Matticus

Matticus is the founder of World of Matticus, a World of Warcraft blog.

How Matt Almost Lost 22000 Gold

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OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

I forgot I had this post sitting in my drafts. It was written a few weeks ago. Here it is now with an important message to guild masters everywhere.

It was a warm and breezy Tuesday. Raid invites had been sent out. It’s the grace period where players are busy wrapping up their affairs and getting prepped for the raid. I slammed down a Coke because I had a feeling it was going to be one of those nights. Groups were organized during the preparation period with players specifically assigned to their vehicles and their roles.

Quick work. Next!

After toasting Flame Leviathan, the pull was set up for Razorscale. A quick countdown ensued and the Dwarven expedition team began placing their Dwarven engineering skills at work charged with getting harpoon turrets up quickly.

This is where the fun happened.

A level 1 Gnome Rogue messaged me.

“hey, its maddawg. can i get a ginvite?”

“Standby. Doing Razor.”

“o, ok.”

A few minutes later, we wrecked him and started opening up on Ignis trash.

“you guys all done in there?”

“Yeah, Razor down. Hop on vent for a sec, need to ask you something.”

“sry cant. at a friends house right now.”

I thought nothing of it and wired out the invite.

Of course, when you give an inch…

“hey, can i get promoted to officer? need to organize some stuff for the bank.”

This was followed by one of the swiftest guild kicks in the history of guild kickingness.

The vault of Conquest would not be breached today! We had around 22000 gold. That amount is just in hard currency and in the main bank (Offshore guild bank accounts? I wouldn’t be that paranoid. Right?) Including various raiding materials such as flasks, enchants, gems, and other things, the amount would have been colossal. It would have been enough to request a bailout anyway.

So what gave it away?

In one of the most failed social engineering tactics of this century, the Maddawg impersonator made several mistakes. More importantly, I had various defenses in place to protect against such infiltration.

Bad target

He didn’t exactly pick the most ideal target. I am perhaps the most paranoid guild master on the planet. That would be a result of Criminology program I’m enrolled in.

Restricted bank access

Freshly invited players do not get access to the bank. They can see everything but they can’t withdraw out of it. No cash, no flasks, and not even a single grey item can be pulled out without an officer signing off on it.

Authentication fail

The first warning sign I received was when he said he was unable to get on vent. Yeah sure there’s a multitude of reasons for that. Policy is still policy. I get instantly suspicious if I don’t hear a player asking for an invite.

Officer alt policy

No alts of any of the leadership including myself are promoted past a social rank for any reason. They are all aware of this and they agreed to it.

What was even funnier was just minutes ago Maddawg had said he was going to head out and to not expect to see him on for the rest of the evening. He wasn’t able to raid that night.

Image courtesy of woodsy

Announcing Magecraft.org!

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For the Mages, you guys have a new place to call home.

Look no further than Magecraft.

Wanted to drop by with a quick note from a guildie. He’s hard at work building a community with a few other Mages and could use a community hand. I know the chances of Mages reading this blog are slim to none, but perhaps you can direct your Mage guildies be they varsity or new to this young and fledgling discussion board.

This is from Dan (one of the brains behind it) himself:

For the last couple of years playing WoW as a Mage their has always been something that has been missing from the community. The gap I felt was due in large part because their really isn’t much support for new Mages, as well as a place for discussion for ‘veterans’.

The mage forums are okay at best, most of the threads end in a ridiculous flame war over stupid issues.  I’m attempting to remedy those problems by releasing a site similar to MainTankadin, Plus Heal and shadowpriest.com.

MageCraft is currently being worked on, feel free to drop by, ask questions, contribute, or just chat about recent achievements with your Mage.

Since I don’t have a Mage of my own nor do I have any desire for one, I may not be able to contribute as much as I’d like. But I do plan on lurking and sneaking around like any Dwarf Priest would.

Anyway, do register and do ask questions. Dan’s a truly stellar Mage (along with the other Mages in Conquest). One of the top Arcanists I’ve had the pleasure of saving from various falling objects of black circles on the ground since he never makes me regret it.

This is What Panic Looks Like

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no-frames

Hands up! Who can tell me what fundamentally important aspect of a UI is missing from this screenshot?

Hint: Compare it with the images from this post.

The Story

We initialized a pull on Freya and on the first wave of Detonators, my client crashed.

“I’m offline!”, I grunted.

Closed the WoW client and restarted it again. Managed to load back in and what did I see? No raid frames. Some of the officers utilize the oRA2 keyword invite option. I whispered the appropriate word and was told I couldn’t be invited due to combat. Duh, I forgot. My raid frames still hadn’t shown up. I panicked and did the only logical thing that made sense.

I activated friendly name plates.

Normally I have name plates disabled. I even unbound my hostile name plates so I could use that key for something else. Thank goodness I didn’t unbind name plates. It wasn’t exactly the ideal set up but the encounter became even more like whack a mole.

Except this is advanced whack a mole.

Where the moles will only appear within 15 yards.

And they’re moving all around.

So just a quick lesson. If your client is unable to load raid frames for whatever reason, name plates is the plan B followed by a quick prayer.

My Definition of a Good Priest Redux

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Focus

Almost two years ago, I wrote a post about the definition of a good Priest. It was one of the questions posed by Ego back then (to which I’ve lost the original link to).

The Priest class has evolved over the past two years. We’ve gained some and we’ve lost some. Has my stance on the subject changed?

Overall Awareness: This has not changed much. If anything, the amount of information needed to make the right choice at the right time has gone down slightly. With the removal of downranking, gauging the health of a player and then responding with the appropriate rank is no longer necessary. We’re still watching out for fires and health bars. I daresay the number one killer of Priests everywhere is getting out of dangerous stuff too slowly or not at all. We’ve moved from Nightbane’s fires to Sartharion’s Flame Walls to Kel’Thuzad’s Void Zones to Mimiron’s Rocket Strikes.

Perseverance: The bosses are different. The spells and tools have become increasingly diverse. I don’t like giving up. No one likes to lose. I may not express it, but I do chase after that “high” I get after taking down a boss. It’s a great feeling knowing that you played a key role. Good Priests know when to take risks to keep tanks alive. Most fights have one or two tanks that are involved with doing something. When the tanks are down, the game is over.

Clairvoyance: Can you predict incoming damage before it lands? Can you react to the little DBM mark that gets placed on a player which signifies the ensuing Shadow Crash? When Flash Freeze hits, do you know who is going to make it and who isn’t going to make it? These are the little things that separate great healers from okay healers. Your reaction time isn’t going to increase. But spotting these small details sooner will help you make your decisions quicker. One DoT tick is enough to kill a player. How many last second saves have you made on players? Ever received slaps on the back after a kill when a raid member thought they were done for only to be saved from the jaws of death with a last second shield, or instant heal to pull them out from the red health bar?

Preparation: One thing I am glad that has changed is the amount of preparation. I used to bring 20-40 potions every raid night. Brilliant Mana Oil was in my inventory. Flasks were supplied with Illidari Marks or were farmed for on my Elemental Shaman. The reduction of chain potting has dropped potion consumption drastically. I go through about one to two injectors a month instead of per raid. I lock myself in Howling Fjord and shoot enough fish to keep myself stockpiled (MP5 fish).

Openness: Always keep an open mind. Don’t shut down everything you hear. Feedback is feedback. It’s up to you to discern between valuable and useless. But outright rejection should come after you examine it. What are other people saying about you? Does it have merit? What information is missing from their perspective? What do they see when they watch you? I can’t emphasize critical thinking enough.

All in all, it seems my stance hasn’t changed much over the past two years. It’s been refined a little by the different class changes and from my forays into the different raids. When I wrote the original post, I had just finished wrapping up Gruul’s and Mag’s. Opening into SSC started a month after that post. Man how that time flies by, eh?

How about your class? Has your definition of a good <class> changed?

Disappointment for Paladins

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Actually, I daresay that disappointment is being shared by many players in the healing community as well. Ferarro, one of the main pillars for Paladin resources has been discovered for not being truthful.

It’s not my place to discuss blog politics. But I’ve seen a lot of discussion and questions about what’s going on. I don’t know all the facts, but I can definitely start with putting some pieces together.

Timeline over the past week

Here’s a quick list of events over the past week that have led to this. I suggest reading everything listed below first.

So what exactly went wrong here? What’s the offense? Here we’ve got a great Paladin blog that’s helped many new and veteran Paladins of all specs become better.

A good portion of the WoW blogging community writes under a pseudonym or a pen name (false name). I’m one of the rare WoW bloggers who write with their real name (technically Matt is my name and Matticus is what I sign off with). In this case, another person’s identity was assumed and used without their knowledge. Pictures and various videos were lifted to add further authenticity. It’s a good thing this wasn’t being used maliciously. Some serious damage could have been done.

It was an extremely elaborate operation. Seven different people all writing under one name at various stages in the blog’s life. A Blizzard employee? CIA agent? It doesn’t make sense to me. Why claim to be a Blizzard employee and write about stuff that can’t legally be written about? Doesn’t that break an NDA of some sort?

I’m actually quite impressed that someone’s been able to carry on this charade for a long time. We’re talking on the scale of years.

Do I buy what happened?

I’m not quite sure what to believe now. This is the internet. You have your beliefs, I have my beliefs. It just seems amazingly far fetched. Some people are going to believe and trust what was said because they want to believe and maintain the illusion. Skeptics out there will continue to point out various flaws.

Personally, it just looks too easy. It sounds too easy.

Anyway I’ll stop here for now. Read through the posts above and come to your own conclusions. The thing about the blogging community here is that if something seems or smells off, someone’s bound to keep digging and digging until they get something. So for all the new bloggers out there, when you hear the advice to blog as yourself we literally mean it. Don’t try to assume anyone elses identity.

When you read anything, always look at it from a critical point of view. Use your head, use your reasoning and figure out if what you’re reading makes sense. Too many people these days read something and just automatically assume it’s true since the source seems authoritative. Be critical about everything you read (especially here since I probably write more mistakes than I do correct stuff).

Don’t believe everything you read.