Matticus

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

BREAKING: Introducing the iRaid

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I’m working frantically on an essay right now which is due tomorrow afternoon, so I don’t have a lot of time. I don’t want to reveal my source about this, but you know how Apple’s opened up their API’s and such for third party developers?

Yup, you guessed it.

World of Warcraft is now on the iPhone. In fact, Apple’s secretly working on a product that completely strips every component they have from the iPhone to create a new device that is far more superior than it’s predecessor in any way shape or form.

This new product is called the iRaid. You people with lives, yes you the ones that bail out at the last minute, now don’t have any excuses to skip out on raiding anymore! With the portability of the iRaid, now players can literally raid whenever they want wherever they want. It’s perfect for players whose lives are way too busy.

On top of that, the interface has been completely re-written. Actually, it’s been completely removed. Now World of Warcraft can be played without having to mash any buttons or observe any tool bars. Everything has been designed with simplicity and automaticity in mind. There are no bars at all, raid frames, or meters to worry about. Threat is automatically calculated and should you hit the cap, then the iRaid automatically locks up preventing you from casting any further spells. There’s a nice heads up display which shows useful information such as nearby players their information, nearby enemies, and their range.

How it works

Using Apple’s intuitive touch interface, players can simply create motions with their fingers to perform certain actions.

For example

  • As a Mage, drawing a circle with the letter "S" inside generates a portal to Shattrath
  • As a Shaman, drawing an "X" over an enemy target will automatically trigger chain lightning
  • As a Priest, drawing an oval creates a Power Word: Shield around the target
  • As a Warlock, tapping an enemy target followed by a fast jab in any direction results in a fear
  • As a Warrior, drawing swirls will trigger whirlwind
  • As a Paladin, drawing a square with the letter "B" adjacent to it activates Divine Shield and your hearth stone
  • As a Rogue, repeatedly tapping anywhere on the screen while adjacent to a target causes your rogue to perform sinister strikes
  • As a Druid, targets you tap on will get moonfire spammed

And it gets better! During raids, all that needs to be done is for you to tape a person’s health bar and it will cast the most mana efficient spell in order to heal that player. Heck, if you’re busy, you can always toggle the "lock" switch which locks your iRaid device and sets it on autopilot. It will not register any taps or presses on the screen and perform the logical actions. The new iRaid essentially RAIDS for you so that you don’t have to do a darn thing!

Chat Interface

The chat interface doesn’t deviate much from the normal iPhone. It uses the same interface which you can rotate in either direction. Based on the nature of the message, the iRaid is capable of determining what chat channel or person to send your message to.

 

Other useful stuff

iraid2The iRaid comes with extra features like a "death time counter". It tracks the amount of time that you spend as being dead so you can prove to the rest of the raid just how useful you are because you spend such little time being dead.

There’s loads more of other stuff, but it’s either still under development or under wraps.

No one knows when this product will debut, but my guess is that we will not be seeing it for a long time. It’s wonderful to see top companies collaborating together and combining innovative technologies and software to deliver even more fun addictions.

In order to maximize space, useless things like calendars, music players, browsers, and the like have been removed. Since the iPhone still has a mic and an ear section, voice communication has been built in to allow iRaiders listen to the praise of their raid leaders on what an excellent job they have been doing throughout the raid.

The all new iRaid: Buying skill is now a reality.

8 Non-WoW Related Blogs You Should Read

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“Variety is the very spice of life that gives it all its flavour.”
William Cowper

I don’t know about the rest of you guys, but sometimes I get a little bored after reading nothing but World of Warcraft blogs all day. It’s bad that I get to the point where I cry out in frustration and “mark all as read”. Like my diet, I need a bit of variety once in a while. It’s also not easy being a writer and there are times when ideas are few are far in between. Sometimes reading about different topics once in a while can get the creative juices flowing. With that in mind, check out a few of these other non-WoW blogs:

1: Waiter Rant – These are the adventures of…. a waiter. He writes about day to day trials and tribulations of being in the restaurant service agency. While on it’s own you might think it’s boring, his ability to create interest and his tales from the kitchen make it an entertaining read. In fact, he was voted on Performancing as the 2nd funniest blog on the internet.

2: Presentation Zen – As a student, delivering presentations is a valuable skill to have. The ability to communicate powerful messages is one that any person working in multimedia should learn. Garr Reynolds principles of minimalism and getting straight to the point as much as possible are points that I try to work in my blog and my presentations at school. It’s a good blog to follow if you’re generally interested in public speaking. For college students, corporate people, AND ESPECIALLY PROFESSORS!

3: Skelliewag – Skellie’s a professional blogger based from New Zealand. Any blogger who wants to perfect their blogging and writing would do well to subscribe to Skellie’s blog. She’s got some great tips on how to not lose your sanity when writing along with other general blogging tips.

4: Study Hacks – This ones an education blog meant specifically for post secondary or even high school students. I keep the sections on “Study Tips” and “Student Productivity” bookmarked. When you’re trying to balance raiding, sleeping, blogging, and school, you need every advantage you can get.

5: Issues of Life – Life is definitely not easy. There are always different challenges and obstacles in the way that seem to affect the direction that you are going. Thankfully, Luke Houghton has a with approaches to problem solving, being creative, effectively managing relationships and “how to cope and succeed in life”.

6: Guy Kawasaki – I’ve known about Guy Kawasaki for a while but I’ve only recently begun following his blog. He’s a venture capitalist who invests in small startups and profits on them if they turn out successful. I watched one of his keynotes and he told a story about how he had a chance to become the CEO of Yahoo! but turned it down because of the 1 hour drive to work. Extremely interesting person and also delivers outstanding keynotes.

7: Write to Done – Another blog aimed at writers. Although not specifically targeted towards bloggers, I’ve grown to apply some of the tips here on to my blog and writing in general.

8: Zen Habits (URL fixed, thanks Becca and Anna) – Another recent addition to my reading list, Zen Habits has blog pieces directed towards zentastic views and philosophies toward life. Definitely another blog to read on life, relationships, and productivity (3 areas I could use pointers on). This blog is also by the same guy who does Write to Done.

8 Great Rules to Follow for Forming Your Pickup Raid

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With the release of 2.4, I’ve taken the opportunity to organize Magtheridon and Gruul’s raids (with Dager’s help, since he’s the best pally on Ner’Zhul). For the most part, they are considered pickup raids in the fact that they do not consist entirely of my guild. Rather, we go through an exhaustive step-by-step process in order to filter out players and ensure loot fairness as much as possible. In today’s post, I want to highlight what was done in Mag’s encounter from start to finish for players who wanted to set up their own polished and successful pickup raids.

So why Mag?

Personally, I like to refer to him as Bagtheridon. In addition to 3 set tokens, he drops 3 badges, a 20 slot bag, and a bag filled with epic and blue gems. My motive for going in there was getting a 20 slot bag along with an epic gem. Other than badges, it’s the only early way for guilds to get gems unless they go take cracks at Hyjal or Black Temple.

"Before anything else, preparation is the key to success."
Alexandar Graham Bell

Set a time in advance

First, pick a time and day that will not conflict with your official raid. We don’t officially raid anything on Saturday and I know that we have players in the Eastern Time Zone. In my case, I picked a time of 4:00 PM on Saturday. This allowed ample time for people to run any errands they had before hand and allowed them to risk not losing the rest of their evening. I made a point of mentioning every day that I was organizing a Mag’s lair run on Saturday so that my Guildmates would know.

Handpick your players first

When you’re selecting the players to form the raid, want to ideally choose the players that you have raided with in the past or know by reputation due to their Guild. I started out initially with Carnage players. Many of them have alts that I knew would be interested in getting gear from Mag. Once I filled it out with players from my Guild, I started turning outward to players that I know. In this case, I alerted both Dager (Blue Moon) and Agrona (Fallen Heroes) that I was organizing a Mag run and asked if they were either interested or had players in their guild interested in going. I was able to cobble together an effective raid using no more than 3 guilds. In a fight like Mag, you’ll want a composition along the lines of:

  • 4 tanks
  • 8 healers
  • 2 rogues
  • 2-3 warlocks
  • assorted DPS

Again, adjust your raid group as needed.

Prioritize your positions

In an encounter like Mag, there’s a minimum number of tanks and healers that you need in order to successfully complete the encounter. I wanted at least 4 tanks since I knew Dager would be able to handle 2 of the initial ads (Prot. Paladin). For healers, I wanted to be conservative and take 8. Make sure you leave those slots reserved for those roles. The worse thing that can happen is where you have to ask a player to leave because you need a healer instead.

Start invites early

Even though I scheduled the raid for 4 PM, I started forming the raid at 330 PM. Because like life, you cannot control all the variables and it is better to err on the side of being early then being late. Forming a pickup raid is not quite the same as forming a guild raid. You never know which players might have to leave early or cannot commit. Our Mag raid didn’t begin until 430 PM. Yes, it took us an hour to form the raid and get everyone here. To be fair, I was munching on food and delegated some quick tasks to my assistants since we were missing a few more players.

Macro assignments

If it’s important, macro it. You don’t know what kind of players you are getting. You don’t know if they’re actually listening on vent or not. You just don’t know them. If it’s important to the success of your raid, macro it for easy repeating.

Some things to consider macro’ing:

  • Vent server: randomventserver.nationvoice.com :: 10001 :: PW – worldofmatticus
  • Loot rules: This might take up 2 different macros depending on how extensive it is. But you will want this in your library of macros for easy repetition. See below.
  • Tanking assignments: Hold your tanks by the hand. Write down exactly what marked targets they’re supposed to get.
  • Healing assignments: Once your tanks know who to go after, make sure you set up healers for the appropriate tanks. It’s okay to double shift healers. I put myself on the 1st, 4th, and 5th ad tanks. I set up a Druid to look after the 3rd and 4th ad tanks.
  • Cube clickers: Very important to have – /rw TEAM CLICKERZ: KAYPASSA RYANDAN GHETTO FAVRE YEESH

Having macros in place allows you to answer questions with ease. Plus if something isn’t working properly, you can go back in and adjust it without having to rely on your memory. I know I can never remember which healer is on which tank unless I write it down.

Make your loot rules known in advance

A surefire way to tarnish your reputation is by mishandling loot or misinforming your raid group. By setting your loot rules in advance, then the raid can at least hold you accountable. If someone raises an issue at the end regarding loot, you can also say that loot rules were mentioned beforehand and by coming into the raid, they waive any rights to complain about loot after (but that’s the law student in me).

Here’s an example:

/rw Loot rules: 1 Item per player
/rw NEED: Primary spec 1st
/rw GREED: Off spec 2nd
/rw Mag’s head: Free roll
/rw =============
/rw If 2 or more of the same tokens drop, top rolls get it.
/rw BAG and GEMS gets randomed 1-25 according to Saph’s Window

I allow players to free roll Mag’s head as I don’t know who has done the quest before and who has not. Typically when going through the rolls, I call out the name and highest roll number on vent so people know who is highest. If someone else rolled higher, I’m hoping someone else in the raid can correct me. During rolls, I also initiate a countdown from 5 down to 1 followed by a cut off dash. Any rolls that come after the dash do not count. I will not accept late rolls because they have 5 seconds to look at the loot being offered and decide whether or not they want it. We don’t have all day to stand around for players to ask opinions of their Guildies and friends on whether or not they should roll for it.

With regards to the 2+ same token policy, I set it this way so that I don’t have to sort through rolls twice. On the other hand, you could make the case that this allows players with low rolls a second chance at getting the set item that they want but that has both it’s upsides and downsides.

The random 25 policy on bags and gems is there because I really don’t want to go through everyone’s rolls 5 different times. After the 20 slot bag is taken care of, the gems are next. They appear in a nice, green bag that you have to open and extract the gems from (I had 3 epic gems, and 2 blue gems).

1 item per player is there to minimize any possible accusations of favoritism. This means that at least 10 different players will walk away with some kind of loot.

Notice that the loot rules and policies here are designed to be as neutral and self-explanatory as possible in order to encourage repeat raiders. Since I plan on making this a weekly operation, it would be very stupid if I changed the loot rules in the last minute or set them in an unfair fashion. I might prioritize loot in the future, but it’s extremely important for me to be as fair and objective as possible when it comes to handling loot. The last thing I want to get is a bad reputation.

Make sure everyone stays during loot

We did Gruul’s lair right afterwards and right after Gruul dropped, we had a Defender token drop. A portal was immediately established for those that didn’t need any loot so that they could get out. The Priest who won decided to pass in favour of giving it to one of the tanks who also rolled. That tank in turn wanted to pass to a different Priest who might have benefited from it.

It was a noble act that the players did in order to pass the loot to the undergeared players. But the 3 players that did roll took the portal out! As a result I could not loot it to them! This indecision resulted in the token going to someone else who had no interest in the piece and did not even roll.

So, for you players that have any interest in attending pug runs, here some quick lessons for you:

  1. Don’t ever leave until all of the loot gets handed out. You never know when a better geared player will pass the item to you.
  2. Either want something or don’t. Please don’t roll on an item and then pass afterwards.
  3. Roll before the line, not after it.

Know when to cut losses

Finally, establish a cut off point. Either pick a number of wipes or pick a time when you will call the raid. Pickup raids certainly aren’t worth the time or frustration of progression runs. A good number is calling it after 5 wipe or 90 minutes. It might be disappointing for sure, but realize that eventually you’re going to hear a chorus of "I gotta go!". Once that happens, the hunt for replacements is going to either take too long resulting in more people leaving or just not happen at all due to attrition and fatigue.

Oh, and if you’re wondering about the above image, yes Canadians do play volleyball during the winter.

Sunday Linkfest

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Here’s some notable links I’ve picked up in the past week or so that I wanted to share:

Also working on an e-book right now. Won’t be out for a while.

5 Barriers of a Raid Healer – Part 5: Healing Against Your Will

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Image courtesy of andrewatla

Each Saturday for the next five weeks, I will be writing about one barrier of the raid healer. Healers are often overshadowed and looked over since we are expected to simply know what to do. With luck, this five part series will help you to become a better raid healer whether you are a varsity or a freshman.

So far, I have covered:

Barrier 5: Healing Under Duress

"It’s choice – not chance – that determines your destiny."
Jean Nidetch

I firmly believe that different people are catered for different skills. Some players are meant to DPS. Some are meant to heal. Some are destined to stand toe to toe with a boss and his attention for as long as possible. Then there are the rare few who excel at any task demanded of them. These players are special. Why? Because not everyone can fulfill dual roles. Need an extra tank? Drop 50 gold for a Paladin’s respec and they can do it in a pinch

Unfortunately, not all of us can fulfill dual positions like that. My friends and guildmates can tell you I’m a worldclass healer but I can’t DPS worth crap.

Now imagine the reverse.

Let me introduce to you the Raid Leaders dilemma:

  • Short a healer
  • Excess DPS
  • Does not want a pickup player

The thought process going through his head is to take a DPS hybrid and ask that player to switch to a healing spec. If the player has no qualms or issues about doing so, then by all means go for it. But you should realize that this is only a temporary solution to a temporary problem. Sooner or later, the grind of switching back and forth between holy and DPS is going to take it’s toll on that player. The fact is, that Shadow Priest you asked to go holy does not want to raid holy.

So why is he doing it? Two reasons:

  1. Wants to raid
  2. Wants to progress

Loyal guild members will obviously take the hit to go forward because they want to see some real progress made. But it’s not the best thing to do. Players that have DPS’d their entire WoW career undergo a period of adjustment. They need to get familiar with spell cast sequence, positioning, healing strategy and so forth.

I’ve seen extreme cases where GM’s have asked players to either respec or risk not raiding. I understand where they are coming from since some encounters require a certain number of healers. Depending on your server, you might have a limited pool of talented players to choose from. But don’t force a respec in the name of Guild progression. The player you get after the respec could be turn out to be a disgruntled player who will not enjoy his new role in the game. Given enough time, the bitterness could result in that player leaving the Guild. You are now back in square one without a healer. Instead, you have suffered a net loss of a player.

Solutions for the GM

Recruiting is the first viable option. If you can somehow find yourself a full time healer, then you will never need to ask a DPS player to respec again.

This one might be not-so-smart option, but consider grabbing a pickup healer from a different Guild. It might be possible to find a healer who isn’t raiding that week or anything with their Guild to fill in a spot for you. Do your research in armory and do some background checks of that player.

Solutions for the player

Assuming you don’t want to heal, make it known right away how long this arrangement can go on for. Give a set number of raids or pick a date. Having a deadline will apply a bit of pressure to your GM to get the ball rolling instead of not actively looking and being lazy. But have a talk with him or her and let them know that if it continues to go on, you’ll have to consider leaving and looking for another Guild that’s more receptive of your abilities.