slow and steady

Z's steadily making progress in the gear department. last night we picked up [Sage of Terokk] (finally found a seth group), got our 2nd kara key fragment from steamvault and picked up a few more bits of healing gear along the way; we broke +900 healing at long last (+773 shadow dmg, on the face-melting side of things).

on the rep front, we broke revered with Netherwing after last night's dailies. the netherwing dailies are pure awesome. we do 8-9 each day we have time and pull in about 3500 rep and 150g at a time. our sparkly new drake is just around the corner! on the other rep fronts... well, we've got a lot of work to do. 4-5 runs of shattered halls will push us into revered territory with honor hold, which will grant us access to the +healing head enchant (yay, healing gear! /sarcasm). sha'tar-wise, we've got a long, long way to go before we can pick up our +spell dmg head enchant. sad, because our nifty [Spellstrike Hood] really deserves that finishing touch! we've got a fair ways to go in lower city rep as well (only about 25% into honored), but that only grants us access to some additional healing gear so no rush there. we turned in 7040 rep worth of aldor odds and ends last night, which brings us about 2/3 of the way through honored. still have a long grind ahead just to get the upgraded inscription. this isn't a priority for us, though, so we'll just turn in rep items as we find 'em.

our focus for the next few days will be netherwing rep, getting our 3rd kara key fragment (hello, arcatraz!), farming mats for our [Spellstrike Pants] and farming sha'tar rep (hello, botanica :( ).

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enough already

nerfs suck. there's just no two ways about it. the nerf bat leaves a long and broken trail of crocodile tears and sad pandas in it's wake. we get that. we've been on the receiving end of more nerfs than we can remember over the years we've played. we feel your pain. however, for the love of all that's holy (or unholy, for all you demon-hugging warlocks out there) quit with the whining already!

so, you got (or are expecting to get) nerfed. it sucks. what are you going to do now? is complaining about it ad nauseum really going to fix things? unlikely. you've expressed your displeasure and it's most certainly been noted by those who wield the mighty nerf bat (yes, they really *do* listen to what you have to say. that doesn't mean they're going to give you what you want, though).

you have three constructive choices available to you:

1. you can decide that this most recent nerf is the absolute last straw and go find a new game.
2. you can decide that this most recent nerf has made your current spec/class "unplayable" and go find a new spec/class to play.
3. you can decide to adapt to the new mechanic that this most recent nerf has/will put into place and continue playing.

pick one and be done with it.

contrary to popular belief, game developers do not make changes to game mechanics in a vacuum. every single change is made for a reason. you have every right to disagree with that reason, but don't fall into the habit of thinking game developers are stupid or don't think these changes through. developers don't just wake up one morning and think "you know, I think warlocks are regenerating too much mana. I'll just change that when I get into the office this afternoon..." while scratching themselves on the way to the bathroom.

every change to a game mechanic goes through a proposal process where the desired outcome is clearly stated and potential impacts are modeled and examined. then it goes through an internal testing process where the change is implemented and tested in-house and the results are checked against the desired outcome. then the change will go through a more public testing process where the results are yet again reviewed and examined to make sure the desired outcome is being achieved. then and only then does a change to a game mechanic get slated for a future release.

changing the game is not a trivial process. a lot of thought goes into it and changes are made for reasons the game developers feel are important, not simply "because they can". the next time you're picking yourself up off the floor after your latest visit from nerf bat fairy consider that maybe the developers really *do* know what they're doing and try focusing your energy on adapting to the change instead of screaming about how unfair or retarded it is.

in the immortal words of someone far more clever than we are, "less QQ, more PewPew".

Continue reading "enough already"...

These are the People in your Raid

courtesy of the WoW forums: everything you need to know about the types of people you'll be raiding with.

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Karazhan, the Destroyer of Guilds

raiding changes guilds. some guilds ride out the changes just fine, others get torn apart by the stresses and challenges that raiding introduces.

why? what's so hard about raiding? it's just like doing an instance with more people, right? let's start by looking at what it means to raid. in this post-TBC era raiding is a 10 to 25 man affair (it was 20-40 in the pre-TBC era). much like running 5-man instances, not just any 10 to 25 folks will do. you need a certain number of healers, a certain number of tanks, a certain mix of dps and utility and so on.

take a minute and think about how hard it can be some nights to put together a 5-man pug. sometimes finding a tank is a nightmare, other times you have to beg and plead to get a healer to come along and you might even have trouble finding dps! now take it up a level and imagine putting together a 5-man heroic run. things like gear and skill start to matter when the trash can 2-shot you. that guy in all greens? yeah, not gonna happen. that hunter that always leaves growl on? pass, thanks. you necessarily have to be a bit more picky about who you bring into your group if you want to have a good chance of success.

combine two of those heroic instance groups, shake well and you get close to what you need as a bare minimum to start raiding. a couple of tanks, 2-3 healers, some mix of dps/cc/utility, a base level of player skill, mostly blue (or better) gear and, most importantly, enough schedule overlap to be able to play together for a few hours at a time.

all this work to gather people together merely grants you the ability to set foot inside the raid instance. if you want to actually succeed, you still have to provide leadership, learn to work as a team, work out strategies for all the bosses and trash pulls and set up raiding policies (are consumables expected/required? how is loot being distributed? it's cool if I go afk for 15 minutes after the first pull, right?). building and managing a raiding team is not a small task.

problems arise when not everyone on the team views raiding the same way. some people are just there for loot. some are just there to see the content and don't really care about getting a boss on farm status. some people just want to raid when they feel like it and not be locked into a schedule. some are more dedicated than others. some players, especially the early members of a raiding team, will put in a lot of time and effort to make sure they have the best gear they can get (farming instances for that one drop, grinding rep for that one piece of gear, etc.), are stocked up on consumables before each run and are always at the meeting stone on time, if not early. others might show up late because they're "just seconds away from winning AV", forget to bring water, demand a summon because they didn't log in in time to fly to the instance or whatever.

while admittedly a gross over-simplification you can divide these people into two groups; the serious raiders and the casual raiders. you have one group that wants to establish gear requirements, set schedules, expects raiders to be on time and prepared. they are determined to see content cleared, bosses farmed, loot distributed to benefit the raid over the individual. progression is the goal and they accept that it will take work to get there. then, you have another group that maybe shares the same goals but doesn't want to (or can't due to schedule issues, etc.) work as hard to realize them. they aren't lesser players, but for various reasons they don't share the same level of commitment as the serious raiders. maybe they have scheduling issues or can only play for an hour at a time. maybe the thought of killing the same bosses at the same time every week bores them to tears. maybe they bristle at the idea of being asked to pass an item that's a clear upgrade for them because it will benefit the raid as a whole by going to someone else. whatever the reasons, raiding isn't as important to them as it is to the "serious" raiders.

a guild's initial raiding team will generally be the serious raider types. they'll get the gear they need, do all the attunement quests, farm up consumables and be the first to kill bosses in guild's name. the raiding team roster will change over time, however. old raiders may move on to other guilds and games, new guild members join or are recruited with the intent to raid, guild members that were still leveling when raiding began will want to join in on all the raiding goodness. if the guild's lucky, these new members will share the same outlook that the older raiders do and everything works out. more often that not, though, at least some of these new raiders are going to fall into the casual group. this is where raiding starts to introduce guild drama. how do you keep everyone happy?

what you tend to see is the serious types looking down on the casuals because they aren't... well, "serious" about raiding and the casual types looking down on the serious folks because they're become elitist. both groups begin to resent each other. maybe it's a poor loot call, maybe it's a dumb mistake that a new raider makes (flame wreath, anyone?). sometimes that's all it takes for this resentment to escalate into a full-blown screaming match over vent. we've seen it (heard it?) more than once and it ain't pretty.

unfortunately, there are no magic fixes. it really comes down to the personalities involved and the leadership and mediation abilities of the guild officers. some guilds end up with multiple raiding teams (there's still drama about who's on the "progression" team vs. the "training" team, though), some guilds simply stop raiding and sometimes things are bad enough that guild members leave for other guilds.

this sort of drama is what lead us to leave our last guild, (for the record, we're in the "serious raider" camp). prior to raiding things were very casual and we loved it. there was a core group that leveled together, instanced together and eventually began raiding together. we started off raiding by pugging in folks to fill spots that the guild couldn't yet fill. it was when we started recruiting new guild members and inviting freshly-minted level 70 guildies to fill out the raiding roster that the drama began. the officers (us included) were never able to "fix" things to the point that we were happy, so we moved on.

we keep in touch with the many friends we made in our old guild, of course, and that's how we learned that things had come to a head in NIIA. after what sounds like a particularly nasty exchange over vent, the guild split. many of the original members have formed a new guild called . we wish them all the best as they pick up the pieces and ready themselves to re-enter kara.

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busy weekend

funny what a little car trouble will lead to. we'd originally planned to go play in the snow last weekend, but ended up staying home and playing a lot of WoW instead. and we were productive! we started our kara key quest and got our first fragment from Shadow Labs. in preparation for the last step of that quest line, we finally ran Caverns of Time: Durnholde. aside from just being a fun instance to begin with, this also got us some of the best pre-raid shadow priest gloves, [Tempest's Touch], available as a quest reward. a couple of gems later and these lovelies are worth 45 spell damage!

next up, we finally whacked Zuluhed and opened up the Netherwing dailies. you know the old saying, "it takes money to make money"? the Netherwing dailies could be the poster child for that expression. it takes 5000g (plus assorted repair bills) to open up them up. however, the money pours in once you start doing them. each daily quest is worth at least 12g. the vendor trash you pick up along the way, especially from the quests in the mines, also sells quite well; 2-3g per stack of things like broken fangs or slime. it's pretty easy to bring in 100g just by doing a handful of these quests.

after our second round of dailies and a couple lucky [Netherwing Egg] drops we hit friendly rep and opened up what is, quite possibly, the best daily quest ever: The Booterang: A Cure For The Common Worthless Peon. teh [Booterang], we haz it. we lovez teh [Booterang]. true story.

anyway, from there we went and joined up with a Shattered Halls group. we had 3 quests for SH in our log still and wanted to clean 'em out. conveniently for us, no one in the group had the key but we were on the last stage of the key quest! so, we went off and spanked hellfire's resident Fel Reaver and we got our [Shattered Halls Key]. the run itself went pretty well, except for a 15 minute pause mid-way through where we had to find a replacement tank. picked up some new healing gear from quest rewards, the [Runesong Dagger] off the ogre boss (nice boost for us, since we were still using our [Battle Mage's Baton]) and [Pattern: Spellstrike Hood] off the first boss. the pattern is especially timely as we were planning on having this item made for us this week. now we have to decide if we want to farm the primal nether ourselves (we were sooo close to winning the roll for one last night) or buy someone else's.

all in all, not a bad weekend.

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