we're not dead, yet

no, we're not dead or kidnapped or caught in a time warp or anything else like that. we are, however, taking a bit of a break from our usual WoW routine. we've taken 5 characters up to level 70 now, all alliance and all on the same server. frankly, we're a bit bored. our two "main"s, harl and zhered, are about as well geared as they can get short of doing 25-man content and while we *would* like to see that content, we're not sure we want to sign up for a heavy raid calendar right now. plus, we'd have to go guild shopping... we hate, hate, *hate* leaving a guild once we've decided to join one, so the "try before you buy" model that a few folks have suggested to us just doesn't really fly. we're one of those "get it right the first time" types, so selecting the right guild takes a lot of time and work. time and work that we don't feel like putting in right now because our interest is waning a bit.

we haven't completely given up WoW, of course. we just needed a change of pace. back in the mists of time, we rolled a blood elf paladin so we could see the new horde starting zone that came along with TBC. we ended up leveling him up to 58, but never got around to taking him into outlands before we shifted back over to playing alliance again on Dark Iron. since we'd been itching to play horde again anyway, we decided to pick him back up, re-spec to protection (he was ret back before ret was FOTM) and go hit outlands as a tank.

it's been fun! totally different play style from what we're used to. we've played every dps class out there and we're used to killing single targets fairly fast and being able to take 2 mobs (maybe 3 if we're playing a class with good CC) without it being too scary. as a pally tank, it's a whole different ball game. now we take 4-6 melee mobs at once and it's actually *easier* for us than doing a single mob at a time. casters, though... casters just suck. we can't mitigate magic damage worth beans and it *does* take us a while to kill stuff. that's the downside of life as a pally tank (no spell reflection). pretty nifty overall, though.

hellfire peninsula feels like a totally new place what with all the horde-flavored quests and some new twists to areas we thought we knew inside out (we had no idea that the orcs near the pools of aggonar were actually a horde-friendly faction!). we've been running around picking up tanking gear from quests and the AH, trying to gear ourselves up for the big show - Hellfire Ramparts. that'll be our first real test of tanking to see if we like it or not. if nothing else, we're looking forward to getting into groups a hell of a lot easier (LF1M, tank! PST).

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it's that time again

meet Yarzill the Merc. ain't he pretty? when you hit exalted with the Netherwing faction Lord Illidan pops over for a little chat and reveals you for the traitorous wretch you really are. Yarzill here swoops in to rescue you from certain death and dismemberment at the hands of a very upset orc overlord. he then flies you off to shat in a victory lap of sorts and drops you off in front of all the netherwing drakes in lower city. you get your shiny new drake for free by talking to the one you want (you can buy the other colors later from a vendor back at the dragonmaw camp for the usual 200g fee).


we went with [Reins of the Violet Netherwing Drake]; thought it matched up nicely with shadowform. took us 11 days this time around (opened up the dailies on mar 1, hit exalted last night on mar 11), which is about 3 days faster than it took harl. the human Diplomacy racial definitely makes a big difference when it comes to rep grinding (25 to 55 more rep for each quest). the rest of the difference is probably due to better luck with finding [Netherwing Egg]s; we found at least 1 and as many as 5 each time we were doing the dailies.

we'll probably continue to do a few of the less tedious netherwing dailies as they're a great source of cash. we made 100-150g a day doing just the dailies, not counting any drops or herbs we picked up along the way. we're back up to about 3400g now and much of that can be credited to dailies. now we just have to figure out what to do next... it feels weird to not have a specific goal we're working towards.

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Kara!

Z finally got his kara key saturday and we had a chance to go play in KZ last night with our old guild. it was a last minute "hey, we think we're going to raid tonight. wanna come?" kinda thing, so it was a little rough around the edges. we made a mad dash to the AH on the way to the meeting stone to stock up on consumables and realized that we'd never really thought about caster consumables before. ended up buying some [Elixir Major Mageblood] (which was a mistake, but Harl can use 'em later), the [Schematic: Mana Potion Injector] for Harl (finally!), some [Superior Wizard Oil] (thought about going for [Superior Mana Oil] instead, but thought we'd try it without first and see what the mana situation was like) and a couple old-school [Flask of Supreme Power]s (they were way cheap compared with [Flash of Pure Death] and it's only a 10 point difference in spell damage). once we were fully raid buffed we were looking at +918 shadow dmg. mmmm, tasty. was even better when we brought in a shaman later on and had a Wrath of Air Totem at our disposal; zomg +1019 shadow damage! we wish that's what our stats looked like normally...

as far as the run went, it wasn't bad. they had cleared through morose on a previous night, so we started with maiden and then went on to opera (wizard of oz), curator, shade & chess; they all went down on the first shot. it wasn't always pretty, but we got the job done. prince was a different story. we made four attempts and never got him below about 40%. not really sure why he was so much trouble, but last night was just not our night for prince pwnage.

but what about "teh phat lewtz"?! we thought we'd be sitting pretty, being the only dps clothie in the raid (no mages or warlocks), but the loot gods decreed that it would be all healie gear, all the time. meh. we ended up with a couple bits of it anyway; the [Blue Diamond Witchwand] because none of the other healers needed it and the [Ribbon of Sacrifice] due to a very unfortunate error by the master looter. we still feel pretty bad about that, but at least it'll come in handy if we end up having to heal our way through the arcatraz again. we also picked up our first 10 [Badge of Justice]s. now we have to figure out what to save up for...

speaking of healing arc... never. again. we ended up going in as a healer because we really, really wanted our 3rd kara key fragment and putting together a group was like pulling teeth. we ended up with a prot warrior, 2 rogues, an elemental shaman and a shadow priest in healing gear (a little over +900 heals at the time). it actually went better than we expected it to, partly because the tank was awesome and also due to the shammie backing me up with a couple extra heals when pulls got hairy (that guy was on top of his shit. we love playing with people like that!). we did have one wipe right before the 2nd boss (damn you, aoe silence!), but all the bosses went down on the first try. that said, it was ZOMG STRESSFUL!!!1! we don't know how you full-time healers do it. we spent the entire run staring at health bars; praying they would stop going down and start going back up. one of our resto druids friends told us that she doesn't even know what the inside of most instances look like because all she does is watch health bars. bleh. major props to all you healers out there, but it's definitely not our bag.

Continue reading "Kara!"...

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 :( ).

Continue reading "slow and steady"...

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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