Finally the Lich King falls

Finally last night I got the Lich King kill on a guild in ICC10 last night. Very happy to have done it, and very pleased that it was on my Death Knight.

I’d happily be next LK

We went through a slow steady change in strategy, which tweaked the raid composition for the successful attempt to include a Death Knight and Warrior tank, instead of Paladin and Warrior combination. We also had some folks who were newer to the fight that others, and while I didn’t rate myself as having no knowledge of how to execute the kill; there is nothing like success to solidify the feeling that we were getting it right.

A big thanks to the guild Insidious, the raid team members who fought tooth and nail to get it done first, and particular thanks to our gm for having so many darn useful toons that made switching roles easy.

Also to our resident shadow priest for doing such a great job on the spirits in phase 3. Ram and Nesty – first round is on me; in fact I’d happily buy a drink for the entire guild.

This marks the completion for me on all the normal 10 man content in the game; and as such it feels exactly as I expected. There is a feeling of a hard victory won, a sense of completion, and also a sense that there needs to be some follow-up achievements to reinforce that it was no fluke. The pull to do it again is very strong, so strong if fact that I would consider working very hard to have this achievement on a few characters, or at least get some good items from the LK on any character. The two handed mace that drops is very healthy for either my DK’s roles, the either staff is a very nice feral or caster option, and if I get lucky and can bring my boomkin into a successful run, then that would be excellent too.

Like our raid leader and a few other players, I have more than one character that I play regularly, and have no fear of switching them around to suit the composition of the raid. Often that meant I was playing as a Druid-boomkin recently, although for some reason (probably due to subtle pressure from me) I was able to keep my Death Knight in the group in last night’s run. I think I play the DK better overall, but am getting ok at the boomkin now too. The difference in dps output is related more to gear and the suitability of the class mechanics to the fight. Boomers are darn solid when aoe is needed, but lack flexibility for fights with single target dps that needs to switch often. I found a similar problem when playing an affliction warlock in TBC years ago. The ghost/spirits in phase 3 of the lich king fight would be very easy for a boomkin to kill, particularly due to Starfall, and the fact I always keep the knockback on Typhoon.

Enough joyous rambling for now – happy killing everyone. Ahem…woot.

Kids Guild Names

It tickles the dry and sarcastic part of my brain to think that an experienced player might get beaten into a bloody pulp by a 9 year old. I know that the under 18s playerbase is present and can deliver some very reasonable quality gameplay, and was pondering guild names.

I guess the question needs to be asked – is it a good idea to indicate that the player may be a child in the first place? Especially with a guild-tag? Probably something for their legal guardians to ponder, like everything else they experience in and out of game.

Some names might be:

• <Primary School Raiders>, an alternate of Old School Raiders.
• <My dad can beat up your dad>, just because its funny and an argument I hope still occurs.
• <Have Parents will AFK>, playing on the popular guild on my server called Have Kids Will AFK.
• <Picked Last at Dodgeball>, because these are the nerds of the future; but they’re still playing fun stuff like dodgeball, not serious sports.
• <Baby Teeth FTW>,
• <Mum Packs My Lunch>; don’t ask. This has very innocent meanings and very odd ones.

Happy killing.

Step up, take a hit, love it

Last week of irregular 5 mans and 3/12 impromptu ICC10 runs were enough to give me enough Frost emblems to purchase some tanking upgrades. It takes a while to acquire 120 badges of Frost, so I am rather looking forward to the difference that it might make to both tanking characters.

Death Knight Tank set upgrades for Mortigen – which somehow only inch my overall ranking forward slightly, but looking at the items a GS of around 5400 seems reasonable to me fro ICC10 man (yes I know gs is no measure of skill, yadda blah blah, but it does work if used properly).

• Verdigris Chain Belt (60 frost emblems), which swaps this ilevel 264 monster belt with an old-ish ilevel 226. The change also dropped me a significant amount of hit, so I also switched to the Citadel Enforcer’s Claymore as the 2H of choice. Having two of those is a real advantage.
• Scourgelord Pauldrons (60 frost emblems)

Druid-Bear Tank set upgrades for Quendalon

– Ikfirs’s Sack of Wonder, by donation from the Guild (ya, thats a huge gift!)

With all the upgrades it is time to Step-Up, Get Hit, and darn Love it.

Then the team was ready to roll into ICC10 and kill the LK again, right as my partner sprang a last minute critical task (ie. RL > WoW… grumble). So offline I go while the guys go to get the Kingslayer title. Shit, damn, bloody-hell, snap, etc.

But I am happy that they did it, and some nice loot was handed out.

Then we went through RS and killed Halion. For me that was a first too, as getting into RS has been a lower priority that other fights, so overall darn happy.

Then over the past few nights we did some hard modes in Ulduar, which was a huge buzz. Most I had never attempted, and all of them still hold some challenge as they require attention to strategy and awareness, not gear.

What was interesting is that now that we over-gear the instance so much, the strategy is still totally dependent on having the correct instructions, but needs to be modified so that the team does not do too much damage at once. Kind of funny to be saying “stop dps” in a hard mode fight. We missed the Kologarn hard mode for this reason, but only by a smidge (damn it).

• Orbital Devastation
• Iron Dwarf, Medium Rare
• Nerf Engineering
• Heartbreaker
• I choose you Steelbreaker
• Crazy Cat Lady
• (and the Freya ones, all at once)

And Mimron-Firefighter kicked us around a lot, buy hey – its is darn worth it.

This week if the gods of MMO glory are kind to me, I’ll be a Kingslayer.

Happy killing.

grind, raid, grind, grind, wail,..grind, grind

There is a certain ratio between grinding, raiding and madness – a tipping point if you like – where everything starts to become surreal. I’m in that place now, staring outward from the game wondering where the game ends and what effect it is having on me.

Today’s post is another rant about the week that was, the pugs that were not, and the dreams of raids left uncleared. Another long–ish rant, skip if you’re not keen on random stuff. 🙂

Less WoW Account Security Flaws

So WoW’s account security got a shot in the arm today, with the forums requiring the authenticator.

Isn’t this more of a “sorry it took so long” situation? This was so bloody obvious that it surprises me that it has taken till now. Maybe there were technical reasons why this could not be done, and as a consumer I do not appreciate the work involved. Maybe.

But maybe it is also not unreasonable to expect this level of forethought when a feature like the authenticator is introduced, and expect a change to the systems we use within a good timeframe. Say less than two years after the press release.

I think the change was implemented to help slow down account hacking. If you think about it the forums are the perfect place to brute force attack a username/password combination; as its a web based delivery system that has to be tollerant to many different interfaces, and has been around a very long time. That means it was probably installed to be a basic solution, and became the juggernaut before anyone really saw what was happening.

The follow-up question is why now rather than later or much earlier; and only Activision-Blizzard could tell you that; the cynics will say its because hacks cost too much (meh), but it could also be that it will be a legitimate and substantial improvement to the forums systems, that has been planned for a while. If the changes for RealID were being planned, it stands to reason that this was part of it.

So yes, it is a very good move, and something that has been asked for a long time.

Update 8 Aug 2010:

Further to the account security, the WoW login screen now recommends some security measures, like letter and numbers – but still fails on the upper or lower case for those characters.