He's making a list

and checking it twice;
Gonna find out
Who's naughty and nice.

I'm still enjoying being able to log on the game and find a group within a few minutes.

What I really appreciate is if someone turns out to be a jerk I can put them on ignore and never group with them, at least on that character I guess, again.

It makes me feel like players' actions have consequences. A feeling that is sometimes hard to get in WoW.

LFG's effect on raiding

Tobold's post on whether raiding is obsolete got me to thinking about my own experiences.

One of my reasons for raiding is as far as PvE is concerned it is the only way to have a ready made group for doing things.

I quit the game on my very first main because at 60 there weren't many raid groups and there was nothing to do at cap if you didn't raid (leveling an alt was a foreign concept to me at the time).

Before the LFG tool, I could log on - and playing tank/healer I didn't have much trouble finding a group - it often took time.

But by raiding with a guild, I knew when I logged on the group was made for me. All I had to do was show up.

The same with PvP battlegrounds, I could just join the queue and a group would be put together for me. Not a good group, but a group nonetheless.

Now with the LFG tool, groups are put together for me and everyone else for PvE. I can play an alt get it reasonably geared, play another alt and do the same.

I can stay out of the raiding scene altogether, because I don't need it to fulfill my multi-player need.

I'm not saying I'm going to stop raiding. I'm just having a lot of fun using the LFG tool on my alt at the moment.

LFG: Tank

Like anyone else playing WoW for PvE, I've been busy instancing. The LFG tool makes it easy to find groups and as someone who hasn't had too much trouble finding them in general I can imagine this is a whole new ball game for those who did.

I have to share a funny comment someone made when asked "How many bad tanks have you had? (Lfg tool)"

They answered:
In lower level instances, it's about 50/50. Most people trying to tank seem to be tank specced at least, but some have horrible gear and/or don't understand basic principles of tanking.


Okay....a tank in a lower level instance, in horrible gear and doesn't really know how to tank?

Quelle surprise.

I heard someone say tanks should group as dps, in essence spending twice as long getting gear - because you need dps gear first then hope and pray the tank will let you roll alongside him for loot.

Of course if you spend time dpsing, you're not really getting any experience actually tanking.

Groups want experienced, knowledgeable, well-geared tanks. But how do you think they get that way?

Good buzz for LFG

I haven't heard so much good buzz around the blogosphere and forums in a while.

The LFG changes appear to be a success. Nice job Blizz!

My personal experience with the new 5 man heroics has been good, I've only done the new 3. But I've done them on a character that outgears it.

That said, I can't find fault with anything that allows you to get a random group going in less than 30 minutes.

Everyone is participating in part because of the new stuff, new loot and Perky Pug.

I wonder will it continue to be so active as things die down?

I'm not able to do too many during the week, but I plan on testing the waters more over the weekend with my sub 80, much less geared horde character.

I haven't had much luck finding lots of people wanting to do normal Northrend instances, so I'm hoping LFG is hoppin' for non-heroics too!

Patchy patch

Patch 3.3 is glitchy but that was to be expected. I honestly do not get upset when MMOs like WoW for having shaky expansions and mini-expansions.

I got the familiar Additional Instances cannot be launched, I got the random disconnect, and punt back to Dalaran.

Yous takes your chances playing on patch day.

Patch 3.3 : BoA cross faction

My horde paladin is almost 80 now, so it won't help that character any.

But I have another alt I want to level up just for the profession and I'm happy to hear with the patch I'll be able to send over all of the BoA heirloom items I have to it. Actually I think I only currently have 3 that would be useful - shoulders and some weapons, looks like there are 12 items total!

I doubt I'm going to bother trying to get all 12, but a stronger character will be easier to level and the xp increase would be sweet! Not to mention the hit on some of the items, you normally don't get hit on low level stuff.

Ah achievements, how thou doth vex me

I found out with only 2 days to spare that an achievement, Proof of Demise is being changed to a feat of strength due to the new LFG cross-realm system.

I have three left so if Patch 3.3 is released Tuesday there is no possible way for me to finish it up.

I've had more than a year to do them, but always felt I'd get around to them just like the nine other ones.

It bugs me enough to blog about it, but I'm going to let it go because if it really meant that much to me I'd go ahead and try to finish it on the chance the patch isn't released. And I really don't feel like it.

I hate to feel in some way punished for simply not choosing to do some things in game. It bugs me to see Hand of Adal titles and Amani War bear mounts, because if I had just played more than I felt comfortable I probably could have gotten them. But I'm not being punished, I'm really just not being rewarded. It feels kinda like when a buff to one class is a nerf to the rest.

In the end, I continue to try to work on playing the game because I *want* to not because I *need* to.

So if Tuesday comes and Proof of Demise is moved? I can at least consider it as an achievement I don't have to bother with.

Hitting a sweet spot

I think I may have hit a sweet spot with WoW.

I have an alliance main that I raid on twice a week max and an horde alt I'm leveling that I have no plans of raiding on.

As a raider in a less-than progressed guild, raiding gets very dull because we've reached a place where I don't think we're going to down any of the remaining bosses. People are starting to bring alts and that's a sign we've done all we're going to do.

I could chase after achievements but I'm at the point the achievements I could get take grinding. They don't give me a bite of the carrot on the stick that makes them fun.

But an alt does. Every time I play my alt I feel progression. I found out I could purchase a blue tanking libram with just 20 or so minutes of playtime and did just that last night.

Playing my alt is filling in for the lack of progression my main is missing. I'm hitting a sweet spot and it feels good!

Leveling as a tank

I decided to pretend I am a tank with my horde character. I say pretend because leading groups doesn't come naturally to me. Being a healer I spent vanilla WoW not really knowing what instances looked like because of "stay back here and I'll pull" thing.

I have no plans to become a raid tank. I raid on my alliance character and that's more raiding than I feel like doing as it is.

I just plan on tanking for the random 5-man pug, get a few upgrades and admire how my character turns out.

Killing stuff is slower, but I like that I'm able to do some group quests without a group.

I'm only tanking instances that are below my level which makes it easier on the healer and all involved. Don't know what I'm going to do when I hit 80. Maybe I'll stick to the easier instances. I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

Yane the Pilgrim

I got Pilgrim on two characters. I vowed I wouldn't chase after world event achievements on anything but my main alliance character. But the ability to level up cooking on my newer horde character was too good to pass up.

The "hardest" parts were sitting at enemy tables on both factions. Undercity and Stormwind weren't pleasant. I also wasn't sure how to easily get to the Alliance cities via horde.

But I'm going back to my vow and try not to pursue too many achievements on my horde character. Sounds crazy, but my horde character is my hobby, while my alliance character feels more like my workhorse. My alliance one does raids and tries to get more achievement points. My horde character "pvps" and is happy when a quest green is better than something I'm already wearing.

Leave the nest

Greedy Goblin's blog is changing focus a bit. He's covered just about everything there is to be covered on making gold. I imagine there is nothing you can ask that you can't just do a search and find the answer somewhere. I feel like he is saying "leave the nest little birdies and find your fortune. I've given you the tools its up to you to use them".

As a horde reroll in need of gold I recently followed his advice to level my mining up to the point I could mine ore in the areas I was questing in.

This was a rough, "I want to play not mine!" I said. But each time I went back to an area to quest I heard GG's voice (it sounds like a goblin) "Don't be a M&S!". So for several hours I mined ore in lower levels, riding round and round until I got my mining up to my quest level.

The great thing is now I'm actually able to mine mats to have some armor crafted. Win-win.

Pilgrims Aplenty

Thankfully, pun intended, this Thanksgiving world event can be reasonably finished without worry of RNG screwing you up. Of course, this event doesn't count toward a meta, but I'm sure it won't stop you from trying to finish it all. I know I plan to.

Pilgrim's Peril - sitting at the dinner table in enemy territory was indeed perilous. I managed to get it done, but not without losing a few of my nine lives.

The Turkinator - has surprisingly only got one long thread of responses on the WoW forums. It's definitely one that you may be worried you might not complete, but I always feel if I can do it anyone can.

It will probably take some time for me to find all of the rogues, but that and a visit to Sethekk Halls is the only thing I have left.

Also if you have alts (or a main) that needs to level up their cooking - get it done with the quests. All you need is some coin and ability to travel to the major cities. They provide the food and the fire!

Alterac Valley

It's unbalanced in favor of Alliance.

What?!?!?

No!!!!!!

Gasp!!!!

Shocking!?!?!

We never knew!!!!

Okay, okay this isn't news to anyone. But it didn't really see all the little things until I played Horde for myself.

But the biggest Aha! moment for me was realizing it is more fun to go on offense than to stay on defense.

Now this concept isn't new either. I'm one of those players who try to defend a flag in Arathi Basin even when I'm not equipped to do so. I realize being able to just keep someone from flipping the flag for a few seconds can make all the difference.

However the entire map of Alterac Valley is made for Horde to have to defend. Guess how tiring that gets?

I know that more people can easily switch sides for the cost of 25 bucks I imagine more won't be able to deny what they already knew.

Are they going to change it, at the point how many years has AV been out? I doubt it, but I do wonder if more alliance defectors complaining about it will make a difference.

They must have had my guild in mind

"In the weeks and months after all twelve encounters are unlocked, additional attempts against the final four boss encounters become available. This represents the Ashen Verdict growing more powerful and gaining a stronger foothold in Icecrown Citadel. To further help raids, Varian Wrynn and Garrosh Hellscream will begin to provide assistance by inspiring the armies attacking Icecrown Citadel. This is represented as an additional zone wide spell effect applied to all players that will increase their hit points, damage dealt, and healing done. This effect will also increase in effectiveness over time."

So maybe now instead of abandoning an instance before its finished with the only hope being to go back and outlevel it in the next expansion, maybe my scrub guild will actually clear something for a change.

Life as an alt

I have no idea why, but I hope the trend continues. My first 70-79 AV was more organized than any previous ones I've been in.

A friend of mine has also found renewed interest in playing from being on an alt just like I am.

He's actually finding it easier to get in pug groups than it is guild groups. Makes sense, you have a much larger population to pull from if you use lfg than our smallish guild. He was suprised by it though, and I'm happy he's having fun again.

And I think Blizzard is once again hitting on the pulse of what at least its customers like. Getting loot fairly easily.

I read reviews of Torchlight and the same comments kept popping up, you get lots of loot (so much so you have a pet that can run errands of selling your loot for you).

It is impressive that Uber Guild X got the Glowing Saber of Superiority. But in the end more players are happy to get their hands on the Slightly Inferior Fist Weapon.

Some players complain getting loot is too easy. But that's why players enjoy.

And before you say it will get old. As soon as you've easily geared up one alt, you can easily gear up another. Blizzard gets this. A lot sooner than we actually do/did.

Leveling through Vanishing Azeroth...battlegrounds

I continue to level my horde character in battlegrounds. Sometimes I do pve quests to mix it up, but when bg queue times are low I just jump into whatever I can get into first.

I failed at seeing all of the horde side I could possibly see. I should have leveled up 1 horde and 1 alliance at the very beginning of release. Back then it would have been fun to do pve with other players. Now you see a few people now and then, but I have more "player" interaction in Dragon Age: Origins than I do leveling up in WoW.

So battlegrounds is where I spend most of my time. I'm high enough to mix in Alterac Valley and Eye of the Storm.

For the first time since I starting playing horde, I'm at the point I wish I was max level with the hopes players starting cooperating more. Because last night I heard my first "I'm just here for the xp".

I want to win every bg I enter, even if it makes it last longer. I don't like rolling over and playing dead.

I haven't kept a tally, but it seems horde wins more Arathi Basins than it loses as expected. It wins more Alterac Valleys than I expected it to (when I played Alliance it seemed like we always won). And Warsong Gulch has been a surprise. Alliance side at least at 80, horde seem to always win, but leveling up it goes both ways. Eye of the Storm for the sake of equality being a symmetrical map is proabably the most boring bg of them all. I think horde loses more than it wins, I can't really tell.

Being the underdog I like playing AV. It's one of those bgs horde can win, just by playing smart. Of course there's the rub. Alliance can win by playing dumb. Guess which side wins the most.

I'm looking forward to hitting 80, although I heard the 70-79 bg is sparse. I'm, to my own surprise, am not looking forward to questing Northrend if I have to. So at this point I don't know if I'll ever hit 80 anytime soon.

Gearing up alts does not help progression

I felt this topic deserved its own post.

I'm going to give my reasons why gearing up alts (while fun for those on their alts) does not help progression and can actually hurt it.

1) As soon as you bring one alt in you are immediately handicapped.
The alt while familiar with the fight, is probably not familiar with the fight on his alt.

2) Alts can potentially take gear away from mains who can swap specs for you.

3) An alt will require more support because they'll have less health, less hit, less everything.

4) In the end, when new content is released, mains drop their alts like a bad habit anyway.

5) If you have the chance to gear up and alt, you may not focus on gearing up your main to its fullest potential.

6) One person bringing an alt just makes 5 other people want to bring theirs. If you are handicapped by one alt, what are you by bringing 5?

Doing what's right for me

I'm stepping back from raiding with my guild a bit.

There has been some mention about running old content to help new raiders get gear. There is also mention of alts running with mains to get gear.

This is a red flag to me. I can feel the heat from the burnout before it even reaches me. When we start farming placing like Naxx and Ulduar while there is still new content we haven't downed I know I'm in the wrong place.

It's not that we can't work on the new content, but we have just enough people not interested that we never can get ahead. It's easier to do old content, no risk of wiping, and pass out gear and those getting gear are happy campers. However those of us, who don't raid on alts, are bored out of their skulls.

And I don't care what anyone says, gearing up alts does not help with progression. I'll save this for another post.

I'm not going to look for a new guild, I'm just going to cut back on raiding.

I realize this is where I should suck it up and keep raiding for the good of the guild. However I know for a fact, I will get sick of raiding the same stuff to the point of quitting altogether.

Mini-transactions, Micro-transactions, Micro-payments

Other than initial additional purchases (Collector's Editions, etc.) I have had the willpower to not spend money on games other than their subscription fees.

I tried Wizard 101 and Free Realms and Runes of Magic, and when, with greater frequency, I started to meet up with things that required a purchase I didn't pony up, instead I quit.

I admit the randomness of winning something through the Trading Card Game made it easy for me to not spend money trying to get a turtle mount or spectral tiger or even one of the easier things to get - various tabards. But I also give credit, on pun intended, to the fact I simply don't want to spend more money on a game I'm already spending money on.

I played City of Heroes a few months ago and was tempted to purchase the additional costume packs, because the original costumes had become dated since I first played. A big part of CoH is the costuming. It would be like purchasing additional quests in WoW. It felt wrong to have to pay for something that should be free. So I didn't give in to temptation.

Now Blizzard will be adding a store where you can buy a non-combat pet directly from them.

I don't think I'll spend any money on those either. There is a crack in my willpower but its sealed by the fact there are pets I still don't have in game. I'll just spend time trying to get those instead if I want a new pet.

I pay $15 a month for WoW. It's cheap entertainment but that doesn't mean I want to throw more money at it to keep it fun.

Another Life

I've started another blog titled "Life in Ferelden" since I started playing Dragon Age: Origins. Perhaps starting a blog about it is overkill. But I've gotten somehow revitalized by the fact I'm embarking on a journey that will end in the foreseeable future.

I wondered why I was so giddy given DA:O is a fantasy with elements just like every other fantasy, and I've decided it was because of that one thing - "an ending".

MMORPGs have worn me out. It is hard for me to enjoy them anymore because I have this nagging feeling that whatever I do is only a grain of sand on a beach and the game expects me to move that beach elsewhere using a bucket. Do you know how babies are content when wrapped tight in swaddling cloth and uncomfortable when they are flailing about naked? That uncomfortableness is the feeling I get when thinking about playing another MMORPG.

Thanks to the intarweb I was able to easily find an article that describes what is wrong about MMOs for me now. This article is about the series Lost. And how at first it was extremely popular, but as each season ended, you started to feel drug along and drug out.

The author suggests shows like Lost be "reimagined". Instead of a regular television series make it a limited-run show from the get-go.

When it comes to how I feel about MMOs, I couldn't have said it better myself - "Puzzles are meant to be solved, not prolonged. You can only tease viewers so long before they feel like they’re being mocked."

I know DA:O is going to end and I'm all the more engaged in the story because of it.

Edit: Here is a link to an opinion that is just the opposite of mine. The Angry Gamer doesn't want to play a game where what he does won't be lasting. AG says "The problem is that MMO’s have spoiled me to the point where I feel like if I play a single player game I am getting NOTHING accomplished."

When achievements were introduced, I too felt as if I weren't on my main "achieving" I wasn't getting anything done. But what I and AG are both doing is painting ourselves into a corner.

If AG is truly having fun "getting SOMETHING accomplished" by playing WoW that's what its all about.

But if AG is avoiding doing something else fun, at the risk of doing more of the same I say free yourself!

What classes can you "just not get into"?

This is a topic from the WoW forums. It's easy to say you don't like this or that class because it owns you in pvp, but I thought it was interesting to see why other players who have actually tried other classes and found out they didn't like them.

No surprise, pretty much every class was mentioned. Least mentioned was druid. The class that kept coming up early on was rogues (warriors seemed to be mentioned a lot too).

Here are some of the reasons given for not liking rogues:

*I can't get into 'em. Maybe I just don't have the manual dexterity to play one efficiently :)

*I can't play anything that doesn't have a blue bar.

*I haven't been able to get a rogue/warrior past 20.

*Never got one past 15. The Combo Point 90s Fighting Game mechanic just leaves me cold, as it always has.

*I've created three or four of them thinking, each time, that I'd totally enjoy it. I'm wrong each and every time.

*warrior/Rogue/priest/mage are a pain in the ass. Rogues and warriors only got bandages and pots

*I cant play a non caster.

*Rogue...I've tried and it's just too stupid. They're faceroll at everything.

*Rogue. Sneakily and skillfully filling your target feels horribly slow and boring after the 3rd mob or so. I've had one that has moved from level 35 to 42 over the course of 3 years.

*Everytime I am absolutely murdered in a BG by a rogue I think "wow, I really should create a rogue, it looks like so much fun....." I think the highest I ever got one was 18 before I cleared bags, removed gold and deleted toon swearing I'll never create one again.

*Rogue's cause of the missmissdodgemissparrymissmissdodgeparymissmissmiss after the get duel-wield.

*That pretty much nails down my views on Rogues as well. Tried many times, each thinking "It'll be different this time", only to approach lvl 20 & find myself painfully bored with the class...just like all the other times.

*In theory, I should love playing rogues. but the fact of the matter is that I simply can't get into it. I blame combo points, to monotonous.

*I can't play anything that can't heal themselves.

*Rogues. I tried leveling one like three times thinking I can finally open those damn lockboxes myself, but I could never get one enough to leave the newbie zone. Just not really my style I guess.

*Rogue. They are fun, but just not my style. I don't like to sneak up on things.

*I just can't seem to have fun playing a Rogue.

Just as someone mentioned, I've often dreamt about playing a rogue and sharing the sorrow inflicted upon me by one. I also wish my druid could play like one, but then it wouldn't be a druid would it?

Nothing much

Nothing much going on lately.

I finished all of my Hallow's End achievements for the meta last year. So what was left for me were masks and a Headless Horseman mount. I had no desire to log on every hour and trick or treat the innkeeper for a chance at 20 masks and while I did a few days of HH runs I grew tired of finding a group or putting a group together and traveling to SM. It's not that much effort at all, but I wasn't really in to doing it, so I said "meh".

Our raid has reached somewhat of a roadblock. We have to sit people for regular mode, but then immediately following we have a lack of signups for hard modes. Once again I don't care enough to go shopping for another guild. But with this lack of participation, we run out of things to do even with our extremely limited raiding schedule.

Over the weekend Ensidia managed to clear the entire place without a single death and we can't muster up enough enthusiasm to kill Beasts.

It makes me want to quit raiding until Icecrown is released.

A fun evening

Last night I had fun raiding in WoW and it felt exceptional. Why?

I realized, once again, I need to keep my raiding/grouping minimal. A few weeks earlier RL freed up some time for me and I jumped in headfirst into every raid I could find that would take me. But it didn't take long before becoming irritated by mistakes and delays in general. I found myself tapping my foot for the pulls and logging off immediately after the raid was over like I'd been freed from the Stockades.

Sure I'm able to get lots of emblems and potential upgrades this way, but it was at risk of enjoying myself. This week, I logged on if I felt like it, not because I needed to get X emblems per day.

(It was a little disconcerting how quickly I fell in to playing too much just because I had the extra time to do so. I'm glad my body sent emotional cues that reminded me why that wasn't a good pattern to drop back into.)

So instead of it being my 2nd or 3rd raid of the week, last night was 1st and I was eager to do so because I hadn't just gotten out of one the night before. Absence makes the heart grow fonder.

It was a 10-man raid. Our group was not optimal. It wasn't optimal by class choice (we started out with 2 of the same 4 classes), we didn't have any of our main or off tanks in our raid, and one of our healers is still learning the ropes. And our normal raid leaders weren't there.

It ended up being a fun time. Instead of having the same person tell us all what to do, it was more of a group effort. We had to figure out ways to do certain things because we didn't have the normal X to do Y. Also everyone in the group seemed to be okay with wiping a few times until we got our strategies figured out.

I think this is what is fun about achievements and hard modes. They make you approach things differently and this spices up raiding the same ol' content a bit.

Once Bitten, Twice Shy?

Have I finally learned my lesson with new MMOs? I haven't played Aion in weeks and I can't even bring myself to log on Champions Online even when I have friends to play with there.

Tobold directed me to a review of Alganon, so much a wow clone it copied WoW's key ring button ui even though it hasn't implemented any functionality for it. (So glad this game appears to really suck. Whew, no more confusing Alganon the game with Algalon the WoW raid. j/k

WoW clones think WoW is a tv, and that gamers are homeowners. They think, rightly so, homeowners like tvs, and even though you have one in your living room, you'll probably want to put one in the basement and in your bedroom too.

But WoW is more like a microwave. It's not an oven, but it fulfills my needs somewhat and I don't need a second microwave. And being a microwave, there really isn't much you can improve on that would make me want to buy a new one. At least that is what I'm discovering.

I thought about how I play WoW now. On my new horde character I spend 95% of my time in battlegrounds. On my older alliance character I spend 90% of my time in raids. I don't spend a lot of time killing 10 rats anymore. So I shouldn't be surprised that I'm not enjoying what WoW clones offer in the beginning, killing 10 rodents or 10 mice, because I guess I'm finally tired of it. When I saw the screen shot of Alganon showing the player killing, instead of rats, grass skitterers, and the quest over to the side marked as "The Skitter Threat" I grew ill.

Okay sure it's not that serious, but why make anymore games like that? I'm not a WoW basher, but I find myself agreeing with Syncaine. I only have myself to blame.

Second Time Around: World Events

I enjoy World Events in WoW. It changes the landscape a little and the world is a more active than usual. It causes some extra lag but I don't spend that much time in cities anyway.

What I really enjoy is the fact since I ran myself ragged last year, this time around I don't have to scramble to get a bunch of achievements done. I have my violet proto-drake and the few achievements I don't have aren't part of any other rewarded meta I know of, so I can say "meh" to doing them (Peddlefeet, Masks for All Occasions, Brewfest mount, etc.).

Of course Pilgrim's Bounty (Nov 8th-14th) was added later, so I have one last (?) event to spend extra time playing on.

I can't imagine they'll add too many more world events. If you're like me, they sometimes get overwhelming, for instance I don't think I did anything with Harvest Festival (Sept 27th - Oct 3rd )because it ran so close to Brewfest (Sept 20th - Oct 5th).

I like that they add a few new activities like BB King but I also like going into the event knowing I've done the bulk of it and I don't need to log on every day trying to get something done. And if I ever got the urge to do so I could just do it on an alt I've neglected. (That time won't come!)

Looking in the wrong places

After seeing Hardcore Casual post about Aion, I'm wondering how I missed that part about it being a grind when I was surfing around reading comments.

Perhaps if someone had said Aion is like Lineage II or FFXI (games I haven't played but are known for their grinding) I would have been warned, but I didn't read anything like that anywhere.

I've yet had the desire to fire the game up again, because the last time I played it felt grindy to me and I hadn't even got out of the teens.

I read several people saying they didn't like it, but the comments from those that did like it swayed me. Not to mention I really did want to try it for myself.

I guess instead of reading beta reviews, I should wait a month after release and read those reviews instead to get a better opinion of what a game is like.

Gearscore

There have been some complaints on the forum about the use of Gear Scores to choose who will attend a pug raids.

Gear Score is the sum of the item levels of your gear. Legendaries for instance have higher item levels than epics. Certain epics have higher levels than other epics. Tier 10 has a higher level than tier 9 and so on.

Places liek WoW Heroes and Wowhead profiles display gearscores.

Pugs are also requiring you to have an achievement for an instance to prove you already have experience doing it.

Basically pugs are moving toward guild runs. Players want assurances they'll have a good chance of completing what they set out to do.

I joined a pug where I had to show my achievement before I got invited. Needless to say when I checked others, I found at least one player who didn't have the achievement. Okay, whatever. When the raid leader asked if it would be okay for an undergeared player to come fill the last spot, the rest of us said no. You require people to hit some standard you set only to let someone else limbo under it?

People move from going solo to pug, pug to guild, from "friends and family" guild to progression guild, from progression guild to server transfer to even further progressed guild, because they level of fail they are willing to put up with drops lower and lower.

I joined a pug Molten Core group that couldn't kill a corehound, and once I got a taste of a guild ran MC I never looked back.

I remember a player leaving what was back then called Nihilum (the top guild in the world) to go to SK-Gaming (another top guild) because he felt Nihilum was failing (at the time I think they got a world 2nd or something).

We all have our own level of fail we can be satisfied with.

Gearscore is a tool that people are using because whether it said or not, people will try to make do with as little as possible if they are allowed.

Just hit 80? Maybe I can get in someones 25-man ToC and bypass the regular 5-man -> heroic 5-man -> Naxx25 -> Naxx10 -> Ulduar 25 -> Ulduar 10 -> 25 ToC. See how much time I saved by showing up and riding on other's backs?

For every person who says but I can be just as skilled in my quest greens/blues as the epic'd player, there are 50 who aren't but like to quote that possibility as a reason they should get to raid in a place they won't really contribute.

One of the CM's seems to think gearscore is a tool, and while it has the potential to be abused, it's alright to use. I'm not sure how they could stop people from using it at this point, and they certainly aren't going to remove the achievement system.

How many people really are elitist jerks?

This comment from one of the guild leaders of a worldwide top raid guild:

"im yet to see a rogue switch his agility gems for armor pen because of an encounter or their own thought process.

if they do change it, it's because some spreadsheet says it's now the best way to do it and it's completely pointless ... the actual number of people that properly understand the maths of stuff like armor pen is TINY"

I myself have wondered how many people on EJ actually have a clue, and how many are more like me "tell me what works".

As Tobold mentioned how restricting being able to choose any number of skills would be, we'd all just pick whatever the best choices are at the time.

I've also pondered how many guilds actually work out content on their own? And how many of us copy what we've seen done elsewhere?

Stopping yourself

The reason why Keen's post (see my previous post) stood out to me is because I'm often guilty of finding ways to make what I'm doing in WoW fun, when it initially isn't.

It somehow reminded me of an old Simpsons episode where Bart and Principle Skinner had this exchange:

Principle Skinner: Oh, licking envelopes can be fun! All you have to do is make a game of it.

Bart: What kind of game?

Principle Skinner: Well, for example, you could see how many you could lick in an hour, then try to break that record.

Bart: Sounds like a pretty crappy game to me.

Principle Skinner: Yes, well... Get started.

Amazing Aion?

Go read about Keen's Amazing Aion experience and let me know if you think he really is enjoying Aion.

I'll wait.

Okay no I won't, after reading it I'm thinking the title shouldn't include the adjective Amazing. Comments have their meanings changed when they are taken out of context, would you think Keen is enjoying himself if you read this:

**Levels 22-25 aka “Hell levels”

**I won’t lie to you… these really were hell levels. Exp seemed to crawl and there weren’t enough quests available to me. I was dragging my feet and resisting something I had done for years: Grind.

**A switch needed to be thrown in my head to accept this form of grinding as nothing different, even though it felt different.

**Between the Morheim Ice Fort and the winding path that leads to the Fungus stuff there are tons of soft mobs — kill them ALL and don’t watch the exp bar.

**However, I do not find it to be as amazing as most people were saying.

**Okay, so this place is great exp but is it fun? There’s nothing really amazing to look at here and the content is rather straight forward: Pull, tank, spank.

**I was really getting tired of the drab looking spriggin area with washed out gray colors in the area after the boring snow.


**Grinding is still prevalent at this level and I find that I end up killing stupid amounts of mobs to get the quest drop and work my way to mobs that I need (lots of wading through aggro mobs)

**I never reached the point of not liking the game, but I did become indifferent to it for a few days as I was struggling to find time to invest into the 18-23 span.

**Yeah, it’s a themepark-like “end-game” mentality oriented goal but it’s a goal nonetheless and it’s something I really needed in Aion.


**For anyone struggling out there to feel Aion’s soul, to feel what this game has to offer and what it’s all about, reach level 25. I know, I know, you shouldn’t have to play a game to level 25 to feel this and I’m not going to justify it at all (trust me, in hindsight I didn’t like 1-23 either) but it changes for the better.


As someone commented to Keen "...even with you now framing your Aion experience in a positive light, it sounds pretty dire to me."














First off he describes “Hell levels” and he agreed they were!

Failnight

It became evident to me last evening, that our guild will never progress very far if we continue to accept other guilds' alts as main raiders.

There are some skilled players who can switch characters on a dime and perform well. We don't usually get these players.

These players show up on their alt death knight or hunter, because everyone has a dk or hunter alt.

They aren't gemmed and enchanted the best because they "save that gold for their main".

Instead we get players searching through their spellbook looking for spells and asking who to use what spell on (this actually happened in a heroic, needless to say we wiped a few times and called it a night).

My plan is to figure out what it is I want on my own main and then take another break from raiding again. I shouldn't feel like I'm running 80s through Stockades.

Why don't we all have 214,748 gold?

The other day I started pining for a chopper. I suddenly realized how gold poor I am when I think about purchasing the mats necessary to get my motor running.

Greedy Goblin says there are easy ways to make tons of gold. I realized something else. I don't believe him.

If I believed him I'd be doing it. What is stopping me from at least trying one of his or any other savvy player suggestions?

My usual response is I don't think I'd have fun playing the market to the lengths necessary to turn a profit. But I also I have this odd feeling I'd do something stupid and lose my gold and probably end up as one of GG's morons of the week. Have you heard of old people who hid money in their mattress because its "safe"? Yeah, I think in a past life I lived through the Great Depression because I can relate*. I'm risk averse.

Either I take the plunge and try one of their suggestions, or continue to put around on my boring mount.


*This doesn't even have to date back to the depression, recently, June 2009 and Israeli woman threw out a mattress only to find her mother had stowed away her life savings of $1mil in it!

Less is less

As I mentioned earlier about not being as much in the loop as I used to be about WoW...I didn't realize they haven't added "Less is more" achievements to Ulduar and ToC.

This was a good choice on someone's, whoever makes these type of decisions, part. While attempting to complete an instance with less than the usual amount of people is challenging for those who do it, it really defeats the purpose of raiding - where a larger group of people get together to complete something.

A few times I was part of a less is more attempt because it was unplanned or someone didn't show up. But if a guild decides to 8-man something ahead of time, who gets left out? Of course you can plan around doing it over and over again swapping out people, but that's a headache and I have yet to be involved in a "let's do it for everyone" scheme from start to finish. The person who plans it, usually gets their achievement or mount and the next week comes down with a cold.

And then there are these "dps it down" achievements that run with fewer tanks and fewer healers. I guess that's the payback for having a easier time finding 5-mans.

There is a thread over at the Raid and Dungeons forum about removing the uber cloak drop from the perfect heroic run (no wipes I believe from start to finish of the whole instance). Even the top guilds complain that since their are connectivity issues they shouldn't be punished.

Then there's the issue of cohesiveness again. Do you sit out the guy on Comcast every attempt because you don't want to risk screwing up just one attempt?

For 10 man regular runs we try to get as many teams going (usually 2) as possible. But for heroics we end up being choosier, because we know it takes a little bit more. You should be "punished" for lack of dps or lack of situational awareness, not a crappy computer connection.

More is more, because when you have to compete for a raid spot you tend to do better. I remember playing with very competitive people who still didn't really up their game until they joined a further progressed guilds and realized they actually could put out more dps. What was stopping them before? A guaranteed raid slot.

So there are things that promote success in a raid and things that can undermine it. I still haven't recovered from Undying and Immortal attempts. And it sad to admit the reason we got undying is because we didn't include some players we normally raid with.

While it may not always be possible, I want to succeed in spite of whatever drawbacks our guild may have. Not end up trying to run things when Player Y isn't online.

In the dark

Over and near the end of the summer I was playing less WoW. As a result, I was reading less about it as well. Now that I've started playing again I realize I'm playing in the dark. Since I haven't been kept abreast of WoW goings-on, I'm coming across things by accident. Some things I wish I hadn't missed, like lots of easy xp in battlegrounds (they've since nerfed it), but others have been nice surprises, like a small new area of land added. I won't say where so it may be a surprise to you too!

Downtime

Yes, compared to RL, wow *is* my downtime. But I'm speaking about a different kind of downtime - the downtime that is between pulls, corpse runs, etc. As I've commented about commenting this is my least favorite group behavior.

Recently I've had a chance to play more than usual. One evening I had a ton of fun, the next evening, not so much. And the one thing I can point to as being the difference was downtime. There's really no resolution, because things were out of our control. The first night everyone was on, we had even more people than we had room for. We buffed, we killed, we buffed, we wiped, we ran back, we killed, wash, rinse, repeat, good night, cya next time.

The next raid session, half the people didn't show up like they said they would. We had to find replacements, we had to figure out who was going to do what. We wiped several times before trying something easier. Since the something easier was old content, people swapped out to alts. We waited awhile longer to see if the no-shows would show. ZzzzzZzzzzz.

The night eventually turned out to be successful given what we had, but I didn't really have that great of a time. Because waiting around is torture. A top 100 (top 20?) guild, Fusion, realizes this and devotes time to speed runs. Well I think for them its more about testing their limits, but I'm sure its also about keeping everyone engaged.

I've been thinking alot about Greedy Goblin's coined (no pun intended) "worse than grind" phrase. (I typed up something about it but didn't post it, maybe later.). It describes when the majority of a guild knows the fights, knows what they need to do individually, but the failures of a few cause just enough problems that they never progress. Or they progress really slowly (usually just enough to keep them satisfied with being in the middle of a "worse than grind".

I think this can apply, in a way, to people who suffer from delays. There are players who have signed up and show up on time, make sure to have everything repaired, stocked on reagents/food, head to the instance early to help summon or show up right on time, are fast on their corpse runs, eat up or bandage, when necessary afk makes them quick. Those who don't take care to try to do all of these things, cause everyone else to suffer "worse than grind" or maybe it is better describe as "worse than wait".

But all of this is the nature of the MMORPG beast. You group, you find yourself bobbing in the waves caused by the group.

Tier 10

The WoW blogosphere is abuzz with Tier 10. (okay maybe just the druid blogs because the helms are so weird looking).

For some reason at first I thought everyone was talking about tiers in a new 10 man dungeon.

Yeah, somewhere along the way I lost track of tiers.

I knew Tier 0.5 would start nothing but trouble.

And Aion...

Aion will not hold me past my initial subscription purchase. For some reason, I keep feeling the need to say "It's not Aion's fault." I think its a great looking game, the beasts and humanoids are imaginative. It's easy to play if you've played any other WoW-similar MMO.

At a few points during my play session over the weekend, I found myself checking my xp bar. I typed up a big long post about it, but I can sum it up in a few words: "That is not a good thing."

Pugs Revisited

Speaking of going solo, and I was in my previous post. I wandered into that dark, scary forest of pugs over the weekend. Given what low expectations I have, they went exceedingly well.

My irritations, as I commented over at Big Bear Butt's blog, didn't come up as much. Though we still had a delay for getting everyone to Heroic Violet Hold (yes the one right smack dab in the middle of Dalaran).

Everyone is trying to get emblems, so finding a group hasn't been very hard. The old instances have been out for a while, and the new ToC one is weirdly short and easy. ToC is truly a gimme instance. So far I've done one boss without a weapon (lance equip ftw), a run with the odd make up of only rogues and death knights (who needs buffs?), One with someone who just hit 80 a few hours beforehand (they couldn't outdps the tank). Easy gear and emblems, no complaints.

But this is coming from someone who hardly ever does heroics. How fun is it to do day after day? I'm not going to try to find out.

When WoW becomes casual for everyone

A friend of mine tried in vain to get something going with a bunch of friends and family (some in different time zones) in WoW Sunday.

All of us can be considered casual now, with only a few raiding here and there. The problem was unwittingly expecting we'd all be free to do something right then and there.

My friend logged off exasperated, and a bit overblown in my book, commenting about quitting WoW completely.

Yet I think it explains how WoW has become for me perfectly. I want to play casually, when, where and for how long I want to. I thought this only affected raiding. You can't progress very far if everyone in the guild has my attitude. (Keep in mind if you're down two person that's actually an achievement.) So if more and more people have my attitude and decide not to show up that doesn't fare well for the raids.

But actually it works the same for smaller instances too. If a group of friends all have the attitude of logging on when they want to, the odds of them actually accomplishing something together are low as well. What each of us are doing is asking our friends to keep their schedules free on the chance we want to do something together. You might do that for a movie, or a night out for wings, but it doesn't feel right anymore to do so for WoW.

I think casual WoW really means going solo. If you log on and want to do something with a group, it will probably end up being a pug. Because if you and all your friends play casually and no one wants to adhere to a schedule, its just not going to happen.

Endgame betas

Is it just me or does it seem odd no one seems to mind that they never get to beta test the endgame of their MMOs. (I say never, what do I know?)

We beta test levels 1-10, or whoo 20! We make our predictions, we decide to buy or pass based on the short time we've beta'd. And then are angry when, let's not even mention getting to endgame, level 21 sucks.

I guess testing things on PTRs count but that's after we've purchased the game.

An MMO lasts on average what 6 mos to 7 years (I made that up) and yet we're okay to beta a month or so of that time (or follow the reviews of someone who did) and make final decisions on something.

I guess Age of Conan is the best example, how in the world did Tortage turn out so well (so I've heard), yet no one mentioned the fun ended there?

Maybe everyone is like me after all, only expecting to have a month or so of fun, until they go back to whatever they were doing before the new game was released.

No Aion update

I was expecting to play Aion a little more and have a little more to post about it. But I haven't felt like logging on.

I think I'll end up playing Aion in long sessions maybe on the weekends instead of frequent short bursts throughout the week. Playing longer sessions lets me feel like I can take my time and explore instead of get X amount done before the evening's over.

Death and Taxes and Loot disagreements

I was going to post this yesterday, but felt I hadn't reached a conclusion, so I just left it to die a slow death in draft form. Instead after seeing Elnia's post over at Larisa's Pink Pigtail Inn, Defining 'Fair' in Loot Distribution I decided to put it out there in the ether of the internet, unfinished but topical.

I think I'm more curious why Rohan started this topic over at Blessing of Kings than the topic itself. Did Rohan miss out on some loot recently?

Rohan posits when Player A passes to friend Player B, loot distribution is still fair to Player C because Player C's chance at the loot has neither lowered or increased Player A's decision.

But I'm lead to ask why Player A is rolling to begin with if they are just going to pass. If player A just dropped out before the roll, Player C's chance is now greater.

And as some have commented there is the issue of perception. I remember playing in a guild with a husband and wife. The husband would roll along with the wife and if he won would pass it on to his wife. His win, his decision right? Rightly so, some disagreed. Two chances at loot are better than one.

And that is what Rohan discusses. As long as you still get your one chance, should it matter that others get two?

Ultimately we all want to feel like we are getting rewarded for what we put in almost to a equal degree. Many of us probably want to get rewarded for more than we we actually do.

If you try to make it black and white, fair and unfair, someone being friends shouldn't enter into the equation. You shouldn't be allowed to pass to someone.

That's why no dkp system, loot rules, work perfectly. Because no matter what is set before us, we all come into it with our own varied experiences.

I made a post on WoW forums that everyone should have equal access to the Tankard of Terror. My reasoning was it's boe and able to be sold at auction and make the same amount of gold for everyone. Of course when I finally did some Direbrew runs, it dropped (twice so far) and I didn't even roll. Logically I felt I could roll on it like everyone else. But deep down in side, it felt greedy on my part. Greedy Goblin would have a field day with me, but I digress.

I've never had a problem with main tanks getting geared up earlier than the rest. But what about the secondary tank, what about the off-tanks. What about the tanks that sub in when all of the above aren't available? And what about the classes that share tokens with tanks?

I've been in several different raid groups, and every main tank I've ever raided with no matter what personality they have, at some point says "I really, really could use that" and which point inevitably whoever else is rolling against them says "I'll pass to you then". Do loot rules take guilt into account?

And forget about tanks, healers they are important too, should they get geared up second? And melee dps are at more risk than ranged, should they get geared up sooner?

My issue with alts getting gear against mains is a subject I could make its own post. A main still has the same chance at loot, but watching alt after alt come in and win and be on their way can be disheartening.

Any time I read about loot council (all loot decisions made by a small number in the raid), those in charge of the loot council always say it works well. You usually don't hear the same from those not on the council.

Even though I mentioned not giving in to greedy feeling above, overall I have become a more greedy player. In fact our guild's system promotes it in a way. If you pass on things to other players they get it at no cost. I got burned by that once, and have learned to be "greedier".

A few Aion likes and dislikes

Disclaimer: The dislikes are minor - nothing that stops me or should stop anyone from enjoying Aion.

Dislikes first:
The personal stores. Rudy giuliani cleaned up the streets, moving vendors to their own little sections in New York a few years ago. As someone who doesn't actually live in NY I feel like they removed part of the "NY feel". On the other hand they removed eyesores.

That's how I feel about personal stores. Players setting up shop anywhere they please makes the city look bad! And their banner ads are as bad as...well banner ads. And the banners aren't set apart in anyway, so it all blends in with other text of things you actually want to see.

And many of the ones I've looked at aren't actually selling anything anyway. For example, putting up 1 cheap potion for 20 million kinah (currency in Aion) without any intention of someone purchasing it. I've read this is a way of going afk without being kicked out of the game.

Get the peddlers off the city streets!!!

Gold sellers. Cuppycake said she never wanted to hear complaints about gold sellers again. But I'm going to say it. Gold sellers. What a blight on the MMO genre. The constant whispers are a pain, and I'm not sure yet how to avoid them without removing myself from the normal social activity of chat channels.

Get the sellers off the channels!!!

Ascension.I never understood why flying was such a selling point and after ascending I still don't. Perhaps I rushed through something, because I think I missed the part where I got my wings. I didn't notice until a quest giver said, "Now that you have your wings...".

Now for likes.
Character creator. For once players actually look different than one another. The ultimate in character creators - City of Heroes, may have finally been surpassed. For once, CoH face choices seem limited.

Cut scenes. Cut scenes aren't something Aion invented, but what they've done I don't think I've seen in other MMOs - they actually include the character you created (see above) in the cut scenes. I hope I'm not spoiling anything by saying my future character looks hawt.

Innocence. I like how right now I don't know what the best manastones are for my class. I don't know what the best stats are, or what armor I should be wearing. I don't know the optimal place to quest. And that's alright for now.

Exploration. I happened on something due to simply exploring. The quests didn't lead me to it, I just happen to go off the beaten path. It wasn't anything extraordinary, but it felt good to get a payoff for doing something I wasn't directed to do.

What a Short, Familiar Journey It Was

I completed Long, Strange Trip over the weekend. I already had a 310% mount, but I do like how the violet one looks better. :)

Another ballast released.

What's kept me playing WoW consistently are these virtual goals I've set. I felt like getting Loremaster would expose me to just about everything Blizzard created for us. I set a "skill" goal of getting one of the dungeon drakes. And I felt any self-respecting longtime WoW player would complete long, strange trip, amirite?

Loremaster would have been much easier if I hadn't changed mains along the way. Had I stuck with the character I created back in 2004 I might have some rare things to look back on. But eventually I didn't enjoy playing my frist or second main, so who's to say I would have stuck with it if I had stuck with them. And actually the character I play now, kinda sucked with how things used to be. Hats off to anyone who chose a character at release and managed to enjoy playing it in all its incarnations throughout these years.

Anyway, after Loremaster I still have 25 quests in my log. Some dailies, some old quests that I fear if i drop them I won't be able to pick them up again. I might finish some of them, I might not. But if they add a "Master Loremaster" or "Loremaster: The Questening" with 500 more quests to complete? I have no desire to go through it again. Overall I enjoying completing Loremaster, but at the end it became something I was just trying to get finished.

I have never been a hardcore raider so many of the raid achievements were beyond my reach. But due to crossing paths with some great players with casual schedules (the only reason our paths did cross) this past spring I managed to get a raid proto-drake. But in the end the experience was so unsavory (guild drama), I decided I would never set a goal like that again. The journey was not worth destination.

And lastly Long, Strange Trip. As I've mentioned many times I've played since release. For some reason, knowing that fact and not completing Long, Strange Trip felt wrong to me. It's like going to Arizona and not visiting the Grand Canyon. So I made it a point to get the meta requirements done, although I had taken a break last October. Many of them I really enjoyed, but once again (see a pattern), in the end I felt like I was doing something because of the goal, not because I was having fun with it.

I want to learn my lesson here. My only goal from now on should be "have fun".

I have one last thing I said I would do, play a horde character. I made this goal fairly recently, with the announcement of Cataclysm. I found myself doing battlegrounds instead of the questing like I said I would. My old goal "complete horde quests" has been replaced with "have fun". If I get back around to doing quests so be it. If they remove some quests and I never get a chance to do them so be it. I'll live.

I've reached a fork in the road. One path is structured with checklists and achievements and endless milestone markers of virtual goals and raiding schedules. The other is unmapped.

I've traveled the first path long enough.

Aion: First impressions

Was able to purchase the game. Had a very slight problem with installation. But no queue at all when I got the chance to log on. Later on that evening there was a queue of ~600, but by then I had something else to do so it was okay. They gave an estimated time of 30 minutes, which for a new release I guess isn't so bad.

Great looking game. Runs smooth so far. If you've played WoW, etc. you'll be able to jump right into this game as well.

Disappointing to see the gold sellers. In the starter area you see as many Mxcxmsc's as regular players. And they whisper you. Do I really want someone selling me powerleveling services for a brand new game?

Did it make me feel like I did when I first played WoW. No. But that's really nothing to hold against Aion.

It's way to soon to pass final judgement. But I like it so far. I think I'll at least get my money's worth out of it.

Aion jitters

I'm hoping to play Aion this weekend. Yes I want to experience it for myself so I don't keep making unsubstantiated reviews! And yes, I want to see the graphics for myself, they really do look great from what I've seen in screenshots. But more importantly I want to start playing soon because MMORPGs are simply more fun when the worlds have PLAYERS in them!

As Jaye vividly describes in text and picture, leveling later in a game's life is tiring.

I leveled several characters to 70, but only one to 80. When I thought about how it would be to come back after quitting for a while I was daunted by the fact I would not have to just level to 80 but 85, or if I'm gone long enough 90 or 100! The act itself was daunting and realizing I'd probably be doing it in empty areas made it worse.

Maybe I'm the only one that feels this way, but I like seeing other players around even if I'm not constantly interacting with them. Maybe that's why I like pvping on my new horde character more than questing.

So I want to level in Aion NOW while other players are doing the same, while the world is bustling with activity. I'm getting unexpectedly anxious that I might miss it.

Getting what you ask for

I continue to prefer doing bgs on my horde character instead of leveling during my Questing through Vanishing Azeroth experience.

I always get pumped from being able to contribute in a bg when I'm on the lower end of the bracket. But being on the high end means you get to participate more than just being a free hk. So when I hit the max for the bracket I'm in I decided to go visit the Slahtz "Experience Eliminator".

Easter Egg side note, the horde EE's name is Slahtz, while the Alliance EE's name is Behsten. Behsten Slahtz (Best in Slots). They both wear level 19 twink gear and are level 19 themselves. They whisper things about wanting twink gear (Lucky Fishing Hat) and losing twink enchants (Nethercleft Leg Armor). I assume after players noticed his hp didn't match a twinks his health was buffed to 1100 with the recent patch. No detail overlooked by Blizzard!

I quickly realized how it feels to be gold poor again as the fee to turn off XP gains was 10 gold. A mere pittance for my Alliance characters, but a large percentage of my lone Horde character's gold. But I chucked the gold pieces to Slahtz and rejoined the queues. I went about my normal activities while in queue, and didn't really pay attention at first that I wasn't getting queued up. Queues in lower brackets usually don't go past 10 minutes and are usually around 1 minute or so.

I knew there had been a patch so I searched to see if something was going on with it. Turns out hardly anyone is queuing up for the non-xp bgs!


Cynwise writes "The only twinks in the upper brackets are now ex-twinks. I sat for hours in queue with my experience frozen and never played a game once 3.2 hit. With XP gains on, I play in under a minute. The queue times speak louder than anything I could write. If you want to twink in the 50s or 60s, you won’t play."


So either twinks don't like playing with just other twinks (as they cried loudly about in the past). Or there really isn't as many twinks around as it seemed.

Now if a twink comes into a XP bg, they can still rip through non-twinks but they risk leveling out of their bracket. I can't imagine anyone is going to bother twinking much if they can't get a bg or if the bgs they get level them out of their twink gear.

The weird part is heirlooms give players the same advantage original twinks had. And not everyone has access to them, at least not until leveling one character to max. It's like Blizzard encourages twinks with one hand and discourages them with the other.

The whole thing has left me with mixed feelings. I have actually been enjoying pvping around the levels there isn't such a great gear or spell availability disparity. I'm the last person who would want to turn off XP but there I was actually wanting to freeze a moment in time.

The queues are so bad for non-XP bgs that it isn't an option for me. At this very moment I like pvping more than question so not being able to pvp doesn't work. I don't need to be able to level in BGs but it was nice to be able to do so. I heard at upper levels in AV you really could fly through some levels, but I heard they nerfed it.

I paid yet another 10 gold to turn XP back on and immediately got into a bg. Oh well.

I didn't expect that!

Over at Nils blog he discussed the advantages and disadvantages of predictability in dungeons.

I immediately disagreed that unpredictable dungeons would be fun, because I feel the X factor is not the dungeon itself but the raiders.

Why is it when the boss strategies are published not soon after a first kill doesn't everybody zone in and proceed to win?

I thought about it some more and thought if I had unlimited time, then yes of course unpredictability would be fun.

But my reality is I have a limited amount of time that I can and want to raid each week. And if extra time has to be spent strategizing, well to be honest only a few raiders actually do that.

And unfortunately I cannot say there is room for both. Blizzard seems to have trouble creating new dungeons at the rate players want them.

Another Aion Review Review

I still haven't gotten around to purchasing the game. Gotta find it first.

This comes courtesy of Cuppycake at Cuppy Talk
Graphics: A
Immersiveness: A
Quest storylines: B
Character models: A
Animations: C
Performance: A
Polish: A-
Sound: B+
Combat: C+

A lot of "A" grades! That's good right??? Uh oh "C+" for combat. I remember Lord of the Rings Online's combat never feeling quite right. It affected how much I wanted to play the game.

Let's go down the list. "A" for graphics. From what I've seen in screenshots I'd agree, I can only imagine it will look even better when I actually see it for myself.

"A" for immersiveness. I'm not sure what Cuppy means when she says this. I like feeling I'm in another world. So if it gets an A that'll work.

"B" quest story lines. Sometimes I read quests, sometimes I don't. I always say I'm going to read every one, but usually end up skipping through the text. So if its a B I'm sure that's good enough for me.

"A" character models. I was about to say doesn't that fall under graphics. But City of Heroes has great character models, but graphics overall are used over and over again.

"C" animations. Hmm wonder what she didn't care for with the animations. If its jarring enough, it could affect my gameplay.

"A" performance. You don't want anything less than an A here, no matter how you describe it.

"A-" polish. That'll do as well.

"B+" sound. That's okay, how many people listen to chat or their own music anyway?

"C+" combat. This really concerns me, and I'm suprised it was listed last. Although she didn't say how she ordered the list if she ordered it at all.

If something is amiss with combat I can't imagine playing for very long. Because unless you choose a game to just socialize or craft, combat is what you spend your time doing.

Interesting how a game can have so many good points, but one bad point can potentially ruin it.

I really need to get the game so I can see for myself.

Blog list

As I change blog themes now and then (How blah is this current one?) I inadvertenly lose my blog links. I've been slowly re-adding ones I like. I especially prefer ones that are updated regularly.

Am I the only ones that go back to old blogs just to see if the blogger came back to blog or play wow. I used to check /afk for a long time before finally giving it up. But I quit checking Out of Mana and suddenly out of the blue it was active again. I think the blogger disappeared again. I gave up on checking Mystic Worlds quickly after she said goodbye, but I've found she's guest blogging elsewhere. Hogit had a habit of posting about once a year, so I never am sure he's really gone or not.

I was debating about having a blog list, because by always checking my regular ones, I miss out on seeking out new ones. I'm always suprised to come across some that have been around for a while.

My Aion Review Review

I don't have a copy of Aion yet (see previous post). But I think it is interesting how much your idea of what a game is can be shaped by reviews. I haven't even tried it yet, not even in a beta (or as one blogger describes open betas - "prepaid release") but I've gone up and down on whether I think I'll like this game or not.

So this is my review of Aion based on other's reviews or lack of:

1) Flight. This concerns me, as I mentioned before, exactly why is being able to get wings and fly such a selling point for this game?

I've been able to fly as far back as City of Heroes. And WoW has allowed us to fly as far back as Burning Crusade. And with both, yes it made a huge difference when you had to start out crawling across the landscape. But for me in both games, I eventually enjoyed participating in things where I didn't have to travel to them at all (AE in City of Heroes allowed me to do various missions from one entry point, and in WoW if I decide to just raid or PvP I don't really have to travel for that either.)

So I'm sorry flying is not enough to make me want to play Aion. I'm not sure who this is appealing to as a selling point - angel cosplay?

2) Age of Conan curse. Why aren't we hearing anything about endgame. Or forget endgame, why am I not hearing anything past level 10? Is it going to be Tortage all over again? Where after you get done with the instanced tutorial you uninstall the game? Or like Warhammer Online when you find the very thing you purchased the game, spent your time leveling for (RvR) is a flop?

3) It's like WoW in the beginning. This is one of the reasons why I'll purchase Aion. No I don't want a WoW clone, but I want a game to pull me in again. I know I'm setting myself up for disappointment. But I'm willing to take the risk.

4) It looks great. This is a see-saw selling point for me. WoW proved a game doesn't have to look all that great to be good. But after installing EQ2 again, I really was amazed at how awesome a game can look. At some point new players are going to try out WoW and wonder how us old folks enjoyed such outdated graphics.

5) What does Aion have? Where's the beef?!? This is where my review review falls flat. But don't blame me! I haven't read much about exactly what Aion has and what players are enjoying.

Guess I'll have to go get that copy.

The Gods say No

Initially I wasn't interested in Aion when a guildmate mentioned it around the beginning of the year. WoW was holding my interest well enough. Later I knew I wanted to try it. But WoW malaise clouded my feelings. Finally I decided to give it a go and I stopped by Gamestop to see if I could get a copy of Aion. They were sold out. The Gods decided for me, for now.

If I hadn't read throughout the blogosphere about horrible queues, so much so massively.com wrote a guide on how to survive it, I would have had a more dogged persistence to track a copy down from other stores.

Surprisingly when I logged on to WoW later, I wasn't met with a queue, but with lag. It was patch day, but usually the only delay is installing the patch. This time it took a while to log in and the lag was bad once you made it in. I went ahead and managed to do a few brewfest repeatables. Unless I'm missing something there aren't many ways to get tokens each day, so luckily brewfest is going for two weeks or so.

I don't even know what I'm expecting from Aion. Someone wrote it's like playing WoW for the first time. If that is at all true I want to give it a try. My expectations are low. Lord of the Rings Online, Warhammer Online, Champions Online, none of them grabbed me from the get-go. I have a feeling Age of Conan might have, I've read several times its 1-20 was great. But I think I was concerned my computer couldn't run it at the time. I have a better computer now. So maybe if Aion could give me that feeling even for just a few levels, I'd be happy with my purchase. That's pretty low expections.

Comment over at Spooncraft

"The biggest argument I always hear is “I cant ever leave WoW, not after the 180 days /played time I have invested on my toon”. I used to think the same way, but there comes a time when you realize that every hour in WoW you spend bored, running around in circles on your mount in Dalaran reading chat, is an hour you have wasted and could have spent discovering antoher game. When you look at it that way, your “invested” 180 days mean nothing, its just a counter of a game you used to enjoy a whole lot more. Its like refusing to sell your old car for a new model, because youve got 150000 miles on your old car."

Blog apathy

I think my previous post may have been my worst ever. I had an idea of what I wanted to blog about but it fell flat in my personal opinion. And I have no desire to flesh it out. Meh.

Pirate Days came and went. You flew down to Booty Bay, talked to someone and got and achievement. Achievement apathy.

Speaking of achievements. Brewfest has come back around. I missed getting it done last year and it is the last of the events I need for "Long Strange Trip."

Since I managed to snag a 310% mount back in the spring, the reward isn't all that impressive. But as someone who has played on and off since launch, I wanted to add this to my list of "been there, done that, got the achievement".

If I manage to get this done, I think I finally will be done with overarching achievements. Instead of having fun playing WoW and doing the world events in a lighthearted way, I felt tethered to the game, even more than the usual addictiveness.

I had already given up on chasing raiding achievements. Because obviously it relies on the raid team as a whole. I have my own apathy, having to put up with others' apathy as well and expecting that some how, some way, we're going to accomplish anything is asking too much.

So...before I played the game without achievements, then achievements were introduced and I played them for achievements and now getting the achievements aren't as much fun anymore.

I realized by "pvping" so much on my horde character I'm not even questing through Azeroth as much as I meant to. I'm starting to say to myself, if Cataclysm removes things I'd never witnessed or been a part of...so what?

And now I can just switch one of my higher level characters to horde if I really wanted to see what some of near end-game would be like. But since everyone can, I don't really think things would be any different at all. Meh.

And this feeling I have is restricting me from even trying Aion. Sure it could be fun for the first 10 levels. But I'm starting to wonder, seriously, what could any new MMO offer that we haven't already seen. What could they possibly do better, do so much better that you feel you're getting a new experience?

Does a game really want to be successful not because its at its core extremely good, but that its a shinier face on the same-ole-same-ole you're trying to leave behind?

Yikes this post is emo.

Raid Apathy

Oh wikipedia, you have everything! This graph does a good job of explaining how I feel during raids.



For Wrath I decided to get back into raiding behind the curve. My guild was already in Naxx and I was new to the guild on top of that. Overall the challenge level was in the middle (many will say the challenge level was nil) and my skill level (read armor into as well) was low. So yes I worried about how I'd do.

We moved on to Malygos and Sarth, and not to mention achievements like undying and immortal so I moved into the anxious territory.

When the guild went into a meltdown I moved over to a new guild. They were around the same progression as my previous guild, but overall they weren't as good. So suddenly I could, but didn't have to perform as well. I think this would fall into the Arousal area.

But eventually we kept doing the same stuff, not really moving forward or being capable of doing hardmodes to reach new stuff. So we never reached the Flow level. We were at Control mode, which is as much fun as this graph would make it seem.

The only thing I don't agree with is Relaxation, Boredom and Apathy.

When my skill and gear outgrow a dungeon, I move from boredom to apathy. But it looks like I should be moving over to the Relaxation phase.

When skill is high and challenge is low, I'd rather not be there at all.

Blog overlap

A break from after hours work for me and break in the various other social activities of my friends coincided so that we could finally play Champions Online together.

As I've played mmorpgs overall longer than they have (one of them introduced me to them) and more variety, their excitement exceeded mine and I envied the fun they were having. Because I attribute it to not playing them as much as I have. We plan on playing together for short periods each week. While I'm not having that much fun with the game itself, I do enjoy playing with friends. I just hope higher levels of CO start to get more interesting.

The blog overlap I mention in the post title is based on the fact I thought it was a coincidence that I was about to make a post about pvp twinking when Tobold and We Fly Spit Fires did the same thing. Of course its not such a coincidence when you factor in we've all decided to level new alts due to WoW's Cataclysm announcement of the removal of old content.

While questing is just fine for me, traveling to quest bores me quite often (even with my mount and copious flight paths). I can enter a battleground from anywhere so that's what I've been doing usually when I log on. I am not waiting until i hit max level for a particular battleground, so I spend most of my time underleveled for it. But I've found I only really only get pwned by players with heirloom items and spell/attack advantage (warlocks I'll have cleanse one day!)

First let me say I don't have a problem with twinking. I don't have access to heirlooms hordeside but I can purchase nice blue and epic items for my level. However since I'm not a greedy goblin with maxed cap gold, there is a limit to what want and am willing to purchase for a character who will outgrow it.

I still think it would be a neat idea to do like Warhammer Online and make everyone max cap for whatever battleground you're in. You'd still have the gear gap but maybe things wouldn't be so lopsided.

The problem is you can never balance things. It's obvious from even the lowly 10-19 bracket. If level isn't what separates players its gear (and professions). If it isn't gear its class. The classes you find in 10-19 are rogues and hunters. Both get benefits at their level that other classes don't. The only way you can create true balance is to make everyone the same class with the same gear, oh! and same faction.

Can you imagine a battleground full of nothing but one class?

To comment on later

Gamers or Raiders

Good question

Friday the Greedy Goblin asked "Why are you playing Now?

GG goes on to say there are things he enjoys in WoW and other things he does not (mostly to play with his GGf). On the latter he writes: "I guess we wasted lot of time of our life with boring and not fulfilling activity because of the ape subroutines in our head. This must change. The activity must be fulfilling for itself, and not because of the people we do together."

I've found myself several times doing thing in WoW not necessarily because I've enjoyed them but because of routine. I think raiding is the biggest culprit. I've raided many hours in the past not because I really wanted to but because as a healer there is usually a group looking for one. Never mind how few times the show has ever skidded to a stop because of lack of healers.

I've taken that knowledge and finally started using it to my advantage. I no longer worry about whether this group or that one needed a healer for the night. If I feel like raiding I will, but I no longer do it out of any sense of obligation. There won't be any successful guilds based on players like myself. But then again, I've never been in any guilds actually making serious raid progression. Quid Pro Quo.

Horde side

In general life horde side isn't much different than alliance for me. But every once in a while I get a quest that sends me to a cave or area I've never seen. I think that's still impressive, especially after this game has been out so long.

My whole purpose of leveling up yet another alt was to see all of Azeroth before Cataclysm. But what I realize is while I never leveled a horde very high before, I have at least rode through many of the areas while getting the exploration and loremaster achievements on my alliance character. I may not have fought quillboars but I've road past them. So I'm not actually seeing as many new areas as I expected but I am seeing a few.

I haven't had too many leveling lulls yet, however I think my leveling experience would have been vastly different without the addition of all of the extra flight paths and I cannot emphasize enough what a difference having a mount at lower levels makes. And if I'm not mistaken I'll be able to get a 100% mount at 40!

I would have undoubtedly been bored out of my skull running by foot to all of the areas I have so far. You still have to ride to the flight paths at least once (if you don't have a warlock and mage porting you around) so you still get to travel through the world, you just don't have to keep doing it so slowly.

I also have always wanted to see how pvp was horde side. It seems more alliance than horde are twinks in Warsong Gulch. Even with our lower levels and gear we're usually able to cap the flag first and if no one caps the flag three times we win by default. (I've heard that's been changed recently). And now that I'm high enough to play in Arathi Basin, I've played horde side and I can honestly say I'm not sure why we win so much in there. But it is a refreshing change.

Putting all your frags in one basket.

The first Val'anyr, Hammer of Ancient Kings was made back in June. As of last evening we're just starting at one Fragment of Val'anyr.

Is it the first one to drop for us? No. The person to get the fragments in our guild was chosen before I joined. That player wasn't able to show up very much for whatever reason and so they started giving it to another player. Well, over the past week or so I guess *that* player decided they couldn't raid and last night we had a random roll among the most consistent players recently. Of course that screwed over anyone who had contributed overall, but it's all about "what have you done for me lately".

This was met with no drama that I know of. I just don't think getting a legendary is special anymore. Now you can farm for legendaries if you are so inclined. Back in Molten Core days it wasn't conceivable your legendary would ever be eclipsed by anything. Now legendaries are surpassed by a quest reward and relegated to kill shots.

Our guild officers had a tendency to really pump up the two players who were getting the Fragments of Val'anyr. I don't know if they did something special before I joined, but they weren't exceptional players compared to any others I've known (once again really exceptional players normally don't stay in the guilds I raid with!) Either way I could tell they felt burned when these players quit with the fragments.

Players are going to come and go, most likely 5 years into this game, its the latter. Hand the fragments to whoever you'd like to have them and hope for the best. But by putting it to random made it feel like all of our healers, myself included, are a dime-a-dozen.

And people still continue to wonder why they have trouble finding healers.

Winding down subscriptions

After another evening of a buddy of mine playing Arkham Asylum instead of Champions Online with me, I decided to go ahead and make sure I cancelled before my subscription re-upped.

I'm just not enjoying it enough solo to want to continue to pay for it on the off-chance my friend (who encouraged me to purchase it by the way!) will find time for us to play together. I always like playing a game for myself instead of wondering whether I would have actually liked it or not. I would have been okay purchasing it further down the road out of a discount bin.

My City of Heroes/Villians ran out not to long ago and I don't miss it. I liked it for about a day or two after I hit level cap (powerleveling through the AE system). So I don't feel any money was wasted there.

I also made sure my EQ2 sub will expire. Such a great looking game on my newer computer! I may have been sucked into it instead of WoW if had the computer I have now back in 2004. Now it's just a game I'd like to have a sub for but doesn't make the cut when I eventually want to try out Aion.

WoW gets to keep taking my money by default. I'm torn by this. I want to keep playing but just don't feel it truly deserves the money it gets from me each month anymore. I feel like the subscription fee should be lower. In the past I paid for 6-months which was cheaper, but I don't want a long-term tie to the game anymore. I'm going to end up paying more just to have a sense of freedom.

So on the horizon I should only end up paying for two accounts, hopefully one, by the end of the year. I'm hoping it will be Aion, but it will probably be WoW.

What's special about Aion?

I've given the blog another new look, since I'm branching out to playing a different class for a while, I decided to change it if you've noticed.

I came across Hardcore Casual (Hmm I just went to get the link and realize I didn't have the right one I usually read).

Hardcore Casual (I'll call this one A) made a comment about being tired of reading WoW blogs. Basically because they aren't original. We complain about the grind, and talk about specs, etc.

Hardcore Casual A would be happy to know Hardcore Casual B has started a more general purpose blog, as I mentioned before isn't as WoWcentric.


Well anyway, this blogger really likes Aion. And then he goes on to say what he likes about Aion so much and I don't see what's so special about it.

Now I want it to be special, in a way I want another game to knock me off my feet. Of course what that would entail (time-sinkage) means I really *don't* want it, but the idea of it is nice.

As usual he mentioned wings, I just can't see switching from one game to another simply because you can fly. But I've read it enough on other sites to see it must really be important.

The other things he mentioned like being able to train skills out "in the field" and a aggro radius on your mini map seemed like nice to haves, but still nothing amazing.

Is it the look? I've seen screen shots and they are nice, but so are EQ2's.

I'm not wanting to be sold on it, because I plan to plunk down more cash to try it out for myself. But what is so special about it? That it's not WoW? Every game that has come out since WoW has that and usually ends up disappointing.

An Aion comparison

Compare the comment of a blogger Cuppycake who has played MMOs since EQ and Sai Pannell one who has never really played any MMOs.

The difference is quite striking isn't it. And I've felt how both of them do.

I felt like this back in 2004...

I've barely seen daylight since the beta started on Sunday. I've been locked up in my bedroom with the computer, only coming out to grab something to drink, or something to eat... and go to sleep. I've been so obsessed with this game, its almost sad.

And I've felt like this many times since...

I logged in and played for about 15 minutes last night, and to be honest – I did one quest and instantly sighed in annoyance.

I think I've been in a type of mourning for a while because unlike Sai, I no longer feel similar to this with each new MMO I try:

I love how this game takes you to various places. Beautiful lakes, lush forests, humble farms, grungy mines, elegant buildings in the sky, cute little villages... I never know what to expect next, and where my next Quest will take me to.

Instead I feel like Cuppycake:

Whether it’s Free Realms, EQ2, LotRO, Wizard 101, Runes of Magic, DDO, or any of the other MMOs I have installed on my hard drive, NOTHING has kept my interest or inspired me. I think I really might be getting crufty, and that makes me sad. =(

I don't know what crufty means but I think it might just describe me.

Questing through the vanishing Azeroth

I continue to level my horde character. I'm only in my twenties so things may change later, but so far I haven't found myself without quests to do.

My mount and all the added flight paths have made it easy to move from area to area doing quests that are green and easy to solo.

I always happen to see players out questing, but just like me they are usually solo. Usually no one wants to group, so I'm glad I'm able to kill stuff on my own at a reasonable pace.

As I do these quests and mine nodes, I think to myself, this has *got* to be the last time I do this. But then I when Cataclysm is released I'll make a worgen or goblin and level through the changed landscapes. That's how they pull...you...back..in!

The casual raiding scene

I've raided casually for a year. It's the only way I can raid. I quit raiding for a while because it seemed the only thing out there were 4-5 night a week raiding. But I'm able to reasonably manage the 2 night a week raiding schedule of my current guild. Even then I get tired of it sometimes.

Our guild has had trouble filling raid slots. I chalk it mostly up to summer. But I also blame burn out (guilty). AND you can get the same gear without raiding, so I've heard.

We managed to clear normal 25-man Trial of Crusader. Perhaps we'll continue to do so to the point we're geared enough to make it through Ulduar. Unfortunately I don't think our guild is capable of hardmode anything. Since we inevitably pug some slots, we always have to go through the mistakes new players make. Not to mention the ones us old players make.

Ensidia is having interviews with its new recruits and one of them mentioned how Ensidia's players don't repeat mistakes. That's the difference between clearing something months ago vs. beating your head against the same stuff.

We need the gear to smooth out the suck. ToC bosses seem to drop a lot of loot so that's good news for us. I just don't think we'll ever see Algalon. This isn't being pessimistic, even our top guild (by default, 3 other better guilds have left our server) hasn't bested him.

The casual scene is one of guilds just hoping they have enough to show up and do something for the evening. That's a low bar and lately we can't even clear it.

Champions Online

Unless my schedule syncs up with the two friends that suggested we play CO together I'll probably cancel my subscription before it recurs.

I don't think CO is a bad game, but as far as I can tell it doesn't do anything better than the other games out there. I think I could have an alright time playing with friends. But it definitely doesn't pull me in enough to want to play by myself.

I wish people wouldn't say this game is awful, but then again I can't say its great either. It's just...there, another alternative. Someone brand new to MMOs might love it. It's 5 years too late for me.

Beginner Leveling

As someone mentioned in the WoW trade channel "leveling is easy". This was in response to someone else saying they wanted to join a guild to get help with leveling. As I winded down my quests in the Ghostlands someone cried out "this is booooring". I checked their levels and both of these players were under level 10.

Leveling has never been easier, but based on my own experience as I level this new character horde side, what is missing is leveling with others. I can't remember the name of the blog, but the blogger is trying out wow on a Refer-A-Friend account and when he plays with his buddy he's having a blast. The triple xp is a blast, but from what I read the fun is playing *with* someone. Becoming more than the sum of your parts.

I wasn't able to get my twink items transferred to me, but I had some extra gold on another lowbie character that I never leveled very far and managed to purchase a twink weapon that helped make things easier. The quest givers and objectives weren't very far apart so leveling has been okay. However I didn't really start having Fun with a capital F until I decided to get a group for instances. I found out I really outleveled the first one, Ragefire Chasm, and since I'd run Wailing Caverns ad naseum on my alliance druid I had no desire to go do it. As luck would have it someone asked if anyone wanted to do BFD and I jumped on the chance. They turned out to be a higher level but gathered a bunch of other lowbies like myself. I forgot to mention I had a mount by that point and I hadn't spent time traveling by ground mount with a group of players in years. It reminded me of how awesome flight is, but how in a way it takes away from that cohesion I was talking about in a post before.

Speaking of mounts, getting one at 20 is great. The quests I would normally give up on because I look at the map and decided I don't want to run that far were made 60% more appealing. I had been copper pinching since I wasn't sure how much the mount would cost. Turns out I forgot as a paladin, mounts are free, but even if I had to pay, 5 gold is practically free.

I think I would have even more fun if playing a paladin was more active. But the nicer weapon makes things bearable. I plan on making sure I have more twink weapons waiting for me as I continue to level.

But back to leveling with people, its just more fun. I've had friend come and go in WoW. Some transferred different type servers, different time zone servers or just quit. I've done all three myself. This fourth time is changing faction. I'm hoping with the paid change I convince one of my friends to switch one of his many alts over eventually.

And my whole reason for coming hordeside? Well I left Ghostlands so I'm getting to do some new quests finally. It feels weird to enter Tarren Mill and not have the mushroom guy yell at me. :)