News and Opinion

General news and opinion about WoW.

So, What’s Up?

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It has been a long time since my last decent sized post. I’ve never been a fan of blog posts where bloggers try to justify their absences. The pattern I see that ends up happening is that a blogger disappears for a time, comes back and apologizes, goes hard for a few posts, then disappears again before coming back and apologizing while promising never to leave again and then disappearing for good. But I am still here.

For the past month I was busy saving the galaxy, the citadel council and getting into a relationship with a really cute sounding Quarian.

So there. That’s where I’ve been. But I’m all done now. I’m done saving the galaxy. Given the choice between destroying Undead monarchies and surgically striking aliens, I much prefer the former.

The guild

How’s Conquest doing? It’s doing okay for the most part. It’s not quite excellent and it’s not at the level of super crappy yet either. I am not a happy Dwarf. Attendance has been gradually declining and we’ve been able to scramble replacements and other socials to cover the empty spots. But tonight was the first night where the raid was immediately called due to a lack of players.

I had 2 spots open and it was already 10 minutes past first pull time.

That doesn’t make me happy at all.

If you’re looking for a raiding guild to join, do check mine out and get in touch with me if you have any questions or concerns. I should say that I make no promises nor guarantees on raid spots. Ideally, I’m looking for people that play a lot and can keep themselves occupied or entertained.

For example, I don’t want the guy who logs in and sits around Dalaran for 3 hours while waiting for an invite.

I want the guy who logs in and manages to farm herbs, do some quests, engage in BGs/PvP, runs random dungeons or whatever while waiting for a raid spot. If someone lags out, a simple whisper, invite, and summon and they can fill the gap at a moment’s notice. At least this way, their time won’t be a lost cause entirely.

The future

3.3 is to be the last major raid patch before Cataclysm. This is where I get a bit scared.

What the hell can I possibly write about between now and Cataclysm?

It’s going to take some serious digging deep in order to fill that time. I guess I’m a little concerned and worried about it. I did recall there being another content patch that will be inserted between now and Cataclysm. I suspect it will be something akin to Isle of Quel’danas (not necessarily a Sunwell type raid, but just quests and such to do).

Actually, while I’m on the topic, any ideas or guesses as to what it might be? Maybe the Troll city out in Zul’Drak will open up. We went by this entire expansion without a Troll raid instance.

A whole expansion with no killing of Trolls in a raid.

Vanilla brought in Zul’Gurub. Burning Crusade had Zul’Aman. Wrath? Zip.

I want to kill me some freakin’ Trolls.

With the Olympic break starting soon, perhaps I can find the time (and most importantly, the motivation) to engage in writing again. I still have some blogging assignments sitting here that are partially complete. In any case, how have you been?

Lodur Joins WoW.com

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Not sure if you’ve heard the news, but our very own Lodur’s signed on with WoW.com and will be providing his usual Resto Shaman expertise in the newly expanded Totem Talk.

Congrats!

Last I heard, he’s also willing to accept suggestion columns for Resto Shamans. Well Lodur, since it is that time of year, here’s what I want to see from you:

“How to seduce that elusive shaman”
”13 uses for totems that will satisfy your partner”
”Tail management for the new guy”

Although, those will never see the light of day.

Also, finally beat Mass Effect 2 and got the super good ending. Now I can spend my time back on WoW.

Quarians are hot. There’s something about masks and environmental suits.

It Came From The P.U.G.!:Voted Off The Island

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For those who might not know yet, my gluttony for abuse knows no bounds. As a result I find myself in a rather large number of P.U.G. groups. At the end of the day I bring you, my readers, the stories of my travels in the random grouping of Azerothian adventure!

This week I bring you a story of a monumental event. Something so earth shattering that babies cried, women ushered their children home and men cowered before it’s terror inducing visage! You may need to sit down for this… ready? Lodur was vote kicked from a heroic group! Now I’m sure there are some questions about what happened and what was the build up. Here goes my tale of woe.

I’ll start by saying yes I was healing, and yes the mace was equipped. I was decked out in my shiny new T10 loot after freshly enchanting and gemifying them. I queue up and promptly my invite button pops up. I join the group and off I am to an adventure… or so I thought. The screen load shows the Pit of Saron and I’m a bit excited. I enjoy healing the place and it beats out Gundrak any day of the week! The instance loads and I’m looking around for the rest of the group. I notice that most of the mobs have been cleared. This is red flag number one. My immediate response, in a joking tone of course

“What did you guys do to the last healer?”

I get a response from the rogue of the group

“Horrible healer we vote kicked him.”

Ok, I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. Mainly DPS folks have been rolling in as healers to get quick frost badges so it wouldn’t surprise me too terribly if that’s what happened. I see they are over at the Ick and Krick encounter and make my way over. We buff up and pull. Things go smoothly until two things happen. First I notice the prot warrior is taking a whole lot more damage than he should be and his health is only at 29k total. Second thing that happens is the poison nova. The rogue tries to cast Cloak and run but instead becomes a stain in the ground. Not believing that you can release and come back while the encounter is happening , they wait dead. We’re doing fantastic though otherwise until the boss marks the hunter and chases after them. The hunter then proceeded to drag the boss back past it’s threshold point and the boss leashes… at 1%. Ok, stuff happens I’ll just res the rogue and we’ll get started again right? Wrong! As I’m sitting to drink so I can resurrect the rogue, and before the tank is ready, the hunter pulls, runs to us and then casts FD. Needless to say I got squashed with the rest of the group. We run back in and drink and buff and get ready for round two. I inspect the tank and see he’s in some pretty low tanking gear… and a bunch of dps gear. I make a mental note of the fact he’s not defense capped and look to see I still have 7 minutes left on my LFG debuff. Time to soldier on! Before we’re ready again the hunter pulls, this time the tank picks it up and we proceed as normal. The rogue dies again to poison nova but this time we kill the boss.

This happens two more times with various mobs on the ramp leading to the final leg of the instance until finally I say something

“Dude, stop pulling.  I need to drink and you’re wiping the group .”

It was then I noticed something I had not noticed before. All of them were in the same guild. Everyone stopped moving and there we were sitting at the base of the ramp leading to the collapsing tunnel. There’s this long, hanging silence while we sit there and then next thing I know I’m booted from the group!

Back in Dalaran I’m in shock at what just happened. Seriously I got kicked because I called the hunter out on pulling and doing stupid things! I look up at my buffs and notice the debuff was just wearing off and that I can re-queue, but still… wow just wow.

Luckily the next one I get is full of people who communicate and pull sensibly. All from different guilds but all with the same rough gear level. We plow through Halls of Lightning, I get my two Frost Emblems and we part ways.

Seriously I’m alright if you want to do wacky things in a guild run. One of our DPS raiders rolled a healer so when I’m on my tank I like to do silly things (within reason) to mess with her (Hi Jaha!) but we always laugh about it, and I never do it when it’s a non guild run. If there is even one pugger in the group I try my best to behave. But to be kicked for calling someone out on pulling and feigning while watching the group wipe, that dog just won’t hunt monseigneur!

Any interesting P.U.G. stories from this week? Good, bad, awesome or terrible? That’s it for today folks.

Until next time, Happy Healing!

 

Image courtesy of CBS

Are Easier Heroics Better in the Long Run?

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Image Courtesy of Geico Insurance

The patch 3.3.2 includes a few amendments to Heroic Dungeons and how they’re played.  Entire packs of mobs are being deleted.  Bosses abilities are being shortened or being made less frequent.  Fight mechanics are being made easier.  In essence, Blizzard is giving us more opportunities to blow through these dungeons with little to no effort.

I’m an educator at heart.  Seeing as though my life “endgame” is to be at the front of a classroom, it’s important to me that people learn the skills necessary to go through life.  How to write a proper business letter, how to analyze a novel or article, or how to put your thoughts in order and present them in a proper argument.

How does this translate into WoW?  Teaching players how to follow a kill order, how to manage small and large cooldowns, or how to CC a mob.  Remember some of the cardinal rules of this game that we’ve all learned?

  • If the ground changes, get out of it. Pretty standard stuff, except for rare circumstances
  • If the boss starts spinning with his huge weapon, move away from it.
  • If a really annoying mob is causing havoc, CC it. If possible, avoid DoT’ing it.

We learn these the hard way.  And, we have to utilize and execute what we’ve learned in the current content.  Ground changes?  Sounds like Rotface’s ooze pools on the ground.  Spinning mobs?  Marrowgar.  The need to CC a mob?  The mind controls in Lady Deathwhisper.

“You are not prepared!”

With the level of difficulty amongst the endgame content, more and more groups are getting frustrated with the lack of skill within the community of 80s.  I equate this to meeting people in the real world that don’t demonstrate even a sliver of mastery of their native language (slang and colloquialisms are fun choices but shouldn’t be your foundation).  How do you get through school without being able to speak or write properly?  How do you get to start raiding without having a knowledge of the fundementals?

Take Ahn’kahet (AKA “Old Kingdom”) for example.  Jedoga Shadowseeker is the boss that floats in the air, summoning an add to sacrifice.  If she succeeds, she hits a temporary enrage.  I remember wiping to that when people first started doing heroics.  The tank had to manage a cooldown; the healer was spamming big heals. This fight demonstrated the need for DPS to turn up the heat to down the add.  Even I as a healer would Smite/Lightning Bolt the add.

Now, it seems that Madame Shadowseeker only does this once.  Does this just mean everyone blows all their cooldowns (Shield Wall, Survival Instincts, Frenzied Regeneration, etc) to endure her short enrage and then they’re done?  The key to earning respect as a player with me is demonstrate a finesse of your skills, not be all RAWR OMG WTFBBQ DPSPWNAGE!!  You can be great player and still utilize all of your classes abilities efficiently.

“Time is of the essence!”

As these Heroics are being made easier and easier, that means people will be blowing through them faster and faster.  Making the value of the gear that people are getting lower and lower.  Follow this math:

Average of 4 badges (+ 2 from random) = 6 badges per run.

Clearing an instance in 15 minutes means 24 emblems an hour.

A whole set of T9 costs 210 emblems.

210 emblems / 24 emblems per hour = 8.75 hours.

Even if you play 3 hours/day, you could have full tier 9 in 3 days.

Given that, do I think it’s possible to really have a grasp of how to exist in a raid setting, possibly having an aspect of the fight rest on your shoulders?  I won’t say a flat-out “no”, but I’m hesitant.  I learned how to play my class through dungeons and heroics.  A fight like Rotface or Blood Princes is going to confuse players that haven’t had the ability to build an understanding of their class.

Consider it a slightly less horrifying version of a person who just bought their character on eBay that day.  Regardless if you’re a completely new player, or just levelling an alt, I fear that we’re starting to lose the building blocks to being a good raider to the ease of too much convenience.  (Sidenote: Notice I said “too much”.  I’m all for crafting the game so everyone has a shot, but there is a point when it goes too far.  I don’t want to go back to the days of needing to run alts through Karazhan to begin the gearing process for Black Temple.)

It’s like the economy (I know, a touchy subject).  If you start pumping more gear into the game faster, it devalues what’s already out there.  I guess the good thing is that people will be less freaked out by GearScore.  If everyone has a high gear score, more emphasis will need to be placed on player skill.  What good is a high GearScore if everyone has it?

“Lazy Sunday!”

“…WAKE UP IN THE LATE AFTERNOON!”  Sorry, a little sidetracked.  I love that skit.

Anyways, with Blizzard making things easier and easier, I fear they’re going too far.  ICC trash is already becoming AOE-able.  People are complaining about there being too much trash (yet, people complained about Trial of the Crusader not having ANY trash and being too boring).  Oculus is getting even bigger rewards.

I don’t want this game to become “just go in and blow stuff up”.  I like the challenge.  I like the dedication.  I like the workout.  I like the strategy.  Do I know how to create a balance with this?  Of course not.  If I did, I would be working for Blizzard.  I just don’t want the laziest crowd in the game to win over the hearts and minds of the game designers.

Now, I enjoy the mechanic of earlier ICC wings getting easier over time, allowing less progressed guilds to see the endgame content, but the latest epidemic of clueless raiders is troublesome to me.  How do you make the game more appealing to everyone, while still teaching those fundemental rules that we’ve all learned over the years?

What do you think?  Do you feel heroics are being made too easy?  How do you promote an understanding of class and basic fight mechanics amongst your raiders?

Auction House Functionality on the Armory? Yes Please!

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Have you guys seen this yet? Bornakk just gave an update on Auction House integration with the Armory website.

Today, we wanted to give you a heads-up about a new service now in development that will let players access the Auction House directly through the Armory website or Armory App for iPhone or iPod touch.

Now if I’m reading that right, it means I don’t have to log into the game to purchase stuff off the auction house. And thank goodness for that. I don’t think I’m the only one for this, but there are some days where I’ll forget to purchase stuff like herbs or flask related stuff. I may not be in position to do so either if I’m not at home. Now I can buy the stuff I need as I’m heading home and it’ll be in my mail box when I log in to raid.

Of course, you have to realize that there is a catch.

It’s important to note here that certain elements of the service will be premium-based, which we’ll go into more detail on once the service functionality is finalized.

If I were to hazard a guess, I would say that browsing stuff on the auction house would be free of charge. The actual purchasing would require a bit of extra cash on your part. Not sure if its going to be subscription based or not. It could be a one time fee (which would be cool too). Anyway, I doubt we’ll be seeing this in the game anytime soon. I’m going to say somewhere in the neighborhood of a Cataclysm release or in the time frame leading up to it.