Matt’s Three Stars: Week Ending November 16

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Akil’zon’s Gauntlet, EZ Mode: First star honors, GMW. First star. You are officially my hero(ine). This one gauntlet section alone took 40 gold off me. So what is her awesome tip that vaulted her past everyone else into first place? You’ll just have to click the link and find out yourself. It’s one of those forehead smacking “Oh duh” kind of things.

The Pointless Debate Around Warden: Gwaendar has an excellent post displaying arguments about the futility of complaining over ‘lack of privacy’ issues in WoW. I agree with you wholeheartedly, sir! Blizzard is a gaming company. They don’t need to break into your computer to blackmail you with your porn stash. It’s unnecessary for them to look up your credit card billing statement (because most of it is involved with WoW in some way or other). If players don’t like programs that add cheat detection to their games, they can simply go play something else. I hear CS 1.6 still has rampant cheaters around. People think they’re so important in this game. They think that the world centers around them and that everyone cares what they have on their computer. They don’t want to be embarrassed or humiliated. Blizz has WAY more important things to do then to snoop through people’s computers. Unless you do something SUPER stupid (like form a plan to blow up Sears tower), there isn’t much that would justify them having to call the FBI. I’m pretty sure you’ll find a clause in the TOS that says they’ll cooperate with authorities if they have to, but it’s like that with any social networking website or service (Facebook especially). They don’t do it because they want to. They do it so they can cover their respective legal ass. You get the number two star in my book, buddy!

What Karazhan Taught Us: Here’s a rather humorous list brought to us by Rohan. These are the important lessons that’ve been taught to us by the various bosses in Karazhan. I think I’ll even expand on it:

  • Attumen taught us gear is important
  • Moroes taught us to have a plan B
  • Maiden taught us perseverance (three weeks on this boss before the nerf, I spent learning)
  • Opera taught us how to learn things on the fly
  • Curator taught us Curse of Doom (an inside joke with a certain warlock who did not realize they had curse of doom)
  • Nightbane taught us synchronized moving
  • Shade of Aran taught us awareness of our surroundings
  • Chess was recess in the school of Karazhan
  • Netherspite taught us the value of strategic withdrawal to strike another day
  • Prince taught us tactical positioning

Third star honors go to you, Rohan! =)

Blame Canada. Again. Blame Blizz. Again.

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Matticus’ Note: This a partially related WoW post which happens to tie into a current event. It’s also very lengthy.

I just checked out the video of that Polish guy who was killed in YVR (Vancouver International Airport) a few minutes ago. If you haven’t seen it yet, I encourage you to check it out. It’s a rare insight into possible law enforcement confrontations. It must be one of thousands of possible situations that they face yearly.

So in a nutshell, here we have a foreign immigrant who flies into our beloved country without a clue as to what he’s doing, where he’s going, or how to speak English. He sets up a wall of chairs, throws around some equipment, causes a big mess, and then the cavalry are called in. He gets shocked and subsequently dies.

Let’s make one thing clear. I’m not trying to condone what the police did was right. I think they acted as best as they could under the circumstances. Hindsight is always 50/50. It’s easier to see flaws in decisions that people make long after they’ve been made. With that being said, I could only imagine the call the police received.

“Hey, control?”
“Yeah?”
“Uhh, we have a problem here. We have an individual acting erratically.”
“On our way.”

Remember we’re at the airport. We’re in an era of post 9/11. Those events are still fresh on our mind. The police probably had no idea what level of a threat they’re dealing with. My guess is that when you get summoned to a problem situation, you’re initial reaction is to assume the worst case. The worst case would be someone carrying, you know… a bomb. Obviously this poor fellow wasn’t.

How Tasers work

In a nutshell, a Taser is a cattle prod. It has an active range of about 10 meters. When it’s fired, twin prongs shoot out with attached metal wires. Electricity is then sent down the wires with the aim of disrupting nerve and muscle functions. Don’t ask me the physics behind it. I’m sure you have science friends. Go ask them.

Anyway, electrical current then courses through your entire body, you become incapacitated.

At least, that’s the general idea.

Remember, most of these trials take place in controlled environments that involve strong and healthy test subjects. Typically, these are people who do not ingest any kind of alcohol, drug, or some other form of illicit drug abuse. When Tasers are used on them, they work absolutely great! No one dies and they get up five minutes later slightly singed and crispy.

Unfortunately, real life is not like that. The intended targets for Tasers are disorderly individuals who are not in the right state of mind whether it’s chemically induced or otherwise. As a result, the effects produced in a controlled, clinical environments will strongly differ from public areas when the weapons are put to practical use.

I don’t think the public would like it very much if the police simply pulled out their Glocks and shot people in the knee. That was back in the 30s when Al Capone was the law.

I don’t believe the Taser is non-lethal. It may be intended as non-lethal, but it has the potential to kill people. Anyone with a pacemaker would not last very long, I imagine. However, I do think it is less lethal. When you compare it to a firearm or even a baton, it will not provide as much fatal results (statistically speaking). You have a better chance to survive an injury from a taser then you would from a gunshot wound or a severe clubbing from a police baton.

So if Tasers are recalled, then police will have one less less lethal tool to rely on. Guns, batons and… pepper sprays, I believe. Even then, pepper spray is used mostly for riot police. I don’t think it’s part of the standard RCMP loadout. But you know what? Pepper spray is lethal too! When under the effects of pepper spray, people are prone to coughing, having a runny nose, having their eyes slam shut, and having difficulty breathing. Gee, if you have asthma, you’re kind of a goner too.

Next option? Tear gas. Dropping a gas grenade in the baggage claim area of YVR is just plain dumb.

Last option? Physical subjugation. The cops could’ve tried to man handle him to the ground or something as a last resort. However, that would then place cops at risk to being assaulted. I know, the video showed four police officers vs one guy. But I think they’re trained to bring down a subject as best as possible while minimizing damage to them and to him. There was no one any could’ve foreseen that a Taser would have killed him. Automobiles are rated as one of the top causes of death in North America. But we still drive them.

Then there’s waiting. Yeah that probably should have been the way to go. Hindsight. 50/50. Who knows why they weren’t waiting? Wait, what would they wait for? An interpreter? If you watch the footage, there’s someone clearing calling for an interpreter. But they made a wrong choice.

I do not for once believe that the police had any intent to kill. If they did, I think we would be at war with Poland right now or something over a bullet riddle corpse. The media already makes it out that way.

If it were me, I would not have known what to do in that kind of a situation. Clearly he looked agitated. Was he a threat to people near by? Tough call. He might’ve been. When you’re in a situation like that, you walk a very fine line. Let him be and he might randomly go after some innocent bystander. Cops lose for failing to do their job (Why wasn’t he subdued earlier?!) Contain him with the risk of death and he just happens to die. Cops lose for failing to do their job properly. In high pressure cases like that, it is very difficult to make the proper judgment call not knowing what the consequences will be. Obviously if I know my Taser was going to kill him, I wouldn’t use it. Would I try to subdue him hand to hand? Yeah. Press reports said that he’s been in there holed up for five or so hours. You can’t just leave a guy in there all by himself throwing junk around. So those guys who tasered him are now in a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” kind of situation. I don’t even know if there is a right answer.

A taser, I believe, is meant as a less lethal response to a lethal situation. However, the police utilized it differently. They exercised a less lethal response to a non-lethal situation. Maybe the best thing to do was temporarily seal off the area until an interpreter was present. But cops are trained to act swiftly, because if they don’t, something bad might happen. It’s way too easy now to condemn them knowing everything that we do know.

If I tried a baton to the knee, people would cry out police brutality.

Another thing that occurred to me. Notice how theres four police swarming the body after it’s been shocked? The body behaves in an uncontrollable state. Would it not have been in his best interest to have been held down a bit to prevent him from biting his tongue or punching a wall or something else that might’ve damaged him? Obviously four cops holding him down is over kill. I’m not a medical student so I don’t know much about that. But I’ve generally seen him people going into some kind of get held down. Or something.

All of a sudden, I don’t want to go into law enforcement anymore knowing that my intentions (however noble) will always be looked down upon by the public. Isn’t that what an Ombudsman is for though? I can’t remember. Anyway, it would seem as if the same people that I want to protect would hate me. I guess I’ll try for that CRIM/PSYC dual major.

What does this have to do with WoW?

Sometimes the best of intentions of developers are not properly carried out. There might be an unforeseen consequence in a patch that is designed to fix problems. So even though there’s a feature added that causes a public outcry doesn’t mean that the idea’s necessarily bad. It just needs more testing and tweaking so it’s able to do what it’s designed to do without any unforeseen side effects.

Check out our Hunter friends for instance. They’re one of the best classes to have behind your back. Now the latest patch has applied all sorts of things that makes them not as overpowered as before. The whole “pet moving behind target” thing seems like a good idea. But there seems to be some problems and pathing and such.

There any problems for Priests? As of yet, I haven’t really discovered much. We had our one of our resist tanks go down awfully quickly for some reason during the Hydross encounter. I don’t know if downranking heals has been adjusted again or not, but endurance is a lot longer then before. Between potions, trinkets, flasks, mana oils, Sporefish, the two piece T5 set, and a Paladin with Spellsurge, I notice that my mana return is pretty damn good. Less drinking involved, that’s for sure. MP5 while casting has hit a number above 250 which is just sick.

Three Stars, later tonight. I didn’t get one in last week. This flu like symptom isn’t fun at all.

Heroic Dungeon Daily Quests

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Honestly, what a brilliant idea by Blizzard. I stepped into Heroic Botanica yesterday for the first time (and probably the last). I never would have gone in there otherwise if it weren’t for the daily quest. After a few bumps and bruises in the beginning, we managed to clear it with some minor difficulty. Reward? 40G. After repairs? 33G. Not a bad haul.

I’m feeling sick right now so I’m not quite at school yet (2:30 class). At the moment, I’m sitting at home and about to get underway in Heroic Black Morass. Of course, the Hunter just HAS to open fire on Horde near the summoning stone and my group gets picked apart with our corpses being camped. Damnit Hunters, stop being so trigger happy!

Does the Zul’Aman bear boss have a reset bug? I was in there yesterday, and we wiped for a few times while our tanks were adjusting to his debuff. Before we knew it, he reset himself appearing at the beginning of the instance. He was not able to be aggro’d. In fact, he just stood there. Is that the way it’s supposed to be? My group had JUST gotten a handle on things, and if we had another few shots I know we could’ve killed him. At least the instance will reset quickly.

EDIT: Forgot to mention that I wasn’t referring to reseting the encounter. After a few tries, the Bear boss will despawn and move to his first position where he stands on top of a ledge overlooking the area. Problem here is that he won’t aggro onto the group. He’s targetable but invulnerable. He doesn’t move and the script doesn’t seem to trigger. We tried running out and back in to see if that did anything, but to no avail.

Free T6 for Shamans

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Well, at least for Resto Shamans anyway. Some friends of mine were checking out some T6 gear and to their surprise, they discovered that the T6 Restoration gear required no tokens to purchase. Of course, you need to be attuned to Mt. Hyjal to be able to make the purchase. Elemental Shamans and Enhancement Shamans did not have this luxury. Unfortunately, I don’t have any screenshots or anything to show you (I COULD photoshop it). Judging by the level of excitement in our chat channels, it sounded legitimate. Can anyone else make a confirmation?

Not that it matters. I expect this to get patched immediately.

The downside to it was that the armor could not be repaired. But who needs to pay repair bills when you get free gear anyway?

EDIT: Looks like server are being taken offline briefly tomorrow morning.

A Tuesday Story and Trash Blows

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I stumbled upon this touching story today. Everyone needs to go read it. Sometimes we all need a reminder to slow down just a little bit even in WoW.

Fate wrote a nice piece the other day about the hassles of trash mobs. One of his Guildies complained about them and Fate took it upon his hands to write about why trash is good and not bad. His main argument? Trash helps to build up the suspense and the pleasure when the boss in charge of them gets taken down. Otherwise, you’d be blowing through Karazhan, SSC, and TK within time frames of an hour.

Personally, I’d love to see more instances akin to Mag and Gruul (Ony style). We’re on a limited raiding schedule. Every wipe, every trash kill, every rebuff eats into the precious time we have. Our 25 mans are capped at exactly 11 hours of raiding per week. Let me first say that I’m proud of the Guild that I’m in and the discipline that they show during crunch time. We may fool around and crack jokes, but when we get down to business we do whatever it takes to get the job done. The clutch Al’ar kill is a testament to that (5 hours of sunday wiping, one more respawn kill, followed by an Al’ar first down). Sometimes, I just wish we had more time to do it.

Trash is nice to have sometimes. I do agree with Fate that it’s something to do in between bosses. Players need to have a little bit of a downtime. It’s not possible to ask 25 players to maintain a 110% focus and concentration. They would burn out too quickly. I know I can’t remain that tense for such a period of time.

But on the other hand, I don’t want to spend time to reclear trash repeatedly. Nothing kills momentum faster then getting a boss down to 10% and knowing you’re able to kill him only to get stopped by the Wall of Trash (0/*, Creature – Wall, Tap: Piss off target raid).

Ah M:TG. Sometimes I miss playing. But it’s either that or WoW.

Anyways, the trash respawns, you look at the time and you realize that your raid is over as people have to work or go to school on the east coast. Trash respawns just kills that level of energy and anticipation. With all the trash removed in SSC, we’d be able to one shot all the bosses and have time left over to do other things (Like Cartman says, now we can all enjoy the game)!

Fate’s point is excellent though. We DO need that trash. Where else are we going to get our Primal Nethers from? Or random BoE/BoP recipes?

Here’s a thought.

We’ve all sniggered at one point when our raid leader forgot to downgrade a raid instance from Heroic to Normal difficulty.

What if Blizzard implemented it and made Heroic raids? Give Raiders a choice in how they want to go through SSC. They can do it normally, or they can do it the Heroic way. Reduce trash by 80% but increase boss difficulty by 20%. Keep loot tables roughly the same and throw in some badges. Maybe the health of Hydross will increase a little bit so the raid needs to ice and poison dance for an extra minute. Think of it as an express raid. I’m not going to try and develop that concept any further. It would probably get defeated in a manner of minutes. But at least it’s something to think about. I sure as hell am not a game developer.

Sadly, I don’t get to go into Zul’Aman today. Our 25 schedules stay the same throughout. With the reset timer nearly twice as fast as Karazhan, it means we can do it any time we want. I’ll probably run through it tomorrow.

Meanwhile, snoozing through trash is the order of the day.