3.3 Coming Soon

The word is out.  Patch 3.3 lands this coming Tuesday, November 24th. (Edit:  Apparently it was postponed two weeks.  Now it’s Tuesday, December 8th.) Will the random LFG work as well as people have been claiming?  Apparently the PTR reviews of the new LFG tool is nothing but positive.  Perhaps I’m too much of a skeptic, cynic or a pessimist but I just can’t imagine it’s going to be much more than 1000 DPS and 20 healers and 30 tanks.  We’ll see…

I’m looking forward to seeing what the new Ice Crown Citadel 5-man is.  The raids can go shit on themselves for all I care.  (what a magnificent was of time they are)

I also like the idea of getting rewarded for using the random LFG.  I’m all about that.  From what I’ve heard players will get rewarded ‘more’ the fewer non-PuG players they have in the group.  Since I run the majority of my 5-mans with two (or three) RL friends we may not actually see much of this reward.  Meh…whatever.  I’m just happy they are putting more players into the pool as options.

What about the new class buffs/nerfs?  Well, I’m not overly concerned with any of that because I don’t care for the ‘hard-core’ aspect of the game.  Haste affecting DoTs?  I don’t care how non-hard-core you are that will be awesome.  I did a test run on my friend’s rogue last night.  If I can land a VT, SW:P and DP on him and let him ‘fly away’ he will die about 15 seconds later.

What does that mean?  That means when I’m in WG and I see an alliance hovering above me on their mount I can actually kill them as they fly away. 

How do I do this?  Well, I start with a 1.3 second cast of Vampiric Touch.  The moment it lands I put on a Shadow Word: Pain.  Then, as soon as the global cool down is released, I land a Devouring Plague.  Theoretically I can get all three up in about 2.5 seconds or so.  If they aren’t on their toes and flying away as soon as I start casting they could find themselves with 3 DoTs on them.

Who cares?  3 DoTs…big whoop.  Well, Mr. Sassy-Pants, it just so happens that in my PvP gear my 3 DoTs will do just over 26k damage to someone wearing 400 resil.  If they are wearing more resil those numbers will go down but 400 resil isn’t that small of an amount.  So, unless the person is a tank or has a ton of resil they likely can’t live through my 3 DoTs.

I love it.  I’m killing some elementals.  An alliance players swoops low to scope the scene.  I immediately cast my 3 DoTs on them.  They fly off.  I continue killing elementals and about 15-20 seconds later I see “Killing Blow” flash across my screen.  With the haste to DoTs that number may drop to 10-12 seconds.  Such fun!

A Perfect World…of Warcraft

When contemplating what would be the ideal WoW situation I come to a few enlightening conclusions.  All of these conclusions are basically derivatives of the opposite of what drives me nuts about WoW.  Basically, I’m easy like Sunday morning.  That is, if I’m not getting pissed I’m happy.  There are many people out there that operate on three levels – sad, content, happy.  I only operate on two – sad and happy.

If I find a PuG group that makes it through an instance without anyone talking in chat or being a douche I’m completely happy.  Most would call that boring but I call it a god-send.  Recently I’ve been getting the urge to tank on my druid during heroic runs.  I have 2 or 3 friends who consistently join me – rogue, spriest and sometimes a druid or warlock.  Unfortunately the druid is a tank so I end up healing when he goes with us.  When he’s not there, however, I get to be the bear.  GRRRR!

Two of the most recent PuG healers we’ve come across have said a total of 1 word for both runs.  Seriously, one druid, when asked if he would be healing, responded with:  “mhmm”.  That was all he said the entire time.  Even when asked a direct question he wouldn’t answer.  The other healer (remember I said 1 word for 2 different healers) didn’t say anything the entire time.  Not a single word.  It was lovely.  Heal, dps, tank and get out with some badges and a few extra gold.  Lovely, I say.

This got me to thinking.  My idea of the perfect MMO would be one where I didn’t have to communicate with the other players.  In fact, there was no avenue of communication whatsoever.  No chat.  No forums.  No websites.  No vent.  Nothing.  It would be absolutely amazing if everyone knew exactly what they were supposed to do and I didn’t have to hear your squeaky voice over vent or read your piss-poor grammar in chat.

Side note:  Everyone I see who types some derivative of “you fail”, “oh hai”, “l2play” or “noob” gets launched to the ignore list with haste.  If only the ignore list didn’t have a limit of 100 players.  I’m sure there are well over 1000 players worthy of ignore on my server alone.

When I put my idea to brass tacks it comes down to this:  I can’t wait until A.I. is to the point that I can play an “MMO” game comprised of me and a bunch of really smart NPCs.  Granted it wouldn’t be an MMO but you get the idea.  I have very fond memories of a game that was very, very close to this – Oblivion.  Man, that game was awesome.  The NPCs learned, changed and interacted with you like a real player without any of the asshatery.

I suppose it just comes down to the simple fact that a person with a platform for free speech coupled with anonymity ends up being a complete prick.  Granted this isn’t an original observation but I find it interesting how so much of my online satisfaction stems from this.

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…