I have http://www.behemothdan.com that is just hanging out with very few posts on it as the most activity it sees is when I use it to send out invoices to my freelance clients.

But let me tell you what I have been doing. Raising my little boy for one, whom some of you might remember when I made the post when he was born and then the subsequent murloc post from last Halloween. Well he is turning 2 in October already and he looks like this:

Ryan in his suit.

Other than that, I have been playing a lot of Magic: The Gathering. And because of that I have also been making a lot of content for my local game store. Since my World of Warcraft partner in crime Mr. Warbull/Freshmaker/Drew works/owns part of the store, we’ve been making an effort to make awesome content for the gamers at our store. We’ve been posting Friday Night Magic deck lists, tournament reports, and making videos covering recorded matches and deck deconstructions.

The store’s site is here: http://www.playatgamegrid.com and the Youtube channel is http://www.youtube.com/user/playatgamegrid/featured.

At FNM I have been running Blue/White Humans to pretty great success, I am building the Kiki Jiki Restoration Angel Modern list, and I have put pretty much the finishing touches on my Commander/EDH deck that has been dubbed “The Justice League” at the shop. The brief run down is that my general is Progenitus, and I have at least one version of every Planeswalker in the deck (except for the silly elf), and to top it off it’s filled with board wipes, some mana ramp, one of every Praetor and Titan, and a couple other fun cards like Consecrated Sphinx and Platinum Angel. It’s a big, slow monstrosity and super fun to play.

We have also had a resurgence in WoW TCG players and a bunch of us qualified for the WoW TCG World Championship later this year so I imagine I will want to talk about those deck ideas in the near future.

So if you play Magic, check out the videos I’ve been making about Magic, let me know what you think. And I haven’t forgotten about my sites!

Crown of the Heavens so far has been a great set and has allowed new decks to start showing up in the format. Mazu’kon and Edwin are still prevalent but there are alternatives. A number of individuals are working on control Mage. Warlock received some awesome cards in the form of Fire and Brimstone and Banish Soul (which does wonders against the aforementioned Mazu’kon). Both casters gained the benefit of the flexible Miniature Voodoo Mask which can shut off some abilities and equipment, such as your Aurastone Hammer.

But I’ve been eyeing Shaman and I really want to make a deck that works, and not necessarily just be another rush variant. I really love the idea of Monstrous Totem and Aurastone Hammer in combination.  Possibly add in a dash of Harmonize in order to drop game-ending bombs rather than just a speedy rush. There are a few key criteria we have to identify and answer before the deck will be viable.

Identifying the Problem

If your deck doesn’t have an answer to the rush deck, you might as well scrap your idea. We currently have the ever popular Grand Crusade which has remained extremely potent, even picking up a few new friends in the form of Jadefire Scout. Aspect Hunter transitioned nicely out of the block format into Core, and the Aberration keyword can give Mage fits when they are reliant on damage-dealing spells to prevent attack steps.

Both decks are capable of extremely early kills before most decks have a chance to set-up. So before we can play our win condition, we have to survive those early turns. We have a few tools to choose from, and some are better than others.

One of the new additions to the Shaman arsenal is that of “Earthquake.” For 3 resources, you can instantly deal 2 damage to every ally on the board and tap any ally with power less than 5. This initially seems like a strong choice, but you have to realize this hits your allies as well. Keeper Sharus will die to this, possibly negating your first turn. Deciding to use Elemental as our talent specialization (and foregoing Riptide) for Earthquake depends on how we shape the rest of the deck.

Let’s take into consideration what your opponent’s first turn might be. You might see a stashed Cairne with a Rosalyne. It might be a stashed Magni with Windspeaker Nuvu. A Mage or Warlock might drop their Voodoo Mask calling a card they assume is in your deck or play a Water Elemental or Jadefire Scout. A third turn versus Grand Crusade looked like this during our local Realm Qualifier:

A Grand Crusade on turn 3.

That’s a 20 damage swing on turn 3. Can you survive this on the next turn?

Answers to the Rush

Grand Crusader

What options does Shaman have to survive these turns? One of my favorite new cards from the new set for Shaman is actually Frost Arc. For 1 resource you can deal 2 frost damage divided however you choose. You can kill Rosalyne, you could take out both Edwin protectors, or any other valid targets. The downside is that it is out of range for Lordann and that it is not instant so you cannot hit Dagax, who can really put a hurting on.

An often forgotten about card that is Core legal however is our friend Frost Shock. 2 frost damage and not attacking or protecting at instant speed for the low-cost of 2 resources. How very handy. This buys us time against Mazu’kon, kills Dagax and stops protectors from getting in the way of our huge fatty monsters.

Other abilities worth considering are things like Natural Conduit which deals 3 damage and heals 3 damage. We also can’t ignore the need to remove abilities as well. Big concerns are things like Grand Crusader obviously, Aspect of the Wild, Mage abilities like Glacial Tomb, or even Death Knight diseases and Chains of Ice.

We have a couple of Shaman specific abilities to consider. First up is Ancestral Purge. This destroys abilities that are not attached to friendly cards, so we can cover Grand Crusade and Aspect of the Wild. It also comes with the added benefit of shooting their board for one damage. The downside is that it isn’t instant so no surprise cleanses on your opponent’s turn.

We also have Cleanse Spirit which will target any ability we wish and it will in turn heal us for 3. But we are still stuck with it not being instant so still no surprises for our enemies.

One slightly crazier option to help clear early aggro is that of Twisted Fire Nova. While not instant, it gives you a hefty 7 damage to spread around as you so desire. In most cases, a board without Grand Crusader would be wiped to this. Looking up at that picture, if it wasn’t for Grand Crusade, we could kill everything on that the board.

Two more cards I have set aside as considerations are Tidal Totem and Nature Resistance Totem. Both instant totems, Tidal will come into play for the cost of 2 resources and heal you or an ally for 3 damage and will mend 3 at the start of your turn. This can get you a quick 6 points of healing and power your Shadowfang Keep for a turn if you don’t think it will live.

Nature Resistance Totem is situational and a tough choice with its imposing 3 cost. For those 3 resources we can shock a target for 2 damage and subsequently give all other friendly allies and heroes Nature Resistance. It is important to note it does not grant this benefit to itself. But it can save your hero 6 damage from a swinging Mazu’kon while shooting a smaller target. It can also create favorable trades against Worgen or when your opponent tries to activate Boomer to pick of certain allies. In a related note, a surprise Nature Resistance Totem could slow a flipped Vorix for a turn or two.

Blazing Elemental Totem obviously deserves a mention as it can eliminate many 1 and 2 drops, as well as Edwin protectors. Shock of the Elements could be handy as using totems to pay its optional cost allows you to do 6 damage to target hero or ally at instant speed for the cost of 2.

All these cards cannot be included in the list and I haven’t tested them yet myself as this is a brainstorming session for me as much as it is anyone else. We cannot devote our entire deck to fighting the rush. We have other decks to worry about and win conditions to include.

Dealing with the Casters

Playing Monster Shaman we have a couple of nice perks. One, we don’t have to worry about Vylokx wiping our board although he might hit a couple totems depending on our final list. Two, we have access to Commander Ulthok, which is one of the biggest boons to a monster deck.

There have been a couple of ideas tossed around in terms of Warlock decks. Corey Burkhart wrote an article in which he explored an Alliance-based deck using the tutor effect in Trista, Herald of the Fel. Switching to Monster changes the deck very little in most cases. Alternatively you can slow the deck down with the Sarmoth Winterveil Disguise Kit shenanigans.

Regardless of the version, Warlock generally is the only class running (or even has access to) true spot removal. Mage can slow things down and attempt to lock the board. The rush decks want to win as fast as possible, but Warlock was given a glorious 3 cost instant non-demon removal spell and the 4 cost versatile Fire and Brimstone. They also have Invoke the Nether as an option if they so desired.

The idea here is to drop a few bombs and end the game, so we need knowledge of cards that are going to interrupt our plans for domination. This is when Ulthok earns his price tag. If you play an opponent throwing down with Warlock and you call Banish Soul and fail to find it, even though you might have “missed”, you gained valuable knowledge on what your opponent can do to interrupt your road to victory.

Commander Ulthok

What can cause problems for you against Mage? Glacial Tomb and other permanent lockdown effects. This could be the Monster Mage flip, or a couple other attachments to keep our allies at bay. This is a strong argument for running Cleanse Spirit in favor of Ancestral Purge. Against the rush that 3 healing isn’t a waste either.

My thoughts immediately turn to Ozumat. He puts casters in an awkward spot. An ally that attacks for 8, has Ferocity, shuffles into your deck if he dies, and has the handy passive ability of dealing 10 damage to your opponent if they dare to target him.

In many circumstances, if the Mage doesn’t have an Overload in hand, they may just die. And even if they do Overload him, he shuffles back in the deck. The Warlock will either have to cast an Invoke the Nether, or suffer 10 damage using Banish Soul or a less optimal Fire and Brimstone. Ozumat also poses problems for the ever-present Al’akir. Tapping him down causes more damage than letting him smash face.

Obviously Ozumat is sporting his (1) tag, so any Monstrous Totem fun doesn’t get to include him unless you want a free shuffle. It is worth remembering though that searching up a second Ulthok with Monstrous Totem won’t let you keep both on the board, but it will let you choose 2 different cards to remove from your opponents deck.

Unfortunately Shaman does not have access to any interrupts at the moment. While I love to see something as simple as Windshear Totem reprinted, we work with that we have. So in this case we are at the mercy of being reactive versus our enemies.

 Racing the Ramp

The Devout Aurastone Hammer has become increasingly popular. It has proven its effectiveness as by being piloted to respectable finishes in multiple capacities lately. In many cases our final list would have had the potential to look similar to a Priest list. Shadowfang Keep, Devout Aurastone Hammer, and Keeper Sharus to name a few.

The tools we incorporate in our list to help fight a rush can also be beneficial to slowing down an opposing ramp deck. If we can limit their access to Harmonize that leaves us only needing to slow down their Hammer. This is a tight spot in terms of room left in the deck. We can run Drudge as a target for Shadowfang Keep and use them as a method for removing equipment such as the Hammer.

Ramp Priest suffers from the same problem our deck would if someone hit our Hammer. It can really set us back a few turns but that’s the risk involved in a ramp style deck. Just like a first turn Frost Arc from us can hurt a Harmonize deck by killing a Keeper Sharus. But that’s the risk involved in exchange for hopes of big gain.

Other Notes

There were a number of cards I want to fit in this deck but ultimately will have a hard time finding room. The Shaman bottle creates unprecedented burst potential. High Warlord Zogar could hit a hero for 30 on turn 4, depending on your final list. However when evaluating the meta for me I felt that I needed to play a heavier focus on the early game mitigating damage. You are generally going to have to accept the fact that you will lose the initial damage race and then end it in one or two swings.

Harmonize is generating a lot of popularity so your defense against aggro is also your disruption for Harmonize.

Monstrous Totem

An important element to note is what Monstrous Totem is capable of doing for your board. The ally you cast doesn’t even have to resolve as long as you played it from your hand. Mage counter your Ulthok? That’s cool, you still get to keep one of them. This puts your opponents into a spot where they cannot let Monstrous Totem stay on the board. So now the Overload or Counterspell has to hit the totem. Fire and Brimstone or Banish Soul will have to go after it if they do not feel they are in a position to win. Even aggro decks might feel the need to run an ally into it on turn 3 or risk getting smashed.

This also creates a possibly spot for Vylokx in this deck as well as he is void of the (1) tag, making him a great ally to cast with the totem on the board. Having two Vylokx in play not only will deal 4 damage to anything that isn’t a monster or demon, but they will buff themselves giving you a pair of 8/8 Demons and give your hero his flip.

As I have been writing this, I realize my eyes have grown bigger than my stomach. Or bigger than slots I have in the deck, so I need to make some careful decisions. Many of the allies I choose to run need to have effects as soon as they hit the table. Affecting the game state guarantees value out of your play. This is also the biggest drawback to High Warlord Zogar. He’s a 10/10 for 6 resources. But he doesn’t do anything until the next turn.

Comparatively speaking, allies like Gnash, Ozumat, Ulthok, and Vylokx make a grand entrance when the smash the table. The Gronn even comes attached with his handy opening hand effect (which can prove useful against first turns plays if you are on the draw). And Krogar the Colossal can eliminate all but the largest of threats that might be hanging out on the board.

Similar to Mage, I can already identify I will have the same issues with Worgen and Aberration. Gnash comes into to fill that spot but that is not a solid or reliable answer.

Conclusion

There are a lot of great possibilities to play in a Shaman deck. We already know that Blackout Truncheon is getting reprinted, as well as Bath’rah. Both make strong arguments for finding room in the deck list. I also could drop Wake of Destruction from my tentative list in favor of 2 more early allies. Perhaps Gilblin Deathscrounger or something similar. For now, without any testing done with this list, this is what I concocted:

Hero

Warlord Grok’thul

Master Heroes

1 Cenarius, Lord of the Forest

Allies

3 Vylokx
1 Malfurion Stormrage
1 Remulos, Son of Cenarius
3 Obsidian Drudge
2 Ozumat
2 Krogar the Colossal
2 Gnash
4 Commander Ulthok
4 Gronn Skullcracker

Abilities

4 Monstrous Totem
4 Earthquake
4 Frost Shock
4 Frost Arc
3 Cleanse Spirit

Equipment

4 Venerable Mass of McGowan
4 Devout Aurastone Hammer

Resources

2 Wake of Destruction
4 Seeds of Their Demise
4 Shadowfang Keep

Share your thoughts, opinions, suggestions, criticisms, or insults in the comments below. What would you change, remove, or add to make it better?

I am not a person that’s scared of repetition. Some of my more mundane achievements that I had earned in WoW are a testament to that. When World of Warcraft was first released there was a huge chunk of time before I considered things I was doing in-game to be tedious tasks in order to get from goal A to goal B. Even then, the things I did do repeatedly (such as running Stratholme, Scholomance, or Upper Blackrock Spire) I enjoyed doing even without Gandling dropping my Valor helm.

Let me say that I don’t consider myself an alt person. Did I have them in WoW? Absolutely, but only after I considered my main in a position where there wasn’t anything to do to improve himself outside of raids. Before I stopped logging in I had been level 50 for almost 2 weeks. In that time I was able to out-gear almost every other Sorcerer I came across in terms of Force power, bonus damage, crit chance, crit multiplier, and activation time. I even healed half the time, respeccing as needed. I ran raids to get gear too and was able to craft a bunch of the epic Biochemical items only usable by me.

Some may say that I rushed through content, which I disagree with. I level fast but I am also thorough. I completed almost every quest hub on every planet along the way, including the bonus series for each one. Generally when I went to a new planet, I was higher level than generally recommended because of all the content I did run.

I didn’t run any Warzones till I hit 50, and once I did I hit Valor level 20 (before the broken zerging going on now on Ilum), and picked up quite a bit of PvP gear (including enough extra gear where I could start giving it to companions).

I share this information not to brag but to illustrate what I had done in-game in this short time period.

And at this point, every day was the same, and it was not fun. I had two options. I could go to Ilum and slog through the daily quests which are slow going, queue for Warzones, or sit on the Fleet looking for Flashpoint groups. And if you were doing one it definitely excluded the other two. And I wasn’t running the Flashpoints because they were fun. In fact it was the exact opposite.

In WoW I didn’t mind running random dungeons just for the fun of it. In the Old Republic I went into Flashpoints with 2 goals. One, completing my daily and putting credit towards my weekly. Two, social points in hopes of being able to be a stereotypical nerd and buy the “Social Armor” from Nar Shadaa for Ashara. Read that last sentence as “putting my female Jedi-turned-not-Sith-but-not-Jedi companion in Princess Leia slave armor.” Sure there were some other fun items I wanted from Social Points too.

At the end of it, I wasn’t having fun. And ultimately that’s your primary motivation. Maybe fun is top-tier raiding or PvP. Perhaps it’s random achievements. No matter what fun is to you, if you are not having fun, why play?

I don’t feel like I need to go over too many points of what ultimately made me decide to quit playing the Old Republic. I talked about what I felt were issues fairly extensively in this post.

But there was an unusual turn of events Thursday, when my good friend “Warbull/Freshmaker” instant messaged me with the statement “IT IS DONE.” Puzzling, I inquired what he meant.

He had resubscribed to Warcraft. Much to my shock. I thought about that for a minute. If he was playing again, I already knew some of my other friends were still playing. And then I learned that Lassirra of “The Hunter’s Mark” and “Dungeon Play” had their entire guild transfer to Illidan a few weeks ago.

I took it as a sign. So I remoted into my home computer and started patching and have found myself playing World of Warcraft again.

So there’s that.

I hit level 50 last week on my Sith Sorcerer. I am known as Darth Aratar Sicarious. I may also be known as the Loathsome, the Hot Shot Pilot, or the Forcewalker. I capped all 3 of my crew skills, being Bioanalysis, Biochem, and Diplomacy. Despite working, making time to draft Magic frequently, and do other real life things, I beat all my friends to the cap.

It has been a blast playing the game. I’ve been playing a lot of Warzones and doing daily quests to get gear. But through all of this, it made me realize something.

I miss Azeroth.

Speeder Bike on Dromund Kaas

“Why” you might ask. It is because despite all the things I thought felt silly in WoW, the things that I thought trivialized the game or eroded the community actually ended up being things I appreciated when I didn’t have them. I have a new-found respect for Blizzard’s engine, their combat methods, their customer support, their UI design, and much of their decision-making process among so many other things.

Does this mean I think Bioware failed in the same categories? Definitely not, but it has illustrated how much Blizzard shines in so many departments.

A day doesn’t go by playing the Old Republic where I wish I could just take my Hunter’s user interface and drop it on top of my Sorcerer and watch my happiness increase tenfold. The emphasis placed on certain elements, the small bits of polish that you don’t appreciate till you don’t have it, and all the little things you don’t pay any heed to all are immediately noticeable the moment you no longer have them. Sometimes I feel like I am squinting at my Sorcerer’s buffs as I wait for procs and waiting for debuffs to wear off, often missing fights. Who would have thought that color-coded debuffs would be so useful?

Fights frequently feel like “I totally wrecked the Jedi. I mean, I assume I did. I am not fighting anymore, he’s dead, and I am not. Yay me!”

Outside of the UI another thing that makes me crazy is the ability lag in combat. It won’t take you long to find a plethora of search results documenting the problem. People have used videos from WoW to illustrate “snappy combat” and how it can be handled.

The people who never played Warcraft have a hard time grasping the issue here, but as I’ve said in the past, some people are fooling themselves if they think many of SWTOR’s subscribers are not ex-WoW players (or current ones at that). It’s the delayed response of ability activation that makes it rough. It’s the game’s need to finish animations before other actions can take place. It’s the fact that even though the game shows a finished cast bar, moving too soon will cancel the ability. When in comparison, if WoW showed a finished cast bar, you could feel free to move around or do something else knowing the cast finished regardless of animation representation on-screen.

A perfect example is the simple act of mounting your speeder. If you wait till the summoning bar finishes and then you move before the actual speeder appears the summon fails. When in comparison if you mount in WoW and move as soon as the cast finishes, your mount will appear no matter what. It feels responsive and it makes you feel attached to your avatar.

While I felt I leveled slowly, I guess I am still ahead of the curve in terms of being level capped, and as such it was rare to actually see players of the opposing faction. In fact, in my entirety of leveling (not counting the one warzone I muddled through before hitting the cap) I saw 7 Republic players. Worlds felt empty and non-threatening. Compare to the anxiety you might have found in contested zones in WoW, most planets kept players from opposing factions quite separated in their questing endeavors.

In that same line of thought, finding Flash Points groups is a challenge. In the past I have thought that the LFG tool might have killed server interaction. People didn’t need to talk to people to find groups. They could press a button and get a group in a few seconds or a few minutes (ignoring the long queues experienced by DPS sometimes). It even removed the need for many people to actually learn where some instances are. However people are running instances and seeing the content. Blizzard recently stepped that up and included a “Looking for Raid” tool as well.

The Old Republic’s looking for group “flag” (as it should be called) is ineffective and group searching exists almost exclusively in the general channels aboard the Imperial Fleet (for Empire players). I spent 20 minutes trying to find a group a few nights ago for any “level appropriate” Flash Point only to eventually find one for players seven levels lower than me. All the while I was not questing out in the world.

The Galactic Trade Market is an abomination. The search functionality is all but non-existent and what is there is awful to use. It requires you to fill out so many parameters you may never be able to find usable items if you don’t know exactly what you are looking for. It also limits you to only having 50 auctions at a time. For a casual player this may be more than enough. However if you have ever done mass crafting in WoW, you can easily see how 50 auctions will become limiting very quickly.

A pretty, painted backdrop

The Old Republic world is also filled with non-clickable NPCs. This may seem like an odd thing to mention, but it creates the effect of people becoming part of the backdrop rather than a living world. Some “guards” impossible to interact with, and NPCs are talking with each other whom you can’t talk to or click on. It creates a weird feeling when so many objects are visually there but offer no interaction..

One person pointed out that the world appears larger than they are due to the painted skyboxes.

Obviously Nar Shadaa and Corellia cannot feasibly be fully modeled cities with so many tall buildings in the background. So it has a mixed effect of creating the illusion of the playable area being larger than it really is, but at the same time knowing you cannot travel to that location because it’s not an actual model. Now I can’t blame them for that, as it would be silly and unnecessary to model a sprawling city that no one will use, but the fact still exists.

There are very few instances in WoW where there was something you could see but could not travel to due to it not actually being an object.

I miss the WoW community too. Maybe because the WoW community has had time to mature in the past 7 years, but it becomes apparent when compared to that of the Old Republic. If you post almost anything negative on the SWTOR forums you will inevitably be labeled an idiot and you should just go back to WoW. Come in defense of Bioware and you are a “fanboi.” They leave very little room for the middle, even when validated. Maybe the WoW community has become jaded or more realistic over the years, but the Old Republic community could learn a lot from the WoW folks, especially about how no company is infallible and that criticism is good, especially if you like the game and want to see it improved.

Another topic that is argued repeatedly is that of mods, which can warrant tons of posts by itself. But being perfectly honest, some major complaints would be fixed by now if Bioware had let the modding community jump on their UI. The Galactic Trade Market, action bar positioning, buff/debuffs, resizing the quest tracking frame, etc. All fixed by the modding community.

Am I being too harsh to The Old Republic? Maybe, but that’s because I want it to do well. There are so many high points in the game that it would be terrible for it to not be as successful as possible, because the low points could have been avoided thanks to the great groundwork laid out by its predecessors. This time around people are not going to wait six years for all the quality-of-life improvements. They waited once already and want them implemented now. I am hoping they listen and do it sooner than later.

Bag Space: Fun in every game!

There are very few industries that would have it’s customer base make excuses for them. Especially when their product came out 7 years after their leading competitor and are now suffering from a lot of the same issues that were experienced back in 2004.

The improvements in gameplay, character progression and development, and many other things Blizzard has worked on since release should have been carefully scrutinized and taken into consideration. The industry leader is the leader for a reason.

Though I will mention AoE auto-looting. That needs to be in every game ever.

For the Empire

This weekend was The Old Republic’s stress test weekend, yet this was not the first weekend I had the opportunity to play the game. Alas, the previous weekends were under non-disclosure agreements so I wasn’t able to write any posts about it.

This one is free game however. I had a post written on the beta forums during my first weekend, but the latest iteration of the game changed my opinion on somethings. Some for the better, some for the worst.

But before I start I want to dismiss the idea that the beta weekend was anything less than positive. I had a blast doing so, and in the effort to make a great game, I am critical of components I feel need improving. This overview is going to make a lot of comparisons to World of Warcraft for the sake of illustrations. I am a person who firmly believes that a product should stand on its own without an overabundance of ”counterpointing” the competition. But this review is specifically for that purpose.

The Story

Without a doubt, the story told involving your character is second to none in terms of an MMO. It rivals many first-person games in plot development and building character attachment. In fact it plays fantastically into the Flash Points where you might be teamed up with folks whose morals” may not line up exactly with yours. For example, the first beta weekend I did what is known as the “Black Talon” Flash Point and I ended up with a group of individuals that were as bloodthirsty as I was. The captain of this ship met an unfortunate demise at the hands of the Bounty Hunter in our group. This time around he was spared due to the saving grace of the Imperial Operative.

Despite how much a company might boast about their unique quest design, ultimately MMO quests end up being all the same in their underlying aspects. You may not be killing wolves for pelts, but you might be killing cave worms or cave bandits. In the Old Republic you are graced with a better story to go along with it. One could make the argument that the game is worth playing up to the level cap just for the character stories, especially if you are a Star Wars fan. Your character definitely begins to take on their own personality. I had written some of my own fan fiction for Drotara as I had envisioned him (when I was feeling creative) and having your own story unfold in The Old Republic is awesome.

The Combat

After this weekend I have to say that World of Warcraft is still the only game to truly create crisp, responsive combat that is unparalleled in the genre.

This doesn’t mean that TOR is laggy or unresponsive, but it is decidedly less so than WoW. Frequently, as I played as my Sith Sorcerer, I would begin channeling Force Lightning only to have the game tell me I was still moving. Jumping still feels unnatural and sending your companion to attack takes multiple seconds for it to take place. It’s a far cry from the snap actions you might be accustomed to when sending in a Hunter, Death Knight, or Warlock pet to attack and having it respond instantly.

Warcraft players might be bothered by the time required for certain abilities to take effect when comparing it to abilities their Warcraft character might have. As an example my Sith Sorcerer has an ability called Static Field which is essentially Power Word: Shield. It was instant cast but easily took over a second to appear on my target. Perhaps I am nitpicking details such as this, but it was something I noticed.

Being the min/maxer that I am, I am concerned about lost DPS, even at level 21. I bring this up because I am fairly certain that if I activated Force Lightning (my equivalent of Arcane Missiles) too soon after another ability I lost a tick of damage due to animations. But without a combat log I had no way of telling if it was actually lost or just not displayed.

There is a lot of finesse in the animations and combat in the Old Republic that many people might miss. Watching your Sith or Jedi casually deflect blaster bolts or block saber attacks from behind their head while fighting weaves that illusion of how awesome you really are. The animations are fantastic and have a lot of personality in them. I could almost feel the malice seething from my character every time I electrocuted someone.

Saying that the Old Republic copies World of Warcraft is unfair to every game that game before WoW, including Everquest, other single player RPGs, and even other role-playing games that involved pens and paper. As one person stated “I don’t know about you, but with that as my MMO training wheels it forms the basis of my knowledge of how an MMO works. Neither of us will probably ever get past that internal categorization of skills based on their relation to the skills we memorized in WoW.”

I think that is a fantastic statement and very true on multiple accounts. It didn’t take long for me to make comparison to many of my abilities. Off the top of my head, my Sorcerer had Arcane Missiles, Smite, Life Tap, Power Word: Shield, Heal, Lesser Heal, Greater Heal, Renew, Shadow Word: Pain, and Silence. I also saw that I would eventually get Leap of Faith and an AoE Heal. I’ve played many MMOs but none for the longevity of WoW and I quickly internalized my abilities in a WoW capacity and starting mapping my buttons similarly to how I had my Priest since my goal was to heal. This isn’t a bad thing but I am sure I won’t be the only person doing this.

Character Development

My very own spaceship!

After picking your class, at level 10 you get the option of choosing your advanced class, which you should probably view as your real class. Your advanced class determines what roles you can fill, what weapons and armor you can use, and what skill points (read as: talents) that you have. Skill Points can be reset but at this point your Advanced Class is a permanent decision, outside rerolling. Your trainer will have two tabs of skills to train from, one for your general class and one for your advanced class. You also have your skill points to further customize your character through a series of “trees” that require 5 points in each tier before you can advance to the next one.

Each planet you quest on (at least on the ones I’ve been on) will drop their own commendations from quest rewards and random mobs which you can redeem for some mighty fine rewards for your level. Most of the time I opted for the commendations out of quest rewards instead of the gear they offered.

A unique feature to The Old Republic is that everyone gets their own companion. These aren’t mini-pets, but full-fledged combat companions akin to Hunter/Death Knight/Warlock pets and their abilities vary depending on what your class happens to be. As a Sorcerer my companion was a beefy tank that enabled me to solo almost every group quest I came upon, partly due to my healing ability. When I played as a Marauder my first weekend I had a ranged companion, which I guess made me more the Hunter pet.

Your companion takes a group spot as well, so you can only have a player/companion combination totaling 4 people, so in a full group your companion will automatically be dismissed. But that’s ok too! In TOR you can send your companions (you end up with multiple) to do your crafting for you or crafting related quests. Talk about efficient use of time!

The Interface

Oh man, where to start. I’ve probably started more fights about this than anything else. If you’ve read my other stuff you know I am not a bad player. My wife always compliments me on my humility. I would like to think I am better than average, but you will find a disturbingly large number of people who feel that mods “play the game for you.” Which I think is ridiculous as it plays the game for you the same way a HUD flies the plane for a pilot.

Inside my spaceship!

I have written a post about this already which you can read here. The interface has its shortfalls and I feel is the weakest point of the game. Oversized action bars, too small health and resource bars, tiny buff/debuff icons, the inability to move elements around the screen are some of the few. It also seems that the player search feature was broken to the point that even searching for a specific individual’s name would return weird results and the small quality of life things you might expect from games like Ctrl-Clicking on a name to see their player information is noticeably absent.

Some people will argue that these elements are fine but if you’ve ever tried tracking a heal over time across multiple group members you know how important having easy access to that information can be to your group. Unfortunately I don’t see any of these things being changed before release and I will have no recourse to fix it myself.

The interface isn’t all bad either. Map indicators for class trainers tell you in their tooltip if they have a skill for you to learn, your inventory has separate tabs for quest items that doesn’t count towards your available inventory, deploying companions on missions is quick and painless and can be done easily even in battle if you wanted. Missions have their recommended levels included by default, as well as the number of players suggested to complete it. Your character sheet has all the statistical information you would want for basic character data.

If anything in the game kills it for me, it will inevitably be the interface, so here’s to hoping!

Conclusion

Did this post sound negative? Probably. But with that being said, the beta weekends were fantastically entertaining and I am highly looking forward to the game. I have a whole crew of folks all rolling together on one server from day one this time, rather than trying to regroup years later. I wanted to be critical of the game because these are the points that I would like to see remedied as it will affect longer term subscriptions.

The game has Bioware polish, which is some of the best in the industry and I would expect a few more things cleaned up between now and launch in less than a month. Did you play in the beta weekend? What were your thoughts and are you going to play at release?

So a fun deck I have put together specifically for raid tanking is a Tauren Paladin deck that plays into the strength of making it very hard to kill a bear tank. This won’t win you any tournaments but your raid group will probably love you. :)

Hero
Kauno Stonehoof

Ability (24)
4x Feral Charge
4x Berserk
4x Dire Bear Form
4x Gift of the Pious
4x Rejuvenation
4x Savage Bear Form

Ally (24)
2x Archdruid Hamuul Runetotem
4x Dayna Cousin-to-Sun
4x ALAMO
2x Cairne Bloodhoof
4x Quakelord Razek Warhoof
4x Sarn Earthtrembler
4x Muruna the Savage

Item (4)
4x Signet of Manifested Pain

Quest (4)
3x Uncatalogued Species
1x Torch of Retribution

Location (4)
4x Thunder Bluff

The deck is simple enough. Play guys, put in Tauren Druids using Signet of Manifested Pain, get a huge butt, and stand in the way of those raid bosses.

It’s simple, it’s fun, and you can easily take the brunt of the damage due to all your large allies and their ability to protect. Berserk gives you great card advantage every time your bear face gets punches.

Enjoy!

Murloc Hat and Murloc Plushie

The Murloc crawling away!

Top of the Murloc

Two Murlocs and a 80s Punk Rocker

The Cutest Murloc Ever

The costumed party-goers!

Spider Salsa

Bonesticks

Homemade Root Beer, because . . . root beer!

Hope you enjoyed the pictures! Be safe and have a great Halloween!

According to Wikipedia, the actual definition of  ”meta” is:

 (from Greek: μετά = “after”, “beyond”, “with”, “adjacent”, “self”), is a prefix used in English (and other Greek-owing languages) to indicate a concept which is an abstraction from another concept, used to complete or add to the latter.

From that you essentially can think of the metagame as the game beyond the game. The concept of analyzing the trends and patterns in the game when you are not actually playing and then incorporating decisions based off this analysis.

Let me give you an example of effectively understanding your metagame (and if anyone has any corrections, please feel free to share them). At the first World Championship for the World of Warcraft Trading Card Game, the play field was littered with Rogue decks. The decks were filled with abilities and equipment and chose to exclude allies (read as “creatures”). The deck was very strong, hence it’s popularity.

Guillame Matignon, a trading card game veteran, recognized the power and popularity of the deck and chose to take the route of building against the popular format and put together a deck who’s ultimate goal was to crush the Rogue deck under it’s plate-clad boot. He performed decently during day 1 of the event, as he faced plenty of variety, and muddled into Day 2 and the rest of the tournament.

And what did he find after he got past the first day of play? A field of solo Rogue decks, which allowed him to showcase his deck decision and proceeded to go undefeated the rest of the day. That landed him the first world championship, and $100,000, the largest prize in trading card game history.

Winning doesn’t always involve building against the format however. When a certain type of deck becomes the standard, it did so for a reason. If you’ve played the online version of World of Warcraft, you are probably familiar with cookie-cutter talent specs. Those are cookie-cutter for the same reason. They have been proven to be mathematically superior to other talent choices as a whole.

So whether you are choosing to play the most popular deck in the format or play against it, knowing what your opponents bring to the table is imperative. This is no different than sports teams reviewing game footage, watching how their future opponents play defense or what their offense does. It’s research and it is smart.

Magic: The Gathering recently had their State Championships across the United States and the list of decks that showed up at the top of the lists was not surprising to anyone. An ongoing list of the decks that performed well is being compiled here. As you can see from the list and the comments, the deck titled “Wolf Run Green” saw tons of play and huge success.

These decks were not surprising or unexpected. Wolf Run Green, Solar Flare, and a number of other popular decks have been tried and tested extensively and their effectiveness has been proven. The internet has changed the metagame in this way as well.

The ideas for these decks were not created in their own microcosm, independent from other sources. Deck lists are almost immediately available from any major event. They are dissected, analyzed, and critiqued extensively. That has come a long way from the late 90s when “net decking” was a dirty word.

But any player serious about competing is doing their research now. Sites featuring the best card players in the world are sharing their analysis of various formats, tournaments, drafting strategies, new sets, and every other facet of the game.

Ultimately understanding the metagame is about doing your homework. At your local game shop, who is your most potent opponent at Friday Night Magic? Can you outplay the rest of the field but lose to a few individuals? Why are you losing? Is it because their deck is a trump to yours, or are you being outplayed as well?

Understand who you are playing against and what is at stake. While I might howl at the fact my friend played Extinction during a casual game at a dinner table while I was playing my “for fun” Sliver deck, but I can blame him for knowing what he was going to be playing against?

If you are into playing online, Magic: The Gathering Online (as well as a number of free alternatives) have provided a huge platform for individuals to test decks, make modifications, and see how they compare to the current field of popular lists.

As always, your thoughts and opinions are always welcome.

Basically you have two camps in which you can take part. You either are okay with the idea of mods or you are not.

The people who are against mods wage plenty of different arguments, which in my opinion are on shaky ground to being with. Let’s list off some of these arguments.

• I don’t want to see the invention of Deadly Boss Mods for the Old Republic.
• Mods play the game for you.
• Threat meters make the game too easy.
• I want to play my character how I want, not how some mod told me I should.
• I don’t want to see a new Gear Score.
• You should be happy with the interface and systems given to you.
• It ruins the immersion.
• I don’t want to see people linking DPS meters.
• I don’t want to deal with updating mods.

If you truly don’t care about min/maxing, you truly don’t care about seeing end-game content, and if you really played the game at a casual level, you would not have a problem with other people using mods. You shouldn’t care if someone “ruins” their immersion by changing their user interface. Just as they shouldn’t care if you use an Auction House mod or a DPS meter.

However if you choose not to use these mods, you cannot expect people who do use them to support you when you want to join them in how they choose to play. People play games to succeed. That definition of “success” varies from person to person. For you, maybe it’s just having a good time. Doing some quests. Working on some tradeskills. Whatever you find fun. And if that is how you play the game, a DPS meter or a threat meter doesn’t matter to you.

But for the person whose goal is to kill a raid boss, or win in PvP encounters, having access to more information can hugely beneficial to their success.

This doesn’t even have to be specific to a Boss Mod as an example. The often hated/loved DPS meter is a perfect example. The people who argue against the use of a DPS meter are simply trying to avoid being scrutinized. If that wasn’t the reason, then they wouldn’t care about it. When a group has a time frame in order to accomplish a goal, making sure they are getting the expected performance from all party members is important. Are there annoying folks obsessed with linking how awesome they think they are through DPS meters? Of course.

Are there obnoxious folks who like to spam linked items in chat? You bet. Be annoying isn’t limited to having access to a DPS meter.

I can spend lots of time trying to discount the arguments against mods and user interface customization.  I am a firm believer however in providing a case for my side rather than spending the whole time counter-arguing.

Why you should be ok with mods

My wife played World of Warcraft with me, but we shared very little in terms of where we found our enjoyment in game. I loved raiding, dungeons, and PvP, and I was a sucker for achievements.

My wife also loved achievements, however she never engaged in PvP nor did she raid, and the extent of her dungeon running was when we brought her with us. Yet she loved her mods just as much as I did. We found use in different mods, and had different favorites as well. While I had Power Auras configured to be super informative, my wife would die without her Auction mods that let her post large stacks, gauge market value, and determine how much gold she was making an hour.

Who was being affected by her use of my use of mods?

Knowing how much gold she made an hour affected no one but herself. Being able to list multiple stacks on the auction house affected no one but herself. Someone might try to argue that using an auction mod let her more strategically price her goods, but in reality it was doing a basic undercut that most people do anyways.

The person truly affected by this was her, and what it did was increase her level of enjoyment in the game.

I had boss mods installed, along with DPS meters, and a number of other things. Ultimately they didn’t let me do anything I couldn’t already do. I could already keep track of my abilities, move out of fires, and everything else. What things like Power Auras did was let me enjoy more of the game, watch more of my screen and have more fun doing it.

Did this affect the casual player in Dalaran? Or did it affect my wife questing and leveling tradeskills? Not in the slightest. They made the game more enjoyable and anything that makes it more enjoyable for people (without out right cheating of course) seems like a good thing to me.

Looking at upcoming games like The Old Republic and there are a lot of people excited for it. Few games are built on such a beloved universe of lore. However you can wager that many people excited to play it will be doing so as their second MMO that they have played. The first being World of Warcraft and it has set a very high bar of quality.

If you get a moment, you might read an older post I had on my other site entitled “The Michael Jordan Syndrome.”

The people (not all, but a lot) moving to games like the Old Republic learned about this gaming genre from World of Warcraft and the experience it created. From linking items in chat, the leveling experience, the fluidity of combat and character control, and the ability to customize your gaming interface were all things people have come to expect from an MMO.

Being a Star Wars game is one of the strongest launching pads a game can have in my opinion. But being Star Wars isn’t enough to hold them if the overall experience is a lesser quality than what they are used to. They need to be impressed with new features and mechanics, but still have access to things that they might have thought commonplace. Especially if what was commonplace was awesome. Buildings mods generated a huge community of developers coming up with ingenious and fantastic creations. Some Blizzard might have thought too powerful. I am looking at you old-school Decursive. You too Augmented Virtual Reality!

Take a step back and be honest with yourself. Are you against mods because you truly believe they are creating a negative environment in the game? If they were gone do you think that negativity wouldn’t find another outlet? Trolls will be trolls, whether they have Gearscore, a DPS meter, or if they have nothing but their sad existence.

Or are you against them because someone excluded you from something based on a mod’s information? Did you die in a clearly labeled fire? Did you join a group for a progressive raid and are unable to contribute adequately to a group and someone called you out on it?

I am sure I won’t win hearts and minds of everyone against mods. But if one person realizes that the mods aren’t creating a negative environment and it’s people who would be causing problems anyways, and realize that mods do great things for a game, my work is done.

I hope The Old Republic supports mods as I would love to get involved in the community far earlier than I did in World of Warcraft.