Mirshalak's Lair

Happy New Year

noreply@blogger.com (Mirshalak) — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 09:08:00 +0000

I am writing this from the Hemp Bar, a somewhat (I am told) internationally famous venue in Cullen Street, Nimbin; in central New South Wales. I still have not decided whether to return to Victoria. Melbourne is a dangerous place, these days. Not so much as America, apparently; but political conditions are not ideal for one as restive as myself.

World of Warcraft has not been forgotten by me; truthfully, I don't think it ever will be. I still feel the urge to resubscribe at times, although I have no idea what is happening with the game. If this post reaches any of you, I would be interested to know if any of you still play WoW, and if I am missing anything?

Paradigm shift

noreply@blogger.com (Mirshalak) — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 04:21:00 +0000

(Note: This is an entirely non-gaming related post. Sorry about that, but just to warn you)

So four weeks ago, I flew some 1600 km north of where I was previously living. I'm now roughly an hour south of Brisbane, Australia, in a town called Nimbin. Many of you will have heard of it perhaps; the town refers to itself as "the sister city of Woodstock," and is more or less the psychedelic/hippie/"alternative," capital of the country. Some of you may also remember the animated movie, "Fern Gully," from several years ago. That film was set in what is now the Nightcap Rainforest National Park near Mount Warning, an volcano which actually exists not far from my present locationl.

I've been here for two weeks now; and the two weeks previous to that were spent in a Permaculture Design Course, taught by Geoff Lawton, a man who a couple of you may have heard of. That was also an amazing experience; permaculture is a revolutionary system of agriculture and environmental management, but there is much there that was reminiscent of Survival for me.

Moving that distance was a large extension of my previous comfort zone, especially considering that I'm still not exactly rolling in money. I finally got tired, however, of only playing characters like Mirsh vicariously within computer games. It became time to take some real risks.

Three days in Eberron

noreply@blogger.com (Mirshalak) — Thu, 26 May 2011 14:25:00 +0000

I'm still playing DDO, and enjoying it. Although I've read in reviews that it isn't so much true later on, at the moment at least, this game is a solo player's dream. Every quest takes place in its' own instance, and as mentioned, the difficulty is fully adjustable; Casual, Normal, Hard, Elite.

I tend to go in on Normal to get the feel for a place, and then kick it up to Hard for a second run through. Depending on how I did on Hard, I'll then go for Elite. The rewards scale with the difficulty, as well; on Casual, XP/rep gains are 50% of Normal, while on Elite, XP gains are 8-10% more.

It isn't all completely rosy, however. DDO's interface isn't quite as slick as WoW's. I have to have my bow and melee weapons assigned as different weapon sets, and use two hotkeys to manually switch between each. There can also be a noticeable delay when switching during combat, so if I'm going to initially kite or shoot a target, I have to time switching to make sure I've got my axe out when a mob reaches me.

The other major bugbear is the targeting, which tends to ping pong back and forth between targets, depending on what my mouse is hovering over. From memory there's an option to turn auto targetting off, though, and I also already have sticky targetting assigned to the F key, so I think I will be able to sort that out. That's just the usual sort of initial teething problem when starting any new game, really.

I only have two combat skills at the moment; Trip and Sunder. My spells apparently come much later. Trip is very useful, because it makes my character perform a foot sweep which knocks a mob's legs out from under them, and sends them to the ground. This makes them much more vulnerable, so I'm usually able to kill them in one hit after that. Sunder is like Sunder Armour for Warriors in WoW; it reduces a mob's armor class for a bit, so I can kill it more easily.

The Ranger Tempest is meant to be a dual wielding class as well, but I think I already mentioned that being a Half-Orc means I get initial two handed proficiency early on. This is a real lifesaver, because while I'm levelling up, before I get the full bonus from Two Weapon Fighting, I've still got a hit penalty to the offhand, similar to what I actually had when dual wielding as a Survival Hunter in WoW.

As far as shooting is concerned, my Strength is sufficiently high that I do almost as much damage with my bow as with my axe; but because my Dexterity is lower, my hit chance is only around 10-20%, currently.

More than anything else, I'm actually enjoying the feel of being low level again. It makes things challenging, and means that I really have to focus on what I'm doing, in order to survive; especially if I keep the difficulty on Hard or above. Kiting is a lot more tricky than in WoW, particularly given that I don't have auto attack, and have to click to fire as I freelook with the mouse; but I'll get it eventually.

It's a funny paradox, you know. DDO has all these funny little interface quirks that WoW had smoothed out at release on the one hand; but now, DDO also actually has enough real challenge that it can keep me interested in playing on the other. DDO is not homogenised in any sense of the word. I suspect that even if WoW does somehow manage to recover from its' current slump, that fact will mean that Turbine will continue to receive my money.

As one door closes...

noreply@blogger.com (Mirshalak) — Mon, 23 May 2011 19:07:00 +0000

...Another opens.

I've uninstalled WoW from my hard drive, and cancelled my subscription. In its' place, I've installed Dungeons and Dragons Online. I've been playing it for the last three hours or so as I type, and already I'm able to tell that with this game, although I loved Survival, I'm going to be able to get at least a good part of the playstyle that I'd always wanted from Surv.

My class in DDO is a Half-Orc Tempest Ranger. Rangers in DDO are a true melee/ranged hybrid. At the time of rolling, I had 17 base strength, straight out of the gate, and was also given a large two handed axe with a fire enchant during the starting quest, as well.

I'm now running through the early quests two shotting literally everything, and even though ranged combat is supposed to be the weakest element of DDO, I think I've figured out a way to get around that. Half-Orcs have very high base strength, and although Dexterity (the equivalent of Agility in WoW, roughly) is usually the stat needed for ranged damage, Tempests get a skill later on which allows us to use Strength as our ranged stat.

I do a little (though not much, truthfully, because I got a very nice repeating crossbow as a quest reward) more damage melee than I do at range, but I can shoot when I need to, for getting casters or other mobs that I don't want to get so close to, that they can damage me. So I have a lot of versatility. Rangers can even wear shields, although I am not going to do that, because as a Tempest, once I get the skills for it, I will be dual-wielding. Tempests apparently have two hand specialisation that is even better than what Fighters (the Warrior equivalent in DDO) get, but they're still quite a bit stronger than we are, as well. Still, I'm doing just fine as my own tank right now.

Rangers aren't a pet class in DDO, but I'm that much stronger melee, that I really don't need a pet; although it is possible later on to get spells which let me summon one for ten minutes or so.

DDO is a completely PvE oriented game; there's no PvP at all, at least that I know of. The instances can also be run either solo, with a human group, or with NPC hirelings, and the difficulty level is fully adjustable. Payment options are equally flexible; you can either pay a monthly subscription, (which I'm doing) or pay for Turbine Points at the DDO store, which seem to allow content to be unlocked on a per-transaction basis, although the initial content is free to play.

I've subscribed for an initial three months, as I said, and I much prefer subscribing than gated microtransactions, because a subscription means I immediately get access to everything up front, that someone doing the initial free-to-play would have to spend a lot more money for, on individual points. At $30 for three months, it's 30% cheaper than World of Warcraft, as well.

DDO's graphics might seem a little limited to some, but I like them. It uses the classic 70s style of fantasy art, as also seen in Age of Conan. They not long ago added support for DirectX 11 though, and I had to actually put the settings down to DirectX 10, because my video card started running at 85C.

If you've been upset about the direction WoW has gone in since Cataclysm, though, DDO is at least worth a try, I think. I'm very happy with it, and while it comes across as non-mainstream and a little old school, that is exactly what I was looking for. It might be your cup of tea; it might not.

(Almost) Zero focus farming

noreply@blogger.com (Mirshalak) — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 09:02:00 +0000

I'm currently slowly making my way through what I assume is the tail end of the Hyjal quests; one of my current ones is The Sanctum of the Prophets. During Hyjal I've started using an adaptation of my old, TBC/WoTLK farming rotation.

First, I use the current addons:-

Omen
Kharthus Hunter Timers
Range Display
OmniCC

I also use the following pull macro with Serpent Sting; although you'll want to swap this out with regular Serpent for instancing. This fires Serpent, but prevents a follow up autoshot, so I don't produce any additional threat. If you don't have any other mobs in the immediate vicinity, after firing, your target will go off, but immediately be reselected.

#show Serpent Sting
/cast [harm, exists] Serpent Sting
/cleartarget

1. Measuring with Range Display, get to 35 feet of your target.

2. Drop an Immolation Trap.

3. Fire Serpent Sting.

4. Backpedal, and while doing so, send the pet when the mob hits the trap. You may get melee hit once, depending on your lag; but that is no big deal.

5. Fire Cobra Shot and Explosive Shot. I like getting the two off without an auto in between if I can, for old time's sake; I never quite got the 1:1.5 out of my system. <3

6. If you are impatient, fire Kill Shot when it lights up.

I finish with 95 focus, and 3-5 seconds left on the cooldown of Immolation Trap.

Better late than never

noreply@blogger.com (Mirshalak) — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 03:44:00 +0000

Although it might be four years late, I have finally obtained an Onyx Netherwing Drake. This marks the completion of the first of the two major tasks I have set myself, before I can leave World of Warcraft. The second is to obtain the Conqueror PvP title.

There has really been nothing else in my life, whether online or off, that having begun, I have completed to the point of real satisfaction. Even if there is nothing else after this, I am going to complete these objectives, and in so doing, according to my own terms, complete this character.

Upcoming Class Changes

noreply@blogger.com (Mirshalak) — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 12:58:00 +0000

A friend sent me this. Enjoy. ;)

http://www.thedailyblink.com/2010/12/patch-notes-from-my-happy-fuzzy-dream-world/

A new guild

noreply@blogger.com (Mirshalak) — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 12:07:00 +0000

So yesterday, after discovering them on the forum, I transfered to the Misha PvE realm, and joined a guild called Pay It Forward.

As the name might suggest, they're probably the single most positive group I've ever encountered in this game. The guild has over 400 people, with very active crafters, and a full to bursting guild bank, which I've already started contributing to as well.

I've already done a Normal Throne of the Tides run, and although I didn't have a meter running, they assured me that I was doing fine. It was chaotic, but we had a lot of fun, and a couple of nice blues dropped for me as well; after which everyone, including me, was repeatedly and profusely thanked for coming.

In other words, I feel like I've finally come home. I have no idea how much content I'm going to end up doing in Cata, but I'm not really focusing on that right now. I'm trying to focus on sharing whatever little I do experience, with an enormously positive, generous, and hospitable group of people.

I think the other important thing is that because they have the attitude that I can play however I like, I can focus on being competitive purely with *myself*, rather than having to think that I'm doing it purely for acceptance from others. So yes, Recount is being installed, and yes, I'm actually looking up the EJ approved spec and rotation for Survival; but I'm doing those things for *me,* not the guild, because the guild have already said that they are not worried about such things.

For me, that has always been the paradox. If I am told to do my own thing, I will still try and improve to the extent that I can, purely for my own sake; but the moment it feels as though anything is being done purely to satisfy other people, it will not happen.

Nether Portals and You: A Minecraft tutorial

noreply@blogger.com (Mirshalak) — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 10:10:00 +0000

My brother tells me that to some extent, Minecraft has become a tradition for a lot of WoW players during Tuesday night maintenance. I had been going to post an ArkInventory tutorial here tonight, but since WoW is down, I thought I'd go with this instead; it's an article repost that I wrote on the Minecraft forums late last year, on how to get Nether portals working. This seems to be something which a lot of people find difficult, so hopefully this information will help someone.

The thread also contains a link to a YouTube video, added just tonight, from a user who was able to use not only my post, but also the research of a user named Addicted, to get his portals working.

Enjoy. :)

--

I'm aware that there are possibly a few people who are still having difficulty with getting their Nether portals working. This was originally sent in a private message to someone who PMed me in response to an earlier offer I made last month, to help fix people's portals; but I figured that there are probably a number of other people who could still benefit from it as well, so I decided to also post it here.

One area where I'm a fairly incurable science fiction geek, is physics relating to teleportation or other unconventional means of transportation. That's meant Stargate, and it's also meant Sliders as well. So for me, the Nether portal has been the single most exciting addition that Notch has made to the game; I love these things. For a while, however, they frustrated the hell out of me. I had to satiate my hunger for the ability to do this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HWyAODVsQ4) within Minecraft, however, and so eventually I sat down and over a period of 12 solid hours of experimentation and tearing my hair out, assisted by this thread (viewtopic.php?f=35&t=93046) from Addicted, and the awesome contributions of uecasm and Mr. B, this is what I eventually figured out.

The portals (and Minecraft's geography in general) work via a Cartesian coordinate system. There are numbers on three axes; x, y, and z. Y represents elevation; the other two are length and width. The Nether and the surface world each use their own numerical grid; however both start from zero.

The Nether has a space compression co-efficient of 8, relative to the surface world, on both the x and z axes. What this means in English is that for every horizontal block of distance you walk in the Nether, by doing so you will have traveled the equivalent of 8 blocks in the surface world.

Another way to express this, would be to imagine a horizontal 10 centimeter line, drawn on a piece of paper, with a 2 centimeter line below it. The 10 centimeter line represents the surface world, and the 2 centimeter line represents the Nether. Because the 2 cm line is so much shorter, it can't contain references for literally all of the 10 cm, but by linking with the part of the 2 cm line that in scale represents the 6 cm point on the 10 cm line, you can get bounced back to that point on the 10 cm line, without having to move the whole 6 cm.

As an example, the Nether portal in my gateroom has coordinates of 9, 48, 308. What that means is that the portal is 48 blocks in height, distant from the 0 block, (the last layer of bedrock) 9 blocks distant from the 0 block in length or width, and 308 blocks from zero on the other axis. I usually have to try and remind myself what each one is every time, aside from elevation, as I don't always remember.

So if I have built a portal at that location in the surface world, if I want to find out the exact location that a corresponding portal should be built in the Nether, I divide both the first and third numbers by 8. I do not divide the second number, because elevation is the same in the Nether as the surface world; 132 blocks, from the last layer of bedrock, to the top of the sky.

So once I've divided those two numbers by 8, I go into the Nether. Now, if there is no other gate in the Nether at that time, there is a form of artificial intelligence in the game, which will try to automatically place the gate in the correct position for me. However, 45% of the terrain in the Nether is unsuitable for gates; it is either in midair, or in lava, or buried in hellstone. So if there is lava or hellstone in the way, or if there is no surface for the gate to be built on, the game will look for a close possible location instead, and build a gate there.

Initially, you will have no way of knowing this. So you will go back through the gate into the surface world, expecting to land back in your surface world gate room. However, the reason why you don't, is because the Nether portal (portal B) was at the wrong linking location for portal A, (the gateroom portal) and so portal B is *now* trying to guess the ideal location of *its'* matching portal in the *surface world.*

It is this guessing which the game does, that is the source of the problem. In order to solve it, you must place your portals manually, and destroy gates which are automatically placed by the game, which do not match the correct coordinates.

So taking the 3 numbers divided from our example, would give us 1, 48, 38. If instead you were at coordinates 1, 48, 38 in the Nether, and wanted to build a gate there, and know the right location for its' surface world partner, you would multiply both 1 and 38 by 8, to give you the coords 8, 48, 308 again.

We then use something like the SignTags mod, or the MinecraftGPS mod, which will allow us to view the coordinate location of the map that we are standing on, and doing that, we walk to coordinate location 1, 48, 38 in the Nether. When we get there, we will place the second obsidian block of the 4 block wide base of our gate, at those exact coordinates, with the first, third, and fourth blocks placed next to it.

Most of the time when we get there, we will find something in the way, which prevented the game from automatically placing our gate in the right location. This can be either lava, a hellstone mountain, or empty space, as mentioned. You will then have to build a scaffolding and a walkway up to the exact location of those coordinates, in order to place your gate. This can sometimes be very labour intensive if your gates are in midair, and for that reason I use Fly mod to allow me to build whatever staircases and walkways I need to, for connecting gates in the Nether, rather than having to initially build dangerous scaffolding and risk falling repeatedly into lava, etc, before my walkway is built. Fly mod also lets me fly up to the ceiling of the Nether and bucket a lava flow, rather than having to redirect it closer to the base.

You also must make a note of which way the surface world gate is facing, and make sure you build your gate to face in the same direction (whether North-South, or East-West) as well. If you enter a gate in the surface world, and come out staring at one side of the frame in the Nether, then even if the second obsidian block was correctly placed at the right coordinates, you will still need to rebuild the rest of the gate in order to face the right way.

This may seem obsessive, but if you place your gates manually, with this degree of precision, you will find that they work flawlessly, every time, and you will even be able to do such things as having multiple gates in the same chunk. I have three gates within the same 16 block Nether chunk (corresponding with 128 blocks in the surface world) and they all work perfectly.

I had exactly the same problem that most people have, for a month after the Halloween update, in terms of the same Nether portals all linking to the same one in the surface world. It is because of the distance difference. A Nether chunk is 16 blocks in the Nether, but that corresponds to 128 blocks in the surface world. The guessing AI is good enough that if you get two of the coordinates right, it can still work around the third one being wrong; but it can't guess for all three, and if all three of your gates are in the same Nether chunk, and at the wrong coordinates, it will get confused, and simply default to linking with the first surface world gate that was made.

There is one other trick that you can use, although I would not recommend trying to use this until you have got all of your gates working, using the exact elevation coordinates.

The trick is this; because the gates require coordinates on all three axes, then as long as you get two of the numbers exactly right, the guessing which the game does for the elevation axis (the second number) will usually still allow it to work. So, for example, you can build a gate at level 5 (the first level of bedrock) in the surface world, and as long as the coordinates for width and length were perfect in the Nether, you could place it directly next to a Nether gate which took you back to sea level in the surface world, without having to dig down to level 5 to place the gate in the Nether.

I am confident that if people are able to understand this, and get your portals working, that even though they can be initially much more labour intensive, you will find them a vastly superior form of transportation to minecarts. Minecarts work by increasing the speed of movement over the same surface area. Nether portals, on the other hand, literally reduce the amount of surface area needing to be crossed, by 80%. As mentioned, although a minecart will get you from bedrock to sealevel faster than walking, a Nether portal will get you there almost instantly, because the elevation difference does not need to be travelled at all.

"That annoying Hunter."

noreply@blogger.com (Mirshalak) — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 11:44:00 +0000

So after making a few posts on the forum this evening, in response, someone replied to me with this:-

"wow, you were that annoying hunter with a blog on hunter forums in BC. What happened I dont think I have seen you post once since wrath?"

I realise that this, meagre as it may be, sums up my place in this game's history. BRK had a gun named after him; but apparently I still live in infamy on the forum as "that annoying Hunter."

I'm not offended by it at all, however; quite the contrary, in fact. I often used to write that I felt there was a thematic association between Survival and John McClaine. Given that, I think probably the highest form of flattery that I could be given, is to be known as a proverbial fly in the ointment. ;)

XP for old quests?

noreply@blogger.com (Mirshalak) — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 03:48:00 +0000

I'm not at 85 yet. I went through Vashj'r, and to be honest considered the experience very much a mixed bag. Some of it was really gratifying and enjoyable; but to be honest, some of it was so tedious that I found it difficult to remain motivated to keep playing at all.

As mentioned before, I've never been much of a raider, and that is not likely to change with Cataclysm. The two overall objectives I still have in this game, which I've had since BC, are to get a nether drake, and to finish getting the Conqueror PvP title. Another, more minor goal, is to completely finish all of the quests in Nagrand in particular, which was probably my favourite zone in the game. Once I've got those, I'll probably quit.

Anyway, to the point of this post; once I finished Vashj'r, I went back to Shadowmoon Valley to keep doing the Netherwing Ledge rep quests. I became very surprised, however, when I discovered that at level 82, I'm apparently now getting the full amount of XP from said quests, as well as getting 200+ XP per node when mining.

My initial thought was that this was fantastic, because it means that I can get to 85, while still doing purely what I wanted to do anywayz; which I'm assuming was Blizzard's intention. Then, however, I stopped and thought about it a bit more.

One of the things that I've been worried about since probably WoTLK, is that WoW seems to have become a game where the only thing that 90%+ of the playerbase care about doing, is getting to the level cap. For some reason, the prevailing opinion seems to be that the endgame contains the only content worth doing; and that means that for people like me, who actually tend to prefer doing pre-cap stuff, (mainly because I've noticed how much people's attitudes change, for the worse, at the cap) it's much more difficult to find people willing to do pre-cap instances etc, or if they are willing to do them, to see them as anything other than something to be got through as quickly as possible, on their way to the cap.

This may, of course, have the opposite effect, because now that getting Loremaster would apparently assist people in getting to the cap as well, I might actually see more people in the levelling zones. I will mention that I actually did see one other person doing the Skyshatter flying quests at the same time I was; and that gave me cause for optimism. I guess we'll see.

"You have to focus, Trinity."

noreply@blogger.com (Mirshalak) — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 11:17:00 +0000

So over the past 24 hours, I've been considering my opinion on the shift to Focus, from mana.

I offer the following disclaimer; I'm not even doing Heroics any more. My sole two objectives in WoW at this point, are getting a Netherdrake, and the Conqueror PvP title. The 80-85 quests have been sufficiently boring up to this point that it has even been difficult to motivate myself to get to level 85, but I will probably need to if I want sufficient Resilience gear to finish rep farming for Conqueror.

I'm also completely solitary. I made the mistake of transferring back to Jubei'Thos in order to play with my brothers, but they have since moved to Saurfang themselves, ironically; and the community on Jubei seems to be largely non-existent at this point. I tried getting into a guild earlier on, when doing Vashj'ir quests, but got the usual "go go go!" type doing them with me, which I really do not want at all.

My other two activities in WoW will consist of old quests (Nagrand primarily at the moment, for interest's sake) and possibly gold farming for a tundra mammoth, as well. I considered WoTLK's quests to have been the best released so far, and so will probably also finish any of those that I've left also; although due to how much I enjoyed them, most of them were done during WoTLK.

Considering what I use it for, then, most people will probably say that the difference between mana and focus is not all that great. There is a noticeable difference, however. Given that I only used to put Viper on while travelling, (or if I was in really low level areas, where it made no difference) mana meant that I had to drink anywhere between every 10-20 mobs, depending on how much I was trapping.

Now, it really depends on how I play. If I'm not feeling in a hurry, and am happy with simply using Serpent, alternating between Immolation and Snake Trap, and auto shot, I can literally keep going forever. If I use Explosive Shot, however, I will often get down to 50% focus between kills, and so may have to use Steady a few times to get it back up.

Without knowing for certain, I'm idly guessing that will throw a bit of a spanner in the works for those who are doing Heroics or raids, simply because during long fights, there would likely be periods where you'd be stuck doing nothing but Steady (at least for a few shots) with precious little else to do until you caught back up; although given you'd only need 3 Steadies or so, it probably wouldn't be that bad.

The thing I loved about mana in particular during TBC, was the fact that in a 5 man or raid, if I had pots or runes, I could get it back when I really needed it; although I'm guessing that is what Ghostcrawler primarily wanted to prevent us from being able to do, as well.

The really positive side where focus is concerned for me, however, is that with it, traps are completely free; the cooldown itself is my only constraint with using Immolation now. I've removed the Glyph of Immolation Trap which buffed its' damage, as well; at my current level, Immolation has actually become a bit too bursty with the glyph on, and if I'm critting, I can have difficulty keeping threat on the pet.

If I was still doing 5 mans, then, something tells me I'd probably be feeling nostalgic for mana; but for what I do, the occasional per-mob delay is not a big problem, particularly considering that I'm often waiting on Immolation's CD anywayz, if I don't alternate with Snake Trap.

A slow re-awakening

noreply@blogger.com (Mirshalak) — Sat, 05 Mar 2011 13:58:00 +0000

"Mirshalak!"

An unknown voice violated my unconsciousness. I moved away from it, mentally; I didn't want to wake up, yet. Oblivion was warm, safe; peaceful.

"Mirshalak!"

The voice called again. I had no idea whose it was, but somehow I realised it would not leave me alone.

I opened my eyes. There were what felt like tree branches stuck in my back. I didn't know where I was; I couldn't remember how I'd got here, or even why I'd ended up unconscious in the first place. I didn't know how long I'd been out, but something told me it was a long time. The land was barren; a few dead trees, but not much else.

I struggled up into a standing position. I'd been lying in the open; my tent wasn't far away. My first thought was to whistle for the boar. It took a few minutes, but he came running. He was thinner than I'd almost ever seen him, and mangy; but he was alive, and thrilled to see me. For the moment, that was enough.

I got to my feet, somehow packed up the tent, found a nearby track, and began to stumble along it. I'd need supplies; fortunately I still had a bit of gold, somehow. I didn't know how it hadn't been stolen.

I wasn't sure how long I walked for; I was still in something of a daze, but eventually I came to what looked like an inn, of Orcish architecture. I was glad; I needed something familiar, and was in no shape to fight.

I went inside, to find an old Orcish woman tending bar, and occasionally fussing around the fire. Nobody else seemed to be around, but for that I was glad.

"Ancestors, you look like the walking dead!" she said to me. "Where did you stumble in from?"

"I woke up at a camp site up the road," I pointed vaguely outside in the direction I had come.

The woman's eyes narrowed briefly, but then she shrugged, and gave a gutteral laugh.

"I'm guessing you'll want some boar meat," she suggested.

I nodded wearily, and reaching into my old pouch, brought out a couple of gold coins. "And some hot cider."

She laughed again at that. "Yes, you look like you could use it!"

A few minutes later, I took a couple of halting mouthfuls of the cider. The spices were welcome; the heat felt like it was literally bringing life back into my body. As I ate, I asked the old woman for recent news.

"There's all kinds of chaos going on," she answered. "Most are still trying to find our feet and get things back together, after the Cataclysm."

"The what?" I asked.

She narrowed her eyes again, for a longer moment this time.

"Where have you been, that you don't know about that?"

I shook my head. "I wish I knew. But what can you tell me about it?"

She sighed, and began to talk. My eyes widened at some of the details, and as I listened, I realised that things had apparently become very interesting.

Feeling conflicted

noreply@blogger.com (Mirshalak) — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 23:03:00 +0000

So like I said last post, I reinstalled WoW, ostensibly only to play it with a cousin while he was staying here. He's still staying with us, but he went somewhere else for the last 24 hours, and so I'm on the computer alone at the moment.

I confess something; I feel like playing WoW right now. I've bought a new web domain, and was in the process of setting it up yesterday, and that combined with the heat has left me feeling a little brain fried at the moment. So I feel like vegetating; doing something anti-intellectual. Shutting off my brain while my fingers move, for an hour or so.

I'm honestly trying to figure out whether it is really wrong for me to want to play the game every so often. I think the main issue is that, even at level one, the cap and the concept of endgame, and guilding, and all those things that I really don't want to do, but which I feel that Blizzard really DO want me to do, are always there, looming in the background, like the proverbial bogeyman in the closet.

I think if I just log in, get a level of XP, or a couple of LFD instances (say 30-60 mins worth) every now and then, that that is not so bad. I'm going to still focus firmly on the alt game, but there's plenty of room for me to do so before I run out of content; the Alliance zones are still largely unexplored for me, for the most part.

I've rolled an Orc Shaman. His name is Kragar. I'm finding Enhancement with a large 2h axe to be a lot of fun. The class's survivability is also amazing; I've died twice on the way to level 10, less than I ever have with any class before, including the Paladin.

I've also realised that even if I do keep playing, I'm going to leave Mirsh deleted. I might even, eventually, roll another Hunter, (although that is looking doubtful at this point; I've seriously burned myself out with that class, at least for a while) but I'm going to leave Mirsh deleted. I think even more than anything else, even if I was going to keep playing the game, I needed a fresh start. There comes a point with a character where there's too much baggage, and too much weight, and I needed to just throw it all away, wipe it all away, and start fresh.

Anywayz, back into the game for an hour or so. ;)

World of Warcraft:- An autopsy.

noreply@blogger.com (Mirshalak) — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 14:04:00 +0000

My main is still deleted, but a cousin of mine arrived today, and is currently staying with me for ten days, before he goes overseas, possibly for several years. He is someone who I have traditionally played Blizzard's games with, and so I have relented to reinstall the game, and temporarily resubscribe in order to play with him.

It is still, however, highly questionable as to whether I will remain after he leaves. This post, and a deluge of other similar ones, which are showing up on the forums on a daily basis at this point, more or less echo my current feelings about the state of the game. There was one other fairly insightful one the other night, which I might have to try and track down; it goes into more depth.

Although I know that none of these will happen, much less even be listened to by Blizzard, for the sake of argument I will outline the changes which would need to occur, to genuinely reignite my enthusiasm as a player of World of Warcraft.

Brigwyn said in the comments of my last post, that he missed having people around who were willing to speak the truth about WoW. Brig, this post is for you, because a lot of truth (at least from my perspective) that I've been sitting on for more than 12 months now, is about to get spoken.

1. Class balance would need to be reverted to the state of around patch 2.1, and ideally, most of the restrictions that were added to the addon/macro system in 2.0 would be removed. Hell, an easier way of doing this would probably be to simply revoke/invalidate WoTLK entirely. I truthfully don't know anyone who doesn't think that this expansion has been largely a mess. The only part of it that has really been good from my perspective, was the questing. The 5 mans were bad, and I've hardly been able to raid at all, thanks to GearScore.

Let BM be our main damage tree again. I only had a problem with that because of how some BM hunters treated people socially, but in game, there was literally nothing better than having a BM Hunter in the same 5 man group with me as Survival. I trapped, they did damage; which freed both of us to do only that which we were specialised for, and allowed the other person to take care of the other half of our class.

If the Steady Shot nerf was repealed, it would be much easier to make Marksmanship sufficiently competitive to make Rilgon happy, as well.

2. The comic would need to be cancelled. It has trashed the game's lore. I would want it out of print. I would want Thrall reaffirmed as Warchief of the Horde, with Garrosh maybe as his second, but with him behaving. I would want Jaina as leader of the Alliance, with Varian Wrynn retconned out entirely. Have him fall through a crack in the universe somewhere; I don't care. He is a mistake, and he should not exist.

3. The Arena would need to be removed from the game entirely. This probably wouldn't stop the flood of FPS/console gamers, but it would probably help somewhat.

4. Character name change and faction/sex/race change options would need to be removed. These have done possibly irreperable social damage to the game. These days, reputation among players no longer means anything, so it is possible to behave like a profane, sociopathic, entirely anonymous FPS gamer, and then if necessary change your character's name the next day, with zero personal consequences.

5. Heirlooms would need to be removed. These have destroyed the levelling game entirely. As an alt Rogue in Razorfen Krawl a few days ago, I was generating 60 DPS without heirlooms, and a Hunter was generating 80 with them. That's almost another 25% overall damage, and the original 5 mans were not designed for those numbers.

6. The Death Knight would need to become a single target, rather than AoE class. Over-reliance on AoE has killed any requirement for tactical co-ordination within instances.

7. The Paladin's class role would be repealed back to that of the defensive hybrid, per the original design, and its' abilities (in terms of the bubble, etc) would likewise be returned to their previous state. Some of the improvements that have allowed Protection to be made viable as a tanking spec would be kept, albeit with a fairly substantial nerf to damage, and corresponding buff to threat generation if need be. The Retribution tree would be heavily nerfed, and it would be stipulated as a DPS tree for levelling/soloing only.

8. The horrific scenario with stat inflation and the destruction of the colour coding system would need to be repaired/reversed. Gear/stat scaling would need to be made much more conservative, and given sane, conservative rates, made on the basis of analysing the numbers of the original (pre-expansion) game, and extrapolating on that basis.

There would also, correspondingly, need to be a massive reduction in the number of available, epic quality items. The colour coding system only meant something when it was applied judiciously and with genuine care. 85-90% of the items available even to level cap players should be blue; the epic item class should be reserved for genuinely top end raid gear ONLY. The vast majority of the current epics should be made blue.

This change wouldn't just benefit raiders; it would make everyone happier, because it would re-introduce the feeling that everyone's gear was actually worth something.

As a corrolary of this, gear needs to stop being seen, both by players, and by developers, as an end in itself. Gear is not an end reward in itself. All it is for, is to allow you to get past the next level of content. If there is no next level of content, gear is worthless.

The purpose of gear is not to be able to idly stand around capital cities on your mount, seeking to have people stare at you in awe, as a source of narcissistic supply. Anyone who views this game in this manner, needs to seek urgent professional psychiatric help.

9. Blizzard need to stop mindlessly, shamelessly pandering to the lowest common denominator, in the name of myopic corporate greed. In response to a thread made in the DPS forum by someone quitting not long ago, Ghostcrawler implicitly made his priorities clear, by talking about population numbers and how well WoTLK was still selling.

Caring purely about short term player population growth above all else, while entirely neglecting the quality of individual player experience, class balance, and virtually every other element of the game, is not a good recipe for the game's long term wellbeing. World of Warcraft is being hideously mismanaged, in all of the ways listed above.

Ghostcrawler and the developer team are also now fairly clearly allowing their direction to be dictated by the chronically mentally ill 5% of the playerbase, that inhabit the forums. The single main reason why this is so disastrous, is because the forum's most vocal inhabitants (who are also among the smallest minorities in the playerbase) are dedicated Arena players.

In particular, the train wreck that is the philosophy of, "bring the player, not the class," must be abandoned if this game is to survive. Needing to bring individual classes, is the very defining essence of a Role Playing game. Virtually all of the individuality between classes has been stripped, and whenever he is asked about this, Ghostcrawler invariably responds that this is by conscious design. As has been commented on by other players, the fact that Blizzard wanted to remove the class forums, and replace them with three class role forums, only underscores the point.

There are only really the three roles now; tank, healer, DPS. There is no really appreciable difference between the classes in these three roles. Crowd control is dead. If you have either a Paladin or Death Knight in a group, any form of tactical co-ordination or execution order are redundant, as well.

This isn't a true roleplaying game; most implementations of Team Fortress have greater differentiation between class roles. WoW used to have an extreme level of diversity and asymmetry between classes. The level is rapidly declining, and again, whenever Ghostcrawler is notified of this, his response is to almost sound proud of it.

The game has degenerated into a mindless grind for gear. Other than raid hard modes, there is no challenge whatsoever, and any difficulty left from the pre-TBC game is ruthlessly nerfed by the developers as soon as it is found. It really is not a sarcastic exaggeration to compare WoW with Hello Kitty Island Adventure any more.

Socially, the game has collapsed. The addition of the battlegroup LFD tool, and all of the paid transfer and race/sex/name changes etc mean, as described above, that you are now entirely anonymous and invisible. There is no need for anyone to moderate their behaviour for the sake of social reputation at all, and so as a result, people's treatment of each other, outside pre-existing guilds, is utterly abominable.

Guild formation has been made much more difficult, because of the fact that it is possible to level characters entirely within the random LFD tool now, without needing to ever set foot in the non-instanced environment, after level 15. There thus isn't a scenario where you initially meet people any more while questing. Even if you make friends with people during LFD sessions, they're on a different server, so you'll never see them again after the current instance ends.

My problems with this game, as you can hopefully see from the above, are not minor, and are not due to any one single, isolated element. World of Warcraft is, at this point, showing very real signs of a large scale systemic collapse. The new expansion being named Cataclysm is deeply appropriate; but in the end, the cataclysm is going much deeper than simply the non-instanced terrain of Azeroth, and it isn't being caused by Deathwing.

Ultimately, it's being caused by Activision themselves. If I posted this in the DPS forum, I would expect Ghostcrawler's sarcastic response to be, "I assume you think you could perform my job better."

At the moment, my reply, quite seriously, would be, "You're damn right I do."

Stepping into the Light

noreply@blogger.com (Mirshalak) — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 10:47:00 +0000

I recently transferred Mirsh, my main, back to Jubei'Thos, the PvP server where I originally levelled her to 60. I strongly disliked that server, (and still do) but went back because I have two brothers who both play there, and very occasionally I am able to interact with them, when their raid schedule allows.

However, that still left me alone for the majority of the time that I play, and forced to deal with the extreme elitism and toxicity of that server. Seeking a solution, I browsed the forums, and discovered a number of glowing reviews of player experiences on Moon Guard, a non-Oceanic RP realm.

I'd already had a previously deleted Horde alt on Moon Guard before, and found it a very positive experience. (If a little intimidating; I've written a lot of rp pieces here before of course, but being continually in character for more than probably 15 minutes at a time can be a little strange)

I had, however, grown tired of elitism and playing WoW primarily alone. I had read that one of the differences of the Alliance as a faction (and certainly this was always my observation of them in game as well) was a much higher degree of social cohesion and community than the Horde, so despite what I've written in the past, I decided to try it.

The decision was made much easier by a strange coincidence; during my first night on Moon Guard, in the Goldshire inn I actually ran into my guildmaster on Jubei'Thos, who it turned out had a casual roleplaying, but Druid only, guild on the server.

So that decided my new class; a Night Elf Druid. I'm only at level 9 with him at the moment, and it's been close to 10 hours /played, I will confess.

I think it's partly because I really don't know the ground at all as Alliance, and also because the genuinely fascinating conversations I've been having are a continual distraction to levelling. You might not believe this, but I entered Darnassus, to discover a conversation about chaos theory, quantum entanglement, and whether or not the human race was going to survive the next century, being held on Trade. I was amazed, and this was followed by probably an hour long private conversation with someone who'd been on Trade after I left Darnassus, as well.

I'm in the process of reading levelling guides in order to discover the most rapid way to level this character. I'm not levelling it fast because I am planning to raid, at all; but the main reason why I want to get a fair amount of levelling out of the way is so that I can both spend most of my time at the inn, or in Darnassus or Stormwind, but also catch up in order to run at least a 5 man with the guild occasionally if they want to.

Doing an instance partially in character could be a lot of fun, too, although I don't really know anything about this toon yet; all I do know is that he is, of course, very different to Mirsh.

I'm planning on levelling Feral, and then being Resto at the cap, with Balance as farming/offspec. I don't particularly like cat form, (due to the comparitive lack of survivability, primarily) and would prefer to level Balance, but I've read Feral is usually considered fastest.

I'm also currently reading about something which I'd only recently started to experiment with on my Horde alts; multi-zone quest stacking. That is, going to one race's starting area, and doing all the quests there, then going to a second zone and doing all of them there, etc.

In the Horde territories it had a major, positive impact on my speed, but with the Alliance I think it's actually going to slow me down, simply because the Alliance zones are generally so remote and far apart. We will see.

The Argent Champion

noreply@blogger.com (Mirshalak) — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 08:23:00 +0000

Spent close to literally 14 hours within WoW today; my biggest marathon in a very long time. I was rep grinding. I managed to get to Exalted with two more factions; the Mag'har, because I wanted one of the talbuk mounts, and the Argent Dawn, because I was already Exalted with the Crusade, and wanted the two faction title.

I've wished for some time now that I could get a horse mount for Mirsh. The main reason is because most of the Horde mounts make the camera shake a lot when I'm riding, and I don't really like that. I've wanted a mount that was as smooth as I've experienced with the horse that my Forsaken Mage has.

The talbuk, I think, is about as close as I'm going to get, although in aesthetic terms as well as the suspension issue, my ideal scenario would be the Zhevra mount from the recruit-a-friend program. I had a friend a while back in the game whose toon was virtually identical to Mirsh, and she had a zhevra. It looked great, and really emphasised the African cultural basis for the reformed Orcs, as well.

A hat which looks great on Mirsh dropped from Magistrate Barthilas while I was farming Strat for Argent Dawn rep, as well. I've taken to wearing it while doing low level farming at least, although I think the one I really want is the Adventurer's Pith Helmet from Uldaman. Fits with the Indiana Jones type role I've always liked playing in this game.

I love Nagrand at dusk; it reminds me of an aunt and uncle's house I used to stay at, in the country here, when I was only around four years old. My cousins and I played cricket in a field at the back of the property, and that would be about the time of day we'd go inside the house for dinner.

Good memories.

2700 Gold

noreply@blogger.com (Mirshalak) — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 09:16:00 +0000

This is the milestone I'm currently at, in my long climb up the mountain towards epic flying.

I'm aware; all the cool kids got their flying shark when they were first introduced back in TBC, but for whatever reason, I just didn't get around to buying mine back then.

At the time, Tom Chilton hadn't quite managed to recreate the game in his own perverted image to the extent he has now, and it therefore wasn't possible to (at least theoretically, with a full stable of alts) earn 800-1k gold a day simply by drooling on the floor. This is possibly the only area where Chilton's drive to make WoW safe for the Guitar Hero demographic, has actually worked in my own favour.

Of course, being on a server where the auctionhouse is both active and certifiably insane (in terms of the degree of inflation) certainly helps. I'm not sure about other servers, but Star Rubies can sell for up to a dozen gold apiece, and Rugged Leather (pre-tbc leather type) is worth twice as much as Borean on Jubei'Thos.

This means that to a large extent, where pre-TBC content is concerned, I've finally found a scenario where I can have my cake and eat it too. I can engage in my favourite pastime in this game; charge rich alts 50-200 gold for runs through BRD, and sell the rugged leather I skin from the hounds there, for one gold apiece. Runecloth can spike to nearly 10 gold a stack, and I've also seen Dark Iron on the AH before (around two weeks ago) for 15g per bar.

Mithril, Truesilver, Thorium? Same as Saronite, on Jubei; 3g per bar. Thick Leather is the same as Borean; 55s per piece, or 11g per stack. Felcloth? 2g per piece. Winterspring is more lucrative than Icecrown, barring the dailies. Insane, I hear you say? Possibly, but I'm not arguing.

At this point, the auction house and imitating Indiana Jones via old content are literally my only focus in this game. I don't raid; I'm not even trying to do Heroics any more. Why, I hear you ask? The answer to that question would be Jubei's dark side.

The GearScore addon rules Jubei'Thos with an iron fist. Where raiding or heroics are concerned on the server, there are two groups of people; those with 4.5k+ GS, and those without it. Those with it are permitted to raid or run Heroics. Those without it stand outside the bank in Dalaran and cry; either that, or creatively adapt to their situation, as I have done.

Elitism is more brutal, and chronic, on Jubei'Thos than on any other server I have ever seen. Nobody seems run Northrend Heroics because they actually enjoy them, to even a remote degree.

I was doing the Heroic Halls of Lightning daily quest this morning, when the paladin tank I was with refused to engage the first boss, simply because his desire was so strong to be out of the instance in the shortest time humanly possible.

I've shifted focus to people levelling alts or first characters below the cap, and they seem to be enjoying themselves to an enormous degree. By contrast, I ferried a group of 52s through BRD after the H HOL disaster, and we all had a great time. I also ran a couple of 70s through the Mana Tombs the other night; again, great fun was had by all.

I'm not generalising about other servers here, but on Jubei at least, the central rule seems to be, that before the cap, people primarily play the game in order to actually enjoy themselves. After the cap, the motivation is apparently to either desperately try to find something which will cause onlookers in Dalaran (or other capitals) to gasp at you in orgasmic awe when they see you, or simply to get your GearScore sufficiently high that you are perceived as having fundamental worth as a human being.

I've never been able to (and I don't think I ever will) understand what the point of that is. Using WoW as a source of self esteem, for me, has always come across as an exercise in futility. The goalposts are continually shifting; today you're only considered leet if you have tier 7, and tomorrow it's tier 9.

The other thing that I've noticed, is that with only very rare exceptions, you're never actually praised if you manage to achieve the arbitrary prerequisite for social acceptance within the current moment. You're only ruthlessly abused, rejected, excluded, segregated, and discriminated against if you haven't.

So what are my own goals in the game right now? The first is epic flying, and the second is the Conqueror PvP title. If I manage to get a good enough handle on working the AH, I will probably try and shoot for a Traveller's Tundra Mammoth as well. In my instance tourguide/bodyguard type activities, the vehicle's capacity for extra passengers (not to mention its' ability to host repair and ammunition vendors) could come in extremely useful.

I'd lost faith in raiding probably a year or two ago, but it was only relatively recently when the same disillusionment started to set in for Heroics. The usual argument about Heroics, that it's old content, and therefore at this point gear is the only thing that matters, also doesn't wash to me. I can go to old instances with people any number of times, and still consistently have fun.

I can also, with the right group of people, have fun in the Northrend instances as well. Some offline friends proved that to me last week, when we ran Utgarde Keep and Pinnacle together.

One of them was new at playing a Warrior; not only did he lack experience at tanking with the class, but he was undergeared as well. So we wiped probably four times on Skadi, and in the end only beat him very narrowly. Yet I still had more fun wiping with them, than I've ever had in any amount of runs which consisted purely of "aoe lol," at warp speed, where the instance was finished much more quickly.

The point of this game isn't for people who are bitter or insecure about being impotent, powerless, anonymous, and inconsequential in offline life, to attempt to find a means to compensate for that fact. If you're a loser offline, go offline and do something about it there; don't simply live in this game in order to get a 5k GearScore, and then think you can be a petty megalomaniac towards those whose GS is lower. That is unutterably pathetic.

The argument that 5k GS is in any way necessary, is also completely bogus. There is no 5 man Heroic in Northrend which needs more than 1.8k DPS per DPS class, tops. The number for Patchwerk is 2k. The number for Sarth and so on might be a bit higher, but I'm guessing it's truly not much.

I've asked this question before, but I still don't know the answer. If, when people step into an instance, their sole focus is on getting through it as quickly as is humanly possible, then what is their motivation for even entering the instance at all?

The reason why I keep doing older content over and over again (or even contemporary Heroics, if I'm with the right people) is because I actually enjoy it. If people don't enjoy what they're doing in this game, then why are they here at all?

Alts, and playing the Auction House

noreply@blogger.com (Mirshalak) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 03:42:00 +0000

In addition to the tanking I was doing a couple of days ago, I'm currently in the process of migrating back to Jubei'Thos, my first server, in order to play with my two brothers.

Jubei'Thos has a much more active (albeit overinflated) auction house economy than Saurfang, as well, which gives me a lot more opportunities for making good money.

Saurfang's AH was so deflated that I had to undercut to the point of barely above vendor price, in order to sell anything, whereas Jubei'Thos overinflation is much better for me. It means that I have room to undercut substantially, while still making good money.

A long held dream of mine within WoW, has been a scenario where, of the ten allowable toons on a single server, I have one or two which I actively play, with the rest being alts that are permanently posted in zones with valuable gathering materials.

My daily WoW routine would then consist of gathering a set quota of each of these materials, and then mailing them back to a single bank alt for sale on the auction house, as well as possibly having each of them do the six relatively simple (Shadow Vault/Death's Rise) Icecrown dailies.

If I was able to somehow achieve the goal of 10 80 characters, this would result in a daily income of 600-800 gold, purely from these dailies, and parallel farming could potentially triple that.

My focus at the moment, then, is attempting to discover the most rapid possible means of levelling characters. I am traditionally one of the slowest levellers around, and so I've been attempting to find information which will help me change that.

The first thing which has helped, is that I remembered yesterday that I had an old copy of Joana's Horde Levelling Guide on the hard drive of my other machine. In addition to following that, I picked up a very interesting tip at another website, as well.

This tip was the suggestion to not only do the earliest starting quests in Durotar, but also to then go to Deathknell in Tirisfal, and the Eversong Woods, and do both of those sets of starting quests as well.

With the alt that I'm currently levelling, I'd already started the character, so I couldn't follow this advice completely, but I was able to follow it partially.

I levelled to 12 in Kalimdor, and then went back and did several Tirisfal Glades quests. Since I was substantially above the usual level range for these quests, I went through them easily, while still amassing a large amount of experience for them. I then returned to the Barrens and continued there at around level 14.

Joana's guide is going to be a particular Godsend for me once I get out of the Barrens as well, because truthfully I've never been entirely sure on what the most rapid path is from there. With Mirsh, I primarily went through Thousand Needles/Mirage Raceway, then Desolace, then Tanaris, then Un'Goro, and then going up through Felwood/Winterspring.

I've been trying to decide which character class, if any, to standardise on for a farming alt, as well. I'm actually levelling a Rogue at the moment, and levelling with it seems to be marginally faster than what I've experienced with a Hunter.

Stealth and backstab makes killing some large mobs easier as well, but I'm finding I need to plan pulls very carefully, because I tend to die if anything goes wrong. I know I should be using a sword, but dual daggers are so much fun that it's difficult to want to change. ;)

I've also had the idea of creating an army of Mages. That would be glorious as well, due to the teleportation capability, but in my own experience, the Mage is among the slowest levelling classes in the game, and is also comparitively poor at soloing instances.

I'd love having a Paladin for AoE farming, as well, but levelling one of those, again seems slow to the point of being painful. So I think I'm probably going to stick with the Rogue for the time being.

If anyone else has advice on any of the topics I've mentioned here, please add it in my comments. You might end up helping someone other than just me. :)

On the RMT pet store

noreply@blogger.com (Mirshalak) — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 12:35:00 +0000

As Gundersson pointed out in the comments here, two posts ago, Blizzard earlier this month opened an RMT store selling minipets.

Gundersson mentioned having finally cancelled his account in response to this; that it was the last straw. So how do I feel about it?

I've never cared about minipets in this game; I view them as being almost entirely pointless. One or two of them (the Booty Bay parrots, primarily) might add what I would consider aesthetic flavour, perhaps, but very few of them.

More generally, it is also no particular secret that the bean counters are firmly in charge of the direction of World of Warcraft, these days. That probably became true at the time of the release of TBC, which is when the merger with Vivendi happened from memory, and is also when the original live team left the game.

That was also, I suspect, the point when Tom Chilton really took over, and we had the Arena as a consequence. There are a few people left who are possibly naive enough to believe that Ghostcrawler has some genuine control of things, but as Brigwyn has pointed out, in reality, GC isn't much more than a mouthpiece for Chilton, who became sufficiently hated by players that it was no longer really prudent for him to visit the forums directly. During TBC, I can actually remember Chilton having been issued with death threats on his answering machine, according to a forum post.

To be honest though, I'm at the point where I'm past caring about the suits running the game into the ground, myself. Yes, I know they're doing it, and yes, I know eventually they will probably succeed at finishing the job entirely; but for the time being, it is still possible for me to viably find things within the game that I enjoy doing, so I'm proceeding on that basis. The RMT pet store, then, is not going to cause me to quit.

Truth be told, though, it's felt as though the ground has been shrinking beneath my feet for a while now; 2.3 was when the rot truly started to set in.

I've very largely abandoned the Hunter as a class, at this point, but am, as I've written, in the process of discovering tanking and healing, and I suspect those two activities will keep me busy for some time yet.

I will likely only truly consider leaving when a) tanking is sufficiently damaged as to become inviable, and/or b) a substantially better alternative to WoW comes along, although I probably wouldn't move to that unless I knew a few of my readers at least (Rilgon, Pike, possibly Gundersson, Efri) were moving to it as well. There has always been a very vague, remote outside possibility of me moving to EverQuest, but that grows increasingly less likely as time goes by.

On the service roles

noreply@blogger.com (Mirshalak) — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 07:58:00 +0000

Last night I noticed Pike's most recent post, about how she has branched out into raid healing.

Possibly feeling inspired by it, (although I've been planning on taking up tanking, as I've already written) today after tanking another 5 man Uldaman run, I logged on with a level 28 blood elf Paladin in Hillsbrad who I haven't played with in probably close to a year now, specced Holy, and asked if anyone wanted a healer while questing.

What followed was a fairly enjoyable (if at times a little slow) 2-2.5 hours where I acted as buffer/healer for a feral Druid, during probably three or so quests.

After having done this, it made me realise why I gave the game up for nearly a year, as well as the reason why I never really got into raiding.

I need to purge my ego. Egotism was what really stopped me raiding. A certain amount of individualism is vital, yes; but in my own case, I've allowed that to go too far, for far too long. It's as much the reason why I've been socially isolated offline, as it is the reason why things never really took off for me within World of Warcraft.

I also realise that this is the true reason why there has always been a tank and healer shortage in this game, as well.

Tanking and healing (moreso healing) are largely selfless roles. Healing can be reasonably stimulating if you're having to move quickly, and so is a challenge in that sense, but for the most part, it's a scenario where you're doing something that enables someone else to have fun.

Most people prefer a scenario where they can be in the spotlight; where they can do something which, in an immediate and visible way, their ego is going to be gratified. There are, if we're honest, two overt measures of a person's fundamental worth in this game, in most people's eyes; either their gear, or their place on the DPS meter.

I wanted that myself, and I went further, in refusing, even as a Hunter, to be even temporarily flexible in the name of what might have been more genuinely supportive of other people.

I need to start learning, if I can, to put the welfare of a team first, and my own desires second. Other people will respond to this and urge caution, no doubt, and I appreciate that.

The truth is, however, that I've gone about as far as I can at this point, following the, "me first!" route. I've hit a brick wall.

I can keep doing nothing but solitary farming, and clinging to (for me) a dying spec, and never experience anything other than loneliness, boredom to the point where I normally simply log out of the game within half an hour, and a lack of fulfillment due to not moving on to new forms of activity; things which I haven't tried before.

Or, I can realise and acknowledge, that it's now time for something to change. I can become a tank, and experience the subsequent additional maturity which the level of responsibility involved with that will bring.

I don't have any illusions; it's not going to be easy. Even doing Uldaman earlier today was hard; we wiped a number of times at first. I had to zoom right out, in order to have a full 360 degree view, and I had to start pulling carefully, and paying serious attention. Once I did that though, we did not wipe again.

The task I set for myself, first with Ultima Online, and secondly with this game, was to use them as venues where I could learn to relate to other human beings in an effective and beneficial way. So far, my success on that score has only been very partial. I have this blog, and I'm proud of that, yes; but the reason why I haven't ended up doing much raiding in the past, if I'm truly honest, is because I always put my own desires ahead of those of anyone else.

If I'm going to continue to grow, and if I'm going to learn to truly reach out to other human beings, I'm going to need to learn to do something different on that score.

Blowing the dust off

noreply@blogger.com (Mirshalak) — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 03:58:00 +0000

You probably thought this blog was dead.

I'd forgive you if you did. Truthfully, I think I've thought the same at times, over the last couple of months. I'm also aware, from what I've been reading at least, that although I've essentially been on hiatus since January, there are very few people who've been playing since pre-TBC, now left.

There's a major reason why I've been out of the game for so long though, which doesn't have anything to do with WoW itself. The video card in my primary computer has bad memory. I can't play WoW with it (or any 3d game/application, for that matter) for more than probably 90 minutes at the most, and sometimes no more than half an hour, without it causing the entire computer to freeze up.

However, a couple of months ago I was able to get a second computer, which I'm dedicating purely to WoW. It took a while to get it set up, but over the last few days, I've started playing again. The video card isn't great, either; but most importantly, it works. I can get around 35 fps at 1024x768 most of the time, and for me, that's good enough.

I'm creating an alt Draenei Warrior to do some tanking with my younger brother on Barthilas, and also have an Orc Warrior for grouping on my main server, Saurfang.

Mirsh probably isn't going to get played much from here on out; for farming, yes, and maybe some battleground pvp, but the character's days as a main are probably over. My focus now is going to be on tanking, more than anything else.

My Orc Warrior on Saurfang, Braag, is using a Fury/Protection spec. He's still mainly Prot, but I love the 16 or so points in Fury, for all the extra Rage it gives me. I tanked Uldaman with him yesterday while levelling him, and it really helped. We had one wipe, but it happened due to me getting overwhelmed and burst to death very quickly; largely unavoidable.

Also, I know I haven't mentioned this before, but for anyone who doesn't already know this, the links under the Basic Training section of this blog, are almost completely obsolete. Truthfully I've got no idea who to recommend you go to, in order to learn to play a Hunter now; maybe try the forums.

EDIT: As Brigwyn has reminded me in the comments, his site (http://www.brigwyn.com/) is still up, and apparently he is still playing, and thus can still offer guidance. :)

For now's long past the time,
Of last adventures.
Twilight long since darkened,
Into night.

Most of Azeroth's few greats
Have left us.
In the forum, no known name,
Is left in sight.

Yet though reason compels me,
To go likewise,
A greater force demands,
I stay and fight.

The Alliance in positive terms

noreply@blogger.com (Mirshalak) — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 23:40:00 +0000

I'm not sure why I'm writing this, truthfully; I know probably nobody cares about WoW's lore any more, and that they probably ceased caring before WoTLK. I was just reading my old post about Variann Wrynn, though, and wanted to write a positive counterbalance to it.

There's a poem, however, which I tried to have included on the talk page for Turalyon on WoWWiki once, even though they removed it. It always reminded me of the depiction of his and Khadgar's courage in going through the Dark Portal in particular, and I think it pretty well sums up what Metzen's depiction of the Alliance, at its' most positive, could be; as opposed to the war mongering of Variann.

If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

-- The Soldier, by Rupert Brooke, 1914.

"Randolph! Randolph!"

noreply@blogger.com (Mirshalak) — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 13:16:00 +0000

"We're back."

I logged in earlier tonight and did a Heroic VH. Turns out that during peak time at least, the responders to my last post were right; it's not so difficult for Hunters to get into Heroics.

Anyway, wonder of wonders, I was still somehow the member of a guild that I'd joined back in March, and when I'd finished the VH run, I suddenly got a whisper asking if I'd like to do 25 man Ulduar!

So I said yes, and went.

Me:- "I have to warn you guys; my gear sucks. I haven't really played since January, and I just got 2.2k dps in VH."

Someone else:- "Np."
Someone else:- "Welcome."

I found those responses encouraging. In the end, because it was already 10 pm local time, we only downed one boss (the XT-002_Deconstructor) after a couple of wipes, but it still was cool to be in there.

Once raid buffed, my DPS average was around 2.8k, peaking once at 2,898, which left me very surprised. I'm aware that that is terrible by contemporary standards, but given that my gear mostly dates from January, (with the exception of two rings; the Signet of Edward the Odd, and a Titanium Impact Band with a Delicate Cardinal Ruby) 2.2k was about the most I expected to get, especially considering that I was only ever at around 2.1 during the few times I went to Naxxramas.

I'm unsure about my current spec as well, since it was thrown together in a hurry, and was actually intended for battleground PvP; if anyone could offer any suggestions for tightening it up a little here or there, I'd appreciate it.

For eight months away though, that is an outcome which I'm not feeling too bad about. I badly need more current gear, obviously, but if my guild is willing to let me into Uld raids, that will be a decent way to get some. I might have to see if there are some Uld 10 runs going as well, because apparently Deliverance drops from 10 man Normal Yogg'Saron.

A slow, sleepy comeback

noreply@blogger.com (Mirshalak) — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 04:03:00 +0000

So I logged in with my old (ancient) main, a level 42 Mage, earlier, and am going to do some questing with him in Tanaris. I'm not really trying to level; the plan is actually to earn the 10 or so (hopefully) gold I need in order to respec, as every so often I feel like playing with Frost for a while. I'm in the process of updating my addons as I type, as well, since I haven't done that since January.

Seeing as I was in LFG for the Scarlet Monastery however, and saw LFGs for some heroics flick by, I asked a tentative question.

Me:- "Anyone ever want Hunters for Heroics?"
Lightslayer:- "DPS is a dime a dozen."
Someone else:- "@$%# Hunters."
Me:- "Ok, I thought so. Thanks, guys. Just checking."
Lightslayer:- "Go PVP."

I'm considering taking his advice, as I still want to eventually get Conqueror with Mirsh. I've also grabbed an Addon called Overachiever; I want to get at least Nagrand Slam in order to get the old Horde cutscene-type achievement from TBC.

I spent 2k on gear during my last login, as well; though my Armory profile still no doubt sucks rocks by contemporary standards. My motivations for gear are battlegrounds and soloing, but it is going to be difficult, given that apparently I still need to raid if I want decent stuff, and the attitude towards Hunters in PvE is apparently what I mentioned above. ;)

The BGs still don't seem to be too demanding for gear, although with Blizzard's new rated battlegrounds in Cataclysm, that will change, I'm expecting. Still, it'd be good to do rated matches in a form of PvP that, all false modesty aside, I'm actually reasonably good at, for a change. ;)