Matticus

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

Bloggers: How to Deal with Gold Sellers

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I’m not going to name any names or companies here. It would seem that gold farmers have taken an unorthodox tactic to commenting on popular WoW blogs in order to attract potential customers. World of Matticus has been hit by them several times in the past week and I’m usually diligent about it.

I do not want to call them out.
I do not want to name their companies.
I do not want to link to their “blogs”.
I do not want to give them any kind of publicity or attention whatsoever.

I’ve taken a marketing class or 2 and I understand how these guys operate. Blizzard crackdowns and the increased countermeasures that they have given to their players have helped stifle the economy. The thing to understand most is that they don’t care whether the feedback or reaction around them is positive or negative. The point is that they are getting attention in the first place.

If you really want to do something about it, then delete the comment. Don’t blog about it and don’t talk about it (Totally hypocritical, I know, but it still needs to be said). The less exposure they receive then they less they can exploit.

For the Reader

Think carefully before clicking on any link left in the comments. Read it and scrutinize the URL. Remember there has been a recent sting of accounts being broken into (particularly to BRK’s crew). It might be a gold seller today but it could be an account hacker tomorrow.

Raid Juggling

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In hockey, there is a term called line juggling. Typically, when a team has difficulty scoring and getting momentum going the coach will start juggling his forwards together in the chance that they will click, find chemistry, and score.

On Sunday, Carnage has been able to consistently transition from Phase 3 to phase 4 while losing no more than 1 player. We were able to get Kael down to approximately 70%. Earlier in the night, one of our Paladins had to leave due to personal problems. Instead of 4 Paladins, we ran 3 Paladins and replaced him with a Resto Druid.

Tonight we’re diving back into Kael. The confidence is there. In fact, all of our future signup raids have changed from SSC/TK to Mount Hyjal/Black Temple.

But here’s what puzzles me.

Apparently, we’re dropping our Resto Druid and bringing our 4th Paladin back into the lineup. Both of these players are trial members so there’s no issue of seniority here. Now I also know it’s not my place to question the wisdom of the raid leaders. My job is to make sure our players in the raid have the health required to do the job they need to do. I’m not the one deciding who gets benched for the rest of the period or who gets coupled with who out there.

But Sunday was the furthest we’ve ever gotten on Kael. Why change what has arguably had the most success? Not only that, but our last two attempts that night were so spot on that we got him down to that 70% range (+/- 10%) consecutively.

How does that old adage go again? If it ain’t broke don’t fix it?

I’m not going to openly question the decision of the GM’s in this one. It’s out of my hands anyway. They have more to handle on their plate without me asking why we’re changing the lineup. I just found it surprising. I don’t know enough about Paladins in a 25 man situation. I don’t know what kind of advantage we would capitalize by bringing a 4th Paladin (Kings, Salv, Might/Wis, Light?).

But for all you young GM’s out there, if you have a set group of players that have been able to deliver success then I say stick with that group. Ride their momentum. Players are on a hot streak for only so long.

On the other side of the spectrum, if your raid continues to have troubles on a raid boss that you should not be having problems on, then start raid juggling. Get your prot pally to respec Holy and your Warrior to respec prot. Start changing things up. Move your healers around, put your tank healers on the raid, your raid healers on the tank. Something is not working and you’ve given it 9 tries. It’s unlikely it’s going to work on the 10th. Bite the bullet, start juggling.

6 Reasons Why I Will Never Pug A 25 Man Raid Again

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Frustration and anger

Pickup: 1: composed of or employing whatever persons are available on a more or less impromptu basis:

It was a Monday. It was 1800 hours when I got the call. My healing services were need in SSC. The Carnage strike team already cleared it out on Sunday so I tasked myself to bring in my alt, Saphfira.

It was 3 hours of hell that I wish I had back. It didn’t help that my beloved Canucks were getting stomped on by Minnesota (was listening to it on the radio).

Anyway, this is definitely the last time I ever sign onboard a pickup raid of any sort in the 25 man region, and here’s why:

Incompetent/Knowledgeless Raid Leader: The guy quarterbacking the raid clearly did not know the entire details of the Tidewalker encounter. He did not know that the Naga patrol behind Morogrim can be despawned by aggroing him. There’s a little tip for you budding SSC Guilds. If you want to clear out a quick group of Naga’s behind him, send in a Hunter with control of his pet and aggro Tidewalker. Make sure your raid is safely out of the way by falling back to the wooden bridges on the way in there. Once the pet dies, the patrol behind him will despawn saving you about 4 minutes worth of trash. He also did not know about Tidewalker’s ~50 yard Water Tombing ability. And when your Paladin tank is in the same area as Tidewalker lighting up consecrate and suddenly gets tombed…

Lack of Common Sense: Warlocks DoTTing up sheep targets. Tanks not grabbing targets fast enough. Not following instructions to move when asked to. Not running back when your corpse is literally on a boss. Shall I go on?

Attempting to Shortcut Mobs: Normally I’m a huge proponent of optimizing raid time. But when you’re pugging a difficult 25 man instance like this, it’s way better to be safe than sorry. In this case, we circumvented some of the Nagas by swimming underneath the wooden bridge towards Tidewalker and got up on to the platform on the other side. Naturally someone pulls a Boglord, which chain pulls nagas, which chain pulls murlocs. Time to break out the toilet paper. It’s another wipe. Rather than trying to skip 4 pulls, it would’ve been better to regroup on the bridge and just plow through them. 5 minutes of dealing with trash is better then 20 minutes of wiping twice and running back.

Inefficient Use of Time: Looking for people instead of actually raiding. A good hour and a half was spent trying to find the necessary players geared enough and willing enough to go in. The problem with SSC and TK right now is that most players only have one main that’s even anywhere close to being able to try out this content. Rarely are they ever going to have 2. Players on their mains are more than likely to raid T5 instances with their own Guild instead of a pug.

Lack of Consistent Work Ethic: People were asked to bring pots and flasks and other consumables to a raid. Clearly not everyone did. If some people aren’t going to be putting in 100% then they should not be there.

The Murphy Factor: If anything can go wrong, it will go wrong. And yeah it went wrong in a very big way.

In other news, Carnage will not be raiding on next Sunday. There are only 3 weekends in the entire year that we do not raid on.

1: Christmas
2: New Years
3: Super Bowl

It’s going to be a short week but a good week.

New Poll: How Often Do You Raid Per Week?

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Hours spent raidingThis is another one of my curiosity polls. I’m interested in knowing the amount of time you guys (and girls) spend raiding on a weekly basis. This will help me understand my audience a bit more (hopefully).

For me, I log about 16 hours a week raiding (3 hours for Karazhan, 13 hours on SSC/TK and 12 of those hours are spent eating dirt in Kael’s room). How often do you raid and do you think you spend too much or too little time raiding? How much of it is spent on old or farmed content and how much of it is targeted at progression?

Most importantly, do you enjoy it?

How Often Do You Raid Per Week?

  • 5 - 10 hours a week (28%, 110 Votes)
  • 10 - 15 hours a week (23%, 89 Votes)
  • I do not raid right now (23%, 88 Votes)
  • 15 - 20 hours a week (12%, 47 Votes)
  • Under 5 hours a week (7%, 28 Votes)
  • Over 20 hours a week (how?!) (7%, 26 Votes)

Total Voters: 388

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Weekly Digest: Kael Still a Douche, Hunters Saddened, and Mattcast Going Through

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What’s Happening in WoW

By the time this post goes out, I will have finished getting the necessary Sporregar rep to transmute Primal Earth to Water on my Paladin. No more spending gold to buy Primals to transmute Skyfire or Earthstorm diamonds!

Kael is still giving us a hard time. I’ve localized the problem down to the transition from Phase 3 to Phase 4 which has been the largest headache. All of us know our jobs and what to do. But there’s a lot of stupid mistakes going around that by themselves are minor. When combined together though, the raid caves.

Thankfully, our GM has publicly called out some of these players to step up their game. Hopefully it will have a desired effect on Sunday.

What’s Happening with the Blog

I’m still hard at work changing up my blogroll. I mentioned it before, but the blogroll will have it’s own page. My intention is to set it in such a way where when it is loaded, there is a different blog spotlighted every time.

Technical problems, but nothing my gnomish engineers can’t fix!

The hard part about blogging is finding interesting topics. It becomes much more difficult when the blogger intends to do a podcast. I am virtually committed to doing a podcast and I have some great ideas to explore. I might even go a step further and turn it into a video cast. We’ll see. I’ve always had a passion for public speaking and giving presentations. I don’t want to reveal too much for now. I don’t like to make empty promises. It’s a fairly monumental project in it’s own right and I don’t even have the technical knowhow on how to pull it off.

Haven’t quite picked a name for it, so I’m going to tentatively refer to it as the Mattcast since saying World of Matticus Offical Podcast repeatedly would get old after a while.

Lots of learning and lots of reading to do in addition to my school work, that’s for sure.

Latest Blog Posts

Trends in the WoWosphere

There’s been a large outcry over Blizzard’s reversal in their stance of the ghost wolf pet (formerly a bug). Others don’t see the big deal.

I don’t have a hunter myself, so I cannot even begin to imagine what it must have been like to lose the ability to tame it. Blizzard’s decision ultimately cost them the subscription of a player-blogger.

Personally, I think it was a combination of things that made him quit.

Past Hits

Past articles that I’ve written that still hold true to this day.

Blog Spotlight

Light’s Grace – It’s a brand spankin’ new WoW Blog! He’s She’s a Blood Elf Paladin (oh great, not another one). Kulrayk, the blogger, followed me on Twitter for some time and we’ve chatted for a little bit. Now he’s she’s decided to create his own blog! Go show him her some support! It’s tough to get a blog going from the start because you often question yourself and wonder if you have the motivation and dedication. All it takes is some readers.