News and Opinion

General news and opinion about WoW.

Matt’s Guest Post Appearances: Part 1

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Last week, I made a limited time offer  to write a guest for any blogger who was interested. I’ve been hard at work since then and it’s been such a surreal experience. My main intent was to give myself a jumpstart and to help give back to the community.

When I was working on guest posts, there’s a few things that needed to be done. The first step is to analyze the blog and the comments in order to get a feel for what kind of readers that will be on there. I tried to tailor the post towards the audience of the site. The people that read Larisa’s Pink Pig Tail Inn are going to be vastly different than the people who read Zemalf’s Trek in the Blogosphere.

The thing when writing for other people, no matter who they are or what their blog size, is that you really want to put your best work forward. It’s like going to a friend’s house for dinner. You want to look presentable. Comb your hair (add a bit of gel, if you’re me). Dress nice. Be courteous because they’re the host and you don’t want to offend them. Find different ways to spice up your post. Write it as if it was going to be the last post you’d ever do and you wanted to go out with a bang.

Of course, if you really want to go the distance, you look up their code and find out what the width of their site is and send them pre-sized images without having to ask in advance thereby saving them the trouble of doing any cropping work. Look up what their commonly used headers are within posts and use those accordingly.

Anyway, here’s what I have so far.

Don’t worry, there’s still more to come. I do intend on honoring my commitments and I will make sure I get those posts out to you (those that made a request) by the end of the month.<

Priest Vacancy on WoW.com for Spiritual Guidance

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I figured I’d take the time here and now to clear the air.

When I was asked to take the position a year and some months ago, I felt I was the right person for the job and could do what they asked me to do. Some time later on, they were discussing the notion of reactivating Raid Rx (a column specifically about healing in raids). My workload had essentially doubled. Now the players that have read and followed along with my blog know that I am always going to be a team player. It doesn’t matter if it’s work related or gaming related. If I don’t think someone’s the right person for the job in a raid, I’ll ask them to step out for someone who I think can do better.

Hell, I voluntarily stepped out of healing a Tribute to Insanity run this week because I didn’t think I could pull it off without more time and practice.

With regards to Spiritual Guidance though, I was getting to the point where I was questioning my own work. In short, I didn’t think I could uphold the quality and content demands that the site – nay, the readers deserved. It’s difficult to come up with new and unique ideas on a weekly basis. Writing for WoW.com came with an added sense of pressure for me because I was always questioning my work and it’s relevance (you should see my recycle bin with all the crumpled papers and rejected ideas).

The problem is compounded further when the Priest writer isn’t as well versed in PvP or Shadow.

In short, I ran out of steam and I notified the editors before of this.

It’s time for someone else to come in and breathe new life to the column. I know the successor will do a better job then I. They’ll be joining a great crew of writers and personalities. I won’t be leaving as I’m still continuing Raid Rx along with other news stuff as it comes. This does help free up more time for me to work on other projects. Some players seem to forget that:

  • I’m in University (and it’s finaaaaalllls)
  • I run a guild
  • I’m writing a book
  • I write for 3 blogs
  • I’m revamping Plusheal.com

Of course, Modern Warfare 2 and Dragon Age might play an impact in there somewhere as well.

By the way, if you’re one of the many people that are applying for the position, feel free to get in touch with me if you have any questions. I’m more than willing to set aside some time to have a quick chat about what to expect and other details.

But uh, do me a favour? Could you pull a Kanye on the new guy when he gets in? *wink*

What do You Look for in a Guild Website?

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This is a great question asked by Nibuca on Twitter which was brought to my attention by Gnomeaggedon.

Guild websites can be a great tool for communications between guild members and detailing raid accomplishments. You can use it to hold information for prospective recruits, keep track of loot that has been awarded and set up forums for active discussion between your players.

So here’s today’s questions for you all. I’m actually in the midst of writing a long post about guild website essentials, so consider this a research post designed to see if I’m on the right track.

Does your guild have a website? Do you use it or not, and why? What features would you consider important or expendable?

The Case for Limited Attempts

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We’ve seen the mechanic in Trial of the Grand Crusader and it seems like it’s going to be implemented in Icecrown as well. When I was on the PTR, I saw the countdown at 3000. We were down to 2994 when the raid group was called.

Again, this is why I’m in favour of being on the PTR often so I can waste my learning attempts there where it doesn’t matter. But that’s the tactician in me anyway.

There’s been objection to using limited attempts as a means to make raids more difficult for players. It means every attempt means something and they cannot just be squandered away. A ceiling has been imposed on the amount of times a guild can throw themselves at bosses.

This means that a guild who raids for 24 hours a week has no advantage over a guild that raids for 12 hours. They both have the same amount of chances to get the job done. The playing field has been leveled in such a way that guilds can’t simply just “brute force” their way through a raids and rely on a sheer number of attempts to do so. You can’t have players doing the same stupid things that cause them to die. The overall skills have to go up.

Granted, I’ll admit it is a cheap way of slowing down raids and making stuff harder. But I like this approach instead of throwing in more trash mobs. While ToC was one blend of the spectrum, I don’t think I’d be particularly happy if most boss chambers and corridors had quantities that rivalled Freya or General Vezax trash. I’d rather spend that time focusing on boss attempts. Some of the areas in ICC had trashed turned on. From what I’ve seen, it’s difficult enough to keep players entertained on the route to trash and there’s just enough where you’re not going to get bored of it and want to gouge your eyes out.

Will there be a reward system?

I’m not sure. It could be modelled after ToGC where the attempts remaining has an influence on the type of loot received. In fact, I think that is something they’ll implement.

Did you like the way limited attempts were set up in ToGC? What would you change for Icecrown?

Shaman Tier 10 Lodur’s Thoughts

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So where has Lodur been you might be asking? Well I’ve been a busy Shaman. For those of you who may not know I am now the co-host of a weekly podcast called For The Lore. We transmit every week live on Monday’s at 6:45pm EST over at our Ustream Channel. We cover all aspects of modern gaming and some of the old school, we talk about more then just the lore of these games but the story is honestly a big part of why we play these games. Needless to say I’ve been quite busy with that and keeping the ball rolling over there. If you have time feel free to check us out live Monday evening’s or download us for free through iTunes and listen to your friendly neighborhood Shaman speak his mind.

Now while I have been busy with that among several other projects, I have not been living under a rock. I did see the Shaman tier 10 models and I dare say that Blizzard put it up rather shortly after my Cardboard Samurai post because I think they realized the natives were restless 😉 Lets take a look at it in it’s full glory shall we?

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This thing kicks allllllll kinds of tail in my opinion. Personally I think we won Tier 10. It’s stylish, the color scheme is awesome the placement of the ice is tasteful and well…lets be honest the shoulder effect is about as sweet as I’ve seen since Warlock Tier 6 bat wings. The only other armor set for tier 10 that comes close is the Warriors, but even that falls short in my opinion. Compare tier 10’s look to tier 9’s

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Aside from the kilt, this set is identical to the hunters tier 9. It didn’t look very shamanistic, and to be honest it was pretty ugly. I wish I could hide my t9 or have a vanity set shown over it because it’s not that great. Tier 10 feels very shamanistic, lets not forget that Ner’zhul was a shaman before he became the lich king, so the tier 10 armor has this erie shamanistic feel to it. It has the icicles around it randomly for the elemental feel of water, and the bones are that of what appears to be a Shoveltusk. Stags, Talbuk and Shoveltusk have always been representations for the Spirit of the hunt or spirit of the wild for shaman, so it seems only fitting to have not only their bones but the spirtual image of them pushing outwards from the shoulders.

I’m impressed and honestly very very happy with it. I think this was blizzards way of saying “we’re sorry for tier 9 guys, here… look awesome” and I say to them. Thank you. I’m quite pleased with how tier 10 came out.

What about you guys? What do you think about the Shaman tier 10? Think it looks good, bad, meh?

until next time, happy healing

Sig

all images courtesy of MMO-Champion.com