But not in the way that has gotten some people banned. I didn't get double rolls on loot, but I did slip in there wearing sporting my shoulders off Chimaeron, my gloves off Maloriak, two pieces of ZA/ZG gear, a Brewfest trinket, and a 359 in my other trinket slot. I had only one piece of T12 and my average ilvl for my raid healing set was definitely not 372.
But I got in to the raid finder last week and completed the four fights that were available. I actually went last Thursday because I wanted get a preview of the Dragon Soul raid (my group raids Saturday and Mondays so we haven't gone yet) and because I didn't want to do the same raid twice on my druid, I took my holy paladin instead.
As to how I got in... it's was perfectly legal by Blizzard's standards. I happen to have a full set of Ruthless Gladiator PvP gear from all the arena I do, which pushed my average ilvl for all gear to a handy 382 and well above requirement for Looking For Raid.
Looking For Raid was not the nightmare I thought it might be after hearing all the complaints on the PTR. I think it may be because the only people who were eligible to go into LFR that first week were all raiders or their raiding alts.
No one called me out on my crap gear, but with all the transmogging going on maybe they just thought I had awful fashion sense (I've only changed my paladin's shield and head so far, because the level 60 PvP gear I was going to wear is sadly unavailable to me).
The first two bosses were one shots, even with a tank that admitted he had no idea what he was doing and hadn't looked into the fights at all. Yor'sahj, the faceless boss who summons slimes, was actually the sticking point as a pug.
The other bosses it's very clear what to do. Shoot the boss, don't stand in bad, group up with everyone else when you see people clumping. There were a couple people who already knew the fight and made callouts in chat when needed, and the fights weren't complicated enough to require more than a little nudging for everyone to get the message.
But Yor'sahj featured the ever popular problem of people dps-ing the boss instead of the slime adds. We wiped three times and each time loss some people. Fortunately the raid finder found replacements quickly.
I think the 25-man formula was a good choice, as there was none of the waiting I'd normally associate with a 5-man. Though we lost a tank, a new one appeared immediately.
And by the fourth attempt people finally got it into their heads to kill the adds and we one-shotted the fourth boss with only two deaths due to ice wall failure.
I'm not sure what it is about the Hagara fight, since it didn't particularly strike me as very paladin friendly with all the running in circles chaining lightning or avoiding moving ice walls, but I had my best healing performance in that fight versus the other healers.
No healing assignments were given, so it was really a free-for-all, which makes me wonder what it's going to be like healing Ultraxion this week since the second wing is opening up.
Showing posts with label misc. Show all posts
Showing posts with label misc. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Skywall: Now Accepting New Players
I've dropped off the blogosphere a bit, between raiding, a wedding, two conventions, and now NaNoWriMo, but I'm still around.
For all of my time on WoW, Skywall has always been my main server. I knew the names of the vanilla guilds, the names of the top raiders. I knew who the PvP enthusiasts were on both sides of the faction divide, and I remember laughing at some of the forum jokes, like how members of the Sacred Samophlange had managed to get Eringobragh's name into the urban dictionary with an entirely inappropriate definition.
I've certainly made enough alts on other servers (mostly to play with friends) and I've gotten a feel for some of them, but I've always come back to Skywall.
The funny thing about being on the same server so long is knowing the history of how one guild rose from the ashes of another, or who went where and why.
Skywall has been a Medium population server since late vanilla. There was a brief period when it was high and we even had queues to come on, but then Arathor opened up and a lot of people transferred there, including the Alliance guild I played in with my coworkers. Server technologies improved and we went back to Medium pop.
At the end of Wrath of the Lich King we had at least five or six strong 25-man guilds on Alliance and perhaps four on Horde (Horde has always been weaker on Skywall). But when Cata launched, the 25-mans started dropping, with many reducing to 10-man during Tier 11 content, not all of them voluntarily.
Then Disconnected broke up. Driven to Conquer broke up. Language Barrier and Sanguine Curse couldn't managed the numbers and by Firelands had either dropped so low on the radar as to be invisible or vanished. And I know these guild names won't mean anything to 99% of the people who read this, and if they had gradually vanished it wouldn't mean as much to me either, but before I realized it, something was happening.
It was when Osmosis began struggling that it really hit me. Osmosis had long been one of the premier guilds on Skywall, and been undisputedly the best on Horde since TBC. I don't pretend to know all the details, and Osmosis still exists as of this writing, but they lost a lot of players. One of those who server transferred was a guy I'd known since vanilla.
Osmo, the last of our progression 25-man guilds, did their last progression kill on 10-man.
Skywall still has one 25-man guild on Alliance (Choice) and one on Horde (Tortured), so that kind of raiding still goes on for those who like it and can make the time slot, but they aren't the bleeding edge that Disconnected, or Osmosis, or DTC was.
Progression on Skywall is now in the hands of 10-mans guilds.
And while I like my 10-mans very much, I am very sad for those who want the bigger raids, who want to work the edge, and can no longer find that outlet. I don't remember the exact words used, but I remember the guild leader of Osmosis venting on the forums at the end of Wrath about the equal loot for 10s and 25s. He loves the 25-man format, he hates 10s, and he was afraid of what the change would do to recruitment.
Why aren't there more 25-man guilds on Skywall? Well, it seems everyone's leaving.
We used to be Medium population, but when I logged in last night we were one of only two realms with the blue New Players population size.
I hesitate to say Skywall is dying. A walk around Org nets a fair number of people and our economy is healthy. Pugs still happen and my guild hires itself out every now and then for achievement runs of old content to stuff the guild bank with more goodies. There are new guilds forming as always, and for all I know one of them will be fantastic and fill up a gap that people had forgotten was there.
But seeing New Players has been demoralizing. It is proof of how many people have transferred away.
I'll still be on Skywall. I don't do the transfer thing. But if you're looking for a new server, I won't mind if you roll here and say hi.
For all of my time on WoW, Skywall has always been my main server. I knew the names of the vanilla guilds, the names of the top raiders. I knew who the PvP enthusiasts were on both sides of the faction divide, and I remember laughing at some of the forum jokes, like how members of the Sacred Samophlange had managed to get Eringobragh's name into the urban dictionary with an entirely inappropriate definition.
I've certainly made enough alts on other servers (mostly to play with friends) and I've gotten a feel for some of them, but I've always come back to Skywall.
The funny thing about being on the same server so long is knowing the history of how one guild rose from the ashes of another, or who went where and why.
Skywall has been a Medium population server since late vanilla. There was a brief period when it was high and we even had queues to come on, but then Arathor opened up and a lot of people transferred there, including the Alliance guild I played in with my coworkers. Server technologies improved and we went back to Medium pop.
At the end of Wrath of the Lich King we had at least five or six strong 25-man guilds on Alliance and perhaps four on Horde (Horde has always been weaker on Skywall). But when Cata launched, the 25-mans started dropping, with many reducing to 10-man during Tier 11 content, not all of them voluntarily.
Then Disconnected broke up. Driven to Conquer broke up. Language Barrier and Sanguine Curse couldn't managed the numbers and by Firelands had either dropped so low on the radar as to be invisible or vanished. And I know these guild names won't mean anything to 99% of the people who read this, and if they had gradually vanished it wouldn't mean as much to me either, but before I realized it, something was happening.
It was when Osmosis began struggling that it really hit me. Osmosis had long been one of the premier guilds on Skywall, and been undisputedly the best on Horde since TBC. I don't pretend to know all the details, and Osmosis still exists as of this writing, but they lost a lot of players. One of those who server transferred was a guy I'd known since vanilla.
Osmo, the last of our progression 25-man guilds, did their last progression kill on 10-man.
Skywall still has one 25-man guild on Alliance (Choice) and one on Horde (Tortured), so that kind of raiding still goes on for those who like it and can make the time slot, but they aren't the bleeding edge that Disconnected, or Osmosis, or DTC was.
Progression on Skywall is now in the hands of 10-mans guilds.
And while I like my 10-mans very much, I am very sad for those who want the bigger raids, who want to work the edge, and can no longer find that outlet. I don't remember the exact words used, but I remember the guild leader of Osmosis venting on the forums at the end of Wrath about the equal loot for 10s and 25s. He loves the 25-man format, he hates 10s, and he was afraid of what the change would do to recruitment.
Why aren't there more 25-man guilds on Skywall? Well, it seems everyone's leaving.
We used to be Medium population, but when I logged in last night we were one of only two realms with the blue New Players population size.
I hesitate to say Skywall is dying. A walk around Org nets a fair number of people and our economy is healthy. Pugs still happen and my guild hires itself out every now and then for achievement runs of old content to stuff the guild bank with more goodies. There are new guilds forming as always, and for all I know one of them will be fantastic and fill up a gap that people had forgotten was there.
But seeing New Players has been demoralizing. It is proof of how many people have transferred away.
I'll still be on Skywall. I don't do the transfer thing. But if you're looking for a new server, I won't mind if you roll here and say hi.
Sunday, August 28, 2011
Human Decency
I like to think that most people, even in a game, are decent to each other if not actually friendly. It takes some effort to be a jerk after all, and usually people, particularly in pugs, just want to do their business and be done with it.
But yesterday I came across an unusual bad specimen that I had to write this to wash my mind of it.
I joined a pug on my resto druid alt (my third druid) and it was for Hellfire Ramparts. We did the first couple pulls across the bridge and all was well.
The third and fourth pulls were more chaotic. It looked to me like a couple of the dps pulled, but the tank soon had everything under control and I didn't get blasted in the face by caster mobs like I expected. The mage even commented that he was happy to find a healer who would heal his pet. (For me, pets are last priority, but I do heal them if I am sure it will not result in another party member dying.)
Then the tank paused and asked the dps to stop pulling. He has been away from the game for several months and is getting back into the habit.
The mage is ballsy enough to say no to the tank's face, saying that the tank is too slow, and pulls again.
The tank replies that he's not going to taunt mobs off the mage if he pulls them. And he doesn't.
As I have done from time to time out of sympathy for much put-upon tanks, since it is most often the green and the rusty among them that get this treatment, I offered to not heal the mage so that there is a real consequence to the dps for having a mob on them. The tank is grateful for the support.
The mage dies, and I rez him figuring he's learned his lesson.
He hasn't.
And so we go down the corrider to the first boss with the mage berating the tank, saying that it doesn't matter that he's been gone for months, he's wasting other people's time by pulling so slowly, and all the while continuing to pull. Unfortunately the mage is a pretty good player, so even though he pulls mobs and the tank does not taunt off him and I don't heal him, he continues to live.
The tank snaps back at the mage, and also apologizes to the rest of the group. He says he's not normally this snippy, but after getting so many awful people in pugs it's starting to hurt. I comfort the tank and the atmosphere in the group is so bad the other dps start yelling at the mage to shut up.
The tank really isn't pulling that slowly. He's not chain pulling, but he's not 10 seconds between pulls like the mage claims.
After a pull in which the mage nearly dies, the tank whispers me that the mage tried to have me vote-kicked for not healing him. I laugh it off, though I'm a little surprised that he didn't try vote-kicking the tank first considering he's who the mage has been venting at. Perhaps he doesn't want to wait in the queue for a new tank.
Right before the boss the mage says if the tank is rusty he'll tell him how to tank. And rattles off a warrior rotation.
The tank is a paladin.
No one says anything, but the mage must have caught his error because he then spews out a bunch of random prot paladin abilities and proclaims that he has now taught the tank how to do his job.
Moving on, we kill the boss and it is no problem. The tank doesn't chain pull, but he knows how to hold aggro. The rest of the party continues defending the tank, the hunter even saying that the tank is pulling faster than others he's seen so he doesn't know what the mage is complaining about. The death knight tells the mage to stop QQing.
After the next pull the mage runs ahead. I have bad feeling about this.
When the mage comes back with two enemies in tow, nobody hits them, but the mage ice blocks sending them on us and we're forced to pick them up.
The mage runs away for the next batch.
I know his game now. If we're too slow for him, he's going to force us to speed up by bringing us enemies to fight.
We try kicking him repeatedly, but we're never out of combat long enough to activate the vote kick. He's not giving us enough breathing room.
Finally he runs down with six mobs after him and he can't save himself. Unfortunately, it's a bad situation for us with the ranged mobs not being on the tank, and I get killed second when I try to heal. The rest of the party soon falls.
I grumble in chat that at least now we'll be out of combat long enough to vote kick him.
The mage declares that he got what he wanted and he won't care if we kick him. We, of course, kick him as soon as the timer lets us.
The rest of the instance was fantastic.
The tank was easy to heal, held all the mobs, and only took a couple seconds between pulls, checking to make sure everyone was with him, which was fine with me. I don't see what in the world the mage had to complain about.
After the last boss was dead, the tank thanked us for the run and I told him that I hoped he had better luck with future pugs. What we had there was one of the nastiest I've seen in a while, and I hoped he wouldn't think that happened all the time. Pug tanking is often thankless work, but it's a role that needs filling, and I hope by encouraging young tanks we'll find more of them out there.
The thing that bugs me the most, I think, is that Ramparts is a leveling instance. People are still learning things, trying out new specs, figuring out when to use new abilities, getting familiar with the pulls. Not everyone is an old hat who knows every instance inside and out. The tank was in the proper instance for getting back into the swing of tanking. He was doing nothing wrong.
If the mage had a problem with that, he should have left, but in fact did not, even when the option was raised.
But yesterday I came across an unusual bad specimen that I had to write this to wash my mind of it.
I joined a pug on my resto druid alt (my third druid) and it was for Hellfire Ramparts. We did the first couple pulls across the bridge and all was well.
The third and fourth pulls were more chaotic. It looked to me like a couple of the dps pulled, but the tank soon had everything under control and I didn't get blasted in the face by caster mobs like I expected. The mage even commented that he was happy to find a healer who would heal his pet. (For me, pets are last priority, but I do heal them if I am sure it will not result in another party member dying.)
Then the tank paused and asked the dps to stop pulling. He has been away from the game for several months and is getting back into the habit.
The mage is ballsy enough to say no to the tank's face, saying that the tank is too slow, and pulls again.
The tank replies that he's not going to taunt mobs off the mage if he pulls them. And he doesn't.
As I have done from time to time out of sympathy for much put-upon tanks, since it is most often the green and the rusty among them that get this treatment, I offered to not heal the mage so that there is a real consequence to the dps for having a mob on them. The tank is grateful for the support.
The mage dies, and I rez him figuring he's learned his lesson.
He hasn't.
And so we go down the corrider to the first boss with the mage berating the tank, saying that it doesn't matter that he's been gone for months, he's wasting other people's time by pulling so slowly, and all the while continuing to pull. Unfortunately the mage is a pretty good player, so even though he pulls mobs and the tank does not taunt off him and I don't heal him, he continues to live.
The tank snaps back at the mage, and also apologizes to the rest of the group. He says he's not normally this snippy, but after getting so many awful people in pugs it's starting to hurt. I comfort the tank and the atmosphere in the group is so bad the other dps start yelling at the mage to shut up.
The tank really isn't pulling that slowly. He's not chain pulling, but he's not 10 seconds between pulls like the mage claims.
After a pull in which the mage nearly dies, the tank whispers me that the mage tried to have me vote-kicked for not healing him. I laugh it off, though I'm a little surprised that he didn't try vote-kicking the tank first considering he's who the mage has been venting at. Perhaps he doesn't want to wait in the queue for a new tank.
Right before the boss the mage says if the tank is rusty he'll tell him how to tank. And rattles off a warrior rotation.
The tank is a paladin.
No one says anything, but the mage must have caught his error because he then spews out a bunch of random prot paladin abilities and proclaims that he has now taught the tank how to do his job.
Moving on, we kill the boss and it is no problem. The tank doesn't chain pull, but he knows how to hold aggro. The rest of the party continues defending the tank, the hunter even saying that the tank is pulling faster than others he's seen so he doesn't know what the mage is complaining about. The death knight tells the mage to stop QQing.
After the next pull the mage runs ahead. I have bad feeling about this.
When the mage comes back with two enemies in tow, nobody hits them, but the mage ice blocks sending them on us and we're forced to pick them up.
The mage runs away for the next batch.
I know his game now. If we're too slow for him, he's going to force us to speed up by bringing us enemies to fight.
We try kicking him repeatedly, but we're never out of combat long enough to activate the vote kick. He's not giving us enough breathing room.
Finally he runs down with six mobs after him and he can't save himself. Unfortunately, it's a bad situation for us with the ranged mobs not being on the tank, and I get killed second when I try to heal. The rest of the party soon falls.
I grumble in chat that at least now we'll be out of combat long enough to vote kick him.
The mage declares that he got what he wanted and he won't care if we kick him. We, of course, kick him as soon as the timer lets us.
The rest of the instance was fantastic.
The tank was easy to heal, held all the mobs, and only took a couple seconds between pulls, checking to make sure everyone was with him, which was fine with me. I don't see what in the world the mage had to complain about.
After the last boss was dead, the tank thanked us for the run and I told him that I hoped he had better luck with future pugs. What we had there was one of the nastiest I've seen in a while, and I hoped he wouldn't think that happened all the time. Pug tanking is often thankless work, but it's a role that needs filling, and I hope by encouraging young tanks we'll find more of them out there.
The thing that bugs me the most, I think, is that Ramparts is a leveling instance. People are still learning things, trying out new specs, figuring out when to use new abilities, getting familiar with the pulls. Not everyone is an old hat who knows every instance inside and out. The tank was in the proper instance for getting back into the swing of tanking. He was doing nothing wrong.
If the mage had a problem with that, he should have left, but in fact did not, even when the option was raised.
Monday, July 11, 2011
Molten Burnout
I was reading a post at Kurn's about how she was getting burned out by everything that needed to be done in order for a responsible PvE raider to max out their effort every week in terms of valor points, dailies, rep, etc.
It's a lot, and I'm at the point where I'm close to throwing my hands up and saying "Screw those Molten Front dailies, screw those heroics, I don't care if I need more gear." I only raid twice a week on my druid main because I want relatively low commitment gameplay, but the Molten Front material takes almost a month to fully unlock, and I've been slavishly doing all their dailies since 4.2 landed (even on the nights I would normally be off WoW) because a day I don't do is another day's delay to the end.
Worse, I'm doing this on two characters so my engineering paladin will be able to make the Flintlocke's Woodchucker scope for my guild's hunters.
And I think it's retarded that it's more time efficient (at the moment) to get valor points from heroics than raid boss kills.
Then, like Kurn, I have a holy paladin that's occasionally running with a second guild other than the one I lead, because it's nice to go to a raid and not have responsibility.
But all this is sucking up a huge amount of time.
Now that I've unlocked the Druids of the Talon on my druid and the Shadow Wardens on my paladin, the number of dailies I do each day on both my 85s has skyrocketed and I'm doing them everyday.
I suppose I don't have to, but I feel like I should to be a good raider on my main and to get the engy schematic for my guild's hunters on my alt (because I'm sure the first few engineers to get the schematic will be gouging on the AH).
The thing is... I know the rep will come with time. As we kill trash and bosses in Firelands I'll eventually get Avengers of Hyjal rep, so I can close my eyes and say there's no need to do trash runs. Yes, it would help get gear sooner, but I can at least pretend any gear upgrades are minor enough on my main that it won't make much of a difference.
The valor points will come with time as well. I'll still be raiding twice a week and we'll kill bosses.
Both rep and valor points will come while doing pre-planned scheduled events.
But the stupid Molten Front dailies... I think the reason I'm so annoyed by them is that they aren't a fun group activity and they're mostly the same thing day in, day out and they're taking up time when I'd otherwise be doing something else that is most likely not WoW.
Previous daily quest grinds didn't seem to be such a big deal.
The Netherwing dailies weren't for gear, so I never worried about missing a day in TBC. Hodir gave shoulder enchants in WotLK, but it was relatively easy to get the blue versions and even then there was perhaps a max of seven dailies and I only was working on one character at a time. The Argent Coliseum dailies didn't even give anything to raiders. They were mostly just for fun, city rep, and titles. Gear was only really needed by alts.
In Cata, Therazane and Dragonmaw were probably best known for having dailies, but they also had tabards so dailies weren't the only way to get gear and enchants. I could combine gaining rep with heroic runs so it felt very time efficient.
But the Molten Front gives competitive gear as well as the means to craft competitive gear. I just realized there's a neck unlocked a few days ago that's better than the one I'm wearing, and there's a relic I could use while I save valor points for my tier pieces. And of course no hunter is going to want to be without the Woodchucker.
I'm just not sure how much longer I can keep this up before I'm going to want to take a step back from the game. I think if there wasn't such a clear gating mechanism, with its own story, and with competitive rewards I'd take my time and play through the sequence leisurely, but since it's not, I feel compelled to burn through it.
And the worst part is... there's all this new craftable gear, but no new engineering helm. The engineer in me is sad.
It's a lot, and I'm at the point where I'm close to throwing my hands up and saying "Screw those Molten Front dailies, screw those heroics, I don't care if I need more gear." I only raid twice a week on my druid main because I want relatively low commitment gameplay, but the Molten Front material takes almost a month to fully unlock, and I've been slavishly doing all their dailies since 4.2 landed (even on the nights I would normally be off WoW) because a day I don't do is another day's delay to the end.
Worse, I'm doing this on two characters so my engineering paladin will be able to make the Flintlocke's Woodchucker scope for my guild's hunters.
And I think it's retarded that it's more time efficient (at the moment) to get valor points from heroics than raid boss kills.
Then, like Kurn, I have a holy paladin that's occasionally running with a second guild other than the one I lead, because it's nice to go to a raid and not have responsibility.
But all this is sucking up a huge amount of time.
Now that I've unlocked the Druids of the Talon on my druid and the Shadow Wardens on my paladin, the number of dailies I do each day on both my 85s has skyrocketed and I'm doing them everyday.
I suppose I don't have to, but I feel like I should to be a good raider on my main and to get the engy schematic for my guild's hunters on my alt (because I'm sure the first few engineers to get the schematic will be gouging on the AH).
The thing is... I know the rep will come with time. As we kill trash and bosses in Firelands I'll eventually get Avengers of Hyjal rep, so I can close my eyes and say there's no need to do trash runs. Yes, it would help get gear sooner, but I can at least pretend any gear upgrades are minor enough on my main that it won't make much of a difference.
The valor points will come with time as well. I'll still be raiding twice a week and we'll kill bosses.
Both rep and valor points will come while doing pre-planned scheduled events.
But the stupid Molten Front dailies... I think the reason I'm so annoyed by them is that they aren't a fun group activity and they're mostly the same thing day in, day out and they're taking up time when I'd otherwise be doing something else that is most likely not WoW.
Previous daily quest grinds didn't seem to be such a big deal.
The Netherwing dailies weren't for gear, so I never worried about missing a day in TBC. Hodir gave shoulder enchants in WotLK, but it was relatively easy to get the blue versions and even then there was perhaps a max of seven dailies and I only was working on one character at a time. The Argent Coliseum dailies didn't even give anything to raiders. They were mostly just for fun, city rep, and titles. Gear was only really needed by alts.
In Cata, Therazane and Dragonmaw were probably best known for having dailies, but they also had tabards so dailies weren't the only way to get gear and enchants. I could combine gaining rep with heroic runs so it felt very time efficient.
But the Molten Front gives competitive gear as well as the means to craft competitive gear. I just realized there's a neck unlocked a few days ago that's better than the one I'm wearing, and there's a relic I could use while I save valor points for my tier pieces. And of course no hunter is going to want to be without the Woodchucker.
I'm just not sure how much longer I can keep this up before I'm going to want to take a step back from the game. I think if there wasn't such a clear gating mechanism, with its own story, and with competitive rewards I'd take my time and play through the sequence leisurely, but since it's not, I feel compelled to burn through it.
And the worst part is... there's all this new craftable gear, but no new engineering helm. The engineer in me is sad.
Monday, June 27, 2011
Times I'm Thankful For My Guild
My guild looks like it will be ending its Tier 11 raids with the progression of 6/13 Heroic, which isn't too shabby at all. We've had our ups and downs, and chewed through a frightful number of healers at one point, but stabilized over the past month or two and downed multiple heroic bosses for the first time.
One thing I've liked is that people are serious about showing up. People post ahead of time whether or not they're going to be absent. We run a team of 12 and only very, very rarely have we had to cancel a raid even under the worst of circumstances.
I was not always in a guild like this.
Back in TBC, when I was in my first raiding guild, they were very lax with their team setup. People knew the raid times, but on the rare occasion they would actually raid earlier than scheduled (I was admittedly quite upset to have rushed home to raid only to discover they're started without me) and then they wanted to be fair about giving everyone an opportunity to raid. The problem was, they had trouble stopping recruiting and when you have two tanks, three healers, and twenty dps for Kara... well... you don't get to go very often.
It also meant that if a healer was absent we probably wouldn't go, and if a tank was absent we definitely did not go. There was no penalty for being absent. There was no reward to being present (other than you might get to go). There were no attendance rules at all really, so the dedicated raider would often be sat for someone who rarely showed up in the interests of giving everyone a chance to raid.
Those who are dedicated raiders can see the problem in this.
But for a casual raid guild, maybe it's not that bad a thing to trade off progression and a regular raid spot for the freedom of just showing up once in a while and still getting to go (maybe), but it's something I knew going forward that I've wanted to avoid.
And I've done a decent job. My second TBC guild valued me highly and I never sat, whether it was 10-man or 25. My first WotLK guild never benched me either, though occasionally I volunteered to sit. Both of those guilds were good about making raids happen until eventually their leaders couldn't take it anymore and quit.
My second WotLK guild and current Cata guild are the same, and it is my guild. I run it, and I do all I can to avoid the burnout of my predecessors while accomodating the schedule and raid style I want. We raid just two nights a week (then unprecedented on our server and quite rare in general when we started in ToC), just 10-mans, and with an eye on heroics.
I've seen more content in my little guild than in any of my previous ones, and I know it's due to the skill and dedication of my raiders.
This feeling of pride isn't something triggered by the upcoming patch 4.2, as one might think. Rather, something else happened recently.
In these final days of Tier 11 I volunteered to fill in for a casual raid guild's healing team on my paladin. I don't know this guild well, but their members have always been nice folks, so I was sure that running with them would be more pleasant than pugging. I was warned by their GM that they didn't have as many of their regular raiders anymore, and things might be kind of rough, but I said I was fine with that. I'm not someone who's going to nerd-rage because we wiped.
The guild ended up taking three non-guildies, including me, to fill the holes in their roster. We killed three bosses in two hours and called it a night. For a casual guild deprived of a full in-guild raid team it was acceptable, especially considering that they had to explain the fights from scratch for a couple people.
Knowing they were short-handed (and wanting to raid a bit more on my alt), I offered to fill in for them again, and their guild master extended invites to me via the in-game calendar for the next three raids.
I accepted, and now two of those three dates have passed. They didn't raid on either of them because not enough people have showed up.
If I was one of their guildies and that was my only opportunity to raid, I would be quite annoyed, but since I'm just filling in for fun on my alt, hearing that the raid has been canceled 20 minutes after start time didn't bother me, especially since I would have been online anyway.
Now, attendance is not mandatory in their guild, and it's one of their selling points in their recruitement ads, so it's not surprising that when content is stale not enough people show up. Personally, I could not live with that on my main. But I know people at my day job who play WoW and think it's ridiculous to set aside a set time every week to raid. They don't mind raiding itself, they don't mind going once in a while, but they don't like the commitment. For them, that kind of guild isn't a bad idea. Go if there are enough on, don't if there aren't.
The biggest thing to be thankful for in a guild is being with people who share the same commitment to raiding, leveling, PvP, whatever that focus might be. It doesn't matter if it's a high amount or a low amount as long as the commitment is the same. My guild is ranked #2 for 10-man progression on our server, but #72 on guild levels since we're still level 20. We might not be achievement hunters or fishers or crafters or activity maniacs, but we know what we like and we do it.
One thing I've liked is that people are serious about showing up. People post ahead of time whether or not they're going to be absent. We run a team of 12 and only very, very rarely have we had to cancel a raid even under the worst of circumstances.
I was not always in a guild like this.
Back in TBC, when I was in my first raiding guild, they were very lax with their team setup. People knew the raid times, but on the rare occasion they would actually raid earlier than scheduled (I was admittedly quite upset to have rushed home to raid only to discover they're started without me) and then they wanted to be fair about giving everyone an opportunity to raid. The problem was, they had trouble stopping recruiting and when you have two tanks, three healers, and twenty dps for Kara... well... you don't get to go very often.
It also meant that if a healer was absent we probably wouldn't go, and if a tank was absent we definitely did not go. There was no penalty for being absent. There was no reward to being present (other than you might get to go). There were no attendance rules at all really, so the dedicated raider would often be sat for someone who rarely showed up in the interests of giving everyone a chance to raid.
Those who are dedicated raiders can see the problem in this.
But for a casual raid guild, maybe it's not that bad a thing to trade off progression and a regular raid spot for the freedom of just showing up once in a while and still getting to go (maybe), but it's something I knew going forward that I've wanted to avoid.
And I've done a decent job. My second TBC guild valued me highly and I never sat, whether it was 10-man or 25. My first WotLK guild never benched me either, though occasionally I volunteered to sit. Both of those guilds were good about making raids happen until eventually their leaders couldn't take it anymore and quit.
My second WotLK guild and current Cata guild are the same, and it is my guild. I run it, and I do all I can to avoid the burnout of my predecessors while accomodating the schedule and raid style I want. We raid just two nights a week (then unprecedented on our server and quite rare in general when we started in ToC), just 10-mans, and with an eye on heroics.
I've seen more content in my little guild than in any of my previous ones, and I know it's due to the skill and dedication of my raiders.
This feeling of pride isn't something triggered by the upcoming patch 4.2, as one might think. Rather, something else happened recently.
In these final days of Tier 11 I volunteered to fill in for a casual raid guild's healing team on my paladin. I don't know this guild well, but their members have always been nice folks, so I was sure that running with them would be more pleasant than pugging. I was warned by their GM that they didn't have as many of their regular raiders anymore, and things might be kind of rough, but I said I was fine with that. I'm not someone who's going to nerd-rage because we wiped.
The guild ended up taking three non-guildies, including me, to fill the holes in their roster. We killed three bosses in two hours and called it a night. For a casual guild deprived of a full in-guild raid team it was acceptable, especially considering that they had to explain the fights from scratch for a couple people.
Knowing they were short-handed (and wanting to raid a bit more on my alt), I offered to fill in for them again, and their guild master extended invites to me via the in-game calendar for the next three raids.
I accepted, and now two of those three dates have passed. They didn't raid on either of them because not enough people have showed up.
If I was one of their guildies and that was my only opportunity to raid, I would be quite annoyed, but since I'm just filling in for fun on my alt, hearing that the raid has been canceled 20 minutes after start time didn't bother me, especially since I would have been online anyway.
Now, attendance is not mandatory in their guild, and it's one of their selling points in their recruitement ads, so it's not surprising that when content is stale not enough people show up. Personally, I could not live with that on my main. But I know people at my day job who play WoW and think it's ridiculous to set aside a set time every week to raid. They don't mind raiding itself, they don't mind going once in a while, but they don't like the commitment. For them, that kind of guild isn't a bad idea. Go if there are enough on, don't if there aren't.
The biggest thing to be thankful for in a guild is being with people who share the same commitment to raiding, leveling, PvP, whatever that focus might be. It doesn't matter if it's a high amount or a low amount as long as the commitment is the same. My guild is ranked #2 for 10-man progression on our server, but #72 on guild levels since we're still level 20. We might not be achievement hunters or fishers or crafters or activity maniacs, but we know what we like and we do it.
Thursday, June 23, 2011
I'd Tank... if I had a Third Spec
I queued for the Ahune fight the other night on both my 85s. My druid is currently off-specced into bear, which is my preference. (I spent most of T11 off-specced into resto, which I'm not nearly as happy playing as.) I was happy to jump in the queue as a tank and be rewarded with my instance within a few seconds. So was the one guildie I was grouped with.
This meant we had three puggers.
My guild is a small one consisting primarily of people with relaxed playing schedules, so guild-only 5-mans are uncommon. We mainly log on to raid, and anything else is happenstance. When I do 5-mans, I usually pug, and I'm fine with it. I think pugging makes me a better player due to the unpredictability of what I get.
Anyway. Ahune died. Loots dropped. All was happy in the world.
My guildie and I got on our alts. I queued as healer on my paladin. Guildie was dps. And we waited, and waited, and waited. And after 9 minutes (as a healer!) we finally got in.
Then the tank, who'd clearly never tanked Ahune before, got himself killed by trying to tank the boss (standing in bad stuff) and ignoring the adds which killed everyone else. The tank went off-line rather than face the embarrassment of a explanation on how the fight works.
Which meant we had to wait again.
And it occurred to me, that if I had a third spec... I would have tanked on Gillien.
Back in WotLK my paladin's dual specs were holy and prot. My holy spec pulled double duty for PvE and PvP, but the two specs were close enough that this was "okay" even if it wasn't ideal. Many times, in order to get the faster queue, I'd tank. It got to the point where I was tanking 5-mans more often than I was healing and I'd opt for waiting a couple minutes in the queue just to get a break from day-in-day out tanking on two 80s.
But in Cata, I found the difference between a reasonable arena spec and PvE holy spec were quite a bit different, with 7 of my talent points rearranged to give me access to a variety of talents not present at all in my PvE spec. They're good talents too. They've come in handy multiple times, whether helping my teammate burn someone down with Exorcism spam or getting an extra Word of Glory heal from Eternal Glory.
I use my PvE and PvP holy specs often enough that I don't want to sacrifice one for a prot tanking spec, but I don't mind tanking. I would have gladly tanked Ahune the other night, but I wasn't going to pay 100g in respecing forwards and back for the privilege.
It occured to me that Blizzard is trying to find ways to improve 5-man queues, to the point of offering additional rewards through the Call to Arms, and it makes me wonder if they've considered the potential tank population that just ran out of specs, seeing as all tank classes are hybrids.
I know they want specs to be of a lasting impact, to be meanful. I can understand why they wouldn't want a hunter to have BM PvE, MM PvE, MM PvP, and Survival PvE (which my guildie has said he would do in a heartbeat). To keep this on the topic of too few tanks running 5-mans, why not make the third spec a dedicated tanking spec? If it's not tanking, you can't have it.
I'm sure it would be annoying to implement something just for that consideration, but let's say the third spec can only be used for tanking and people take it for tanking. I can only see it increasing the number of tanks, since people who tank instances already aren't going to stop just because they freed up one of their dual specs, and people who would consider tanking but can't because they ran out of specs, might actually tank.
I don't know how large the "I ran out of specs population" is, but Blizzard, you have one here.
This meant we had three puggers.
My guild is a small one consisting primarily of people with relaxed playing schedules, so guild-only 5-mans are uncommon. We mainly log on to raid, and anything else is happenstance. When I do 5-mans, I usually pug, and I'm fine with it. I think pugging makes me a better player due to the unpredictability of what I get.
Anyway. Ahune died. Loots dropped. All was happy in the world.
My guildie and I got on our alts. I queued as healer on my paladin. Guildie was dps. And we waited, and waited, and waited. And after 9 minutes (as a healer!) we finally got in.
Then the tank, who'd clearly never tanked Ahune before, got himself killed by trying to tank the boss (standing in bad stuff) and ignoring the adds which killed everyone else. The tank went off-line rather than face the embarrassment of a explanation on how the fight works.
Which meant we had to wait again.
And it occurred to me, that if I had a third spec... I would have tanked on Gillien.
Back in WotLK my paladin's dual specs were holy and prot. My holy spec pulled double duty for PvE and PvP, but the two specs were close enough that this was "okay" even if it wasn't ideal. Many times, in order to get the faster queue, I'd tank. It got to the point where I was tanking 5-mans more often than I was healing and I'd opt for waiting a couple minutes in the queue just to get a break from day-in-day out tanking on two 80s.
But in Cata, I found the difference between a reasonable arena spec and PvE holy spec were quite a bit different, with 7 of my talent points rearranged to give me access to a variety of talents not present at all in my PvE spec. They're good talents too. They've come in handy multiple times, whether helping my teammate burn someone down with Exorcism spam or getting an extra Word of Glory heal from Eternal Glory.
I use my PvE and PvP holy specs often enough that I don't want to sacrifice one for a prot tanking spec, but I don't mind tanking. I would have gladly tanked Ahune the other night, but I wasn't going to pay 100g in respecing forwards and back for the privilege.
It occured to me that Blizzard is trying to find ways to improve 5-man queues, to the point of offering additional rewards through the Call to Arms, and it makes me wonder if they've considered the potential tank population that just ran out of specs, seeing as all tank classes are hybrids.
I know they want specs to be of a lasting impact, to be meanful. I can understand why they wouldn't want a hunter to have BM PvE, MM PvE, MM PvP, and Survival PvE (which my guildie has said he would do in a heartbeat). To keep this on the topic of too few tanks running 5-mans, why not make the third spec a dedicated tanking spec? If it's not tanking, you can't have it.
I'm sure it would be annoying to implement something just for that consideration, but let's say the third spec can only be used for tanking and people take it for tanking. I can only see it increasing the number of tanks, since people who tank instances already aren't going to stop just because they freed up one of their dual specs, and people who would consider tanking but can't because they ran out of specs, might actually tank.
I don't know how large the "I ran out of specs population" is, but Blizzard, you have one here.
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
Still One Blizzcon Ticket Left!
My guild still has one Blizzcon ticket left! If interested, please contact me ASAP at 
. It's for sale at face value of $175. We have until June 10th to get your name registered in the database so you don't have to stand in line with us.
I'll go back to regular blogging after this. Promise. :)
. It's for sale at face value of $175. We have until June 10th to get your name registered in the database so you don't have to stand in line with us.I'll go back to regular blogging after this. Promise. :)
Friday, June 3, 2011
Blizzcon Tickets?
I apologize for falling dorment again after the beginning of last month. May was very hectic for me for multiple reasons.
I would have liked a real post, but as it is, there's not much time to take care of my current business.
My friend and I bought extra Blizzcon tickets for friends, but it turns out that the extras weren't needed, which has left us stuck with $350 of paid tickets that we don't need.
But given how quickly the tickets sold out, we figure there must be plenty of people who are interested in going, but never had the chance. We'd return these tickets if we could, but since we can't we're offering them up for sale at the face value price of $175 each.
If you are interested, please e-mail me at. We would like to sell them ASAP, since the tickets become more complicated to sell after June 10th. (June 10th is the deadline to attach an attendee's e-mail address to a ticket, which would let them pick up their ticket without arriving with the credit card holder.)
And yes, this means I will be at Blizzcon this year.
I would have liked a real post, but as it is, there's not much time to take care of my current business.
My friend and I bought extra Blizzcon tickets for friends, but it turns out that the extras weren't needed, which has left us stuck with $350 of paid tickets that we don't need.
But given how quickly the tickets sold out, we figure there must be plenty of people who are interested in going, but never had the chance. We'd return these tickets if we could, but since we can't we're offering them up for sale at the face value price of $175 each.
If you are interested, please e-mail me at
. We would like to sell them ASAP, since the tickets become more complicated to sell after June 10th. (June 10th is the deadline to attach an attendee's e-mail address to a ticket, which would let them pick up their ticket without arriving with the credit card holder.)And yes, this means I will be at Blizzcon this year.
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
PvP Gear in PvE
Since the ZA/ZG instances have come out, I've heard complaints of people gaming the system by showing up in these 5-mans while wearing PvP gear. As someone who does both PvE and PvP, though, I wonder what people mean by showing up in PvP gear.
Are they talking about PvP blues or purples? If they're complaining about blues I have some sympathy, but I don't for the epics.
The reason I wonder is because the epics take time to earn. Even with the accelerated access to PvP gear that prompted the nerf to conquest point gain, it still takes real world time to purchase them. One week of capping just for the purpose of gaining a higher ilvl gear would net... what... a bracer? A relic? A off-hand?
Conquest points aren't like honor. You can't grind them all day long saying that you'll reach that item level come hell or high water. So where are these people coming from who got PvP gear just to game the queue?
Chances are they've been there all along, healing, dps-ing, and maybe even tanking heroics the whole time. (I ran into one pug tank who swapped on his PvP gear for one of the H VP boss fights to great success. He knew what he was doing and was smooth as butter to heal.)
I do understand that some of the itemization budget that could have gone to haste, spirit, and other things is lost in PvP gear due to resilience. I get that.
But would a pug group rather my paladin wear Vicious Gladiator purples or my remaining 333 blue gear that just happens to be better itemized? For some of my PvE gear slots I've just never gotten 346 blues, or the Vicious Gladiator gear pulls ahead despite the wasted budget on resilience.
I ran my paladin through Ask Mr. Robot for a quick sanity check.
The way Mr. Robot works is through stat weights. It's not the best way for a healer to determine which stats to go for. A lot depends on personal playstyle, who they run with, the content they're doing, whether they need speedier heals or more regen. What Mr. Robot does is let the player set how valuable they consider the different stats and Mr. Robot recommends the best gear for those stat weights. So for a quick "Am I doing it wrong?" Mr. Robot works in a pinch. Mr. Robot also comes with default stat weights.
For Gillien I set my gearing parameters to the content I've had available leading up to 4.1, which was just heroics and PvP gear. (I set myself to "I'm Good at PvP" which opens all PvP gearing possibilities that do not require an arena/rated battleground rating.) I did not touch the default stat weights, so as to avoid my own personal biases as to what makes good holy paladin gear.
It lists four pieces of my current Vicious Gladiator gear as the best in slot for pre-raid and recommends three pieces I currently do not have, one of which I made a conscious decision not to get. (I don't have mana troubles in arena, so I opted for the Vicious Gladiator's Greaves of Alacrity instead of the Meditation version.)
Now Mr. Robot is a robot. It doesn't turn its nose up at where the gear comes from. It's saying that even though resilience counts for crap this gear is better for these stat weights than any of the blue heroic gear in the same gear slot. Now there's a different argument about trusting stat weights since they're blind to an individual player's situation, but if you want to compare individual pieces of gear in a vacuum, this piece vs. that piece, conquest PvP isn't necessarily that bad compared to heroic blues, which is all you need for ZA and ZG. The additional spirit, the additional intelligence, can outweight whatever secondary stat is lost to resilience by virtue of the higher item level.
I wouldn't expect Gillien to perform in ZA or ZG as well as a raid-geared holy pally of equivalent skill and ilvl, but he should do just as well or better than a holy pally with nothing but blues.
Are they talking about PvP blues or purples? If they're complaining about blues I have some sympathy, but I don't for the epics.
The reason I wonder is because the epics take time to earn. Even with the accelerated access to PvP gear that prompted the nerf to conquest point gain, it still takes real world time to purchase them. One week of capping just for the purpose of gaining a higher ilvl gear would net... what... a bracer? A relic? A off-hand?
Conquest points aren't like honor. You can't grind them all day long saying that you'll reach that item level come hell or high water. So where are these people coming from who got PvP gear just to game the queue?
Chances are they've been there all along, healing, dps-ing, and maybe even tanking heroics the whole time. (I ran into one pug tank who swapped on his PvP gear for one of the H VP boss fights to great success. He knew what he was doing and was smooth as butter to heal.)
I do understand that some of the itemization budget that could have gone to haste, spirit, and other things is lost in PvP gear due to resilience. I get that.
But would a pug group rather my paladin wear Vicious Gladiator purples or my remaining 333 blue gear that just happens to be better itemized? For some of my PvE gear slots I've just never gotten 346 blues, or the Vicious Gladiator gear pulls ahead despite the wasted budget on resilience.
I ran my paladin through Ask Mr. Robot for a quick sanity check.
The way Mr. Robot works is through stat weights. It's not the best way for a healer to determine which stats to go for. A lot depends on personal playstyle, who they run with, the content they're doing, whether they need speedier heals or more regen. What Mr. Robot does is let the player set how valuable they consider the different stats and Mr. Robot recommends the best gear for those stat weights. So for a quick "Am I doing it wrong?" Mr. Robot works in a pinch. Mr. Robot also comes with default stat weights.
For Gillien I set my gearing parameters to the content I've had available leading up to 4.1, which was just heroics and PvP gear. (I set myself to "I'm Good at PvP" which opens all PvP gearing possibilities that do not require an arena/rated battleground rating.) I did not touch the default stat weights, so as to avoid my own personal biases as to what makes good holy paladin gear.
It lists four pieces of my current Vicious Gladiator gear as the best in slot for pre-raid and recommends three pieces I currently do not have, one of which I made a conscious decision not to get. (I don't have mana troubles in arena, so I opted for the Vicious Gladiator's Greaves of Alacrity instead of the Meditation version.)
Now Mr. Robot is a robot. It doesn't turn its nose up at where the gear comes from. It's saying that even though resilience counts for crap this gear is better for these stat weights than any of the blue heroic gear in the same gear slot. Now there's a different argument about trusting stat weights since they're blind to an individual player's situation, but if you want to compare individual pieces of gear in a vacuum, this piece vs. that piece, conquest PvP isn't necessarily that bad compared to heroic blues, which is all you need for ZA and ZG. The additional spirit, the additional intelligence, can outweight whatever secondary stat is lost to resilience by virtue of the higher item level.
I wouldn't expect Gillien to perform in ZA or ZG as well as a raid-geared holy pally of equivalent skill and ilvl, but he should do just as well or better than a holy pally with nothing but blues.
Monday, April 25, 2011
Day 03 – Your first day playing WoW
My first day playing WoW was back in vanilla. It's funny how the years meld together now, but I'd say it was 2005 (though I did not become a regular player until 2006). My boss lent me his discs and gave me one of his 10-day free trial passes and told me to go ahead and give the game a shot.
I was reluctant to play due to the fact I had been a horrible MUD junkie in college (now that's old school, MMORPGs from before they had graphics!) and I knew that if I got hooked I could have trouble maintaining a balance between the game and the rest of the world.
Because the free trial was for a limited period I decided I would start it up on a Friday night so I would have two weekends to play. At about 9 or 10 in the evening I finished installing the four CDs and found myself at the character select screen for the first time. I made my tauren druid (race/class combo already picked) and made her a brown cow who I dubbed Hana because it's Japanese for "flower" and sounded appropriately pleasant and fantasy-ish.
Hana began her life in Mulgore in what I believe was June (of 2005) and dutifully pew-pewed little plainstalkers to provide food and supplies for Camp Narashe. It was dark and I don't recall other players being around, but that suited me just fine. I was just learning everything.
My internet connection at the time was pretty bad, so I was having trouble staying online and I distinctly recall being killed by one of the quilboar's battle boars, the very first mobs that would aggro on to a new low level tauren, during a disconnect. I'd wager I didn't make it past level 4 before I logged for the night.
What I remember the most about my first night was that Mulgore was very green and (my death notwithstanding) very peaceful. I remember the night sky, and that I was amused that I could do the majority of the old emotes from my MUD days. MMORPGs were just MUDs with graphics. How little things change.
What actually turned out to be a pleasant thing to know after I finished my 10-day trial is that I was able to put the game down and not buy it. It would be over six months before I would actually buy the game and begin playing it.
While it seems like an odd thing to say considering that five years later I'm still playing it and I have been almost continuously, it means to me that I'm not in danger of the addiction I feared. I only raid twice a week and while as a guild master I have to put a certain amount of time into the game and related activities, I think I can quite happily put this game down when the time comes. I'd miss my online friends of course, but I'm not in danger of the game ruining my professional or social life.
I was reluctant to play due to the fact I had been a horrible MUD junkie in college (now that's old school, MMORPGs from before they had graphics!) and I knew that if I got hooked I could have trouble maintaining a balance between the game and the rest of the world.
Because the free trial was for a limited period I decided I would start it up on a Friday night so I would have two weekends to play. At about 9 or 10 in the evening I finished installing the four CDs and found myself at the character select screen for the first time. I made my tauren druid (race/class combo already picked) and made her a brown cow who I dubbed Hana because it's Japanese for "flower" and sounded appropriately pleasant and fantasy-ish.
Hana began her life in Mulgore in what I believe was June (of 2005) and dutifully pew-pewed little plainstalkers to provide food and supplies for Camp Narashe. It was dark and I don't recall other players being around, but that suited me just fine. I was just learning everything.
My internet connection at the time was pretty bad, so I was having trouble staying online and I distinctly recall being killed by one of the quilboar's battle boars, the very first mobs that would aggro on to a new low level tauren, during a disconnect. I'd wager I didn't make it past level 4 before I logged for the night.
What I remember the most about my first night was that Mulgore was very green and (my death notwithstanding) very peaceful. I remember the night sky, and that I was amused that I could do the majority of the old emotes from my MUD days. MMORPGs were just MUDs with graphics. How little things change.
What actually turned out to be a pleasant thing to know after I finished my 10-day trial is that I was able to put the game down and not buy it. It would be over six months before I would actually buy the game and begin playing it.
While it seems like an odd thing to say considering that five years later I'm still playing it and I have been almost continuously, it means to me that I'm not in danger of the addiction I feared. I only raid twice a week and while as a guild master I have to put a certain amount of time into the game and related activities, I think I can quite happily put this game down when the time comes. I'd miss my online friends of course, but I'm not in danger of the game ruining my professional or social life.
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Day 02 - Why I Decided to Start a Blog
I'm not sure I ever mentioned why I wanted to blog. Mostly, I think I wanted an outlet for all my WoW talk. There was a period I went through where I just couldn't get enough WoW.
I read other people's blogs. I read WoW Insider. I loved keeping up on the latest on Elitist Jerks. And I am by nature a writer. It's what I do.
So it was a natural decision to set one up. Even if I haven't been blogging as much lately, I assure you that I have not stopped writing. I have a novel that's almost done that I'd started in September of last year. It's just a question of whether I'm writing here, on my other blog, or something else entirely.
Also, at the time I started blogging, there were still very few moonkin. Graylo's Gray Matter wasn't the only game in town, but the other blogs were few in number. Moonkin didn't become popular until WotLK and so I figured I could present a different voice, more of a layperson's voice to moonkin affairs.
I understand the math and the theorycraft, I can even do my own theorycraft push comes to shove, but I'm quite happy to leave the simulations to others and I suspect there are a fair number of others who are happy to do the same.
As for the holy paladin end of things, that's mostly because I love playing Gillien and I didn't believe I'd have enough meat for the blog if I restricted myself to moonkin only. I'm glad I made that decision because blogging about arena on Gillien has been one of the highlights of my blogging experience. There aren't a lot of PvP bloggers so it's fun to talk about something that's relatively unique.
Speaking of which, when I'm not doing one of these 20 day blogging challenge posts I need to get up my latest thoughts on the current arena season.
I read other people's blogs. I read WoW Insider. I loved keeping up on the latest on Elitist Jerks. And I am by nature a writer. It's what I do.
So it was a natural decision to set one up. Even if I haven't been blogging as much lately, I assure you that I have not stopped writing. I have a novel that's almost done that I'd started in September of last year. It's just a question of whether I'm writing here, on my other blog, or something else entirely.
Also, at the time I started blogging, there were still very few moonkin. Graylo's Gray Matter wasn't the only game in town, but the other blogs were few in number. Moonkin didn't become popular until WotLK and so I figured I could present a different voice, more of a layperson's voice to moonkin affairs.
I understand the math and the theorycraft, I can even do my own theorycraft push comes to shove, but I'm quite happy to leave the simulations to others and I suspect there are a fair number of others who are happy to do the same.
As for the holy paladin end of things, that's mostly because I love playing Gillien and I didn't believe I'd have enough meat for the blog if I restricted myself to moonkin only. I'm glad I made that decision because blogging about arena on Gillien has been one of the highlights of my blogging experience. There aren't a lot of PvP bloggers so it's fun to talk about something that's relatively unique.
Speaking of which, when I'm not doing one of these 20 day blogging challenge posts I need to get up my latest thoughts on the current arena season.
Saturday, April 2, 2011
Day 01 - Introduce yourself
I found out about the 20 Days of WoW Blogging Challenge that Saga of Spellbound came up with, and I figured "Hey, that would be a good way to get back into blogging regularly again."
So here I am.
Introducing myself:
I am most commonly known as Hana in WoW, though there are a few people who only know me as my paladin alt Gillien.
I'm a thirty-something female with a day job in the game industry and I am a part-time fantasy and science fiction writer after having won the grand prize to a major sf/f writing contest. I might not be able to quit my day job yet, but it's nice to start earning enough that I need to list my income on my tax forms.
I have also written two pieces of WoW fiction for the global writing contest, featuring my paladin Gillien. "By Whatever Means Necessary" was an honorable mention in 2009, but "Devotion" did not place in 2010. I think there are a couple of reasons for that, aside from writing quality, which is something for any writer to be aware of. For one, I decided to write a sequel when the judge might be unfamiliar with the original (though I took steps to reduce the need to have read the first story). For another, Blizzard may have had their fill of both blood elves and paladins so all else being equal they may have chosen to honor a story with a different topic.
My play style is a bit irregular depending on what's happening outside of WoW. I try to be on at least four nights a week, though I can be distracted by day job overtime, writing deadlines, and other games. Dragon Age, both the original and DA2, are bad for my WoW time.
I am the guild leader of Be Your True Mind, which takes its name from the subtitle of the first Persona game. I set us up to be a 10-man guild compatible with the lifestyle of a working adult while still making progression (and we're currently recruiting healers!) and despite ups and downs we're still kicking.
Hana was my first character, ever, and I became a balance druid because I didn't know better and I found I liked it. I play Gillien a lot though, and consider him to be my PvP main. I've always wanted to raid with him, but it's never been practical to do it on a regular basis.
I'm also an altoholic with numerous alts scattered on different servers (my home server of Skywall is already maxed at 10), though I tend to play them in bursts depending on mood. All my alts are below level 70 save Gillien and my feral druid, Darkker.
Other fact: I have four druids, one for each spec, and a fourth that is leveling moonkin to see how different it is from back in vanilla.
On to Day 2!
So here I am.
Introducing myself:
I am most commonly known as Hana in WoW, though there are a few people who only know me as my paladin alt Gillien.
I'm a thirty-something female with a day job in the game industry and I am a part-time fantasy and science fiction writer after having won the grand prize to a major sf/f writing contest. I might not be able to quit my day job yet, but it's nice to start earning enough that I need to list my income on my tax forms.
I have also written two pieces of WoW fiction for the global writing contest, featuring my paladin Gillien. "By Whatever Means Necessary" was an honorable mention in 2009, but "Devotion" did not place in 2010. I think there are a couple of reasons for that, aside from writing quality, which is something for any writer to be aware of. For one, I decided to write a sequel when the judge might be unfamiliar with the original (though I took steps to reduce the need to have read the first story). For another, Blizzard may have had their fill of both blood elves and paladins so all else being equal they may have chosen to honor a story with a different topic.
My play style is a bit irregular depending on what's happening outside of WoW. I try to be on at least four nights a week, though I can be distracted by day job overtime, writing deadlines, and other games. Dragon Age, both the original and DA2, are bad for my WoW time.
I am the guild leader of Be Your True Mind, which takes its name from the subtitle of the first Persona game. I set us up to be a 10-man guild compatible with the lifestyle of a working adult while still making progression (and we're currently recruiting healers!) and despite ups and downs we're still kicking.
Hana was my first character, ever, and I became a balance druid because I didn't know better and I found I liked it. I play Gillien a lot though, and consider him to be my PvP main. I've always wanted to raid with him, but it's never been practical to do it on a regular basis.
I'm also an altoholic with numerous alts scattered on different servers (my home server of Skywall is already maxed at 10), though I tend to play them in bursts depending on mood. All my alts are below level 70 save Gillien and my feral druid, Darkker.
Other fact: I have four druids, one for each spec, and a fourth that is leveling moonkin to see how different it is from back in vanilla.
On to Day 2!
Friday, January 7, 2011
How Quickly Heroics Change
At first I was fearful about pugging Cataclysm heroics. CC this, CC that. Tanks, dps, and healers alike not knowing the fights. People stuck in WotLK mentality. But my worries have gradually abated. Even instances that I used to fear the possibility of doing in a pug (Stonecore *cough*) have been done successfully and with minimal wiping.
As back in olden vanilla days, people will pick themselves up after a while, with less complaining and more of a question about what went wrong, and then give the boss or pull another shot. Often times, people actually talked to each other in party chat, even if it was just a "hello, how's it going?"
Now that Cataclysm has been out for a month, pugging heroics is much safer. More people (though far from all) know the fights, so it's possible to get to a boss and fight him without more being said than "be sure to AoE all the crystal adds." Heroics can be relatively smooth.
I think I found my first downside to having more experienced puggers though, and it's come much earlier in the expansion than I expected.
Last night I got on really late and all my guildies were already in another heroic. From the time I knew it would be their last run of the night, so I queued up by myself figuring that it should be all right. I prefer to take a guildie or two if I could help it, but I had pugged completely solo before and it had worked out all right.
I pulled Blackrock Caverns as my instance, and was pleased since I consider it one of the easier heroics. The tank was well geared (160k health in a heroic) and he tanked without CC, which I initially found concerning, but the healer didn't seem to be struggling keep him up and he marked a kill order, so I said nothing. He seemed to know what he was doing.
The other dps with me were a ret paladin from the same server as the tank (but different guild) and a DK with the impressive Death's Demise title.
The group of us cleared the first two bosses without incident. Even the second boss, Corla, whose beams some puggers have problems with, went flawlessly. So we got to Karsh Steelbender, the forge boss, in short order.
We cleared the fire elementals. We cleared some troggs to the left of the boss. Then some more troggs towards the back left of the room, which was odd, but maybe the tank really wanted the leeway. Then the tank marked the cultists and elementals in the tunnel behind the boss and charged in.
Did he really think we needed to clear this many mobs around the boss?
After we killed the pack and the patting Defiled Earth Rager duo, the DK turned around to look back at Karsh Steelbender and asked "Are we skipping this boss?"
The tank did not reply and jogged down the tunnel. He proceeded to mark the next pack of mobs.
The DK asked again, but now he was asking why were we skipping this boss since, after all, the boss was not hard.
The tank replied that we could come back and do the boss later.
This sent off warning flags for me. I know if the last boss of the instance is completed there's nothing holding the group together anymore, and even if most of the group wants to go back and clear the other bosses, they can no longer queue. The first time I did Halls of Origination my tank mistakenly did Rahj first (he'd never been there before) and our healer left immediately afterwards. The four of us who remained actually wanted to do the other bosses, but we couldn't.
We finished the next pack of mobs and the tank positioned himself with his back to Beauty, and proceeded to set up the next pull. It was clear he intended to skip Beauty as well.
The DK asked anyway if that was his intention. I stood in the hallway between Beauty and Karsh, because I wanted to hear what the resolution of their disagreement would be and didn't want to be running all over the place until I was sure where we were going. I didn't need justice points badly, I had no main spec gear left to buy, so if everyone agreed to skip I wouldn't have had a problem with it, but I didn't think it was a good idea to keep on trucking as though nothing was wrong. It was awfully strange to be skipping bosses this early in the expansion just to get valor points, especially since these "optional" bosses weren't exactly out of the way like they were in a couple of the WotLK heroics.
I'm not sure if the tank didn't realize that he didn't have the entire group with him, or he just didn't care, but he pulled the next cultist/elemental pack, got the Defiled Earth Ragers as well, and things didn't go well from there. I tried to stay out of combat so I could rez everyone from the wipe I saw coming, but the survivors ran back the direction I was standing so I got pulled in as well.
As we were running back from the graveyard, the DK asked the recalcitrant tank about why he was skipping the bosses. He said he understood that Beauty would be rough with our group comp (only I could reliably CC the core hound pups), but there was no reason to skip Karsh. I chimed in saying that I could CC two of Beauty's pups easy. I nearly always handle the CC of two of them. The tank agreed to give it a shot.
We grouped up where we came out of the teleporter, right by the forge boss Karsh. People drank up to restore mana... Then the tank ran down the hallway over to where we had died near the entrance to Beauty. The ret paladin and the healer went with him.
I stayed by the DK and facepalmed so he could see that I was annoyed by this as well. The DK asked why we were skipping Karsh again, since he's easier than Beauty. I realized in retrospect that the tank had never actually answered his question!
The tank still didn't. I don't know exactly what happened next, but I saw the three of them had gotten into combat (apparently the tank was so eager to skip bosses that he pulled without us) and they all died again.
The ensuing conversation went something like this:
Ret Paladin: So what about the two bosses? We can just come back later.
Me: It doesn't work like that. If you leave once the last boss is dead we can't queue anyone to replace you.
DK: I bet you're on your daily, so you'll leave after you kill the last boss.
Ret Paladin: lol, I'd take that bet.
Now... the thing that I hadn't mentioned yet, is that the DK queued specifically for this instance. He said so in party chat. Chances are, something he wanted dropped off those bosses the tank and the ret paladin wanted to skip, and as a dps it would be a horrible waste of time for him to have sat in the queue and skipped bosses in spitting distance of the main path that had gear he could use. And here we had a tank that was unwilling to take a few minutes to kill a boss, and in such a hurry he was wiping the group by pulling without having everyone present. (I'm sure we could have killed Karsh in the time it took for him to do his gy runs.)
I told the DK I'd support him if he wanted to vote-kick the tank.
The vote-kick passed under the reason "won't tank bosses." The silent healer who hadn't said anything up until now evidentally supported us, since at least three need to vote for the kick to pass. (He later said he's up for wiping a couple times on any boss, and that he hadn't appreciated the CC-less tanking.)
We tried to re-queue for another tank, but the ret paladin kept declining, so we realized we would have to vote-kick him too.
Unfortunately... there was something we hadn't anticipated.
The ret paladin had group lead, and being on the same server as the tank... he simply invited the tank back in.
Now I understand it's not a gigantic majority over who wants to skip bosses and who doesn't. I can understand that the paladin and his tank friend may have thought it would be cool to queue for a "quick" heroic and nab their valor points, and they were upset by the delay (from their perspective they were a mere two pulls away from the last boss), but reinviting the tank wouldn't accomplish anything. It's not like we could have finished the instance with this kind of impasse. All they were doing was blocking us from queuing.
We kicked the ret paladin (reason: "griefing"), but group lead horrifyingly enough passed to the tank, who reinvited the paladin. And it became a stupid merry-go-round of them reinviting each other until we finally got lead to pass to one of the three of us and kicked the other just after he accepted his invite.
We must have kicked the both of them a collective four or five times before we managed to queue for replacements.
(Note to Blizzard: If someone has been vote-kicked by the majority of the party, it should not be possible for them to be reinvited by the remaining minority.)
I'm not entirely unsympathetic towards the desire for a quick valor point run, and if the tank had voiced any serious reservations about tanking Karsh I might have supported the skip, but instances are a group effort and the tank and his friend didn't seem to think that the DK's wishes mattered. Worse, they talked about coming back to those bosses later when they obviously had no intention of doing so.
We're only a month from the launch of Cata. People are still gearing, not everyone's raiding yet. It's just too soon to assume the majority of puggers are only there for the valor points or happy about skipping bosses that drop loot and justice points. Running an instance involves a little give and take.
Blizzard has said in the past that they didn't like people skipping fights, and I think that's why in Cata there are no out of the way bosses, but stubborn people can still skip some of them if push comes to shove. Perhaps the best solution would be to not award valor points at all until all the bosses in an instance are dead.
I admit, I don't like the idea that we're transitioning back to WotLK-style dungeon running already, "I just want my valor points" and all. I might have little interest in dungeon drops myself, but I believe that when you sign up for a dungeon run you should have an interest in accomplishing the goals of everyone in the group. It may not be possible to do so, but you shouldn't sign up to use those people as quickly as possible to satisfy your own needs and then leave.
As back in olden vanilla days, people will pick themselves up after a while, with less complaining and more of a question about what went wrong, and then give the boss or pull another shot. Often times, people actually talked to each other in party chat, even if it was just a "hello, how's it going?"
Now that Cataclysm has been out for a month, pugging heroics is much safer. More people (though far from all) know the fights, so it's possible to get to a boss and fight him without more being said than "be sure to AoE all the crystal adds." Heroics can be relatively smooth.
I think I found my first downside to having more experienced puggers though, and it's come much earlier in the expansion than I expected.
Last night I got on really late and all my guildies were already in another heroic. From the time I knew it would be their last run of the night, so I queued up by myself figuring that it should be all right. I prefer to take a guildie or two if I could help it, but I had pugged completely solo before and it had worked out all right.
I pulled Blackrock Caverns as my instance, and was pleased since I consider it one of the easier heroics. The tank was well geared (160k health in a heroic) and he tanked without CC, which I initially found concerning, but the healer didn't seem to be struggling keep him up and he marked a kill order, so I said nothing. He seemed to know what he was doing.
The other dps with me were a ret paladin from the same server as the tank (but different guild) and a DK with the impressive Death's Demise title.
The group of us cleared the first two bosses without incident. Even the second boss, Corla, whose beams some puggers have problems with, went flawlessly. So we got to Karsh Steelbender, the forge boss, in short order.
We cleared the fire elementals. We cleared some troggs to the left of the boss. Then some more troggs towards the back left of the room, which was odd, but maybe the tank really wanted the leeway. Then the tank marked the cultists and elementals in the tunnel behind the boss and charged in.
Did he really think we needed to clear this many mobs around the boss?
After we killed the pack and the patting Defiled Earth Rager duo, the DK turned around to look back at Karsh Steelbender and asked "Are we skipping this boss?"
The tank did not reply and jogged down the tunnel. He proceeded to mark the next pack of mobs.
The DK asked again, but now he was asking why were we skipping this boss since, after all, the boss was not hard.
The tank replied that we could come back and do the boss later.
This sent off warning flags for me. I know if the last boss of the instance is completed there's nothing holding the group together anymore, and even if most of the group wants to go back and clear the other bosses, they can no longer queue. The first time I did Halls of Origination my tank mistakenly did Rahj first (he'd never been there before) and our healer left immediately afterwards. The four of us who remained actually wanted to do the other bosses, but we couldn't.
We finished the next pack of mobs and the tank positioned himself with his back to Beauty, and proceeded to set up the next pull. It was clear he intended to skip Beauty as well.
The DK asked anyway if that was his intention. I stood in the hallway between Beauty and Karsh, because I wanted to hear what the resolution of their disagreement would be and didn't want to be running all over the place until I was sure where we were going. I didn't need justice points badly, I had no main spec gear left to buy, so if everyone agreed to skip I wouldn't have had a problem with it, but I didn't think it was a good idea to keep on trucking as though nothing was wrong. It was awfully strange to be skipping bosses this early in the expansion just to get valor points, especially since these "optional" bosses weren't exactly out of the way like they were in a couple of the WotLK heroics.
I'm not sure if the tank didn't realize that he didn't have the entire group with him, or he just didn't care, but he pulled the next cultist/elemental pack, got the Defiled Earth Ragers as well, and things didn't go well from there. I tried to stay out of combat so I could rez everyone from the wipe I saw coming, but the survivors ran back the direction I was standing so I got pulled in as well.
As we were running back from the graveyard, the DK asked the recalcitrant tank about why he was skipping the bosses. He said he understood that Beauty would be rough with our group comp (only I could reliably CC the core hound pups), but there was no reason to skip Karsh. I chimed in saying that I could CC two of Beauty's pups easy. I nearly always handle the CC of two of them. The tank agreed to give it a shot.
We grouped up where we came out of the teleporter, right by the forge boss Karsh. People drank up to restore mana... Then the tank ran down the hallway over to where we had died near the entrance to Beauty. The ret paladin and the healer went with him.
I stayed by the DK and facepalmed so he could see that I was annoyed by this as well. The DK asked why we were skipping Karsh again, since he's easier than Beauty. I realized in retrospect that the tank had never actually answered his question!
The tank still didn't. I don't know exactly what happened next, but I saw the three of them had gotten into combat (apparently the tank was so eager to skip bosses that he pulled without us) and they all died again.
The ensuing conversation went something like this:
Ret Paladin: So what about the two bosses? We can just come back later.
Me: It doesn't work like that. If you leave once the last boss is dead we can't queue anyone to replace you.
DK: I bet you're on your daily, so you'll leave after you kill the last boss.
Ret Paladin: lol, I'd take that bet.
Now... the thing that I hadn't mentioned yet, is that the DK queued specifically for this instance. He said so in party chat. Chances are, something he wanted dropped off those bosses the tank and the ret paladin wanted to skip, and as a dps it would be a horrible waste of time for him to have sat in the queue and skipped bosses in spitting distance of the main path that had gear he could use. And here we had a tank that was unwilling to take a few minutes to kill a boss, and in such a hurry he was wiping the group by pulling without having everyone present. (I'm sure we could have killed Karsh in the time it took for him to do his gy runs.)
I told the DK I'd support him if he wanted to vote-kick the tank.
The vote-kick passed under the reason "won't tank bosses." The silent healer who hadn't said anything up until now evidentally supported us, since at least three need to vote for the kick to pass. (He later said he's up for wiping a couple times on any boss, and that he hadn't appreciated the CC-less tanking.)
We tried to re-queue for another tank, but the ret paladin kept declining, so we realized we would have to vote-kick him too.
Unfortunately... there was something we hadn't anticipated.
The ret paladin had group lead, and being on the same server as the tank... he simply invited the tank back in.
Now I understand it's not a gigantic majority over who wants to skip bosses and who doesn't. I can understand that the paladin and his tank friend may have thought it would be cool to queue for a "quick" heroic and nab their valor points, and they were upset by the delay (from their perspective they were a mere two pulls away from the last boss), but reinviting the tank wouldn't accomplish anything. It's not like we could have finished the instance with this kind of impasse. All they were doing was blocking us from queuing.
We kicked the ret paladin (reason: "griefing"), but group lead horrifyingly enough passed to the tank, who reinvited the paladin. And it became a stupid merry-go-round of them reinviting each other until we finally got lead to pass to one of the three of us and kicked the other just after he accepted his invite.
We must have kicked the both of them a collective four or five times before we managed to queue for replacements.
(Note to Blizzard: If someone has been vote-kicked by the majority of the party, it should not be possible for them to be reinvited by the remaining minority.)
I'm not entirely unsympathetic towards the desire for a quick valor point run, and if the tank had voiced any serious reservations about tanking Karsh I might have supported the skip, but instances are a group effort and the tank and his friend didn't seem to think that the DK's wishes mattered. Worse, they talked about coming back to those bosses later when they obviously had no intention of doing so.
We're only a month from the launch of Cata. People are still gearing, not everyone's raiding yet. It's just too soon to assume the majority of puggers are only there for the valor points or happy about skipping bosses that drop loot and justice points. Running an instance involves a little give and take.
Blizzard has said in the past that they didn't like people skipping fights, and I think that's why in Cata there are no out of the way bosses, but stubborn people can still skip some of them if push comes to shove. Perhaps the best solution would be to not award valor points at all until all the bosses in an instance are dead.
I admit, I don't like the idea that we're transitioning back to WotLK-style dungeon running already, "I just want my valor points" and all. I might have little interest in dungeon drops myself, but I believe that when you sign up for a dungeon run you should have an interest in accomplishing the goals of everyone in the group. It may not be possible to do so, but you shouldn't sign up to use those people as quickly as possible to satisfy your own needs and then leave.
Thursday, December 16, 2010
Uldum and Level 85
I finished Uldum last night. Pushed through the last of the new desert zone's quests and stayed up about an hour later than I should have. Though it's billed as having less quests than Hyjal or Vashj'ir, I feel like it took longer. Particularly the tail end of the Harrison Jones fork goes slower because you end up doing one quest at a time instead of a two or three at once.
Unlike the other zones, after the initial set of quests and introduction to the main zone hub, the plot largely forks, and surprisingly enough does not come back together again. I found I really liked that, because I could bounce back and forth between storylines. If I ever got tired of one I could vacation in the other, and I did.
The two prongs of the Uldum storyline are the civil war of the Ramhaken, the new race of centaur-like cat people, and the adventures of Harrison Jones. Both are good, though the Harrison Jones branch has some (expected) groan-worthy moments.
Overall I don't think either storyline is as strong as Deepholm or Vashj'ir. Though Deathwing's reach is apparent, the fate of Uldum does not feel like it will help or harm Azeroth as much as other zones. But having choice goes a long way taking away the railroad feel, and Uldum wins points for that.
It also won a lot of points with me for its opening scenario, which involves a couple good laughs as first my character gets slighted by a camel and then witnesses a silly (but apparently effective) escape plan as set forth by Budd.
Uldum is quite possibly the most cut scene rich zone in the game, and by a long shot. Whether or not you like cut scenes may affect your opinion of the zone, but I viewed it as a positive. Amazingly enough, there is one cut scene where your character speaks! It's just a brief one word of protest, but prior to this I've seen very little said that wasn't obviously a scream of pain or some sort of scripted proclamation. It was almost a conversation... almost... in that it felt very natural.
So natural it stuck out because our characters so rarely interact in what should be dialogue.
A portion of the Harrison Jones quest chest is obviously a sendup of the Nazis in the Indiana Jones movies, but I have to wonder if there's a World War II buff on the Blizzard team since I may or may not have been reading too deeply into the quest to capture the Desert Fox and Schnottz's turkey henchman Gobbles. (The Desert Fox being the German WWII general Erwin Rommel, and the Gobbles referring to Joseph Goebbels, Hilter's minister of propogada.)
The Ramhaken storyline, while involving mobilizing a nation to go to war, and even some RTS elements, doesn't strike me as being quite as memorable. I like the Egyptian theme the Ramhaken have going for them, but their storyline isn't as powerful. Even though there is an NPC who is killed that the player could have felt connection to, his last battle and mortal wounding happens off camera, which robs the player of feeling any anger at his death. I could see less observent players not even recognizing that an NPC they met earlier in the zone is now dead by the time they finish.
By the time I finished a little over half the quests in Uldum I dinged 85. I'm terribly undergeared and won't be able to start heroics just yet, but that's okay. I intend to finish Twilight Highlands before I get serious about them, but I'll probably queue for the normal Lost City of Tol'vir and Halls of Origination tonight.
Oh, and one more thing... If you're one of those people who just really likes punting gnomes... even if you're a gnome who likes punting gnomes... there is the gnome mashing quest to end all gnome mashing quests in Uldum. Seriously.
Unlike the other zones, after the initial set of quests and introduction to the main zone hub, the plot largely forks, and surprisingly enough does not come back together again. I found I really liked that, because I could bounce back and forth between storylines. If I ever got tired of one I could vacation in the other, and I did.
The two prongs of the Uldum storyline are the civil war of the Ramhaken, the new race of centaur-like cat people, and the adventures of Harrison Jones. Both are good, though the Harrison Jones branch has some (expected) groan-worthy moments.
Overall I don't think either storyline is as strong as Deepholm or Vashj'ir. Though Deathwing's reach is apparent, the fate of Uldum does not feel like it will help or harm Azeroth as much as other zones. But having choice goes a long way taking away the railroad feel, and Uldum wins points for that.
It also won a lot of points with me for its opening scenario, which involves a couple good laughs as first my character gets slighted by a camel and then witnesses a silly (but apparently effective) escape plan as set forth by Budd.
Uldum is quite possibly the most cut scene rich zone in the game, and by a long shot. Whether or not you like cut scenes may affect your opinion of the zone, but I viewed it as a positive. Amazingly enough, there is one cut scene where your character speaks! It's just a brief one word of protest, but prior to this I've seen very little said that wasn't obviously a scream of pain or some sort of scripted proclamation. It was almost a conversation... almost... in that it felt very natural.
So natural it stuck out because our characters so rarely interact in what should be dialogue.
A portion of the Harrison Jones quest chest is obviously a sendup of the Nazis in the Indiana Jones movies, but I have to wonder if there's a World War II buff on the Blizzard team since I may or may not have been reading too deeply into the quest to capture the Desert Fox and Schnottz's turkey henchman Gobbles. (The Desert Fox being the German WWII general Erwin Rommel, and the Gobbles referring to Joseph Goebbels, Hilter's minister of propogada.)
The Ramhaken storyline, while involving mobilizing a nation to go to war, and even some RTS elements, doesn't strike me as being quite as memorable. I like the Egyptian theme the Ramhaken have going for them, but their storyline isn't as powerful. Even though there is an NPC who is killed that the player could have felt connection to, his last battle and mortal wounding happens off camera, which robs the player of feeling any anger at his death. I could see less observent players not even recognizing that an NPC they met earlier in the zone is now dead by the time they finish.
By the time I finished a little over half the quests in Uldum I dinged 85. I'm terribly undergeared and won't be able to start heroics just yet, but that's okay. I intend to finish Twilight Highlands before I get serious about them, but I'll probably queue for the normal Lost City of Tol'vir and Halls of Origination tonight.
Oh, and one more thing... If you're one of those people who just really likes punting gnomes... even if you're a gnome who likes punting gnomes... there is the gnome mashing quest to end all gnome mashing quests in Uldum. Seriously.
Monday, December 13, 2010
More Cata Impressions - Now At Level 84
Now that it's been almost a week, it seems I've had the time to get a better feel for this expansion.
Overall, questing is much more linear. It's not just Hyjal. There is sometimes a little variation in which order quests can be done, but it seems like some 90-95% of the quests out there are required in order to finish a zone's storyline. This makes it easy to get the questing achievements, but then I'm not sure how easy it is to skip ahead in a zone if there's a quest chain you just really don't want to do again, or you just want to do the "highlights" on an alt.
Hyjal did end better than it started, with more epic moments as the story wore on, though I don't think it ever really got away from the railroad feel. I loved Tortolla the turtle Ancient and hearing the story of how he'd held the line against the Burning Legion and never actually fell. When they dug him out after the battle he simply asked if they had won. Truly a good turtle to hold such a defense. I wanted to give him a big hug. Being able to fight alongside him was more rewarding than with any other Ancient.
The zone definitely has its moments, but I think overall it's been my least favorite of the new 80-85 zones. It's not just the linearity, but I felt there was too much time feeling like peon rather than a great war hero. Even the final quest line, which by rights should have been epic, wasn't as impressive as it was when we'd originally seen the villain. I just expected more chaos, more desperation, and I wasn't getting it.
Also, I thought it was kind of silly that the Guardians of Hyjal all appeared to be druids, but you'd see their forces standing out in the fields in caster form with weapons. It would have been cooler to see an army of cat, bear, and moonkin druids holding the line against enemy forces.
I ended Hyjal at level 82 using barely any rested XP. On future runs with alts I imagine I'll finish at level 83. While this isn't so much a problem with Hyjal, it could be with Vashj'ir.
You see, it's necessary to discover portal entrances in order to do instances in Cata. It's not so different from the pre-dungeon finder days, where after getting a bundle of quests a player might seek out the instance in which they can be complete.
But Vashj'ir is so huge that I dinged level 83, the maximum level a player can still run normal Throne of the Tides (the instance associated with Vashj'ir), before I finished the zone. Granted, I did Vashj'ir after Hyjal, but I also did it running on a minimum of rested XP since I was playing everyday. If I'd been on an alt running completely off of rested XP, would it be possible for me to level out of ToT doing Vashj'ir alone?
It's a discomforting thought, considering that the breadcrumb to go into ToT only appears at the very end of the zone's quest line.
Sure, you can go in beforehand, but you won't be able to do any of the quests. One of my guildies finished Vashj'ir at level 84. He won't be doing the Throne of the Tides quests until he comes back in heroic. Not that he'll never see ToT again, because he undoubtably will, but it's not conducive towards a smooth leveling experience.
Aside from that, Vashj'ir turned out to be much better than I expected considering it's an underwater zone. The speed boost from Sea Legs does apply to aquatic form, so if you're a druid it's quite pleasant coasting about as a seal for short distances. I really only busted my seahorse out for travel that I expected would take a minute or more. Anything else was just my seal form splashing about.
The first part of Vashj'ir isn't much on the wow factor, but once you get to the Shimmering Expanse, the second third of the zone, does it ever get pretty! And the questing gets more interesting. As other bloggers have mentioned, the Battlemaiden storyline is fantastic, and the climax simply awe-inspiring.
And in the third part of the zone, there's a lot of desolation but also an extremely fun moment of insanity. I won't spoil it, but you'll probably know what I'm talking about when it happens to you, if you haven't had it happen already. And don't forget, if you enjoyed all the running and screaming, you can do it as many times as you like until you finally turn the quest in. I took a screenshot to immortalize the moment.
My third zone of the week was Deepholm. I could have skipped ahead to Uldum, but I want to do all the zones in order, and Deepholm turned out to be quite fun as well. Though it also has a very strong storyline, it doesn't feel quite as linear as the previous two zones, because there are at least a couple points where it's possible to go to a choice of different areas before coming back and resuming the main storyline.
I was a bit disappointed though that if you killed the princess in Maraudon that Therazane doesn't say something to you. She mentions her daughter's death, but apparently has no clue who did it or that the killer is standing in front of her. Or perhaps our characters are just smart enough to keep their mouths shut.
Still, I liked questing and doing favors for rock elementals more than I thought I would, and I felt more like I was going after the brains of the Twilight Cultists in Deepholm than I had in Hyjal. There's also the most adorable little rock elemental called Pebble that you can meet in Deepholm. When I first saw him I wanted to keep him for a pet. Alas, it was not to be. But I can visit him at least!
The finale of Deepholm is probably my favorite of the three zones so far. Hyjal didn't feel epic enough. Vashj'ir was fun, but a little overwrought and buggy besides. But Deepholm had a good climax. I liked it and it really felt like the job was done. I could happily go back to questing elsewhere.
Last night I just barely started Uldum. I've heard it described as the zone of cinematics, and perhaps it is, but I haven't been disappointed by them so far. I got a good chuckle out of my introduction to the zone and if the rest of Uldum's like that, I'm gonna like it!
Overall, questing is much more linear. It's not just Hyjal. There is sometimes a little variation in which order quests can be done, but it seems like some 90-95% of the quests out there are required in order to finish a zone's storyline. This makes it easy to get the questing achievements, but then I'm not sure how easy it is to skip ahead in a zone if there's a quest chain you just really don't want to do again, or you just want to do the "highlights" on an alt.
Hyjal did end better than it started, with more epic moments as the story wore on, though I don't think it ever really got away from the railroad feel. I loved Tortolla the turtle Ancient and hearing the story of how he'd held the line against the Burning Legion and never actually fell. When they dug him out after the battle he simply asked if they had won. Truly a good turtle to hold such a defense. I wanted to give him a big hug. Being able to fight alongside him was more rewarding than with any other Ancient.
The zone definitely has its moments, but I think overall it's been my least favorite of the new 80-85 zones. It's not just the linearity, but I felt there was too much time feeling like peon rather than a great war hero. Even the final quest line, which by rights should have been epic, wasn't as impressive as it was when we'd originally seen the villain. I just expected more chaos, more desperation, and I wasn't getting it.
Also, I thought it was kind of silly that the Guardians of Hyjal all appeared to be druids, but you'd see their forces standing out in the fields in caster form with weapons. It would have been cooler to see an army of cat, bear, and moonkin druids holding the line against enemy forces.
I ended Hyjal at level 82 using barely any rested XP. On future runs with alts I imagine I'll finish at level 83. While this isn't so much a problem with Hyjal, it could be with Vashj'ir.
You see, it's necessary to discover portal entrances in order to do instances in Cata. It's not so different from the pre-dungeon finder days, where after getting a bundle of quests a player might seek out the instance in which they can be complete.
But Vashj'ir is so huge that I dinged level 83, the maximum level a player can still run normal Throne of the Tides (the instance associated with Vashj'ir), before I finished the zone. Granted, I did Vashj'ir after Hyjal, but I also did it running on a minimum of rested XP since I was playing everyday. If I'd been on an alt running completely off of rested XP, would it be possible for me to level out of ToT doing Vashj'ir alone?
It's a discomforting thought, considering that the breadcrumb to go into ToT only appears at the very end of the zone's quest line.
Sure, you can go in beforehand, but you won't be able to do any of the quests. One of my guildies finished Vashj'ir at level 84. He won't be doing the Throne of the Tides quests until he comes back in heroic. Not that he'll never see ToT again, because he undoubtably will, but it's not conducive towards a smooth leveling experience.
Aside from that, Vashj'ir turned out to be much better than I expected considering it's an underwater zone. The speed boost from Sea Legs does apply to aquatic form, so if you're a druid it's quite pleasant coasting about as a seal for short distances. I really only busted my seahorse out for travel that I expected would take a minute or more. Anything else was just my seal form splashing about.
The first part of Vashj'ir isn't much on the wow factor, but once you get to the Shimmering Expanse, the second third of the zone, does it ever get pretty! And the questing gets more interesting. As other bloggers have mentioned, the Battlemaiden storyline is fantastic, and the climax simply awe-inspiring.
And in the third part of the zone, there's a lot of desolation but also an extremely fun moment of insanity. I won't spoil it, but you'll probably know what I'm talking about when it happens to you, if you haven't had it happen already. And don't forget, if you enjoyed all the running and screaming, you can do it as many times as you like until you finally turn the quest in. I took a screenshot to immortalize the moment.
My third zone of the week was Deepholm. I could have skipped ahead to Uldum, but I want to do all the zones in order, and Deepholm turned out to be quite fun as well. Though it also has a very strong storyline, it doesn't feel quite as linear as the previous two zones, because there are at least a couple points where it's possible to go to a choice of different areas before coming back and resuming the main storyline.
I was a bit disappointed though that if you killed the princess in Maraudon that Therazane doesn't say something to you. She mentions her daughter's death, but apparently has no clue who did it or that the killer is standing in front of her. Or perhaps our characters are just smart enough to keep their mouths shut.
Still, I liked questing and doing favors for rock elementals more than I thought I would, and I felt more like I was going after the brains of the Twilight Cultists in Deepholm than I had in Hyjal. There's also the most adorable little rock elemental called Pebble that you can meet in Deepholm. When I first saw him I wanted to keep him for a pet. Alas, it was not to be. But I can visit him at least!
The finale of Deepholm is probably my favorite of the three zones so far. Hyjal didn't feel epic enough. Vashj'ir was fun, but a little overwrought and buggy besides. But Deepholm had a good climax. I liked it and it really felt like the job was done. I could happily go back to questing elsewhere.
Last night I just barely started Uldum. I've heard it described as the zone of cinematics, and perhaps it is, but I haven't been disappointed by them so far. I got a good chuckle out of my introduction to the zone and if the rest of Uldum's like that, I'm gonna like it!
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Mount Hyjal Antics
Like quite a few people (quite possibly a few million people) I launched into the bright new world of Cataclysm on Tuesday. I didn't get into the game until well into the evening, but finished about half the quests in Mount Hyjal, one of the two starting areas of Cataclysm.
I picked Mount Hyjal over Vashj'ir simply because I'm a druid. Why wouldn't I want to go hang out where all the other druids are?
It feels like a very linear zone, where the player moves from quest hub to quest hub. While it always makes sense, I feel more boxed in than I did in WotLK. It's possible to explore off the beaten path, but I don't feel encouraged to explore. Instead I have the feeling that if I just follow the quests like a trail of breadcrumbs I'll see everything that there is to see.
It's nice, but takes some of the fun out of the exploration bit.
There is a very nice breadcrumb to the new Blackrock Caverns instance though, complete with mole machine that lets you discover the portal to the new instance without having to trek all the way to Searing Gorge to do it! On the other hand, wasn't the point of having to discover the portals so that people don't get lost trying to find their way back to the graveyard? I honestly wouldn't know how to get to the new BRC outside of the mole machine if I ever died!
Hyjal has a lot of plot and lore though, including ever funny moments that can only be had as a moonkin druid. (And if you're afraid of spoilers in the first half of Hyjal, you may want to stop reading here.)
Ferals get forced out of their forms to avoid such silliness as cats riding horses and other such nonsense when a quest calls for mounting up or riding vehicles. But moonkin? Nah...
It's perfectly natural for a moonkin to be riding a giant wolf, right?
But the best part of my night was yet to come. As part of a hero's duty, one of the quests in the first part of Hyjal is to take command of the Eye of Twilight, which gives orders to some rather dim-witted Twilight Cultists. Through a series of events, your character does exactly that, and you're treated to a very nice graphic of your character hovering above the eye and giving instructions to those obedient peons.
Even if... you are currently a moonkin...
I did mention those cultists are dim-witted, right?
I'm hoping the storyline gets more interesting later on. I know it's kind of odd to think about story in an MMO, but I feel like Hyjal is swimming in so much lore that it could benefit from a little more structure, and not the quest design kind. WotLK had some nice moments where a very personal story was told among all the lore, and I haven't found that yet.
The Ancient Lo'Gosh came back into the world through my efforts, but I didn't feel like "All right! I did something really cool!" Replace him with a minor wolf spirit and the quest chain could have been done in Ashenvale.
Epic characters call for a epic quest with an epic story.
I picked Mount Hyjal over Vashj'ir simply because I'm a druid. Why wouldn't I want to go hang out where all the other druids are?
It feels like a very linear zone, where the player moves from quest hub to quest hub. While it always makes sense, I feel more boxed in than I did in WotLK. It's possible to explore off the beaten path, but I don't feel encouraged to explore. Instead I have the feeling that if I just follow the quests like a trail of breadcrumbs I'll see everything that there is to see.
It's nice, but takes some of the fun out of the exploration bit.
There is a very nice breadcrumb to the new Blackrock Caverns instance though, complete with mole machine that lets you discover the portal to the new instance without having to trek all the way to Searing Gorge to do it! On the other hand, wasn't the point of having to discover the portals so that people don't get lost trying to find their way back to the graveyard? I honestly wouldn't know how to get to the new BRC outside of the mole machine if I ever died!
Hyjal has a lot of plot and lore though, including ever funny moments that can only be had as a moonkin druid. (And if you're afraid of spoilers in the first half of Hyjal, you may want to stop reading here.)
Ferals get forced out of their forms to avoid such silliness as cats riding horses and other such nonsense when a quest calls for mounting up or riding vehicles. But moonkin? Nah...
It's perfectly natural for a moonkin to be riding a giant wolf, right?
But the best part of my night was yet to come. As part of a hero's duty, one of the quests in the first part of Hyjal is to take command of the Eye of Twilight, which gives orders to some rather dim-witted Twilight Cultists. Through a series of events, your character does exactly that, and you're treated to a very nice graphic of your character hovering above the eye and giving instructions to those obedient peons.
Even if... you are currently a moonkin...
I did mention those cultists are dim-witted, right?
I'm hoping the storyline gets more interesting later on. I know it's kind of odd to think about story in an MMO, but I feel like Hyjal is swimming in so much lore that it could benefit from a little more structure, and not the quest design kind. WotLK had some nice moments where a very personal story was told among all the lore, and I haven't found that yet.
The Ancient Lo'Gosh came back into the world through my efforts, but I didn't feel like "All right! I did something really cool!" Replace him with a minor wolf spirit and the quest chain could have been done in Ashenvale.
Epic characters call for a epic quest with an epic story.
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
The Last Minute Pre-Cata Laundry List
Back in July I listed the vanilla quest chains that I wanted to do before the world shattered. I finished all of them with time to spare, but I’ve found that there are still some things I’ve been meaning to do that I haven’t. So this is the remaining list of loose ends that I want finish before the world erupts.
Mind, doing some of this may be difficult with all the fire and brimstone about. I’m banking on the actual world shattering to happen after Thanksgiving though, giving me a little time to wrap these up.
1) Get Bane of the Fallen King
This might not realistically happen, but we are so close it’s maddening. Unfortunately our disc priest has disappeared without warning on us. No longer answers calls, e-mails, nothing. We have a non-raider who plays an awesome disc priest, but he can’t always make our raid schedule so we realistically only have two raid nights before we’re scheduled to take our raid break. It’s a rough time because if we get really close, we’re going to want to push before Cata, but then that means people won’t get a break.
2) Get Gillien his Crusader title
My paladin is my primary alt and I’ve done things on him I haven’t on my main just because it makes some odd RPish sense. Getting the Crusader title as a paladin would be one of them. I only need a few more days of regularly doing dailies for that.
3) Make Jeeves
I’ve had the recipe for ages, but couldn’t be bothered to make the old field repair bots for parts. Also, since Gillien is my engineer and my alt, he didn’t do as many of the Storm Peaks quests and never got around to learning the Scrapbot recipe, which is kinda necessary (just a little bit).
4) Get the Tripping the Rifts Feat of Strength
I only have one rift each on Hana and Gillien from random happenstance. Obviously this should not be difficult now that Phase 4 is in effect, but I can’t procrastinate either since this will only be around for a limited amount of time. I’d like the achievement on my two most played 80s. Anyone else would just be a bonus.
5) Move low level alts out of Dalaran and Shattrath
This is important. I don’t want low level alts to be stranded in high level cities without portals. I’d have to pay a mage to teleport them back. (Can you imagine trying to get my 19 shaman from Dal back to Org without a portal?) On my main server it’s easy to get a guildie to port me, but my non-twink alts are mostly on servers without support and only got to Dalaran/Shatt by paying a mage in the first place.
6) Clean out the vanilla quests on various alts
If there are any vanilla quests leftover in my alts’ logs that I just wouldn’t feel complete without turning in, I need to take care of those now. This doesn’t apply to my 80s, or my two alts in Outland. This is for the small army that runs from level 19 to 44.
I don’t feel I need to clean out every single quest on every single one of them, but some of them due to RPish inclinations or leveling philosophy I want to clean out more before those quests go away.
At the moment I’m focusing on my twink warrior, who is barreling through the Ghostlands with a vengeance. Everything dies so fast and I’m having so much fun I might have to re-kit her out for Cata-era PvP. With cross-realms BGs twinking might be viable again. After her I’ll likely focus on my 29 hunter (also twinked) and my 44 resto druid, with my 19 twink shaman following afterwards. If I get to any others beyond them that would just be a bonus.
I think those six items should cover everything, though I might not have time for them all. Anyone else have last minute laundry lists?
Mind, doing some of this may be difficult with all the fire and brimstone about. I’m banking on the actual world shattering to happen after Thanksgiving though, giving me a little time to wrap these up.
1) Get Bane of the Fallen King
This might not realistically happen, but we are so close it’s maddening. Unfortunately our disc priest has disappeared without warning on us. No longer answers calls, e-mails, nothing. We have a non-raider who plays an awesome disc priest, but he can’t always make our raid schedule so we realistically only have two raid nights before we’re scheduled to take our raid break. It’s a rough time because if we get really close, we’re going to want to push before Cata, but then that means people won’t get a break.
2) Get Gillien his Crusader title
My paladin is my primary alt and I’ve done things on him I haven’t on my main just because it makes some odd RPish sense. Getting the Crusader title as a paladin would be one of them. I only need a few more days of regularly doing dailies for that.
3) Make Jeeves
I’ve had the recipe for ages, but couldn’t be bothered to make the old field repair bots for parts. Also, since Gillien is my engineer and my alt, he didn’t do as many of the Storm Peaks quests and never got around to learning the Scrapbot recipe, which is kinda necessary (just a little bit).
4) Get the Tripping the Rifts Feat of Strength
I only have one rift each on Hana and Gillien from random happenstance. Obviously this should not be difficult now that Phase 4 is in effect, but I can’t procrastinate either since this will only be around for a limited amount of time. I’d like the achievement on my two most played 80s. Anyone else would just be a bonus.
5) Move low level alts out of Dalaran and Shattrath
This is important. I don’t want low level alts to be stranded in high level cities without portals. I’d have to pay a mage to teleport them back. (Can you imagine trying to get my 19 shaman from Dal back to Org without a portal?) On my main server it’s easy to get a guildie to port me, but my non-twink alts are mostly on servers without support and only got to Dalaran/Shatt by paying a mage in the first place.
6) Clean out the vanilla quests on various alts
If there are any vanilla quests leftover in my alts’ logs that I just wouldn’t feel complete without turning in, I need to take care of those now. This doesn’t apply to my 80s, or my two alts in Outland. This is for the small army that runs from level 19 to 44.
I don’t feel I need to clean out every single quest on every single one of them, but some of them due to RPish inclinations or leveling philosophy I want to clean out more before those quests go away.
At the moment I’m focusing on my twink warrior, who is barreling through the Ghostlands with a vengeance. Everything dies so fast and I’m having so much fun I might have to re-kit her out for Cata-era PvP. With cross-realms BGs twinking might be viable again. After her I’ll likely focus on my 29 hunter (also twinked) and my 44 resto druid, with my 19 twink shaman following afterwards. If I get to any others beyond them that would just be a bonus.
I think those six items should cover everything, though I might not have time for them all. Anyone else have last minute laundry lists?
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
The Past Few Weeks
My WoW activities have been rather restricted for a while, but slowly time is coming back. First off:
After completing my Blizzard contest entry I went to my writing workshop, a very special workshop given for free to a select group of candidates. As I mentioned in February, I had placed first in the quarterly Writers of the Future competition, which earned me publication in the annual anthology and a trip to a weeklong writing workshop intended for budding professionals. The workshop was taught by Tim Powers (whose current claim to fame is being the author of On Strange Tides, which is being adapted for the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean movie) and K.D. Wentworth, one of the previous winners and a novelist in her own right.
It was needless to say a fantastic week, well worth the price of admission (which seriously was the postage it took for me to mail in my contest entry). If any readers are budding fantasy and science fiction writers, the WotF competition is now taking electronic submissions. It doesn't get easier than that!
They go international as well. This year's crop of twelve winners (1st-3rd place from the four quarters of the 2009 contest year) had one from Ireland, one from the UK, and one from Australia. The rest were from the US.
Since I'd placed first, this meant I was in the running for the grand prize, which I... somehow... managed to win... The Gold Award was given to me at the award ceremony at the end of the week.
So, it was a good week for me. Very busy. No WoW that week. But a good week. It's weird to be on a first name basis with writers you've only heard about before, or whose works you've read, and find out that they're very interested in helping new writers get in the field. Mike Resnick sent me a message on Facebook, encouraging me to keep writing, after the competition. That's the kind of attention and involvement these folks give you.
After coming back, I rolled into my guild's raid schedule, they missed me, and administrating the guild took about all the free time I had because I was also busy setting up another blog for my writing, another Twitter for my writing, and a Facebook page for my writing. And then, of course, there was the writing itself.
I now write no less than 500 words a day, everyday, without fail. If I come home late and it's 1am, I write. Unless there are complications because of raid time, I make sure I get my writing done before I spend any time gaming. And surprisingly, it's working. I've written over 10,000 words since coming home from the workshop, and I'm still finding time to raid, attend my weekly game nights, and manage a full time job that is currently giving me a lot of overtime. After the initial rush to get all my new sites set up, my free time is coming back to me.
But I do not play as much WoW. It's maybe an hour less on the non-raid nights I still play.
I'm still keeping up with Cataclysm info, though I'm trying to avoid most plot related spoilers. I log on Hana and Gillien 4-5 nights a week to check in with the guild. Darkker is largely on hiatus. I have no time for her at the moment. Most of what alt time I have is currently taken up by my level 70 warlock, which is being leveled to join a group of coworkers in ICC (not sure if I'll get there before Cata!).
And let me say that not being able to queue as a tank or a healer is horrible for someone used to queuing as one or the other (or taking a guild tank). Having access to tank and healer specs for daily heroics has made me entirely too spoiled. Last night I got on Gillien to do the Brewfest boss, decided I didn't want to wait 2 minutes as a healer, so I flopped specs, Divine Plea-ed while in holy gear to get all my mana back, put on my tanking gear, and requeued. Instant success. Go tanking.
I also ended up tanking heroic Lich King on my druid last night!
All our previous attempts we just wouldn't try it without both our usual MT and OT present, but our MT for the LK fight, our bear, had horrible latency issues last night and couldn't stay connected. Just when we were about to give up on being able to run at all, one of our non-raiders showed up (fantastic player, just unable to regularly make the raid nights) and that let our disc priest swap to his mage and I swapped specs to bear. My bear set is almost as good as our MT's now so we made a go of it.
We had all kinds of sloppiness and only made it to 60% last night, but at least we got a night of attempts in, and I can safely say I make a decent stand-in for our regular LK tank.
If you're interested in following my writing, my new writing blog is The Rat's Den. It will not follow a regular publishing schedule and probably will not talk much about WoW, since it will mainly discuss my writing or my thoughts on writing. I think there may be a fair chance of general anime or video game posts though since those are what got me into writing.
As for the story that actually won, the paperback version of the anthology can be pre-ordered on Amazon. There is also a Kindle version as well, and I think the Kindle one may already be available (it doesn't say pre-order).
After completing my Blizzard contest entry I went to my writing workshop, a very special workshop given for free to a select group of candidates. As I mentioned in February, I had placed first in the quarterly Writers of the Future competition, which earned me publication in the annual anthology and a trip to a weeklong writing workshop intended for budding professionals. The workshop was taught by Tim Powers (whose current claim to fame is being the author of On Strange Tides, which is being adapted for the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean movie) and K.D. Wentworth, one of the previous winners and a novelist in her own right.
It was needless to say a fantastic week, well worth the price of admission (which seriously was the postage it took for me to mail in my contest entry). If any readers are budding fantasy and science fiction writers, the WotF competition is now taking electronic submissions. It doesn't get easier than that!
They go international as well. This year's crop of twelve winners (1st-3rd place from the four quarters of the 2009 contest year) had one from Ireland, one from the UK, and one from Australia. The rest were from the US.
Since I'd placed first, this meant I was in the running for the grand prize, which I... somehow... managed to win... The Gold Award was given to me at the award ceremony at the end of the week.
So, it was a good week for me. Very busy. No WoW that week. But a good week. It's weird to be on a first name basis with writers you've only heard about before, or whose works you've read, and find out that they're very interested in helping new writers get in the field. Mike Resnick sent me a message on Facebook, encouraging me to keep writing, after the competition. That's the kind of attention and involvement these folks give you.
After coming back, I rolled into my guild's raid schedule, they missed me, and administrating the guild took about all the free time I had because I was also busy setting up another blog for my writing, another Twitter for my writing, and a Facebook page for my writing. And then, of course, there was the writing itself.
I now write no less than 500 words a day, everyday, without fail. If I come home late and it's 1am, I write. Unless there are complications because of raid time, I make sure I get my writing done before I spend any time gaming. And surprisingly, it's working. I've written over 10,000 words since coming home from the workshop, and I'm still finding time to raid, attend my weekly game nights, and manage a full time job that is currently giving me a lot of overtime. After the initial rush to get all my new sites set up, my free time is coming back to me.
But I do not play as much WoW. It's maybe an hour less on the non-raid nights I still play.
I'm still keeping up with Cataclysm info, though I'm trying to avoid most plot related spoilers. I log on Hana and Gillien 4-5 nights a week to check in with the guild. Darkker is largely on hiatus. I have no time for her at the moment. Most of what alt time I have is currently taken up by my level 70 warlock, which is being leveled to join a group of coworkers in ICC (not sure if I'll get there before Cata!).
And let me say that not being able to queue as a tank or a healer is horrible for someone used to queuing as one or the other (or taking a guild tank). Having access to tank and healer specs for daily heroics has made me entirely too spoiled. Last night I got on Gillien to do the Brewfest boss, decided I didn't want to wait 2 minutes as a healer, so I flopped specs, Divine Plea-ed while in holy gear to get all my mana back, put on my tanking gear, and requeued. Instant success. Go tanking.
I also ended up tanking heroic Lich King on my druid last night!
All our previous attempts we just wouldn't try it without both our usual MT and OT present, but our MT for the LK fight, our bear, had horrible latency issues last night and couldn't stay connected. Just when we were about to give up on being able to run at all, one of our non-raiders showed up (fantastic player, just unable to regularly make the raid nights) and that let our disc priest swap to his mage and I swapped specs to bear. My bear set is almost as good as our MT's now so we made a go of it.
We had all kinds of sloppiness and only made it to 60% last night, but at least we got a night of attempts in, and I can safely say I make a decent stand-in for our regular LK tank.
If you're interested in following my writing, my new writing blog is The Rat's Den. It will not follow a regular publishing schedule and probably will not talk much about WoW, since it will mainly discuss my writing or my thoughts on writing. I think there may be a fair chance of general anime or video game posts though since those are what got me into writing.
As for the story that actually won, the paperback version of the anthology can be pre-ordered on Amazon. There is also a Kindle version as well, and I think the Kindle one may already be available (it doesn't say pre-order).
Monday, August 23, 2010
Timeline of a Writing Contest Entry
As I tweeted out to the Twitter group (I'm HanaMoonfire if you want to find me there!) I submitted my entry into the Blizzard Global Writing Contest for 2010. It has been a long an arduous process, which either says that I'm insane or I'm very dedicated to my fiction.
In retrospect, I thought it would be fun to see how the timeline of my writing process looked. Hint: It's not pretty.
June 23rd (60 days remain) - Blizzard announces the 2010 Global Creative Writing Contest. That afternoon I begin brainstorming and when I come home in the evening I write several possibilities for the plot.
June 24th (59 days remain) - The setting of the story changes from within Icecrown Citadel to a little earlier in the Argent Crusade's march on ICC. I begin writing. It's only two paragraphs though.
June 29th (54 days remain) - I finish the first scene, but I'm not terribly happy with it. That's okay though, because I've learned that the start of a story is generally crap until I have time to revise it.
July 5th (48 days remain) - It's a holiday and I write an entire second scene and half of a third. I realize pretty quickly that the third scene is going to have to go. It's fun and shows a lighter side of life in the Argent Crusade encampment, but doesn't serve the rest of the story.
June 17th (36 days remain) - The first major action scene (and fourth scene overall) is completed while I get my oil changed at a Jiffy Lube. I'm rather pleased I pulled it off without making paladins look silly, but I'm getting nervous because the contest is almost half over and I haven't gotten to the meat of the story.
August 3rd (19 days remain) - For one reason or another I barely write for two weeks and it's another 17 days before I complete the fifth scene. It has a dubious opening that I was not entirely able to rectify even in the final draft since there is not really any lore precedence for what happens.
August 5th (17 days remain) - Despite the impending deadline I have a burning urge to go write a particular scene that does not even belong to one of my existing writing projects. It's not even a germ of new story. It's just a scene that will have to, one day, belong to a large work that I haven't a clue about. I write the scene anyway and the characters and scene bother me for the next few days as I try to figure out what to do with them.
August 10th (12 days remain) - I return to my contest entry. I am now approaching the moment of truth. The sixth scene will be my longest and most important. It will contain the climax of the story. I know what must be done in broad strokes. This must happen, and that must happen, and then there's gotta be a big explosion. The problem is, how is the protagonist going to pull it off? I realize I don't have a clue how my finale is going to occur.
August 11th (11 days remain) - I continue working on the sixth scene. At this point I am terrified of the impending deadline. I wanted to be finished with the first draft at the beginning of August and obviously that hadn't happened. I spend almost every lunch hour at work from here out working on my draft.
August 15th (8 days remain) - The climax finally comes to me. I know what I'm going to do, how the explosion's going to happen, how the protagonist is going to escape. Looking at the day, Sunday, I realize that my overtime at work has cost me so much time. I have been working six days a week at my day job since mid-July. I am very tired and plan to ask for time off in advance of the 23rd. Not only is the 23rd the contest deadline, but the first day of a writing workshop I agreed to attend months ago.
August 16th (7 days remain) - My boss kindly agrees to let me take Thursday and Friday off in advance of my planned vacation. It's not really because of the contest, but because he realizes I need to decompress after all those six day weeks before heading to my workshop. Actual decompression might not actually happen. I run a partial raid with my guild, helping people get their Been Waiting A Long Time For This achievement before bowing out to work on my story.
August 17th (6 days remain) - As soon as I get home from work I sit down at the kitchen table and bang out the rest of the story (I always write in longhand first). The paper draft is complete. I begin typing it in and get as far as typing the first two scenes in before I go to bed. It's 2am and I still have work the next day.
August 18th (5 days remain) - I allow myself to decompress and relax for just one day. I do some revision work during lunch and make good progress. The mess hall scene in the Argent Crusade is definitely gone, but I'm not sure what to do with the opening yet. The evening I spend playing with my usual Wednesday night D&D group. The current story arc is very critical to my character so if I didn't show they might not have played.
August 19th (4 days remain) - The second draft is complete and I mail it out to five volunteers. I end up sending the story out later than I want to, but still at a respectable hour. It really helps that I had the whole day off.
August 20th (3 days remain) - Four of the readers get feedback to me before end of day. I already have plans for the third draft so I don't expect that incorporating their comments will take me as long as they do. As the hour gets late I consider throwing in the towel, but realize that if I do I won't get the story out to the Friday night group in time (different set of readers). When I finally mail out the third draft it is 3:20am.
August 21st (2 days remain) - The last Thursday reader gets back to me, and all but one of the Friday readers. I try not to stay up too late, and bow out of the raid with my guild's blessing, but then the MT disappears from the raid in the middle of the fight with only an extremely panicked "I gotta go!" in vent. I'm called in to fill the last raid spot. I finish the fourth draft and mail it out at 2am.
August 22nd (1 day remains) - I wake up earlier than I expect and I'm in a sunny mood. I read through the morning's comments from the final Friday reader and the only Saturday reader. The remaining issues are largely technical, though I clear up a few story points. I'm quite happy with the way the story has progressed. I have a final copy-editing read which involves me reading the story aloud and "performing" the dialogue to make sure everything sounds right. (It's a very good technique for finding typographical errors.) I spend a little more time polishing up the formatting and then submit the story to the contest.
I really want to thank Cursedhoof, Klepsacovic, Colarna, Puffyier, Sting, Peter, and Denis for critiquing this story for me. It was a crazy-ass ride. Now I just need to pack for my workshop.
Damn. It's almost 1am over here. I'm never getting to bed am I...
In retrospect, I thought it would be fun to see how the timeline of my writing process looked. Hint: It's not pretty.
June 23rd (60 days remain) - Blizzard announces the 2010 Global Creative Writing Contest. That afternoon I begin brainstorming and when I come home in the evening I write several possibilities for the plot.
June 24th (59 days remain) - The setting of the story changes from within Icecrown Citadel to a little earlier in the Argent Crusade's march on ICC. I begin writing. It's only two paragraphs though.
June 29th (54 days remain) - I finish the first scene, but I'm not terribly happy with it. That's okay though, because I've learned that the start of a story is generally crap until I have time to revise it.
July 5th (48 days remain) - It's a holiday and I write an entire second scene and half of a third. I realize pretty quickly that the third scene is going to have to go. It's fun and shows a lighter side of life in the Argent Crusade encampment, but doesn't serve the rest of the story.
June 17th (36 days remain) - The first major action scene (and fourth scene overall) is completed while I get my oil changed at a Jiffy Lube. I'm rather pleased I pulled it off without making paladins look silly, but I'm getting nervous because the contest is almost half over and I haven't gotten to the meat of the story.
August 3rd (19 days remain) - For one reason or another I barely write for two weeks and it's another 17 days before I complete the fifth scene. It has a dubious opening that I was not entirely able to rectify even in the final draft since there is not really any lore precedence for what happens.
August 5th (17 days remain) - Despite the impending deadline I have a burning urge to go write a particular scene that does not even belong to one of my existing writing projects. It's not even a germ of new story. It's just a scene that will have to, one day, belong to a large work that I haven't a clue about. I write the scene anyway and the characters and scene bother me for the next few days as I try to figure out what to do with them.
August 10th (12 days remain) - I return to my contest entry. I am now approaching the moment of truth. The sixth scene will be my longest and most important. It will contain the climax of the story. I know what must be done in broad strokes. This must happen, and that must happen, and then there's gotta be a big explosion. The problem is, how is the protagonist going to pull it off? I realize I don't have a clue how my finale is going to occur.
August 11th (11 days remain) - I continue working on the sixth scene. At this point I am terrified of the impending deadline. I wanted to be finished with the first draft at the beginning of August and obviously that hadn't happened. I spend almost every lunch hour at work from here out working on my draft.
August 15th (8 days remain) - The climax finally comes to me. I know what I'm going to do, how the explosion's going to happen, how the protagonist is going to escape. Looking at the day, Sunday, I realize that my overtime at work has cost me so much time. I have been working six days a week at my day job since mid-July. I am very tired and plan to ask for time off in advance of the 23rd. Not only is the 23rd the contest deadline, but the first day of a writing workshop I agreed to attend months ago.
August 16th (7 days remain) - My boss kindly agrees to let me take Thursday and Friday off in advance of my planned vacation. It's not really because of the contest, but because he realizes I need to decompress after all those six day weeks before heading to my workshop. Actual decompression might not actually happen. I run a partial raid with my guild, helping people get their Been Waiting A Long Time For This achievement before bowing out to work on my story.
August 17th (6 days remain) - As soon as I get home from work I sit down at the kitchen table and bang out the rest of the story (I always write in longhand first). The paper draft is complete. I begin typing it in and get as far as typing the first two scenes in before I go to bed. It's 2am and I still have work the next day.
August 18th (5 days remain) - I allow myself to decompress and relax for just one day. I do some revision work during lunch and make good progress. The mess hall scene in the Argent Crusade is definitely gone, but I'm not sure what to do with the opening yet. The evening I spend playing with my usual Wednesday night D&D group. The current story arc is very critical to my character so if I didn't show they might not have played.
August 19th (4 days remain) - The second draft is complete and I mail it out to five volunteers. I end up sending the story out later than I want to, but still at a respectable hour. It really helps that I had the whole day off.
August 20th (3 days remain) - Four of the readers get feedback to me before end of day. I already have plans for the third draft so I don't expect that incorporating their comments will take me as long as they do. As the hour gets late I consider throwing in the towel, but realize that if I do I won't get the story out to the Friday night group in time (different set of readers). When I finally mail out the third draft it is 3:20am.
August 21st (2 days remain) - The last Thursday reader gets back to me, and all but one of the Friday readers. I try not to stay up too late, and bow out of the raid with my guild's blessing, but then the MT disappears from the raid in the middle of the fight with only an extremely panicked "I gotta go!" in vent. I'm called in to fill the last raid spot. I finish the fourth draft and mail it out at 2am.
August 22nd (1 day remains) - I wake up earlier than I expect and I'm in a sunny mood. I read through the morning's comments from the final Friday reader and the only Saturday reader. The remaining issues are largely technical, though I clear up a few story points. I'm quite happy with the way the story has progressed. I have a final copy-editing read which involves me reading the story aloud and "performing" the dialogue to make sure everything sounds right. (It's a very good technique for finding typographical errors.) I spend a little more time polishing up the formatting and then submit the story to the contest.
I really want to thank Cursedhoof, Klepsacovic, Colarna, Puffyier, Sting, Peter, and Denis for critiquing this story for me. It was a crazy-ass ride. Now I just need to pack for my workshop.
Damn. It's almost 1am over here. I'm never getting to bed am I...
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Anyone Want to Critique My Writing?
Sometime around 1am last night I finished the first draft of my currently untitled submission for the Blizzard Global Writing Contest. This is a far better finish time than my first completed draft for the last contest (I finished about 3am the night before the deadline--it was horrible). This year's contest deadline is the 23rd.
Because of this, I have a little more leisure time to do multiple drafts and patch up the story. Sooooo I'm looking for a few volunteers with some free time who are able to critique an approximately 6000 word story (subject to change a few hundred words in either direction after the next revision) on short notice. 6000 words is roughly 12 pages single-spaced in Times New Roman font, depending on your display.
My personal plan is to be producing new drafts on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday (with a touch-up on Sunday). They will all be mailed out, but not necessarily to every volunteer, unless they really want to read 3-4 versions of the same story. I did that to one of my guildies last year, even giving him two drafts in the same day.
The first round of drafts will be mailed out Thursday afternoon/evening Pacific time, and I would need responses back by Friday night (it can be really late on Friday night) so I can use the results in my Saturday draft. Sooner would be better of course, so I can make use of comments for the Friday draft, but I know this will already be a bit of an insane turn-around time. Later than first thing Saturday morning will be no good because by then the comments will be two drafts behind.
Deadlines would look like this:
Thursday Draft - need comments back Friday night (or before I wake on Saturday morning)
Friday Draft - need comments back by Saturday night (or before I wake on Sunday)
Saturday Draft - need comments back by Sunday morning
If you would be interested in reading any of those drafts, please contact me at
. I will be pestering assorted guildies and writing friends and hope to have 2-3 people reading each draft. We'll see who's crazy enough to read for me. :)
Want a synopsis of the story? Well, if blood elves and paladins make you want to throw up this story probably isn't for you, but it involves my paladin Gillien and unresolved personal business he has in Northread.
I will likely send a list of questions to be read after finishing my story that highlight my current concerns and what I'm working on.
Needless to say, this is work in progress and if you volunteer to read, please do not post or forward this story anywhere. It's really creepy when someone e-mails me about my story and I never gave it to them.
Because of this, I have a little more leisure time to do multiple drafts and patch up the story. Sooooo I'm looking for a few volunteers with some free time who are able to critique an approximately 6000 word story (subject to change a few hundred words in either direction after the next revision) on short notice. 6000 words is roughly 12 pages single-spaced in Times New Roman font, depending on your display.
My personal plan is to be producing new drafts on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday (with a touch-up on Sunday). They will all be mailed out, but not necessarily to every volunteer, unless they really want to read 3-4 versions of the same story. I did that to one of my guildies last year, even giving him two drafts in the same day.
The first round of drafts will be mailed out Thursday afternoon/evening Pacific time, and I would need responses back by Friday night (it can be really late on Friday night) so I can use the results in my Saturday draft. Sooner would be better of course, so I can make use of comments for the Friday draft, but I know this will already be a bit of an insane turn-around time. Later than first thing Saturday morning will be no good because by then the comments will be two drafts behind.
Deadlines would look like this:
Thursday Draft - need comments back Friday night (or before I wake on Saturday morning)
Friday Draft - need comments back by Saturday night (or before I wake on Sunday)
Saturday Draft - need comments back by Sunday morning
If you would be interested in reading any of those drafts, please contact me at
. I will be pestering assorted guildies and writing friends and hope to have 2-3 people reading each draft. We'll see who's crazy enough to read for me. :)Want a synopsis of the story? Well, if blood elves and paladins make you want to throw up this story probably isn't for you, but it involves my paladin Gillien and unresolved personal business he has in Northread.
I will likely send a list of questions to be read after finishing my story that highlight my current concerns and what I'm working on.
Needless to say, this is work in progress and if you volunteer to read, please do not post or forward this story anywhere. It's really creepy when someone e-mails me about my story and I never gave it to them.
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