For some, not a lot, for others though, the ‘game starts’, even before the game starts in the level 1 starting area, at the character selection screen.  Class and race can at times be difficult enough to decide on, and then consider, male or female, gnome, dwarf, night elf, hair, earrings, facial expression.  Move onto an MMO other than WoW and character customisation can become an even larger part of the game (a muscle here, a loincloth there, to jetpack or not to jetpack?!). 

Finished with abilities and aesthetics, then its onto the name-game.  I’m a terrible decision-maker, and not the most creative person in the world so this is usually where I find myself staring at a flashing cursor trying to come up with something witty and clever.

I enjoy the starting screens, the opportunity to customise something (even if only slightly), to add my own stamp to something you I will potentially be having a long relationship with appeals to me.  But name selection makes me shudder – I want to think of something good!  And in game there are times where name selections make me laugh, and other names that make me cringe.

So, let’s get the negatives out of the way first and I’ll try not to rant too much:

• Working your way ‘around’ the blocked use of inappropriate names is not amusing, I don’t care if you are thirty or thirteen – grow up;
• Blowing smoke up your ass by naming your character something like this: “imakickurass,” i’m not a fan.
• Rape is not nice: use of this word with any ‘casual’ connotation is not on.  I don’t care if you are thirty or thirteen – grow the f**k up;
• Symbols in your name, ok not as annoying as some of this list but I can never get them to work in game! 

Is it the name thats important, or what it represents?  Lets say I mention Synris, would anyone who played on Barthilas associate that to spam or some lame 360 ‘gag’?  What about Unreal Realities?  It has a lot of meaning for me, and at the least a small handful of other people that I know of, and I’m sure there are people in guilds all over who are proud to wear their guild name.  Character names; individual for each toon or themed?  I think sometimes there’s more in a name than we are consciously aware.  Toon names are something that we are identified by in our ‘other’ life.  Friendships and relationships are sometimes built around pixels and letters that constitute our guys and gals in game.3

In guild we have a few examples on name variations:

With the recurring theme we have Serevok and the Voks while Rum and Dreamy and their army of alts, as well as Stir and Spank both use a custom made prefix.

And of course Unreal Realities has the infamous Hitmeagain, Roach, and Co. who has a an alterego for every day of the week.

My own toons all have different names, some I’m not so fond of, and others that remind me in some way of another time and place.  Pancakechick for example, she was my second toon, my first main and my real introduction to WoW.  It took me forever to level her and we will always have a love hate relationship, she’s the favourite of all my gnomes and has travelled with me interstate, over servers and in and out of guilds over four or so years of our lives.  Honestly, I’m not sure what I think of the name (It probably makes me sound like I’m a sixteen year old girl who loves pink shiny things and Justin Bieber!! Note for the record that I’m not), but I just don’t think I could change it, not after all this time, and even if I did – what would it be?

I don’t know, maybe there’s nothing to it and a name is just a name.  Pancakechick will be around to ponder it all for a while longer anyway.

Regardless, I’ve been travelling very well, secure in the knowledge that I was above the curve and getting some extra grunt out of a middle of the road DPS class. Toppling the meters is always fun and I’m happy to admit I’ve been epeening a little in our raid group.

Those days are over now however. A few personnel changes, coupled with 4.06 and some raid drops to a few of the other DPS in my group, has seen me pushed from the top rung. Occasionally I still finish the fight on top, but it’s now the exception not the rule. Number one is very much owned by our Hunter, Dimble, now and I’m fighting for the second spot with our new Rogue, Pancakechick. In fact, for the first time, the other night I found myself out of the top three completely after a fight – I can’t remember the boss – our Shadow Priest sneaking past me. And considering we have an under geared Fire Mage and Enhancement Shaman, not to mention a Boomkin that’s been tanking about to return to DPS land, in our group I could soon be bringing up the rear. If the interwebz are to be believed, all of these classes should out DPS me.

While this may not be the best news for a fragile ego, it’s pretty damn good news from a raid leading point of view. In fact, it’s fantastic.

All things being equal, if I’m topping DPS, there are issues within our group. Sure, I get a little more out of my Shaman than a lot of people, but I’m no super star by any stretch of the imagination. My class is nearly smack bang in the middle of any DPS chart, making us really the measuring stick. We’re doing the right amount of DPS, those doing more are doing too much, those doing less, not enough.

So being that my class is in the mid range I would expect that encounters are balanced around the DPS my class can output. I’m doing above average DPS for my class and that means we’re ahead of the game straight away. So if I’m managing to milk a little extra out and everyone is doing more DPS than me…well, shit is just dying.

While it’s great to be king of the hill and sitting on top of the DPS charts, it’s better to know you’re doing your job and everyone else is above you. It’s better for the group and, therefore, better for me as a raider.

So coming top of the charts is no longer my aim when I DPS. My aim is to get every last bit of damage out of my character and, hopefully, be the bottom DPS.  That’s the road to success for Pirates in this expansion, for the DPS at least.

The sooner I’m the lowest DPS in the group, the happier I’ll be.

With the release of Cataclysm, it was time to jump back on my main. I don’t get griefed to much on Serevok, for two reasons. One, the bullies like to attack folks much lower than them, two, I win more than I lose when jumped. Horde is generally not an issue on my Shaman.

The Alliance, however, is. I thought I went a little report mad with 4.0.3 but that was nothing compared to the amount of reporting I’ve done since Cataclysm launched. Seriously, my ignore list has been full three times and, in the early weeks of the expansion, I was reporting people three or four times a day.

I know what you’re thinking. Vok, are you really such an uptight, vengeful priss? Well, I don’t think so.

You see, I don’t think calling someone a fag is ok. I don’t think calling someone a retard is ok. I don’t think being racist is ok. I don’t think being abusive is ok. And, the simple fact is, Blizzard agrees with me.

I work in an environment where I’m subjected to a fair number of profanities and abuse on a daily basis. I’ve worked in environments like this all my life, often having to play the role of peace maker or pacifist in the face of some very, very angry people. I don’t react inappropriately to this and I never have. I do my job professionally in the face of all forms of abuse. When I come home, to my sanctuary, my place of peace, I don’t bring it with me. When I step into World of Warcraft, or any other game, I do so for fun, because I enjoy it.

I don’t do it to be abused, or to see others abused. Online worlds, just like our real one, have rules. These rules are there for a reason, to protect the people within them.

Unfortunately, like the real world, many people break these rules and there are too many us that sit idly by and do nothing or, worse, react in kind. We encourage this behavior by our lack of action or by joining in. This makes us enjoy our world/s less, making us more likely to, in our frustration, react in kind. Soon this behavior goes from being tolerated, to accepted, to encouraged, to the norm.

When the masses hit the level cap in WoW, it was off to the new heroics. Harder than we had seen since TBC and completely unknown to us, they were long and, often, frustrating. It became the normal, almost expected, response to this to become abusive toward those in the group with us. Never been to Grim Batol before, never seen the fire adds, get hit by one and die? You’re a retard. First time in Throne of Tides, don’t switch to the adds in .25 seconds on the first boss? Fag.

Honestly, what the f**k is wrong with these people? I’m fortunate that I’m a very good player. I’m aware, I adapt and I do the right thing most of the time. Not everyone that plays this game is a very good player. Not everyone is a good player. A lot of people are not good at all. That does not mean they deserve to be abused because you’re an egotistical, self absorbed, prick. These people are on your side. You’re trying to achieve the same goal. Fucking help them, don’t abuse them. (ok, broke my own rules there a little, but it really pisses me off!)

Now, every time I see any form of abuse, at me or others, in a Heroic I stop and report the person. Immediately. I’ve, a number of times, stopped a group with a quick “one sec, putting in a ticket” after someone has sprayed someone else. I don’t want these people in my heroics, or my game, and this is the only way to get them out. And a quick vote to kick. You’d be surprised how many times it will get passed, because people don’t like wankers.

So, if you see someone being abusive, take 20 seconds and report them. It’s not good enough in our society and it’s sure as hell not good enough in our game. Inaction is the same as approval. And if you think this behavior is ok, do me a favor and stop reading this blog, because it’s no ok to abuse, harass or bully anyone.

Ever.

I soon fell in love with both raiding and healing.

I was a class leader, then an officer and eventually Guild Master of Obsolete, a successful 25-man raiding guild, all as a Resto Shaman. After Ulduar I gave up the 25s raiding, leaving Obsolete to form Unreal Realities and raid tens content rather than 25s. I was raid leader of my tens group within the guild and, thanks to what I learned from mistakes made in Obsolete, a pretty good one.

I also consider myself to be a very good healer. I learned everything there was to know and, frankly, I got the best out of my class for four years.

This time around I’m making red bars go down though, rather than green bars go up. While I definitely needed the break from healing, I had some concerns taking on the role of DPS. First and foremost, would I be any good at it?

This is pretty important, particularly when leading a group. If I can’t get good numbers, how can I push others to? If I die in fire, how can I encourage others to me more aware? If I pull agro, how can I call out others that do the same? Most importantly though, will I go from being a major part of our groups success as a healer to holding it back as DPS? All of these issues gave me pause and prevented me, at first, from throwing myself in headlong to DPS.

Fortunately, for me and my group, it turns out I’m not terrible. Thank god for that right? In fact, I’m pretty good.

I approached DPS the exactly same way I did healing – I stood on the shoulders of giants. The fine folks over at Totemspot are as much responsible for my DPS as I am. I read every thread, I look at the armory, read WoL logs, check recount and tinker with gems and reforging almost every night.

So, where has all of this gotten me? I’m currently, consistently, top of recount in my raid group, although that will change soon. With all things being equal, I expect to find myself at three or four – a Boomkin, Hunter and Rogue regularly beating my DPS. And that can only be a good thing.

The last Baradin Hold I did before the new patch, I did 16.7k DPS for the fight, not too shabby. I went over to State of DPS to have a look at what other Elemental Shaman were doing. State of DPS takes the top 200 WoL logs and displays the min, max and average, broken down in numerous ways. I was (very) happy to see that the BH average DPS for an Elemental Shaman was 16.2k in tens. (You’ll note that Ele Shaman are doing 20k in BH now. I haven’t had the chance to do a BH this week, unfortunately. If I get one, I’m sure I’ll be disappointed now)

Above the average for the top 200 WoL stats uploaded. I’ve got to say, I’m pretty chuffed with that. It’s certainly not above the average for the top 200 Shaman in tens, there will be countless BH runs that are not uploaded, but still, it means I’m certainly not holding my group back.

And now, I’m completely in love with DPS. Due to some recent changes I’ve had to change my offspec to Resto to cover, when needed, a healing spot. I’m pretty devastated about it, because I really want to just pewpew this expansion. I’ll heal when needed, but I’m not going to like it. At least, not for now.

DPS has given me a new freedom in raids. There is certainly pressure there to perform but if I misclick and cast Earth Shock when I should have cast Flame Shock, no one is going to die. It might reduce the size of my epeen as I’m out DPS’d but it’s not going to cause a wipe. Now that I know I’m good enough, I don’t feel I need to be the best, and frankly with my choice of class it’s not possible.

I’ll head back to healing one day, the next expansion at the latest, but right now I just love them big arse numbers.

This isn’t a real blog though – just letting you know that the real blogging is on the way back. I’ve got a few things I’m building up to, so here’s an idea of what’s to come:

• An update on Pirates and our recent struggles;
• Why I hate everyone that uses the WoW forums;
• DCUO;
• Serevok – Part II. Another attempt at some geeky roleplay;
• Reported Part II – The Alliance Strike Back;
• Unreal Realities 2nd guild drinks;
• Guild progression and why we (still) need housing;
• SWtOR – the game we’re starting to forget;
• Rift – being like WoW is a GOOD thing;
• DPS – Thank god I don’t suck at it;
• Raiding with your loved one/s – will it end in tears?
• How to make 10s raiding work;
• A new expansion, new guildies – but I miss the old ones;
• Leveling an alt and why it’s so painful to do despite, or because, it’s so quick.

They’re a few of the ideas kicking around at the moment and they’re definitely ready to be banged out on a keyboard. So, watch this space!

Got done:

All Justice Point upgrades purchased.

Archaeology maxed.

Engineering maxed, with super awesome goggles made.

Exulted epic item reward purchased.

Bucket loads of money made of AH (around 20k since launch).

Awesome new ground mount obtained (Raptor from Archaeology).

Epic rep shoulder enchant unlocked.

All dungeons complete on Heroic.

Awesome way to make ongoing cash that not many people know about – no, I’m not telling you because you’ll steal it.

Hit the hit cap.

L2dps. This took some adjusting but I think my healing background actually helped. That’s a topic for a different blog though.

Fully enchanted and gemmed – green quality gems count right?

Didn’t get done:

All new reps to exulted. 2/6.

Camel mount. Not even close.

Awesome Alchemy mount. Not even close.

Alts maxed professions. Not even close.

Worgen and Goblin starting areas. Did a little of the Worgen, none of the Goblin.

Starting working on PvP gear. I’ve done a total of two BGs.

Loremaster of Cataclysm. Vashj’er and Uldum to go.

Still a lot to do. And that’s without actually leveling alts. Might need to take another week – or four – off…..

I leveled to 85 with my partner, Pancakechick on her Rogue. Tuesday night was horrible but Wednesday he slowly made our way through Hyjal and starting Deepholm. We finished that up Friday night and started Uldum. We did about half the Uldum quests before heading to highlands, hitting 85 around 10 o’clock Saturday night.

Since then I’ve been trying to leveling Engineering, finally capping it last night. Today I picked up my first epic, the Engineering goggles. Very, very happy with them.

I’ve also been hitting the heroics. The PuGs have been terrible – not because of the lack of ability or knowledge of people, but the lack of patience. Everyone wants to kill every boss with ease and there has been a lot of rage – and me reporting a lot of people.

Archaeolgy is something I’m completely in love with but I’ve been slow to level it with all the other things I’ve been doing. Hopefully I’ll be able to spend some real time with it over the next few days now.

And now, I’m finally feeling like I can relax a little. I’ve been going as hard as I can because I want to be raid ready as soon as possible and drop my WoW time back down to it’s pre-cataclysm level. There is still a bit to do, but I’m getting pretty close.

Next week there will be a lot more blogs going up. I’ll be stuck in the queue like everyone else then and there is plenty to talk about. Right now, however, I’ve got a digsite to explore!

I relogged in Goldshire to avoid the load screen of death in Stormwind and it worked well, I was able to take the new flight path straight to the new trainer and get my Azerothian Pilot License. Flying in Stormwind is a little weird at first but wow, Azeroth looks amazing from the air.

From there it was profession training – First Aid, Cooking, Fishing, Engineering, Mining and the new Archeology. Then it was off to Hyjal!

Oh. My. God. Hyjal was insane. So, so many players, it was something to behold. After about ten minutes though, it was clear that questing was not going to be possible at all so I did what I expected I would and headed off to do some Archaeology.

I’ve got to say I really like Archaeology, it really appeals to the lore geek side of me. While it was fun, it was leveling that I wanted to do so at around an hour and a half after launch me a Pancakechick headed back to Hyjal.

It was still tough. There were people everywhere and we pretty much had to camp spawn points to get any quest kills. Thankfully the huge amount of guards in the area meant that we were mostly safe from getting ganked.

As we moved on though the guards thinned out while the Horde became more aggressive. I quickly became grateful for a few things here:

1. Having a leveling buddy

2. Specing/Glyphing for PvP

3. Having four years of training as a healer.

4. The terrible abilities of Horde world PvPers.

It’s the forth that really stood out. Seriously, they were terrible. I think it’s a massive lesson to any Alliance player on Barth – just because you are attacked does not mean you will die. Time after time the two of us survived three or four Horde at once. It was almost like they were used to people just rolling over and dying. I almost started to enjoy it.

We also heading into Blackrock, which was a lot easier than I expected. I’m assuming that heroics are going to spank me though.

And then, late at night, I hit level 81. Hurrah! That, alas, took me to bed time. Now if I could just get through this massive queue I could play some more!!

UR: So how much lag should we be expecting to disappear here?

Reebz@HP: For the other Aussies out there, I’m a Telstra user and I went from 480-550ms to 175-195ms. Crazy speed increases. It’s going to be different for each person based on your city, ISP and quality of connection, but that being said – I’d be surprised at anyone that didn’t half their ping, probably more.*

UR: So, for someone not at all technically minded like myself, how hard is it to set up and run?

Reebz@HP: We’ve made it as streamlined as we possibly can. You’d need to struggle to turn the PC on to struggle with HeroPing. You download the application, install the application, run the application, and that’s it. No messy configurations.

UR: I don’t need to tell it what game I’m playing, or where the servers are for that game?

Reebz@HP: Not at all. Our application does all of that for you. Basically our app will figure out what you’re playing, where the best Hero Ping server is for that game and hook you up. All you need to do is start the app, choose what country your game is in and we do the rest.

However, if you’re used to the old school Putty/FreeCap configuration, we support that too. In fact, we’ve even set up an installation guide if you wanted to give it a try.

UR: Very nice. What about stability? I’ve used one of the other services available and it was…rocky…to say the least. It’s no good halving my ping if I’ll dc every second attempt in a raid.

Reebz@HP: Whenusing one of the other services, you individually select which server you want to use (sometimes there are over 100). Most people choose the one with the smallest ping and least users logged on to get the best speed. But then, everyone else starts using it too, increasing your ping and lowering stability. We do it differently, with Active Load Balancing – you connect to your country server (for example US West Coast), then we automagically pick the server for you. That way there is a stable load on all of our servers. This improves speed significantly and keeps you at the top of the leader board.

UR: So is this a service that is available only to Australians?

Reebz@HP: No! We’ve set Hero Ping up so that it doesn’t matter where you are – it only matters where your game is located. This is a world wide service.

UR: Is Hero Ping going to affect every game I play, or is it limited to a select few?

Reebz@HP:  Currently, we are pushing Hero Ping out to specific games to make sure we’ve got the formula right. Our key focus right now is WoW because, lets face it, thats where most of the players are. As we grow, our games list will expand and it is always kept up to date on our website. The end goal is to make it compatible with any game, but we need to ensure that the service is stable and fast first, as we’ve done with WoW and a few others.

UR: Is your focus on MMOs, or will we see other games, like first person shooters, added to the list?

Reebz@HP: Definitely, yes. Because our service in ping based, the most significant improvements will be seen where games are hosted on a set server and, traditionally, this has been MMOs. After MMOs, we will be looking other popular games like StarCraft II, Heroes of Newerth, League of Legends, the Battlefield series, the Call of Duty series and much more.

UR: So, the big question – how much and how often?

Reebz@HP: Prices at launch will be US$3.99 per month with greater discounts depending on the length of your sub. Plus there will be a few promos on our website too…

UR: And it officially launches….?

Reebz@HP:  It’s up and running right….now

UR: Awesome. Thanks for your time mate, and best of luck!

Reebz@HP:  Thank you!

Hero Ping is up and running now. Everything you need to know can be found at HeroPing.com. Check it out, it comes with Vok’s Seal of Approval!

*Since this interview UR has been given the opportunity to test this service. My results were pretty spectacular. I’ve gone from a ping of 550-600 to 200-220. More of a write up of my own experiences with Hero Ping soon.