Release Date Finalized

Cataclysm will drop on Pearl Harbor Day --December 7th-- this year.

Let the countdown commence!!

EtA:  Thanks for this goes to a fellow guildie, who found it and posted it first on her own blog.

Lag spike

As this expansion wanes down, I'm finding myself more and more in the position of raid leader.  This is not something I've got much experience doing, nor am I particularly comfortable doing so.  That being said, however, I've been curious about how to approach performance related topics during raids.  And even more importantly, when should a raid leader overlook a mistake?

Now, if I remember back to previous guilds I have been a raider in, I've got a wide variety of leadership at both ends of the spectrum.  I've had a former Marine who's now a highway patrolman, and a female college student who just wanted to have fun in game.

The former Marine, as you can imagine, was a gigantic, complete, and utter dick at times.  Ok, well most of the time.  He was hard-core.  He was a former raider in everquest, and we all know from the glory stories every everquest player has how much this entitles him as a badass.  His approach to when a member of the raid messed up was to halt the raid, and wait for the guilty to fess up and apologize - sometimes 15 minutes would pass.  He'd be nerd raging into vent, and once somebody spoke up, he shifted back to being a less-vocal dickhead.

He could give this guy a run for his money...
(Warning - offensive language and mildly offensive crudely done animations)


I think most rational people would not put up with that leadership style for very long, however.

This one the other hand seems much more friendly.  The raid leaders pick a cartoon voice to imitate, and this video features Mickey, Goofy, and one of the South Park kids.  It gets the job done and guild members get a good laugh out of it.
(Warning - also contains some offensive language)


So I'm trying to find a balance between the two, and figure out what, when, and how to approach things like members standing in a fire or hitting killing spree right before a mechanic that requires you to move and subsequently kills you.

This type of problem wouldn't exist, however, if players took more responsibility on themselves to learn fights and positioning.  If a mistake was made, call yourself out on it, apologize, learn from it and move on.  What ever you do, don't blame lag or some odd non-existent bug that got you killed when your character is clearly not lagging - you just messed up.  And it's OK to admit it - faking reasons why the situation was beyond your control to avoid the clearly avoidable encounter mechanic just makes your fellow guild members lose respect for you.

That being said, I'd like to hear a few grand stories of how you've wiped an entire raid.  Here's one of mine:

I'm on my way on my vanilla raiding character (rogue) to my second ever time in ZG, and I get to see new bosses I've never seen before.  I was so excited.  I zoned in, asked where the group was and they had just killed the tiger boss and were handing out loot.  I had no clue where the tiger boss was.  I just mounted up and followed the path of destruction and eventually found them right as they were coming down the ramp out of the tiger area.  I realized as rode up, however, I somehow got aggro on a pack the group must not have killed, because I had a nice little train of mobs following me... So I vanished to hopefully lose aggro.  Nope- they went straight for Mr. former Marine.  As you can imagine this set him off with the quickness - it was rather funny though.  "Who the F was that!? I know it was a rogue!  I SAW YOU VANISH!"

Pimp My Purse

Howdy, my fighting, fearless friends. As this is my first post among you, let me introduce myself as a quiet, gentle mage who farms mats late into the night, wades through Dalaran sewers in search of wayward potions of Tuskar proportions, and enjoys walks on the beach preferably with someone I like.

With that said, let us begin with a topic near and dear to my heart--money.

Yes, we females love money. Mostly because one can find satisfaction without all the necessary gibber jabber other things require. But don't fret you fine specimens of testosterone. Even male orcs can be sexy too. Think of it, you in Cataclysm with your 310 mount all paid for by your economic virility and her perched on top of Deathwing Lair waiting for someone to give her the ride of her life. Yes, that can be you with a pimped out mount carrying a heavy purse and hot babe. To prove it, I'm going to include a video where not only can green pectorals be entertaining, but said pectorals can actually induce undulating monetary ecstasy by simply following this fellow-blogger's direction on how to make gold with Jewelcrafting and Enchanting in less than 10 minutes. You read that right. 10 minutes!

Alas, there is one thing that is critical...well, two things: 1) use the tools he recommends, and 2) timing is of the essence.

First, macros and add-ons take much of the work and simplifies it similar to a microwave is to hot pockets. He provides links to the add ons and instructions for macros.

Second, timing, timing, timing... It can't be said enough. With Cataclysm around the corner, you want to make sure items like epic gems are sold now. Make sure they're cut and make sure to use cuts people would want to buy (i.e., haste/spellpower, strength, spellpower, etc.). The blue quality gems sell best uncut, frankly. I know he has a few cut, but honestly you can make a lot more selling them as mats for professions and more so right after Cataclysm comes out. Remember, people will be leveling their worgens/goblins, so they will seek the Auction House for mats to level their professions.

Okay, this may not be the magey-goodness you expect, but you can't deny its yumminess. Nosiree. Like me, you too will drool and gasp in awe as you learn how to make 1,500 gold a day spending only 10 minutes of your life in the game. Say it with me... YEAH, BABY!

Stay tuned for my next installment, where I discuss "How to contend with burnt-hair-smell as a fire mage in Cataclysm."

Woo! Happy Birthday to PC

Yep, we're coming up on our first year anniversary on Sept 29th!

I'd like to thank my co-poster Redbeard, and even though Satyana has been MIA from the blog for a while, I'd like to thank her for her contributions as well.

And most importantly I'd like to thank the readers and the wonderful people who take the time to reply.

I wasn't so sure we'd be as successful as we have been. 

And I'd also like to welcome our newest contributing poster!  Welcome to Ehna!  I'll let her do her own introduction, but I believe she'll make a great addition to the team!

I'm looking forward to all of the topics Cataclysm will bring out, and all of the exciting changes in store!

Intentionally handicapping gameplay

There's all sorts of ways players intentionally inhibit themselves, and I'd like to touch on a few that have bugged me recently.

Character control

We've been running Ulduar 10 hard modes in an effort to acquire a 310% mount before Cataclysm is released.  A few members of the guild are very very close to getting Glory of the Ulduar Raider finished
up.  I, myself, am only lacking one achievement, which we just attempted for the first time last night and got three solid attempts in - making it to phase two of Yogg'Saron +1.

Doing these hard modes makes me realize a few things.  There is NO WAY a keyboard turner can complete some of these achievements.  You just can't... 

Case in point, we have a few players in our guild who actually DO keyboard turn. (I find this to be more prevalent on PVE servers where you can lazily run around with out having to look for incoming attacks).  And we struggled for three nights on Firefighter.  One of our tanks happens to keyboard turn.  So when shock blast is about to go off, he turns, starts to run and promptly drops dead.  And that same player has to execute a left turn, forward run, right turn just to dodge cold flame on Marrowgar.

/facepalm.  Ok, fine I guess I won't get to try out my new pve fury dps spec.  Back to tanking...

And another quick pet peeve... if you have to run from something, RUN.  Don't backpedal, don't keyboard turn yourself around - use the mouse to turn and then strafe (you can still move at full speed doing this) or just quickly face the opposite way and run your happy ass out of the bad stuff.

Socially
 This is a multiplayer game at its core.  Sure, you CAN do most things in the game solo, but for all of the good stuff (raids, pvp, dungeons) you will need to interact with people.  The best way to do this is find a guild.

But you don't want to join a guild because you're not good enough?  How do you expect to improve on your gameplay?  It doesn't just happen naturally

For example, you learn very very quickly not to use Hand of Reckoning in a group setting if you're not the tank.  A new player would assume that this spell does damage and it's OK to use in your rotation.  And that new player would never change his mind if he were not exposed to a group environment where you learn how to properly apply your class skills.


Beyond that, you make new friends and acquaintances.  Developing your social skills are good, albeit they're internet social skills...

Having friends in the game can really help motivate you, too.  I probably wouldn't have finished out my nether drake on my warrior (third nether drake grind now) were it not for a friend wanting to do it and joining up with him.  And we're even working on getting random reputations built up - things I never though I'd do.  Because frankly... it sucks.  Rep grinds just are NOT fun.  However, having a friend there to idly chat with and crack jokes really doesn't make it so bad.


Mentally


"I've seen everything there is to see in the game because I'm a hard core raider and there's nothing left for me here."  Or perhaps, "I've played this game since launch - it sucks.  Xyz new game will kill warcraft."  Or even "This will be my last blog post for a while, I've just lost interest in playing the game."


BULL SHIT.


I hate that sort of overly dramatic whiny nonsense.  Get over yourself.  There's nothing left for you in game?  That's fine, to each his own.  But I don't care to read about how bad you think the expansion will be and how your flavor of the month class is going to be nerfed and you can't figure out what the next class of the month will be.


SHOW SOME ORIGINAL THOUGHT.  There's tons of stuff to do in the game.  Level an alt, try out the other faction, finish leveling out your trade skills, play at the auction house, pick an achievement and try to get it.


I'm tired of reading about people who are stuck in the pre-expansion lull and whine about it.  This is the first time where end game as been so readily available to the average player.  Have you conquered all of the raids and dungeons in the game to date?  If not, find a group and set to it.  


Say you have actually conquered everything in game as far as raid / dungeon content goes.  That's fine too.  Pick a raid achievement and get it done.  You'll get a spiffy reward.  And you may even have fun doing so.


Don't get yourself stuck in a rut where you focus on the negative.  

So the moral of the story is: Nobody likes a negative nancy, level 72 death knights, or gnomes.

A Cure for the Common Ganker

I started writing this post about two or three times before I decided I wasn't going to write about pugs.  I could return to my regularly scheduled grumblings another time, but this post will be pug-free. 

(You're off the hook, Mr. "Gnomer-is-so-boring-and-I-spend-so-much-time-yawning-that-I-forget-to-tank.")

I was on Neve, working on some quests in Hillsbrad while waiting for the LFD queue, when a thought struck me.  "You know," I said to a fellow guildie, "this has to be the first time I've leveled in Hillsbrad without constantly looking over my shoulder."

Old PvP habits die hard.  When I first showed up with Neve in Hillsbrad, several months ago, I was completely unnerved by the Alliance characters just blithely passing me on the road.  After having spent my formative WoW years on a PvP server, I was used to ganking as a way of life.  If you were out farming for ore, you kept a close eye on your surroundings before you stopped and picked that nugget of Iron up.  Even when you got flying in Outland and Northrend, that meant you had to watch the skies as well as the ground.  You could be out questing at 3 AM server time --Stormscale is a Pacific Time Zone server and I live in the Eastern Time Zone-- and found yourself caught from behind while working your way through Stromgarde Keep.  After a while, you get twitchy when you go through different locales, wondering where the next attack is coming from.

Switching to a PvE server does help eliminate that inherent nervousness, but I think what really helped in the long run was leveling on the Alliance side.  No, I'm not talking about some great kumbaya moment about how we're all one great happy family, but rather going out and leveling in unfamiliar places.  Redridge Mountains.  Darkshore.  Dun Morogh.  Loch Modan.  Wetlands.  Westfall.  Azuremyst and Bloodmist.  All of those places are strange territory to this Hordie, and the lack of opposing faction toons finally allowed me to relax and enjoy the environment.

After that experience in low-ish level areas, returning to Hillsbrad on Neve was almost a non-event.  I saw a few Alliance toons heading up to Alterac, but since I didn't have the PvP flag turned on, there was nobody to worry about.

Except for the fellow Hordies who thought that Neve needed company or something to protect her from the big bad Murlocs.

Now, if I could only figure out how to attack people on my own faction....

Whispers in the Dark

Have you ever had that feeling where people are talking about you behind your back?  Perhaps you developed that sense in middle school, when rumors could sweep through your classmates before you even knew what happened.  Or maybe you were clueless then, but in office politics you have to keep an ear to the ground, lest you be swept aside by some conniving young punk a few cubicles down.

In real life, that feeling is often accompanied by the looks you get from others while they're huddled together.  WoW, however, doesn't have that visual cue.  You have to rely upon actions or words instead.

Before you ask, I don't intend to talk about guild drama.  There's enough posts out there on the subject by other bloggers that you don't need me to chime in.  And to be honest, I avoid guild drama like the plague.  Sure, I like to know the whys behind a move within the guild, but that doesn't mean I want to inject myself into the drama.

What I meant was in relation to instances.  In raids, you have Vent (or equivalents), but not in a regular old 5-man pug.  Maybe in a heroic Northrend instance you expect silence, but in the lower level instances you expect people to talk, to say they need to drink, and to discuss strategy.  Unless the entire group is composed of people at the high end of the level range, you simply aren't OP enough to wing it.  And if people start doing some bizarre behavior, you can bet that there's some discussion going on behind the scenes.

Take a recent experience in Maraudon, for example.  Thankfully, Blizz cut Maraudon into chunks for LFD, which makes it easier to run.  This particular run was the Orange Crystals wing, which ends at Razorlash, and the party consisted of three guildies from another server (tank, healer, and hunter DPS), a lock, and Tomakan (me).

The first sign of trouble was when the lock and hunter died a couple of trash pulls in.  From what I could tell, the hunter pulled aggro on some of the mob, and that subsection of the mob killed both of them.  I kept expecting the Warrior tank to yank the mob back, but he instead he pressed on.  I rezzed the lock, the healer rezzed the hunter, and the two guildies ran on to catch up with the tank while the lock and I drank.

I expected something to be said in party chat by then, but it was eerily silent.

We got to the oozes and dispatched them without much issue.  The tank headed left to the next trash, and I engaged just as I realized that there was nobody else behind us.

The other three had engaged the oozes on the right instead.

By the time we got back to the others and finished off the oozes, the lock had died again.  The healer rezzed the lock and then ran on ahead with the rest while the lock and I drank.  I don't know what was going on in the lock's head, but I was detecting a pattern.  The healer was behaving more like DPS, and I was spending some of my mana keeping both myself and the tank upright.  I checked the roles, and yeah, the healer wasn't me.

What was more worrisome was that the tank seemed blissfully unconcerned about trying to pull back aggro when someone else acquired it.  I know all about the "you yank it, you tank it" concept, but this was different.  At one point, I got aggro and I popped Hand of Salvation and stopped hitting, but I kept aggro.  I bubbled, and I still kept aggro.  Standing there in the middle of the mob with nowhere to go and waiting for my threat to go down was an exercise in frustration, especially when the hunter was also pulling aggro, the tank seemed to be on auto attack, and the healer was jumping around and popping Holy Nova.

Somehow, we made it to the end and defeated Razorlash.  I was typing in my standard "thanks for the group" when the tank and hunter ran onward, obviously going to Celebras.  Whatever, I thought, and followed along.  I could use the extra XP, after all.

Well, Celebras wasn't the end.  The tank and his guildies kept going, and it was obvious by now that they wanted to take out Theradras herself.  I hadn't signed on for this, and the only time party chat was used was when the lock died for the third time and the healer said "I'm not rezzing you any more."

"Send me a heal now and then," the lock replied.

I grimaced and kept going.  I could have taken the easy way out and dropped, but I wasn't going to leave the lock alone with these clowns.  Besides, their asshatery hadn't really risen to my "I'm dropping group" threshold.  The mobs got tougher, and they started getting silence effects.  The way the healer was jumping around and attacking meant he was well within range for being silenced, and I knew it was a matter of time before the mobs got big enough for us to wipe.  Right at a choke point that happened; the tank pulled two groups, and about 20 seconds later that was that.

Almost immediately the three guildies dropped.

Maybe they just did it on a spur of the moment, but to the lock and myself it sure felt like they were leading us on until we both bit it.

"They had to be on Vent together," I told the lock.

"How so?"

"There was no way they were working all this without there being a chat going.  And since nobody paused to type, they had to be on Vent."

"I think they had it out for me.  The priest hardly healed me at all."

"He hardly healed anybody.  I was healing the tank as much as he was."

"Crap."

I now know why some people cringe when they see several people from the same guild in a LFD pug.  If they're talking on Vent, doing their own thing, then they're not really participating in the group.  This ain't exactly a formula for success, especially when you're one of the people being ignored.

How do you fix it?  Be more open.  Don't play like this is a private club.  If it were, you wouldn't need extra puggees, right?  On the flip side, don't ding and drop.  People hate that, and it gives your guild and your server a bad name.

In short, don't make a pug run into all about you.  It's a team, remember?