t there when our one Naxx-10 team turned into two, when two turned into three, and when three 10-man teams turned into a 25-man squad. When we scored our first recorded Bigglesworth kill, faced the frenzy of Faerlina, and choked on Grobbulus’s dreaded ‘poo gas’, he wasn’t there. ‘Tom Joad’ had turned into the Invisible Man, due to a combination of real life events that had interrupted his WoW playing time. While we were forming one, two and then three Naxx-10 teams he was puttering around on a Death Knight, while his main was just finishing up Howling Fjord. As we started drawing the noose around Kel’Thuzad in 10’s and began making decent progress in 25, he was hitting up Old Kingdom. I think he suddenly realized how far behind he was and made a final push for 80. Once he reached 80, he underwent another identity switch, and became ‘Mr. Entitlement’ – not very complimentary, but earned:

Mr. Entitlement expected to be given a slot on the Naxx-10 team with his old ‘Kara buddies’. He seemed to feel that the history we had warranted it.

Mr. Entitlement expected to be placed on the Naxx-25 roster, just because. Never mind that during his one trip in his dps was below the tanks, and he privately griped to the GM about loot distribution.

Never mind in the first two cases that there were people ahead of him on the lists; never mind that we were still in progression mode, and that we didn’t really have the margin of error to be carrying sub-1500 dps in Naxx-25. Mr. Entitlement tried to subtly cash in on our history and get himself placed on these raid teams. What kind of message would that have sent to our other members?

Mr. Entitlement was unwilling to work with guild members that he didn’t know well. The simple fact is the guild had grown by quite a bit while Mr. E was away from the game. We tried to get him to hook up with the Naxx 10 team that was raiding on weekends, and actually needed dps help (although I have since heard that there was some funny business with this team; this one may not be Mr. Entitlement’s fault). Mr. Entitlement’s preferred method of getting a group for heroics was to look to see if the old raiding team was on – if we were, he’d ask us to group. If we weren’t, or were busy, he’d quietly slip away, and his disgruntlement grew.

The transition from Tom Joad to Mr. Entitlement was a surprising one. The transition from Mr. Entitlement to Mr. No-longer-a-member-of-this-Guild was inevitable. I was (and am) sorry that he’s no longer with us; however, the only way to stop him from leaving when he got to ‘Mr. Entitlement’ stage would have been to give him what he wanted. Doing so would have required us to compromise the standards and regulations that we had established for raids, and that was a step none of us was willing to take, for those compromises lead to charges of favoritism and cronyism (ironically, Mr. Entitlement made a few not-so-subtle hints in guild chat that we were guilty of that all along), and that leads to even more unhappiness in the long run.

I’m not sure how much Mr. Entitlement’s departure and unhappiness effected the other seven who left. The timing may well have been a coincidence, or it could have been related; I’ll look at the curious case of ‘Pebbles’ next time. Thanks for reading!

2009-05-21T09:16:00.000-04:00

Welcome to Looking for More! I will be using this space to comment on things I have observed over the last two years of playing World of Warcraft. This will not be a site devoted to the finer points of playing your toon -- there are so many sites out there that already do this far better than I could, so I'll stick more to observations of a social nature. I realize I'm probably doing a Very Bad Thing by putting this site up without having a post ready to go -- so be it, I'm willing to break a rule or two here or there.

Thanks for stopping in; come back anytime you're 'Looking for More!'