Which puts me in a bit of a bind, since technically I’m still an officer member of a 25-man raiding guild on the Alliance side on my Death Knight, but I can’t raid 25s because they’re on the weekend, I can’t really raid 10s for two more weeks because I’m going to be working basically until raid start time (and after that I’m going to want to fall over dead into bed, and the raids are a bit too late for that), and frankly the idea of logging in to throw myself at Arthas in 10s during the week kind of makes me want to not log in at all.

Hence why I put myself as tentative for the next two weeks of raids. I even feel bad about doing that; Caffeine has had a bit of a top-level shakeup lately, and I can’t help but feel I’m somewhat abandoning the new GM and other officers… but I can’t even bring myself to log in.

This weekend, for instance, I:

• went to a used bookstore (and bought $36 worth of paperbacks)
• played Persona 3 Portable, Dragon Quest IX, and Team Fortress 2
• watched Warehouse 13 (thank God it’s back)
• thought about logging into WoW, then didn’t

I didn’t really get that end-of-expansion burnout thing at the end of TBC, but by God, I’m feeling it now.

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A touch of burnout

I feel certain a few accounts will be canceled (as I’ve seen a number of people say they’ll do), and voting with your wallet is perfectly acceptable. I want to say that I think the forums will also be a deserted wasteland and everyone will flock somewhere else, like maybe the Wowhead forums, but I don’t think for a second that will actually happen. The forums will still be populated by vast quantities of people who just don’t care about it enough to not post. However, it won’t have some of the valuable stuff that is there, and we’ll probably end up looking elsewhere for it.

As for me, I’ll probably be staying off the forums regardless. I rarely needed to post there before (and mostly in Technical Support when I did), and I don’t see much changing in Cataclysm. Unless, of course, this thing where I crash every time I log out (or get disconnected!) doesn’t have a solution by then.

TL;DR: I can’t say I’m happy with their decision, and while it doesn’t affect me because I choose to not post on the forums, it will probably affect others negatively and I understand why they’d choose to boycott it as they see fit.

Other views: Pewter, Miss Medicina, Chas, Ratshag, Byaghro, Myze. Comments are off in case this non-post somehow gets linked from wow.com and their Troll Squad arrives again.

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Weighing in on the forum Real ID issue

I was going to write an actual post about numbers and the top 5 specs for each class from data mined from the top 20 PvE guilds in the world, but instead, I’m going to just put this all down so I don’t have to type it over and over and over again.

But I have to hand out my email!

Once. From the Real ID FAQ, yes, you have to hand out your email to someone you know in order for them to real-ID-friend you. (There really needs to be a convenient way to verb that.) Furthermore, it’s not automatic friending, so if you see a name you don’t recognize trying to friend you? Deny the request. The other person is never notified of that. Got an asshole ex trying to friend you on Real ID? Deny the request. Got someone trying to friend you that you just plain don’t want to know the identity of all your alts? Deny the request. If someone puts in an incorrect email address, or their request is declined, the requester is never notified. If you have a friend who constantly has keyloggers or has been hacked or what-have-you, don’t give that person your email address to begin with. Or make them give you their email address. It’s common sense. Why don’t more people have it?

But then my email address is saved in their client forever and ever!

Incorrect. From the Real ID FAQ, mutual Real ID friends (and their Real ID friends) will see your first and last name, as well as what character you’re on, what zone you’re in, and the special Real ID stuff like status messages and presence. It explicitly states in the FAQ that your Battle.net email address is not displayed in the Real ID friends list.

But you said friends of friends! HAX OMG

Shut the hell up. From the Real ID FAQ (do you see a trend yet?), yes, when you click on a friend, you can see the names of their friends, so if you have mutual acquaintances, you can quickly friend them. However, since your battle.net email is never displayed in the Real ID friends list, you don’t know your friend-of-friend’s email, and they don’t know yours. You don’t have to hand out your email, they don’t get to know your email, and it’s easy to make friends. If you don’t know who this person is who’s trying to friend you? Deny the request.

But what if they harass me?!

I bet you see where this is going. From the Real ID FAQ, not only can you contact a GM – just like if any other player was harassing you – you can block individuals from communicating with you anywhere on battle.net.

But even after you assuaged all my fears, I still don’t want to use it!

Fine.

Don’t.

What, do you think there’s more to it than that? If you don’t want to use Real ID, don’t approve any Real ID friend requests. If you opt in then later decide you want to opt out, remove all Real ID friends from your lists. Friendship is a two-way street on Real ID (unlike WoW in general), and if you remove someone, they don’t see you anymore.

Guess where I got that information?

If all else fails, you can turn on Parental Controls. They’ll be updated to disallow Real ID.

The TL;DR Version

• People you are Real ID friends with do see your first and last name (the ones set up as your primary contact in battle.net).
• People you are Real ID friends with do see your character, realm, and zone.
• People you are Real ID friends with do see what game you are playing – WoW and Starcraft II support Real ID right now. You can safely assume Diablo III will as well.
• People who you would like to be Real ID friends do need your email address once, or you will need theirs once.
• People you are Real ID friends with do not see your email address in their friends list, nor do you see theirs.
• Friends of people you are Real ID friends with do not see your email address in their friends-of-friends list, nor do you see theirs.
• Read the FAQ before you start freaking out next time, internet.

Worst case scenario: someone finds out your real name, and it turns out it’s your boss, and he notices both of you are signed on during work. Whoops!

Let’s stop the pointless panic and the rumormongering, folks. Let’s save the panic for actual crisis scenarios, when things are actually wrong, and stop the "ZOMG HORRIBLE IDEA" righteous indignation over Real ID.

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Real ID: here’s some info, now stop with the righteous indignation

Damn it, DeathwBZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ.

(Inspired by Frost is the NBBBBBZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ, where you can learn how to turn your Horn of Winter into a vuvuzela.)

BZZZZZZZ well, my friends.

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BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

Yeah, I’m going to pick on warriors. I’ve been running instances from the teens up through the high 20s on Rhododendron and Brynhild, and while occasionally you’ll get something like Softi’s hunter with a growling, aggressive pet, or someone DPSing in Ragefire Chasm in bearform (because they don’t have cat yet, and evidently missed that part of the pesky tooltip for Maul (Rank 1) that says it causes high amounts of threat), the biggest issue I’ve had has been with warriors. Absolutely. Idiotic. Warriors.

Our latest shining winner, Darca of Drak’thul, ended up in a Stockades run with us after one of our DPS unexpectedly had to go, shortly before fighting Bazil. No, not Basil, Bazil. (Side note: Stocks sucks as Horde. The only thing I get out of it? Lots of wool.) Shoulda known something was up when as soon as she zoned in, she ran directly to the first mob in front of her, hit it with her sword, and Thunderstomped. Pardon me… what? Feral Faerie Fire, Growl, quit stealin’ mah mobs.

So we got to the three-way room before Bazil, and I couldn’t remember if it was him or Dextren Ward that has the fear (spoiler: it’s Dextren), so we went to clear the side rooms. I had no more than turned my fat furry bear ass to face the room before Darca … once again pulled. The entire room. My only response was "you know you’re not the tank, right?" No response. Once again, I grabbed threat back, we beat up all the inmates, we beat up Bazil Thredd, and we got our goodie bag. Our mage goes, "Requeue?" To which I have no objections; I figure if Darca keeps misbehaving, we can always boot her.

Unrelated: I wonder if the Alliance are ever confused about why their prison riot started? One minute they’re having a prison riot, next thing you know, a bunch of Horde warriors teleport in, smack down all the prisoners, and teleport out.

Also unrelated: I have to give credit to the Defias Convicts, for having the balls to backhand a bear.

We requeue, and huzzah, Stockades! Because the RNG has a horrible sense of humor. Darca immediately pulls; we finish and I say politely, "Darca, please let me pull."

Darca promptly runs into the room to our left, aggros everything in the room, and dies.

Then spirit rezzes outside.

And hearths to Tarren Mill.

So we four-man the rest of Stocks, with me periodically checking if we can boot Darca (I could’ve sworn they got rid of the minimum time to kick; if it was in the patch notes, it’s a lie), and manage to finish before the cooldown because this time we just went straight to Bazil Thredd. Beat him down, requeued, and… Darca picks no role.

Requeue. Darca picks no role. Requeue. Darca picks no role.

Vote to Kick Darca? You can’t kick people after the instance is over. What kind of idiocy is that?

So you might be asking, "what’s so unique about this story?" Nothing. If I had 50g for every arms or fury warrior wielding sword-and-board and trying to tank an instance when they queued as DPS, I’d have two damned mammoths. Does anyone have any idea why this happens? What is it about this particular class that seems to be attracting all the derp derp derp members of WoW society?

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What is it with warriors?

Path of the Titans is scrapped; instead, we get Medium Glyphs: Why, you may ask? Well, evidently they couldn’t balance Path of the Titans, but they feel they can balance Medium Glyphs. "Tom [Chilton] explained that in Wrath, people were really powergaming their glyph choices—that glyphs, like talents, had gotten to a point where everyone agreed on what the "best" glyphs were for each class and spec, and anyone who chose otherwise was dumb. With medium glyphs, they’re trying to break that system up a bit—major glyphs are still critical, but minor and medium glyphs have more flexibility." This reason is flat-out stupid. If medium glyphs do anything more than a minor glyph, there will be a set of "best" medium glyphs, too. Adding a new tier of glyphs just means new things for the math nerds to minmax. Plus, let’s not hesitate to point out that they haven’t gotten minor glyphs right yet – several classes have at best 1 or 2 usable ones, then slots you fill up because you’re tired of it being empty. DKs got lucky, we’ve got 4 to 5 (2 mandatory, 2 or 3 you can choose between based on spec and raid comp). Druids aren’t so bad off either, at least if you’re tanking.

At least a couple usable changes came out of this – a mention of being able to see all the possible glyphs for your class, and (the one that sucks for scribes if it goes live) discussion of making glyphs permanent – once you use a glyph once, it goes into your permanent collection and you can use it thereafter. If they do that, scribes had best be able to make and sell the best shoulder enchants.

Guild currency is out; guild reputation is in: different method, different terminology, same end result. When your guild does things together, or even alone, you get rep for it; I, for one, would like to have a mount with my guild tabard on it. Guild talents are also scrapped; guild perks are in, as your guild "levels up" they get guildwide perks. Also, finally, a new guild interface. No word yet on if it’s a huge enormous stupid rigamarole to add a new rank anywhere but at the bottom.

Downshifting raids: Being able to turn a 25 into 3 10s if you don’t have the people for the 25 is pretty hot. No upshifting, though. "They explained that they felt this would cause a lot of pressure on guild to pull some really unpleasant maneuvers—for instance, stripping out the bottom 15 players to do some particularly difficult encounter, and then inviting them all back in for trash. They figured the legitimate use-cases for upshifting a raid were much more rare."

Flexible raid lockouts: As long as the raid you want to go into doesn’t have a boss up that you’ve already killed, you’re good to go. Essentially, you can’t kill the same boss twice per raid lockout – but you can pug a raid on one night, then join your guildies for the next night. Fun! Sounds like they’re switching to more of a "boss ID" system, rather than a "raid ID." Works for me.

Stormwind and Orgrimmar redesigns: blah, blah, blah. Does anyone find it amusing (and maybe sort of symbolic) that Garrosh refuses to put his stronghold in the Valley of Wisdom? (BASIC CAMPFIRE FOR WARCHIEF)

Grim Batol: Bastion of Twilight: Hello, New Naxx! 5 boss fights, plus an ultra-hard final boss fight, plus motherf*ckin’ CHO’GALL as a final boss! Yeah, I’m just a little excited about this raid. And a council-style fight, huzzah. I’m just hoping for fewer overhangs on the roof – trying to rotate my camera to find those floaty purple balls is harder than eighteen bitches on a bitchboat.

Skywall: New 5-man, new raid, able to use your actual flying mount, and oh yeah, you get to fight Al’Akir the Windlord in the raid. Glad to see Ragnaros isn’t stealing facetime from all the other elemental lords. Wonder if Thunderaan will show up, pissed that he was repeatedly used to do nothing but get a sword? (Also – I’ve never seen Memory of Thunderaan. Kind of wish I could now, though.)

Deepholm: The Orgrim’s Hammer has crashed into the elemental plane of Earth, but the Skybreaker is still floating around. Take that, goblin engineering. Also, Therazane the Stonemother will be running a new Hodir-like quest hub. I wonder if she’ll be pissed at how many times we killed her fat ugly evil daughter.

Uldum: WoW does Egypt. And furries. Furries made of stone.

I’m sure I didn’t cover nearly all of it, but that’s the parts that jump out at me. I spent a good chunk of the weekend either not playing WoW, or playing my druid when I was playing WoW (did I mention I have a druid now? Went from level 7 to level 23 over the weekend).

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Weekend Cataclysm infodump

Phase 1: Got this down to a science by the end of the night.

Transition Phase 1: Also went well. Watching people get flung off by Ice Spheres during one of our wipes cracked me up, though.

Phase 2: Well, we’ve got the next few weeks to work on this. Our raid lockout is being extended until the Lich King is dead. Don’t expect much interesting out of me in the meantime.

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Defile is the opposite of love

Raiding

Progress in ICC continues apace; we steadily progress every week in 10-man, making it to either Valithria, Sindragosa, or the Lich King himself on night 1. Caffeine can easily field two 10-man teams during the week (truthfully, I bet we could do 3, but 2 is working for now), with my tank being able to attend one. My rogue has now poked his nose into ICC as well, showing up in an alt and "leftovers" run on Sunday night. Assassination is still fun – I have a weird love for daggers – but I think I need to keep toying with my spec some more. And the spreadsheets! Oh, how I love the spreadsheets. My raid leader pointed me at these when I was griping about my low DPS.

Anyway, ICC. ICC-10 is almost through the Lich King (it’ll only be a week or two more til one of our teams gets him down, I figure), ICC-25 is working on stuff as well, though sadly I can’t attend the 25-man raids most weeks due to the raids being on Friday and Saturday, which are designated for spending time with my girlfriend when she’s not busy studying for the Praxis II. I’m signed up for this weekend’s, though, so maybe I’ll get Festergut’s blood and finish off Shadow’s Edge. That’s right – after four weeks of buying absolutely nothing but the necessities, I have 25 Primordial Saronites. Well, four weeks of nothing but necessities, plus I bought several with Frost emblems, plus Thalois was nice enough to just give me one (thanks Thal!).

Honestly, there’s not a lot more to say. I have been noticing an influx of new DK tanks, though, and I’m going to recommend you go to Pwnwear and check out the contest and forums – especially the forums! – there. It’ll set you on the right track to redeeming our class-wide reputation again.

Guild

Still enjoying my tenure in Caffeine. I was asked to become an officer a week or so ago, and so I did. Huzzah! Looking forward to helping the guild move forward through Wrath and beyond.   Also hoping our next tabard design has a muffin on it. If I win, you’ve all been warned.

Non-WoW

Yeah, that’s right, I do non-WoW stuff. Sometimes I even blog about it. Sometimes I blog about it on other blogs. Surprise!

• I’ve been playing a few games here and there, including 3D Dot Game Heroes and Super Street Fighter IV. I’ve come to the conclusion I really need to invest in a good fightstick for SSFIV.
• I actually have two other blogs, sort of. If you need your daily fix of my non-WoW stuff, check out Midboss (which could be nearly anything) and iDevice (which is about my iPad, which is on the truck for delivery as I write this. Glee!). Oh, and I write – sometimes – for Polygamerous, which you should really check out. Mostly the Morning Quickies segment. I’m not on the podcast, though, but that’s probably for the best because I don’t talk much when I’m on podcasts unless I’m one-on-one, as anyone who heard me on the Twisted Nether roundtables can attest.
• I’m also shopping for a couch. It doesn’t get more exciting than that, loyal readers.

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Small pieces (of posts), loosely joined (into one post)

I’ve been using ACP (Addon Control Panel) to turn on and off addons, and only recently began playing with its Addon Sets functionality… and here’s where we run into problems.

• Turning off an addon turns it off for everyone. I don’t want to turn off Auctioneer for all my alts – my banker still needs it – I just want to have a set with it off.
• Saving sets are buggy as hell. For instance: PallyPower, used for a now-gone alt on a different server, was turned off by default. Whenever I make a set? It turns itself back on in the saved configuration. It got to the point where I had to delete it because it refused to stay off.
• Loading sets is equally buggy. Half the time, loading a set will turn all my addons on. Thanks, but I don’t need VuhDo, TotemTimers, and PallyPower on my death knight, surprising as it may seem.

So … while ACP is still good for turning on or off one or two addons at a time, or managing addons manually, it is absolute ass for trying to manage groups of addons. Does anyone have a suggestion for a better addon to herd cats manage my addons in-game?

Update: Below, Gryphonheart suggested I try TooManyAddons. It does exactly what I want and does it well; it’s probably a good thing when my only gripe about the addon is that I can’t easily rename sets of addons from in-game. Thanks, Gryph!

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Clearly, I need an addon for my addons

I’ve been trying for it for a while now, but I just had a feeling, you know? I was in the pit, pummelin’ some warbears, and it suddenly popped into my head: today’s the day. And lo and behold, I got the bear. Huzzah! And yes, that’s the handle of a Cryptmaker peeking over my shoulder there. She’s a beaut, ain’t she? Doesn’t clip my cape horribly, either, like the other two weapons I own. Seriously, Ramaladni’s Blade of Culling looks like it’s stuck halfway into my back, though this might just be a problem with some dwarf models (it does the same thing when I’m in an iron dwarf disguise, but not when I’m in a dark iron dwarf disguise).

As for the other pic mentioned in the title -

It was a good weekend on the auction house, too. Just need nine more Primordial Saronites and Festergut’s Acidic Blood and I, too, can get harassed by Arthas whenever I like. It’ll be like old times – I haven’t had ol’ Lichy baby whisperin’ in my ear since I left Acherus.

Oh, and about that video. Got an email from Lionsface Entertainment announcing a WoW hip-hop single and video, "Fail," by Blood Type. Ordinarily I’m not very impressed by these (there’s only so many times I can take blood elves bragging about their epeen, though there are a few standouts, and I’ll admit to having a few on my iPod), but the production value on this one is above par, and the two vocalists can… you know… actually rap.

Anyway, without further ado, here’s the vid:

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Two pics and a video