Faction change was announced a few days ago, and its been a heated and typically whine filled debate.

Good god wow community, quit your bitching. Folks seem determined to crap on any idea, change, or shift in the game. I like reading the constructive feedback, can stand the “but this might break…” posts, but there seems to be a solid contingent of players who are determined to find anything that is new and bitch.

Like I said in one of the threads on project lore:

There is no gear, achievement, etc issue that cannot be solved with a little logic.

The players who want this service will pay well for it, and it pretty obviously not aimed at players who are happy to re-roll. Its not aimed at hardcore “back in my day..” players either. The players who want it will also accept some fudging of results too. Its aimed at players who wish to play without re-playing the content. And they’ll have to pay – more power to ‘em.

Just like paid toon transfer (or the barber shop, recruit a friend, easy modes, or frigging anything) you don’t have to use it and it does not hurt your game if somebody else does.

C’mon guys, there are great things to talk about.

• Players might to to play with their friends otherwise lost to other factions.
• It can be used with some rules to help realm balance.
• You can switch a toon over to see how the other side of the game without starting from scratch.

I’d like to see them allow the races to stay the same, but the toon make a permanent Faction change. There is no class unbalance anymore (shaman vs paladin); so having a Human traitor to the Alliance; or an Orc who was raised by elves but did not revolt like Thrall is a cool idea.

Give the player base one Traitor per server limit, and see what the RP realms do. They’ll go nuts with stories, movies, and all sorts of roleplay.

ps. yup, I know I bitch like the rest of them from time to time. Ohhh the irony.

There seems to be a general pause or slow down in players at the moment. I’d say its a summer thing, but I also think it has to do with folks wanting to get further through content; combined with new content being announced. It may also have to do with the release of the PTR for testing Patch 3.2, which is looking like a very exciting update.

Rather than dwell on the negative, here are some things that I am looking forward to.

• Running Heroics for new tokens. Yummy high level gear, which hopefully increases the number of pug runs.
• Having more play time sooner or later, hopefully. Work / Life balance is hard, and I miss wow when I only play 2 nights a week.
• Hoping that the “link your achievement” bullshit will soon die, but I suspect its here to stay. Players who insist on this just don’t realise that my Alt might not have the achievement, but my main has, and I know the fight backward.
• Tanking more. I dipped my toe in the metal-flesh-wall-of-pain mode of wow again and liked it. I’m not too fussed by the ptr changes to Death Knight tanking, as I trust (trusting the community is not something that happens every day) that DK tanks are a little too strong when compared to everyone else.

Northrend map chosen as it represented the excitement I had when they first announced the Wrath expansion, and all the Death Knight, lore, class, etc changes began in earnest.

WoW Head guys have built a Profiler that does everything an Armoury tool should, and includes a 3d model of your character. Its worth a look as it gives you a great summary of the character.

Its a damn fine tool. By way of (selfish) exmple here is Mortigen my Death Knight.

A huge amount of the final stage of Warcraft is progression at end game. You can do dailies, or RP to your hearts content, but most players are trying to get the even diminishing returns that comes with improving their gear.

Knowing what gear you should be aiming for is critical; which requires understanding of stats and a bit of math.

Percentages of Ratings, tweaks in dps stats, and all sorts of figures and interrelated numbers that make the small but noticeable difference. Some awesome bloggers, forums, and webpages publish “Best in Slot” or “new to 80s” gear lists. Others even tell you where to find the upgrades. This is golden advice and very often easy to follow.

However if you want to verify an item, dig for what more subtle upgrades you need next, or even just qualify that what you have is reasonable; you’ll need a personal-gear-advice-slave, or some skill with a gear website.

Q. But what if you want to do it yourself, but fear the math?

A. Well you can read on to find out how I do a series of simple steps to create lists of items that are desirable. Teach a man to fish….etc. However the best results are gained if you embrace a little theory, and start crunching.

Warning: This is a long article.

I’ve been looking at WWS for how my runs are performing, and by golly its good to use a tool to keep you honest. It saves on guessing about your input to a run, is a measurable way to see performance, and can be used to make all sorts of sharp value judgments on players (grin).

I’ve been able to:

• see which fights have buffs and debuffs which affect performance
• how much splash damage is done, and of what type
• healers can see over-heal, aoe heal, or if a 3rd healer in 10 mans is always needed
• track deaths, and particularly see what affect they have to the rest of the team

The free version’s reports only stay active for a week or so on WWS; but that is plenty of time to check-up / flex your e-peen. Certainly a better way to discuss the run afterward than just using impressions/hunches from all the players.

By way of practical example I was debating the difference between having Expertise 5 and 6.25, for my Death Knight. I compared a recent run in H Naxx with a run a while ago and  I can say without question that the extra expertise is the thing keeping my DK competitive. The increase from 5 to 6.25 was a bump in dps; and I’m pretty sure that hitting the magic 6.5 number will be a good thing. Although getting the extra 0.25 will be a pain on other stats at the moment.

World of Logs does the same thing, in a more graphical way. Same upload process, slightly different quirks. Its worth checking out both and see which you prefer. Out of the two I think I’ll use WWS for a while longer, then switch to WOL for a solid few months. Both give you all basics.

Go grab, review, and use:  http://www.worldoflogs.com/ and http://wowwebstats.com/

Being AFK gives me a chance to write up thoughts on the content we’re progressing on, so here are some altogether scattered Ulduar thoughts. Short version: get into Ulduar if you have not yet. Its great.

Apparently Patch 3.2 will lower the cost, increase the speed, and lower the level requirement for mounts.

Linkage via WoW.com, and the WoW Forums.

That is great; bring it on. Especially the speed increase for normal flyers. Nothing but win for anyone leveling at the moment. I’m happy about this even though I purchased normal riding yesterday on an alt.

Nothing suspect about a level 1 warrior pinging all classes and such. His name seems to be gibberish. Nothing at all. What strikes me as odd is how (after how easy the interface is) this guy couldn’t even use a macro properly. Fail.

So hard to get good help these days. I reported him just to be sure, and at least that keeps his spam from interfearing with Topper and Miller’s spam.

Q. What happens when your mates group with you in WoW?

A. All sorts of stupidity, see screen shots below after the fold.

Warcraft Empire Online are thieves. They may also be snivelling creepy bastards, but I have no proof of that. They might be perfect humans too, but no proof of that either. But they are content thieves.