On hiatus

At this moment in time, I have not played WOW in many months, I had an active sub that I was not making use of so I cancelled it. Uni/child commitments are taking over my ability to play anything but a casual game which is not something I can really do with WOW!

On the Mist of the Panderan expansion: Wow. I dunno what to say. It looks awesome, but Im not sure its wise to blatantly rip off Kung Fu Panda ^.^

Still, it will be interesting to see what it is like when it is out, for sure enough Ill be along to bump my lil mage to 90 and play the new content as always! I may even blog about my journeys properly. :p I see a lot of people still hit the page for the Arcane Mage Shot rotation update post... eek. Maybe I should research and actually update it!

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Active!

The account is active. Woot!

I dont plan to play end game, I dont have the time... if I can wiggle something into my schedule I am willing, but for the time being I think Im gonna hit an RP server and be "one of those roleplaying types!"

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Mage gear in 4.2

Stumbled on an interesting article on my RSS feed. Basically: getting new gear in patch 4.2 for mages. Daily Quests, crafted epics and raid gear that is new to 4.2, certainly suits my palette! I want to play again! Gah to this busyness!

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WOW: Numbers drop, trial improves. :)

So, ActiBlizz announced that they have had a dip in subscribers recently (about 5% - but thats half a million active accounts!) thats bigger than most other MMORPG's even have.

Now - they have changed the trial - free to play... forever - with a level 20 cap. That gives a good chance for folks who want to play the game to try it out and get a feel for the game and the classes without a timeout. I likey this! I you aint played, go get the trial. Now! :) I see this bringing a chunk of new players in - a good move from ActiBlizz.

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So much to post about...

I may have been quiet lately, but I actually have an excess of post ideas and I just cant get organised to get them down on... keyboard.

There are many aspects of the forthcoming patch that interest me, I have been listening to past episodes of The Instance and have a lot to chat about there, my Instance Episode catalogue has more in but the back-episodes have dissapeared from the website so I dont see the point in continuing until I can get access to them to continue downloading and listening to the episodes.

Amongst all this there have been random topics to discuss, such as healing strategies, tanking, my screenshot library to share and more.

Watch this space, I might pick something and roll with it soon!

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Flintlock comics

If you have not caught these in your time, I suggest going over to here and having a damn good look... The flintlock comics is by far, at least in my opinion, the best wow comic around. Well, when I say around, I mean in existence - the actual story for it stopped being written a few years ago - but the archives are still well worth a read :)

There are clear references to this character in the game that have been put in - Hellfire Peninsula - you get his pants working for the goblins there, and in Cataclysm you get to actually work with the potentially homicidal Flintlock.

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A movie: "Are Wow graphics good"

Found this movie on Wow Insider and just had to link - makes me wanna roll a new char and just amble around on an RP server enjoying the scenery ^.^

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The Instance, ah - the joys :)

I have been listening to some old episodes of the instance as I go about my rounds, driving from site to site as part of the internship. I must say, it has been a good giggle. The news may be old - but the entertainment value is as good as ever. As is the nostalgia value. 

I have been putting together some notes from the shows as I go, as a while ago I decided that it would be awesome to get a list of episodes with nice short decriptions and bullet points of the main content that can be referenced, as well as other info like hosts, run time, and links to the episode blog and audio file.

I now have the latest 4 on my HTC, ready for my trip to Glasgae tomorrow. God help me, I been struggling coping with the drive to/from edinburgh... I better hit the sack!

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Buyable mount: The winged guardian

So, Blizzard have release a new epic mount that players can buy: The Winged Guardian... I must say, I think it rocks :D

When the celestial steed came out - I didnt even get a tingle of oooooh. This one though... this ones shiny... I want to tug his little KittyBeard... in a cute way, of course!

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Warcraft pen & paper rpg

Well bugger me, I never know of this...

A warhammer D20 game based on Dungeons and Dragons v 3.5 rulesets (well, it says revised 3rd edition rules... I think this is 3.5ed)

Linky to the wiki :)

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Guide to Patch 4.2, by WOW Insider

I been pinching a lot of news articles from WOW Insider lately - but check this link out and you will see why. They have some nicely organised coverage of various areas of the upcoming patch, if you aint found it on your lonesome - go check it out :)

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Wow patch 4.2 - patch note observations

Encounter Journal:

This is an interesting addition to the 4.2 Arsenal - a page of info about the in-world dungeons, the bosses within, their loot drops and the phases that they have... Im not 100% sure just how useful it will be - but I think it is a utility once again aimed at the casual gamer. It allows you to join a random dungeon, and have a quick browse through the expected encounters - pretty good if you dont want to go check the likes of Wowiki.

Lets see, what else is there... New Haircuts... The FireLands raid encounter - this could be interesting.  Raggy with his lava ding dong. (Also known as legs.)

Tier 12 set bonus changes:

It seems there has been some commotion in the masses regarding Tier 12 set bonus changes. Follow the link for Wow Insiders analysis.

I may be reactivating soon so I can come check out the joys of patch 4.1, and maybe hit the PTR to see these upcoming changes :)

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Patch 4.2: thoughts and opinions imbound...

Honestly... I just been out of the loop and need to go do some research, then hopefully I will have some insightful posts/rants on whats to come in 4.2 that I like/dislike :)

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Noblegarden time :o

Egg poopin bunnies... #winning

Is it sad that this is actually my favourite WOW holiday? Well, perhaps after halloween.

Why? Im a kleptomaniac... the first year that noblegarden was out I got most of the achievements on 3 characters and enjoyed it on every one... I have two characters (Mage and Priest) with the Noble tag... and Im sitting here up to my pits in study materials wishing I could log in and do it all over...

I may need therapy...

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The instance on patch 4.1 - Souvenirs of your adventures.

A souvenir/reward: or pixels for your pixels?

Listening to The Instance podcast episode #223. Currently they are discussing the ability to buy in game items V "earning them" - I must say, I am actually not a fan of buying the items. I like earning the cool items you can find in games - they act as souvenirs of your adventures. For example: My mage has a NetherDrake. This reminds me quite strongly of that time in my life - when I was grinding the Netherwing rep, with a friend or two in game, and the things that were going on at that time in my life (redundancy - or at least the day after I got it I was made redundant - no correlation to the fact I was up 3 times a night from midnight to 6am to gather eggs in quiet time... honest!)

I actually tried through the whole of Wrath to get a Proto-Drake - it turns out it was in vein - but I did manage to get the Bronze Drake from Culling of Stratholm for my Priest, again, this reminds me of the time spent running that instance with friends to get it. As for the proto-drakes, I done the rep grind with my mage - who has the Netherdrake - with the Carebears in Sholazar Basin to buy an egg every 3 or 4 days. Over the months of me doing this religiously, I managed to gather a huge array of pets that I distributed amongst my characters and friends. Little memorabelia's but no Green Proto Drake.

I also ground Utgart Pinnacle to get the Blue Protodrake - but I seen it drop ONCE, and I lost the roll by about 1. DOH!

I also have the turtle mount on my mage from fishing. This proved useful in Vashj'ir - but other than that it is just a funky doodad that I picked up when fishing for mats to make fish feasts for raiding.

Put it this way: My baby blizzard bear is rarely out - but my vampiric bat from the Kharazhan halloween boss before Wrath came out is frequently out and about - I have memories of earning it and I enjoy its presence, like a happy memory flitting by.

Take a look through the mounts on your characters, or the pets: Which ones have the most meaning to you? Your sparklepony? Pretty, yes: it may even have some imbedded memory of sorts in your head. A present maybe? but I doubt it will mean as much to you as a hard-earned rep-mount or boss drop mount. The same goes with pets.

Funny WOW screenshot collection 1:

The screenshots folder. Often added to, rarely browsed. I must have about 5gb of screencaps from my adventures in Azeroth. And thats after using batchconverter on the 5mb a piece screenshots from vanilla wow so they are about 50kb each instead. Since I have so many, I will only include a handful here, but that does make-way for future posts with silly screen caps :D. Below are some of my Cataclysm screen-caps. Enjoy!

Click to embiggen!

I knew I should have gone before getting on that Griffon...

Yes, I really am 12 inside.

O Noes!

No caption required...

WOW Patch 4.1 - Valor Point Changes - Alternative? (again!)

So WoW Insider put up an article regarding the valor point changes in WoW. It basically details the fact that the Daily Heroic system is changing. In my opinion it is changing for the better, but alas, my pessimistic mind has rooted out a number of problems this may cause that make it not seem like a fantastic change to me...

Currently the first random heroic you do each day gives bonus points and awards. This is a fairly nice system that encourages players to try to login regularly and go do at least one run each day. The downside to this is that if you are not able to login for a day or three, or are unable to random it up due to other commitments then you don't get to claim those rewards.

The new system basically allows you to do randoms until you have done all 7. This then refreshes every week. Advantage: If you miss a day or two, you can still do them when you are free. This adds great flexibility to the game and reduces the pressures to login when you do not want to play just to claim those points.

The negatives?

Cluster questing:
As soon as the weekly quest allotment refreshes, people will start cramming in early runs. Think of it like "payday" - for many: you get paid, you go out and buy all the stuff you want/need or just party or go on a shopping spree. You are then left scraping to make ends meet until the next payday, which in turn encourages you to go straight out as soon as you get paid again and start spending. A bad habit. With this system I see it being pretty much the same. The quests refresh - and you hit the randoms to claim those rewards, and keep doing it until you have none left. This makes sense - if you know you are free to do them in the first day or two but don't know if you will have time later in the week, or have other in game commitments then you might miss out on rewards, and you are inclined you do the randoms as soon as you can.

I had a couple of other points that I have nullified whilst re-reading the article. At least with the system in place they avoid one problem that I anticipated:


Chain-lockout:
Undoubtedly there is always one dungeon that people just don't like, don't enjoy or cannot get their head around. If you were required to actually go collect the quests one at a time and progress through them in a linear fashion - then what if this dungeon becomes your daily? you would be stuck with it until you get it done, or possibly until the next weeks refresh. As it is explained it is the first 7 heroics that you complete that give you these rewards, which makes perfect sense to me as long as they are clear in displaying that you are in a dungeon that will give you the bonus rewards and you don't have to manually track.

Personally I would like to see the system get a further tweak - an alternative so to speak:
To avoid this initial cluster of dungeon romping, they could perhaps allow for the first random in a day you complete be your daily heroic - and if you miss a day, then you get to "stockpile" that daily so the next day you can do 2, if you dont do one that day, the next you can do 3, etc. This basically differs the rewards to reduce the initial influx - and to keep people questing throughout the week without them getting penalised for missing a day. At the end of the week if you have a number of unclaimed heroics, they can rollover into your allotment for the following week. Allow each player to have say, 10 stockpiled daily rewards to claim - and if people are having a break from the game, or go on holiday or are really busy and cannot do their daily randoms, then when they come back they have access to all these rewards and are encouraged to start doing the randoms.

Follow this example:

Tuesday: Patch day& Daily Allotment Refresh. 1 Reward available.
Wednesday: 2 rewards available.
Thursday: 3 rewards available. you do 2 randoms and get the daily heroic reward for both. 1 day rolls over.
Friday: 2 rewards available
Saturday: 3 rewards available
Sunday: 4 rewards available
Monday: 5 rewards available - do 2 randoms and get the daily heroic for both. 3 days roll over.
Tuesday: Patch day& Daily Allotment Refresh. 4 rewards available.

Etc, Etc. Or is this system too convoluted/complicated to implement in a game that is aiming to be fairly simple when some people we stumble seem to lack the cognitive capacity to pick their nose? Anyway, I think it could be an interesting system although I will admit, I am quite happy with the change they are making. After writing this I answered some of my own critical analysis queries so that it didn't have as many holes as I was expecting!

/Ramble.
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Wow: Account wide achievements. Nay, Achievement Inheritance?

I have been reading an article on Wow Insider (again) that piqued my interests. The topic was on making achievements account wide. I understand why folk want this to be done - if you have done a particular heroic/raid boss on one character and got the achievement, then surely you should be able to prove to that pug raid that is asking for the achievement to be linked as a requirement for entry. You earned it, why cant you prove it? There are also achievement score points and rewards that go hand in hand with gaining certain achievements.

My thoughts on all this after the quote:

Q: When will achievements finally be awarded account-wide?

A: Making achievements Battle.net account-wide is something we'd like to do, but it's not a goal we could provide a current timetable for. All of the original World of Warcraft coding was done with the expectation that the data on every realm would always be independent. Now that we are trying to make as many things as possible account-wide, we’re having to rebuild all of those systems. It is absolutely something we want to do, but it will take a lot of time away from other features.

I fully understand the mechanics behind this. Over 6 years worth of archived data, as well as live data would need to be transferred onto a new database system with a different architecture to allow for Blizzard to make things account-wide. I'm not sure why they couldn't just modify the database so that achievements tie to account owner instead of character, I guess its cleaner and if it is something they are going to do anyway it makes no sense to go through the motions of implementing "A" feature, when doing it properly will unlock loads of features (allowing anything about a character to be account related, not just achievements.)

As for making the achievements themselves account bound... I was not so keen on the idea at first:

1. I actually like gaining the achievements as I level an alt. It makes it feel like I am achieving something as I play (OMG Rly!?)
2. Just because you gained an achievement on a Raid Boss on one character does not prove you can do it on another. You will have different gearing, a different level of experience with that character and possibly a different role. 
3. Seasonal/Holiday achievements and awards (E.G what a long strange trip it's been) should probably be shared, but how to work it? Different characters will have different stages on these achievements - and its tricky to roll them into the one big achievement...

I thought it would make more sense to implement some way for players to reference an alt/main that has said achievement, and for it to be tagged as the same account as the player linking... But, as I was typing point 3 above something occured to me: Achievement Inheritance.

Make the achievements account bound - BUT have the achievement state which of your characters has actually earned the achievement... E.G my priest may be flying a Violet Proto-Drake but when people look up my achievements or I link them - they will see that it is my Mage's character that is the named earner and that the priest has inherited the achievement benefits. 

Sound reasonable? Your achievement benefits and points are awarded account bound - but you can see both account and character achievements seperately (Simply have your achievements table have an account-tab with the first character who achieved it to be named, and any others who have earned it to be listed aswell... This opens up other potential achievements like: Level a character of each race to level 20, 30, etc, etc.) This should be no more difficult to implement than what they are already thinking of doing - but will cater to both sides of the coin (those wanting to earn, those wanting to have achievements be shared) as well as allowing those that are linked achievements to see that you have done the work to earn it - but that it may be on a different character (or multiple characters). This could be a good or a bad thing as far as pug raid leaders are concerned, but hey: If the person has done the achievement on another character and they can see that the player is sufficiently geared, whats not to like?

Anyway, I hope that waffle gave some food for thought.

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Wow roles: Are tanks special? R.E Call to Arms.

The current state of affairs ^.^

Taking a look at the latest Wow Insider post on the subject >linky< on the Call to Arms feature - there is mass debate being sparked regarding tanks and whether or not they are "special"...

Well, I dunno!
Lets speculate :)

3 Roles: Tank, healer, dps dps dps.

All roles are required for a successful run that is of the appropriate level. (I.e your not over-geared or running low level dungeons.)

All dungeons require someone to tank*. Some fights may allow for momentary use of a dps for tanking - or maybe a hunters pet (check out big red rhino's blog for more on that!). Without a tank then the healer will have to spam heal to keep whomever is getting hit alive, who just wont be able to keep aggro against the healing threat.* This results in deaths, unless you are very lucky, skilled, or both.*

All dungeons require someone to heal. For various group pulls there may be sufficient self-healing for the tank to stay alive (especially if they are a paladin) but on any serious encounter - they need to be kept up by someone - and bandaging aint gonna cut it. (Pun intended.)

All dungeons require DPS - although depending on the dps output of the other two dps and the tank, the skill of the players, any tricks they have out their sleeve, etc - then you can often run with a DPS down (or two once you are geared, but thats against my premise up top.)

Ergo: I am going to take the standpoint that the DPS are nothing particularly special. They are easily replaceable - they can do most things faster in the outside world since they are killing things faster, or before they are even hurt, and tend to level quicker. They are also ten a penny and tanks and healers can DPS in an alternative spec*. Tanks and healers are both vital roles. DPS are important but not vital.

There, my deduction. All classes can be fantastic if you put the right person behind the controls, and everyone plays what they want to (well, I assume so unless maybe you are getting paid to play!) so if everyone get in eventually - whats the harm? Other than the "special people" getting a treat for what is usually a trickier role. If nothing else it is certainly more prone to blame if things fail. Im happy to stick to my DPS despite the changes, although I do have a priest, and I had a tank in Wrath - both of whom I enjoyed thoroughly.

Hopefully there is no offence in this post, there is none intended, but, if anyone out there does happen to take offence... well... your offended. I cant help but deduce that DPS are less vital - but people opt to play them, and in general in my experience - have been more fun.* :p Have a nice day!

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*There are of course exceptions...

Wow Dungeon Finder - Call to arms: again.

Looks like this topic has continued to gain momentum, and some strong opinions. Wow Insider put an interesting post up on the topic that is worth a read, that also links to a number of the big bloggers out there, and their opinions on the topic. Im almost tempted to hit up the main forums and see what the thoughts of the masses are!

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