The Sound of Music – WoW Remix

A not to shabby WoW song created by Jez at DPS We Deliver.

Far better than the original.

Is Warcraft’s community going down the Crapper?

Most days I like the WoW community. There are jerks around, but generally those people don’t cross my path so its kind of OK.

The other day while questing on my mid 20s Druid I was challenged out of the blue by a Hunter. Now I don’t like PvP, duels, etc, so I declined the request, and thought nothing of it. But then the Hunter called be a bitch for saying no; and I had a headache, so I replied in kind.

He took that as intended and made a wonderful mess with racial intollerance and sexual suggestions. I’m blunt, but I think he might need a case worker.

The situation was made worse by replying with harsh language, and telling somebody to fuck off is certainly rude – but then so is randomly sending duel challenges and calling those people who refuse a bitch. In fact I consider it rude to challenge somebody to a duel without talking to them first, especially when they are clearly running on their way somewhere.

I have not reported Crapper, as I’m really more annoyed by his presumption and language than anything else, but I’d love to see the look on his face if he did get a 24 hour ban. Its jerks like that should not play in community based activities. I bet his e-peen is huge.

Life Tap change

Warlocks are soon to see a change to how Life Tap works, and if you’re a Warlock or hate them – you’ll already have an opinion on this issue. There has been a huge response across the community as you’d expect. I hate the posters who are saying that its time to nurf Warlocks more, and consider trolling like that to be childish.

Initially I thought this was a horrid change, then I thought this was only going to be based upon Base stats so that was OK; and now as I read further it seems its on modified health and mana – and thats very bad. We will see.

On the lighter side a great blog post and pic are on Warlock Therapy. Eat babies!

I really hope that the change has no significant affect on PvE when it is finally rolled out to the live systems. I Life Tap alot!

Blunt Update

3 days is too long to have a headache. Tired, grumpy, and altogether in a very nasty mood – so this will be short (reaching for pills as I type).

• Grabbed a Crystalforged Sword for my Paladin, then added the Unholy enchant. Unholy is a crappy enchant but its all I had at short notice. Once I’ve got an idea of a better one, it’ll be straight on. Thanks to the Guildies for the advice, it was an immediate upgrade.
• Warlock is now Exalted with Kara (the V. Eye) which means a slight ring upgrade, and access to an enchant that I cant cast yet.
• Leveling my Druid on Horde, which is fun, but taking longer every level. Its not long until it will take some serious time to get each bar, and thats when the fun slows down too. Goal for now is to get to level 30 for the Travel form.
• Finally got a 6 of Furies, which will complete my Furies Deck – bring on Vengence! Now just need to wait till the next Darkmoon Faire, which is probably a few weeks away. This might also have me at 10,000 health unbuffed, which means I’ll be less killable.
• I need to farm and do daily quests, which means the same thing to me. Gold equals improvement at this stage, so its time to be a gold farmer.

Need to remember to say sorry to my girlfriend too, odds are I’ve said something over the past few days which was mean.

Where in the WoW?

I was running through silverpine forest for a druid quest, and decided to jump over the mountains to save some time – and here is this strange place with a huge runestone, a fire, and a troll sitting on a rock. Its someplace I’ve never seen doing quests on the Alliance side, so I’m curious if this is Horde specific, or one of those things that is in for something later.

If you were there when my Tauren was dancing then I apologise.

What do you value in the game?

Dunno – but I posted on Jez’s blog a while back, and it got me thinking.

I’m a loot whore just like everyone else (yes you are), and get snarky when people get greedy. My ideal group would follow the need vs greed, 1x purple per session, and respect the guys who you run with. Hopefully nobody gets upset, and we dont need a DKP system.

I’m also a fan of Mains over Alts, but really can’t justify that as it would be way too frustrating for the guys who are playing to help the slower progressers get some gear.

So a breakdown of rules would be:

• People > Gear
• Friends > Guildies > Regulars > Pugs
• Girlfriend > Work > WoW > Politics
• Time Played != Skill

Weirder still is folks who will drop real life for the game. Try this on for strange: http://www.myextralife.com/?p=7678

Aussie Guild Names

Naming things in games is great fun, and I like trying to find names that are distinct as well as effective (and unoffensive).

These are the guild names that stuck out for an Australian guild, which wouldn’t take itself too seriously.

• Cooking With Gas
• A Dead Cert
• A Dogs Breakfast
• Elbow Grease
• Five Finger Discount
• Give it Heaps
• Home and Hosed
• On the Nose
• On For Young And Old
• Spit the Dummy

Some other words that are distinctly Aus, but I couldn’t think of a good combination: Dead Horse, BYO, cark it, dodgy, down under, dutch oven, esky, lucky country, bloody, strewth.

Screenshots and observations

With so much happening, I’ll say it with pictures. Above is my Warlock called Aurac, who was fighting hard to stay healthy during the run. I was spoilt by the run as I got my Malefic Girdle, and Voidheart Gloves.

Still so much to do in Kara, and apart from anything else I need some better weapons.

Last night I also entered Kara for the first time with Diamon, my Prot Paladin. He was not actually fighting, but was able to jump in after the run where Aurac was getting spanked to complete the first part of the massive Kara quest chains.

I was stoked to see him walking around in there.

As it was a slow night a few of us Endeavour folks decided to start some Horde toons. We have a Blood Elf Warlock, a Blood Elf Paladin; and I picked a Tauren Druid – named Casserole (I like naming things).

I’ll hopefully enjoy the Druid class as I can see them being a good hybrid class, and I like that about the Paladin. The class mix should be very complementary, as two of the three can heal, might be able to tank later, and we can all dish out some damage.

 Crowd control might be lacking a bit, but I hope we all play at the same time, so three people playing at the same time will make questing easy.

I ding’ed level 6, picked up First Aid, Leatherworking, and Skinning. I was thinking of Herbalism or Mining and might switch, but I don’t want to take something that the other guys might take, and then have to share the nodes. Cooking basic training was more money than I had, but I’m planning on getting Cooking and Fishing, as they’re great stuff to do while waiting.

What spec will I choose, which gear path, blah, blah, blah? Stop! 

Goals:

• Some good sized bags
• Get across to the Blood Elf area, so I can play with the guys.
• Either start a guild, or join one. Naming your guild is fun, and with us having 70s on the other side of the war, cash should be as simple as a trip to the neutral auction house.

I have to go now and attend the Alt-aholics meeting.

The Tankadin Unleashed – Part Three

Now that I’ve tanked a bit, I can see more of the balance you need in gear. +sp dam really helps me keep aggro, but +defense will make me immune to crits.

As a related segway, now I’m planning whats next for my toons. My goals are pretty much limited by time and gold; and to be honnest as gold is aquired over time, its really a question of what order to burn time on.

Ands thats what makes a good character in WoW, the time you spend. I’d agrue that any reasonable intelligent person who spends the time can get a nice character. This is why many people have 4x 70s, but others struggle for just one.

If I had 25,000 gold tomorrow it would accelerate my gear progression, but not fix the goals of getting certain drops and getting a good level of rep, which unlocks pattern and gear.

When I can, I’ll always run an instance. Most of the time this will generate money (unless we wipe a few times), and also get gear, practice, and rep.

As I run two characters, my shopping list is based upon the stuff that will have the most significant upgrade, but may not be the order I aquire them.

Here goes:

Paladin goals

1) Tankatronic Goggles (time – dependent on heroic badges or being lucky)
2) Darkmoon card – Vengeance (gold – just need the Six of Furies)
3) Epic mount (gold)
4) Kara / Heoric level gear (time)
5) Engineering to 375 (gold)
6) Gold
7) BG epic single-hander (time)

Warlock goals

1) Exalted with Violet Eye, etc (time)
2) Kara, Gruuls, and ZA gear (time and luck)
3) Enchanting to 375 (gold)
4) Gold
5) BG gear (time)

Make your own cartoons

Even though you might lack any drawing skill at all, and have little idea of layout – a great little tool is available for the budding cartoonists who wish to make an impression.

Stripgenerator just such a thing, and its fun to waste time on. All I need now is a good few jokes to tell – which the tool can’t help you with. Shame really I could use the help (see my junky strips below).

Here is better quality versions –  Angsty Tanks in Warcraft, and some other thoughts.

Casual vs. Hardcore. Softcore?

DPS We Deliver has a good summary of the casual vs hardcore discussion, and I couldn’t help but comment. Rather than me repeat it, go read. The point – you’ve got to love the type of player you are, and its not black and white.

Paladin hits 70 and a new ride

Wednesday night my paladin hit 70, which I’m pretty chuffed about. What made it extra sweet was flying straight away to get a flying mount. I had to save for a while to get the cash together for my warlock’s flying mount, and even longer for him to get his epic flyer.

This was not quite the same level of excitement, but certainly made the event a milestone in wow for me. White was the only real choice, as I don’t like the look of the black (unless its on a shadow priest), and the gold looks just like the normal gryphons, which is something I’m well sick of flying around on.

Screenshots

A few good screenies, to stretch time a bit – which is what I do when affected by lag or loading screens:

This is the result of a few Horde folks wandering into Iron Forge with evil intentions. Good show chaps, I think you deserve a small reward and a corpse run. I arrived very late by chance, and only saw the Warlock, Mage, and Rogue get killed but get the impression that a stack of Horde must have initially been involved – because the boddies were everywhere.

Also in this pic s a great character name: Ignore. Thats great, better than my suggested pvp team name of <Reagent Vendor>.

And this shot from a Shadow Labs run, where I tried to look threatening to all the monsters at level 68. A few laughed, but then saw the 4x 70s with me, and when all quiet, and dead.

Adelaide Festival is not powered by Bigpond

The company I work for, Fusion managed a huge range of the development, media, and communications for the Adelaide Bank Festival of Arts. It was the first year that one company has managed so much of the Festival, and this year has been already pretty successful and we expect the actual event to be as excellent as ever. Part of this project was the website design and development, which is a very significant tool for communicating to the Festival attendees, and the web project was highly challenging to finish in time for launch, and very satisfying to complete.

The Festival had always planned on using Bigpond as their webhost for all the reasons that many organisations host with them – they’re a great provider and can provide huge bandwith. However during the development phase it became obvious that the setup and details of the hosting were not going to be ready in time for the launch, so Fusion temporarily hosted the website while the Bigpond details were sussed out. No big deal, premium web hosting is one of the things that Fusion offers to clients, and it made sense for us to host and then switch over when Bigpond was ready. Up to this point I was happy.

Recently however Bigpond has asked the Festival to add banners on the homepage indicating that the website is “Powered by Bigpond”. This irks me, for a range of reasons; but most of all because its untrue!

The website is “powered” by Fusion’s CMS called Helium, and was successfully running through the launch period, till recently (2 months in total). It happens now to be finally hosted by Bigpond, but the underlying technology is still Helium, and its still Fusion’s CMS, and all our work.

The banner on the homepage has the affect of giving credit to Bigpond for the website; and implies that they created and now manage the site. Clearly wrong.

While I understand that there is an agreement in place for advertising, the fact that Bigpond seem to be taking credit for another companies work is suspect. Bigpond are a major sponsor, but so to is Fusion – if anything the banner should read: “Hosted by Bigpond, Powered by Helium”.

Please note: these are my views and not necessarily that of Fusion; and my humble opinion only.

Tank Gear

I left a comment and question with Jon from The Bronze Kettle, who writes a particularly good Paladin Tanking blog, and he gave the question a new post in full by way of answer.

 Kudos to the bronze kettle. This blogging thing is actually useful to get information too!

Welcome to Nagrand (population: you)

 

Nagrand is the new Stranglethorn Vale. Rolling hills, streams, trees, and plenty of mobs.

The zone is full of both solo and groups quests, has a huge area to cover, a very large range of beasties present, and you can get killed while resting (which is the theme in tBC).

Its also just like STV in that you need to quests there, but they can get very tedious. To top it off that layabout Nessingwary is there – asking you to prove your skills, so he can reward you. If this guys is such a great hunter, why not go kill the animals himself. What  a bloated windbag!

Hopefully I’ll be through Nagrand is a few days, and will only return later at 70 to grind up some rep.

There are group quests in each zone that are just a pain to get done – and Terrokar Forest and Nagrand seem to be well populated with these funky quests.

Highlights:

• Ring of Blood
• Halaa 18 slot bags
• Son of Gruul (who walks very quietly for a 1000 ft tall monster)

How to play a Warlock

A great post or how to be the 1337-est Warlock in the game. If you like highly satirical, sarcastic and nasty observations about Warlocks, and who doesn’t – read it here.

I found this via Needs More Rage, who is a prolific blog poster – and seems to have the right amount of sarcasm mixed with his dedication.