The Missing Month

I didn’t write a post at all in February, oh I attempted too, but I didn’t really have anything to say. Actually that’s not true, I had a lot to say but nothing I wanted to post. The guild I’d started just before Mists launched was in trouble, I desperately wanted to stay playing with my friends, but 5 people didn’t make a raid team, and trying and failing to recruit, and pug, and make progress, was killing me. We were going nowhere fast and I didn’t see a solution. I just wanted to play with my friends and for all of us to be happy, but it was looking like a pipedream. This was what was consuming me, when it came to the game this was all I could think about. I stopped doing pretty much everything else, but trying to raid, and worrying about the roster. My anxieties about it might have made words flow, but they didn’t make readable posts. Thankfully this problem is now in the past.

All five of us have joined another guild, this guild has sort of consumed my guild and another one, so three become one and hopefully that one will be all the stronger for it. I know people from both, have raided with these guys in the past, they are extremely nice and I’m really positive about the potential for the future. We get to stay together and we get to raid, and this is all in time for 5.2.

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Valor, LFR, 5.2 and the gear grind

Yes finally another post, I really need to write these more regularly again. I had a couple of separate conversations with people recently, I told them what I’m pretty much going to write in this post. However, as I told them I thought “hey that would make a good post” so here it it.

LFR, has it’s fans and it’s critics. What is it’s place in the game? Valor, is it for raiders or non raiders? How soon is patch 5.2 going to drop and are we ready for it? Oh and gear, and more gear, it controls everything.

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Mixed Bag

I haven’t blogged in a while and I think I’ve finally worked out why. WoWInsider posted that they were accepting applications for a writing post. Now I love writing, and a job working from home writing would be amazing. I considered applying for it, who wouldn’t right? However, this scared me stupid and it’s like I seized up. I couldn’t think of anything to write, and even if I had a topic, nothing I wrote seemed to make sense. I didn’t apply obviously, I guess I just wasn’t ready.

I still can’t put together a longer post, I have a box of drafts right now with varying amounts of words. Therefore I’m going to go with what I did last time and have a mixed bag, things that I’ve been thinking about, things that in other circumstances I’d expand to their own post, but just have little snippets right now. So here’s the mixed bag (take two).

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Emergency Update

I haven’t blogged yet this month. I haven’t blogged in two weeks. That’s seriously not cool, and it’s not like I ran out of stuff to write about, that’s kinda impossible. Anyway I need to update but none of my “need to think about this” posts are done and so yay for random ramblings?

The Grumpy Elf, who is my favourite Warcraft blogger hence why I mention him a lot, does a post called Monday Random Thoughts. This has all his random thoughts in, sometimes it winds up making a post of it’s own, sometimes it doesn’t. It’s always interesting to read though, it’s a stream of conscious, like a window into someone’s mind. So what are my random thoughts?

Well, not Warcraft related but I finally saw the Iron Man 3 trailer today. You say it’s been out since October. Well who knew? I’ve been in novel land. I am seriously excited for this movie, little bit scared that Pepper Potts is in danger, but yay more Stark. He is my favourite Avenger, I have a spot soft for Black Widow but Tony Stark is in a league of his own.

Back to Warcraft. Raiding is not going as well as I’d hoped. Due to the month of December being one of social obligations, work/school deadlines and demanding families, we’re struggling to make a raid team. By struggling I mean it’s not happening at all. I’m worried that if it keeps not happening that the new recruits, the people I don’t know so well and who aren’t as invested in the guild/people here, will leave. I don’t want this guild to implode and I’ve seen it happen when raids don’t go as planned even for a week or two. I’m trying to keep people included in the guild by running other activities but I don’t know if it’ll be enough. I’m also trying to recruit more people and just generally do something to make it better. Fact is there’s no easy solution and it’ll likely be January before things pick up again. I’m trying not to worry about it, easier said than done for me, but I’m trying nevertheless.

Aside from raiding, and my weekly Ulduar runs, I haven’t really done much in game for a while. I used to play a lot, likely a lot more than I should have, but I cut down last month for novel writing. I don’t really want to go back to playing all the time. Actually that’s a lie, I sort of do. I look at my list of everything I want to do in game (it’s massive!) and it’s like I never make a dent in it at all. So what I really should do is write a ‘to do’ list, and then cross stuff off when it’s done. If I prioritise the list then I should be able to chip away at the massive pile of content.

The only problem is there’s almost too much stuff to do. That’s a stupid thing to say right? Yeah I know I told everyone that there’s no such thing as too much content, as you can always do it later. That’s sort of the problem though. When there’s so much stuff, it feels like you don’t make an impact, like it’s a giant that can never be slain, so doing any is less appealing. I visited my friend last week who I haven’t seen in over a year though we talk online. He introduced me to new games and so I’ve got hooked on Warcraft 3 Gem Tower Defense. I also got Terraria and Deus Ex: Human Revolution. So many games, so little time, especially when I’m trying to cut down on gaming so much.

Oh I finally broke and installed the Curse Client to update my addons. My friend who introduced me to the game told me not to get it, said it was insecure, but that was several years/versions ago. Anyway, no problems yet and quite frankly it’s one less thing I have to worry about.

So, I’ve decided I’m going to create a ‘to do’ list page. Seems strange that I need a to do list for a game. However, given how nuts I am about achievements/completing stuff, it sort of makes sense. I guess that’s just how I roll. Anyway /end rambling I promise to update with a proper post soon. This was just a “I’m not dead/this blogs not dead” post.

November’s End

I’ve been a bit absent this month, with the blog and in game. My guild have been incredibly supportive with it, and haven’t complained once. You guys are awesome! I’m interrupting the Warcraft posts yet again with this. Maybe I should change the tagline to ‘A mostly Warcraft blog’ as it’s been mostly not this month. I’m not going to go back to playing as much as I was, so I need to organise my playtime better so I actually get things done. Dailies, I am looking at you, I haven’t done you in a month, haven’t capped valor in even longer. Oh I’m a bad Warcraft player, but I just need to be a little more organised. Can’t do everything, but could do more.

Anyway, the month of November and the challenge of NaNoWriMo are coming to a close. So it’s time for a little bit of a recap on how the month went.

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Control, the hardware side

Mists hadn’t been out a week and I was frustrated. I was having trouble keeping my Sacred Shield active as I was something of a clicker for cooldowns. I’ve got small hands so the number of keys I can comfortably reach is limited. I’d never been happy with clicking for cooldowns but with a long cd I didn’t have to do it often. Sacred Shield is only a 30 second buff though. I just wasn’t happy with my performance so I decided to get a mouse with extra buttons.

The decision of what one to get wasn’t easy. I considered Steelseries, different versions of Naga, a couple of other makes too. As I have small hands I worried that I wouldn’t be able to reach the extra buttons, I worried that the mouse would be too big. I wanted to go to a store to test hold it but the nearest one was over an hour away. So I bit the bullet and ordered online, from a company that said I could return it no questions asked. I went for the Razer Naga 2012 and I couldn’t be more pleased with it.

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Skyfall

I interrupt your regularly scheduled warcraft programming yada yada.

I saw this yesterday as I like to wait until the cinema isn’t packed. I had to go to the dentist yesterday morning and so I said I’d go afterwards, if I didn’t have any cavities. Well, I had the beginnings of one which was fixed with some sand and sealant but not a true cavity. I’d love to know how I got that if I’m honest, I brush my teeth everyday and I don’t eat that many sweets. Anyway, so I still went to the cinema. I was going to the 1.15pm showing, and I got into town at 11am something. I actually wound up going to the 3.30pm showing, time flies in town I guess.

Ok used up enough words. Might be spoilers under the cut, read at your own risk and all that.

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That one thing I love about being a paladin

The Grumpy Elf did a post recently where he talked about what he loved about being a hunter. I thought that was a great idea for a post, only of course I’ll do it about my favourite class – the paladin. The idea is to pick one ability that no other class has, or that this class does best, that you really love. Grumpy had trouble picking one ability, well in fact he couldn’t, and I suspect I’ll have similar trouble. We wouldn’t pick the class as our main if we didn’t love it after all.

Paladins are a hybrid class, they can go 3/4 of the available roles. As a hybrid they have access to abilities from the other roles which is really useful. I mean I’ve come to appreciate my warrior more, but the lack of any healing abilities aside from Victory Rush, is a problem. So what is the paladin ability that I love the most?

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Brawler’s Guild

Blizz has made some pretty stupid or ill thought out decisions over the years. However, the general balance is that they get it right. Usually I’m very nice about it all, I look at both sides and say “well that might not be what I wanted but fair enough”. However, I was really excited when they wrote that Proving Grounds snippet. The potential for such a feature was incredible, it was something that I thought would be fantastic in so many ways. I wrote about what I’d like Proving Grounds to be in this post.

When the Brawler’s Guild was announced as being in patch 5.1 I was thrilled. The Proving Grounds concept hadn’t made it into launch so I thought it might have been dropped, but here it was clearly under development. I was really pleased. When I learnt more details about it, details that didn’t match what I’d hoped I was a little disappointed that the scope of the feature was so small. I was also greatly concerned about the implementation and the queue system. The queue system being you go and ask this npc to queue you, and only one person per sever on each faction can have a go at any one time. My server is medium population and I was worried that it would take hours to get a turn, what about high pop servers? I tried not to think about this and hoped with all my might that it would get fixed before launch. Well the fix they’ve put in, is more of a stupid idea than the queue system.

What’s been announced so far is the BMAH will sell invitations to players, those players can then invite other people. However, the BMAH works on a bidding system with the bids able to go up to 1 million gold. We don’t know how many, or how often, these invitations will go on the BMAH. It’s also not clear how many people a player, with one of these invites, can invite. The problem is instantly obvious. The rich will buy the invitations, and then they’ll turn around and make that money back by selling invites to other people. So the rich will get richer and exploit those with less gold. True the price will go down the more players have the ability to invite, however for mutual benefit the price is likely to stay high for some time. Also, given that there’s a Realm First achievement now attached, players will have even more incentive to lock as many other players out as possible.

This is the most asinine decision I think blizz has made. It’s possible I feel as strongly as I do because this feature was what I was looking forward to the most in Mists, something that I’ve wanted for a long time. However, I just can’t see the sense in it. I don’t usually write posts like this but I’m upset so I’m just venting slightly. I give blizz the benefit of the doubt with everything, but I really can’t see how this benefits the players (aside from the super rich) at all.

Gate content behind rep grinds, or rare drops, if you must. Don’t use players to gate it against other players. Remove the stupid queue system and instance it, remove the stupid idea of invites and have people quest their way inside. Make it about what you do, not about how much gold you have. Basically if you don’t play the AH seriously you’re not going to have enough gold. In the comments of various news sites I’m reading suggestions that guilds club together to put up the gold to buy an invite. There isn’t any other form of content in the game that requires a huge gold payment. You pay nominal fees for things like Pet Battles, a little more for the luxury of fast flight. You don’t have to pay a ton of gold before you can enter a raid, or a battleground or anything else. It’s stupid blizz, please don’t do it.

/end QQ

From Zero to Hero

Not really hero but zero to normal capability doesn’t sound as good. A couple of weeks ago I nearly gave up being a paladin. I’d tanked a couple of dungeons, and probed the Mogu’Shan Vaults trash, and I was in trouble. I couldn’t hold threat, my dps was in single digits and my survivability was poor. I started to wonder whether protection paladins had been killed, whether they were no longer viable. It didn’t help that two of the best prot pally’s that I know swapped to death knight and brewmaster. I love my paladin but I love being useful more, I seriously considered swapping classes myself.

However, before I took such a step I took to the theorycrafting world. I combed Theck’s posts and read Elitist Jerks till I thought my eyes would bleed from all the numbers. I talked with the paladin turned brewmaster, who despite class swapping had some useful tips. I discovered something quite monumental.

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