My god... it's full of stars!

the blizzard store has been selling WoW in-game pets for a few months now, but this week they took a new step forward and began offering mounts for sale as well.

like the good little WoW lemming I am, I (and everyone else in Dalaran, it seems) went and bought one. it's a beautiful mount and the price seems fair considering it will be available to all your existing and future characters (unlike the recruit-a-friend [Swift Zhevra] mount, which can only be given to a single character *cough* lame *cough*). I do have a couple minor nits, though.

first is the sound the steed makes while flying... it's the same sound set used by the nether ray mounts and it just seems weird to me. second, and this applies to all mounts that count as both ground and air mounts (e.g., [The Horseman's Reins]), is that if you mount up in a ground-only area you'll be stuck in ground mode even if you ride into another area where flying is allowed. for example, if you mount your shiny new celestial steed in the center of Dalaran and then ride out to the landing platform, you won't be able to fly off until you dismount and remount. I'm guessing this is a programmatic constraint that the devs just haven't put time into fixing rather than an intentional restriction, but it's pretty annoying regardless.

I'm excited to see what other flavor items blizzard is going to put up for sale. they've said time and again that they won't sell items in the store that have any impact on game mechanics (i.e., no gear), which is a choice that I applaud. that still leaves them with a lot of things they *could* sell, though. I wouldn't be surprised to see items that are currently only available via loot cards from the WoW TCG to start popping up in the store. I can imagine other things, too, like custom hi-resolution tabards or even new emotes and hair styles. I do think it's important for blizzard to maintain a good balance between what's available in the store vs. rewards only available to top-tier raiders or arena masters, though. I'd hate to see items in the store over-shadow very rare rewards like the lich king's mount. can't wait to see what the store 'drops' next :)

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Random Acts of Etiquette

like many of you, I've been taking full advantage of the dungeon finder ever since it came out. it's an amazing tool for both leveling and for gearing up once you hit 80. while it's truly awesome how easy and quick it is to get into dungeons now, the dungeon experience itself has changed a bit.

before the days of dungeon finder everyone in your group, strangers and friends alike, was from the same server. when everyone comes from the same place, your reputation matters. your behavior, good or bad, directly impacts your ability to get into groups in the future. with the dungeon finder bringing people together across multiple servers now, that behavorial constraint is no longer in place. as predicted by an oft-referenced (and mildly NSFW) behavorial psychology theory, player behavior has noticeably deteriorated in this new cross-server setting. in simple terms, you can be a complete ass and get away with it because you'll probably never group with the same people twice.

while there isn't much to be done about people with bad personalities (aside from adding them to your ignore list), good behavior sets a positive example for other players who just don't know any better. here's a short (and by no means complete) list of behavior suggestions when running randoms:

• say hi! players are in such a hurry to get on to the next dungeon now that they often don't even say hello anymore. WoW is a social game, so say hi; it's polite and quick.
• observe the Golden Rule: don't say anything if you don't have anything nice to say. if you have issues with another player's behavior or performance, don't start drama. you can attempt to politely explain what you think they could be doing better (in a whisper, not in party chat), but a lot of people don't take criticism well. just leave the group instead of yelling at each other in party chat.
• don't queue as a healer or tank unless you have the spec and gear to do the job. queue times for healers and tanks are short (nearly instant when I'm queuing as a tank), which tempts more and more players to queue in those roles just to beat the line. don't sign up for the role unless you can really do it, otherwise it's unfair to the rest of the group.
• don't judge a player by their gear. that warlock in quest blues and greens may just top the dps meters, know the instance inside and out and be an all-around amazing player that happens to be playing an alt. conversely, that paladin with all the shiny t9/t10 gear might be absolutely terrible (because they usually heal instead of dps, it's a friend's account, they're watching cowboy beebop, etc.). you won't know until you see them play, so don't vote-kick someone from the group just because they have a low gear score (the dungeon finder thinks that player has the right gear to be there, after all).
• if your class has group buffs, use 'em. and don't be cheap and do single-target buffs or the 10 minute versions either (yes, I'm looking at you mr. paladin). reagents cost peanuts at every level, so suck it up and do buffing right. (special aside for shaman: drop totems, damn you!)
• don't go afk. you're wasting the group's time while they wait for you. this is especially true if you're the healer or tank. I recognize that this is not always under your control (phone rings, baby wakes up, etc.), but do your best to be courteous to the rest of the group.
• compliment good play. if the healer's great, tell them. if the dps goes above and beyond (pulling mobs off the clothies, always on top of interrupts, etc.), recognize that. everyone likes positive feedback for doing a good job.
• thank the group at the end of the run. it was a group effort and you couldn't have done it on your own.

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Much Respect for Laptop Gamers

dear gods, have I been spoiled. my home PC recently decided to up and die on me (hardware failure of some sort) and I've been getting my WoW fix on my work laptop for the last couple days. to all you pro healers, chain-pulling tanks and l33t dps out there that play on laptops, my hat's off to you.

my laptop actually runs WoW pretty well (newer macbook pro w/4GB ram), although I now understand the whole 'I hate Dalaran because I always lag' thing. coming from the perspective of running WoW on a fairly beefy PC with a 24" monitor, though, wow... what a difference. it would be one thing if my only experience with WoW was on a laptop, but since I'm used to something a little bigger it's been a challenge to play as well as I'm used to. lower-quality visuals aside, the two challenges I've run into are not enough screen real estate for my addons and not enough keys to map all my abilities to.

I've only installed a subset of the addons that I usually run (just bartender, DBM, recount and omen), but bartender alone takes up a good chunk of my screen and even ends up covering up most of the built-in quest tracker. with omen, recount and the chat window added to that, a lot of screen space gets used up. I don't know how people add raid frames and healing UIs to that and still see what they're doing...

my biggest challenge, by far, has been figuring out how to map all my abilities to keys I can actually use. some of the function keys seem to be wired into Mac OS to do specific things, so I've lost a few keys there. I've also lost use of the number keypad (because there isn't one), which is where I used to map convenience keys like auto-run, mounting and such. most disruptive, though, is not being able to map abilities to extra mouse buttons like I did on my PC.

I like to map abilities I use often but reflexively (rather than as part of a rotation) to mouse buttons; things like taunts, interrupts and stealth, for example. that puts the ability right at my finger tips so I don't have to hunt for it when I need it NOW, but keeps it out of the way when I'm rocking through my standard rotation. tanking with my paladin this weekend made me realize how much I'd come to rely on those mouse buttons; sure I can play without them, but my reactions aren't nearly as fast.

I realize I'm lucky to be getting my fix at all, as a lot of people don't have the luxury of a second computer to use if their gaming rig burns out. I'm very much looking forward to replacing my PC and retiring from laptop play, though ;)

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