Some Thursday Fun

After enough deep posts, I figured something lighter was in order.

I don't often crack open the search entries that send people to our blog, but when I did for the past month, it was an eye opening experience.

"Lady Liadrin" -- Seems that most of these searches are looking for pics of the Blood Elf Matriarch.  Curious, I tried searching for "Lady Liadrin" via Google, and yeah, my screenshot found in "About Redbeard" is there.  To be honest, it's one of the few G or PG rated images out there of her.  Some of the fan art made me feel like I had to shower after seeing just the search results.

"orc warrior tank tier 12" and "forsaken rogue" -- I'm sorry, but Soul turned traitor faction changed to the Alliance, and he doesn't have any Orcs or Forsaken in his stable of toons.

"can i play the wee" -- Um, I suppose so.  I think you ought to ask your folks first.

"fear of saying something in the wrong context" -- Oh, right, you're asking me about that?  And people wonder why I'm not on Twitter.

"adult world of warcraft graphics" -- Maybe you ought to try "Lady Liadrin" or "Thrall and Jaina".  Or maybe you don't want to know, because I sure didn't.  And no, it's definitely not work safe.

"f2p adult mmorpg" -- Haven't these people heard of Goldshire?  Sheesh.

"how to apply retardin desensitizing cream" -- Oh no, not this again.  Make one post --just one post!-- about retardins and you pay for it forever.

***

Heard around Azeroth:

In Warsong Gulch:
(After the flag carrier --a Resto Shaman-- and Neve got jumped and wiped by two Kitty Druids)
Shaman: Of course I died, all I had was an undergeared Mage protecting me.

(15 mins later after the two of us DPSed down the Alliance's FC and got our flag back)
Shaman:  Two 20k Ice Lances and 40k Frostbolt FTW!

Amazing how good you look when you're not stunned, your trinkets aren't on CD, and you get crits on your attacks.

In Isle of Conquest:
DK:  We'd all better look good, cause I'm streaming this right now.
DK dies.
Shadow Priest: Was that good enough for ya?

In Warsong Gulch:
Warrior:  These have to be the worst rogues ever.
Paladin:  Yeah, I've zapped them about 4 times already.
Mage (while rezzing):  Nice to know, cause the Lock and I have been getting one shotted by them the entire BG.
Warlock (me, while rezzing):  I feel like they should be turning me on a spit.

In Isle of Conquest:
Human Paladin:  I wanna be a Goblin, cause they get to ride tricycles!
Me (as Tomakan):  and Gnomes are any better?
Kitty Druid:  I like my Gnomes fried.  Goblins are better roasted.

***

Oldie But Goodie:

Back when we were on Stormscale (US-PVP), Soul and I were cruising near Hellfire Citadel when we got jumped by an L80 Rogue and his buddy, who ganked us.  As we ran back, Soul cautioned me that we're probably being corpse camped so I should be ready to move.  We rezzed and I mounted just as the Rogue emerged from hiding and got me from behind.  Amazingly enough, his attack neither killed me outright nor dismounted me, so I leapt up to the skies aboard my wind rider.

"I thought you were dead," Soul told me.

"So did I," I replied, and cackled.

The Rogue, however, wasn't going to give up so easily.  He mounted, flew up to us, and tried to gank me as he dismounted.

He missed and plummeted to the ground.


I still smirk at that moment to this day.

The Great Equalizer

In the two years since we've been running this blog, ol' Redbeard has started to turn into Greybeard.  Although I'm sure that my family has had something to do with it, streaks of gray can now be seen on the sides of my facial hair, extending up into my sideburns.  Every morning, I peer into the mirror and see evidence of my mortality staring back at me.*  All the crueler, I suppose, in that my toons never seem to age or show any evidence of previous wounds.

A toon's appearance is the great equalizer in WoW.  Until you get on Vent or Mumble, you never know who is actually running the toon.  The players in your pug could be grandparents or tweens, male or female, gay or straight, and unless they make it obvious, you'll be none the wiser.

In a very real sense, this is how it should be.  We can gripe about racial design or (lack) of armor, but in the end, the toon is an idealized artistic version of an arbitrary race in a virtual game.  The toon isn't us; it is merely the vehicle in which we play.

And yet there's so much wrapped up in them.

If you don't think so, I point to the rejoicing at the vanity armor announcement for Patch 4.3.  Or how some people refuse to play certain races and/or classes, based on how they look. 

We invest so much time in these toons, it's only natural that we look at them as an extension of ourselves.  I suppose I'll always look at Q or Neve as Sindorei, Q with his Blood Knight tabard and polearm (evoking the Blood Tempered Ranseur) and Neve with her Kirin Tor tabard** and refusing to wear a helm.  Tom seems to have that Ramkahen tabard permanently stapled onto his chest, and will favor a 2H sword over anything else. 

Even when we aren't really roleplaying, we notice when things just aren't right with our toons.  Whether some gear makes sense or looks halfway decent does matter.  It's kind of hard to take a Dwarf or Gnome tank seriously with the Ulduar horned helm that looks like a giant codpiece.  Or the people who wield a specific weapon because that was what they leveled back in the pre-4.0.1 era when you had to level individual weapon skills.  Or whether your toon prefers to hang around Dal or Shat in the Cataclysm era.

I'll freely admit that one of my toons --Neve-- came out of a long running D&D campaign I was in.  She died in one of those freakish rolls of three '20' results on a d20 in a row, not more than 7-8 sessions after I'd spent all the time and effort to get her into the campaign.***  I'd been thinking about trying out a mage in WoW, so I went with Neve's name, hoping that she'd last a wee bit longer than her D&D counterpart.  In a sense the name was perfect, because I'd played her as a snarky, academically oriented Elf who thought she knew more than she really did, and that overall attitude is what the Blood Elves exude in spades.  At the same time, I don't play on an RP server, so I never really play Neve 'in character'; she's just, well, 'me as Mage'.  But I never forgot where she came from, and that kind of influences my attitude toward her.

Maybe we are all roleplaying, albeit unconsciously. 




*Unlike, say, my knees, which haven't been really right since college.  Yeah, I know, I could lose some weight, but three years of running hurdles in high school haven't exactly been kind to my knees either.

**She's not too proud to use her Illustrious Guild tabard to get rep with her guild, however.

***Our game group had no Wizards or Sorcerers --no magic wielders at all, really-- so I campaigned to take on a second character just so we could have some magic to round out the party.  I don't think I'd have minded her dying so much as the manner in which she bit it: killed by a fellow party member who'd been mind controlled by a Harpy.

Who's the Hero Now?

While I enjoy reading about the WoW lore, it may surprise some people to know that I'm not a big fan of the books.  A great deal of my indifference is due to the design decision in Azerothian lore to emphasize the leaders at the forefront of everything.

Look at it this way: if you're out questing in the L1-L60 areas of Azeroth, when you report to a faction leader, it is a "big deal".  Sure, you can show up at any of the capitals, walk right up, and dance around Sylvanas*, but actual interaction with the story is fairly rare.  The emphasis, naturally, is on you as the hero.  You're out in the field, interacting with people who report up the chain to the faction leaders.  Now, there are third party groups out there you interact with, such as the Cenarion Circle and the Argent Crusade, but the lion's share of quests come from the two factions.

This format makes sense, because the faction leaders are consumed with less of the day-to-day and more  nation building and maintenance.  There are advisors and councils who deal with other things, such as the war effort.

Historically, by the time we reached the Age of Enlightenment it was a rare sight to see a monarch in battle, and a monarch having adventures was unheard of.  Monarchs weren't the strongest, most powerful, or most intelligent people in the nation, but their bureaucracies ensured that they didn't need to be.

Azeroth, on the other hand, has a bizarre environment.  In the time of WoW, Azeroth has lost a great deal of its population, but at the same time has tons of toons when a server is busy.  There are Native American inspired cultures and "the strongest rules" medieval type of societies, but also has the trappings of Steampunk and the later Victorian Era.  These are huge continents, but near instantaneous travel via portals is a reality.  And yet the societies don't have any cross pollination, despite the forces at work.

This is a world where --if you follow the books and the lore-- you have the faction leaders and their equivalents going off on adventures.  They are the focal points, because they are the strongest, the most powerful, the most intelligent.  In some respects, this is a lot like a David Eddings series.

And like a David Eddings series, after a while it starts to feel like a who's who of people at the top.  The rest of the Azerothians don't exist, except as a bunch of red shirts.

I suppose I can't blame the books, given that the authors are working within Blizzard's constraints, but it just doesn't feel right.  WoW has taken the focus of the game away from the folks at the top and given it to us, yet the books are still stuck in Warcraft 3 mode.





*Not to mention the inevitable question why you'd do such a thing.  Unless you have a death wish or something.

Who Needs PUG Stories, Anyway?

I was planning on writing something else today, but a week's worth of keeping an eye on the kids while they play LOTRO has been... enlightening.

***

...And a Level One Gold Farmer Yelling, "You buy?"*

My son has demonstrated the best grasp of the mechanics involved in gameplay, but economics eludes him.

"What are you doing?" I asked as he ran around Michel Delving.

"Looking for the stables."

Since I hadn't played as a Hobbit, I had no idea whether the stables were needed for a quest or not.  The next thing I know, he's heading through the Old Forest and getting himself killed by a wolf 8 levels higher than him.  "Okay, you've got to get out of here," I said, taking over the controls and moving him to (relative) safety.

"But I've got a quest to go to Bree!"

"You can take the stables."  I directed him to the nearest stables, and he rode to Bree.

He turned in his quest, then ran around the city for a while.  "Why can't I buy anything that's my level?"

"Bree's a higher level city.  You shouldn't go there until you get high enough level."

"But I want to buy stuff?  Where do I get the money?"

"From doing quests and killing monsters."

"But there's no monsters where I'm at!"

"Go back.  They're there."

He then blew another silver traveling back to Michel Delving.  Sighing, I turned back to my work.

"Aaaaa!"  He had apparently found wolves to kill.  Three of them, and they all aggroed on him.

"You can kill them off.  Stop running around and face them."

He continued to run around as the wolves nipped at his heels, slowly draining him of life.  Stopping finally, he turned the wrong way and wondered why his attacks were missing.

I spun him around and started hitting his melee attacks, but it was too late.  "Now," I said as I sat back down, "you were telling me there weren't any monsters here."

"Oh.  Yeah."

***

And This Could be from an Older Gamer

"Why am I doing this?" my youngest asked as she ran off to kill some wolves.

"Did you read the quest?"

"Yeah!"

"No you didn't.  I watched as you clicked the 'finish quest' and then the 'accept quest'; you don't read that fast."

"Oh, um, yeah."

"That's why the words are there, so you can understand the story behind the quest."  And, I added silently, you'd not believe the number of adults who don't bother with that as well.

***

Who Says Guys have a monopoly on Objectification?

My oldest watcher her sister playing as a Human Guardian** when her sister's toon approached Strider to accept another quest.  "Aww...." she said.  "I hope that my elf gets a chance to meet Strider!"

"Why?" I asked, although the sinking feeling in my stomach already provided the answer.

"Because he's so dreeeaaammmmyyyy!"



*From Wowcrendor's spoof of Goodnight Moon, called Goodnight Orgrimmar.  If you haven't seen it, it's awesome!

**Just where did that come from, anyway?  I don't play tanks, and her older siblings rolled Hunters.  I fear she's been corrupted.

MMOs for the Wee Set

When do you let your kids play MMOs?

If you play MMOs and you have kids, this question will come up sooner or later.  For me, the answer has always been "when I think you're ready," closely followed by "when you can afford the cost of a WoW account."* 

I'm not worried about them handling the commands --I've seen them play the LEGO PC games-- but they have to be mature enough to handle the MMO community.  If the worst they ever saw in an MMO was Barrens Chat, I'd shrug and move on; the worst thing I'd have to do would be to rent a few Chuck Norris movies to explain who ol' Chuck is.  But when you add in all of the other items, such as nerd rage, ERP, and griefing, an MMO isn't exactly the friendliest place for a kid.  You have to learn to let it roll off of you, and that's a difficult thing to do.

Now, I have let my kids occasionally take the reins of one of my WoW toons and let them fly around.  The first time I let my son fly Tomakan around, he discovered two things:  that you plummet to the ground when you click on the 'mount' button in mid-flight, and that there are places in Shattrath City that are impossible to reach so you can rez.**  That disaster aside, the kids have generally taken care of my toons on the rare occasion when I let them explore a bit. 

But that brings us closer to the threshold of playing their own toon.

I'm not sure why I made up my mind when I did, but I finally let the kids create a few toons of their own.

However, I set up a few ground rules: no more than 1/2 hour playing, and I'm going to keep close tabs on what you're doing.

I also decided almost immediately not to let them play WoW.

My guildies are great, and the community they promote is fine, but I'm not about to foist my kids on them.  And although WoW is probably the easiest MMO to pick up and play from scratch, it doesn't have the friendliest player base out there.  Sure, you can find people to help you with a quest or a question, but you're also equally likely to find someone to say "L2P noob" or "go look it up in Wowpedia".

Where to go?

Well hellooo, freeplay.

Age of Conan was completely out --hell, I don't even play that while the kids are awake-- but LOTRO was an intriguing option.  You could play up to high levels, the setting was well known (they've seen the first two LOTR movies and at least one of them has read The Hobbit), and the servers aren't that populated.  Plus, the community is fairly sedate and well mannered.***

Therefore, the other day I let my son create a toon on LOTRO, a Hobbit Hunter.

I gave him two pieces of advice, which I shared with his sisters:  be polite, and if someone asks to duel you or join a kinship (LOTROs version of a guild), decline.  Then I let him go, with me keeping one eye on his progress and answering questions as he went.

While I figured he'd enjoy the experience, what surprised me was how comfortable I became watching him play.  He learned the keystrokes easily enough as I figured, but since the low level areas were sparsely populated, I didn't have to worry about him running into a lot of other players.  Also, this being LOTRO, there wasn't a lot of obnoxious profanity or racist/sexist stuff spewed in the chat channels, either.  After his half an hour, I felt confident he could handle this.

His older sister created an Elven Hunter a few days later --what is it with Hunters, anyway?-- and had a slightly more difficult time figuring out the mouse movement, but she slipped into the quest mode and was on her way.  Now I have the youngest wanting to play too (we'll see how she handles the keystroke commands).

Do I worry about how they'll behave in-game?  Sure; if I didn't, I wouldn't be a parent.  But I'm determined to make sure that they have as good an experience as they can while they understand that not everyone is nice out there on teh Internets.  I'm also going to make sure they understand that real life is more important than MMOs, and as the parent I reserve the right to pull the plug on this experiment if I feel they're neglecting school or other stuff just to game.

So far, so good.  But this is a work in progress.  (Kinda like my PvP gearsets.)



*As you can guess, I'm not big on providing subscriptions for my kids, whether it is an MMO or a cell phone.  For one reason, I can't afford it, and for another, if they want something for their private use with a subscription fee they should pay for it themselves.  I don't believe in writing blank checks.

**The repair bill still smarts.

***I laugh at the people who complain in the LOTRO chat channels that the community has gone to hell in a handbasket after LOTRO went freeplay.  If this is what 'hell in a handbasket' looks like, I'd hate to see what they'd think of WoW's Trade Chat.

Free stuff is always great

I was very happy, today, to read that the implementation of the RealID party invites will continue to remain free.

Truth be told, I hadn't even used that feature because I knew (or thought I did) that it would eventually go away, and it was easier not to get used to it.

So, I was thinking about how this opens up the community and the possibilities that could now be available.

Here's what I'm thinking... Similar to the blogger only guild that existed on both the US and EU realms, we could get a group of bloggers together with out having to leave our own server.

Think of how nice it would be to have a group of fellow bloggers to bs with while getting a random dungeon done with out having to deal with pugs.

I know I've been idea starved lately and nothing helps motivation better than really jumping into the community.

Interested?  If so, let me know and we'll get something started!  Leave a message on how to contact yourself in the comments.

Split Personalities

I was chatting with Vidyala from Manalicious the other week when she mentioned that it was cool that I ran BGs on both factions.  "Most people have a lot of faction loyalty that way," she said.

She's right.  It's kind of funny that way, because I'll hear "We suck!  We always suck!" no matter what BG or what faction I'm running with.  Since the Battlegroups were combined, I've seen little evidence of one faction's dominance over the BG scene.  Sure, I've heard stories about how the Horde used to mop up BGs, but that isn't the case these days.

Some BGs are virtually identical for both factions --such as WSG or SoA or EotS-- but others do have a few critical differences.  The choke point in AV close to the Horde base can be a deadly trap for the Alliance (I've been on the receiving end of that before), and the current strategies in IoC (Horde to Workshop and Ally to Docks) favors the Horde with the beefier demo units.

But that pales to how identical the BG chat is.

If there's one truism about pugging BGs in Cata, it's that the amount of time spent nerd raging in a BG is inversely proportional to the effect you have on a BG.  If you're busy typing about how everyone blows chunks, you're probably not out fighting.  Sure, you could have created a "We all suck!" macro, but most nerd ragers aren't satisfied with that simple --if inaccurate-- statement.  Why stop with three words when twenty will do?

There's a special space in hell reserved for those people who need to channel their inner George S. Patton.  "Get the EFC!  Get the EFC!" says the toon who is jumping around back at the base.  Meanwhile, five of his compatriots are busy attempting to chop their way through three healers and a Hunter to get at said EFC. 

"We all suck!  We were never good!  Why did I ever FC to Ally anyway?"

Beats the hell outta me, man.  If you were on the Horde side, you'd be saying the same thing in a losing effort.

***

If there's one problem I've had running BGs on both factions, it's the keeping track of what side I'm on.

No, seriously.

You'd think that a (relatively) slim Blood Elf would stand out in contrast with a hulking male Draenei, but when I'm in the midst of a BG, keeping track of several things at once, I occasionally slip up and think I'm on the opposing faction.  That can get unnerving in a constantly shifting BG such as Arathi Basin or Eye of the Storm, where you could end up running into the opposing faction's territory while you're examining the map.  One minute you think you're rushing up to help defend a node, and the next you're back at the Spirit Healer.

Oh yeah...  I think I need some coffee.

Under the Heading of "That was interesting...."

I attended GenCon on Sunday, and one of the first things I noticed were the promotions for Rift.

No, not Rifts, the pencil and paper RPG, but Rift.  You know, the MMO from Trion.

The swag bag contained a copy of the game --the same copy that you find in the stores right now-- and the cloth necklace your badge hangs on had "Rift" printed all over it.

Methinks that Trion knows their audience, and if you can understand GURPS or Pathfinder, you can figure out Rift.

Of course, there were a few people pissed off at Rift because it was close enough in name to Rifts that they got some haters just because of that.  It's not like the concept of a 'rift' in time and space is anything new or unique to Rifts, so I shrugged it off.

Oh, and for the curious, there was a huge area for WoW TCG called Darkmoon Faire --which I laughed about, telling my brother-in-law that there were more people in this Darkmoon Faire than the one in-game-- and it was well populated.

Language and Respect

Back in the Wrath days, I was once in a Nexus run that I regretted finishing.

Not that the group wasn’t skilled, or even that one player played in an asinine manner, but of what was said in party chat.

You see, the group had three members of the same guild in it, and they kept peppering party chat with references to how the trash mobs and bosses wanted a piece of their ‘puss-say’.  The Druid tank in particular kept up a stream of ‘puss-say’ talk, all the while keeping his toon on the move and tanking each group in succession.  As the instance progressed, their descriptions became more explicit, and the greater my disgust grew.

I may not show it when I write here on the blog, but I have a temper.  (I’m a redhead, what did you expect?)  Typically I keep it in check, and when it does flare up I usually dip into my pool of obscenities to fling a few good barbs at the offenders.  It's been a long time since nerd ragers in an instance or a BG bothered me, but these three clowns did.  I don’t know whether it was the extremely juvenile nature of the thing or that it was incredibly demeaning to women, but before we had even finished with Telestra, my fingers were twitching.  My desire to reach through the screen and smack them good reached a breaking point by the time we reached Alexstrasza.  As the tank pulled the Malygos-dominated dragon, my mouse hovered over the ‘Leave Group’ selection.  All I had to do was click it and get away from these jerks.

But whether I realized it was a futile gesture, that the instance was almost over, or that I wanted the Badges of Triumph more than anything else, I stayed.

I want to say that I said something to them and forced them to kick me --that I stood up on principle-- but this one time I can’t.  I’ve spoken up in party chat before, defended people who did no wrong in spite of what the other party member said, and I’ve called people out for mean and spiteful stuff.  But I’m not proud of that moment in The Nexus, and I’m sure it will continue eat at me for a good long while.

Fast forward a year and a half later, and I found myself in Eye of the Storm on one of my Paladins (I can’t remember which).  A few of us were holding down the Draenei Ruins, and when the last toon --a Death Knight-- got smacked by my Hammer of Wrath, the Rogue turned to me and said “You really raped that guy!”

My mouth opened and closed.  I knew all too well what he was saying, and I thought about ignoring him.  Or leaving.  Or something. 

But I remembered The Nexus.

“I didn’t,” I finally replied.

“Oh, I saw that hammer come down and he dropped!”

“No.  I didn’t rape him.”

“It’s just a saying.  Lol.”

I ground my teeth.  No matter what I said, to him ‘rape’ = ‘pwn’ and that was that.  Never mind what ‘rape’ really means.  Never mind that you might actually be talking to someone who knows a rape victim –or is a victim themselves.  Or that your borderline misogynistic behavior paints all of us gamers in a bad light.

Words have power, and some words shouldn’t be used lightly.  They don’t make you awesomely badass, they make you sound like a five year old who overheard a few naughty words and is testing their limit.

And you’re older than that, right?

Moar Mounts

If you've seen one of these Winged Guardians...

...you've seen them all.

They're the Sparkle Pony of Cata, or so it seems, but I haven't heard that much discontent out there about them.  Since they're not the sparkle version of "My Little Pony", I guess people are okay with them.

Well, I've a bone to pick with them.

Since Blizz enabled flying mounts to be used as ground mounts in BGs, I see them all the time.  Flying, you see them as they are above.  Running, here's what they look like:

Yes, you're riding a BIG GLOWING ENGLISH SHEEPDOG WITH WINGS.

Anyone up for a Shaggy Dog marathon?


EtA:  Both pics are links.  The mount pic is from Blizzard's web site, and the English Sheepdog pic is from a Reuters pic found on animalpicturesarchive.com. 

Playing to Your Strengths

"Play to your strengths."

"I haven’t got any," said Harry, before he could stop himself.

"Excuse me," growled Moody, "you’ve got strengths if I say you’ve got them. Think now. What are you best at?"
--From Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire



When you stand in a bunker in Alterac Valley, waiting for it to be destroyed, you have plenty of time to think.

Oh, I'm constantly moving my viewing screen around, checking for the inevitable attempt to retake the thing, but aside from the occasional nerd rage there's not much going on at 5 AM.  Most guildies are asleep, and those that aren't just came off of the graveyard shift and will be hitting the hay shortly.

This morning, however, I was still turning over something in my head that I heard on the Double O Podcast yesterday.*  Oestrus and Ophelie had on Vidyala and Voss from Manalicious and Sword and Board, and they were discussing guilds and guild leadership.**  The topic, while entertaining, didn't really apply to me; I'm not a GL/officer and don't plan on being one.  However, a statement made by one of them got under my skin.  The discussion had shifted to the officer corps and how some people take care of certain aspects of the guild, like fish feast preparation, without being an actual officer.  One of the panelists --Vid, I think-- mentioned how thorough their guild interviewer was, and how he's good enough that he was considering making it his career.  It was a minor point, but that got my attention.

How often are we advised to improve our weaknesses, but play to our strengths?  At work, certainly.  In sports, hell yeah.  In an MMO?  Um....

Yes, you can solo an MMO and do it successfully.  I'm living proof of that.  However, when you make that step into an instance, a BG, or a raid, the game changes.  It's no longer about you as the hero, but the team.  Then the question becomes:  what do you do well that can help the team?  Or guild?  Do you even know what it is you excel at?

Sure, maybe you've got that DPS rotation on automatic pilot, and you can just sense when some adds are zeroing in on the healer, but what else can you do with that attention to detail?  Can you help the prep work for the raids?  Does the guild need gems cut and ready to roll?  Enchantments available?

Are you good at organization, helping to line up raid and BG groups?

Do you communicate in an instance or BG, or is your 'communication' limited to "yoo all suk!"

Do you stop and help out the lowbies from time to time?  If you're on a PvP server, do you defend Grom'gol or the Rebel Camp from gankers?

Do you know how to make a killing on the auction house?  Why not apply that knowledge and help the guild's coffers?

Really, the choice is up to you to do what you want in-game; nobody is forced to do this.  But if you enjoy what you do, and you do it well, you expand the enjoyment of others in the game.***

And believe me, I hate-hate-hate a Polyanna attitude, but this is just common sense.  You can work on your weaknesses, but odds are good that you'll get more satisfaction when doing what you're best at.



*I used to be able to listen to podcasts on a regular basis, but meetings have been steadily consuming my work time to the point that anything more engaging than background music --and yes, a WoW soundtrack counts as background music-- will just get ignored.  That's a shame, as I've not had much of a chance to explore the WoW podcasts out there.

**Vid is the GL of Business Time/Moonrunner(US), and her husband Voss is the raid leader.

***Well, except for that ganker loitering around Forest Song that you took out, but he got what was coming to him, right?

A Bit of Nostalgia

2004

(Apologies to Bowling for Soup and their song 1985)

Liese just hit the wall

She never had it all

Firelands dailies all day

Her GL’s MIA

Her optimism ceased

When BC was released

Only been with one guild

What happened to her goals?

She was gonna be a hardcore raider

She was gonna get world firsts

She was gonna dance around

On C’thun’s bloody corpse

Her sparkle pony is now the enemy

Looks at her stable of toons

And nothing, has been…

All right since

Cata and Outland

Way before Northrend

There was AQ and MC

And Naxx was still in EP

The newbies in her guild

They tell her she’s a greybeard

Cuz she’s been playing since

2000, 2000, 2004

Woo Hoo Hooooo!

(2004)

Woo Hoo Hooooo!

She’s done all the classics

She knows every boss

Four Horsemen, High Priest Thekal

And even Princess Huhuran

She cleared Maraudon

Not a big Stonecore fan

Thought she’d get Exalted

With the Frostwolf Clan

Where’s the Tier 2 gear from Nefarian?

And when was Thrall replaced by that guy in Grommash Hold?

When did the Alliance get Shamans?

Whatever happened to Rexxar, and Bolvar

They’re not where they were before

Cata and Outland

Way before Northrend

There was AQ and MC

And Naxx was still in EP

The newbies in her guild

They tell her she’s a greybeard

Cuz she’s been playing since

2000, 2000, 2004

Woo Hoo Hooooo!

She hates expansions, they make no sense

When did Dire Maul become a mid-level instance?

And when did Blood Elves become playable?

Please make this stop, stop, STOP (tick tick tick) and remove

Cata and Outland

Way before Northrend

There was AQ and MC

And Naxx was still in EP

The newbies in her guild

They tell her she’s a greybeard

Cuz she’s been playing since

2000, 2000, 2004

Woo Hoo Hooooo!

Cata and Outland

Way before Northrend

There was AQ and MC

And Naxx was still in EP

The newbies in her guild

They tell her she’s a greybeard

Cuz she’s been playing since

2000, 2000, 2004

Zen and the Art of Losing in a Battleground

There was a time, in the distant past, when I ran as a Holy Spec Paladin.

It's now hard to believe, given that I DPS almost exclusively, but I have healed instances on both Quintalan and Tomakan.  Nothing since 4.0.1 dropped, but I retain some of the trappings of those days on my UI, with Healbot and Decursive being the prime examples.  Like any good Ret Spec is capable of, I can step up in emergencies and heal in an instance when the Healer drops.  I may not look pretty doing it, but at least I can hold my own with Ret's limited mana.  (And I look much better healing than tanking.  Ol' Twinkletoes Redbeard doesn't exactly strike fear in the hearts of trash mobs.)

In spite of all of that, I have been tempted to switch to Holy Spec when I see absolutely no healing in sight in a BG.  I figure, 'bad heals is better than no heals', but then I remember that Quint's Holy Spec gear is stuck somewhere between T9 and entry level Cata greens.  I suspect that Neve would have more armor on her than Quint in his creaky old Holy Spec gear, and when I last looked at Tom's Holy Spec gear I laughed when I found items dating from Uldaman. 

Well, it was a thought.  And believe me, after running WSG on my furball dozens of times, you can just tell you've got a winning or losing situation based on the number of healers.

A good tank or two can make up for a dearth of healers, but having three good healers in WSG can make a team an unstoppable juggernaut, tank or no tank.  Sure, you have to still play smart and not have everyone running off in different directions*, but your odds of winning just went up by a huge amount.

***

I'd like to say that I'm an expert at BGs, but come on.  I merely run them.  The experts are the ones that use my toons for a doormat.

My poor furball and his oversexed Succubus sidekick got caught in a WSG buzzsaw last night.  After about 5 minutes into this particular run, a pair of Rogues, a kitty Druid, and a Holy Spec Pally set up a tent and went camping at the Alliance graveyard.  No matter what we did, we could only barely get to the edge of the graveyard before we got sapped, sliced, and diced.  The few times I escaped, I ran into the secondary tier of the rest of the Horde crew who had set up a Worgen-dog stand.  I lost track of the number of times I died, and since the Horde side was content to rack up HKs, the game dragged on until the time limit.

And then, a measure of vindication.  The end screen popped up to deafening silence.

The game ended in a tie.

I laughed bitterly when I saw the number of times I died:  21.  Yes, that's right.  Twenty one.

And I still tied them.

[Insert Appropriate Zen Comment Here]



*Like I saw in Arathi Basin late this afternoon.  "Go to the Farm!  Go to the Farm!" someone cried when we lost the Stables.  What happened?  Two to Lumber Mill, two to Mine, three fought in the road between the Blacksmith and the Stables, and one went to the Farm.  The rest defended the Stables, and watched the saga unfold.  Needless to say, we lost.

I Sense Much Fear in You

There are times when you just know something is going to go badly.

Like the time I was in Arathi Basin a few weeks ago.  Tomakan ported in, and I scanned the data in Healbot to see who I'm running with.  Healbot usually takes a second or two to scan each toon to let you know what spec each one is, and over the course of the next ten to twenty seconds I felt a disturbance in the Force.

• We had six rogues
• We had no tanks

At first we also had no healers, but a Druid switched to Resto while buffing. We were living the high life, let me tell you.

Well, I thought, stranger things have happened before, so I decided to stick this run out.  In retrospect, I think it would have been better if I'd just dropped and taken the debuff instead.  The Horde swarmed over us like kids after an ice cream truck, and the Warrior and two Frost DKs made a special point of making me their personal punching bag.

I figured that was just a bizarre twist of fate to be grouped like that, like the time I was in a four Pally run through Gnomer, until this morning.

My little Furball of Evil got into Warsong Gulch at the crack of dawn, and as I scanned Healbot, I saw the familiar Purple and Yellow in abundance.

"Oh oh," I muttered.  We had three Locks --myself included-- and three Rogues.

No tanks.  No healers.

Then someone dropped and we got a Resto Druid.

"Oh, this is not going to be good."

One of the Locks kept his Voidwalker on, and I resisted the urge to suggest he try a Succubus or Imp.  Sure, that Voidwalker wasn't going to help much against players who would just ignore its threat, but considering the group's makeup, I figured it wasn't going to matter.

On the initial run out from Silverwing Hold, I got caught from behind and one-shotted by a Hunter.  I respawned, and before I got anywhere, it happened again.  The third time, I got as far as halfway across the no man's land just in time to actually see my enemy before he dropped me.

Rinse and repeat.


While I waited for the Spirit Healer, the Resto Druid complained that nobody was protecting him and he dropped.  "Kind of hard to protect him when we're all dead," somebody replied in BG chat.

We respawned to find two Hunters, a Disco Priest, and a Holy Pally camping us.  "Oh, come on," I muttered while dropping DoTs as quickly as I could before I was killed.  "Like we're a real threat anyway."

In the end, I think I was killed about eight times in the span of seven minutes.  It could have been worse, I suppose, but I'd be hard pressed to find a BG run outside of the one time I ran Rated BGs that I got facerolled like that.

Dear Blizz--


Your BG finder needs work.  Please correct.


Signed, 
The Smudge on the Ground That Used to Look Like a Worgen

You Never Forget Your First Time

As much as I would like to remain objective, I suppose that I'll always look at WoW through Wrath-tainted lenses.

I guess that a certain subset of people just threw up their hands and said "Oh crap, here comes another 'heroics are too hard' or 'why can progression be the same as in Wrath' topic," but that's not really the case.  For one thing, I've yet to actually set foot in a Cata Heroic.  It's kind of hard to compare Heroics if you don't queue up for them, you know.  The other big reason why it's not the post you thought it was is that I don't raid.  (Running AQ40 when you're L80 or L85 doesn't count in my book.)

No, what's really on my mind is how I approach WoW, how I think about WoW, and how I describe WoW to people.  Because I started playing mid-way through Wrath, I can't really internalize how different things were in Vanilla or BC.  Sure, I can appreciate on an intellectual level the all-day Alterac Valley fights back in Vanilla, but since I never really lived it I can't think in terms of those BG runs.

In a way, it's akin to learning a new language.  You learn basics of grammar, memorize words, and practice conjugating verbs, but until you actually learn to think in that language, you're still merely translating what's in your head.  The new language could be a cipher for all that's worth, because your brain still uses your native language as a primary reference.  Once you reach a critical point and the switch is flipped inside your head, then you can actually say 'I get this now.  This makes sense to me.'

I understand WoW through Wrath's eyes because I can't comprehend the BC way (or the Vanilla way) of doing things.  Sure, I ran instances throughout the pre-Cata Vanilla and BC zones, but I ran them with the Wrath toolkit.  I can't understand how it was to run Magister's Terrace back in the day, because the BC toolset was so radically different than it is now.*  Even if you eschewed the L68 Wrath gear and ran with BC L70 gear, you truly won't get it because everything that comprises a toon --Talents, Spells, Attacks, Glyphs, etc.-- has completely changed since then.

This isn't a bad thing or a good thing, but just, well, how it is.

When I think about Halls of Origination, I say to myself "imagine running Halls of Stone and Halls of Lightning back-to-back, and that's what HOO is like."

When I try to describe Tol'vir to people, I tell them "it runs about as quick as Utgarde Keep, although the bosses remind me more of Ahn'kahet and Forge of Souls."

When I look at the Therazane quest chain in Deepholm, I compare it to the Sons of Hodir quest chain in Storm Peaks.

I'm sure that people new to WoW in this post-4.0.1 age will have trouble understanding things like the 'Thrall goes to Outland' quest chain, how Hillsbrad can make Hordies on PvP servers twitch, or how the simple words "attunement chain" can start a fight.  They'll be Cata babies, and you know what?  That's okay with me.

What's really important to take away from this is that we all started out in WoW differently, and we approach the game differently.  Nobody really forgets what it was like to install the software, login, and create your first toon.  We all start from the same beginning, but we take different paths along the way.


*Right about now some smart-ass will say "you hit stuff, you kill stuff, how hard can that be?"  But that's life, man.

And People Thought WoW had Adult Themes...

I've been caught up with projects around the house, so I haven't had that much time to devote to WoW lately.

Yes, I've heard about some funky new patch thingie that dropped last Tuesday, but in typical Redbeard fashion I took a huge pass on fighting the crowd in Hyjal and putzed around with other things.

"Are you grinding rep?" a toon asked me when I offered assistance on his plea for help on the Ring of Blood.

"No, working on Loremaster."  Okay, I took advange of the PvP flag being on after a BG to go and take Halaa --again, something this Wrath baby had never done before-- but I was exploring Outland as part of my ongoing quest for double Loremaster.

If a toon could look disappointed, it was this guy.  "Oh."

"Well, that and avoiding the nuthouse in Hyjal."

"lol."

In addition to doing some out of the way stuff, I've also been examining yet another MMO.  No, not the upcoming Star Wars MMO The Old Republic, although I'll say that what I've seen via the vid clips looks very interesting.  The MMO I'm speaking of is Age of Conan, which just went F2P last week.

I'll be honest:  I only have the money in the budget for one pay-type MMO at a time, so F2P MMOs hold a great amount of appeal to me.  The F2P model allows me to explore different MMOs without incurring additional cost, and while I'm aware that I'm observing only a small slice of the entire MMO, the F2P MMOs give me a bit more breadth in the MMO space.

And what breadth it is.

I suppose Age of Conan is most famous for it's 'M' rating, and I'll be honest:  the first thing that I heard gamer podcasters mention about AoC --even more than the graphic violence-- was the nudity.  The concept of "OMG bewbs!!" from more than a few people kind of turned me away from the game, not that I'm a prude by any stretch, but nudity for shock purposes doesn't appeal to me.  And now, with the recent addition of vanity armor to AoC, that also means that you can deliberately customize your toon to walk around almost literally naked.*

However, let's get something straight.  This is Hyboria.  This is Conan.  This is Robert E. Howard's vision.

And nudity is part of the tapestry of the Dreaming West.

I've read several books worth of the original Robert E. Howard short stories, so I know a bit about Hyboria and the Sword and Sorcery genre that it helped spawn.  For a Sword and Sorcery environment, you need a few things you don't typically see in traditional Epic Fantasy RPGs or MMOs:  all magic is tainted to some degree or another, and rarely --if ever-- used for purely good purposes; the noble savage ala Conan or Tarzan (or even Fafhrd) as a skilled hero; an overall feel of a more primitive lost world whose time is approaching it's end (less Tolkien's Middle-earth and more Moorcock's Melnibone); that nobody has really pure morals and/or motives; and sex and betrayal are often integral to the plotline.

Judging by those tropes, Age of Conan really succeeds in capturing the feel of Howard's Hyboria.  The only mages as a playable class deal with those from the tales who wielded the Dark Arts:  Stygians and Khitans.  The emphasis from Aquilonians and Cimmerians is on Rogues and Soldiers, with the odd Priest or Shaman thrown in for good measure.  The quests in Tortage (the starting zone) focus on evils awakened by the Picts, the Stygian witch Myrelle, and the twisted and evil tyrant Strom of the Red Hand.  The questlines often present choices where there are really no good answers, only varying shades of gray.  Undercurrents of sex, whoring, racketeering, greed, and violence really fill out the quest lines.  Consider that you become part of the Resistance against Strom, hoping to overthrow him and Myrelle so that the city can return to being a bustling pirate haven full of greed, slaves, and prostitution, and you get the point.

This is not fodder for kids.

WoW, by comparison, is pretty tame stuff.  Sure, you have shades of gray with NPCs' morals, but you also have discernable good and bad guys.  There's nothing like dark and darker imagery that you get out of Age of Conan.  Considering that WoW is doing something completely different with it's blend of High Fantasy and Steampunk, that's to be expected.  Blizzard doesn't take itself too seriously, while AoC is like the student dressed all in black sitting at a table in a dimly lit coffeehouse, grousing about 'art'.

One thing that did strike me about the environment was how AoC equalized the sexes.  Sure, you've got your standard-issue damsel in distress style stuff and the omnipresent skimpily clad NPCs, but AoC is set up so that as far as profession is concerned, the sex of the NPC is irrelevant.  Sure, some of the female NPCs do show an interest in your toon (I played a male toon, so I don't know what the female toons deal with), but the banter reminded me more of a Mike Hammer episode than anything else.

The graphics are beautiful in a realistic manner, but they make my PC strain more than WoW does.  That's kind of a bummer, but it's a tradeoff.  The character customization is something that every MMO ought to have; it does a fantastic job of tweaking your toon to just the right size and shape.  And yes, for the record, the shape of the human body isn't the cartoony top-heavy look that you get out of humans in WoW.

One huge problem I noticed was the size creep in the game's database.  When I started playing the game, the DB was about 8 GB.  The next day, it was 12 GB.  On Sunday, 16 GB.  By this morning, it had ballooned out to 20 GB but seemed to have stopped growing.  If it starts expanding again, I'm going to run out of disk space before too long.  Additionally, the game kept informing me on startup that the DB might be corrupted, and would I like to thoroughly check the DB.  So, what began as a 4 minute startup turned into a 10-15 minute startup.  This doesn't lend AoC well to the "okay, I've got a few minutes, let me login and play for a bit" mode that I can slip into.

Another annoyance is that the graphics settings would need to be tweaked on game startup.  I mean, every single freaking time.  At first I thought it was because I was stressing the graphics card so I backed off on the settings, but it still did it the next time I booted up.  Oh well.

I suppose I could talk about the Real Combat system, where combos are a succession of keys pressed in the correct order, but that's really secondary to the environment.  The thing that really struck me about combat wasn't the Real Combat system, but how mobs attack.  You attack one Pict in a village, and the others will step up and rally to his/her defense.  You don't take on a mob lightly, because they will swarm you and attack you intelligently:  take you from behind, stand at distance and conduct ranged attacks, and stay disciplined in their movement.  If you move to keep the mob in front of you, the mob won't just stand there passively:  it will respond to your movements to regain the upper hand.  While you do have heroic combat, it's definitely a "make 'em sweat" style of combat where two of the enemy at one time can be a dicey event.

On the whole, I like what Age of Conan is doing, and I'll probably play it a bit here and there.  It's not going to replace WoW by any means --I get the impression that Funcom is going to really restrict what is in the F2P area, above and beyond what LOTRO does-- but for a real Sword and Sorcery environment, it can't be beat.

Now, is it asking too much to have an MMO based on Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser?


*And don't think that people haven't done that either.  After a while I started to get annoyed at the people who had created female toons with names like "Goodforyou" and paraded them around the city.  By the end of the weekend, however, those sort of toons seemed to disappear as the crowd thinned, but still there was one guy in Trial chat who asked if he was "a bad man for checking out his Succubus' rack."

Gotta Keep 'em Separated

I've been reading some blog posts recently about player advancement, 5-man heroics, and progression raiding.

Priest With a Cause: An Annotated History of the Badge System
Blessing of Kings: The Root Problem
Blessing of Kings: Blocked Player Advancement

I've found the discussion interesting, particularly when you combine these articles with numerous PUG stories out there about overgeared toons behaving badly in Heroics.*

Now, I like Rohan's idea of removing Valor Points from the game, but the problem of overgeared toons running Heroics would still exist.  There is no need to run them from a gear standpoint, but that doesn't mean that you can't film an episode of Overgeared Toons Behaving Badly on a regular basis.  I can think of a few reasons why an overgeared toon would want to enter a 5-man Heroic anyway:  guild runs with guildies who aren't raid ready; mat runs farming DC-able gear and Chaos Orbs; and Justice Point farming runs, where a toon is farming JP to purchase heirlooms or convert the JP to Conquest Points (for PvP gear).

If the goal is to discourage badly behaving raiders from running random Heroics, isn't there a more direct method:  expanding the raid lockout to include heroics?  I'm not talking a daily lockout, but a weekly one.  Or better yet, if you enter a Cata raid, the lockout will include 5-man Heroics via the Dungeon Finder.  (Toons could still group up and enter a Heroic the old fashioned way via the meeting stone and instance entrance, however.)

Either suggestion is a very draconian method to keep the overgeared raiders away from the properly geared Heroic runners, but it does force one problem with this entire exercise into the limelight:  issue prioritization.

Which is the greater problem:

• Keeping bad apples out of 5-man Heroics
• Reducing wait times in 5-man Heroics

While some of us may see the former as the problem, Blizzard has voted with the latter and instituted the Call to Arms to encourage people (*cough* tanks and healers *cough*) to jump into randoms to alleviate long wait times.  But I'd argue that long wait times would discourage the asshats from queuing for instances in the first place, so why "fix" one problem when it exacerbates another?

Perhaps the solution to keeping the bad apples out is to increase the wait times for a random out of the Dungeon Finder, not reduce them.  If you queue for an instance run via the LFD tool, you have a minimum 30-45 minute wait.  No exceptions.  You end up getting the people who really want to be there, who will want to work out issues and setbacks in an instance run, while discouraging the jerks from entering.  The poorly behaved toons can still join groups, but their best chance of instance running is with a guild/friend group.

But what about the rewards for a guild runs?  Who'd want to have a guild run via the LFD with a wait like that?

Well, why restrict the daily LFD rewards to the LFD tool?  How about allowing a party to reap the same rewards via the traditional route:  entering via the meeting stone and traditional instance location.  Getting to an instance will be much quicker than the wait involved via the LFD tool, but would yield the same amount of rewards.  It also means that people will get out in the world a bit more, rather than loitering around Org or Stormwind.  Finally, it also means that people might just group up within the same server a bit more often, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.  (Okay, Rhii might have a different opinion on that, given her disastrous encounter with some puggees from her own server, but those asshats will eventually get their comeuppance.  Karma is a real bitch that way.)




*Of course, there are plenty of toons that behave badly no matter their gear.


EtA:  Yes,  I like The Offspring.  I couldn't justify using "Hit That" or "Pretty Fly" as the title of the post, tho.

Some Friday Humor

I'd always liked the Downfall parodies on YouTube, and was disappointed that they got yanked. Well, it seems that they're back, and better than ever. This particular one hits kind of close to home, since I play several Pallys as well as starting up a Warlock.  Be warned, there's some strong language, but nothing that you haven't heard in the heat of battle before.

It is... A Puzzlement!

Have you ever been in a run where you had to wonder what was going on in everyone else's heads?

I don't mean that in an asinine way, or even in a WTF OMG this-is-so-full-of-fail way, either.  Sometimes I feel like General Taylor in Good Morning Vietnam when he tells the Sergeant-Major that he's out of line:  "You're mean.  And this is just radio."

Last I checked, WoW was a game.  Sure, it can suck up a lot of your time, but no more than if you're a sports fanatic.  (Or a crafting fiend.)  But the thing is, in the end it's just a game.  It's supposed to be fun, and if you start acting out for no real reason, maybe it's time for you to take a bit of a break.

For example, I took my lowbie Warlock out for a spin yesterday and queued up for a random instance.  Out popped the new Shadowfang Keep.  SFK isn't the kindest place for casters due to line of sight issues, but I've done it before on Neve, so I figured this wasn't anything I couldn't handle.  To be honest, I needed the experience running through the renovated keep at-level before I get sucked into it in the Heroic queues, and I really needed to hammer out a rotation anyway.*

I was the only caster in a party which included a Pally tank and a Priest healer, with a Hunter and Warrior rounding out the DPS.  The instance began in typical fashion, with everyone exchanging greetings and buffing up.  After the first couple of trash pulls, however, one of the DPS asked if someone had a recount meter running.  While the healer posted the numbers, I mentioned that the DPS stats weren't going to mean much.  "They'll be all over the place," I said.

"Oh, I just want to see if my numbers are any better."

Okay, that's nice and all, but the surest way to improve your numbers if you're L19 is to get to L20.  I can understand the desire to maximize your rotation --hell, I was planning on tinkering with my rotation myself-- but asking for Recount numbers like that is a sneaky way of showing off your e-peen.

We kept winding our way through the keep, and I was bound and determined not to be a spell sink on the healer and kept my use of Life Tap to a minimum.  I'd run out of mana, and Life Tap just enough to get going again.  After several sessions of rinse-and-repeat, we downed one of the Bosses so I took a short break to drink my way up to full.  "Hang on a sec, mana," I said, noting that the healer sat down to drink too.

Did that stop the Draenei Pally?  Nope.  He kept right on going, as did the other two DPS.

The Warrior and Hunter overtook the Pally and took turns pulling instead.  I was starting to wonder when everything was going to hit the wall, but we reached the antechamber before what used to be Arugal's old hideout, and I realized the instance was at an end.

Then I got the pop-up saying that there was a vote to kick the Draenei Pally.  The reason?  "He does nothing."

I am not making that up.

Yes, because a Pally running full tilt through the instance wasn't fast enough for at least one person, there was a vote kick entered instead.

I voted no, and the measure failed.

What surprised me was that nobody complained about either the Pally's or the other DPS' behavior.  Typically, any of this would have set off at least something from someone, but people were tightlipped throughout the run.  Well, the only complaint anyone had at all was when my Warlock bit it at the end.  I was perched way up high atop the stairs, getting a great view for my DoTs and AoEs, when I got laid low by one of the last pistol barrages.**  "Stay behind him when he unleashes those," one of the other DPS snipped at me.

Whatever.

For some hours after my run through that instance, I still puzzled over it.  That wasn't a bad run, or a fail run, or even a nerd rage run, but what I couldn't really fathom were the motivating factors behind my puggees' behavior.

Nobody was from the same server, let alone the same guild, so that wasn't it.  The Draenei Pally was already tanking at breakneck speed before he got abruptly replaced by the other two DPS, and the Pally didn't say a word.  He was doing second most damage, so it's not like he was failing badly in that arena, either.***

I just wish I knew what the hell their motivation was.



*Yes, I'd read several of the guides online, but I believe that it's important to work some things out yourself.  Besides, I'd specced as Affliction, which isn't the best PvE spec out there.  For BGs, on the other hand...

**This is akin to the last boss in Vortex Pinnacle's instance-wide attack; even though I wasn't what would be considered the field of fire in any regular environment, Godfrey's attack apparently extends all the way to the roof.

***If anything, I was the one limping along with substandard DPS in my quest Whites and Greens.  But I also had the lowest level of the bunch. 

Friendship in the Age of the MMO

"We're a guild formed from RL friends..."


"We used to play with RL friends, but decided to strike out on our own..."


"If we join, we have some RL friends who might like to join too..."

If you've been around WoW long enough, you've seen entries like that describing guilds and players alike.  This isn't unique to WoW, of course; my experience with the Internet dates back to the 80's, and people would differentiate between real life (RL) friends and online/virtual friends as a matter of course.  Online friends were the equivalent of an electronic pen pal, only with a bit more instant gratification.  While nice, they were considered secondary to the people you met face-to-face. 

The convention has continued to this day, but I wonder if by now the convention has it wrong.

How often do you get online to play WoW?  Text/Tweet people?  Visit chatrooms/webcams?  Update Facebook?  And then, the obvious question:  how often do you spend time talking/hanging out with your RL friends?

You may not have all the visual cues that you get from a true face-to-face conversation, but for a lot of people their online friends are the real life friends.  The transient nature of a lot of jobs --especially in IT-- means that your coworkers may be in the cubicle next to you, or half a world away.  If you can work on a team with someone overseas, why is it so unusual to have a raiding buddy a continent away as a friend?

It isn't unusual at all.  Not anymore.

The world has shrunk, and tech --MMOs included-- has changed the dynamics of friendship.  As a shared activity, an MMO such as WoW fosters friendships where the common denominator is the game itself.

Of course, most in-game interactions are of the "polite stranger" or "general acquaintance" variety,* but it doesn't have to be.  Perhaps you hang with your guildies due to a shared goal, but after raiding with people three nights a week for months on end, are you so sure you've remained merely acquaintances?

I know people in my neighborhood who would think I was a special type of crazy for suggesting that online friendships should be given equal footing with RL ones.  "What sort of crackpot are you, anyway?" they'd ask, then go back to sitting in their garage, drinking their beer and discussing high school sports.**  But replace the garage with a computer, and sports with Tol Barad, and what do you have?

It's important to have perspective in all of this, but the one thing that I've been struck by time and again is that WoW friendships shouldn't take a back seat to anyone.***  Don't try to put the WoW friends into a little compartment and pretend that they're inferior to your "real" friends, because they aren't.



*Or the nerd rager type.  Or the OMG FAIL! type.  But I digress.

**Yes, that sort of thing really does happen in my neighborhood.  All the time.

***Well, except for your family.

Coming to Terms With My Outer Darkness

As has been well documented, I play several Paladins.  You know, the Goody Two Shoes of the WoW world.*  While the other ostensibly "good" class that draws power from Holy Light --the Priest-- has a Shadow Spec, the Paladin is free of any direct taint of Darkness.  They are the rigidly Lawful Good characters who embody what Roland, Saladin, and Perceval strove for.**  Not only pure of heart and mind, but able to kick some serious ass.

And they're also cloying.  The constant preaching of the Argent Crusade and from those who hang out in the Cathedral of Light can be grating on people.  Paladins have a reputation of being the sort of person that would stand side-by-side with you in a fight, but are too self-righteous to go hang with you at the World's End Tavern afterward.

So naturally it follows that I've started a Warlock toon.

If you thought that Paladins were on the uber-good end of the class listing, Warlocks have to be on the opposite end of the spectrum.  Whereas the Death Knight's intro story pretty much sets up their redemption at the Battle of Light's Hope Chapel, there isn't anything so warm and fuzzy about a class that revels in wielding "true power" and "secret knowledge".

The entire concept of the Warlock as a playable class kind of flies in the face of the current World of Warcraft setting.  With Guldan and the Shadow Council no longer in charge of the Horde, Warlocks would be persona-non-grata in official Horde circles.  Yes, there is still an undercurrent of approval and "those were the good old days" in the Horde, but all that time spent fighting against the Burning Legion in Outland would have driven that sentiment deeper underground.  The only official place --Cataclysm Era-- where the philosophy of "I don't care where it came from but I'm going to throw it all against you" would find a home is in Sylvanas' camp.

As for the Alliance, there's even less of a reason why a Warlock is a playable class.  The Alliance fought not only the Burning Legion but the old Horde, and if there's any class that the Alliance would despise more than the Warlock, I'm not sure what it would be.  Yes, I know that there are always people who are tempted by power, but when WoW tries to set your toon up as a hero, a Warlock is typically not what the general populace has in mind.

Considering all that, I felt distinctly uncomfortable when Genn Greymane and Co. would call my new toon an 'old friend' and a 'hero' during the Gilneas starting zone.  "Hello?  Can't you see the Imp following along behind me?  Doesn't that make you just a WEE bit uneasy, Your Majesty?"

Dominating members of the Burning Legion like a Warlock does is splitting hairs.  Really.  You can't look at the Warcraft universe and say "well, they may be demons, but they're on our side."  To paraphrase Azrael from the movie Dogma, "But they're f@$#-ing demons!"  Warlocks are playing with the worst kind of fire, WoW-verse speaking, and I am surprised that Blizz doesn't tweak things a bit so that they are more obviously shunned a bit more.***

In spite of all that, Warlocks are a bit refreshing.  Most people --virtual or real-- tend to hide their dark secrets.  Locks put their own Darkness right out on display.  Hell, they'd probably charge admission if they thought they could get away with it, in their own Ray Bradbury-esque dark circus.

So playing a Warlock --especially in an RP environment-- is all about power and domination.

***

Of course, that's not the reason why everybody plays a Lock.  Some of us are in it for the DoTs.

If you've ever been in a BG, you know what it's like to have someone out of melee range dump several DoTs on you, then sit back and laugh --or maybe cast a Fear-- while you bleed to death.  If you're lucky and you're playing a class that can dispel those DoTs, you'll end up wasting time dispelling them while there's a Warrior or Kitty Druid beating on you.  Having been on the receiving end of that tactic enough times, I finally decided that I'd had enough and I want some of that too.  After all, how hard could it be?

Um....

If you come from a melee or Hunter/Mage background, harder than you think.

The hardest thing I had to deal with during the Worgen intro zone was the waiting.  Your direct attacks aren't that powerful, so you have to wait for the accumulation of those DoTs to have the desired impact.  I suppose I could run around, kiting the enemy, but that could be disastrous if I ran in the wrong direction.  So there you are, clad in cloth armor, watching some enemy wail on you.  It's only when you finally get a Voidwalker minion that you have a viable mini-tank to take the pressure off.

But that leads into the second hardest thing as a Lock, and that's the accumulation of threat from all those DoTs.  Threat spikes have always been the bane of DPS, but you can mitigate some of the danger of threat spikes by slowing down your rotation.  With DoTs, however, you don't have any sort of control once you cast your spell; your only option is to determine whether or not to cast that DoT in the first place.  Finding a way to control threat in this back handed manner is probably where a lot of Locks fall down in instances.

So, what's up for the little furball of Evil now?

I'm going to keep him questing through Darkshore, and now that he's high enough level to queue for Ragefire Chasm, I'm going to find out how Warlock dynamics work in an instance setting.

Oh, and of course I'll queue up for Warsong Gulch.  I can't resist giving the old DoT/Fear trick a whirl!



*Blood Knights notwithstanding.  And Lady Liadrin, the Blood Knight Matriarch, has since corrected things during her audience with A'dal in Shattrath City.

**Yes, I know that Roland is the chief paladin of Charlemagne's court, that Perceval was a literary construct, and Saladin was more complex than his Medieval admirers believed.  Give a guy a break, will ya?

***Even though it's not in the WoW-verse, there ought to be a chance, however small, that the demon would break free from your control and turn on you.  I'd tweak it such that the likelihood of a demon breaking free from your control goes up when you get into a fight; after all, your toon is under increased pressure, so naturally something bound against its will would try to break free when you're distracted.


EtA:  Warlocks are a class, not race.   That'll teach me to not write and edit early in the morning.

Go go go!

My guild and I have made some pretty steady progress recently on the raiding front, and we're close to getting 11/12.


I have enjoyed the raiding content so far in the game, but we're really feeling the pressure to down all of the current content before it gets nerfed to oblivion in patch 4.2.

We're pretty casual - only raiding 6 hours over two days each week.  Only raiding so little time each week usually leaves us limited time to get attempts in on final bosses, but it all works out.

Wish us luck as we push to get everything down!

WoW in Popular Culture, Part Whatever

Yes, I've been around (so has Soul and Ehna), but I've been very busy at work and home.  But yes, there are new blog posts coming.

In the meantime, here's today's Working Daze comic:

Atari to Sell the Maker of Star Trek: Online

Apparently Atari's Cryptic Studios has lost $25 million the past two years, and therefore they're looking for buyers.

Gamespot: Atari Unloading Cryptic Studios

What We Need NOW

After having seen the proliferation of "these" sorts of games....

It only makes sense what ought to be developed next.

LEGO  World of Warcraft!

Attack of the Pug

One nice side effect of the reduced queue time for Tol'vir has been the return of the pug story.  Sure, I've got BG stories that are more interesting than your typical nerd rage variety, but I'd missed a good old fashioned pug tale.  There's something compelling about a group that puts the 'fun' in dysfunctional, making you grateful for your blissfully silent instance run.

My first couple of runs through Tol'vir were uneventful.  I'd prepared ahead of time in much the same fashion as people study raid videos, but of course that didn't stop me from making a few boo-boos.  Once I settled in, I got the feel of how the instance flowed, and got to watch group dynamics in action.  There was the tank who thought that the party could bypass the Croc boss, but that wasn't anything major.  On the whole, people were efficient and courteous, pointing out what to do where without so much whining.  I was starting to wonder if all the nuts had migrated to Cata heroics when I entered Tol'vir as Tomakan, proceeded to buff folks, and watched as the first pull turned into an adventure when the tank dropped.

Two of us were L85, so even if we weren't geared for Heroics we were able to put the trash down without anyone biting it.  "That was annoying," I said.

"Very," the healer replied.  "If he didn't like the instance, he could have dropped before we started."

So we waited. 

Five minutes later, a new tank zoned in and decided she wanted to go in the opposite direction.  So we reversed course and took out a few more groups of trash.

"I've gotta be honest," one of the DPS piped up.  "I'm only here for the rep.  Once I ding Exalted, I'm outta here."

"That sucks," the tank replied, and dropped.

Another DPS dropped as well.

"Thanks a lot, asshat," the healer griped to the DPS.

I had really nowhere to go, so I waited.  Tol'vir is quick enough of an instance --think SM:Library, Blood Furnace, or Utgarde Keep-- so I figured that it'd take even longer to requeue than go grab some coffee and wait for two replacements.

About 8-10 minutes later, a DPS and a third tank zoned in and we continued our run.  This time, the tank was a touch overeager on trash, attempting to pull multiple packs until the healer chastised him.  "If I don't have mana, you don't get healed," she said.

Things went well until the last boss.  On one of the DPS' request, the healer sketched out the strategy:  kill the ads, then in the second phase go after the boss.  So what did the DPS do when the fight started?  Went straight for the boss and managed to get himself killed via the deflections.  Luckily, the lack of DPS didn't mean a wipe, but it did mean that dropping that last boss took a lot longer.

***

That Tol'vir run wasn't the only one where being L85 came in handy.

I tried branching out on instances and queued for Vortex Pinnacle, but the 35 minute queue time was more like what I expected with Cata instances. 

Quintalan zoned in --remember him?  Blood Knight, about so tall, red hair, last seen taking a vacation on a park bench in Dalaran-- and listened in to the basics about the instance given by the Mage.  "...and you have to get in under that triangle before he starts his attack," he was saying, "otherwise it's instant death."

"And don't try to release and run back during the fight," I added.  "His attack is instance-wide.  Don't ask how I know that."

That earned a round of chuckles.

The first couple of pulls went okay, although there was a tendency to keep attacking the air elementals that were added for "flavor".  That's about all I can say about the elementals that see you and vanish without invoking my extensive vocabulary of profanity.  The first boss fight went well, but one of the DPS dropped off the platform instead of clicking on the whirlwind to move to the next section of the instance.  Oh well.

Then things began to get tricky.  Right before the first drake, the healer expressly said to the L82 warrior tank to "pull [the drake] out of the heal zone."  Well, the tank pulled, and then stopped with the drake half in and half out.

"Pull him!" the healer cried.

The tank kept the drake stationary, and then bit it.

I cursed, slapped on Righteous Fury, and started tanking.  The drake dropped, and the healer rezzed the tank.  Properly chastened, the tank proceeded to dutifully pull the next drake out of the heal zone without a problem.

Then we got to the section with the Neferset lackeys.

The first pull there, the tank ran in without marking or requesting that the Neferset healers be sheeped.  After realizing that the tank wasn't concentrating on the healer at all, I pulled off of the tank and started dropping as many interrupts as I could on the Neferset healer.

"Let me sheep him!" the Mage cried.

"Okay...."  I peeled away and stepped back.  "I'm off.  Go for it."  I remembered to breathe when I saw Mr. Lion Man become a friendly little lamb on the ground.  As is typical, once the healer went down, the rest of the mob followed suit. 

The Mage then rounded on the tank.  "Next time, let me sheep the Healer first; they have to be CCed or this takes forever."

"Got it."

Well, the tank didn't quite get it, because on the last of those packs he bit it again.  Because he didn't wait for the Healers to be sheeped, I got to play tank again.  All I can say is thank goodness for Lay on Hands.

I did not have a good feeling heading into the final boss, but I comforted myself in the knowledge that we'd covered all this beforehand.

Silly me.

On the first Supremacy of the Storm cast, the tank stayed outside the grounding field, and...

I knew the drill by then.  Slap on Righteous Fury and start spamming stuff to keep my threat up.  When there's a Mage in your party with more health than you, you know that there's a good chance that you'll lose threat, especially with the way Ret is specced these days.  You simply don't have the tools (or mana) to swing tanking for long stretches.  However, I don't think I lost threat more than twice in that fight, and each time Hand of Reckoning dragged the boss back my way.  I don't know exactly what that healer did, but whatever it was worked:  he kept myself, the Mage, and himself upright throughout the rest of the fight.

The Mage was thoroughly disgusted with the way things went that he quickly passed on the two items and dropped group.  I can't say I blame him.

iLevels and Deception

For most people out there, this particular rant doesn't apply to them.  They leveled, they ran normals, then got enough gear for heroics.  (Hell, who am I kidding?  They're way past that now, deep into raid progression.)

The average WoW player probably grumped at bit about iLevels and the restrictions for the heroics, or they had heroic pugs where at least one puggee griped about an undergeared party member.

I, obviously, didn't follow the normal progression.

Due to time restrictions, I leveled, skipped instances entirely, and concentrated on battlegrounds.  After running BGs for about a month or two (and crafting gear), I've gotten enough PvP gear on Tom and Neve to be able to jump straight into heroics, almost completely bypassing the Cata normals.  If I work on my PvP gear for another couple of weeks, it's entirely possible I could queue for Zul'Aman and Zul'Gurub without having set foot in a single Cata heroic.

And I'm here to say that isn't right.

The point of the iLevel restrictions for heroics and the 4.1 instances are to make sure that the players have a fighting chance in those instances.  Whether you get the gear by crafting, running normals, or the auction house, once you get into one of these instances the gear shouldn't be what holds you back.  But PvP gear, by it's very nature, will do just that.

I've said before that to run a BG you don't need PvP gear, and I stick to that assessment.  Regular BGs have a hodgepodge of people with all sorts of quality gear --from Cata greens to full Gladiator sets-- and anybody can join in.  However, if you want to run Heroics --and, more importantly, tank or heal in them-- the reverse won't be true.

The emphasis on Resilience (and gemming for spell penetration) hurts PvP gear when you run PvE content.  Sure, you can compensate with skill, and iL PvP gear that is far higher than your PvE gear will be better overall, but if your gear has similar iL, PvP gear will be inferior to PvE gear in PvE content.

And that doesn't address the overall problem of bypassing most of the content to get to the latest PvE stuff.

I'd like to see Blizz fix this issue by dividing the iL into PvP and PvE tracks, much like how the gearscore app has evolved over time.  PvP gear won't count toward your PvE iLevel, and vice versa.  Or at least have a requirement like Magister's Terrace, where to unlock the Heroic mode you have to have run the normal instance to completion at least once.  For the Zandalari Heroics, I'd suggest that having run at least half of the Cata Heroics would suffice, although by the time you get enough PvE gear to get into the Z-H's, you'll probably already have the Cataclysm Dungeon Hero achievement.

As for me, I'm not planning on using my PvP gear to sneak into Heroics.  I know better; just because you've got the gear doesn't mean you can slide by.    I also don't want to misrepresent my guilds this way, either.*  I've discovered that normal Tol'vir has both a small queue wait and a short run time, so I've been spending some PvE time there, but when I get around to it, I'll expand my PvE immersion.  But not until I feel that my PvE gear has gotten good enough will I walk into a Heroic.



*I believe that when you affiliate yourself with a guild, you represent that guild when you're out in Azeroth.  It's just like in the real world, where you wear a shirt with a university or sports team or company on it, people will judge the name behind that moniker by your actions.  It's not fair, but it happens.  In Azeroth, if you behave like an ass, people will judge your guild and your server accordingly.


EtA: My last comment about Zandalari Heroics disappeared into the interwebs, so I had to go fix it.