Stabby

Well, I got close to Wrecking Ball a number of times, but never quite got it. At the 50's level the class abilities get a bit more chaotic and it's dominated by Outland gear, so the run might be over. In addition, the popular battleground is Alterac Valley, and I don't have a computer at the moment that can handle that many polygons.

So, the focus is on PvE for the moment, and I'm limping along, uninspired. William is catching up with his own rogue, in the mid-40's. It's possible he'll catch up this weekend, his least desirable levels are behind him.

Sneakiness

Just swung by to confirm that the rogue domination continues in battlegrounds in the 20s bracket, and in some ways it gets worse. With the addition of Cheap Shot and Vanish, rogues are truly a terror in this bracket.

Only level 24, I was able to effectively dominate a battleground, one-shotting all classes but paladin and warrior, and in pursuit of an enemy flag carrier multiple rogues can take out any target in very short order.

This might be the first time I will ever get the Wrecking Ball achievement on any character.

The Ambush Everyone Sees Coming

Right now in World of Warcraft in the lower-level battlegrounds there is nothing more imbalanced than the subtlety-specced Rogue. There are a lot of interesting little changes to spice things up in the 10-19 bracket such as resto Shamans with Earth Shield and frost Mages with their elemental pet, but giving a rogue Shadowstep at level 10 is just mind-boggling.

Hearing about the outrage on the forums yesterday, I decided to quick roll a new rogue to test out the allegations. I dinged 10 and joined the WSG queue and immediately noticed how there were few hunters, but more rogues than usual. Immediately I saw why. There was a L10 warlock boldly running alone, and I quickly saw the opportunity to test my damage. Shadowstep - Ambush - crit! - 1-shot kill. I was critting for over 300 damage at level 10 on an undetectable, indefensible opening move.

There were a couple of other rogues L16 and L19 who were dominating. The L19 didn't even bother to stealth much, and after one-shotting any character of their choosing would stay unstealthed and fight packs of enemies until eventually killed. She finished the match 36-10.

So now I have two heirloom daggers with +15 agility enchants and heirloom chest and shoulders, and the heirloom bow. I hit L12 last night, almost 13, and I plan on leveling to about 15 tonight and then going the rest of the way to 20 just in battlegrounds. As long as Blizzard doesn't fix this - and history shows they are very slow to fix class abilities - I should be able to level most of the way to 80 in battlegrounds with my overpowered rogue.

There's a number of things that go into making this ability overpowered. They include:
- Glyph of Ambush increases Ambush range by 5 yards
- Shadowstep range of 25 yards puts you right behind your target, and adds 30% damage to ambush
- 3/3 Improved Ambush increases Ambush crit chance by 60% and damage by 15%
- 3/3 Opportunity increases Ambush damage by 30%

Add it together and the level X9's are one-shotting everything.

On the Horizon

Warcraft's Wrath of the Lich King is winding down, with the populous becoming bored of the current content (which never came close to the levels of fun in Burning Crusade, in spite of the subject material). Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is also suffering from rampant hacking on the PC platform and ordinary players are getting frustrated at the diminished gameplay. Fortunately, these games are seeing sequels in the coming months that should cure player malaise.

World of WarCraft: Cataclysm has an (unofficial) official release date of December 7, 2010. In two months' time the new addition to the WarCraft universe will bring forth Goblins and Worgen as playable races, and the mighty Deathwing as a major villain. It remains to be seen if the class/talent changes are viewed favorably or if they are too limiting, and if the Archeology profession helps cure the between-content blues during this xpac.

There are still no features on the horizon that encourage creation over destruction (player housing, armor dyes, building construction, etc.) and in some ways the trend is further against them. The new talent changes are going to box players into a single talent tree for most of their development, and leveling will require fewer visits to trainers. The city portals are also being removed from Dalaran and Shattrath, which will require more travel from players, and make mages a class in high demand for casuals. This should be another well-crated expansion from Blizzard, but I'm having a hard time getting excited about it. So far it only feels like more of the same.

Call of Duty: Black Ops is arriving a little sooner on November 9, 2010, and offers a cure for what ails the legit FPSer - dedicated servers. Peer hosting was a low-cost solution, but it was rampant with hacks and cheats and offered little fun in exchange for a lot of diminished gameplay. With dedicated servers the Steam network can easily identify client hacks and disable accounts, and at $60 a pop it's not likely that gamers will risk having their license banned from network play.

The game itself offers character customization that we wish WarCraft had - everything from face paint to weapon mods and textures, when someone gets the knife up close they're going to remember you for a long time. They've added new killstreak rewards and battle types, including wager matches. For my dollar this is more of a must-have upgrade than Cataclysm.

And if either of the big 2 coming out this fall doesn't appeal to you, there are still more games coming soon. DC Universe is dipping a toe into the MMO genre and available for preorder, and SWTOR is approaching ever closer on the horizon. In all, there should be plenty to do to entertain yourself this winter.

Mine, all Mine

If you're stuck at work or someplace where you have internet access and not much to do, and have a couple minutes to waste, I suggest you take a quick peek at Minecraft. It really only takes a couple minutes to learn, it runs in Java in your browser, and it has a simple concept: Shape the world.

There are apparently multiplayer and "survive the zombie apocalypse" modes, but I haven't tried them. I like just clicking it open, seeing the world it randomly generates for me, and then sculpting it a little bit until I've made a comfortable place to live in it.

It's not a very advanced game and the graphics are obviously terrible, but it has a large following. There's a really simple reason why: It allows players to change the world they live in, and create something instead of just destroying it.

I remember the people at Blizzard talking about FarmVille and, citing its popularity, saying that they needed to change their game to incorporate more things in WoW that people could obsess over like in FarmVille. Well here's another hint for you. Over 280,000 people have actually paid for the full version of this simple, terrible block game just because they are able to create something original instead of only killing things.

Focus on the content, the creativity, and the contributions players can make. Give them some control over their appearance, behaviors, and environment, or they will seek it elsewhere. It's more important to many of them than good graphics, or they wouldn't bother with games like Minecraft and Dwarf Fortress.

Asus High

How's this for price/performance?

• Core i7 720QM / 1.6 GHz
• RAM 8 GB 1066 MHz DDR3 SDRAM
• HDD 500 GB + 500 GB 7200 rpm
• DVD±RW / DVD-RAM
• Mobility Radeon HD 5870 w/1GDDR5 SDRAM
• Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
• 17.3" Widescreen TFT 1920 x 1080

$1,599.99

Praise Elune and Pass the Ammo

Lately I haven't been blogging much because I've been contributing a lot of photoshops to brewcrewball.com and sharing comments about the baseball season, which for the Brewers is circling the drain at this point. It's been a fun season, but football is here now, and with the colder weather, a return to more frequent video gaming.

Cataclysm is coming! I have my beta sub for Cataclym, giving me an inside look at the new content that will be released for World of WarCraft this holiday season, and so far it looks fun as hell. Everyone and their emo sister will be playing a werewolf (Alliance gets Worgen as their new race), but for my money the Goblins (Horde) are where it's at. Oh man, the selfish storylines and grouchy emotes have me to a T, if there was ever a race built for a cynical old man like myself, this is it. Fun!

Also, I've been splitting my gaming time with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. The guys at work here play it on the X360, and that's a more pristine environment than the PC, where hackers run wild. Aside from that, it's a lot of fun to zone out with a sniper rifle behind an old junk car on a map somewhere and plunk baddies. I don't need to role play, I don't need to learn complicated sequences, just shoot the other guy before he gets you.

And rumor has it that the sequel Black Ops will be out in November and be hosted on dedicated servers, eliminating the hackers who are running wild with MW2. Lots of fun on the horizon this holiday season... and almost time to buy a new gaming rig too.

Badges burning a hole in my pocket

So my paladin has exactly 50 triumph badges in his inventory, which are enough to trade in for a shiny new helm, or almost enough for both gauntlets and shoulderpads. All of those need replacing, as I'm still in mostly blue gear. The question though is whether I should bother with the badge gear, or if I should skip it in favor of spending those badges on an heirloom for whatever class I end up rolling my worgen.

Which leads into the second choice - when Cataclysm is released in November we will be able to roll a character from one of the two new races, worgen and goblins. I'm somewhat interested in goblins, but worgen are going to be insanely cool, and they're an Alliance race, so it makes sense to roll one. But what I haven't decided yet is whether I'll be leveling a worgen right away or if I'll be taking one of my 80s on the WrA server (priest, paladin, rogue) to 85 first.

Supposedly, the new dungeons are actually difficult. This would surprise me since they're making all other aspects of the game much simpler and easier, but it gives me some hope that my rogue might actually be useful in Cataclysm. Possibly. We'll see. Healers and tanks, for sure, are going to be valuable, so I will probably make my worgen a druid. I don't currently have a druid on this server, and I am going to want to be able to group more to see the new content.

And a worgen moonkin sounds pretty natural - a wolf, howling at the moon?

PvP: FPS > MMO

It's been a while since I blogged, and the primary reason is that my interest in WarCraft dropped off the table over the past couple of months. I'm a fairly self-aware person, so I can probably list the reasons why my interest has waned:

• Transitioning from pvp to pve gear on my priest, I was mocked for trying to heal in pvp gear. I understand it's not mana-efficient, but a person has to start somewhere. That's crap I just don't need to deal with.
  
  
• My rogue is weapon-capped unless I raid, and my damage is capped unless I improve my weapons. There's basically no way to improve at this point unless I raid, and even if people were seeking rogues for raids, I'm not seeking to endure raiders and their endless ventrilo crap-flinging sessions. Umadbro?
  
  
• The prospect of Blizzard forcing users to reveal their real name on the forums highlighted how much they've forgotten who their playerbase really is.
  
  
• My son plays WarCraft and enjoys talking about it all the time. I like talking about other things from time to time, and there's only so many times you can recite the raid bosses in Karazahn or wonder about the role of the Guardian of Tirisfal, etc.
  
  
• If you don't raid, there's nothing to do but achievements and alts. I already have over 2,000 levels of alts, and I don't get any enjoyment from knocking out achievements. They're fun when they happen, but they're not fun to chase.
  
  
• The community is still stupid, foulmouthed, and terrible.

I finally buckled down and picked up a copy of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, and it's a lot more fun than WarCraft is for pvp, by far. Aside from the occasional hacker, games are balanced, and you always have the ability to kill your opponent by being smart rather than just having superior weapons or being really twitchy. WarCraft doesn't come close to how much fun the pvp is. Not even in the same ballpark.

I'm a PC player, not console, so if you see me online as Sussemilch gimme a shout.

Pristine

So far the scarcest item on my supply list are the Pristine Black Diamonds required for every libram turn in with the Shen'dralar. They've jumped from 120 to 200 gold in the auction house, and that's too steep to buy. I managed to find one yesterday in Scholomance (farmed up some skin of shadow there) and used it to turn in one tome. Did three Knot Thimblejack runs last night, and one ogre suit turn in this morning. If I do nothing but farm keys I might be able to get to Unfriendly tonight with two of the goblin factions.

I definitely want to keep up with the librams however. The darkmoon faire decks are a totally separate grind and can be done last, but the librams drop while I'm doing rep runs in Dire Maul so it's good to have the items on hand to turn them in when I can. And that means pristine black diamonds. I really wish these things had a higher drop rate. Even more so, I wish I'd kept the stack of them I had once upon a time when they were 1g each in the AH.

Fishing and Lies

Rugged leather, rugged leather, rugged leather. There's a reason why people can charge 100g a stack for this stuff and get away with it; once in a while you need to get something done and you absolutely must have rugged leather, and only a skinner can provide it. The stuff only comes from L50+ animals, and people never stay around Azeroth past level 58 anymore when the drops become common, they head straight to Outland and start questing.

Anyway, I need some of the stuff for making Ogre Suits for one of the two Knot Thimblejack quests in Dire Maul. Each turnin requires a couple of rune thread (easy), bolts of runecloth, and 8 pieces of rugged leather. I'm not paying 100g for a stack of leather, I don't care how much time it saves me, so the alternative -- is fishing.

I logged in my druid and grabbed my fishing pole and started searching for pools of floating junk to fish up mithril chests with, and because some of the notes said that I could get trunks from stonescale eel pools, I fished the eels also. Total lies. I ended up with three stacks of eels and only one trunk the whole time I was fishing eels. The floating wreckage was perfect though. I ended up with a lot of thick leather, plenty of bolts of runecloth, and enough rugged leather to do the job. Thankfully also, when you loot the gordok key and free Knot Thinblejack he leaves behind a cache of leatherworking/tailoring mats in a box and sometimes there's rugged leather in there also.

So about two hours of fishing STV, Feralas, and Tanaris, a complete clear of UBRS to farm for pristine black diamonds (none dropped all night) and a couple of clears of Dire Maul on my rogue and I was about 1000 rep higher on my goblin factions. This is going to take a long, long time to finish. I don't mind farming the older instances because all kinds of interesting stuff drops, and because my rogue is still an enchanter I can d/e the greens and blues I get and sell the materials. But I sure hope my Heroes Deck sells so I can blow money on buying pristine diamonds instead of farming them... I'm going to need about 80 of them all together, and I still need to buy/craft darkmoon decks too.

Actually, I should probably be farming Stratholme for the pristine black diamonds on my rogue instead. I wouldn't mind getting the Argent Champion title while I'm at it, and I need the abomination stitchings for libram turn-ins. I'll just have to remember to kill everything instead of stealthing past it all. I need blood of heroes too. And skin of shadow. Maybe I should spend an evening doing that instead of fishing.

So many things to do! Much better than twiddling my thumbs saying "nothing to do." Thank goodness I upgraded all my rogue's bags to 20 slots last night.

OMG. Dungeons Heroics and Raids! (Oh my!)

One thing I DESPISE about WoW: Farming. Farming Mats, farming badges, farming (my favorite thing $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$) Gold... all of it, I do not like farming, but... I am happy to anounce... my achievement (not actual achievement in-game...) of getting an entire set.

The set is very familiar to all level 80 mages: Khadgar!!!!!!!

This set I love, it is a purplish grey, and it is misty...

This set is bought from the cloth armor sellers in the "Threads of Fate" in Dalaran, across from the inn, "A Hero's Welcome". This set is bought with NO money, only Emblems of Triumph. I am thinking of farming the EXTREMELY HARD Bloodmage set, but... that would take hardcore raiding >.>... I need Frost Badges for that... well, below is the link to the armor sets.

Khadgar = http://www.wowhead.com/itemset=843
Bloodmage = http://www.wowhead.com/itemset=-247

Well, see ya!!!!!

(LFM: Simple ways to farm gold QQ)

Going Insane

For me, there are two modes for Warcraft: Goal, and No Goal.

If I have no goal, I wander aimlessly and jump through hoops mindlessly hoping that something will spark my interest or feel slightly fulfilling. I use it somewhat as therapy for a frustrating work environment, so when my day isn't productive I want my play to be, to cancel it out. Sometimes it works, most times it doesn't.

If I have a goal then I can track my progress and strive for an accomplishment. It creates its own storyline as I progress towards my goal, and the little things that I do in between add meaning to the larger story. Even fishing or mob farming becomes interesting when I attach a progress bar to it. I get the feeling that I am building something, a feeling I don't get from work.

So, I have taken on the largest goal I know of: The Insane title for my rogue.

If you aren't familiar with this achievement, it is the single hardest set of reputation grinds in the entire game. It requires you to be:

• Honored with the Bloodsail Buccaneers
• Exalted with Everlook
• Exalted with Ratchet
• Exalted with Ravenholdt
• Exalted with Booty Bay
• Exalted with Gadgetzan
• Exalted with Darkmoon Faire
• Exalted with Shen'dralar

It's possible you can look at that list and say to yourself, how hard can that be? Well, some pieces of it aren't hard, and some are. And some are very, very hard. I started working on it this Friday and ground on it in one way or another all Memorial Day weekend.

The part that I was not looking forward to was the Bloodsail Buccaneer reputation, which ended up being incredibly easy. Just kill a bunch of Booty Bay guards over and over, and you're there. When you get to friendly you do the quest to get the Bloodsail Admiral's hat and get your title with the Buccaneers, and then grind the rest of the way to honored.

After that, you need to work your reputation back to exalted with the four goblin factions, which takes much longer. Currently I'm still hated with all four, although I've made some decent progress by turning in linen and silk at Ratchet and Booty Bay. You can see my reputations here.

The Bloodsail I got done on Friday, and then knowing how useful it would be to have a MOLL-E (portable mailbox) I dropped herbalism, leveled mining to gather materials, dropped mining, and leveled engineering to 435. I love engineering on my rogue anyway, it's a lot of fun. I've ended up already using the rocket boots a lot, for the little things mostly like running through those long tunnels in Dire Maul (grinding goblin rep) or running back to the beginning of Ragefire Chasm (farming linen there). That ate about a day and a half, just leveling that.

Now that the preliminary professions are done I'm going to be doing a lot of Dire Maul runs for both the goblin and Shen'dralar reputations, so I'll want to do two things before I begin. First, I need to take my druid fishing for lots of rugged leather and bolts of runecloth. The rugged leather simply can't be bought at any reasonable price on the auction house. If I get desperate for cash I can probably fish up a few extra stacks from the mithril trunks I find, because the market is crazy.

Second, I need to take my rogue through Scholomance, Stratholme, and Eastern Plaguelands to find Skin of Shadow, Abomination Stitchings, and Blood of Heroes to turn the librams with the Shen'dralar faction in Dire Maul. The rugged leather and bolts of runecloth are used to build the ogre suit for Knot Thimblejack in Dire Maul, and I get 75 rep every time I do that.

Thankfully other people have done this grind before and posted their tips on how to do it, so all I need to do is buckle down and spend the hundreds of hours farming to get it done. But when it is done it will be an achievement that few have ever gotten and no one can argue with the value of.

Ysera

The thing that was the Ysera server, it's time to discuss it. Unless Alzheimers is setting in and I already have. I don't remember talking about it though, so it will be uniquely entertaining to me, if not to you. Anyway:

Ysera was a pre-BC and post-AQ server that opened up sometime after I was sick of playing on the Khadgar server and I decided to roll a new character there. I leveled up my hunter at launch, and managed to fold in with a good group of raiders who were all motivated to clear content asap.

We wanted to raid, but we had a specific motivation of supporting our GM's desire to do the AQ questline as quickly as possible and get him the Scarab Lord title. We were right there, leading the Horde in progression (guild name: Static) and starting our Molten Core grind when out of the blue, it happened.

Transfers had just opened on Ysera at the one-month mark. People started coming over from other realms and we had a few applicants, and we were just getting used to this when suddenly on a Monday night at 2am one of the Alliance transfers took the scepter of the shifting sands that he transferred with to Silithus and rang the AQ gong.

It was the single most horrible thing to ever happen to a WoW server.

Basically, the event is designed to last from the time the gong is rung until server maintenance. Maintenance happens on a Tuesday, so this transfer from off-realm started the event, no one was prepared for it, and no one got to participate in it because it ended four hours later when the servers went down for maintenance.

The effect on the server was devastating. Several of the top guilds (including ours) disbanded within a week. People immediately stopped logging in and went back to their old servers, or new ones. Ysera was crippled and demoralized, and people who had worked hard to prepare their guilds for the grind were infuriated.

With my guild in a shambles I left, depressed. I haven't logged back into my hunter on Ysera more than a couple times in the years since, considering it a failed experiment. Then this last week, I decided to give it another shot and logged her back in.

As it turns out, I didn't have false memories about how much fun my character was, it still is. My lady Tauren hunter has an old PvP title, a good name (Teacher) and is pretty fun to play. So for the last week I've been logging in over there and slowly leveling her up. I might just keep playing her for a while, enough time has passed between then and now that I can have fun again with an old toon.

IC: Stormwind City Reserves OOC: OMG! 89 DEGREES! IN MAY!

Fritzy Here!

I feel like talking about my rp guild, the Stormwind City reserves. I like the people in my guild OOC, mostly because they are very social, funny, kinda... quirky... and just plain old fun. However, these people are hardcore RPers, and they have a very unpopular record. Mostly because of what they do IC. In IC, they are a strict army guild based in Stormwind and they sort of act like the Police. They are competative with many people, like some guild like White Sigil, Stormwind Vanguard, etc. They also are friends with some guilds, but I don't remember any (IT IS A SIGN!!! *cough*). They have strict RP rules, training, patrols, a UNIFORM, etc and all that good stuff... If you wanna find out more, go to www.stormwindcityreserves.com/, and read the handbook before even trying to get in the guild, cuz they have specific rules, not too many (MANY), and they are easy to follow, but if you break them, your booted.

OCC, this weekend, it is suppose to be 89 degrees! too hot for may! Global Warming is taking over! Stop Global Warming! it is bad! please!!!!!!

KK, byez!!!!!!! See yah on WoW!!!!

Go do Scarlet Monastary! Gosh!

Cataclysm is coming...

Fritzy here!

You heard me... CATACLYSM!!!!!!!!!

I have some ideas for Blizzard if they like the idea.

-Turn Nesingwary into a faction. I mean come on, we have seen him (and his son) for three expansions, and I love the Nesingwary quests. The only problem is that the thrill of it dies out when I see either the achievement pop up, or the question marks disappear. I would like to see a daily quest or two, a gather quest, and a quartermaster that (obviously) sells hunter gear. I think that would be fun, and possibly a hunters-only quest...

-A new raid for the Caverns of Time!!!!!! I think, since many have been waiting, we should have a new raid for CoS. I introduce to you... Caverns of Time: The Great Sundering! Since we are introducing Malfurion Stormrage and the Dragon Aspects (again...), we might as well see how their alliance started... Thanks to Queen Azshara's corruption, of course. I also think we should have this because we are introducing the Sunken City of Vash'jir...

-Remaking Gnomeregan into a raid. I mean come on... Sicco Thermaplugg is the end dungeon boss for Gnomeregan, but the new Gnomeregan intro is saying that 'he never dies'. (Same thing with Zalazane) With that, I think something is gonna pop up, and we will freak out. If he has robots in his place, and was Mekkatorque's advisor, he has to be stronger than a level 32 (Elite)...

-(Raid for Zalazane...)

-No fatigue. I think it will be a dumb idea because people will be too fast on their Epic Flying mounts, and will reach an island before the fatigue before it wares off. It would also be cool if there was a small island that has to be discovered by the players before Blizzard says anything about it, and maybe add something to that.

-Swimming mounts. With the new underwater areas, I think it would only be fair for swimming mounts and underwater breathing with the mounts. We wouldn't last alot in the water without some trick to get around...

Well, that is all I have so far... but I will keep posting! See ya!

(Free ports to Dalaran!)

Fritzy Sparkplug

Fritzy Here!

I am a new author on the Electric Glory team! I will probably post my WoW complaints, future ideas, my RP guild Stormwind City Reserves, and maybe even my blooming machinima ideas ^,^. I will help post ideas, and people can talk to me in-game on Hiimamage-Wyrmrest Accord. See ya!

City of Heroes

I don't like the mouse controls. I'm sure that if I spent a while trying to figure it out, I'd be able to swivel around and look at my character's face, but I haven't been able to yet. It's pretty annoying, I want to see my character in action, and not just from behind. I have the nagging suspicion that it's totally disabled because they didn't include any facial expressions. Oh well.

I haven't yet tried the architect feature, which I will probably get to tonight. I made a couple of characters last night, one of which I kind of like, a little dwarf brick with a mace and shield. Combat is a little clunky, but the character movement takes a lot of getting used to. Using both mouse buttons to run triggers autorun, and the key movement doesn't always do what I expect, with the strafe keys changed up, etc.

I had to crank down the graphics settings when I was in the city center because other people make me lag. The rest of the city and graphics is fine, but when other players show up it slows down. The power animations are nice, and the sound effects are suitably comic bookish. The music gets pretty annoying pretty quickly.

The architect feature is the star of the show here, and I need to get to the point where I can start using it. Apparently it requires me to find a building in the city and interact with it to open up the design menu. But reading the help gave me a few pieces of information about it to begin with. The primary worry with player-created content isn't anything like economics or balance or behavior, but data. Everything a player does has data associated with it, and every piece of data is multiplied against the entire playerbase for storage and access concerns.

CoH has limited the number of story arcs and missions (dungeons) that you can create per account. You get three story arcs with five missions each. With the amount of detail that each one can include, that sounds like a pretty generous allotment. Tonight I'll try this feature out to see how it was implemented and it should give me something to think about while playing WoW.

Architect

I finally broke down and bought a copy of City of Heroes - Architect Edition. I get a month to play it to see how I like it, which should be plenty. I know one thing already: Either I'm going to be done playing after a day, or I'm going to be crazy about it.

Not sure so far so there's nothing to report. I paid my $20 online and created a new account, then spent the rest of the night waiting for the 3.1G to download while watching old war movies. Tis the season for good war movies, with Memorial Day approaching.

Last night we saw 12 O'Clock High with Gregory Peck, and about 2/3 of The Longest Day. Good stuff. Makes me wish there was a good modern historical MMO out there to play.

RIP Frank Frazetta

So long, Frank. You were perfectly matched for fantasy books, with your impossibly muscled heroes, suspiciously willing women in metal bikinis, and poses that made characters come alive with action and deadly consequence. There was no one like you before you showed up, you were an original.

I hate guilds

I hate WarCraft guilds so much.

They are no longer an essential part of play. Once upon a time everyone needed to be in a guild in order to get anything done, because it was required for people to play together often in order to learn each others' playstyles and become accustomed to executing the guild's strategy for killing bosses, which opened the door to epic loot, etc.

That isn't really an issue anymore, with epic loot being handed out like door prizes at Warren Buffet's birthday party. Pretty much everyone can go from zero to 5000 gear score in a couple weeks' worth of heroics, and it isn't at all challenging. After that, pick-up groups exist for the harder content, and that pretty much eliminates the last of what guilds have to offer. Who needs to associate with a bunch of people who (let's be honest) you really don't care about, when you can get exactly what you need by PUGging your way to epic gains?

People in your guild will only slow you down, because inevitably you discover that they're only in the guild or invited you to it because they want something from you. Whatever it is, you probably don't want to do it, don't have time to do it on their schedule, don't like the way they go about doing it, and there's nothing in it for you - just them.

So, screw guilds. Forget them, they are awful. They exist only to tap your time and resources (If I had got as much out of guild banks over the years as I've put into them, I'd own my own server) and to say "grats" when your achievement is spammed to guild chat.

Yes, there may be some advantages to being in a guild in Cataclysm, but unless it's really, really sparkly stuff, I just don't give a damn. Most of the people who play are complete idiots and timewasting fools, and I'm tired of pretending to like them just to hear a "grats" every once in a while when I ding.

Not exactly the best way to feel about social groups in an MMO, but as I've said before, WoW is the AOL of MMOs. It's scummy and trashy. It's like a cross between Middle Earth and a trailer park. The only way to find it interesting and entertaining is by either playing with everyone at arm's length, or to play at the expense of other players. Given the choice, I'll play alone.

Cho'Gall

There is no server in all of WarCraft quite like Cho'Gall.

Each server has its own personality, of course. Moon Guard is the massively RP (and notriously ERP) server, Illidan is the economic heaven that crashes periodically, Proudmoore has a large amount of diverse lifestyles. Cho'Gall is famous for being host to the greatest faction imbalance in all of WoW.

Last I checked, there were 20 Horde for every 1 Alliance player. It's a truly amazing place to play, on the Alliance side especially. When you do Wintergrasp you never have fewer than 8 stacks of tenacity (and more often, 16-20). People are so few and far between that everyone pretty much knows everyone else, and you can't escape your own reputation so there's an inclination to be forgiving.

And when it comes right down to it, everyone needs each other because the auction house is a disaster. If you can't do it yourself, you need to use trade chat to find someone with the skill to do it for you. It's the cooperation out of necessity that has drawn me back to Cho'Gall after a hiatus. I'll probably go play my rogue or druid when cataclysm hits, but playing the paladin on Cho'Gall is great fun right now. It's like playing wow minus all the idiots.

And I've always said that the only thing wrong with WoW is the people who play it - Cho'Gall fixes that equation for you.

World of Lazycraft

Laziness. Is it even appropriate to talk about being lazy in a game? I mean, it's a game. Isn't that the purpose? To relax and have fun?

I have two level 80 characters on my primary server/faction right now, and I don't really feel like playing them to improve them. I like the idea of logging in and playing them for fun, but their gear is to the point that I don't really care how much better they get. They're geared well enough to handle the content that I'm willing to entertain, so that pretty much means they're finished.

My rogue has a 5k gear score and my priest is hovering around 4500. That means that I'm very well geared for heroics dungeons, and can do some raids if I wanted. Unfortunately, raids have probably spoiled me. When raiding I tend to hunker down and get clinical and don't relax very much, because if I mess up a whole bunch of people die, food buffs are wasted, etc. I don't think I can relax while raiding anymore.

When I'm tanking I feel a responsibility to make things go smooth, and keep up the pace. When healing I have to pay attention and heal people through damage. When I'm DPS, I worry about doing enough damage to justify my spot. All those things get amplified in a raid setting, and detract from just having fun with the game.

So more and more lately when I'm done with my daily chores (quests, heroics) I log on to my baby hunter alt and pew pew arrows at stuff. No responsibility, no challenge, lots of relaxing fun. Call me lazy for not farming badges until I get a nosebleed, but I prefer to play the fun parts of the game.

In Need of a Rainy Day

We're having a pretty dry spring here in western Wisconsin, and it's wreaking havoc on my gaming enthusiasm. Normally when I get home from work it's so miserable outside after a miserable day at the office that I'm ready to have a cup of evening coffee and settle into a mind-numbing session of warcraft to ease the soul.

Unfortunately, it has been so nice outside that I'm not deriving all of my relaxation and pleasure from gaming, and I find relief out in the garden playing with my plants. I'm sure you think this is very natural and healthy, but while I'm distracted with these flowery garden things the orcs and trolls are undoubtedly running amok in Azeroth in my absence.

So here's hoping that we get a good set of strong thunderstorms or a few days of rain. Yes, the plants need the rain too, but the Horde needs my assistance. Just not so much lightning that you knock out the power please.

Thank you, gaming gods.

Hunter's Paradise

Warsong Gulch is the first of the warcraft battlegrounds, and the easiest to understand. Each team has 10 players and a base with a flag inside. The goal is to grab your opponent's flag and return it to your flagpost while your own flag is still there. The first team to 3 points wins.

It's the perfect battleground to introduce new players to, because it introduces the issue of class imbalance to them at an early level and emphasizes it. If you can endure that, you'll be fine with anything in the game.

Warsong Gulch favors some classes heavily over others. Rogues and warriors, for example are easy to overgear at a low level and they can deliver some comically awful mismatches against normal cloth wearers. It's not unusual to see a geared-out level 19 rogue one-shot a clothie with ambush, or a warrior charge a group and kill everyone with bleed effects. Mages have lots of chilling effects that help them escape, and paladins already have their stun. Priests, shamans, warlocks, and druids are pretty much the perpetual victims, although shamans and druids can at least run away from most things.

But nothing dominates in this bracket like the hunter. The hunter can plunk people at 40 yards (truly fearing only warlock dots and other hunters), and mark rogues as soon as they rez in the graveyard to prevent their stealth attacks. I have always complained about this imbalance, but it was even more emphasized for me last night.

Playing a level 15 hunter - middle level for the bracket - I carelessly ran around shooting everything and escorting flag runners and ended up with almost 20 kills and only 5 deaths. I easily led everyone in the battleground in total damage done by about 40% over the next highest person, and I still have four more levels in the bracket. I can kill low level enemies with just my pet. My traps do as much damage as a warlock DoT, and I can put stings on multiple targets at range and daze an opponent before they get close to me and kite them forever. It's my happy hunting ground.

Hunters have always been the 'cheap and easy' leveling class but I'd forgotten just how easy they really were. Now with heirlooms (I'm using the Charmed Ancient Bone Bow, among others) it's ridiculously fast. I can farm mobs much faster than with any other class I can remember, even faster than a feral druid back in BC. It's a non-stop killing spree with my pet acting as maitre'd, serving up one after another.

I'm leveling up too fast. It's too much fun, I keep obliterating people in Warsong Gulch and getting XP for it, I'm outpacing my skinning and leatherworking. I can't believe how easy everything is... such a change from just leveling the priest. Something tells me this character will make it to 80 just because it's fun.

April Fools

This was an April Fools joke by Comics Alliance – but a really awesome one.

Top Shelf Announces 'League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: 1988''
This morning, Top Shelf announced the long-awaited next installment of Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen saga, shocking fans and retailers alike with the news that not only would O'Neill not be drawing it, but that after last year's "Century: 1910," Moore's scripts were jumping ahead almost 80 years for "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: America 1988!"

League of Extraordinary Gentlemen - America: 1988

When war-hero-turned-handyman Kesuke Miyagi is found drained of blood, it becomes clear that the occult gang known as the Lost Boys are targeting the only individuals that can stop them from complete domination of America. It's the perfect case for the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen--except that their government contact, Oscar Goldman, disbanded the team in 1979 after they defeated Mr. Han's army of the living dead.

Now, disgraced scientist Emmet Brown has to put together a new team to combat the growing threat of the Lost Boys and their leader, a newly resurrected vampire kingpin Tony Montana: Transportation specialist Jack Burton, ex-commando B.A. Baracus, tech wizard Angus MacGyver and the mysteriously powerful femme fatale known only as "Lisa." But will Brown be able to stop the Lost Boys before time runs out?

Mercy Rule

I don't like the thought that getting to 80 should entitle you to shortcuts. Each trip should be something individual, valuable, and unique. I should be forced to go through the same labor to get myself to 80 the eighth time as the first.. but dear lord, it should at least be as original and entertaining as the first.

I see the questlines in Sholazar Basin, and my eyes begin to tear. The thought of heading to Storm Peaks makes me queazy, and opening up the zones in Icecrown has me wishing I had chores to do somewhere. I've ended up spending a lot of time in AV and LFD because I despise grinding the same Northrend content over and over. It's just not fun, and the distance between rewards - levels, not cheezy quest greens and some gold - gets longer and longer as you get closer to the end. The last couple levels are the worst, but it wouldn't be so bad if we could take a different path to 80 once in a while.

So, in short: Don't give us shortcuts to 80, give us variety.

Bubble, Boil and Trouble

So I'm leveling up my priest's alchemy profession, and it occurs to me, back in Burning Crusade we had the ability to specialize our alchemy with either potion mastery, elixir mastery, or transmute mastery.

What was involved was doing a special (expensive) quest for an alchemy master, and then you would have a chance every time you used your alchemy for that area of mastery to create additional product without requiring any additional ingredients. Depending on the mastery, it usually mean 15-25% extra stuff produced using the same ingredients.

So at level 74 I ventured back through the portal to Outland and before hunting down the master of my choice, stopped at wowwiki to do a little reading on the quests. I'm glad I did, because not only do these quest requirements still exist, they're still a hurdle.

Transmute Mastery. This one is probably the easiest to solo (which I'm glad to hear, since it's the one I chose) and it requires talking to a questgiver in Netherstorm. All he wants you to do is provide 4 Primal Mights and bam, you're a master. No one uses primal might anymore, so if you head to Shattrath the arrakoa alchemist guy will probably have the recipe waiting for you, and then you just need to farm all the primals to make the mights, transmute them to primal might, and turn it in. For primal mana, I suggest doing the old L70 daily quest in the consortium area of blade's edge that makes all the mana wyrms visible - you can farm them until you get all the primals you want, and then turn in the quest too.

Potion Mastery. Somewhere between L70 and L80 you will get powerful enough to head into the Botanica in netherstorm and kill High Botanist Freywinn by yourself. Until then, good luck finding a group, and you'll need to kill him and return his book - along with a bunch of potions - to become a potion master.

Elixir Master. And the reason I chose Transmute Master is because I knew it would be almost impossible to get a group for Black Morass these days. To master in elixirs you need to travel to black morass in the caverns of time and get 10 drops off the rift lords and rift keepers in there. Some classes will be able to solo this at 80, some will not. Adding to the difficulty, you still can't even enter the black morass until you've done the durnholde keep instance and turned in that quest. Also, you'll need to bring 15 elixirs with you when you turn in the mastery quest. Ugh.

There is one small saving throw however. If you absolutely need to be an elixir master and can't possibly get a group together to jump through the hoops, you can do one of the other mastery quests and then switch, for a fee of 150 gold.

(That's it? 150g?)

Yeah, 150g isn't worth what it used to be, eh? Apparently if you complete a mastery quest in one area you can drop it and learn another by just paying gold and switching, which is pretty awesome. So if you're headed in one of these directions, probably the time-saving one is to go transmute, then visit the other trainer and just pay to switch.

If you live on a high-pop server this could possibly be done very quickly too, since they removed the cooldown for transmuting primal might in patch 3.0.2. You might be able to find all the primals (and maybe even the primal might recipe) in the auction house, learn it, craft them up, and turn it all in, then pay and switch, and be done immediately.

That's just a little bit too lazy for me. I'm at least going to farm for my own primals.

One Syllable to Rule Them All

When you're thinking about naming your character, be careful and consider this: Unless your name is 5 characters or under, your guildmates will probably forever refer to you by the first syllable in your name.

I made the character Diagnose (my rogue) to take advantage of the conjunction with "the Patient" title. The guild I was in started referring to me as "Dia" instead of Diagnose, so when it came time to create an alt, rather than confuse everyone, I chose a new name that started with Dia - Diagram. If I'd planned ahead I would have made the priest Diagnose and the rogue Diagram, but whatever. Every time I make a character I think that it might end up being the most important character I have, otherwise I probably won't finish getting to 80 with it.

So if I follow the current pattern, I found a list of other words that start with Dia. Diabolic would make a nice warlock name, and Diamond would make a good tank. You can be pretty sure that I won't have a character named Diarrhea though.

So even though Putrescence sounds like a fun name to have, don't be surprised if down the line everyone in the guild starts referring to you as "Poo."

Escape

There's a number of reasons people play warcraft. Educators are studying the internal rewards system and examining why kids will play for hours and hours on end - even while stating that they are bored with it and tired - because it can be addictive for some people. Others like to see the graphics and interaction of the game, and when they've soaked up all of the visual potential, they grow tired with it. Some people like to log in and sit around and chat.

Unlike most people, I know exactly why I play because I've thought about it, and I think about it every time I plunk down $30 for two months' play time: It's cheap therapy.

The real world often sucks, and due to very complicated societal obligations that prohibit killing people, smashing vault doors, and eradicating endangered species, we will accumulate a lot of stress restraining ourselves from showing displeasure at the things that bother us during the day.

If someone cuts me off in traffic and screams obscenities at me, I can't jump out and smash his car with a tire iron, but I can wait until later and log into warcraft and demolish his siege engine in Lake Wintergrasp. I can turn on the television and hear people screaming about how the world is coming to an end because of politics, but in Warcraft I can ignore one or two people and still hear what everyone else is saying just fine.

I had a wonderful episode on Wednesday, that describes this perfectly. I was in a meeting with a group of people who were giddy, nervous, and talking over their heads about management material. After a half-hour of uncomfortable and ridiculous exchanges, the presenter made a gross insult against my family. He knew better than to say what he did, but said it nonetheless, and I found it offensive enough to leave the meeting (and not smash things with a tire iron). Of course as a result I was disciplined for leaving the meeting. Feel the love.

The perfect anecdote was to log into warcraft, be given clear direction by a questgiver, and offered a non-negotiable reward. I did several of these, and started to relax. Then I joined a pick-up group in Hellfire Ramparts and healed a group through the dungeon, keeping everyone alive and healthy while we looted the place. Everyone got what they needed, and I got some compliments for my healing ability. Later, I joined an Alterac Valley battle and we battled against another army, strategizing and cooperating on the fly, and earned a strong victory.

If only more people played warcraft, they'd understand where we were coming from, and we'd have a common language to communicate with. Like when someone tells an off-color joke we can say "dude, not in guild chat please." Or if someone steals from your bank you can kick them out of your guild, and put them on your ignore list. Warcraft is honest where the real world fails, and it gives us feedback that we desire in our daily lives but never get. It heals people, and it reinforces self-worth - even in tiny amounts it at least assures you that you are not crazy.

/tireiron

Light and Shadow

Now that I'm in Outland where the gold is pretty darned good, I've got my alchemy and herbalism to Outland level, and I've pait for my flying mount, the next expense on the list is dual spec.

For those who are not familiar with dual specs, it allows you to switch back and forth (out of combat) between talent specializations. For a priest this means that sometimes I can be healing as a holy priest and sometimes I could do damage as a shadow priest.

I never really went shadow, fully. I tried it a long time ago with my original priest and was kind of disappointed at the results. I didn't kill stuff that much faster, I was still basically shield-and-cast, sit-and-drink. Looking at the shadow tree it seems that there have been some improvements made to the talents since then that should make life easier.

The one that sticks out in my mind as the best change is to Vampiric Embrace. Having it a self-buff instead of a dot that consumes a GCD and can be applied to only one target is a major improvement. It's more of a cast-and-forget benefit, which makes DPS more relaxing and less like an affliction warlock trying to juggle DoTs.

I've got about 100 gold to go before I can afford it, but either today or tomorrow I'll probably have the gold and will buy my second spec. These are the talents I'm looking at, feel free to comment on my choices:

Vacation on the Dark Side

Every once in a while, no matter how fun and smooth your life as a (insert class here) is, you feel like taking a break from it, usually to perform a different role. Tanks may decide they want to DPS, healers may feel like tanking, DPS might want to heal. Sometimes you can change your talents around to fill a different role, sometimes you can't.

My rogue is great fun. If the Cataclysm expansion came out right now I'd probably hop back on the rogue and start adventuring in the new content. But I was a little tired of DPSing, and decided I wanted to roll a priest - a class I haven't played in a long time - and I'm enjoying leveling as holy.

I asked the guild if they thought I could go from level 43 to Outland in one weekend and they laughed at me, but by the time I logged out Sunday night I was level 59 and cruising through Hellfire Peninsula. Last night I hit 60, and had the gold for my flying mount. Leveling through Outland is so much better when you can fly everywhere.

A big part of the accelerated leveling was due to grouping. I did Sunken Temple twice, Blackrock Depths about a dozen times, Uldaman and Maraudon countless times, Scarlet Monastery until I was nearly falling asleep. It was less interesting than leveling, but also less relaxing. Because when you rely on grouping for your progress... you are taking a walk on the dark side.

Everyone likes to think that they are the reasonable person in the group. You can be young, old, new, experienced, undergeared, tweaked out, doesn't matter, that is always true for every group - conflict are never your fault, it's always someone else's. And I've seen it all in the last 40 levels, anything you can possibly imagine. I don't like votekicking, but I've initiated my share. I don't like complaining, but sometimes even the most gentle soul is left with a head-spinning 'wtf??'

Why is that death knight doing terrible dps? Maybe because he's got resurrection sickness.

Why are we chain-pulling when I'm out of mana? Oh - the warlock's pet is on 'aggressive.'

Why is that hunter standing next to the boss and taking cleave damage? Because he ran out of arrows about 15 minutes ago and is melee attacking everything.

It never ends. Just when you think you've seen it all, someone shows up with their "perfectly reasonable" quirkiness and throws the whole group on its ear. The little things are easy to deal with - like druids who panic when they see the tank taking some damage and they stop doing dps to heal them (hey, that's my job - back off). When it gets more challenging is when people bring their prickly attitudes to bear on these little quirks, and a slightly inefficient run turns into a personality explosion.

Last night I had a doozy, doing Hellfire Ramparts with a death knight tank (Ramparts is tanked by DK's whether you like it or not, it's practically a law). The tank wasn't very good, but we managed. We got to the final boss and he decided that the little fire on the ground didn't look that dangerous so he decided to sit in it to keep himself warm while he tanked the boss. Unfortunately, the fire does far more damage than the boss, and armor doesn't mitigate any of it. About 20 seconds later he finally lost health faster than I could keep up with GCD's, and he died. The group wiped. Out of nowhere: "OMG HEALER YOU SUCK WTF ARE YOU DOING"

Calmly I popped open recount and linked the 23,000 damage he took from Liquid Fire, and pointed out that this was damage that he easily could have avoided.

"YOU SUCK! YOUR SO BAD I BEEN HEALED THRU THAT BEFORE"

Some things are just so awful/obscure they have no answer. Almost immediately, the DPS whispered to me to please ignore him and not leave, so we could just finish the run. I agreed, we rezzed and rebuffed.

Tank: Don't ****ing suck this time healer
Me: Don't stand in the fire this time, k?
Tank: ST*U your the worst healer ever I swear
DPS (whisper): ignore him! plz plz
Tank: btw you have shield and renew its not hard
Me: Btw, fire is red

And we proceeded to kill the boss easily. The tank decided not to stand in the fire - which reduced the healing required by about 80% - and it was a cakewalk. Won some loot, vendored it. Got some xp, yay. /Leave group, teleported out.

Then the beauty of the system - put the tank on ignore (yes, you can /ignore people from other realms) and now the LFG system will never put the two of us in the same group again. I'm sure the tank is happy about that, and I know I sure am. I took a break and stretched a little and had a glass of water before settling back in.

The next group I was in was smooth as silk and everyone was very complementary of my healing. It was a wonderful reward for tolerating the previous group, and I wished I could have added them all to my friends list.

And we all leveled happily every after.

Speaking of Quitting

I have no intention of quitting Warcraft. Once upon a time I wondered if spending hours playing a video game was a wise choice of time, but that just isn't a concern anymore. First of all, warcraft has completely replaced my television watching time. I find it highly ironic that the mainstream population that baffles at us gamer types spending hours plunking away on a keyboard has no problem opening up a 6-pack and parking their ass in front of a television for an entire afternoon.

Warcraft is easy and quick entertainment, it's an ongoing story that I am the director of, and it's really cheap. If you're not a kid - if you're a financially secure adult - 15 bucks a month isn't a big deal. I can skip a couple meals and end up saving the money, and at my age/metabolism skipping a meal here and there isn't a bad idea. It's so cheap that I plan on keeping up my subscription whether or not I choose to play.

But my subscription time has run out, so I need to head to Walmart to pick up another time card and plug it in. It's about $30, and lasts two months. I could choose to pay via credit card online, either as individual payments or through automatic billing, but I prefer to buy the card and enter the code.

I really don't know why I do this other than I suspect it fulfills some basic need to participate in a transaction in order to get the fullest satisfaction from it. Everyone in my office has direct deposit, but I still get a paper check and take it to the bank each week. The money ends up going right back in the bank most of the time, but it's the value of being part of the process that keeps me satisfied.

This is one reason why I keep playing Warcraft, and haven't transitioned to some other subscription game by now: I can buy playing time at Walmart. If City of Heroes had time cards at Walmart I might be playing that instead (especially if I could buy the Architect Edition at Walmart). Whatever MMO ends up displacing WoW, the time cards will be available at Walmart.

People forget how powerful that point of sale is for the mainstream gamer. Most people who play Warcraft don't see ads in the back of comic books or read MMO websites to know what the newest/greatest game is - if it isn't on the shelf it might as well not exist. And if you're going to charge for a subscription, you'd better sell your time cards there too or you won't get much repeat business. That's just the way it is.

But in any case, the game is so cheap that paying for maintaining my subscription is nearly independent from whether I feel like playing or not. It's a few bucks, I'll pay for it in case I decide to log on sometime this month. And if I don't, I still browse the forums a lot and like to interact there. I guess if I want to post any comments I need to re-up my subscription.

Looks like I'm skipping lunch and heading to Walmart today.

Obsolescence

Warcraft is entertainment. It's pretty cheap entertainment as far as that goes, for only $15 a month you can connect up and play as much as you want. Quite a few people have noted that the hardest part about quitting warcraft isn't the withdrawl - if you're bored with it, you don't want to play it - but the huge replacement cost of being entertained at the same level.

For $15 you can't even buy the family dinner at a fast food restaurant, or take a date to the movies. I've paid bigger late fees for movie rental before. $15 is chump change, which is what makes the "Omg, I'm outraged!" customers on the warcraft forums all the more amusing. For $15 you typically can't get anything of quality, but it will buy you a monthly access to the best MMO in the world.

But it is entertainment, and even inexpensive entertainment becomes undesirable if it isn't kept fresh. Television has done a good job of proving this for us. Warcraft has a huge world filled with entertaining activities, and to a large extent it is all replayable with different characters, but there are some things that should be changed because the game itself has changed so much over time.

Back at level 60 there were two sets of divergent changes being made to the game. On the one hand there were additional features being added to the game - battlegrounds, guild banks, etc. - and on the other hand there was additional content being created specifically for the 1-60 leveling experience. Some of these things are still fresh and fun, but some have become obsolete and should be either upgraded, or removed.

The first one that comes to mind is class quests. Back in vanilla Blizzard decided that it would be fun to add in class-specific quests (all of them requiring a visit to the Sunken Temple instance) that would add to the uniqueness of each class. For example, as a priest you need to visit ST and kill the dragon Morphaz and bring a vial of his blood back. In return you can choose between a ring, wand, or trinket. All three items are fairly worthless, and are guaranteed to be replaced in about six levels when you venture into Outland.

The concept at the time was that you would learn something about the instance, something about the lore of your class in relation to it, and you would gain an item that would help you level and possibly not be replaced until you raid at level 60. Well, these days are long gone. No one does their class questline anymore because it's pretty tedious and the rewards are really low. I would wager that more people complete this questline at 80 when they try to get the Loremaster title than people who are at-level trying to just get quests done for leveling.

It's a good concept, but the rewards don't hold up over time. The instance itself is pretty confusing and irritating - spiral stairs that overlap each other, mobs and bosses on multiple levels inside the temple, gobs of trash in small fight spaces. It feels like a parking ramp sometimes (where did we park again? which stairway goes where?) and has some sequential kill requirements that are a turn-off to casual dungeon crawlers.

Another thing that was added at level 60 was the tier 0.5 dungeon set. The tier 0 set was the blue (mostly BoP) drops from 5-man dungeons all over Azeroth, and dungeons had to be run multiple times to collect all the pieces from each to put together a set for all the bonuses. Tier 0.5 was a set of questlines added on top of that that allowed you to upgrade your gear pieces to 'light epics' that were superior to the basic dungeon set, but inferior to the raid set you could get from Molten Core.

On RP servers sometimes people will run dungeons and collect the gear and then do all the questlines to upgrade the gear just so they have a unique set they can walk around in on occasion, but no one does this stuff anymore for practical reasons. At level 58 when you can enter Outland your first quests will reward you with items that are far superior to Molten Core gear, much less tier 0.5, so it makes no sense to do this process for anything other than intrinsic reasons.

And then there's the issue of Alterac Valley. Once upon a time it was a battlefield of epic proportions, with NPCs stopping players from running willy-nilly all over the map, and battles took hours (occasionally even days!) to complete. There are a lot of people who miss that type of battle, one where lines needed to be maintained, and the fighting is mandatory instead of just being a race to PvE the opposing general.

In Cataclysm they are removing marks of honor for battlegrounds, opening up the possibility for Alterac Valley to be restored to its original state. The reason AV was reduced in difficulty was because Blizzard wanted each battleground to last about the same amount of time, so that marks were fairly equal in value, but if all the marks are eliminated then it's possible for them to restore AV to its original state. However... since they are including the Daily Battleground option in Cataclysm they probably don't want AV battles to last forever again.

Aside from class quests, tier upgrades, and battlegrounds, there are many other things created or conceptualized for level 60 that need to be updated for the L80 (L85) game in order for them to remain valuable as content. And content is king when it comes to entertainment. Updating the game makes the difference between $15 spent and a $15 bargain.

What Makes a Main?

For those who aren't fluent in Warcraft, every player is allowed 10 unique characters on any realm (server), and a total of 50 across your entire account. You can only play one at a time, of course. Of all of your characters there is probably one that is your "main", and the rest are "alts". Sometimes people will have more than one main. Sometimes people can't identify their main, they love all their alts. To make this a little clearer, I will attempt to lay out the guidelines that help you identify a "main".

First things first. When you first log in to the game, which character do you want to log in and spend time on first? Yes, you want to check your auctioneer mule, and there may be some reason why you need to see something on an alt, but most of the time you are logging in your main to check everything out and remind yourself of the things you want to get done with that character today.

Say hello. Even if there aren't any raids tonight and you don't feel like running your daily for a couple frost badges, you probably log into your main to say hey to other people and see who's online (because wow is just an interactive 3d chat client, amirite?). You may do this with ventrilo instead, but there it's even easier - the name you use on vent is often the name of your main. Your main is probably the identity you use on the forums also.

Levels. This is easy: We toy around with a lot of classes, but our main is usually our highest level character. If you only have one L80 character then it's probably your main. Given that we're over 5 years into this game, by now most experienced players have more than one L80.

Achievements. Somethings are fun to do once, but not twice. If an achievement comes up that you'd like to get done for a character, odds are there's a character you'd like to do it with in favor of your others - that one is probably your main. Your level 80 alts may be under 2000 achievement points, but your main will be over 4000, have the rare pets you found, have a bunch of titles, etc.

But... The things above are just indicators as to what your main might be. In actuality, your main is always the character you spend the most time playing. I have seven or eight level 80s (I forget atm) and two of them are highly competitive. But right now, my main is the priest I'm playing. I don't really care if my rogue progresses any further (even though it may become my main again in Cataclysm), but my priest is fun, and I'm playing it full-time. Therefore, it's my main, and I have several L80 alts.

That's it. Your main is the character you are mainly playing the most.

By All That's Holy

I've been very hard on the priest class over the past few years. I've called it the garbage class, the class you trick your little brother into playing, the warriors' training wheels, etc. I have good reason to hate the class - I leveled a holy priest in vanilla as my first character.

Back in December of 2004 the priest class was a much, much different animal than it is now. First of all, if you ask around for tips for leveling a priest today one of the first things you'll hear is 'get a good wand'. It's true, at low levels a good wand does as much damage as your smite, so there's no sense in wasting mana. Well, back in vanilla wands weren't autofire. Can you imagine trying to click-and-shoot with a wand to literally save your life? It was torture. Wands back then were a stat stick and an emergency tool.

Leveling holy - because my friends needed a healer for all their groups - meant that I didn't have the utility of discipline or the DPS of shadow, and I had to heal my way through every fight, which lasted forever. The only real benefit back then was that Inner Fire didn't run on charges, it was a cast-and-forget buff. But fights took forever, took all your mana, and if you were lucky you could fight one mob two levels above you or two mobs at the same level.

Then I got all the way to 60 and eventually our guild decided to try our hand at raiding. Now you have to understand if you haven't played a healer that there's a certain amount of guilt that comes with letting people die. You get over it eventually as you play more, but a good healer will still feel a tug of responsibility for the other players' lives even when things go wrong. Well, my first raid was a 40-man Molten Core rep run - just clearing trash - and I was the only priest in the raid.

Back then most of the healing was done by priests. I was a good one, but I couldn't keep 40 people alive, no way. Seeing 39 people die because you just couldn't pump out healing fast enough was traumatic. I decided I'd had enough, and I actually deleted my priest. I had a GM undelete it a couple months later, but I never seriously played it again. It was awful. I would be asked to heal things, I'd be a hero, then when I wanted some help with my own quests there was no one to be found to help me. I was a tool to be used to make other people enjoy the game - screw that.

So I gave up on that priest forever, and switched to other classes and loved them all. Even the hybrids that would occasionally heal, I knew that I was just a respec and a gear change away from doing something fun instead of healing someone else's adventure.

Five years later

My rogue is at 5k gear score, and it's time to play an alt. At the back of my mind I've been thinking about playing a priest again,and I finally give in and roll one. This time I make sure to give myself every advantage so the leveling process isn't painful - I buy the staff, shoulder, and chest heirlooms to give myself a 20% leveling bonus and I don't have to worry about a weapon until level 80. It's a huge difference right from the start.

Back in vanilla there was virtually no +spell on any items before level 60, and what there was was divided into two groups, +healing and +damage. In the BC expansion they combined healing and spell damage and every healer everywhere cried with joy. No longer would they have to collect two exclusive sets of gear just to be able to farm for repair bills, they could do decent damage in their healing gear. I remember the day they made the change and I took my resto druid out for a spin and giggled for hours at being able to starfire with decent damage.

Also back in vanilla the priests each had racial spells to make them unique. Dwarf priests had fear ward, which gave the Alliance a significant advantage in raiding and made Dwarf priests the preferred choice. I was a troll, so my racial was a shadow ball that did damage to things that hit me. The problem was that it only lasted three hits and it was too mana costly to maintain, so it was mostly useless. Every priest had their own special spell and I miss that uniqueness sometimes, but I wouldn't trade what we have now.

Fear Ward is now a trainable spell for every priest at low levels, and so is Devouring Plague. That gives us two dots we can pop on a target, just like warlocks. Wands are now autofire, so on a normal mob you can shield yourself (with Inner Fire up) and wand it to death, or cast Holy Fire, Smite, or Mind Blast and your mob is dead pretty quick. Even specced completely holy like I am, grinding and questing is easy beans.

And then there is the added bonus of LFD and queuing for battlegrounds from anywhere in the world. If I get into a spot where the quests are hard and I'd rather grind out xp in dungeons or mix it up with a few battlegrounds (which now also give xp) I can queue up anywhere on the fly. And priests have no movement buffs at all - no animal forms, no sprint, charge, anything - but the level requirements for mounts were nerfed down to level 20, so your priest won't have to walk everywhere forever.

All together the priest class has changed a little, but the game has changed a lot in ways that don't punish healers for their class choice as much as it did back in vanilla. If you had thought about playing a healer sometime and weren't sure what it would be like, it's a better time than ever - jump in and roll a priest.

Can't get no Satisfaction

Here I go again, focusing on a new character. I have no idea how long I'll be able to stick with it considering it's a priest, which is the lamest, gimpiest, most garbage class in WoW. Priest is the class you trick someone else into playing so you can get healed while you play a class that's actually fun.

I bought the heirloom staff, shoulders, and chest for the priest and it's still leveling at a crawl. I must have died at least 20 times already because I can barely handle one mob two levels above me, much less two. I'm level 12 right now, with only three more levels to go until I can level up via LFD and PvP full-time. But it's taking... forever... to get there. Westfall is a horrible zone to level in, I hate it with a passion.

The rogue was fun while I played it, but in 5k gear I'm only doing 4k dps in raids. That's manageable, but not great. I think I'm probably capped out at what I can do for now. I was just getting used to mutilate with daggers and the higher DPS weapons dropped that I needed to respec to combat to use, and I just don't care for combat much. The assassination tree has more in it for me, and my rotation was pretty manageable.

And there's not many upgrades left for the rogue without raiding, which I don't enjoy. It sucks up too much time, and I refuse to play in a manner that makes it impossible to talk with my wife and kids. So, the rogue is done.

Now if I can just figure out a way to stomach the next three levels on the priest... maybe I should head over to the Draenei territory and knock out a few quests there.

Don't be an Armory Orphan

If you haven't been over to the warcraft armory site in a while - wowarmory.com - make sure that you do. A couple of things are hidden that were once visible, but there is a huge new addition. Your character, complete with armor and weapons, is now rendered in the browser exactly as it will appear in-game.

And you can tell the difference right away of which characters are truly loved by their players and which aren't. A normal player doesn't bother checking his armory very much and only uses it for reference. If you really love your character though it's just fun to look at it, and you will have a custom pose set up for it to appear the way you want.

My rogue, for example, is looking off-screen to the right in a crouched position ready to dodge any incoming attacks. I could zoom in our out on him, have an animation play, rotate him to any angle, etc. It's pretty fun to play with. But you can tell who's got a passion for their character, he's not just standing there, he's animated.

It Only Takes One

I've been trucking along at 80 for a couple weeks now gearing up my rogue, and he's finally gotten to the point where he can do steady heroic-level DPS for... heroics. I'm still enjoying this guy enough that I'm less interested in rolling another alt than I expected I would be. I actually got to a low point, said to myself 'time to roll an alt' out of habit, then decided not to. Playing at 80 is still fun, which is a feeling I haven't felt in a while.

I did Wintergrasp a bunch of times this weekend and the closest I got to winning was on my Alliance paladin on Cho'Gall, which we never win. On Wyrmrest Accord - even though we supposedly outnumber the Horde - we win only a couple times a week. The faction is great, people are nice and the economy is fairly healthy, but when it comes to PvP people just can't get motivated to participate. Someday, maybe.

But I did a ton of heroics. My DPS is still not great but it's improving, and I discovered that Envenom is a pretty slick ability. I was rolling along with a whole bunch of good groups all weekend, then got one bitchy tank for Culling of Stratholme.

Arthas rolls up and sets into his narrative, etc., and the tank says 'so you didn't bypass the beginning huh?' I tell him 'guess not', and then he accuses me of talking to the 'gnome dude', which sets the narrative in motion. Now I don't know if the narrative can be bypassed or not, but I didn't talk to any NPCs. And the 'gnome dude' is Chromie, I know who that is. So he accuses me, and I deny it. He says he saw me do it, I told him he's mistaken. He says 'then it must have been a different rogue named Diagnose'. Finally I'm fed up with the accusations: 'Yeah, whatever. Just tank.'

So even though I was cheerful going in and laid out a Great Feast for people to share before we pulled, suddenly I'm on the poop list of the tank, for doing nothing. Awesome. The run is very quiet even with the stops in between, and there's a good chance the tank is talking shit in whispers to the other players. Yeah, we know how this is going to end. Second to the last boss has the potential to drop the plate armor that the tank wants. We kill the boss easily, it doesn't drop. Tank quits the group, two other players drop with him immediately.

Hey, that's your right if that's how you want to play it. You were certain that I did something that I didn't do, and you decided to be a jerk in return. Grats. And no matter how many good heroics I had with nice groups all weekend, I'm left wondering what I'd done to piss this guy off, and why bother playing if all I can aspire to is to end up grouped with jerks who can blow up our groups because they get their panties in a bunch.

So I think maybe I should step away from grouping a bit and try to solo for a while. Maybe roll an alt. I log in an alt, take a look at the starting zone, and log out again. Yuck, I don't have an appetite for that right now. So now between jerks and Wintergrasp I'm wondering why I play at all. Jokers to the left of me, clowns to the right.

I log out for a minute, and take out the dog. Bag up the garbage. Get a glass of water. Watch some of the closing ceremonies for the Olympics. Oh my god, a giant inflatable moose! Log back in, do an Alterac Valley. I love AV, it has magical healing properties, even when we lose. I queue for another heroic, and everyone is cheerful and sweet as pie, and they're all happy to be there. Suddenly, I love playing again.

I guess sometimes it only takes one group to bring you down, or lift you back up. I've got to make a mental note: The jerks are never worth worrying about. And I put the tank on ignore, so we'll never end up in a group together again.

Sneaking Into Stormpike

Let's get this right out there: I love Alterac Valley.

I loved the old AV when it was full of NPCs and it took literally days to complete a battle, I liked the middle version with the NPCs nerfed and long-capping towers, and I like the current version with its race to the finish. We could get all nostalgic and argue about which version is best, but there's a place for all of them in my heart.

In the current version of AV, which has been stripped down and mostly been reduced to a race to each others' general - don't forget to wave at the enemy as they ride by - there are still some things a person can do to bring back the PvP in an otherwise PvE battleground.

And before we discuss it we should probably mention that the L80 version of this battleground is drastically different than the 50-60, 61-70, and 71-19 brackets. In the 80 bracket you can have the best-geared tanks in the game riding down to pull the general for you, and these are the icecrown raiders who aren't afraid of nothin'. With proper heals they can pull the entire room with all the generals' buddies and tank them all at once. It's crazy. Multiple times I've seen the Horde (and the Alliance only once in my battlegroup) ride straight through from one end of the valley to the other, ignore the towers and graveyards along the way, and pull the general's room immediately. Five minute finish, 600 honor. Not bad.

Most of the time though the group just can't do it. If the pull messes up then you have dead tanks and healers, and they need to ride all the way back because you skipped graveyards. If the DPS pulls too much threat and gets themselves killed then you can end up fighting the boss forever and eventually the other team will show up and make you wipe (die to the boss). Sometimes it doesn't take anything more than a rogue or druid to sneak in and throw some crowd control on the tank in order for the whole pull to fall apart and people to start dying. The "blitz" works best with a good tank, and a decent sense of surprise.

Aside from that, the typical strategy is to cap the towers and bunkers and graveyards, and when all of the towers and bunkers are destroyed (each building destroyed gives you one less NPC to fight with the general) you pull the general and kill him quick. Each NPC still alive when you fight the general adds to his strength, but at L80 it's still pretty easy to take one or two of the NPCs with him and still burn him down.

If the battleground has lasted six minutes your enemy is probably not blitzing, and is eliminating adds (and getting extra honor) before they take out the general. If you see them taking every tower and graveyard along the way, you know they aren't blitzing or they wouldn't bother. In this case, where they are waiting for bunkers and towers to be captured, there is the opportunity for espionage.

Enter the rogue.

If both teams are waiting for the towers to go down before they pull the general, then usually the team that caps first is going to win. It is my supreme joy in AV these days to mess up that schedule by sneaking into our captured towers and recapping them before the timer expires. You have four minutes from start to finish, and no matter where you are on the field - which is huge - it is still enough time for you to ride to a tower and turn the flag in your favor, at least if no one kills you before you can complete your attempt.

My secret weapon is the AV trinket. Starting at level 51 you have the ability to complete a quest for your AV faction to go into a cave in AV and retrieve a piece of a banner. It's guarded by a bunch of higher-level mobs, but it's not too difficult to pound or sneak your way in there, get the banner, and return it to your questgiver in the Alterac Mountains. In return you get a trinket that will allow you to teleport from anywhere on the field to the entryway to your general's building.

For most classes this is a suicide mission. Once you show up the enemy is usually waiting there (for the tower timers to expire) and seeing you show up is like throwing meat on a kennel floor. *chomp* But for rogues and druids, if we click our stealth buttons just at our teleport is finishing, we will immediately go stealthed when we arrive, and we can scoot out of there before anyone detects us.

Then it's the difficult science of sneaking into a tower, identifying the people guarding it and figuring out how much or how little they are paying attention, and using the right timing or crowd control to create eight seconds during which you are not attacked and can recap the flag.

It's a science. Hunters and DKs with pets on auto-attack can be a nuisance. Sometimes you end up CC-ing the pet and not the character who is oblivious. Sometimes you need to use two forms of CC to keep them busy. Sometimes you need to use one form, wait for them to trinket out of it, and use another. But the very best tower recaps, the ones that taste like grade AAA prime rib au jus are when there are three or more people in a tower guarding that flag and you still recap it. My personal record is six. I stood right on top of a tauren right in the middle of a pack of people guarding it, and vanished without being attacked. It was savory.

See there's safety in numbers but there's also complacency. Everyone thinks they're helping the effort, but not primarily responsible. When I go to recap, that flag is mine. It's my responsibility. When they defend it's just something they're helping to get done. If they took as much responsibility for their job and paid it as much attention as I do, they'd never allow a recap. Some players are tough and really expect a recap and they're pretty hard to deceive, but most are pushovers. Some you need to trick.

When a tower or bunker caps anywhere in the valley, there is a red swirl around the flag that looks exactly like someone is trying to recap it. If you time your recap correctly you can make it overlap with you actually capping the flag and it buys a couple extra seconds before the defense reacts. And oh God are they pissed if you dupe them and they know it.

By the way, the Horde word for rogue is "THROM!" Shout it louder, Hordies. I drink in your confused tears.

AV battles played: 409
AV towers defended: 324*

*That's the number I got from the armory and I'm almost certain my actual total is higher. My record for recaps in one battle is 9, although some of them were recaps of the same tower. I don't try to kill the person capping, I just recap it so they have to cap it all over again and restart the timer. All I'm trying to do is buy us enough time to win.

**The armory site is wrong, as usual. In-game statistics say 213 AV battles, 330 towers defended.

We Built This City

In honor of the Trolls settling in Echo Isles and the Gnomes retaking Gnomeregan -

WE built this city

Say you don't pity, or care about my race
Say you don't care that my old home is a disgrace
Knee deep in the murlocs, running for my life
Too much radiation lighting up the night

Tired of Orgrimmar drums,
Too quiet in Ironforge
Don't you remember?
We built this city
We built this city on Troggs and Trolls!
We built this city, we built this city on Troggs and Trolls
Built this city, we built this city on Troggs and Trolls

Sure you're having fun now, raiding in Icecrown
Who cares about winning wars abroad when you've lost your town
We just want our homes back, someone stole our land
We're gonna take it back by force, war is being planned!

Tired of Orgrimmar drums,
Too quiet in Ironforge
Don't you remember?
We built this city
We built this city on Troggs and Trolls!
We built this city, we built this city on Troggs and Trolls
Built this city, we built this city on Troggs and Trolls

It's just another Tuesday, in the Echo Isles
Zalazane's got another thing coming, we'll wipe away that smile

Who runs all the gearworks, who's put in the elbow grease?
We hold up the pillars of Ironforge and subsidize the lease
Don't tell us you need us, 'cause we're headed for Gnomeregan
Unpack the radiation kits - this time the war is on!

Don't you remember ...

Tired of Orgrimmar drums,
Too quiet in Ironforge
Don't you remember?
We built this city
We built this city on Troggs and Trolls!
We built this city, we built this city on Troggs and Trolls
Built this city, we built this city on Troggs and Trolls
Built this city, we built this city on Troggs and Trolls
Built this city, we built this city on Troggs and Trolls
Built this city, we built this city on Troggs and Trolls

We built, we built this city yeah
We built this city
We built, we built this city

Everyone is a Critic

Anytime you open your mouth, you're subject to the opinions of others. In WoW this is taken to the extreme. In fact, because of the young, anonymous nature of the playerbase pretty much every aspect of behavior is taken to the extreme.

People are extremely condescending to each other whenever they get the chance if they don't have any prior history with the other person. They insult names, gear, habits, pets, guilds, arena ratings, talent spec - pretty much everything. When they run out of things game-related to insult they turn to the chat channels and use everything allowed (and many things disallowed) to describe their fellow players personally.

It's interesting to watch in the same way that seeing a knee surgery is interesting. Oh look, under that person's skin is... wow, who would have known they were hiding that? Given the right subject and the wrong words, even the mildest-mannered people turn into frothing e-thugs who get all tough and rowdy and talk about violating each others' dead grandmothers.

I've got to wonder where it came from. There is the preconception this is just the way things are (the saying "welcome to the internet" comes to mind), but I remember a very short time in 2004-2005 when it wasn't always this way. Back in the beginning there were consequences for being a jerk. Not only were the chat channels moderated far more than they are now, but guilds themselves would exclude people who were public nuisances. And generally the people who couldn't keep their chat clean were problems in other areas too, and it was good for the guild to blacklist them.

Things have changed. Another 6-8 million people have joined the game since then, and they are younger on average than the previous generation of players, and are more insecure. They react with harsh words towards anyone who they think might be questioning them, and they quickly turn every disagreement into a circus of monkeys flinging crap. Sometimes they just like to see it fly, and start out tossing the first load to see how much hits the fan. It's as much an e-sport to them as the game itself is, and they strive to 'build cred' by being a reliable foil.

Well, it isn't impressive or amusing. It's dumb. Not that they care what people think, there's not anything a person could say to make someone change their behavior, because the antisocial feed on discontent. The only thing that could possibly affect them is being banned from the game, because it would rob them of participation. So really, the only recourse for anyone who dislikes this growing sport is to leave the discussion.

Most people who don't care for the chat /leave the global channels altogether. It affects them somewhat because they are left out of some economic or grouping opportunities - legitimate traffic interspersed within the insults - but for the most part they end up playing a separate game within the larger game with a separate group apart from the larger group. The insults continue, the groups break into smaller pieces, and eventually the fun dwindles for the smallest groups and people leave the game.

And that leaves WoW as a game on the decline, because Blizzard decided not to moderate their own global chat. It's their choice, but if they truly valued the quality of their content they would realize that the chat is a large piece of that content, and moderate it to some degree. Maybe they see that their product is on the decline and view that effort as tossing money into a losing proposition, in favor of creating new titles for people to migrate to.

Dunno, but it has been interesting to watch as a social dynamic. Anyway, it's on the internet so no one is free from insult, even if you just write a tiny blog for your friends somewhere.