Fun In The Head

Recently some friends of mine have become a bit more active playing WoW.  This has, in turn, provided me with more structure when I play WoW.  We don’t have anything formal scheduled but we do like to run the heroic daily, regular daily, BG daily and maybe a quick heroic ToC whenever we can.  It’s been fun and I’ve made significant progress on my gear via emblems.  Sadly there isn’t any gear in heroics that are useful to me (especially my druid) but I’ve been tweaking my tanking gear with upgrades from conquest and triumph.  (hurray for 2 piece T8.5 bonus)

While I sit here and reminisce about my recent gaming accomplishments and what has provided me with the most entertainment I notice that WoW is pretty short on the list.  I play WoW more than any of my other games solely due to the diversity of things I get to do.  On a daily basis there are my crafting cool downs (epic gem transmute, moonshroud etc) there are the profession quests (fishing, cooking, JC etc) and a plethora of other things I can do to occupy my time.

When I’m not on WoW what do I prefer to play?  Rock Band, of course.  I’m pushing myself into expert drums rather rigorously these days.  I refuse to play on hard when I play by myself.  That isn’t to say that I can play all the songs on expert but rather I play the easier songs so that I can force myself into the expert mindset.  When I play with others I often down-grade to hard to ensure we can play all the songs we want – and survive!  Guitar, on the other hand, has become my formitable bread-and-butter.  I’m at the point where I can beat almost every song on expert – and beat them convincingly.  That is, my worst case scenarios end up being about 85% or so, and the vast majority of songs end up being above 90%.

The list of songs that I can’t beat have shortened considerably.  I recently beat Green Grass and High Tides, which took about 3 hours of back-to-back attempts to do.  Vicious!  The list has widdled it’s way down to 5.

Painkiller – I’m convinced I can beat this now I just haven’t tried in a very long time.

Panic Attack – This is my current project.  I’ve spent about 1 hour with it and am fully confident I will command and conquer on my next set of solid attempts (damn that organ solo).

Warriors of Time – Does the solo need to be that long, fast and difficult?  Really?  I honestly can’t foresee myself completing this without a solid afternoon of attempts.  It’s cool though because it’s a great song and fun to play.

Snow, Hey Oh! – Can someone explain how this isn’t a tier 7 song?  Mother of some-other-son-of-a-pain…

Visions – Whoever suggested this song as mandatory in order to complete the endless setlist needs to have a vice grip attached to their balls (or punched in the boob if it was a girl).  Speaking completely from the music theory perspective this song is terrible.  There is no well defined beat, melody or harmony.  It’s composition is sloppy and it’s just a shitty song to play.  Some chick just grumbles into the mic for 4 minutes and the guitarist just hits random strings…not to mention what the drummer is doing…

Other than that I’ve downed every other song (that I have) on expert.  I’m sure there are some DLC songs that would be very challenging but I haven’t come across any that sounded appealing to me.  It’s sad how a great deal of the very challenging songs consist of people just screaming at the mic.  Perhaps I’m getting too old but when it comes to music I’d like to have feelings aroused.  The songs I end up liking are songs that I find moving – either by lyric or note.  Screaming incomprehensible words means very little to me.

When thinking back on what I’ve done, as far as gaming goes, in the last few weeks I must admit that Rock Band sticks out as the game I’ve had far more fun playing.  Why is it that I choose to spend so much more time on WoW?  A mystery…

GC is Pretty Awesome

Some of my readers may not know who Ghostcrawler (GC) is.  Those of us who follow theorycrafting are very familiar with him.  He is a developer for Blizzard who interfaces with the public on a regular basis.  He is pretty much the “go to guy” for anything coming down the pipeline.  You can find his posts on the official WoW forums.  He typically discusses class changes that are being looked at or implemented.

As you can imagine, his job could be difficult.  Not necessarily on the Blizzard side of things (I can only speculate here) but rather having to deal with the hundreds of thousands of shit heads who complain on the Blizzard forums.  In fact, he recently psuedo-resigned from his forum posting responsibility as many of the forum trolls were starting to attack him personally – and questioning his abilities as a Blizzard employee.  Come on, as if he is the one behind all the decisions…I expect he has some input but he’s ultimately just the messenger.

GC recently posted some information regarding the current PTR Paladin changes.  The PTR (Public Test Realm) is a server set up for testing purposes of the next patch.  The next patch planned in 3.3 and if you log on to the PTR you will see the content they have “planned”.  Of course, everything on the PTR is subject to change but it should give you an idea of what they are trying to implement.

It turns out that Paladins are getting the nerf bat…again.  Thank God!!!  They have been getting nerfed almost every patch since 2.3 rolled around in TBC and they are still over powered.  I don’t care what you say or think but if a 600 resil warr with 25.5k hp, unbuffed, can get killed within one Hammer of Justice stun then the class is over powered.  That is completely ridiculous.

I have nothing against the Paladin as a class so much as I have something against the people who play them.  Yes, you heard me correctly.  In my experience the people who play Paladins (especially Ret) are whiney little bitches who just like face rolling everyone.  A troll on the WoW forums started spouting off about the incoming Paladin nerfs and essentially tried to bash GC.  Perhaps the best come back of all time – GC simply said:  “Dear OP, Bye.  Hugs, GC.”

That man is a shining example of awesome.  Not only do trolls deserve to be put in their place like this, most Paladins do as well.  The original justification behind this particular nerf is that Blizzard had intended the Paladin to be a support class from the beginning.  A support class is basically one that supplies buffs and helpful spells for the group but doesn’t necessarily contribute directly with a kill.  (healers are generally considered a support class)  With the buffs they received in 2.3 they wanted to bring them out of 100% support and have them be competitive when DPSing and tanking.

The current problem with the Paladin OPness is they gave them all the tools necessary to be seen as a force to be reckoned with but didn’t actually nerf their support abilities.  As GC put it (paraphrase):  “…all their abilities over time have contributed to making the class feel like a one-man army.”  So very true, indeed.  They are next to impossible to kill in a one-on-one situation.

I’d like to give an example.  I have several well geared characters – hunter, druid, dk, priest and warrior in full epic gear.  Each of those characters has a PvP set ranging from about 300 resil (priest) up to around 600 resil (warrior).  Now, I’m fully aware that 600 resil isn’t spectacular, nor would I claim it is, and 300 resil is on the low-end of things.  Given the itemization in PvP gear it’s very clear, upon first inspection, how much PvP gear a player is wearing.  One only need look at the health pool.  It’s possible to have a great deal of hp and little resil but it’s kinda tough to have a great deal of resil and no hp – because all the resil gear has a ton of hp.  Of course one needs to take into account armor class – clearly a mage is going to have less hp than a hunter with similar amount of resil simply because mail generally has more hp than cloth.  One learns to pick out how much health implies solid pvp gear.

I see a Paladin rolling around with 21k hp self buffed.  I know immediately one of two things is occurring.  Either he is running around in full PvE gear or he has very few PvP pieces.  If it’s the former he could have anything from leveling blues up to teir 9 epics (a bit of an exaggeration but you get the idea).  If it’s the latter I would suspect he has no more than 250 resil and a mix of PvE gear.  On my warrior I see 21k hp and know it’s going to be an easy kill – for any class but the paladin.  I see another warrior with 21k hp and it’s a slaughter-fest, dk with 21k hp and I’m going to have fun dancing around them while they die, priest, mage, hunter…whatever…if you have 21k hp you are going to die by my axe within moments of engagement (for the most part).  Except the Paladin!

I’ve learned that a paladin with 20k hp on up to 40k hp or more is a character I won’t mess with unless I have to.  Period.  Simply because they are just so OP.  Now, I love to pick on the Paladin running around with 16k hp…only because I love to watch them die.  This isn’t only true for my warrior either.  I’ve heard people counter with “warriors aren’t supposed to be able to kill paladins”.  What about my 30k druid with 480 resil?  What about my 26k dk with 400 resil?  What about my 26k hunter with 500 resil?  What about my 22k priest with 300 resil?  All of them will generally get slaughtered by a paladin who has little to no resil.  This isn’t a matter of one class being the “counter” of another but rather a bunch of paladins running around as one-man armies.

Blizzard is taking the correct steps in bringing the Paladin back down out of godhood.  I only question whether it’s enough…

More PuGs…Diamond in the Rough?

With patch 3.3 we are going to see cross-realm LFG options.  Yes, we will now be able to do the daily heroic with each member (theoretically) from different servers.  Will this actually give players a better chance of filling out a group then we currently have?  I suspect a big, inescapably lamented, NO!

What is the problem we have now?  Too many players wanting to DPS and not enough tanks and healers to spread around.  In order to make a proper group for a 5-man dungeon you must have a tank, healer and 3 DPS.  (Yes, it’s possible to have a different make-up than this but 99.999% of the groups have the common formula)

So, that means 40% of your group must be a healer or tank and 60% of your group must be DPS.  Based on my experience using the LFG GUI I see roughly 10% of players are healers, 15% are tanks and 90% are DPS.  Wait, what?  10 + 15 + 90 = 100?  No, but most healers and tanks have a second spec for DPS so technically speaking 90% of players have the capability to DPS in a 5-man.

Let’s take a ‘for instance’ look at what the new cross-server LFG will do.  For the sake of easy numbers let’s assume there are typically 100 people looking to do the daily heroic on any given server.  So, 10 can heal, 15 can tank and 90 can DPS.  That means, at most, 10 groups can be made since you need to have a healer.

This leaves 5 tanks and probably around 50 DPS high and dry – remember some of the healers could likely DPS as well.  Now, with some arm-twisting and guild begging those 5 tanks can probably get a healer.  So, suppose 15 groups are made when everything is said and done.  That means 30 DPS players are left with their thumb up their ass.  That is nearly 1/3 of the players!

What happens when cross-realm LFG is implemented?  Well, instead of 100 players searching for a group it will be 1000.  Instead of 30 DPS players sitting on their ass 300 DPS players will be sitting on their ass.

Will this change actually accomplish anything?  I suspect not.  In fact, even beyond what I’ve already mentioned, I think it will likely cause more problems.  You know there is going to be some douche-bag newb healer who says he can heal H ToC so he can get the mass of epics.  H ToC is nothing to scoff at.  That place can be rough to heal through…even for a well geared healer…especially if the tank isn’t well geared.  So, I’m a DPS player who happens to land a group with the cross-server LFG and it turns out the healer is an absolute scrub.  With the current system you can at least see who is going to heal and do a quick gear score on them or armory them.  Hell, even look at their health and mana pool.  If you see a healer with 14k mana and 13k hp you know for a fact they just hit 80 and are not going to be able to heal H ToC.

With the new random LFG you won’t know who is signing up to heal or tank until you are already stuck in the group with them.  I predict headache galore – but maybe I’m just too cynical.

Why Can’t I Just Enjoy It?

There is a new Internet phenomena sweeping the nation.  It’s a low budget web-sitcom titled The Guild.  It seems the show has caught on and is becoming very successful.  Although I typically enjoy original thought and comedy I find this show kinda…well, dumb.  Maybe I’m just a hater but, from my perspective, it’s the writers and producers of The Guild that are the haters.

If you haven’t seen this show I’ll give you a short summary.  The Guild is based around a group of people who play an online game.  The game is never specified – to my knowledge anyway – but it’s very clear it’s an MMO similar to EQ, WoW or Warhammer.  The show goes on to depict the people in the guild as completely dysfunctional morons.  Now, I’m sure there are more than enough dysfunctional morons who play the game but I think the vast majority are probably pretty normal.

The casual viewer watches a show like this and assumes that everyone who plays WoW is a complete retard.  That’s fine.  What erks me is that they feel completely justified believing I’m a complete retard because they’ve seen the show and they “know how MMO players are”.  Then, I’m unjustified in believing they are a complete retard because they spend 2 or 3 hours a day watching television.  What a waste of your fucking life.  At least with gaming you are involved.  I have to solve puzzles, practice motor movement, coordination and environmental awareness.  People who watch television (be it network, Internet or other) are just draining their brain and doing nothing more.

So, how exactly am I the retard?  Clearly it’s a stereotype that has developed from a small percentage of the MMO population.  The same conclusion can be drawn about people who watch television.  I’ve seen several people who watch television all day who are grossly overweight, unemployed, lazy and unhygienic.  So, using the same logic, I can pigeon hole everyone who watches television to be dirty, stinky, out-of-work fat asses.  Right?

Wrong.  I wouldn’t do that because I’m not a retard.

A Change of Pace

Generally speaking this a WoW related blog but I’m a gamer and enjoy several flavors of games.  The other game I spend my time on is Rock Band.  I began playing about 2 months before Rock Band 2 was launched.  Prior to that I had never touched Guitar Hero or any other ‘instrument simulator’ in my life.  I fell in love with Rock Band immediately.  I purchased Rock Band 2 the day of the launch and downloaded about 60 songs since.  I play guitar, bass and vocals on expert.  (the drums on medium/hard…depending on the song)

As many of you know Harmonix recently launched The Beatles: Rock Band.  A friend of mine purchased it for the Wii and said it was really fun.  She lives in California.  I live in Alabama.  So, I didn’t really get the chance to try it out for myself on her Wii.  Well, I have a college buddy who lives in Portland who plays Rock Band with me over XBOX Live.  We like to play the very challenging songs together.  It turns out that he purchased the game as well.

Well, this last weekend my roommate rented The Beatles: Rock Band and we spent several hours on Friday night playing with my college buddy.  I was guitar, my roommate was bass and my buddy plays drums.  I should point out that I am not a fan of The Beatles.  They have their share of catchy songs but I give them no credit as great artists.  They are rather a group of musicians, who are moderately talented, who happened to fall into something original.  They were a fucking boy band, for christ’s sake.

One can argue taste all day long so I will not continue along with this discussion.  So, back to the game.  Well, we jumped on and noticed some immediate differences between Rock Band 2 and The Beatles: Rock Band.  Many differences were neither ‘improvements’ or ’shortcomings’ – they were just differences.  Some differences took me a few moments to get used to.  Some I didn’t like.  Some were of no consequence to me.  There weren’t really any improvements from what I saw.

My first stumble was that the track that the notes come down on was very short as compared to Rock Band 2.  That is, when a note is coming down the ‘fret’ it can sneak up on you because there isn’t a great deal of ‘fret’ to look at.  Does that make sense?  It’s really just a matter of the prospective of the graphic.  In Rock Band 2 the ‘fret’ is angled more acutely and you can see a greater distance down it.  So, when a note is incoming you have more time to prepare for it.  This was just a difference that I needed to get used to.  Neither an improvement or shortcoming.

The second stumble was that the art from the background was unbelievably distracting.  Come on with the psychedelic colors already.  The spinning, twisting and colors distracted from the notes so much it was borderline dizzying.  When you go into overdrive you can barely make out your fret during some art sequences.  The art in The Beatles: Rock Band was much more of a point-of-attention than in Rock Band 2.  That is, it was apparent that the developers wanted much more time and effort put into the art for The Beatles: Rock Band.  The problem was it was too distracting to the game play mechanics.  Major short coming.

The third stumble is that the game is unbelievably short.  Oh, my.  My roommate and I ran through the entire Story Mode in just a few hours.  Not bad for a rental, but to buy the game would be insane.  Why spend $60 when you can spend $6 and get the exact same experience?  It comes down to an argument of repeatability.  I can’t foresee any reason why I’d want to play any of these songs again.  I suppose if one were an avid Beatles fan it might be worth $60.  Of course, you can probably buy a CD compilation for $60 that will have more than 45 songs in it.  Not impressed…

The fourth stumble was the difficulty of the game.  Not once did I fail when I played it.  Not once did I have a ‘oh, shit’ moment.  There was simply no challenge in the game.  I got 5 gold stars the first time through on many of the songs.  Granted they were among the easier songs – but there just weren’t that many difficult songs to choose from.  I believe my worst performance was 82% or so.  This leaves a lot of room for improvement but many of the tier 7 Rock Band songs required me to play for hours to beat it.  There are still some songs I can’t beat and many that I get sub 80% on.  So, to fly through the entire game scoring over 90% on probably 42 of the songs means that the game is just too damn easy.

My final thought is related to the intentions of the developers.  (and perhaps George Harrison’s son – who was directly involved in the ‘direction’ of the game)  This game was fully intended as a core to a plethora of DLC songs.  That is, they created this song fully intending to have their audience pay another $40 to $50 (at least) to download more songs for the game.  Why do I think this?  Even though I’m not a Beatles fan I know what are the ‘good’ songs.  There were maybe 5 songs on the whole game that I could stand – let alone enjoy.  Now, I will admit there are about 8 to 10 Beatles songs that I find catchy and entertaining to some degree.  I know this set of ‘greatest hits’ was intentionally avoided to cause people to pay for them later.  What a crock of horse shit!  Good marketing on their part?  Probably.  Does that make it any less coercive?  No.

I know, I know…people aren’t forced to pay for the DLC…blah, blah, blah.  It’s just a matter of ethics, in my opinion.  They knew full well what they were doing and the primary purpose was to get more money out of people.  People will argue “that’s capitalism”, which is just a poor position to hold.  Telling me the name of the economic system that supports this behavior does not justify it.

Let’s say I was designing a Rock Band game specifically around Led Zepplin (oh, god…that would be awesome if it was done right) but decided not to include Black Dog, Kashmir, Stairway to Heaven, Living Loving Maid, Ramble On, Over The Hills and Far Away or D’yer Mak’er.  So many Led Zepplin fans would purchase the game because they love Led Zepplin only to be disappointed when they found out their favorite songs were intentionally left off because the developers wanted them to pay for them later.  That is just a coercive thing to do.  It’s unethical and the fact that we have an economic system that supports it is simply staggering.

In conclusion, if you are a die hard Beatles fan and want to support them in everything they do or are a part of then I say:  Go for it.  For the rest of us who don’t really care for the Beatles, prefer to have a game with depth, challenge and meaning or would rather get what you pay for then I say:  Skip The Beatles: Rock Band and stick with Rock Band 2.  If you spend $60 on DLC you’ll likely get a list of songs that have more of your favorites than the entire The Beatles: Rock Band will.  Sure you can’t buy 45 songs with $60 from the Rock Band 2 DLC but I guarantee you won’t get a shit ton of stupid songs – because you decide which songs to buy.

Stupid song in The Beatles: Rock Band – about 35

Meh songs in The Beatles: Rock Band – about 5

Pleasant songs in The Beatles: Rock Band – 3 (Ticket to Ride, Come Together and While My Guitar Gently Weeps)

Potentially good songs that were omitted from The Beatles: Rock Band because the producers knew people would dish out extra money in DLC to get them but should have been included in the original because of their obvious ‘greatest hits’ status – Let It Be, Yesterday, All My Loving, Please Mister Postman, Love Me Do and Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da.  I’m sure the Beatles fans would have a more extensive list than what I came up with here.

Now, admittedly, I only played the guitar part throughout the entire game.  Perhaps the other instruments are more challenging, fun and worth while.  If so, then John Lennon was a shitty guitarist.

It’s Really Not Even Opinion Anymore

If I make my way to the Vault of Archevon and take a gander at the results recorded therein I am often completely overcome with laughter.  The count usually reads something like:

Horde vs. Alliance Captures:  463 vs. 462

Horde vs. Alliance Defense:  834 vs. 327

That’s right.  The alliance and horde have captured Wintergrasp about the same number of times but the horde have defended it almost 3 times as much.  The numbers are skewed to a ridiculous degree.  If I find myself in, or near, Dalaran when WG is about to start I will queue up to help out the leveling toons as well as give the horde more of a shot at Stone Keeper’s Shards.  No exaggeration – I have so many Stone Keeper’s Shards I have to spend them on honor points because I purchased all the heirloom items that I can make use of.  I usually cache about 150 Stone Keeper’s Shards on each of my characters in case I get new pvp shoulders or helm – to buy the pvp enchant.

Every battle I can recall that I have been involved in for the last month has had 2 raids of horde versus about 20 alliance.  They have so many stacks of tenacity it’s insane.  They are like trash pulls in raids.  It’s common to run into a warrior, druid, dk or paladin with 70k hp…sometimes upwards of 100k!  Here I am with my measly 17k hp on my new-to-80 spriest completely destroying a group of alliance with, on average, 60k hp each.  What is wrong with this picture?  Just yesterday I quite nearly got ‘one-shot’ by a druid who pounced me, shred, dead.  Then, about 1 second later, he was completely mobbed and destroyed by a group of 15 players.

Why do people even roll alliance on my server?  It is a losing battle that will likely have no result other than constant frustration for them.  Just faction change, reroll or give up.  Seriously, you aren’t doing anything other than giving the horde good reasons to laugh at you, make videos of your failures and spoon feed us with honor.  Being involved in that one WG I was able to complete 4 weekly PvP quests, which resulted in 40 Stone Keeper’s Shards and I had a net increase in 16k honor after the entire event was complete.  That’s 16k honor in 20 minutes!

Now, perhaps different servers have seen different results.  I’d be interested to hear some of the Vault of Archevon numbers from different servers.  Display the results in similar fashion to the way I have done above using the comment section of this post.

It Just Got Hard

This particular pictorial is referring to me.  Well, more specifically, my priest.  I recently leveled my priest, Zunju, to level 80 and have begun trying to gear him up by running heriocs.  Luckily he is dual spec for disc/shadow.  So, I can fulfill the roll of dps or healing.  The sad (oh, so very sad) element is that my gear sucks billy goat balls!!! Now, having said that, I don’t think I’ve done too bad for myself.  Within about 3 hours of hitting 80 I healed a timed CoS run.  I had to blow every cool down whenever it was up to pull this off but I was able to accomplish it non-the-less.

Do I think I should have been able to do a CoS timed run in a mix of heirloom items and questing blues/greens?  Hell no!  I’ve got my hours upon countless hours of healing experience to thank.  *Thanks, experience, I owe you.*

Since the timed CoS run I have healed heroic Violet Hold, heroic Utgarde Keep, heroic Drak’Tharon Keep and regular Trial of the Champion.  It turns out that regular Trial of the Champion is more difficult to heal than the rest of them.  I’ve healed through it twice – and failed a third time.  It is just way beyond my gear level at the moment.

Now, I have been able to tag along as dps and do heroic Halls of Lightening, heroic Trial of the Champion and several others.  It’s so much easier to dps when you have shitty gear than it is to heal when you have shitty gear.  The gear dependency is more than I’d like to admit.  People will claim all day long that you can accomplish amazing things with poor gear.  While I won’t necessarily disagree, I do wish they would caveat it a little.

No amount of skill can carry you through something your gear is not ready for – and vice versa.  I’m a damn good healer.  I handle myself flawlessly as a healer.  I don’t make mistakes and anticipate damage very well.  I know how to play my class.  I know how and when to use what cool downs and spells.  Despite all that there isn’t a chance in hell I’m going to be able to heal a bunch of average players through even regular Trial of the Champion.

I was able to get a DK tank with 24k hp (buffed) through Trial of the Champion with my shitty gear.  I died during the last encounter, soulstone rez’d, healed as best I could and died again.  We managed to get him down with the tank having just under 2k hp and only the hunter left alive.  We were sweating it.  Then, of course, the lock rolls on the gloves I need and wins over me.  Bah…I got nothing out of the run.  Not even the emblems because it was just regular ToC.

My priest sucks.  I don’t suck, my priest does.  I think I’ll stick to some of the easier heroics for a while until I can get a better gear base.  Otherwise the entire song and dance is just too damn stressful.

Jump Ship!

At the beginning of the year I had a post with many predictions as to things that will change along with a wish list.  After reading it over a bit I’m somewhat impressed.  Apparently I nailed several on the head – even some wish list items. 

There is one wish list item that I’d like to expand on – faction transfer.  This was listed as not likely to occur but I suggested a simple $25 fee.  Well, it appears to be a $30 fee but it was implemented none-the-less.  When I read of my ability to bring my level 71 NE priest and my level 70 human warrior to the horde side I was ecstatic.  Apparently so were many others…

Has anyone noticed an overwhelming number of faction transfers are occurring one-way?  Granted I haven’t done a whole lot of snooping around, but I have yet to hear of anyone who transferred from horde to alliance.  Every single mention of the faction transfer has been from alliance to horde.  Who would have guessed?

What reasons might someone want to change from alliance to horde?  A simple change of pace.  Fair enough…they wanted to see what it was like on the other side.  This seems like a reasonable motive for such a change.  It seems that there would be an equal amount of alliance-to-horde transfers as there are horde-to-alliance under this motive.  I argue that this cannot be culprit behind the lop-sided number of transfers.

Another reason for such a change is to play with friends or family who are already well established on the opposing faction.  Again, for similar reasons as above, it seems reasonable to argue there are just as many alliance-to-horde transfers as horde-to-alliance under this motive.  So, the lop-sided number of transfers cannot be attributed to this reason.

What could be the root causes of this?  My situation arose because when I was a newb starting the game the thought of being a cute little gnome mage, a majestic NE priest or a heroic human warrior was just too appealing.  What I never considered, and only towards the end realized, is how many god dammed kids and moms play alliance.  It was a breading ground of 12 year olds and their mothers.  My next venture into the MMO world (if ever such a venture is to occur) I will definitely take into consideration which ‘faction’, ‘race’ or otherwise ’side’ I can choose that will most likely deter the players who are more likely to suck and annoy.  (moms suck and kids annoy)

Now, if you are a mom or a kid reading this please don’t take too much offense – I’m sure you’ve already taken some.  I don’t intend to say that a mom can’t be good.  I mean to say that the overwhelming majority aren’t good.  What grounds do I have to say this?  Years upon years upon years of gaming experience.  My mom sucked at video games, all of my friend’s moms sucked at video games…every mom that I have raided with, PvP’d with or quested with sucked at wow.  So, using Ockham’s razor, I must conclude that there are probably more moms that suck than there are moms who are good.

Kids annoy because it is too often the case that they are talking on vent, chatting in gchat, trade chat, general chat, battleground chat, raid chat, party chat…whatever.  I understand that it’s a social game but for the love of god, please shut up.  There is just something uncouth about seeing someone make a comment in party chat more than once every 5 minutes.  Obviously necessary comments don’t count – bio break, afk a sec, brb, a fight explanation etc – but ‘lol i just crit that guy for 12k with my kill shot omg i’m so awesome i love huntards’ is completely unnecessary and very annoying.  Clearly it doesn’t take a child to behave this way.  Anyone can be this annoying.  I suppose what I’m trying to say is that anyone who is this annoying is exhibiting child-like behavior.  Often it is the case that children haven’t learned, or understand, social taboos to the point of not exercising them despite of themselves.

Child-like behavior often consists of trying to look cool, bragging among ‘piers’ and trying to get attention.  Any comment made in this vein is annoying.

The problem I’m seeing is that now it seems there are a great deal more children and mothers coming to the horde side as well.  Sure, there were some from the beginning but the vast majority rolled alliance.  Anyone who has played the game at max level for more than 6 months recognizes how much superior the horde were than the alliance.  So, now all the kids want to be cool and be on the winning side – now we’re getting them all.  sonofa

How awesome would it be if Blizzard made an ‘adults only’ battlegroup.  You had to verify your age to be older than 21 in order to have characters on any of the servers.  It’s a pipe-dream, I know, but just think about how relaxing it would be.  Never having to explain a boss fight.  Never having to try and explain how fighting on the flag in AB is advantageous.  Never having to deal with the amount of retarded shit you see in trade chat.  I know, I know, there will be several adults among us who are ‘child-like’ but by eliminating the actual children should reduce the ‘child-like’ behavior immensely.

One can only wish…

Comeback?

I’ve decided to start playing WoW again.  Obviously my return to WoW implies a return to this blog – you know, since I have so many comments, observations and general opinions about the game.  Should I remain in ‘retirement’?  I don’t know – I’d really like to come out and do a sweet blind-side chop-block on someone. 

The return to raiding…not so much.  A return to my druid…not so much.  A return to pvp…not so much.  A return to enjoyment…yeah, we’ll go with that.  I’ve recently decided to go way, way, way on the casual side.  I’ve been back for about 5 weeks now after about a 6 or 7 week absence.  I’ve done the new ToC dungeon twice and the ToC raid twice.  The dungeon was ok…the raid kinda sucked.  I think I’m still burnt out on the idea of raiding.  I simply hate almost everything it represents.  Too much talking on vent – I want to come home and relax during my evenings.  I have to rely too much on the actions of others – I want my playing to be regulated around my own actions, not others.  Too many stupid people – the epeen thing is really, really, really played out.

As a result I’ve decided to blow all my emblems on heirloom items and level the piss out of my alts.  Thank god for the faction change implementation!!!  I took advantage and brought two toons over to the horde side.

NE Priest Verocia –> Troll Priest Zunju

Human Warrior Suranne –> Tauren Warrior Galtero

Identity crisis?  Yeah, probably.  haha

It turns out, even with my reluctance to do dungeon and raid content, I have gathered about 25 Emblems of Triumph.  What really tugs on the ole’ short hairs is that I can’t trade them down to Emblems of Heroism.  When I asked about it all I got was a plethora of people saying how stupid that would be.  Why would it be stupid?  The only thing I want to trade emblems in for are heirloom items.  I don’t give a shit about the new ‘awesome sauce’ gear.  Yeah, that would be the same gear that I will be able to buy way cheaper in 2 months…and be able to get better items after 10 minutes in the next 5-man dungeon.  What a waste of emblems.  OR I can spend the emblems on heirloom items that will help all of my leveling characters.  hmm…doesn’t seem like such a dumb move to me.

My toon repertoire now consists of almost every flavor possible except the shaman.  I had a level 36 shaman but I had to delete him to make room for my 71 priest.  A fair trade, imo.  I just didn’t like the shaman.  It took me over a year to level him to 30.  I kept hearing that once he gets Windfury they are really fun.  I spent 6 levels saying: Meh.  Anyone who likes a shaman should roll a warrior…now that shit is fun!  Roll up and MS your back, Overpower your face and execute your ass.  I digress.

Now I’m rolling with an 80 druid, 80 dk, 80 hunter, 75 priest, 74 warrior, 74 mage, 62 rogue, 42 paladin and a 23 warlock.  I’m really excited about getting my priest and warrior to 80.  I really enjoyed them at 70 but since I rerolled horde back in TBC they’ve just been collecting dust.  Again, thank god for the faction transfer option!

Well, with my triumphant return I’m planning to develop some more leveling guides.  I’ve got one for almost every toon (two for a mage) but I really need to sit down and make the rest.  I did update them a few weeks ago to keep them current for the 3.2 patch.  Feel free to critique them if you’d like.  I’ve been following my guides religiously and have been very pleased with them. 

Peace Out!

I have decided it’s that time – the time to walk away.  This last Tuesday our guild was going to have it’s first day back from a short raiding break.  I logged on to get my toon in proper order.  Gathered my reagents, pots and repair money.  Everything was good to go and I thought: Holy christ, I want to shoot myself in the face right now.

I logged off, wrote a short (very short) explaination on the guild website and called my PvE days to finish.  Then, this morning, I received an email from Blizzard telling me my 6 month renewal is up today and my account is inactive until I manually renew it.  Ultimately it’s just perfect timing.

Although I do not want to do anymore PvE I do think I may occasionally jump on for some PvP.  I’ve been enjoying PvP with my Death Knight, Druid, Hunter and Mage.  Although my mage is only 69 it’s still a good time.

What will happen to this blog?  Meh, it will probably just sit here.  I may keep making leveling guides.  When the mood strikes I’ll probably write about a new PvP spec I’m trying.  All things considered this blog has gone the way of the Dodo.  I have started another, non-WoW related, blog on my personal website for anyone who is interested.  I haven’t been in the writing mood lately so it’s rather scarce at the moment.  If you are interested in philosophy, social science or politics you can take a gander.

ricosignal.com