A bit of Lance

Holy Paladin in 4.0.1 - Part I

2010-10-15T11:42:00.005+03:00

I am one of those people that do not moan about their classes. Well not much. It seems this time around its kind of harder to do. Holy paladins are changed, but I am not sure yet if they are 'damaged'. Let’s review what I did do once I went 'live' and how that did work out...

Rebuilt the Gui to the state it was minus Satrina Buff Frames. I currently do not have anything informing me about procs and transient states appart from the default 'Power auras' and some Pitbull 4 notations. This defo needs tweaking...

Bought some new Glyphs as per Rohan's advice which I found quite useful.

Now the hard part...

I tweaked my Haste, Critical and Mastery to the following (unbuffed):

Haste 728 (quite low by some reports for 4.0.1, more than adequate for 3.X)
- Crit 39% (probably could do with less as crit is less usefull now)
- Master ~10% (this is new territory and current reports state that logs do not measure absorbsion - need to check)

With those options and the same talent trees Rohan suggested (31,0,5) I participated in a guild run in ICC, doing some heroic modes.

My reports are:

Paladin healing is, obviously, very different - it looks like we need some time to adjust to the new paradigm. Main changes went from a Pace-type of healing (FL repeatedly for minor damage, HS+Glyph for larger damage+splash, Beacon, shields etc) to a more synergetic style. Holy shock is our secondary resource "counter", Word of Glory is our mana-free-instant counter reset-er and we now have 3 core 'time' heals:

Divine Light (expensive, slow and very-high-output)
Holy Light (cheap, average-to-small output)
Flash of Light (expensive, ultra-fast, high-output)

Coupled with the aforementioned:

Holy shock (mana based, instant, procs Holy Power)
Word of Glory (Holy Power based, instant, procs acute pain to my fingers...)

We are much less 'capable' than other healers when it comes to healing meters. I am having trouble determining what our niche is with the current build and I hope this will change within the next few weeks and hopefully some correcting tweaks. Instant (therefore extremely situational) heals in small-damage scenarios (damage either was small or other healers very fast) feels kinda... "where do I fit in"... Last but not least, it is ESSENTIAL to built the UI in an informative way. It may take a couple of runs to adjust to "looking for the right things"

Overall...

I am having trouble detecting our niche
I need time to learn and put inside my head the timings
I need to gain some experience with the new synergies
We need to 'measure' Mastery - I am not sure there is a reliable method there. Kinda makes me feel like a Disc Priest
I need to make our UIs assist 'counting' and 'pacing'

And I most definitely need to do a few more runs with an alternative build to be able to have a better insight on how the new Holy Paladin paradigm feels. I am particularly intrigued by Eternal Glory and the possibility of chain-casting WoG (which if it does happen it will be eventually nerfed "to the ground"). All in all, I am sure we will be tweaked as things are noticeable inefficient and things look less favourable for the time being. But I could be wrong...

The Return of the Escaping Gnome

2010-10-01T15:58:00.001+03:00

Ok, I have to admit, the title is not very indicative of what I am going to say. In fact I am not sure what I am going to say. You see the last few weeks I've been thinking of writing up something in my blog, its been a while after all. But I always felt there is not much to say. As if the fun was drained out from both the game and the surrounding activities.

Yet the last few weeks Escape started assembling back from the holidays and begun raiding again. In order to do that we started recruiting once again, to fill in the gaps and form a raiders group around the veteran core. It a process, we have been accustomed to and it is probably an inherit feature of guilds with a more 'casual' approach like ours - although only our schedule is per se casual.

As with most guilds in our status the question was either push for more HMs or go straight for a Lich King kill to satisfy the popular demand. We kind of did both last week. This week, mostly because our seasoned drill Searg...er... raid leader and GM was not around we opted for a more "relaxed" approach. Get our usual HMs, do not try anything new and overall try to have fun.

Not sure what was the deal, I am not to fuzzed about the technicalities of WoW these days, but our DPS was excellent - think the Boomkin did work wonders there - and the raid was...dare I say it... fun! Even the voices of the raiders were sounding happy. Jokes flew over, our resident gnome got teased, the old-farts exchanged insults and as always I slacked trying to read a couple academic papers while raiding. Yes, I admit I do that during normal modes...

All in all it has been a while I had fun in a raid. But most importantly it brought as smile in my face as I saw Escape sound and healthy after another summer break. It seems Cataclysm - which I have been checking now and then through Beta - will include lots of opportunities to play around with guildmates and get some nice guild-rewards. This was enough to renew my interest to World of Warcraft for a while.

I feel I'll be updating this blog more often now...

On holidays, beta invitations and mental health

2010-08-17T23:46:00.006+03:00

It is amazing what a few days of holidays can do. Relax you, give you some time to think ahead, catch up. I have to admit there have been lots going through my head as I was packing my mountain-bike and trying to keep the dog calm on the back seat, the day my wife and me started our holiday.

Little I knew these days would make a huge difference in my recent approach to World of Warcraft…

The few months before this break found me skeptical of my WoW involvement and the ‘keenness’ of experiencing what we call ‘the end game’. I spent some time getting the Loremaster achievement, the achievement that means most to me. You see I love Warcaft lore and getting it kinda felt… appropriate. But apart from that there have not been many things I truly went after. Maybe the ICC drake for the 10-player heroics, but I am close to it and I will have my chances.

So as I logged before the holidays I felt I would not… hunger for WoW for a while.

It took me a week…

I got a beta invitation for Cataclysm and, although I have no means of downloading the client etc in my holidays, that kinda stirred something. I went to see screenshots of Cataclysm on MMO-Champion. The guild forum became busier and people started assembling for those 25mans– slowly but it is happening. Holiday season seems to reach its end.
And once again I realized how happy I am with my enthusiastic yet reasonable approach towards the game. I do like World of Warcraft, but not at the expense of my other hobbies and leisure. I like schedules, sign-ups, programs and goals. Planning ahead.

And taking some time to… catch my breath.

Holidays are indeed over. But it looks once again that WoW is not…

Catch you on the flipside…

Quick 'n' Dirty - VI

2010-02-17T15:35:00.002+02:00

Felt like writing but have nothing specific to talk about. Or at least anything controversial, interesting or indeed though provoking.

We have been steadily progressing though ICC, having killed Putricide and Valithria last week on 25-player and everything up to Sindragosa on 10-player. Notice the politically correct use of `player' instead of man. Mainly out of courtesy to our female players. Yes we got a few and I must admit they are just as good if not better as their male peers. But that is beside the point... if there is one in this post...

Where was I? Ah yes, Putricide, Valithria and our new target, Queen Lana'thel. I must admit I find these encounters, or all of ICC for that matter infinitely more refreshing than ToC encounters, or indeed Ulduar ones. I wont even discuss the difference in the feeling of immersion of ICC, a rich instance in terms of areas, compared to the blunt Trial arena. The encounters themselves seem to me like a very nice combination of different mechanics. Movement, situational awareness, raw output, phases - all seem to be nicely orchestrated and combined, making the encounters challenging in a more involving way than in the past. It still does not beat the feeling I had with Black Wing Lair but hey, different times.

And on top of all, the Gunship encounter. For me, this is one of the most enjoyable encounters, mainly because it reminds me of Pirates, Start Wars and Boba Fett (The Return of the Jedi rumble over Sarlacc's Pit). I mean, how cool is that? Jumping off the Alliance ship, with rockets on the back, landing in the midst (or something close) of battle. This has to be one of the most immersive fights!

All of the above would be even more enjoyable, if it was not for the stupid lag of the past weeks. Nevertheless, we had some nice raid days the past week, around challenging encounters and a constant smirk in my face as I look froward to meeting him again...

Lag, gear, raid fillers and poor performance

2010-02-10T10:35:00.007+02:00

Its been a while since I posted here and the reason was once again too much work in the way. I have been travelling the last week and I have been having chain meetings the week before. Being exhausted from the whole thing had a sever impact in my performance in guild raids. Granted, I have never been our guilds best healer but sometimes I feel I am just not outputting enough and I am not helping my guild.

So, I have been thinking about what needs to be done, insight to my performance etc. My conclusions? As with anything in Warcraft I sometimes I feel I got the right excuses. Other times that I am just fooling myself, or simply trying to find excuses for being poor. But in any case here is my brainstorm...

Real Life tiredness:

Its probably the most important reason but raiding after a tiresome day or a trip in the Middle East definitely has an impact on performance. I have noticed that after some time my responses are much slower, my anticipation of incoming damage is crap and I generally make poor judgements. What I am optimistic about though is when I fuck up, I know what happened. I just need to fix it. And start getting some sleep before raids. After all I DO raid to relax and get my mind of things so I might as well be more... prepared for it.

Gear:

I must admit I have slacked in getting proper gear. Things of course did not improve by missing a few raids or working on my own on my toon but I have also been reluctant in mix-and-matching new items as they come. In other words I have not been bold enough and thought a bit too much on what items I should have. However, I started tweaking things yesterday and I feel this can be solved easily.

And my favourite subject of all, the grand excuse as I say...

Tech healing vs Nuke healing:

(Check here for differentiation, I often call tech-healing anything that does not involve an HL nuke)

Yes, I know its being used a lot as an excuse but in my case its probably very applicable. I have been closely monitoring my performance on 10-mans and I must admit I have no problems there. In fact I have been doing just fine. I always felt 10-mans are more challenging, there is a lot of player-intervention due to the smaller number of raiders. Simply put, there is more room to heal, dps and make a difference. Now, being a Technical healer since I remember myself I am used to having a `pace' in my healing rotations that accommodates the 10-man damage patterns more than anything. In those scenarios you do not only need to output more, but in the right time. And you need to do that along with your healing peer or peers. That is - in my humble opinion - the ultimate challenge. And I have been feeling that on the healing front 10-mans are much better tuned than 25-men. Or - if its not the raid mechanics themselves - two or three healers of different class work better together than a mixture of 6,7 or 8 classes .

Now, monitoring our raids for the last few days I noticed that nuking paladins make a huge impact. Granted, in some scenarios they can not keep up with aoe-healing classes. But generally speaking the Holy-Light splash seems to work just fine. Only recently I had to adjust my healing to err on that side after some... insight, former guild-mates. Now, call me stubborn or a dinosaur. I just can not do it to the max. I feel its immensely more fun to try to squeeze that Flash of light in the right time. Unfortunately I have to keep up with times. And I have always been a `mainstream' person, hence I am reluctant in going for a proper Flash of Heal build (which needs some fine gear to work properly). I have been therefore constantly trying to pick up my healing output, while not loosing much on awareness and mobility. Although I have had some silly deaths the few recent weeks - 90% of which where because I either tried to do too much of took calculated risks which obviously were not calculated properly :-p - I was always proud of my awareness. But check point 1 and you will see how it all comes together...

At the end of the day though, I have been wondering what is the importance of that person at the bottom of the healing meter list - where I have been ending up quite a bit. Could the raid do without? Well. Probably. But just to give myself a pat on the back - excuses excuses... - it you take that person, the filler as I like to call it - you will most probably crumble. Cause healing is not only about how much. Its also about when. And if that person at the bottom of the list heals in a timed manner, the odd heal might make a difference in dying or being repeatedly healed by different healers. In other words, I'd like to believe I am the one that prevents death, while others just fill up your healthpoints bar...

Unfortunately, Silvermoon server is in a very bad state and lag is more abundant than bones in Icecrown. Lag is definitely not helping us a lot and trying to Tech-heal in such an environment is just impossible. So I end up trying to nuke, which seems not to work as I'd like it to be.

All of the above might be simply an excuse and the real reason of my poor performance is not being able to cut it any more. But, one thing I've got is being stubborn. Extremely stubborn. And I still have not said my last word...

On marriage, honeymoon and Gearscore

2010-01-12T12:02:00.002+02:00

After a brief break, involving a marriage, a honeymoon in NYC, lots of shopping, Rock of Ages, Nicks vs Bobcats, Nutcracker, Tavern on the Green, lots of walking around, Xmas, carols and a variety of greasy food I am back in the world of Azeroth and my not-so-frequent blogging. Catching up on Frost emblems and Ashen Verdict reputation naturally involved the odd PUG. And although the new LFG gimmick works quite nicely for my 5-man ventures I am still reluctant to join challenging runs of more than 5 toons.

Nonetheless, in an effort to overcome my fears, aided from missing all ICC guild raids this week, I was keeping an eye on the general chat. The debate was on Gearscore, the controversial add-on which you eventually (probably) end up hating. And it made me think...

Using the sum of a set of values and ending up with a scale is a fairly simple notion. Add-up all the item levels and there you go. You just compare sums between them, or categorise them.

Good? Well, not really. Bearing in mind having the best item level in our gear is not always the best option (considering class design, BiS items etc) the scale is not descriptive (or comparative) among classes. A GS of 5200 for a Paladin might effectively be worse than that of say 5165. Or 5200 for a DK is not the same as for a warrior for example. Moreover, its purely indicative of the gear a player has obtained. Which, granted, does say something about someone's experience/skill but can often conceal a lot. On the other hand, Blizz themselves use a similar approach in the achievements score. So as an approach is not necessarily flawed. People end up debating about GS, advocates claiming its a scale that does show effectively how far your toon has been in raiding, where as the opposition claims that it does not depict skill and it is a crude way of selecting people for a run.

I personally hate it for a number of reasons. One, its badly implemented (knocking the add-on, not the scaling method) due to the high lag it causes. Silvermoon EU is probably one of the laggiest servers around anyway. Using GS during raiding is a definitive nono and we often had trouble with it in the past.

Moreover, it definitely does not show how good/skilled one is but it does show how dependable one *might* be - kind of like minimising the risk by getting in a run someone who at least seems to have gone the extra mile. I personally still consider the Armoury as a whole to be more descriptive as its kind of like your toons Curriculum Vitae. Obviously using the Armoury in order to assemble a PUG is kind of an overkill but in my eyes its the only way to maximise the probability of ending up with a decent raid. And that is what handed us a descent run (5/12 and almost 6/12 10-player ICC) yesterday. Not bad for a PUG.

Last but not least, GS disrupts the flow of raiding within the community. The latter being because everyone and their mother is asking for a GS of 5xxx while their GS is crap. Only to be 'carried' on someone's back and get loot. People that have been away from the game for various reasons can not catch up, unless something gives. Bearing in mind people ask both GS and achievements in order to accept one in a run catching-up can be very frustrating.

To sum things up, I am now a married man, the honeymoon was lots of fun, Rock of Ages is wicked, Nicks won, Tavern on the Green was marvellous but stopped serving till God knows when, Xmas is over, greasy food out of the system and GearScore sucks.

Arthas & Co. will have to wait

2009-12-08T14:50:00.002+02:00

So here we are... Patch 3.3 imminent, wedding imminent and I am ready to go all guns blazing. I hope I do not confuse the church with Icecrown and yell to the priest (the real one...) 'die Arthas'!!!

Oh well, I bet you can imagine how I feel now. My guild is about to venture to Icecrown, the very instance I waited for years. They are ready to unleash our newly-replenished, mighty, raiding-team to fight the Scourge and get epic and legendary loot. Ready to crunch our way to the ranking ladder once again. Eager to slay all those that oppose us and forcefully immerse themselves to the ending of the most popular part of the Warcraft lore. Well, as much of the lore as they will see in a couple of weeks, anyway...

Nevertheless, I wont be around. Not for a while at least. Although, I will have a brief chance to see the new instances in the next couple of days till the wedding. Well, that is if my wife-to-be allows me to do so... You know how women are...

I am happy because the guild has seemingly recovered from a bad period when it comes to raiding. But we kept our cool and our composure and we are back again with what appears like a capable roster. And we will continue to strengthen more. And if all goes as planned, get some nice ranking kills. I will be away for two weeks and I am confident my guildmates will carve their way into Icecrown.

On the other hand I am about to enter a new territory in my real life. That of a married man. Whatever than means. Sounds like a role-playing thing if you ask me. Without the dragons. Well, the non-hostile ones :p. And epic rings. I am not sure what lies ahead. Only thing I know is that me, my wife and our dog are about to enter a new era. And I feel good about that too.

So, just as Escape will unleash hell to Icecrown, we will visit NYC for our honeymoon and the ultimate urban fix.

Arthas will have to wait till we get back. See ya in a couple of weeks.

Effectiveness VS Efficency

2009-11-24T14:52:00.003+02:00

Preamble

Effectiveness is doing the right things. Efficiency is doing things right.

What I am often skeptical about is what `doing' means. Merely 'doing' or actually achieving what you initially set out to do? Cause, if your goals are not achieved... you are definitively not effective, no matter how efficient you tried to be. But if you were effective, where you as efficient as you could be?. So for the sake of argument...

Effectiveness is achieving your goal doing the right things. Efficiency is achieving your goal by doing things right.

With my definition, being rather close to the Greek translation of the word, efficiency implies effectiveness. Nonetheless, effectiveness does not necessarily imply efficiency.

I have started writing a post, a few minutes ago, on guild policies and ethics. Somewhere in the middle of my rumbling I got stuck, re-thinking of what exactly I am trying to put across. You see, I am a fan of efficiency. I like things done in a clear, defined and well documented way. The latter part in particular is essential. Guild ethics and rules do not only have to be clearly defined, they need to be conveyed, particularly by the guild members actions. The obsession with efficiency is probably due to my academic and engineering background, as I do not merely want to make things work, I want to make them work with minimal cost, effort and time.And yes, I know everybody wants that but... bear with me :p

I often see that this efficiency is not desired by those around me. People have different needs and the extend one goes to achieve his or her goals varies. People like to go from A to B in circles, or zig-zag, others in a straight line. People walk, fly, crawl. That variety is definitely part of what makes us human. But it is also the reason we rely on deterministic machines to do a great many things in life. Or the reason anything advanced is often based on standards. Because merely being effective is ok. But being efficient in modern time saves money, time and... keeps the blood pressure down.

World of Warcraft is essentially the same. Its a large shared virtual environment, even larger bearing in mind the community of players as a whole and not specifically that of a class/server/guild or any sub-grouping available. People bring their personalities in-game and although the set of actions that one can perform is far less than that of real life, many observations from our real world apply in Azeroth as well. People in WoW are every bit as ineffective, or far more frequently inefficient as in real life.

Take a guild for example. Whats its purpose? Mainly collaboration. People come together, just as real life associations, to achieve efficiency. Nowadays, more than ever in WoW, one can be merely effective in-game by joining a pug, doing the same instances that everybody else does, albeit in normal modes or a tad later than others. There is of course a group of players that come together to do more things faster, with less resources spent (time is the key here) and with greater ease (that blood pressure mentioned above). Therefore do things with efficiency. And there is a group of players ignorant to the above but we leave those for the wolves to eat...

However, people often confuse those terms and start bending guild rules, become less vigilant in performing their best or completely disregard anything that augments collaboration. They initially are happy with merely being effective and gradually become self-absorbed, self-seeking and self-serving. Shattering any notion of effectiveness, let alone efficiency.

I can not help wondering, why these people stay in a guild. Or even worse, why a guild puts up with them. I appreciate they may have a social value. However, in terms of the guilds' purpose not only they do not add any value but they also affect negatively their peers. Being put aside as reserves is the polite way of dealing with them. I bet you know the non-polite (high)way.

The solution of course to this issue is efficiency. Yes, the very same notion one tries to achieve, is the basis of achieving them. Efficiency in defining and applying guild rules and ethics. Excruciatingly militaristic efficiency, even for the casual-est of casual guilds. Because above all, a guild must preserve its self. It must cater even for the smallest things with great effort, or it will become something else entirely. A collection of inefficient individuals, branded together with no apparent goal. And there is no Escape from that...

Raiding, Marriage and tales from the crypt

2009-11-19T15:57:00.001+02:00

I'll tell you one thing's for sure. Preparing for a wedding is like preparing for a raid. One, you need the proper gear. Two, you need consumables. Three, you got to do some reading beforehand. Four, you assemble a group and assign roles. Five, you wear rings...epic ones...and halos. And you videotape it and take screenshots for you to remember it. And people whisper...and behind your back. And you send invites! And people kinda sign-up and come over and eat consumables. And there are beasts and formidable creatures!! You know, ugly aunts and good looking females. And at the end of the day you are - hopefully - left with some extra gold and some loot. God dammit, getting married is like going into a fucking raid!!

I am sure you can appreciate that preparations are taking quite a bit of time and especialy hinder my blogging. But I have never been a very frequent blogger. Nonetheless... There is often something to write about. The wedding is one part. The waiting is the other...

Escape, has proven numerous times its very resilient. We had ups and downs, ins and outs. And we are kinda down these days. Many of our raiders are away for real life reasons. Some got tired of - what I consider the worst instance I have ever seen - ToC. Same place, no variety. Granted, the challenge is there but as far as I am concerned the scenery goes a long way. So we ended up loosing quite a few raid nights due to that. And we are not alone it seems...

Many guilds suffer from what I like to call a 'pre-patch trauma'. People for all sorts of reasons find excuses to stay out of the game. Contrary to after-patch times when people make time to be in-game and use excuses `out there', in the real world. I appreciate many people have ultra-valid real life reasons to stay out. But you can not change my view, we do make time to be in-game when we want. And at this time people do not want to be in-game. Simple as that.

Inevitably that leads people of no emotional attachment - or a weak one for that matter - to their guild to move to the... `upper echelons' of the guild hierarchy within a server. Its not the guilds that attract those raiders, that continue to raid no matter what. Its the raiders themselves that keep gathering up and forming such guilds.

The rest of us, those that have some attachments to the guild they are into await patiently for others to return. Hoping that when the time comes we will grab our axes and yell our battlecries.

I just hope this will take place before my wedding, otherwise I will miss a couple of weeks of the fun!

Quick 'n' Dirty - V

2009-11-04T12:21:00.006+02:00

Its been a while since I updated my blog, once again being swamped with work and preparations for my wedding. Particularly the latter needs a bit of work :p. We are also planning slowly our Honeymoon on New York City! Exciting times! I think we are both much more thrilled for the trip than the wedding itself. But hey, we are in this together :p

Nonetheless, I did spent some time in WoW the last couple of weeks. Escape managed to slay Northrend Beasts in heroic mode and now we set our sites on the next hard-mode. Otherwise I spent some time to set up an inscription busyness to complement my herbalist/alchemist DK, manly created to supply Lance with consumables. The scribe is on my GFs account and his sole purpose is to put in the AH the leftovers of the DK. And its been doing well, I have more or less managed to level up inscription to 330 with minimal expenses, funding myself from AH sales.

I've got myself a copy of Windows 7. Ok, either Win7 are a massive improvement to Vista or my Vista install was pretty knackered. I am seeing an increase in FPS of over 300% in areas like Icecrown with full settings. I am pretty sure Win7 are NOT supposed to be that good (or better) and the never-underestimated power of a clean install worked like a dream. But hey, can't complain :p.

My dear friend Thoryel called me one day and informed me about Torchlight. Sounds and looks very promising and I am sure I will put my hands to it when time allows. I am also excited about patch 3.3 lore-wise but I wont even begin to comment on the Tier10 robes and the recent LoH Forbearance `band-aid'. I will be patient to comment on the 'final' version of things.

/Lance

Modern day heroes and growing older

2009-10-19T16:15:00.008+03:00

Those of you, those precious few, that read my blog most probably have realised I am a wow lore aficionado. With a tiny obsession with Arthas. Granted, I am not as knowledgeable or imaginative as others, like Lorecrafted, but I am into it enough to provide myself a role-playing background to my involvement with the game.

World of Warcraft, is definitely not much of a role-players game. Or at least I do not feel like it is. Here we are in an epic turmoil, ready for the battle of our lives (or...this patch anyway), among heroes and villains of the past, yielding powerful artefacts... and we talk about talent specs, encounter logs, recruitment applications and various other mundane aspects using a language known as... leet.

Not very epic, I know. Add to that the ever-present teenagers that ruin the game of us mature (sic!), 'academic' players with their naive approach to the game (the correct vernacular term being "they act as noobs")... well the feeling of immersion goes out of the window...

Buuut...

We are still here, playing, filtering the people we hang out with on-line, trying to carve our ways into this colourful shared virtual environment. Why? Case we escape from our realities more often than not. Because after we stop thinking how moronic this 13year-old-tank-that-went-afk-to-have-lunch-cause-his-mother-yelled-at-him is, we start adoring our toons, admiring how heroic they look as they fly through the forests of Grizzly Hills, towards Icecrown, ready to do their part for peace, victory, judgement and honour.

Our toons have become our modern day heroes. No more Spiderman, Batman, James Bond or whatever we thought was cool when we were young. Or toons our our own personal heroes. Things are not 'awesome' any more... They are 'imba'...

P.S. And yes, it gets worse as we grow older... We have a saying in Ancient Greek... Τίμα το γήρας, ού γάρ έρχεται μόνον, meaning... fear old age, for it never comes alone (but along with its nasty side effects)...

It's begun...

2009-10-09T12:25:00.004+03:00

This post is essentialy continuation of the previous one. Between them I was fortunate to read Arthas: Rise of the Lich King by C. Golden, going through the most important aspects of Arthas' personality. And that spinned-off this post, essentially completing the previous one... Forgive the repetitive pattern here, its here for a reason.

It's begun...

These are the words that start the Wrath of the Lich King era. These are also the words that end Arthas: Rise of the Lich King by C. Golden. Fitting. The book presents the life of Arthas from his 9th year, where he meets Varian, admires Terenas and begins his training With Uther, the Lightbringer and Muradin. It goes all the way to the moment where the death Knight Arthas lifts the helm of Ner'zhul's armor and wears it, fusing himself with the entity of the Lich King. However...

Two parts of the book, the very first and the very last present us that internal battle between what Arthas was, what he was temporarily become and what he will be. To put a few words to it... there is no more Arthas. There is no more Ner'zhul. Just the Lich King...

In-game we encounter numerous times Matthias Lehner, allegedly the avatar of Arthas' youth. I am afraid this is merely a vessel for us, to find in-game what happen to the last prince of Lordaeron. Tirion even tries to make sure there is no bit of him left by examining what appears to be Arthas' stored heart after a covert mission we participate into.

Nope, no happy ends here.

We are about to unleash a fierce attack to Icecrown Citadel. Jaina, once his great love, Sylvannas, product of one of his most gruesome acts, Varian, reminecent of his happy youth, High Lord Saurfang, victim of his latest acts and Darion, once his servant, now his enemy... are about to assist us bringing him down.

I am not sure how each one approaches this encounter. For me, being such a fan of the Plaguelands, of Scholomance and Stratholme, of the Ashbringer and the Silver Hand, Arthas is the ultimate villain. Ultimate by the fact that he is so complex. From the moment he sees his horse, Invincible, being born, to the very moment where in his dreams he trusts Frostmourne to the young boy Arthas and the old Ner'Zul... Arthas is a collection of emotions. Great expectations, commitment, love, courage, strength, eagerness, betrayal, happiness, despair, desire, resolve, indifference, hatred, vengeance...

I find it sad that many will enter Icecrown Citadel for the next tier of loot. For the next hardcore challenge. I find it sad that many people are unaware of the story of Arthas. That many have not played Frozen Throne, even just to see who he is. Because ultimately Arthas, with his emotional complexity is much more real than many characters of Azeroth.

And for that, he deserves juctice...

Icecrown attack, imminent

2009-10-06T16:08:00.004+03:00

Its been a while since I posted, simply because there has not been much progress on my part in game. I completed What a Long, Strange Trip it's been, got my violet drake, got a few upgrades, some off the AH and some from looting. But its been quiet, with no new kills. We are kinda stuck on Northrend Beasts in hard mode, not aided much from a rather unstable roster due to various in-game and real life reasons. Nonetheless, we have been there before and we are going back with a vengeance this week as well.

Tiny spoilers below...

But the big news are on another front. Patch 3.3, or at least its first version, is on the PTR. Blizzard is introducing a very interesting collection of 5-man challenges. New quest lines, historical weapons, lore figures add to the mix of what appears to be an involving adventure in 5-man instances. And its been a while since we had one of those.

Icecrown Citadel starts with a 5-player dungeon, consisting of three wings in the citadel's foundation. Players will assist Jaina Proudmoore (Alliance) and Sylvanas Windrunner (Horde) in infiltrating, commando style and through the back-door, the citadel, while the Lich King focuses on the attack of the Argent Crusade and the Ebon Blade. Their purpose, simple. To weaken the Citadel's defences. Kind of like a Dirty Dozen type of thing, only with... well, like half the dirtbags. Interestingly, we have to complete one wing to get to the other. Adds flavour, I can't complain. Normal and Hardmodes are available with each wing being on a separate lockout timer. Rewards for those interested will probably be between 219-232 item level.

The Forge of Souls, Pit of Saron and Halls of Reflection are the three wings, where we will meet some... interesting foes. The reports say we will encounter... Frostmourne, as we enter what appears to be the Lich King's private chambers. Falric and Marwyn, captains of Arthas Menethil in the past, now commanders of the Lich King, as well as the true prince of darkness...no wait, that is Ozzy... I mean the Lich King, the true prince of Patch 3.3, await for us.

Waaait a second... If we encounter the Lich King in a 5-man... who do we encounter in the Icecrown Citadel raid? And, while we fight him... what happens to Jana and Sylvanas?

I am not sure what will happen, not I have been monitoring the reports, the blogs and the general information sources. All I know is that we are weeks before what I consider the pinnacle of the lore already laid down. The rest that will follow are somewhat new things. Since Arthas became what he is now, the epitome of a fallen not-so-lawful 'good' person (kind of like Anakin becoming Darth Vader), to the chaotic evil being he is, I knew he would die, one what or the other from out blade. I can even say I have been playing in WoTLK for that very thing. To finally meet and kill that `old friend'. Redemption never looked plausible for me. Of course I may be mistaken, but I think the probability is pretty slim...

For me this encounter will be the end of a wonderful journey, along the path of life of Arthas Menethil, ever since I met him Frozen Throne. What is to follow when he is dead? Well, dunno, he is already dead in a sense :p. All I know is that once he is out of the way, there will be lots of new villains to get hooked upon. And I plan to do so...

Upgrades and Murlocs

2009-09-25T15:21:00.003+03:00

So, amidst turmoil and introspection on my performance on recent raids, I got a few thingies that brought a smile on my head, whereas I am planning a few more.

I am now a happy owner of Grunty, the Murloc Marine marine... Yes, that is two 'marines' for achieving The Marine Marine achievement.... whatever. This is a funny pet. We went to get some Elementum ores for a guildmate's Thunderfury yesterday after out ToC tries. It was kinda late in Greece, around 01:00. My girlfriend was sleeping, dog was sleeping and even vent was boringly quiet. I think that is why I had left the speaker volume kinda high, trying to listen to my guildies... Suddenly....

...the murloc aims... AND STARTS SHOOTING... RATATATATATA!!!
(Check a vid here)

Ok, one of these days I am going to get a heart-attack from 'improper use of in-game sound mechanics...'.

Apart from Grunty, I got 3/5ths of the 245lvl Tyralyon set and an item from the 232 set. Things start to balance out on the gear front as I am trying to `up' my mana pool a bit more. ToC hard mode was not really forgiving for us this week, still a lot of things to tweak. But I think we can tackle the Northend Beasts soon.

Brewfest is the last achievements group towards What a Long, Strange Trip it's been - (notice the Grateful Dead reference there). At least I'll get my hands on a proto-drake, although I have been raiding for ages I still have not gotten my hands on any. Slacker... Not even the green one as I have been quite unlucky with luck-based rewards in WoW. Hopefuly, I'll find the time to do at least those Ulduar 10man hard modes.

Last but not least, its time to convert some accumulated badges to gems, both for sale and future upgrades. And start planning for non-armor items...

Guts 'n' balls... revisited

2009-09-22T16:02:00.002+03:00

I often wonder what makes elite players truly elite. By elite I do not mean the wannabes of every server but the truly top ones. What makes them so efficient at what they do? Often people simply reply... time. Ok, time does indeed play a huge role in our involvement with the game. The amount of time we put into the game is often proportional to what we achieve. Or the other way around, but you do get the picture. But that is often an aspect of an individual, not the guild as a whole. So... what makes elite guilds tick? Fear of the RL? Some common jedi-like focus on the game? Magic? Money?

I'd like to think that its co-operation. World of Warcraft is by no means complex. Mathematics can be complex. Quantum mechanics, nanotechnology, augmented reality and space travel. These are complex. Scripted, repetitive encounters are not complex. What IS complex though, to some extent, is how you approach those encounters. Take a raid for example...

You got 25 individuals. One of them, at least, is busy up to his neck with raid leading. Possibly others with leading subgroups, like healers etc. The rest try to do a set task and do it as best as possible. Most of the times. When they do not slack that is. When the raid succeds all is well. But what happens when they fail?

One of the most important aspects of World of warcraft is that its a multi-player game. Not a solo game. Therefore, its safe to assume that teamwork does indeed play an important role. I often used to refer in the past to Manslow's pyramid of needs - depicted below:

Source: University of Tasmania (!)

I beleive that the three top layers can be extrapolated to the WoW environment through the notion of guilds. All of the features depicted in the above diagram can be met within a guild. Teamwork - expressed above in the Social tier but with hints to Ego and Self-Actualization - is an important element of a guild. Since most encounters require certain subgroups to micro-manage, its essential that those groups work together consistently to achieve their goals. Moreover, the members of these groups must maintain a good level of communication in order to rectify errors, achieve stability and hopefuly - and ultimately - improve performance.

Now, enough with the posh talk. Wow players must play together. They need to communicate, speak their mind in a polite way. There is absolutely no value in not expressing an opinion when you want to concider yourself a raider. However, this communication needs to follow some simple ethics. I remember when I filled in my application form in Escape a year and a few months ago there was one question. "What is your abuse tolerance level". Well, most of us said extreme. Quite rightfuly I might add. But at the end of the day I often thought that this tolerance is towards constructive critisism. One that is expressed directly from the person voicing an opinion towards the individual concerned. I expect my fellow raiders to come to me and offer their suggestions, critisim and ideas personaly. Thats when that question starts to mean something. When I will sit down and talk with them, reply to their suggestions. Otherwise, if they do not speak their minds I will not know of their opinion. And - I am not perfect by far - I may make a mistake. I must admit - and I am thangfull for it - that certain people do actualy come forth and speak their mind to me.

Raiding is more often than not about reviewing what you did. About being aware of your choices and making decisions. Its about communicating those decisions, tactics and concerns. When a guild does not communicate as it should, when people keep opinions for themselves - or use messengers to relay them... - the guild stops being that very thing, a guild. It becomes a pug, full of indifferent individuals who would rather talk with a sub-group of players with absolutely no benefit for the group, instead of trying to help out the group.

I am fortunate enough that I have a fellow paladin playing with me that he does have the balls to come and talk tactics and opinions with me. We recently had a talk, trying to gauge certain aspects of the encounters we are currently working at. And we adapt. This is teamwork after all...

Guts 'n' balls boys and girls. Come forward and have your say. I assure you, you will surprised from my answer (and this is not by any means a threat...)

Guts 'n' Balls

2009-09-17T14:37:00.000+03:00

Ever though you got so many to say, so many things to curse for but you feel you must not do so? For `the greater good'?

Well, that is the spot I am into. Once again this week. A friend told me, when this game stops being fun its time to call it quits. Not sure if that time has come yet, I guess I have faith in some people and hope to see a change of things. So, I will pretend everything is fine and speak bout a subject in a `politically correct' manner, - whereas I would ideally like to be very non-PC...

I must admit, one of the hardest things in WoW is not to be included in your guild's raids. Even if they are just the non-scheduled ones. Granted, I have been fortunate enough to be a regular in the 25mans but 10mans are a often different story. And all that got me thinking of how tricky is for everyone, organisers and participants of such raids, to balance things out.

From the organisers point of view, there are two paths to follow. One is the `progressive' path where people pursue achievements, prestigious kills etc. I appreciate that its definitely better to go with a stable set-up to those encounters as the group gets more efficient with playing together for extended periods. Such raids offer good publicity to a guild when said progress is achieved. From the participants point of view they need to be punctual, follow the usually `internal' schedule (by internal I mean its often organised from raid to raid and not with the assistance of a raid subscription tool), come prepared to the max and do their best.

On the other hand, we have what I like to call `community' raids. Raids which offer a basic clear-out of instances or in the best case scenario some hard-modes AFTER having completed a basic set of goals. Their purpose is twofold. One is to mix and match the raid group and give the chance to more people to raid. Equally important - particularly with the current ToC badges - is the collection of a basic number of tokens for gear upgrades which ultimately lead to better gear for all guild functions. Unfortunately, such raids often have people that are either indifferent to hard modes or have been left out from `progressive' raids. Either way, such groups are trickier in achieving anything but normal clear-outs. Not impossible though, just trickier.

Naturally, those two groups often merge together, the progress raid being the predominant one. People have to adjust to this mentality, play their best even if in theory they come from the `casuals' pool. Note here that by casuals I do not mean in any extent less capable. I mean those that are not as often on-line as others. Because - in principle - if those players are much worse than their peers skill-wise, then they should not be in the guild in the first place.

Obviously, the problem is which path to take and how far you can merge these two groups. That is, if you can not afford two raids, one in the fast lane and one for the rest. To wrap it up, the advantages of those two categories are the following:

Progressive Raids

Pros

Sought Achievements ontained
Good guild PR when those achievments are obtained
The joy of hard-modes challenge
Progress, progress, progress
Better gear for some

Cons

Often, a seperation of a guild to `elite' and lesser groups occurs
High concentration of gear to specific individuals - the rest get to be in guild functions in lesser gear compared to their 'elite' counterparts
People of a casual raiding schedule can't follow - (although are often present when these raids take place...)
Guild fragmentation and morale issues

Community Raids

Pros

More people participate
Gear is spread more evenly accross the available player pool, thus augmenting the whole groups capabilities (or potential)
More people get the chance to participate in 10man content - and if the raid is good, get to complete hard modes
Badges of more = more upgrades = better gear for more

Cons

Rarely achieve well-sought progress
Players often take their outcome for granted and underperform
(Aledgedly) better players often disregard them for greater chalenges
(Aledgedly) better players are unhappy with the non-take-no-prisoners attitude of the raids

I must admit that I am not sure which path I would follow. It is basically the very same reason why I stopped being a GM/officer etc. So that I wont have to decide such things. I have the utmost respect for those that take the effort to organise either of those types of raid. And to a great extent respect their choices.

But people suddenly loose that respect when they do not abide themselves to a few basic rules. Do not disregard people that have been with ya for a large period of time, do not `ninja' their raid IDs. Not when they are on-line at that time. At least have the courtesy to ASK them before you go and invite your out-of-the-guild buddies. Have the guts 'n' balls to tell people when you want to raid with one of your buddies, don't leave them waiting. Do not go behind their back...

Not when I respect you and the guild as much as I do...

Of course I might be exaggerating a bit. After all these raids are not a primary guild function and could be treated simply as someone else's raid. He or she leads, its their raid, their choice who they take and their choice who to talk to. Their rules, their game.

Lancebit the Paly and Lance the Dog

2009-09-09T10:07:00.003+03:00

This week I got some real-life news...

A few days ago while returning home from an errand I was followed by a puppy. The place where I live is full of houses with fairly big gardens where most dog owners have their dogs running loose, pooping all over the place. Our municipality even has a playground for dogs, something not often encountered in hardcore-urban Athens. I expected the dog to belong to someone but nobody ever asked for it and there were no labels or a microchip on him.

So... the puppy followed my up to my parents house and back. He seemed relaxed, coping with my walking pace. As I walked back home, my girlfriend was on the garden, tiding up. When she saw the puppy she became ecstatic, making funny joyful noises. One thing lead to an other and now the puppy is under our protection for the last week or so. We took him to the Vet, did all the necessary check-ups, got some instructions and we are training him (and ourselves I might add...). And now Lancebit and Erlune have a real pet...

His name? Well, Lance ofc...

Lance 'in da house'

As for WoW? We cleared ToC10 and ToC25, starting on hard-modes, I got two 245level set items and some other assorted upgrades, got epic gems and planning further upgrades. I also upgraded my PvP gear and hoping to a rewarding Arena season. Arf!

A deafening silence...

2009-09-03T14:11:00.005+03:00

Its been while since I wrote anything in the blog. I can not help thinking that I often have so much things to say but for various reasons I do not. I used to be a GM in my previous guild, writing huge walls of text with directions for my officers but at some point I lost the plot, they did as well and we all followed separate paths.

Nonetheless, not being an officer - therefore someone who is 'entitled' to speak about certain affairs - sometimes stops me from saying those things I want to say. Other times I am thinking of the consequences of what I will say, which bearing in mind my understanding of social norms in the game, can be devastating for my image and... my peace. Besides, its not my place any more to give instructions and I am immensely happy of not having that `burden'.

I am really sorry for not updating this blog more frequently but its getting really hard some times to keep my cool and enthusiasm for the game. Hard not to cry out a hurricane of feelings, observations and remarks. People do not like it when someone `knocks' their reality, just as much as I do not. I just hope that soon, I wont have to feel that way and people will see what is wrong and sort it out. Its so easy and apparent...that it is hidden like the best kept secret in the world...

We visited Koralon on 10-man yesterday, cleared ToC and then attempted the hard modes. Bearing in mind our set-up was not the best possible since we spread people over two raids and used alts and off-specs to fill in blanks I must say I am not surprised we did not get that far. I know the group that in theory had more `main' specs and a tad better composition got at least the first two beasts by the time I logged off.

The heroic modes do indeed seem quite challenging but I must admit I am sceptical on who long this will last. 245 level gear are fairly easy to grab, are quite an improvement compared to out Ulduar bits and I think the heroic modes will soon be conquered. Still, I never considered anything but the hard modes as a challenge and its a good one.

Apparently paid transfers are coming soon (they are available it seems in the US) and I am thinking of transferring my `pet' rogue who is decked in heirlooms to a horde side and when Cataclysm comes, level a goblin rogue for the kicks of it. Anyone know if heirlooms transfer with a toon when you do a realm/faction change?

Last but not least I began writing Lance's story. I am not gonna go into details but I want to use it as an alibi for certain changes I am planing for him.

Till then, I'll keep my mouth shut and my hammer next to me...

It's changing out there. There's a cataclysm coming...

2009-08-24T12:19:00.003+03:00

It been a while since I posted as I was on a much needed holiday. I spent some time off work, along with my wife-to-be, by the seaside of southern Greece. I am sure those few of you that read my blog can excuse my absence. Yet, when I returned I was patient enough (or lazy enough) not to post anything as I expected this year's Blizzcon. My reasons where simple...

I met the Warcraft universe in WCIII. Naturaly, for a while I though Arthas was the ultimate Warcraft villan - up to the point I started catching up on Warcraft lore. Nonetheless, although there are more powerfull beings in this universe than Arthas, I always though an encounter with him would be the pinacle of my WoW life. Naturaly, when WotLK was announced I was sceptical. How will Blizzard top this? How will they come up with something with a punch that would keep us hooked, in a good way, with their next expansion?

At the time I believed it would be very hard and that the next expansion would not make such an impact.

And it seems I was wrong, very wrong...

Cataclysm seems to bring back the gloomy, dark environments even more than WotLK does. Deathwing is back and I must admit the icon of the dark dragon bursting with flame returning to Azeroth looks pretty daunting. The master of deception is back. And hopefuly Turalyon and Alleria will return to continue his hunt...

Nonetheless, there are two aspects of Cataclysm that add another dimension to the game. One is the revamp of the old world. Granted, some will be mad that the path to memory lane is going to be shattered. But I am one of those that feel that 'Vanilla' is sort of outdated in terms of environment detail and quality and the only thing that keeps me returning is those memories. But those will always be there. I want the feeling of immersion in the game to increase. And the change in the old world makes the environment feel alive. Gone will be the static areas, the never changing places. Deathwing comes, shatters the world and everything changes. As we see our real world change from the enviromental disaster our own 'existance' causes... As we see our towns and cities change. The environment becomes more organic - even if that is semi-permanent. Naturaly, the interest of going back to those places and 'mourn' for the disasters adds more depth to the visual. We are going to appreciate areas that were forgoten, simply because we will loose them. And that has impact. Thats proper immersion.

The other aspect I am sure I will enjoy a lot is Guild Talent trees and overal Guild related rewards. I always felt the concenpt of the guild in wow was left a bit 'uncultivated'. I always felt the devs could bring depth to the function of the guild. They started with Guild Banks. Now with Guild Talents trees (however they implement this). Now, you can have a definitive contribution to your guild apart from participating in raids and general farming and housekeeping. You can now work for the team. Your team becomes more organic itself.

Couple that with some nice lore involving Gilneas, maybe the guardians of Tirisfal, the tension between Horde and Alliance growing bigger, underwater worlds, flying all over... oh this is gonna be fun. The only thing that I regret is not being able to make a goblin rogue in my guild (we're alliance, doh!)... they look like they are gonna be the scum of scums! And how good that can be!

I bet someone will roll a Goblin...

Lance, Daiske and a hot mid-summer's dream

2009-07-27T15:25:00.005+03:00

Its been quite a few days since I blogged, manly because I was up to my neck - once again - with work. But... I also tried a little wow experiment. After 4 years (I am not sure how long its been, I feel I have been referring to those `4 years' for ages) I managed to put myself in a mental state to level an alt. Granted, its a death knight and it feels like I am cheating :p. However, bearing in mind the whole `slackness' of the summer-time, I felt its a good opportunity to level up Daiske, my human (yes I can be really boring..) death knight. And level up alchemy on the side, to have one more useful profession available to me, as Lance is a miner and an engineer (as is yours truly... the engineer part, not the miner...).

I must admit that death knights are fun to play and sure as hell are a quick level-up. I am half-way to 68 and my plan is to hit Borean Tundra once I become 68. Contrary to Lance's path, Daiske will enter Northrend in BT and maybe, just maybe go to Howling Fjord once I get a couple of levels. Truth be told, the whole experiment is primarily done for the herbs and the flasks. That is why I am eager to enter Northrend. On the other hand, I must admit that gearing up in a relaxed manner a character, often checking the Auction House, drooling over gear I have never looked at and feeling that itchy hand caressing my wallet is... refreshing (ok ok, I am just trying to sound poetic, don't laugh). Yes, levelling Daiske brought some nice memories of the past, when I was levelling Lance to 60. When gear was out of reach and raiders seemed like semi-gods. Now things are different. So, going back, even if its for a few precious `virtual' moments... its sure is refreshing. If Daiske hits 80 then the next bit will be to get my `pet' rogue levelled up. Now that will be truly hard...

Lance is there though, going to the guild's raids - which by the way have not suffered from attendance that much - definitely much less than last year. I am still doing those AT dailies for the gold and the tokens. After all, that AT tabard and the new Charger are essential for a true paladin...

P.S. I also got season tickets for my favorite football team - (soccer to my US friends) which might result in me loosing a couple of raids in the future. But at the end of the day skipping a few raids has always been the trick to the longevity of my playtime in Wow. I still enjoy it a lot and those precious breaks now and then - or slowdown of gaming pace to be precise - kept me going.

P.S. Holidays are coming... Swimming with the missus under the hot Hellenic (correct term for Greek) sun... who cares about Arthas...

Turalyon returns...

2009-07-14T14:10:00.014+03:00

During my brief holiday, last week, I read Beyond the Dark Portal - from Rosenberg and Golden. I must admit that the story was not as griping as the War of the Ancients but it was good enough to `glue' certain periods of the lore. Its based on Warcraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal game that was released about twelve years ago

To briefly sum it up the book is basically about the Expedition Force - assembled by the paladin Turalyon, Alleria Windrunner (sister of Vereesa, Rhonin's companion and Sylvanas), Khadgar, Danath Trollbane and Kurdran Wildhammer- that ventured through the Dark portal, sometime before the tBC era and destroyed it, preventing themselves from return to Azeroth for sometime until the portal was recreated in tBC. Their opponent was Ner'Zhul, leading the Horde, trying to open portals to other worlds and somewhat Deathwing taking sides with the Horde. Grom and Garrosh Hellscream, Teron Gorefiend, Rexxar and Gul'dan fill in the puzzle of the notable lore figures. Now I won't say anything more for the story, you might as well read it, or indeed play WCII, if you are interested, instead of me spoiling it. I will just mention for those unaware of it that the members of the Exhibition can bee seen as statues at the entrance of SW. More importantly, Khadgar can be found in Shattrah, Kurdran in Shadowmoon Valey and Danath in Honour Hold. But Turalyon and Alleria are missing...

Alleria - scetch from - Onetamad @ deviantart

... and also have a past between them. The story mention's their love afair; one of the most important love afairs, save for the Illidan - Malfurion - Tyrande and the Kael'thas - Jana - Arthas affection triangles. However its quite more substantial as we found out in tBC as there is a child, namely Arator, the Reedemer (apparently the only half-elf paladin in game) in Honor Hold.

Since I am a fool for all things Paladinish, Turalyon - just as Tirion and the Morgraines - always intrigued me as a lore figure. And although we still have not seen him he is... back. Or at least his armor is...So is Alleria's. Although there are two more Windrunners... ah complicated as always...

The new armor sets allegedly destined to be Tier 9 bear the names of notable lore figures as can bee seen bellow and in this post:

Mage: Khadgar (A) / Sunstrider (Dath'Remar and Kael'Thas)(H)
Warlock: Kel'Thuzad (A) / Gul'dan (H)
Priest: Velen(A) / Zabra Hexx (H)
Druid: Stormrage (Malfurion obviously)(A) / Runetotem (H)
Rogue: Van Cleef (A) / Garona (H)
Shaman: Nobundo (A) / Thrall (H)
Hunter: Windrunner (Vereesa & Alleria (A), Sylvanas (H))
DK: Thassarian (A) / Koltira (H)
Paladin: Turalyon (A) / Liadrin (H)
Warrior: Wrynn (Llane, Varian and Anduin)(A) / (Grom and Garrosh) Hellscream (H)

Notice that both Walocks are notoriously evil (Kel'thuzad can bee seen strolling in Southshore in the CoT: Old Durnhold, where as Ner'zul is what we now know as the Lich King). Turalyon is paired to Liadrin (as if there was another choice...) where as the Wrynn dynasty of warriors is well paired with the Hellscream's. You can check the rest of the pairs with links to some basic lore info.

To my knowledge this is the first example of `named' tier gear, instead of the usual epic names such as Lighforge, Conqueror's and the lot. I am not sure what this turn in naming policies means but using such names for the gear sounds... like a hint for something. I am curious...

As far as Turalyon and Alleria are concerned...

We have no clues on where they are and for some of us, hooked on paladins, their appearance is greatly anticipated. Turalyon was Lothar's apprentice in the Alliance chain of command, so to speak and a paladin of great strength. He was High General of the alliance forces during the time of BtDP, exhibiting great courage and association to the Light, while remaining humble (and a tad lovestruck). I would love to see him emerge sometime in the future, although I do not think we will see him in WoTLK. Probably more possible to appear in some part of the game revolving around Deathwing. Still, seeing his name triggered that part of the lore in my mind so I thought I'd share the references.

If you are interested Wow lore, searching and digging into the names depicted in the armor kits will direct you to some of the most aspects of the lore. Otherwise, if you are not interested you might as well laugh on how hideously ugly the paladin Horde set looks...

DPSing in a healer's costume...

2009-07-08T10:40:00.003+03:00

Yesterday Escape made a few attempts in killing Yogg without the help of Mimiron. We attempted to go with minimal number of healers and that meant that yours truly was to go DPS into the brain.

Facts:

My gear is better than Naxx level by a couple of pieces but overall based on tier 7. I do not consider this as adequate and our RL and officers were aware of that.
I have not raided significantly as retry, nowhere near as much as the 1/10 of my raiding experience as Holy which spans for about 4 years.
I am accustomed to the healer's type of awareness, not a melee DPSer's and only now I am beginning to develop the latter (after the introduction of dual specs)
I do not consider myself particularly skillful and I had never seen this fight from another perspective but as a healer outside the brain room.

As you can imagine my presence as a warrior of light was... miserable. I constantly failed to get out in time of the brain room, sometimes because I was not clicking properly, others because I was seemingly late. Although I can not fathom how faster I could be. That, coupled with some reluctance on certain parts of the fight and a misunderstanding with the portals did not help much. In fact it was so bad that I was banging my hand on my desk like XT having a tantrum. My wife-to-be was having seconds thoughts on my mental state... I am not happy at all wiping my raid, I am not happy at all wasting the time of others and I am not happy at all not being in control of my game. But...

Bearing in mind the facts above I must say I find it fairly reasonable. My performance I mean. Yes, the fact I sucked as DPSer. Out last attempt of the night was with the help of Mimiron, me healing in the brain room, our druid brain healer going boomkin and us one-shoting Yogg. Well, one-shoting him with Mimiron and me as healer at least :-p. I was sooooo pumped up with being back in the healers boots that for the first time in many raids I was first in healing. You see my healing style does not ever earn me any meter-prices; I like to believe (or fool myself) its more subtle. And no portal issues this time, going out of the brain room fast. Still... I felt so good to be in control of my game, so good to be back where I feel comfortable that I gave it all I had. Maybe it was guilt for screwing up and wiping my brothers-in-virtual-arms. Maybe because I wanted to prove myself to what I know best. Maybe because I wanted to have my vengeance from my other self. Kind of my real-life work situation these days. But that is a different matter...

Yogg fell, but I could not help thinking of what I had seen. I have been immersed in a different game, where my awareness of the surroundings was totally different. The closest experience I had of a melee play style was judging light in MC and smacking things with my Quel'Serrar for kicks. Ok and some 5-mans. But I had to make an impact here, watch the raid, stop thinking of those bars going black and watch the bloody clouds. Oh, the ordeal of a healer in DPSers boots...

Still... I am not giving up. I will continue to gear my paladin for retribution and I will be there when my RL needs me. Even that will be a rare occasion, rarer as I continue to fail :p . My holy set is almost complete, some tiny bits and pieces here still needed. Granted, it will take some time before I develop the situational awareness of a DPSer. But... as with anything in my real life that is difficult and seems daunting, or impossible... I will push forward as much as I can afford. I'll try to not do it at the expense of others.

Vengeance will be mine... Cookies too...

Patch 3.2 review - Argent Tournament grounds

2009-06-27T10:30:00.005+03:00

Patch 3.2 is in the PTR and I though it would be good to check up on a few of the changes so I can report them to those reading me but did not have yet a chance to be in the PTR. Most of the changes mentioned in Part 2 pf the Patch 3.2 review series are around the area of the Argent Tournament grounds. I anticipate quite a few changes further on and the plan is to report these in Part 3 of the PTR review. But lets look on what I found in the northern part of Icecrown...

First and foremost, the Coliseum is finished. The building is a cross-shaped structure with an arena-type circular peripteral where I presume lots of fighting resulting in blood and gore will take place. Sunreaver and Silver Covenant forces guard the place all around, along with the Argent Crusade Peacekeepers. On the sides we can find the portals to (I presume) the 5 & 10/25 man raid instances.

View of the Coliseum from the west	Birds eye view of the Coliseum arena
North-east side	Closer west view
Entrance to east portal	North side portal

At the Argent Pavilion at the west the quest givers have increased. Now, along the old ones handing in quests like Threat from Above there are three more, along with a new vendor with a Greek-sounding name, Dame Evniki Kapsalis(!!). The vendor has among other things the new Argent Crusade tabard and the new Argent Charger. The charges is safe to presume that its the same mount that Justical Mariel Truehart has, right at then entrance of the Pavilion. Crusader Silverdawn, High Crusader Adelard and Crusader Rhydalla hand in quests that reward once again money and Champion's seals.

The new quest givers	The new AC quartermaster
New AC quests - I	New AC quests - II
New AC quests - III	New AC quests - IV
The old quest-givers remain	The Argent Charger

Interestingly enough, once I went out of the Pavilion I faced some quite important placeholders... It seems Highlord Tirion Fordring, King Varian and Jana Proudmore, along with Thrall and their
personal guards are present on the grounds. I am most intrigued by their simultaneous presence and I wonder what lore implications we are going to see from now on. Also, the placeholders kind of hint new avatars. But we will see for that...

Fordring and Co. placeholders

The aforementioned quest givers hand in quests that direct us to one of the new quest hubs, Hrothgar's Landing. As we approach a vision type mist effect appears, similar to the ones in Borean Tundra's coast. I wont bore you with the details of the quests, I am sure others will :). The other hub is Deathspeaker's Watch, on the west of the Argent Pavilion.

Hrothgar's Landing

Deathspeaker's Watch

Hope the pictures give you an insight of the current changes in the environment and the related quests etc. More updates 'soon' :)

Patch 3.2 review - Part 1: On healing meters and forthcoming changes...

2009-06-22T12:59:00.005+03:00

First of all, I can not emphasize how good this post, over at World of Matticus is. It is one of the most insightful posts I have seen on healing and how tricky it is to evaluate it. Sometimes, the results of healing deficiency (or not?) are obvious - kind of like the three MT deaths we had in our last raid. However, saying that its just the healers fault is not very meticulous. And even if an RL has not time to deal with such details and he will simply say it to pump its crew, the healing coordinator and his healers have to take it into account.

Nonetheless, my purpose was to review some of the changes on Holy Paladins rumored or announced for patch 3.2. It seems that Napalm healing (as the notorious Ferraro once named it) is taking a heavy hit. No more Holy Light spamming boys and gals. Now we have to think, when, who, for how long etc. Which brings the ball over at the technical healing court. And finds yours truly quite happy as I consider tech healing more challenging.

Now, lets see those changes:

Mana Regeneration: All items that provide "X mana per five seconds" have had the amount of mana they regenerate increased by approximately 25%.

Ok, more is good but obviously something's got to give...

---------

Replenishment: This buff now grants 1% of the target's maximum mana over 5 seconds instead of 0.25% per second. This applies to all 5 sources of Replenishment (Vampiric Touch, Judgements of the Wise, Hunting Party, Enduring Winter Frostbolts and Soul Leech).

1% over 5sec vs 0.25% over 1. I.e. replenishment ticks with a larger period and returns 0.25% less totally. Personally I find this particular change indifferent, I am more worried about the overall (aggregate) mana return.

---------

Lay on Hands: The buff from this ability now reduces the physical damage taken by the target by 10/20% instead of increasing the target's armor.

Reduces the physical damage. Indifferent, its a situational spell that its core use is to heal a lot fast at no cost (but with some return when glyphed). So the added effect is not important in my opinion.

---------

Sacred Shield: When a paladin casts Flash of Light on a target with this buff, they also now place a heal over time effect on the target, healing that target for 100% of the Flash of Light amount over 12 seconds.

Ok, bearing in mind that Sacred Shield is now unique among your group and its usually casted on your primary assignment the hots will give you a `smoothing' mechanic which buys time to heal other targets (with some assumptions suchs as beacons etc) and allows some nice `matching' rotation schemes among healers. Imagine two paladins rotating among themselves flash of lights and the odd holy light.

---------

Judgment of Light: Now heals for 2% of the attacker's maximum health instead of a variable amount based on the spell power and attack power of the judging paladin.

Ok, JoL now belongs to all paladins, not just the Retry ones. Good for looking good at the meters. Too bad I almost always pick wisdom :p

---------

Beacon of Light: The healing amount on the Beacon of Light target is now based on the total healing done (including over-healing) instead of the effective healing done. Radius increased to 60 yards. Multiple Paladins can now have this active on the same target. Buff indicating a player is within range of the Beacon target is no longer displayed.

Whoa... hang in there! Beacon becomes very powerful (which means I expect it to be nerfed due to some stupid arena-related reasoning). Over healing does count as effective healing now. Which means that less is wasted, its less risky to off-heal and probably allows for some positioning tricks. Does it stack with JoL, I wonder. Do JoLs on multiple targets add-up? I wonder...

---------

Divine Intellect: This talent now gives 2/4/6/8/10% increased intellect instead of 3/6/9/12/15%.

Boo, net nerf. Less intellect. Trickier replenishment. Balance between them... unknown but there is always a way...

---------

Illumination: This talent now returns 30% of the mana cost of the spell instead of 60%.

Boo, net nerf. But... in the grand scheme of things possibly justified. Crit is less important now (but always nice for all sorts of other reasons), mana-per-5 is more important, mindless-spaming of Holy-Lights goes out of the window, Glyph of Holy Light becomes less useful but still there, Fash of light returns imo as the flagship heal and....

... well, overall the requirement for greater awareness crops up. I am not one of the people crying `nerf!!!' when changes like this happened. But I do feel that things need to be `balanced' out somehow and evaluated properly. If trading crit for mana-per-5 produces the same results (ro comparable) in healing output (whatever the latter is :-p) then I see no problems. If however the changes are not overall complementary and properly `matched' then there will be issues. Can't wait for some PTR testing... :p

Well, as with everything related to healing things are not as simple as they seem. The changes seem to follow a trend, which is to make paladin healing a bit more challenging and thoughtful. I am waiting to see the synergy among the changes. People (paladins) have asked for challenge but are bound to complain about it because we (everyone) are intrinsically lazy. I say be careful what you wish for because you might just get it...

Thank you, Jong... again

2009-06-18T09:52:00.003+03:00

Wicked post - as always hilarious - from Jong here. Averna thinks he is `sucking-up' for a heal but what the hell... at least someone does and does not blame us ;-p. I wont spoil-it with my `up-tight' writing style (yes, I know...) so...

And always remember...

"You may be boasting about your crits and damage, but at the end of the day we decide who lives and who dies"

- SomeonewhoIdonotremember

Yogg-Saron is no more

2009-06-15T10:21:00.004+03:00

Yup, took us three visits to the Old God of Death to get him down. We have been....tenacious enough and entered phase 3 a few times before the recent nerfs so we were pretty confident he would be dead. In fact, the recent nerfs made him kind of a walk in the park in my humble opinion, although we already had tackled the affected phases. Nonetheless, we raid 3 days a week so we do not complain. The old god is dead and that keeps the guild spirits up is excellent. I got my 4th Tier 8.5 (or whatever the number is, I have lost count) and I look more like a Samurai than a Paladin...

Escape's 1st Yogg-Saron kill

Now, Escape will focus on getting some of the hard-mode achievements going, get out emblematic priest his fragments for his Val'anyr and gear up our raid pool as we go along. Hopefully I will eventually be able to collect the deathknight-looking armor set from off-spec bidding, equip the Scarlet Tabard and make a scarlet crusade-themed video...And possibly at some point get those fragments myself.

On a side note, its sad to see people leave the blogging community but I appreciate they want to move forward. Blog Azeroth has lots of new authors cropping up and I'd like to think that the 'nouvelle vague' of wow blogging ( I place myself in that as well :p) will keep the community active as ever.

New Looks

2009-06-11T14:37:00.000+03:00

Since there are not many things to report on the Wow front I felt its a good time for a change.

A bit of Lance is sporting a new look, so please bear with me as I tweak things up. I was rather tired of the `orangy'-brown theme and went for something less... colorful. My blog is now using the same template as the one I used for the Escape website, originally based on the marvelous Ultimatum from Ourblogtemplates. The level of customization and the degree of integration with the Blogger settings GUI is, in my humble opinion, unparalleled.

On the WoW front, things have been pretty stable for us. We have been having some nice tries on Yogg-Saron, now successfully entering phase two and most of the times entering phase three as well. Some tweaks in the latter and things will fall into place. We are determined to make the most if this coming raid week.

Are achievements a virtual barrier for casuals?

2009-06-02T11:34:00.004+03:00

Everybody these days is talking about Ferraro (or whoever he, she, they are) and the whole story of posing as another person - as far as the real life pictures are concerned. You probably have read it, you probably have an opinion as I do. But I'd rather not talk about it, I am just mentioning it so that I do not seem completely ignorant of what happens out there :p. I wanted to make a fun post, portraying myself as a blond bombshell but I think I'll stick to more serious matters...

While I was reading about the aforementioned `scandal' and doing my dailies an old friend from the past, recently transfered in Silvermoon, whispered me. He mentioned something that - what a coincidence - one of our council member mentioned a couple of days ago...

That achievements will eventualy be the downfall of the casual raider...

Both players touched this subject from a different angle. An observer and a victim. Our coucnil member mentioned that he felt that the current trend of being accepted into pugs only if you have completed the relative achievements cuts-off new players from the entry level instances. Likewise, my old friend mentioned exactly that. Not having the achievements does not help him much into participating in Naxx pugs. Mind you, I am talking about people that due to real life commitments are not in a guild, do not have a set playing schedule and try to do the odd instance now and then. People that have accepted that they can not be part of anything a tad more systematic than a mere casual presence into the game.

I must admit I have never thought of this virtual barier before but I do admit its there and its blocking people to catch up. Or even try to. Its perfectly acceptable in my book not to be able to raid as often as I do (which is not that often btw...). As it is perfectly reasonable to try to gauge the people that participate into a pug. But being blocked even out of pugs due to those ruddy achievements is...well, there is definitely something wrong here...

The only way I can imagine someone would `bypass' such virtual barriers is to have friends that are willing to go the extra mile, organize pugs and get that `slacker' the chance to get some descent gear. Of course for that to happen, that 'slacker' must have been a good and pleasant player to be with, someone on your `dearest friends/list'... and not someone that would fit Gevlon's M&S profile. And that is when the social norms of this game come into play...

On the highway to hell

2009-05-29T11:59:00.007+03:00

ACDC in Athens 28/05/09 - Black Ice Tour

Nothing much to blog about WoW these days, everything revolved around the first ever ACDC concert in Athens. I have been a fan for years. I am utterly thunderstruck... a childhood dream came true, I haven't had the chance to see them live before.

Rosie on the Rock 'n' Roll Train

They were f@king awesome!

What do you remember...

2009-05-25T12:44:00.004+03:00

Averna tagged me with her meme and I must say, its a nice subject, brought a smile on my face after thinking of the past... Apologies for being late, work was rather hectic.

What do you remember about being a newbie... The good old days, indeed.

As soon as I logged in, my dear friend Elisdav invited me to my first guild Maza of Crushridge. Elisdav was at the time studying for his PhD along with me in the University of Essex. So, truth be told, I was never guildless. Well, a few sec maybe :p

I started going around smacking things. I do not remember using any of my abilities to start with, just auto-attack everything. I almost got a stroke when I died for the first time...

I was immediately called 'Lance'. My toon's original name is Lancebit (derived from Lancelot) but I do not think I have been called Lancebit more than a couple of times during my 4 year career as a Paladin...

Elisdav chipped in and bought me a Searing Blade. I was the most fearsome paladin ever... withing two yards of my standing point...

I was dragged into Deadmines with Pizzaman and Maluska (or something...). People I did not know. People I eventualy met and hang out with...

I thought at the time those lvl 60 players were Gods!!

I once say Blessing of Kings casted on me during a 'rumble' in Southsore (brings a tear in my eye... world PvP at its best)... and SoC on a fellow paladin. I started looking where they got these toys... Talents... that figures... so that's what that menu is for!!!

I was then praying for a Soc Proc just to see Lance jump in fury and slam that two-hander. At least I got the two-hander part right...

I had no idea what a tank is. Why the hell they call it a tank. Is it a vehicle?

I remember standing thunderstruck when my friend Dentrag used Buff-ahoy to buff in Uldaman. It had a 'say'-bubble confirmation that you were about to buff. An add-on... what the hell is an add-on...

And then came level 60. That's when things started falling into place... I went with Elisdav and some other friends in Dire Maul. Apparently... I was one of the healers. Yes, we had two, don't ask me why, it was 4 years ago :p. At the time I had absolutely no idea what I was supposed to do. And that became quite apparent. The other healer, a druid named Debran went ballistic with me. And there I am, ruining their instance...

Eventually I caught up with times. I was thrilled when I completed my 1st 5man, along with one of Escape's current MTs. Yes, we go a loooong way back. I remember it was Stratholme, both sides. Till now, I consider it the most entertaining instance ever.

I went ballistic when another Paladin casted DI on me in a UBRS run. I had no idea what it was. You can imagine... I though my keyboard was dead... (naab...)

I used to see paladins wearing Lighforge and thought it was cool. Then I say Lawbringer and said to myself that's impossible for me to get... (I got the shoulders, the only piece missing a few months ago in an MC achievement run! ha! gotcha!)

Now I am wearing a purple-red brown skirt those people in game call tier8.5 or sumthin... I still visit Stratholme, thinking of my old team-mates / friends. Good thing I'll meet them for coffee this or the next weekend to talk about Guitar Hero... Elisdav, I know you read this from time to time... I blame you for everything...

Now, lets tag Jong , Firelight , Vaadren and Jesper in his personal blog.

Bad to the bone...

2009-05-21T10:28:00.004+03:00

After some farming, quite a few dailies - as I am pretty crapy with the AH, contrary to Gevlon - I managed to get the cash I needed for my Mekgineer's Chopper. I must say driving this thing is immense fun, much more than I thought. And since the new bike needs a `bad-to-the-bone attitude' Lance is now sporting a new punky hairstyle. If only I could get rid of that skirt...

On another note, Escape killed General Vezax and had our first tries on Yogg-Saron. He will soon become the dead old god of death...

Why the bloody hell do we go in Ulduar?

2009-05-12T16:39:00.004+03:00

Sometimes I wonder if its a good thing or a bad thing not having anything `juicy' to write in my blog. You see, I often report either good/positive or bad/negative news. If everything is...yikes!...`normal'... nothing to report.

Escape has been progressing steadily, facing today Mimiron seeking to complete the Keepers of Ulduar achievement. Freya was freed this week for the first time and although we got only 3 raid days per week we seem to make the best of them. Our 10-man groups also do well, with the most 'advanced' one facing Yogg-Saron.

On the solo front, I have been leveling fishing, (around 390 nowadays), doing some dailies in case I do get that chopper (yes, I still haven't crafted that for me...) and collecting my Argent Tournament badges for future use and rep with Silver Co. I already spent the first 50 on the Stormwind tabard but the damn thing depicts the guild's tabard when you are guilded. Still, I wait patiently till they fix it, I think its the most `definitive' tabard for Lance.

Nonetheless, one of the things that have been bothering me for some time is...why?

Why the bloody hell do we go in Ulduar, why do we participate in AT. Ok, in `game-terms' we do it for the loot, the fun, the progress. But what is the justification for our characters, our toons. The Ulduar cinematic did give some... political background in the whole story. But being an old player that have gone through the quest lines for Onyxia, Molten Core, AQ and even the old Naxx (although I never set foot in it)... I was used in having a background story, something to support why I am going there. Although Wotlk arguably placedt the players deeper in the story-lines, I feel that Blizzard kinda missed something when it came to Ulduar. Unless I am missing something - dazed from the endless coding in a tcl/tk 'clone' for work' - there is not even an NPC to direct you there. Someone to say, `oh shit, Yoggy is loose, the shit is about to hit the fan so we need someone to grab him and turn that fan facing Arthas bedroom...'!.

Or... maybe there is something and I missed it
...but then again...
...I shouldn't and if I did, its not my fault alone...

Thinking out loud

2009-05-06T16:45:00.001+03:00

I sit down thinking, hoping to come up with something interesting for my blog. Various thoughts revolve around my mind but I eventually end up with the same. I am having fun in this game. Multidimensional fun. People seem to think I am crazy. You see, many of my older guildies have recently quit the world of warcraft. It was more or less that time for them. I feel tiredness was showing up in their game.

Still, I like it in Azeroth, its kinda fun and relaxing at certain moments. Granted, some times things are repetitive, but I often find that particular fact relaxing. Other times we are short of one person or two for raiding. Ok, been there, done that. There are good times, bad times, as Led Zeppelin sang. Jousting, farming, pvp... round round, I get around...

This raid week was somewhat `clumsy'. Yes, clumsy is the right world for it. We cleared most of the `farmed' content during the first two raid days and we got Hodir towards the end. That is 8/14 now. Still, our last raid was hindered from low numbers. It seems once in a while the stars align and mock us. We are a fairly small guild with fairly regular raiders. But once in a while things just do not add-up. So, this week left me with a bitter-sweet taste. Ok, we did get one more boss down (freed actually) which, sufficient to say, its more than many can say for their raid weeks. But I do feel with a tad more dedication and commitment we would be way ahead of us, competing with the `hardcore' ones in our realm.

But clumsiness often comes with the luxury of being able to raid three days a week to the max. Sometimes your guildmates may have prior obligations. Other times people have the odd-connection issue. Many things hinder a small guild like ours.

A busy week for me comes to an end. I think its time for me to come up with some more thoughtful posts than simply thinking out loud...

Quick 'n' Dirty IV

2009-04-29T17:06:00.002+03:00

Its been a rather busy week at work and I did not have much time to update here. What I did though and had lots of fun with, was updating our guild's front-page with one that is based on blogger. I am surprised how many things you can do with this platform and a bot of good old html/css...

Will be back over the weekend with some thoughts on Ulduar nerfs, jousting and whisky

..and a year with Escape

2009-04-23T14:45:00.006+03:00

It was exactly a year ago when I decided to leave the old server I played with friends for quite some time, in order to look for greener pastures. I had already done my research and was ready to embark to a journey to a different place. So some time in the afternoon and after my new GM had accepted my application I transferred my toon to Silvermoon and got a ginvite from him.

A year that took me from Black Temple and Mount Hyjal, all the way to Ulduar and the Silver Council. I made some good friends, had some good laughs and was fortunate to be accompanied through this year by some of my good old teammates. They will be a year with us in a couple of weeks from now.

Not much to say, I just wanted to share this with my readers, particularly those from Escape. Thank you for all the fun. See ya in game.

Ref: Image from Deviantart's Chudtoons

A week with 3.1

2009-04-22T11:04:00.007+03:00

One week after the introduction of patch 3.1 and a day before the imminent - and usual - nerfs/modifications of 3.1.1, I though its best to wrap-up my experiences with the content of the patch up to now.

Solo game

Dual specs

The dual specs feature was one of the most anticipated things in the game. With a hit of a button it is now possible to switch spec (and gear if you use an add-on like Outfitter). It can even be macro-ed and here is what I use for it:

#showtooltip [spec:1] Holy Shock; [spec:2] Crusader Strike
/usetalents [spec:1] 2; [spec:2] 1

where 'Holy Shock' and 'Crusader Strike' are the spell names of the icons you want to appear on the macro-ed shortcut. Careful on the spelling, some of mine did not work properly. Also, remember to put it on 'both' bar sets (spec1+2).

The newest Outfitter available from Curse (contrary to old reports that it would be discontinued) allows switching of gear set. Right-click your gear-set, go to Script and choose Primary or Secondary talents. Make sure that you have un-ticked the Disable Automatic Switching from the options tab.

To put it simply, its a joy to farm/grind as retry. Mucho fun amigo.

The Argent Tournament

...is in town and players get the chance to do some fun dailies gaining gold and reputation with the Silver Covenant as well as to collect badges for Tournament-related faction rewards. The most notable of the latter in my humble opinion are the main faction tabards (yay! Stormwind Tabard ftw!). The dailies revolve mostly around jousting with npcs - something which once you get the hang of it is quite fun. The rest of the quests are of the usual kill/collect pattern. On top of that, there is a `lore' chain quest which eventually leads to an achievement.

There are three levels of quest, the Aspirant, the Valiant (check?) and the Champion. Progression from each is done by collecting badges from the dailies and hand them in (15, 25 badges for the first two levels). Once you become a champion you can collect champion badges. You get 10 as a bonus once you reach that level and - as with the Aspirant and Valiant levels - 5 per day if you do all dailies. Note, the latter may require a group quest for killing Chillmaw. Lance became a Champion of Stormwind over the weekend and now collects badges for that lovely Stormwind Tabard.

Raiding

Now, when it comes to raiding, there are quite a few interesting stuff. Ulduar seems to be fairly more difficult than Naxx and Co. and the challenge starts to show as guilds try to go deeper in the instance. Its been quite some time since a raid required proper positioning, synchronization, synergy among classes and some thought on how to tackle things. I am not sure on how long it will remain a challenge but we must bear in mind that almost all kills are on `easy-mode', perhaps with the exception of some kills like the ones from Inner Sanctum . You will find lots of guides on the bosses so I wont bore you with such details.

What I do know though is that Escape managed to tackle 6/14 in the first raid week with our three-day raiding scheme, acquiring some good `ranked kills and achievements' in the process. We are fairly proud of this and confident that we can start saving time and seeing new bosses as we venture deeper in Ulduar.

I wont even comment on Emalon the Storm Watcher, I hardly noticed he is there when we got him...

On top of that Lance is once step closer to getting Val'anyr Hammer of the Ancient King, since our priest officer (the prime recipient as per guilds decision) was away. So that means I am 59 fragments away :p. Still, big thanx got to my guildmates for their trust. Hope I am and will be making up for it.

So overall a very good week for us. Can't wait from more fun in the Tournament and in Ulduar. Fun... yes, we kinda missed that in-game the last few weeks...

Ulduar up on us...

2009-04-14T13:45:00.006+03:00

As always, right before I set off to work and while eating my chocolate flavored cereals I am sitting in front of my computer, browsing through Wowinsider, Mmo-champion and my guilds forum. Ok, and some sports-related websites :p

Today, I more or less expected to see the confirmation that the patch would be deployed this week, a few hours earlier to the US, followed by the European servers. Just as I went through the first lines of the news-posts my eye fell on the video square beneath... King Varian ready to crit someone... So, naturally, I clicked and saw the promo video from Blizzard... Go on, check it , I do not want to spoil it ;-p

....
....

You're back?... So yes, the friction between the Alliance and the Horde is there once again. As well as an underlying `pact'. Varian and Garrosh are bitching, where as Rhonin, Jana and Thrall seem more... thoughtful. Yes, stereotypical, as warriors clash their blades, where as `scholars' and 'spiritual-attuned' people seem to be thinking a bit deeper. And in the middle Brann and his discovery... Yogg-Saron is slowly going stronger...and loose from his prison...

So, two levels here. One the Alliance-Horde friction, on the top level of the `political' aspect of the Ulduar-era lore. I expect this to be even more apparent further on. On the second level its the need to stop Yogg-Saron. And that is where we all come in. Our factions probably will fight for the territorial advantages, but we will have to dig in deep and do the hard, covert (well, not so covert but you get my point) stuff and go 'commando' on Yoggy (how we wow players turn every name into a pickachu-like-name is beyone my comprehension, even if it refers to inconceivably dark entities).

Jana looks troubled (with an `edited' face), Varian and Grosh mean, Thrall baffled and Rhonin... Ah, one of my favorite old heroes has now proper dialogue... And when Rhonin speaks we all better listen...

So, I leave you to enjoy the video, read the patch notes and prepare. I expect the usual service disruptions, as many people will return to the game, the usual issues with the add-ons and lots of running around! I will be back with something Ulduar-related in a few days...

Waiting for the patch...

2009-04-08T11:13:00.004+03:00

Its a rather boring time in the World of Warcraft these days. Not much to do, people are stalling, waiting for the new patch. Not much action taking place. As the content has been exhausted by most the only thing left to do is maybe some achievements. But even those are hard to do, due to the whole situation of people being `relaxed' and raids often being under-maned. It seems (and it has been observed before) people loose their focus before major content additions. And its reasonable to some extent.

So, a few days more it seems, maybe a couple of weeks. I plan on parking Lance to Stormwind Cathedral. And then rush out to:

Get a free respec: I plan on reshuffling my Holy spec, resulting into a pure PvE spec with absolutely no 'damage talents', a true raid servant. And my second spec as retribution for truly selfish and take-no-prisoners fooling around. So that's sorted. Do not ask me about talent options, I often choose the most prevailing specs, so I'll have to dig-up through the usual references there
Sort Gear-switching: ...with a new gear-switching add on. Blizzard's equipment manager has been pushed back, I am unsure of the state of Outfitter after then patch introduction so... we will all need to sort out our spec switching with something new it seems.
Content: Go to the Argent Tournament area and start exploring, questing and... reputation grinding :p. In the process get some gold on the side for that Lancey-Davidson... Then start reviewing the changes here and there, starting from the new engineering changes.

Then, depending on the people around we might venture into Ulduar for a ten-man suicide mission, waiting for the next day and our scheduled run...

Guild recruitment and Tiers of capabilities

2009-04-02T13:32:00.003+03:00

One of my observations, related to the current state of things in WoW concerns the quality of applications for recruitment. It seems that the level of those seeking guilds, in terms of quality, has degraded a lot. At least in our realm - allegedly the top PvE realm in EU - and regarding our own applicants. So, I could not help thinking that the easier content essentially hurts mid-range guilds and eventually will hurt top guilds. Now, here is my reasoning.

We got three tiers of guilds. Tier One (T1) is the `hardcore' top guilds of a realm where the 'cream of the crop' finds home to satisfy the desire total annihilation of bosses-targets within the smallest amount of time possible, after their introduction. Tags like, realm-firsts, rankings etc go in this category.

The second tier (T2) is mid-range guilds which are usually slower than the top ones, either due to schedule (like my guild which raids 3 days per week just for its members to keep their sanity, their spouses and their RL in order) or due to `lesser' skill.

The third tier (T3) is the entry level guilds wich range from `social' doing-nothingness, to clearin a fragment of the content or just not attaining the top achievements.

Since the content is easier these three tiers are more distinct than ever. Those who can do things fast, efficiently or what I like to call `punchy'. Those that can do the same things more or less but require a bit more time. And those that for a variety of reasons can not do all, some or most.

Although my tier model is crude, its adequate to demonstrate my point. Each tier mostly replenishes itself from its immediate lower.

Now, I believe that in the past where the content was harder people often transferred to guilds within their tier. Top guilds were off limits, mid range guilds were much more and casual guilds quite fewer cause there was not much `casualness' in the game (I am excluding PvP from this ofc).

Whereas some players sleeked for more and jumped tiers, many stayed with in their tier - mostly T2 - and tried to find more satisfying raid environments. Nowadays things are a bit different. Since content is easier people can jump to the tier above with greater ease. That means that T2 which has capable players looses quite a few to T1. Unfortunately those from T3 who wish to go to T2 and who for a variety of reason could not complete certain (if not many) elements of an overall easier content are usually not good enough for T2.

In other words those that have not done basic things in this content (and wish to do more, hence its not a matter of commitments/time etc) are not good enough for many T2 guilds.

Of course, these are just observations. I may be way off there. Do I make sense or this sounds like a phd thesis...?

Quick 'n' Dirty - III

2009-03-31T12:14:00.008+03:00

What can I say, it seems during the last few days I suffered from writer's-block. Or blogger's-block, I am hardly a writer :p. That, along with quite a bit of work really, made me crazed, like an Orc with Manoroth's blood flowing in my veins. Less green though, but equally angry. It was one of my least creative weeks.

My DK is slowly getting leveled up, my finances both real and virtual revolve around saving up as much as I can and me and my guildmates await Patch 3.1. Doing some of the old quests though is fun. I just need to get the Scarlet Crusade tabard and my DK will look like Alexandros Morgraine. Or so I think...

I am still missing a nice pair of gauntlets for my retribution set on Lance, but I'll hold on to my badges till Patch 3.1 is close, instead of spending them for the tier token. But most importantly...

As I have probably hinted in one of my old posts, I am getting married towards the end of the year. So in preparations for the wedding and due to the parallel lives of Lance and Erlune (guess whose toon...) I think I need to get myself one of those 'family' mounts. Cruising with your loved one around Azeroth, sight-seeing, slaying demons and looking at sunsets, with dragons flying above your head is... really romantic.

Now I need to decide, will I get a hummer-mammoth or I'll rig up a nice Lancey-Davidson chopper?

Dreaming the Wow universe...

2009-03-20T11:31:00.008+02:00

The recent weeks I have felt that the game has stopped being played in the servers and has shifted in the `informational' plane; that of the websites, the blogs and the forums. Many players claim they have reached various states - represented by feelings of discomfort, such as burnout, boredom etc - due to the apparent low difficulty level of the current content. Instead, people log much less their toons, spent increased amount of time in the various `informative' and speculative websites in anticipation of the new patch. Which interestingly seems one of the most - if not the most - groundbreaking ones.

So we have two attitudes here. One is a direct or implied dismissal of the current content. A re-used entry level instance and a couple of single-boss encounters seemed not enough to keep people in the edge. Hardcore players of course seek the achievements for those extra novelty items and titles, where as ultra-casuals raid once-so-often at best. The mainstream of the players had cleared all instances on a non-achievement incurring mode and many have stepped up and did all but the hardest (Immortal, Undying, Sarth3D, Poke and Eternity). This in my humble opinion represents the current state in-game.

On the other hand, outside of the game, people drool over the incoming Ulduar instance, new rewards, some the next Arena season, new achievements but most importantly the new dual-spec scheme. The latter 'drags along' some nice UI modifications that encapsulate the dual-spec functionality or assist in changing gear schemes - and possibly replace current add-ons like Outfitter if only basic functionality is required.

Bringing these two together we have an intermediate period where people try to finish off achievements that are being altered (in terms of rewards) in 3.1, prepare their secondary spec, gather up items possibly to benefit financially from new crafts or finish up any loose ends like reputations, profession skill-ups and the like.

Overall, the game seems it has partially lost the drive of `oomph' of the previous years due to the anticipation of what is to come. I will attempt a dangerous speculation here based on one of my favourite WoW aspects. The lore. Up to now we have witnessed only an establishment of the `new order' of things and a closure of an old chapter. Kel' Thusad is down, Naxxramas has fallen, the alliance moves one bit closer to Icecrown and establishes a perimeter. The Ebon Blade is aiding this (or not...) and Tirion is the martial commander. Back home Varian, Thrall do an inconclusive bras-de-fer with Jana as a referee, Bolvar is dead (or not...) and the retribution order is stronger than ever. The dragons have established their presence and confronted the blue lunatic Malygos, Deathwind is nor here nor there, but always present and Krasus and Alexstrasza are scheming on the backs of the mortal races. Now, its time to see what the Titans and the Old Gods got in store for us. And towards the end (or not...) the ultimate Deathknight, a corrupted youth paladin and a blond boy...

Its time for the light to emerge from the ashes...

I dare say that Blizzard's 'ace up their sleeve' - on top for further streamlining the mechanics of the game and allowing us to do more 'for our buck', through new quests, new factions, a new dimension in playing with dual-specs and new raiding content - will be the lore. I feel that Wotlk is now about to start and immerse us to the next chapter of the Warcraft universe where the old order is about to crumble and the new 'players' are about to take their places in the checkered floor of Azeroth. Or... any place, plane etc...

Of course, I may be miserably wrong and we will fall in another wormhole, of mediocre difficulty caves and castles filled with non-purposeful mobs...

P.S. Excuse the `poetic' nature of my posts. Working in the Telecom industry is somewhat stressful and one of my favourite escapes is to mentaly travel, through the stories I participate in and allow my imagination run wild. And hope there is still a lot to dream for...

P.S.2 Picture is from one of my favourite digital artists involved with Wow themes, pulyx.You can see his (or herr, I am not certain...) gallery in Deviantart here

Enter the Twilight Zone

2009-03-13T10:32:00.007+02:00

It is amazing how sometimes things fall together and make a mere game encounter an epic moment. In the recent week my guild saw a couple of its `hardcore' members move to another guild, arguing they wanted a tighter raiding schedule, realm first etc. Many attributed a large portion of their decision on our inability to tackle Sart3D. The latter mostly because a spell of flaky attendance and some other coincidences.

Yet the guild was patient, did some clever recruiting, had the usual discussions that take place in such occurrences and remained faithful that even with our 3-day raiding schedule we can tackle the challenges ahead. Maybe a couple of weeks later than top guilds. But after all we are together in this guild cause we want balance and... moderation

Yesterday the guild was scheduled to raid Naxx for the weekly clear out. But the number 0f raiders present and the overall composition seemed quite promising for a few good tries on Sart3D. After a quick VoA, we moved to Sartharion's lair. A few slacky early tries showed once more that this would not be a walk in the park. But then again, we were not there to take a stroll either...

After a few good tries, a bio/drinks break and a couple of jokes that kept spirits high we were ready for one more try. A try that went smoothly up to the point our MT healers - yours truly and the iconic priest of the guild - went down like 'doofs' (guild term for silly I think :-p ) from a Tsunami, trying to keep the MT topped when the third Drake landed. Yet the rest of the raid performed remarkably. Healers stepped into to hold the MT up, people tackled the adds properly... Being there lying dead I was thinking how wonderful teamwork is. Granted, things can often go bad for various reasons - I miscalculated my Divine Guardian-specced bubble by a margin and thought I could endure the Tsunami while bubbled - but our guildmates stepped in with a top game. Teamwork often makes people cover each other and keep the group going.

All in all, the raid was extremely successful, nailing the Twilight Zone achievement and one of us got to show off in his brand new drake in Dalaran.

So, a few weeks later, a couple members less and a great deal of desire to prove we can do almost everything presented to us, we finally got the damn lizard. Now it is time to get those drakes and `normalize' those DKP pools for Ulduar :)

Metron Ariston

2009-03-09T16:10:00.002+02:00

The ancient Greeks had a recipe for long, happy life: "Metron Ariston" roughly translated: good things in moderation. The emphasis of this quote is in the word moderation. Why on earth he talks about this, you might wonder. Well, even Blizzard uses a paraphrase of this quote in its loading screens with 'Take all things in moderation, even world of Warcraft'.

Many people flamed this quote as the epitome of 'mediocre' in warcraft. Reminded me of the time people flamed Richard Bartle, saying who the hell he is to be talking about Warcraft. Being a researcher myself I am alway suspicious. What is said, by whom, why, how and where. I listen, I think, I accept, I defy.

So, that old quote came to haunt me the last few days. You see we had a few people leaving the guild in order to seek even more competitive guilds that would allow them to do realm first, or a higher number of raids, or possibly what in their eyes is a higher level of player ability - which alone in my eyes is a subject of great debate and analysis. Now, I am not knocking their decision, everyone is entitled to play the game however they want. I wish them good luck in their search. But in the same time I am going to defend my decision - which was taken a loooong time ago - to take WoW in moderation. And the fact I am done searching.

I am in a relationship that leading to marriage, and like all my close friends I decided to take that step by the end of the year. I am blessed to have a beautiful, considerate and extremely fun person next to me that puts up with my nerdiness and love for virtual dwarfs, swords, spells and dragons. I am working in the Telecoms industry and I get to socialise with my friends in coffee-shops (not the ones in Amsterdam, the ones in Athens where we only drink coffee in various flavours and gossip about politics, football and celebrities - so much for the ancient Hellenic civilization), bars, cinemas and our ultra-comfortable couches watching Champions League (soccer to my friends from the US), NBA and Euroleague basketball games, the national tournaments and quite a few HD movies. But more than anything else spend time with my GF and wife to be.

At the same time I am keen on seeing the content through, in Warcraft, gearing up my paladin with whatever I get my hands on, eager to experience fully another spec (being Holy for a loooong time), but most important feel that sense of accomplishment when my team hammers that dragon boss down. I consider my guild as a very capable bunch that has gone very far, albeit with a moderate 3-day raiding schedule.

But I will do all of the above in moderation. I will not loose my head over some achievement that I can not have now, but I will do my best to obtain it. In the mean time I will explore the content as much as possible, but I will be patient and take it one step at a time.

Why? Because I want all of the above. I do not want to sacrifice anything, I want everything to be part of my life, my leisure time. It keeps me sane, reduces my stress and allows me to keep a brave face when something awkward crops up.

Moderation ladies and gents is what keeps our lives full. I am not a sports champion, I am not a politician (OK that's a bad example), I am not someone who has to sacrifice a great deal to achieve something. I am the average punter, a bloke in his 30ies that likes what he does, how he does it and when.

Excuse the tone of the post, but there is one point on has to stand up to all the 'opposition' that claims its seeking more and more, whether that's justifiable or not.

No, I will stick to my decision. Wow is and will be one of my hobbies for as long as my relationship and future family allows me. It will be my Escape from my real life. I will try to go as far as possible, for as long as possible, doing as much as possible. But I will not replace my real life with that of my toons.

My opinion is simple. Sacrificing something should be done only for life-changing, life-defining actions and decisions. Otherwise, as Frankie said... Relax.

On Lore progression

2009-03-05T12:09:00.006+02:00

In the past I mentioned briefly my love for the Warcraft lore and how I am totally hooked on certain stories. TBC was relatively shallow when it comes to lore as we got to kill certain important figures without truly exploring their past. Those figures were mainly from the most popular Warcraft period for many - that of WC3. They eventually got to be end-bosses where we 'killed' them (and one case re-'killed' them :p) without some justification in regard to their past actions. Or at least not enough. We never get to see the past of the Illidan brothers and their relation to Tyrande, the relationship of Jana, Kael and Arthas, the importance of Lady Vashj in the elf lore (and possibly a future expansion with Azshara). But we did get to see Kil'Jaeden and that is quite big :p

Wotlk changes this to a large extent with visions of Arthas' past, the active involvement of the Dragons (which in the books/lore are all over the place affecting our future - and sometimes our past), the Bronzebeard brothers, King Varian and his return, a very interesting development in Wrath gate, the return of the Ashbringer and Tirion, the tension between Alliance and Horde etc. Lore is all over the place and things crop up as we go deep in Northrend. Even some `loose ends' like Matthias Lehner, or Bolvar Fordragon are quite prominent and make lore-aficionados work their minds overtime with assumptions and predictions.

And now Ulduar comes...

For those that have seen the relative information on Yogg-Saron, recently published, we get to see various important points of the lore with some interesting mechanics. We get to see `hidden' messages, we get to wonder why, what, how and when and possibly we get to see what happened to some of those 'loose ends'.

I wont spoil the fun with details etc, you can always go look if you are interested. What I know is we are much more involved in the story now. One story that slowly comes to its conclusion (or not), closing some of the remaining chapters of WC3. And quite possibly a few new threads, generated, that in will return spin-off to new paths.

All I know is that now is the time to enjoy the story; more than ever in World of Warcraft.

P.S. Picture source

Screenshot

2009-02-27T01:51:00.005+02:00

So... tagged by Suicidal Zebra and here is the 6th screenshot of a messy retro-pics folder.

I did some editing at some point and the folders are all over the place so... anyways... Lets tag I Like Bubbles, not sure if she was tagged up to now :p. She has a new blog also!

Its been a hard day's night...

2009-02-26T10:16:00.002+02:00

...and I've been crawling uptomyneckin work (concatenated to fit with the Beatles tune...)

Nonetheless I had some time to download the PTR, had been proactive in copying Lance to Brill PvP and have been patient with the frequent crashes. Not sure how is the PTR for you guys in the US, but back here in EU the crashes are as frequent as hell.

But I had some time to look around the dual-specs thingy, the switching, the gear manager and flew over the Argent Tournament `hotspot'. The spec-switching, bar & glyph switching seem well handled, simple and quite solid. Apparently there is an option for using a talent template prior to saving the talent tree and that can be activated in the general options.

I was positively impressed with the Argent Tournament area. Secluded, right up to the end/edge of the worlds. Reminded me of Mos Eisley for some reason...go figure... Still, the `Argent' term seems confusing. Is this held from the Argent Crusade? What is it, the Olympics of Wow? Will dig a bit over things during the weekend as we have a 3-day weekend here (next Monday is Pure Monday) and I will stick my head out of the work-swamp. I am interested on what `lore' justification Blizzard will come up with for such a competitive festivity...

On another note, various data-mined rewards appeared in mmo-champion. One thing caught my eye, mentioned in the past hen WotLK was introduced. The Stormwind Tabard. Now Lance can wear his homeland's colours around.

Nothing much to add, work has been hectic and I got to go back. Will be back tonight for that screenshot meme, as per Sucidal Zebra's command :)

Ulduar

2009-02-18T11:30:00.006+02:00

So here it is, what many WoW players waited for patiently for months. The next bit of content, the awaited challenge, the new place to be, the new loot-bank, tier8, new achievements, new enemies and a whole lot of things we play for...

Ulduar.

For countless millennia, Ulduar has remained undisturbed by mortals, far away from their concerns and their struggles. But since its recent discovery, many have wondered what the structure's original purpose may have been. Some thought it a city, built to herald the glory of its makers; some thought it a vault containing innumerable treasures, perhaps even relics of the mighty Titans themselves. They were wrong. Beyond its gates lies no city, no treasure vault, no final answer to the Titan's mysteries. All that awaits those who dare set foot in Ulduar is a horror even the Titans could not, would not destroy, an evil they merely... contained. Beneath ancient Ulduar, the Old God of death lies, whispering.... Tread carefully, or his prison will become your tomb.

First, lets take a look on some bits of information from the Blues (not the Brothers...):

As the next step in tiered raid progression in Wrath of the Lich King, Ulduar is set to blow players away with gorgeous setpieces, sprawling battlefields, and innovative boss encounters. Ulduar's design aims to provide a fun, unique, and innovative raid experience, but it also includes additional challenges - and rewards - for seasoned raiders. In this sneak-peek at World of Warcraft's newest raid dungeon, we'll take a look at some of the new content that makes Ulduar rise above the crop of amazing dungeons already available in World of Warcraft.

More pictures in: 1,2,3,4 from mmo-champion

From the pictures posted in mmo-champion the place sure looks nice, on par with the titan architecture, possibly (hopefully? ;-p) reminiscent of Uldaman in some places. About the detail on innovation, achievements etc, more further on...

Many players have already gotten their Wrath of the Lich King raiding feet wet in Naxxramas and the Sartharion raid, but Ulduar is the first example of the expansion's much larger, truly epic scope of raiding, as will be evident from the second you set foot in the instance. The most obvious difference between Ulduar and its predecessors is that the dungeon actually comprises two separate raid areas. The first section is an epic battle against a vast army standing between you and the entrance of the dungeon proper; in the second area, you will dive into the heart of the dungeon itself and finally discover the secrets of Ulduar.

So, here is an implied reasoning on why raiding content was fairly easy in 3.xx. To get more people's feet wet. Now - the devs claim - comes the hard/epic/interesting part. Possibly one of the reasons we set foot in Northrend. One of the reasons Brann is here. Maybe one of the reasons Arthas is here too...

An interesting twist (depending on scale) is the battle prior to the instance. Kinda gives some depth to the meaning of raiding a place of secrets. You would think someone would try to protect those secrets, right? So, here it is. The defenders of the instance, the front line. We will have to pass from those guys first.

Ulduar's new master has rallied his own massive Iron Army to guard the entrance to Ulduar and to prevent any unwanted guests - including you, especially you - from reaching the inner sanctum. Thankfully, you'll be able to face the Iron Army on even footing: although the main Horde and Alliance forces are focused on the forces beyond the Wrathgate and on each other, some who are better able to appreciate the true magnitude of Ulduar's threat have managed to scrap together a small fleet of siege vehicles to aid you in the assault.

Yes, especially you. You are the one they are afraid off, you are the one that affected the history to some extent up to now and you will be the one to make more changes. You. Arthas thought the same...

So, siege a place before we enter. Aided from some enlightened Alliance/Horde who think there is something worth fighting here. It looks like Blizzard is adding depth and purpose to why we need to go there.

You and your friends will have to use these vehicles wisely to break through Ulduar's defenses. A mix of motorcycles, demolishers, and siege engines will be at your disposal, each granting unique abilities to the pilot and the passenger. Motorcycle drivers, for example, can create pools of liquid tar that snare opponents and can be set on fire by area effect attacks, while demolisher passengers can load themselves into the vehicle's catapult so that the pilot can launch them into the distance. If used judiciously, these and other abilities will help decimate the Iron Army and any other threats lying in wait between you and Ulduar.

So, here comes the first innovation. Vehicles. One of Blizzard's 'aces' in Wotlk. We need to see how this will be implemented but on paper it looks fun. I know people already whine about it but I personally find vehicles a fun aspect.

One such threat is the Flame Leviathan. After you've plowed through the innumerable ranks of the Iron Army, you will be confronted by an enormous tank. Mimiron built the Flame Leviathan as part of the V0-L7R-0N weapons platform, which means that it packs quite a punch. Normal spells and abilities won't be enough to take down this juggernaut, so you will have to rely on your siege vehicles to outmaneuver and defeat the boss. After wearing the massive war machine down, you will have to launch players onto the tank's back to destroy its defense turrets and sabotage the Leviathan before you can move on. Of course, if you'd like an additional challenge beyond this naturally frantic (but extremely fun) fight, you can try your hand at one of the Flame Leviathan's different Hard Modes (see sidebar).

Robo Wars! Ok, if this is what I imagine it will be like WWII (Check here and you will get where I am getting at.)

Of course, the vehicle gauntlet, the Iron Army, and the battle against the Flame Leviathan are only the start of World of Warcraft's most ambitious raid to date. Patch 3.1 will hit the Public Test Realms very soon, so you will be able to see for yourself what other challenges await beyond the gates of ancient Ulduar.

Ulduar brilliantly illustrates the new design challenges and innovations that come with the bigger scope of the expansion's raids. In order to make raid content more accessible, it has to offer a lot of variety, but it also needs to include a very granular means for players to adjust a raid's difficulty. This concept was first realized in the Burning Crusade with the introduction of Heroic mode, and Wrath of the Lich King is developing the idea even further with new Hard Modes.

So, they got something in mind, for sure, and we are going to see it further on, starting with Ulduar and presumably eventually Icecrown Citadel

Boss fights that have a Hard Mode are affected by certain variables which players can control and which change the encounter's difficulty. For example, spread throughout Ulduar's vehicle section are four defense towers you can destroy. The more towers you leave intact, the harder the encounter with the Flame Leviathan will be, but the loot will also be better.

Ok, hard, easy mode, drakes, achievements etc.

Ulduar isn't the first dungeon to include Hard Mode, but it certainly makes the most use of it. Out of 14 bosses, 11 will have a Hard Mode that offers additional challenges and rewards. Ulduar will appeal to a wide range of play styles, but the dungeon also has great longevity and a high replay value.

Ok, take a note on the last sentence. Great LONGEVITY, high REPLAY value. Lets see how true this is, cause if it is then we are up for a wild ride! Also, I think its the first time these features are mentioned by devs; kind of a response to those claiming the current content is short, easy and boring.

And a further post with some more details:

Ok, we're getting close to the point where we will need testing of Ulduar boss encounters on PTR, so let's talk about Ulduar testing!

We're going to be performing testing differently than in the past. We're looking for much more targeted feedback, and we don't want to just have the zone freely open and allow extended, unsupervised testing to take place. So, when the PTR servers come up with 3.1.0, by default Ulduar will be turned completely off. We'll instead enable Ulduar and specific bosses during times where the encounter team can observe testing.

Shortly after 3.1.0 PTR is up and running, I'll post a schedule that will indicate when we will open specific bosses to testing. We'll have testing opportunities for both EU and NA region PTRs in their respective prime time playing hours. There might also be a boss or two we do leave up for extended testing, and some bosses will only be tested in either the EU or NA. Some encounters won't be up on the PTR at all! There's 14 boss encounters in Ulduar, there will be lots to test. The schedule will be quite flexible, check in the Dungeons & Raids forum and on the PTR forum for updates.

The first set of boss encounters to get testing will include:

Freya
Thorim
Hodir
The Iron Council

Both 10 player and 25 player versions of the encounters will be open to testing, and we expect players to have nearly full Naxxramas gear. While Jillian McWeaksauce might make appearances on the PTR to provide testing consumables, please try to bring your own.

I hope to see raid groups of many different skill levels on the 3.1.0 PTR servers when they become available!

The first boss has you enter 1 of 3 different vehicles (Chopper, Demolisher, and Siege Engine) to fight your way through an immense Iron army to the Flame Leviathan and defeat him. After that, there's very little use of vehicles by players. We'll have the fight up on the PTR at a later date, but this fight isn't in the first wave of boss encounters to be tested.

Actually, the effectiveness of the vehicles in the Flame Leviathan fight changes depending on the quality of the gear. So someone in full Naxxramas epics (or Ulduar epics!) will have an easier time than someone in greens.

So, BLizzard is attempting a more controlled testing procedure, supervising even more than they did with Sunwell. The result will be presumably better monitoring, debugging and tweaking, but less tactics posted afterward. World firsts from exausting the PTR content will be a tad harder (I doubt if certain guilds wont get them anyway).

The aforementioned bosses are also characters we have encountered up to now so I expect their respective stories to develop. I also sense the possibility of new factions cropping up, aside from the Sunreavers and the Silver Convenant. Also, the vehicle quality changes with our gear. Quite clever I must admit...

One thing is for sure, this is an exiting time. Now lets see how bad that paladin tier8 looks like...

P.S. All the information above was obtained from mmo-champion

Quick 'n Dirty - II

2009-02-17T14:58:00.001+02:00

The last few days have been spent running around the major cities, fragrance all over the place, seeking candiebags and rose petals. Unfortunately, meeting the ever elusive candie bag was as difficult as Baron's mount in the good old days. Blizzard claimed they hotfixed the drop rate but I saw no difference. In fact I had two bugs the very first day of the even but saw none in the next days. Ironicaly, the candy missing is the Be Mine! for the Be Mine! achievement...
Oh well, next year...

Still, I had some time to gather up gear for my Holy-PvP and Retry-PvE sets. I had some badges lying about, bought the odd resilience gear just to give it a try and compare it to my tier7.5 and went around pissing horde off with my shields :-p. I must say Holy palas remain powerful as ever, just as the class-population reports from top arena teams depict. Oh, and Death Knights are

I think its time to do some 10-mans to get some nifty epic items and then wait patiently for patch 3.1.

Not much to report otherwise, our Sarth3D tries are still going, hindered a bit from the lack of healers. But we will get those lizards eventually.

Dual Specs - Part II

2009-02-12T12:02:00.002+02:00

Continuing my post on Dual specs I think its time to look on a few negative aspects of dual-specing. The most important ones I could think of (with a little help from Ruhtra) are:

Loot rules related
Skill related

Loot rules

I expect this to cause a fair amount of friction. My view is that all raiders will seek to equip both specs with the best gear they can get their hands on - i.e. possibly seek to get gear for both specs the same way. If you are a Holy paladin and want retry gear, your guild is raiding everywhere you will not look to gear your second spec from heroics but the very same raids you get your Holy gear. However, that will mean you compete with classes that want that very gear for their primary spec.

I think guilds must enforce a primarily and a secondary spec and distribute loot around it. As we often bid for off-spec items in Escape but main specs (even with the lowest amount bided) get it. It’s essential to preserve the raid balance and role distribution - as this is ultimately the only way for anyone to keep gearing up - while allowing secondary specs to get loot without clashing with primary specs. It sounds simple and most guilds probably do it, but I expect that people will become greedy and issues will crop up (not in my guild necessarily, I am talking in general).

Skill related

Ruhtra makes a valid point into one of his comments. Playing two specs might have an effect on performance. Are you as good in your 2nd spec as you are with your 1st? Are you playing too much in your 2nd spec that you have become sloppy on your 1st? These are valid questions that might cause some issued to players - especially those with a knack of experimentation but limited playtime.

I think players must be responsible and maintain their best-performing spec as primary. This is for their benefit and their raiding group's benefit. In their own time they can explore the pleasure and the perils of that secondary spec, but not at the expense of their reputation (with the community, not the Argent Crusade :-p).

Overall, if people are not greedy and not too reckless Dual specs will bring a new dimension in the game. If people are frank of what they can accomplish with each spec, things will be much better for them and their groups. Being able to see the game from a different perspective (seamlessly and with out hassle, as you can respec anyway nowadays) will allow those with some brain to deepen their involvement in the game, have fun with that other spec and add some flexibility in group compositions.

Dual Specs and Bartle's gamers

2009-02-09T12:24:00.004+02:00

So, dual specs will be with us soon. Assuming there will not be any bugs with the interface, the switching and all that... there are few things worth considering.

The first thing is the mechanics. How will the switching take place?

It has been mentioned in the past:

Swapping specs (going from A to B) will truly be free in towns and possibly during the prep phase of PvP. In an instance it may cost a nominal fee (think reagent level). We want you to be able to do it when you want to do it, but we also don't want to slow things down if everyone is constantly flipping spec from fight to fight. But if it's free in town, then obviously it can't be more of a burden out of town than just hearthing and being summoned back is or nobody will use the remote option. (Ghostcrawler on Dual-Spec)

Interestingly, there is no mention of such a thing in these `preliminary' info. To be honest, I appreciate that there needs to be some policing of the changes, but from my completely lazy point of view I'd rather there was not. Still, certain assumptions like not being able to switch in an arena game, or in combat, go without saying. It remains to be seen what the devs will think about it. Besides, the mechanics might as well change along the way. What is mentioned, and could not have been otherwise, is that the glyphs and bars will change accordingly. Very convenient indeed, almost like having two separate chars (but with the same Achievements :P )

Second is the effect they will have in the game:

For starters, it is a massive addition in my opinion in the game. Almost groundbreaking. The reasoning is simple. For that, we must first look on gamers types. I have been fortunate enough to be in the same University as the controversial Richard Bartle, the 'father of MUDs' as we used to call him. He probably does not know my existence as I was under the supervision of another researcher there, who nonetheless always spoke highly of him. During my stay there I encountered his Bartle Test of Gamer Psychology (rough info here) which essentially classifies gamers in three categories:

Achiever
Explorer
Socialiser
Killer

These categories exist within each gamer by some percentage, as you can see in the aforementioned link. I'd like to think myself as a 50% Achiever , 25% Explorer, 20% Killer and 5% Socialiser (no, I did not take the test, its a rough estimate :-p). An AEKS for short. With all respect to R. Bartle, I am going to use his classification in a crude way.

Dual specs will appeal essentially to Achievers and Killers. Possibly under certain circumstances to Socialisers. But mainly the first two categories will see DSpecs as more appealing. Achievers will be able to use the dual specs towards... achievements. For example Holy Paladins might be able to go Prot, tank the odd instance and have higher chances of completing dungeon achievements. Others might do the same in raids or pvp. Arena teams can become more flexible. All in the name of going further, higher etc. On the other hand some achievers might think of gearing up a second spec almost to the bone is an achievement itself. With DSpecs switching between the specs and being in groups becomes easier. I would place in this group even pure DPSers, which may see less benefit in DSpecs, like say healers or tanks. Having the option of getting two tweaked specs (whether PvP-PvP, PvE-PvE or the more common PvE-PvP) is a step towards increasing the means for achieving more.

Killers will be benefited even more (killers can be healers, this is not a dps tag, more like a 'I crunch number and I pwn' tag, although the closest paradigm to Bartle's definition is the PvPer). The option of raiding like Holy and smacking things, like Retry in my free time, is hugely appealing for me. One of my paladin guildies wanted to tank for ages but due to our Holy heritage from the MC days, never put his mind to it. Now he has the chance. We all get to see another aspect of tha game, for which we were `cut-off' to a certain extent. We can explore the ‘art’ of that other elusive spec that we only tried the odd-weekend or in the PtRs and Betas.

Overall, I think Dual Specs will add a subtle variety in the game - the art of tweaking your toon, collecting the gear or mix and matching with your friends in groups. Its quite funny, but yesterday I was looking for groups to complete my Elders of the Dungeons achievement. One of my guild mates was in there with an alt, asking for people to join. But he was looking for a DPSer. Where is that secondary retry spec when you need it...

/Lance

P.S. The next post will be about the negative aspects of Dual Specs. Or to be precise, the issues that might arise once they are ingame.

Patch 3.1 Info

2009-02-06T11:16:00.004+02:00

Some (?) of the changes planned for 3.1 have been made public yesterday. These are:

Blessing of Kings – this spell is now a base ability trainable by all paladins.
Exorcism – this spell now causes damage to all types of enemy targets. However, it always critical strikes undead or demon targets. This change should make sure paladin damage doesn't drop when going from Naxxramas to later tiers of content.
Shield of the Templar now causes your Avenger's Shield and Shield of the Righteousness to silence targets for 3 sec. The old damage bonus of this talent has been folded into Holy Shield, Avenger's Shield, and Shield of the Righteousness.
Ardent Defender, Improved Hammer of Justice, One-Handed Weapon Specialization and more have had their ranks reduced.
Guarded by the Light – no longer reduces the mana cost of shield spells, but now has a 50/100% chance to refresh Divine Plea duration.
Judgements of the Just – now also reduces the cooldown of Hammer of Justice by 10/20 seconds and increases the duration of the Seal of Justice stun effect by 0.5/1 second.

A few hours before the devs mentioned changes in the mana replenishment aspect of the game:

As we have suggested, we have become concerned that mana regeneration is currently too powerful, especially for healers. We want players to have to keep an eye on mana. We don’t want you to go out of mana every fight, but running out of mana should be a very real risk for sloppy playing or attempting content that you aren’t yet ready for. When mana regeneration is trivial then certain parts of the game break down – classes that offer Replenishment are devalued, stats that offer mana regeneration are devalued, and spells that are efficient are neglected in preference to spells with high throughput.

Here are a list of changes you are likely to see in 3.1. They will be available to try out on the PTR. Mana regeneration is somewhat technical, so please bear with us.

[...]

Since paladins rely less on Spirit as a mana-regeneration stat, we have to address them in other ways. We don’t want to change Illumination or Replenishment. However, we are going to increase the healing penalty on Divine Plea from 20% to 50%. Divine Plea was originally intended to help Protection and Retribution paladins stay full on mana. It should be a decision for Holy paladins, not something that is automatically used every cooldown.
In addition, we are also changing the way Spiritual Attunement works. In situations with a large amount of outgoing raid damage, as well as in PvP, this passive ability was responsible for more mana regeneration than we would like. We want to keep the necessary benefit it grants to tanking Protection paladins, while making it less powerful for Holy paladins in PvP or raid encounters with a lot of group damage.

[...]

We balance around the assumption that even 10-player groups have someone offering Replenishment. To make this even easier on players we are likely to offer this ability to additional classes, as well as make sure that existing sources of Replenishment are more equitable.
These changes are ultimately being done to bring the different healing classes more in line with each other as well as to give the encounter team more leeway when designing encounters, who can balance with these new mana regeneration numbers in mind. In a world with infinite healer mana, the only way to challenge healers is with increasingly insane amount of raid damage, so that global cooldowns become the limiting factor since mana fails to be. An example is the Eredar Twins in late Sunwell. We weren’t necessarily happy with that model, and this change hopefully allows us to move towards giving healing a more deliberate and thoughtful pace rather than frenetic spam. (Source)

I will focus on the changes regarding the Holy specs as its the one I know best. First of all the nerf on Divine Plea seems kind of justified, bearing in mind the current content, as things have been to simple some times. A Paladin decked in more or less the top gear rarely has issues with mana and Divine Plea has become almost a spamable ability. The -20% reduction is practicaly unoticable and people who are aware of cooldowns maximize their replenishment by spaming Divine Plea in the most demanding fights. Nonetheless, I noticed from personal experience that I rarely do this anymore. The attempt - and if numbers stay as such - is to make DP a more "thought-through" ability. Whether 50% is too much remains to be seen. Probably something in the order of 35%-40% would be better but we need to test it through in the PTRs

The good changes though are equaly if not more important. Kings becomes baseline, simplifying somewhat the spec choices. In my guild I am the only paladin going for 20 points in retry with Improved might and wisdom. The rest have specced around BoK. Now things will be simpler, although exact choices will be though through once the exact talent trees are available (which might change from the current ones, depending on the 11pt talent in prot).

The other change is Exorcism. This is a good addition in a Holy paladin's arsenal. The fact that it always crits on Undead and Demon targets is a subtle bonus as lots of mobs are of that sort, adding some oomph in solo game. However the non-ud/deamon aspect of it is much more important, speeding things a bit in the solo game. What remains to be seen is if the talent up in holy, affecting exorcism, will be tweaked. It may be worth considering in the grand scheme of things as far as soloing is concerned. The fact that it is an extra offensive ability in PvP might cause some friction (you know the wow community how works :p) which might lead in more detailed changes (mana cost, output etc).

All in all the changes seem interesting and would make healing possibly a bit more chalenging in terms of timing (not the crude thing it often is nowadays) whereas soloing as Holy will be a tad more interesting. As with all changes that crop up when patches are due, I am patient on how they will end up, as we often seen them change until we are able to use them in-game.

P.S. Check Rohan's post on the changes and in particular those concerning protection.

'Prompting' down the memory lane

2009-02-02T16:45:00.002+02:00

I am currently working on a telecom company and recently I started working on a new platform for telephony charging. One fine day we got a new Solaris box and we asked from our It department to do the mandatory patching; put the box in the company network etc. Once the system was ready I got an email with the IP and all the info I needed to log in through SSH.

So, I log in and I freeze. I stand in awe... the network name of the machine...

Ragnaros...

I knew the guy that set it up, I knew that he was a more-or-less casual wow gamer. But seeing that name brought some fine memories. When raiding with other 39 players was truly an epic adventure. When the world seemed vast, the stories behind events long and the warmth of adventuring fulfilling.

I am not sure what follows as far as the lore and the depth of the story in Warcraft are concerned. You see, the good old Wow was more or less the next bit after Warcraft 3. But without messing up much of the story. Players were, more or less, in the same point, quests involved 'lesser' characters and the `ghost' of some personalities was there to remind us of the 'drama' and the 'suffering'. I am not sure how many of us, that knew the lore beforehand, expected to face Arthas, or even Illidan, Kael and Vashj. It kind of felt romantic thinking of those characters. You knew they existed but they were off-limits.

TBC changed all that in a somewhat blunt way. We faced certain lore characters but without knowing what they have done. Or at least it was not presented as much as I would want. How many for example knew who Vashj was. In any case, people thought there was not much reasoning in killing those figures (apart from the loot that is :-p).

Blizzard acknowledged that and tried to make lore more accessible. And they did it in a clever way, I must admit. Throughout questing people get to see the fall of Arthas, through the Culling, betraying his soldiers, obtaining Frostmourne etc. Although I have my doubts on how many people absorbed the information due to frantic levelling, it was there for us to see. Possibly go back to WC3 and have a look too. Other important figures just appeared and their doings hopefully will be presented to - like Rhonin, Krasus etc.

Yet, seeing Arthas up close and personal leaves me with a bitter taste. Not because I do not appreciate the visual, or the way it appears through questing etc. But because some of those `untouchable' heroes were just that. Out of our reach. Legendary because we could not see them...

Still, the story evolves. We are now about to step in to a new part of it, exploring the Giants legacy. At the same time we are about to close (?) the chapter of the fallen prince. And within all that dive into a new era of conflict among the Alliance and the Horde.

Yes, seeing that name on my Solaris prompt made me laugh. Then it made me sad for all the battles and the stories I lived through with Lance. But now, its time to wright the new chapters. And for sad punters like me, who adore the story of Warcraft, its something to look forward to...

Quick 'n dirty

2009-01-29T11:40:00.003+02:00

Work has been somewhat hectic the last few days and I am trying to fit everything in my schedule. I wanted to post about a few things here - after all as a new blogger I need to pick up pace :p - but things often get out of hand. Still, I had the time to follow my guilds schedule and the Sarth3D tries. Those went fairly well but we still need a few tweaks to nail that. In order not to loose the kill last Tuesday, after a fair amount of tries we decided to do the 2D flavour for a first time. Get the kill and have some challenge we thought. Still, after one failed try we pulled it through fairly easily. And that left a bitter taste. 3D is the challenge and we will be visiting again this week.

On a personal level I still need to catch up with some reputations and achievements. I have been fortunate enough to complete the 25-man content, complete my tier7 holy set and now shifting focus on the odd retry, in hope that the dual specs will crop soonish. Almost all my peripheral items (weapons, trinkets, shields etc) are of a good level (200-213 if I am not mistaken the numbers) and I'd rather allow other people in the guild get what they need. Still, I am going to be there if numbers allow because after all raiding is a relaxation for me (imagine that!)

Nonetheless, my achievements still lack (currently about 4.2K points) and there are things I still need. I became exalted with Kaluak and Sons for the fishing-pole and the shoulders enchants respectively, raised my rep with Kirin and Wyrmcrest for the head enchants and got the hog schematics. Now that the 1st tier of personal targets is complete, it is time to move to the next one. That includes:

Become exalted with Kirin, Wyrmcrest and Ebon
Start the Oracle dailies
Complete some leftover achievements both for PvP (still got to kill 1-2 hordes in Silvermoon :p) and PvE (loads of instances to do there as well as complete Elder of the Dungeons)
Try to save up some money in hope I will craft my own Lancey Davidson hog

The latter seems to be rather tricky with my playing schedule as most of my profits the last few weeks went to consumables/repairs for the Sarth3D tries. Still I managed to have some profit overall. A long way to go there, as I am not much of a trader and stand in awe on how adept some people are in such things.

All is well for my warrior of light, but like the real me, there is always something more to gain...

/Lance

P.S. I installed the Powered by Wowhead code but unfortuantely can not test it now as I am behind a company firewall. Will get to that tonight from home.

Tactical approach and initial tries efficiency

2009-01-26T10:38:00.002+02:00

One of the aspects of raiding in WoW I always found intriguing was formulating tactics around the encounters. Granted, I was never one of the first to see content so I always had to read something before I step into an instance. Nonetheless, while I was GM and during my brief raid leading I always felt that with the proper methodology and by fragmenting the fight things start to fall into place. Even now as a mere raider I try to consult my peers, or give any ideas, so that the initial tries of a boss are as useful as possible. That of course requires patience from all raiders and the understanding that it ιs for the greater good (quote from Hot Fuzz, all together repeat... ` the greater good').

Nonetheless, the approach to this has certain essential aspects:

Raiders must be willing to try and wipe for as long as it is needed to streamline the tries.
Raiders must have read at least two tactical approaches from the usual sources. The more differences between them, the greater the insight.
Positioning is the 1st and foremost aspect that needs to be addressed, bearing in mind MTs, OTs, healing vectors, ΑΟΕ-areas, CC, phase transitions and most importantly raider paths.
Timing is the second important aspect. When, what and for how long.
Persistence. Try, correct, tweak, try again. DO NOT change something if it works. Build on your tries.

Of course, once again the above require experience. Experience comes with time (and some basic understanding of course). To reference recent posts and discussions on the casual vs. hardcore debate, experience players can be from both categories. I feel what ultimately makes the difference is ones experience the `culture' and 'ethics' of raiding. Understanding why you can't cut it and accepting it is the important thing here. Claiming you are 'imba/pro/pwnzorz' or other ‘leet’ names is of no use! Therefore the more experienced the raiders (and the less selfish (, the better the information obtained.

You might be tempted of course to argue that reading a tactic from the usual references is enough. Possibly. But according to my little experience almost all encounters need to be `customised' to guilds strengths. Some healers are particularly good, some tanks more resilient, some dpsers more efficient, some players more tactically adept etc. Playing to your strengths is often what makes a raiding guild truly efficient, than merely effective.

To conclude, we more or less followed the above approach during our second proper visit on Sarth3D. Raiders have been patient, we worked well as a team on reading the encounter, the raid leader yelled with his usual tone and the result was that its only a matter of time till we control the encounter to the point of nailing it.

Raiding requires experience but equally important a mind set to pulling it through, a positive approach. I believe that after all it ιs not how often you raid, but how efficient (not effective!) your raids are.

Doctorate in Healing: a primer for healing research

2009-01-23T14:58:00.009+02:00

Healing metering methods seems to be an aspect of the game that is widely debated. Advocates claim that current healing meters are a reliable method to represent the healing output of a player/team whereas adversaries claim they do not depict important information and often people end up healing for the sake of their meter bar, without using their heads.

Let me tell you one thing. I am a researcher. I worked my butt till I get a PhD in augmented reality and wearable computing. What I found out during my years of research is that any method of measuring, formulating and investigating can have pros and cons. In research there is never black and white. There are opinions, claims, data, evaluations and degrees of truth. Why would a game as complex as World of Warcraft be any different?

Measuring output in an encounter, whether its healing or dps is highly situational and dependant on various aspects. Group composition, available buffs, tactical assignments, exclusivity among abilities (e.g. only one paladin can JoL), encounter mechanics, player individual skill (whatever that is :p), situational and context awareness, means of communication, technical issues (lag etc.) and of course the methods of measuring some of the above.

Analysing the above is usually done with observation and measurement, i.e. qualitative and quantitative methods.

Observation is simply looking around who does what, when and how. Our raid leaders do a formidable job of that - they are often a bit scary on how well they see things. Players, in addition, need to look around and `decipher' the imagery and the sound, monitor their co-raiders etc. The quality of this observation, in the wow context, is dependant on ones experience.

Measurement is done with some sort of metering or reporting add-on. Bearing in mind these are pieces of software, continuously updated to be more accurate, report things better, cover more variables etc we should be aware of their deficiencies before we use them as evidence for further insight. Subsequently we need to understand what those meters mean, more often than not coupled with our observations and our `design' variables (assignments, group compositions, buffs etc)

Only then we will be able to appreciate the amount of information available to us and reach some conclusions on what works and what is broken. But still, we must always keep in our mindset that what we are doing might not be perfectly correct.

Like in research, knowing what you do and why you do it is more than half the battle. Likewise, in something as trivial as analysing Warcraft data, knowing what they mean in the grand scale of things is equally important.

That is in my opinion what makes this game so interesting. Appart from the feeling of immersion that is... :p

Buggy Patches and patchy baggies

2009-01-22T10:42:00.003+02:00

So, the patch is here. And the result from the reports I have seen seems more like patch-werk than a blood elf bombshell. Yes, that ugly. I have not yet encountered any of the mentioned bugs and I WAS able to create a DK on other realms. Not sure also if these reports come from the US realms and the EU ones seem ok (although I highly doubt that).

So lets see what we ended up with:

Some players can not create DKs on other realms. Unfortunately, this was one of the major positive aspects of this patch.
Wintergrasp BG causes all sorts of problems and had to be shut down. If I am not mistaken Wintergrasp was a flagship aspect of Wotlk which is as good as a tank in greens facing Patchwerk.
Lag seems to be here once again, making our life 'interesting'. Too many in the same place it seems, if you get my drift.
Various class related problems like warlock summons etc.

And here is my question. Why the hell Blizzard allowed this patch to go live at this state. It is not like the issues were not known. It seems though they are more acute now. If the problems are related to the population that has access at any given time to such features, then they ought to draw more people in the PTRs by means of other incentives (not free epics, more like playtime-gifts).

Blizzard is renowned for their attention in detail. For their nice ideas of how to make a game look involving, immersive. For the good quality of their worlds. Such issues like the ones we face in the recent patch disrupt the feeling of immersion[1]. I feel they need to address certain aspects to maintain the good quality of this game:

Sort out their method of communication with the public and disregard flames/pleas/demands of the nature "omg, givf patch nao!!!one!!!" or whatever symbols the leet language uses) and focus on allowing patches get public when they are ready. Better late than broken.
Exploit their PTR mechanics and draw more people there - by means of constrained playtime-rewards - in order to have more realistic data in terms of stress-testing etc.

Now, to be honest its easy to sit on your char and nag to Blizzard for not doing this right. Being a developer myself I know there are often unforeseen variables that may affect a product. I therefore mention the above while giving Blizzard the benefit of the doubt. Hopefully, their reaction on such issues will be appropriate.

[1] The feeling of immersion, whether physical or psychological in nature, allows the sense of belief that the user as left the real world and is now “present” in the virtual environment (Sadowski & Stanney, 2002). Witmer & Singer (1998) define immersion a psychological state characterized by the perception of being or feeling «enveloped by», «included in» or «in interaction with» an environment offering a continuity of various stimulatory experiences. Slater and Wilbur (1997) define immersion as being the extent to which a computerized system is capable of offering to the user the illusion of reality at once being: inclusive, vast, surrounding and vivid.

Sarth3D and assorted challenges

2009-01-19T12:17:00.002+02:00

We started yesterday our first tries on Sarth3D. The server is very laggy since wotlk, possibly more than others as there are many guilds raiding everything but Malygos, as we are a fairly capable PvE realm. Yet we managed to do Naxx, Archavon and Malygos is one raid day and a half. In fact it could have been much faster if it was not for the lag. We now shifted focus on Sarth3D , looking for some real challenges.

Half a raid day was well used in seeing the fight. What I call the 'aquiantance with a boss'. The fight just needs to be decyphered. Although it seems overwhelming at start, in my opinion there is no fight in wow that does not have a trick. Position, damage, tanking, movement all in a nice chalenging mix.

We got one more raid day till reset and I hope we will make the most of it. Its time to read fora, watch videos and think the fight through. I am confindent that we can streamline the encounter and be successfull on what seems to be the ultimate raiding challenge (along with Immortal Naxx).

Whether it is worth it? Well - and that goes in conjunction with some of my previous thoughts - most guildies, including me, raid for the challenge. Overcoming a boss after a lot of effort gives a rise that can't be compared to anything else in game. I am a fool for these tricky raids, where the raid leader throws microphones here and there, silly gnomes scream in terror and people cheer when that carcass drops.

Weekend blogging

2009-01-16T14:52:00.004+02:00

I am spending some time learning a few trick on blogging, trying to sort out some quirks of my set-up and looking around for a good template. Possibly will end up writing one of my own.

Weekend is close, time for some dailies and some money-making while my GF is enjoying her sleep :-p. Hopefully will have some time to make this blog shine a bit :)

Can I have a Legendary Ferrari?

2009-01-14T11:50:00.005+02:00

(Continued from a Blessing of Kings comment)

Wait...

Can I email Aston Martin then to make a cheap, super-fast, super-luxury, super-desirable (almost legendary) car with a couple of grand (in euros please) because I got a life and have no time to earn (farm?) the hundreds of grand needed?

In the debate of casual vs. hardcore, easy content vs. challenging content etc. …

I admit I can not have a clear opinion. Of course if I could get my hands on a Ferrari I would. Still, if all could get their hands on one it would loose its value as an exotic, luxury car. Whether we like it or not the ease of acquiring some items is what makes them more desirable or more valuable.

In current Wow the Ferraris are some mounts, derived from certain difficult achievements, unlike in the past where rare mounts were an occurrence of luck. Or to be precise Ferraris were some legendaries, or some Tiers. Now, if you kill this boss with a set of (difficult nonetheless) conditions you get a Ferrari (albeit with no technical advancements to other cars, just the novelty from looks). If you can't, you can settle with some slightly less cool mounts. Which themselves are better than the Yugo's you can purchase from Vendors.

Blizzard (or 'Disney' as Rohan and Tobold mention ;-p) changed its approach towards what we call casual players (I call them mainstream, ‘casual’ players often do not know how to get to Northrend...or even that Northrend exists) and allowed them deeper in the content. Unlike in the past if you are a mainstream player you can easily see:

* The story and the lore (could not to a great extent in the past)
* The encounters (at least in 10-mans, possibly 25-mans with much less effort than in the past)
* Wear Tier-7 or look-alike gear with formidable stats
* Gather reputation rewards easily
* Experience the 'bulk content' of the game

As a hardcore player you do all of the above but can differentiate to some extent with:

Completing difficult achievements or achievement-groups with some novelty rewards

Possibly get some of the rare-est end-game gear

I feel Blizzard has managed to get the structure of the reward hierarchy fairly right. Still it needs some tweaking to make it compelling to a larger (read: mainstream, not casual nor hardcore) player base. And we must also bear in mind we are at the beginning for this expansion cycle with one of the most important raids being a recycled version of a past one (which was mostly left inexperienced). I think Blizz ought to keep us in our toes with:

* Gradually increasing Instance difficulty - Blizz presumably tried to bring more players to the raiding world with Wotlk and gave them the opportunity to learn some basics. Now possibly they can hook more people into raiding.
* Introduce more than one instance levels per content patch. Ulduar, plus something else for example. People are becoming better and better into raiding and along with blizzard streamlining the raiding process people go over the content faster.
* Introduce more achievement-like rewards (achievements now work kind of like legendary quests)
* Introduce legendary item(s) to differentiate the elite from the mainstream
* Possibly introduce gear/reputation checks within reason.

As I said, I feel Blizzard managed to introduce a fairly good structure to the game for the rewards hierarchy. Now they need to enrich it, mainly to keep the mainstream players satisfied and offer some reasonable challenges. After all, they want to keep us hooked in the game – and that can not be done if we cruise through everything in a couple of months time.

What a guild offers

2009-01-13T14:56:00.001+02:00

Following some of the blogs around I stumbled upon the Greedy Goblin discussing what a guild has to offer. One of the most important points made is that the true essence of the guild lies is a `filtering' process - eliminating those that can not cope with a set standard of performance and keeping those that can.

Overall, guilds in my opinion should first clearly set a schedule and the depth of content they are aiming for. Whether you want to raid 1, 3, 5 or whatever days - it needs to be stated as an overall guild policy. Subsequently, you need to aim towards a certain instance (if PvE oriented) level. The guild I am currently in has a clearly defined approach to this, from which we never deviated. 3 raids per week. Perfect for those with real life commitments but who still want to devote some time in the game. The second part of the aforementioned `policy' is that we aim as high as possible. In tBC we went up to mid-sunwell and in Wotlk we recently cleared all content, all the way to 25 man Malygos (which nonetheless is somewhat comparably easier than in the past). 10 mans are `filler' raids. This was achieved with a set of simple things.

Fairly clearly defined guild structure
Compliance to our 3-day raiding schedule
Stable guild and raid leadership
High level of player base performance
Focus on the content and the achievements and not the loot etc.
Clearly defined DKP based rules

Greedy Goblin mentions the latter as a point of friction. In our guild things are simple. The rules are rules and you can bid for what you need as main spec and off-spec. What eliminates friction is common sense and the nature of the players. When the aforementioned social filtering works, the people involved are not frantic about loot and maintain an open mind about it. If the guild performs at the end of the day you will eventually get your hands on anything you might need. Maturity goes a long way...

So, at the end of the day a guild offers an encapsulation for the player. Social and game-related rules are there to keep things going. That along with the players reasoning and understanding that no system is perfect but given certain thinking it is what will get you far. I have found this the hard way when I was GM and now I am accepting things as they are - simply because it is the guild’s rule. It is the leaderships job to maintain these social attitudes and standards in order to ensure that the guild `works as intended'.

And to add an extreme example to the above...

One of the guild officers had an in-game aspiration of becoming a Scarab Lord, having done the quest line for his own gratification he was missing the last bits. During the Xmas holiday he informed the guild that he would transfer in a `virgin' realm to finish up the quest line and eventually return back. I must admit I found his cunning thinking and determination quite pleasing. But above all I was pleased that everyone in the guild backed him up and not a single soul commented negatively - something which I would expect from other non-maturely thinking guilds. In fact - as he maintained the channels of communication with us - he mentioned that others doing the same transfer-thing as him were not welcomed back to their guilds. Am I the only one thinking it is cool to have a Scarab Lord in the guild? :p

Wow is above all a social game, a shared virtual environment. When you become friends with someone, when you develop a sense of camaraderie and you contribute to the community it is hard for someone to be against you. Yes, the guild does filter morons out. But it also gives a sense of belonging. At the end of the day I feel that each player’s obligation to a guild, apart from the attendance - which as Greedy Goblin points out ought to be clearly stated - is to maintain the culture of the guild, abide to it and if possible contribute to it.

Holiday's are here....

2008-12-23T16:11:00.000+02:00

I 've been busy in game trying to sort out the reputations I `need'. It seems to me that no reputation is actually needed and its more of a novelty reward when you reach exalted with any of them. Nonetheless Argent Crusade and Vanguard are my first choices for the Argend Crusader title and the Hog schematics. At the same time I am doing the dailies for Sons of Hodir for the shoulder enchants. I am close to being exalted with all three of them. Next will be the Kirin Tor and the Wyrmcrest for those nice head enchants. Overall, it seems much easier to do heroics and 10/25-mans for the loot.

I have managed to get 4 tier7 pieces and the odd badge reward and I am happy for the time being with my stats. Next projects along with the reputations is crafting the Hog, obtaining a descent pair of trinkets and rings and ofc seeing the end of the last encounter left for my guild. Malygos.

In between I hope to maintain a descent amount of gold and sort out an efficient dailies and farming trip. Also get to finish the quests in Icecrown and Borean Tundra that are left.

A first look on heroic performance

2008-11-27T10:34:00.000+02:00

Its been quite a few days since I posted as I was up to my neck with work and my spare time went in game.
Lance is now lvl 80, Holy spec-ed and I am starting to adjust to the new talents, rotations and the new game play.

I have not visited any normal instances yet as Holy but I did visit Culling and Dark'Tharon in heroic modes. My observations are...

Healing is much more interactive now. The cost of spells is bigger, you can not rely on passive mana management and you need to keep an eye on your bar and cool downs. Divine plea is a massive addition if used timely, often and whenever possible. It will extent uptime, it will compensate for emergencies and it will keep you going longer. The numbers are not of my concern for the time being as I have not gotten the feel of it in many instances.

Holy shock is marvellous filler for emergencies and once we get the hand of it we will couple it with fast follow-up heals with Infusion. Tricky but quite doable and as far as I see it fun.

Holy Light is now quite different as down-ranking is a no-no. So its a pure nuke heal. Crit, Mana per 5 and heal need to be adjusted for longevity and net effect. How this will develop... its quite early for me to say.

Sacred Shield has a nice graphic but I have not yet fully appreciated its use.

Longevity in my current tier6 gear is a question though. I see my mana bar dropping sometimes a bit more than I am used to. But hey, its a start.

Overall, healing with the Paladin seems fun to me. If only our solo dps was a tad more exciting, I would be pleased

Northrend...

2008-11-19T10:25:00.000+02:00

Its been a few days since I posted, simply because I have dived in to the quest pool and looking around in awe. Blizzard has done a very good job on the environments, most of the quests and the story is more involving than ever. I am halfway to 76, trying to keep a balance with speed and enjoyment of the quests. Leveling as retribution is solid, almost no uptime and I also did UK, NxS and AN with guildies. Completed the quests on Howling, Dragonblight, went straing for the Argent Crusade tabard (did a few quests there for the rep), then went to start normal questing in Grizzly. The latter is by far the most immersive area I have seen in wow. Probably the trees, the colours, the shadows the...ah crap, bears!!!

No upgrades yet though apart from some trinkets, a ring and gems! Oh the gems are nifty. As far as professions are concerned I am not doing anything in particular than mining everything I encounter and then try to level engineering in steps. I was also fortunate enough to get the Heavy Frostwave book (or whatever its called) quite soon in Zul'Drak and do the odd cooking here and there. Fishing...well, I am stuck at 320 so I'll leave that for when my GF goes to outlands.

Overall, the game looks and feels a million time better than previous instalments. Lots of things to do, lots of scenery and lots of lore. Meeting up with the likes of Krasus, Rhonin (I am a wow book fan :p), Alexstrasza, Arthas and ofc Tirion in his pala armour truly gets you into the conflict.

My only concern is the slightly more demanding minimum requirements that may affect my GFs laptop and seem to have caused some issues on my rig. Do not be afraid to tweak the settings and do not assume that going all maxed out in the graphics tab yields the best performance. You need to look what wokrs and what not for your setup, going lower or disabling something may look better actualy.

Good luck, may the Light guilde your path and see you in Icecrown...

The script evolves...

2008-11-11T14:39:00.002+02:00

As I said a few days ago Blizzard ought to bring the story to a point that there would be leverage for the Alliance and the Horde to attack Northrend (which up to a few days seemed not to be the plan).

Now undead forces attack the two iconic cities of Stormwind and Ogrimmar. I personaly expect Sindragosa to come on top of the current attacks. The spring is loaded and about to throw us to the noerthern continent. Arthas taunts us and we will take up on the chalenge...

A few hours left till the Wotlk launch, a few more hours till the servers get hammered from old, current and returning players. A few hours before Lance grabs his two-hander after quite some time and venture to the icy continent...

Meet you all there...

The Final Countdown

2008-11-07T10:57:00.000+02:00

The clock is ticking... The final countdown has started...

This is the last weekend before the release of the Wrath of the Lich King and I expect some events to trigger. From a `screenplay' point of view the alliance and the horde currently have no incentive to attack the Lich King, apart from the old crimes. Which more or less - and bearing in mind that nobody does anything about them - seem `ignored'. I feel that in order to justify the attack in Northrend something big needs to happen.

Ofc that would mean that the time point of entry to the new continent will have to be placed a few months from now to justify the new structures and the Alliance and Horde expeditions establishment/preparations.

If nothing happens then the script will seem a bit flaky to me. If the entry point in Northrend is the next day form the end of tBC then there will be missing references on what takes place currently in Northrend (it would have to be now, in order for us to go and find everything set up the next day).

So, in other words I expect (and hope) that Hell breaks loose this week.

Still, the amount of information we received the past months makes me eager to see the new content, do some fine -lore related - quests and drool over some fine new items.

I just feel that wrapping everything with a good script will set up the ground perfectly for the new expansion which Blizz claims to be much more lore related and involving for all of us.

I left my paladin in the Stormwind Harbour looking towards the Horizon. He expects the Lich King's taunt, in the form of a dragon...

The Achievement of my gametime

2008-10-30T16:00:00.003+02:00

It has been quite a few days since I posted something in this blog. I am up to my neck with work and all my spare time goes to my GF and Wow.

Nonetheless, most of my current time spend in wow involves doing some achievements. I missed a large time-window of the game when I was serving in the army for a year and now I am trying to see those places once again. MC and BWL, which I raided much less than my guildies and never got the chance for some well-sought gear due to low attendance. Revisit old quests or indeed some pinnacle events (Eranicus for example). Raid those Horde leaders while listening to the new AC/DC album with the appropriate teen-age naivety...

A few days are left till Wotlk launches and I must admit this has been a quite fun period, much more than the pre-tbc pvp months. But the greatest achievement was something else...

While in my old server I never thought I would get the chance to see the content I have now, visit the places I have or get the gear I was lucky to obtain. Unfortunately, the old server was never a good PvE realm (much much worse than Silvermoon EU by miles) and dragged all half-descent players with it. Couple that with a generally `casual' approach... Stuck in TK and SSC. The only thing that kept me was my friends, met in game and now very dear friends in RL. A couple of weddings, lots of going out for coffee or drinks, one child-birth, one christening, lots of videos, lots of phone calls. Meeting such fine people through an online game is somewhat marvelous.

When I chose to leave the server back, little I knew what was to follow. I took quite some time from my GM duties to try to find a guild and server that would suit my play style in terms of time, frequency, efficiency and level. I easily identified Escape as the guild that possessed all those traits I was looking for. I was fortunate enough to join them while they were 4/9 in BT and 4/5 in MH. Oh, I am telling ya, it was stressful and full of mistakes. But I held on to me hammah', try to do my best.

At some point, probably because I talked so enthusiastically for all the things I had seen to my mates over coffee, one by one they followed...Applied, accepted, did their best.

And now most, but a very few, of those players I appreciated most are with me. Coupled with some like-minded players I found here, the guild has a very healthy approach to PvE, with some PvP urges lurking about. Archimonde one-shoted in a raid that seemed flaky, with new people, RoS, BB, Shahraz, Council... Illidan followed. Even Kalec and Brut...

A few months ago my guildmates were tired, I was dressed in tier5 and some pvp gear, I had not seen Kael's face and was beggin' for some light. We all had thought of quiting. Nowadays, I am among old and new friends, revisiting forgotten places, decked in the gear I always wanted, staring at the horizon from the brand new SW harbor...

Yes, the greatest achievement was our Escape from misery...

On a less romantic note...

My GF is also levelling a rogue, currently at 45. She was caught up in the whole achievement buzz and she is shouting exciting every time she gets one completed. Surprisingly, she has more PVP achievements than PVE. She is turning to be quite the butcher :p. I think I will remove all the knives from the kitchen one of those days...

2008-10-21T10:34:00.001+03:00

I must admit I find the achievement system quite fun. The reason is simply because I can go back to places I had no reason to, explore the odd area that I never visited or do some low level quests which now have a meaning but are also very relaxing.
The way the achievements are implemented allows the player to do something in game while staying within to the time constrains of real life. You got lots of time but your guild is not raiding today? You can do a long chain, kill a faction boss (if there are enough likeminded people in your server), solo an instance that you miss or do some quests for the lore master title. You got only 15 min before dinner is ready? Go fish in IF :-p

However I got a few things to point out:

1. Achievements are the PvErs arena points. The first in-game PvE rating system (including ofc pvp objectives as well) along with the now-feats-of-strength titles. Quite nicely coupled with the competitive nature of most wow players.

2. They won’t last forever. Unless new are added as we go along. The first remark means that over the course of time what is now available will be completed. If not new ones are added (which probably will) it will be like a game-over type of thing.

3. Even the PvP Boss objectives got a PvE flavour. I consider going and killing Sylvanas (which we did yesterday) a nice chance to taunt the opposite faction. I must admit that being a lore fan I always thought these PvP encounters were part of PvE in the broader sense. I mean, at the end of the day that tauren is part of the environment and he is standing on my way... right? :p

4. Some achievements are humorous and fun. Others are tough and rewarding. Others are simply to back up your /played. All are to boast.

Overall I consider achievements a fun addition. Most importantly, an excuse for me to cover for the missed in-game opportunities due to my compulsory army service :p

Sylvanas went down yesterday. A nice raid, made from Club, Alter Ego, Genesis and a couple of Escape members went and killed the Forsaken leader (cool avatar nowadays!) while a raid made from one of the top guilds came late, stood and looked. Rumours that they logged their Horde toons to stall us are being investigated... Sorry guys :p

Patch incoming

2008-10-14T12:05:00.003+03:00

Patch 3.0 is incoming and its time to plan ahead. I will be sticking to Holy until Wotlk hits for sure to continue on my current role. I think its a nice time to catch up with the new mechanics, appreciate the healing that can be delivered and tweak my spec out.

Presumably I will try for 51 points in Holy to try BoL. Not sure on Infusion though. The real star though will be the glyphs, most probably going for the Holy Light glyph and a choice between +10% on jusdgement (to cover somewhat the nerf on judgements) and the wisdom one (-5% less mana cost). But a nice chance to try things out :)

2008-08-01T11:57:00.006+03:00

This is my first trip to the world of blogs. Although I have been into the computer industry for quite sometime I never attempted to make a blog and... well, thought I'd start :)

This blog's theme revolves around the World of Warcraft MMO game which I am currently playing and to events related to my current guild, Escape, in the realm of Silvermoon.

Instead of boring my guildmates with my random rumblings in our forum, I thought I use this `stage' to express myself during those boring moments at work...

So welcome and have fun!

/Lance