Like the Corners of My Mind

I was doing a little cleanup on the blog tonight when I came across a couple of things I knew were coming but still were a punch in the gut:  the domains for The Pink Pigtail Inn and TankingTips.com were gone.*

Going through the list, Voss' Sword and Board and Cynwise's Posterous Field Notes have also vanished into the same ether that claimed Tam's Righteous Orbs and Lara's Root and Branch.  Still, the PPI especially was the great watering hole that not only had Larisa's posts, but also had the monster mess of a blogroll that people could use as a master reading list.  I know I used to use PPI to find new blogs to read, and I could trace a big spike in PC's readership to the week when Larisa added us to her blogroll.  Even up to a year after Larisa stopped posting at PPI, we'd see more people following a link from there to our blog than just about anywhere else.

Now, outside of Rades' huge blogroll, there's pretty much Hugh at the MMO Melting Pot keeping the blogroll flame alive.  WoW Insider doesn't bother with posting interesting blog links anymore, and truth be told I've not really ventured over to WI in quite a while.

Change is the only constant in the blogging world.  Keeping up a blogging schedule is not an easy task, and real life has a way of interfering with both blogging and game playing.  When we started PC almost four years ago, I had no idea what I was getting into.  If I did, I might not have committed to it.  Yet at the same time, I'd not have traded the experience for the world.  I've met fellow bloggers around the world whom I'm happy to call friend, and the schedule of writing a blog has pushed me (and my writing) in directions I didn't think I could go.**  the MMO blogosphere can be sniping and backbiting at times, but we all have the same interest at heart:  a love of the weird wonderful worlds that inhabit a Massively Multiplayer Online RPG.

This blog, while ostensibly about "all sorts of games", really began as a WoW blog.  And it remained that way for well over two years, with occasional forays into other MMOs.  However, as I've moved from one dominant MMO (WoW) to several MMOs, the blog's feel has changed to reflect that.  I suppose that going forward you can expect more change, but what it will entail I don't really know.

I'm not the gamer that some people are; I don't have the experience in electronic gaming that Spinks has, for example, or the endgame experience that many other MMO bloggers have.  While I realize his hiatus was for medical reasons I still miss Cynwise's PvP posts, because compared to the master I'm merely playing at PvP. There are others who write great fiction, like Rades or Akabeko (The Red Cow), and many others whose humor and wit bring cheer to an otherwise dreary morning reading work e-mail.  However, it is the thoughtful blog posts, the ones where people bare a little of their souls, that I cherish the most.  It's the equivalent of sitting out on a porch with a beer or two, shooting the bull, while the sun goes down and the fireflies dance in the yard.

But I hope that as the blogosphere changes, one thing remains constant:  the camaraderie of the bloggers themselves.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got a beer that's getting warm.



*The Pink Pigtail Inn goes to another blog entirely now, and the domain for TankingTips.com has completely vanished.

**Now, if that will only translate into getting a novel written to completion....

The Stuff of Nightmares

Have you ever had the dream where you're trying to outrun something --a train, a car, or Usain Bolt-- but you feel like your feet are made of lead?  You're trying desperately to get around a corner before you get run over, and you can feel the rumble of the steam engine in your bones as that train gets closer....

Closer....

Closer....

And then you wake up, your heart pounding in your chest.

Yeah, I've had that dream a lot recently, and it involves Deepwind Gorge.

On the face of it, Deepwind Gorge is a lot like Arathi Basin and Battle of Gilneas, with the additional part of having to capture the other faction's gold.  The BG is more compact than either AB (by a lot) or BoG (marginally so), but the line of sight issues make it seem larger than it is.  But the biggest differences between the prior two and DG are the locations of the respawning points:  each faction's home base.

That alone changes the dynamics of the BG, because if you're assaulting a mine and you can kill off another faction's toon, that pretty much guarantees that toon will be gone for more than twice the normal amount of time it would take to run back from a localized spawning point.  We've all been in the situation where you're in AB assaulting the Gold Mine, and you kill off a toon just to see it make a reappearance from the GM spawning point 10 seconds later.  That won't happen in DG.

But what the respawn points also do is make Rogues' biggest advantage --stealth-- their biggest weakness.

No matter how fast a Rogue can run while stealthed, except for a few short bursts they can't move fast enough to get back to a base in peril.  You are trying to get back as quickly as you can, or to get anywhere as quickly as you can, and you feel like your feet are in mud.

There is an option, of course, which is to summon your mount and ride back, but for a class that's bringing up the bottom in terms of survivability in BGs, that's akin to jumping up and down and yelling "Free HKs!!" To ensure survivability you have to ride in a pack, and that isn't playing to a Rogue's strength either.

Rogues are at their best when they can strike when you least expect it.  They don't have the plate (or even the mail) of other melee classes, and they don't have either tanking or healing capabilities.  They also don't have a (seemingly) neverending font of mana, either.*

What all this means is that a Rogue's best bet while playing Deepwind Gorge is to either play close to your home base --defending the gold-- or spending time as part of a bigger effort.  Solo work is a risky business for a Rogue in general, and solo work in DG is potentially very nasty indeed.

Oh, and try not to have too many nightmares.



*I once hid in Icewing Bunker with another Rogue, watching a Mage spam Arcane Explosion and seeing the Mage's supply of mana creep downward like a snail.  "They need to nerf that," I whispered.  "There's absolutely no downside to spamming that for minutes at a time."

"Yeah," the other Rogue replied.  "That and a Lock's Hellfire and Rain of Fire.  When a Lock can dump Rain of Fire on the run...."

WoW Weddngs are Alive and Well

I've known people who play MMOs together who are married, and even some of those who met in game (WoW or some other MMO) and married before I met them.  But in-game weddings?  I've not known any myself.

However, Navimie of The Daily Frostwolf is a bit luckier than I, and last Wednesday attended an in-game wedding up in the Grizzly Hills.  Her adventures of getting there as an L1 alt are worth the read alone, but the picspam of the ceremony itself are really cool.

If my wife and I were to get married now, we'd not go for an MMO ceremony --she doesn't play-- but we most likely would have something like this at the reception hall:

Yes, that's a Settlers of Catan wedding cake.
(From forgoodnesscakes.net.)

Or maybe this:

Of course, I usually lose at Scrabble.
(From casasugar.com.)