Smyths Munqui Blog

STO in the Long Run?

2010-03-19T15:31:00.000Z

So far, I've still very impressed with STO. Although it has a few social failings at the moment, in that the game is relatively simple to solo, as almost every encounter scales with the party-size. But overall I think it's still a good game, well worth playing, and with some interesting mechanics too.

The one concern I have is 'end-game'.

In WoW, you take a level 1 character, play through 19 levels of content, and only then does the door really open up to a lot more content. Which you will strive to complete in order to 'improve' your character, and potentially reach even more content.

In STO, you take a level 1 character (Ensign), and level him / her up to become an Admiral. Each rank has several levels too. So far so similar. But while in WoW you only have 1 set of gear to aquire (not counting dual-spec's), in STO you have many sets. There's yours, at least 5 Crew Members, and your ships (and you may have multiple ships too).
Since STO isn't quite as expansive as WoW, I'm concerned that once I reach the maximum rank, I'll simply be on a grind to aquire massive amounts of gear, to enable me to... do nothing much with.

Cryptic are releasing fairly regular updates, adding new content, and mini-patches to add events. And I like that design. Trickle-feeding updates rather than making everyone wait many months between them keeps people much more interested.
In fact there's a whopping 2GB patch coming soon, that the downloader is already begging me to pre-download.
2GB in the STO universe must be a hell of a lot of content, since 'space' doesn't take much designing, so they must be inserting a lot of extra content. Maybe they're bringing in cities or something? Who Knows.

In fact, the more I write about this, the more I'm beggining to think that Cryptic have got the balance just right. And maybe I'm worrying for nothing. I'm enjoying levelling at my own pace, I'm not rushing for end-game content yet, and by the time I reach it, it'll probably be all that I hoped. There's just that little nagging doubt, but maybe that's a WoW-Syndrome.

WoW endgame got repetitive and felt un-rewarding to me. So I'm just painting STO with the same brush.

But... Elves, and Vulcans. Goblins and Ferengi. Monsters and Aliens. Is it really all so different?

For now.. yes.

Later... Who knows.

Needy-ness is not Attractive (except in certain circumstances)

2010-03-15T14:11:00.000Z

Playing STO again over the weekend, and experiencing a bit more of the social aspect of the game. Joining the STO equivalent of PUGs.

The problem was, although the PUG was very succesful, there was very little social interaction. In fact, in the 35 minutes I spent in that team, the only chat was the spamming of "Help!" from a muppet who had wandered off in to the middle of an army of mobs on his own, and not realised he could click the 'respawn' button to just get out of there.
And one line from myself along the lines of "I'm guessing many of you don't know the difference between 'Need' and 'Greed'"... Literally, that was it... And that's not artistic license, to emphasize a point. It's exactly how it was.

Firstly, let's consider the problem of 'Ninjas'. It was rampant in the PUG. There was no particular leader, just people thrown together becasue they all wanted to be in the same instance at the same time.
Of course I started out by 'Greed'ing everything, as nothing serious was dropping anyway. But soon noticed that almost the entire group was 'Need'ing on every single item. From the STO equivalent of Bandages (Hypos) to the Ground-Weapons, and even stuff that they physically couldn't use. I.e. Engineers 'Need'ing on Tactical kits and vice-versa.

So, before long, I started to click 'Need' every now and again, just for kicks. Not the most mature or sensible thing to do I admit... but hey.
Considering almost everyone I've met in the game so far is an Ex-Wow (or other MMO) player, surely the 'Need' vs 'Greed' situation shouldn't have to be so bad?

Secondly, the lack of conversation didn't really hamper the progress of the PUG, we wiped the floor with all the mobs. But I believe that if we hadn't had the healer in the group then we'd have suffered much more. She single handedly kept many of the idiots alive. People to whom the idea of flanking, and pincer movements probably sounded like menu options in a restaurant.

The raid situation was a lot of fun, and doing it as a fleet would have been a blast. As it was, it left a little sour taste in my mouth about the lack of socialism, and made me wonder if the game balancing was right if a team who didn't know each other, never spoke, and many of whom appeared to have suicidal tendancies, could succeed so easily.

Spam, Glorious Spam.

2010-03-12T10:53:00.003Z

War!.. Huh... What is it good for?

Selling in game currencies for real money apparently. Almost all big MMO's suffer from gold spam (or Credit Spam in this case).

Whenever I'm logged on I tend to get about 2/3 spam whispers per hour offering these services. And my in-game mail usually has a few each day too.
I report all of them to the devs, so eventually they will, presumably, get the account blocked. But it's more confusing how they are managing to make a profit from it at all.

Here's the gist of it:

There's only one way to get a trial account in this game, and that's for someone who's paid for the retail version to send you one.
Each copy of the full version has the chance to send 1 5-day buddy key to a freind. That's 1 per account. Not just 1 at a time. Once that key is used, no more can be sent out.
Bronze sent me his, I sent mine to Jeanie, if she buys the full game she will have one to send on too. But if not, the line ends there.

The cheapest you can buy the game for is just under £30. And they're selling the credits for about $2 per 1,000 (roughly £1.50). For that they get a main account for 1 month, and a 5 day account, which they presumably just use for spamming.
So, just to break even, they'd need to sell 20,000 credits. Farming on the main account, and spamming on the trial one. But the spam will end after no longer than 5 days, or before if the account gets blocked. So how do they continue to sell?

You can probably farm 20,000 credits quite easily in a day. But unless you have a way of selling it, it's just pixels.
So then you need to buy another main account, but that's another £30, and the minute that one (and the free trial that comes with it) gets blocked, you're back at square one.

Assume you have 1 main account that does the farming, and then need lots of other full and trial accounts who might also farm, and send their money to the main account, but are also spamming. And that each spamme ris blocked within 5 days (or expires if it's a trial account).

Here's what you'd need just to continue trading for one month (30 days):

1x Main Farming account (£30) (Does not spam)
1x 5-Day Trial (£0) (Lasts 5 days)
1x Main Account (£30) (Farms and Spams, blocked after 5 days)
1x 5 Day Trial (£0) (Lasts 5 Days)
1x Main Account (£30) (Farms and Spams, blocked after 5 days)
1x 5 Day Trial (£0) (Lasts 5 Days)
1x Main Account (£30) (Farms and Spams, blocked after 5 days)

So for the first month it's going to cost at least £120, and at least £100 for the following months (No need ot buy another main account, but £10 per month to keep it activated).
On top of that you also have the wages to pay for the farmers, and the cost of the IT and ISP you need to play, rent costs, etc.. etc..

I don't think a rough figure of £200 - £250 per month would be too far off the mark, as a minimum.

So, in this scenario, that means that each month they'd need to sell 166,000 credits before even begining to make a profit.
More farming accounts could easily make credits to sell, but it's the spamming accounts that are going to be getting blocked more steadily. And for each one you'll also need more IT and more farmers.
If an account get's blocked in less than 5 days, you're another £30 out of pocket, if it lasts a bit longer, then you might make a bit more.

Either I'm missing something, or that's just not a viable business.

UPDATE: The spam continues, although I am seeing a little less of it. But the prices have now incrased to about $12 per 1k Credits. Ridiculously high prices, considering that you can easily find a few thousand in an hour of play, without even trying to.

Allods Schmallods

2010-03-11T08:04:00.000Z

I regularly read several other MMO and gaming blogs, and some of them have criticised the masses for walking away from Allods online because of it's problems since launch.

Personally, I was very excited by the game while playing it in Closed Beta. But that excitement soon vanished once the Open Beta arrived.
The inability to log-on and the lag once in there was a major factor. A little lag was to be expected, but to not even be able to get in to the game was a major put-off.
I've got a few hours spare, I think "I know, I'll log in to Allods and do some levelling". Only to find that I can't get in to the bloody thing. So I switch back to WoW out of boredom. I bet I'm not the only one who did this.

The other major issue is the cash shop. I'm not as naieve as some people out there. 'Massively' overpricing something so that when you slash prices to the level where you're simply 'Majorly' overpricing them it looks like you're taking positive action, will not work on me.

I usually consider things before doing them, and see right through tactics like this. Where is my incentive to play if the cost of the end-game is going to be so high?

The only time I see myself returning to Allods is to play with my son. He wants to get in to MMO's, and with Allods being free2play I wouldn't mind spending some time in there with him teaching him the basics of this type of game. It'll do him well if he wants to transfer to a more mainstream one later.

As I said, some of the bloggers out there have criticised people for walking away from the game in it's early stages. Seeing it as some sort of betrayal.
But at the end of the day, it's a game. I'm supposed to play it for fun. Not because I feel that I'm being loyal to it in some way. If the I don't want to put up with it's problems anymore, there's plenty of other games out there willing to take it's place.

If my mobile phone provider had absolutely terrible reception in my town, I'd switch to another provider, even if I'd been with that same company for years. I don't have to be loyal to them if they're not providing what I need. So why the hell would I do it with a game?
The problem is, millions of people wouldn't switch providers, either through laziness, scared of change, apathy, or simply because they like to feel that they're not 'quitters'... Idiots.

(Allods might be free2play at the basic level, but it only stays that way if you get your character to the level-cap and then celebrate by rollign another one and doign the same thing again).

Moving on Down (And Recruiting)

2010-03-11T07:48:00.000Z

I'm trying to take a bit more of a back-seat in the MMO's at the moment, while still trying to stay active in the Munquis.

For this reason, I've handed over the GM'ship of the WoW guild to Knickerface, and last night Bronze took over the Leadership of the STO Fleet. (Although because of a feature of the STO fleet system, we're actually both still the leaders of the fleet. I promoted him to the top spot, but it left me there too. And I can't demote myself).

The Munquis are obviously going through a bit of a transitional phase at the moment. The next few months will be a turning point. And will probably define whether the Tribe survives and becomes bigger and better than ever. Or simply dwindles away in to history because there just aren't enough people interested in joining, or in staying as members.

I think we were quite unique in WoW. You used to be able to log on at any time of day and find at least several players online. Log on at peak times, and it would be in the 20+ range. Log on in the middle of the night, and there would probably still be at least 1 or 2 around.
Those days appear to be gone. I've logged in to find myself the only person online, the raiders have struggled to reach the numbers needed, and for the first time in a few years we're having to actively recruit to try and sort the situation out... It was bound to happen at some point but it's always a shame when things, that were once great, begin to fade away.

In STO we're at th eopposite end of the scale. We're a new fleet, but it's a new game. So we're going to have to actively recruit no matter how we look at it. We currently have a fleet of 2, and that's not going to help much.
I've posted a recruitment thread on the official forums, and we'll have to start advertising in-game. But some of the the other fleets have got much more of a head-start on us. Particularly the ones that played in the Beta. As they probably kept everyone they already had, and many people prefer to join established teams liek that, rather than come in at ground level and work hard to build things up.

Personally, I prefer the challenge.

The Pitfall of Being an EU STO Player

2010-03-10T13:14:00.000Z

I've been singing the praises of STO so far, so I thought I'd better take a minute out to point out some of it's flaws. Just to even things up a bit.

The first real nag that I had came only after I'd actually bought the retail version of the game. Buying it was no problem, activating it was simple, and when it came to the subscription method Paypal was a nice option to see too. But the one thing that did bug me was the monthly subscription price... £10.34

Now, I can only see one reason for that price, and that's exchange rates. I believe the EU and US players all share the same server. I certainly haven't been presented with any options of switching to another server.
The upside to this is that there's usually plenty of people around, and we all like to be freindly with our continental cousins, as long as they're not 11 years old and playing Call of Duty, and shouting abuse over XBox Live. The downside is that to make it fair, everyone should pay the same rate of subscription.

The problem is that $14.99 might be £10.34 today, but tomrrow it will be £10.36, the day after it will be £10.32 and in a few months time it could easily be £8.27 or £11.45.
So while the subcription price is staying the same for the US players, over here it's fluctuating.
When this is in the range of a few pence, I don't mind. But I do prefer to know how much I'm paying for something.

I was slightly dissapointed that it was so high. With Blizz only charging me £8.99 for my WoW subscription, I'm now paying more to play a game with less content. The difference might be relatively small, but it doesn't take long to add up to a lot, especially when you multiply it by the number of EU subscribers the game will have.

I don't know for a fact that the prices will constantly fluctuate, but at that strange pricing level it seems to be the case.
To avoid the 'not knowing' issue, I'll be paying in 3 monthly blocks. The downside to that is, if the rate changes by a lot, I could end up paying more for that block than if I'd just paid for a month at a time.
Watch this space for more info on this. I'll do a bit of research.

The other nag I have is that the difficulty of things scales with the number of players in your party. This seems a stupid thing to say, but I've often found that it's easier to solo many missions than it is to end up in a team with a moron, or someone who just refuses to join in with the rest of you.

As an example: (Figures have been made up to demonstrate)
In Solo Mode an enemy fighter has 2000HP
In 2 Player it has 4000HP
In 3 Player it has 6000HP
In 4 Player it has 8000HP
In 5 Player it has 10000HP

In solo mode I can easily handle groups of enemy fighters. And with a bit of tactical play, murder them all effortlessly.
But if I'm grouped with 1 other who refuses to join in, or co-ordinate attacks, it's becomes twice as hard for me.

If you find yourself in a group with 5 players, and just 1 of them is a muppet, the rest of you have a much more difficult task, as all the enemy mobs will hit harder, and take more to kill.
Sure the muppet might constantly get his ass handed to him while he tries to solo everything, but that doesn't help the rest of us.

Also, in some missions re-inforcements are called in by the enemy as a sort of final-boss stage, and these are often summoned as 1 per player.
Again, solo they're not too bad. In a good group they have little chance against a co-ordinated assault. But the 1 moron who won't join-in properly makes life very difficult for all the others.

"So don't team up with them" I hear you cry. Well, if only it was that simple. When you enter a mission area, if someone else is on that same mission, at the same stage as you, you are automatically grouped with them.
The only way to get out of the situation is to abandon what you've done on that mission so far, come out of the instance, and back in again. Otherwise, if your mission is to 'Kill 10 Tribbles' every one that the other guy kills will not count to your tally, and there will only be 10 of them around.

This isn't a major problem, I've only experienced it once so far. And in that case I managed to survive against the overwhelming odds, and got a good feeling of achievement for having done so.
But it is an annoying situation to be put in.

Star Trek On Track

2010-03-10T08:57:00.000Z

After 5 days playing I’ve just reached level 11 (Lt. Commander). At this point I get access to new ships, and my skill choices start to make more of a difference to my gameplay.

Up until this point everyone starts with the same basic ship. You can customize it’s looks by quite a large degree, but the stats remain the same.

On promotion I was provided with a choice of 3 ships. I chose Escort (Tactical / DPS) since that’s the direction my character is focusing on.

But one of the things that’s impressed me about STO is that it’s not as restrictive as games like WoW on what you can do.

Because you’re ship also has a crew, composed of Science, Engineering, and Tactical officers just because you’re DPS doesn’t mean that you can’t self-heal, or heal others, or even act as a tank.

You might never be 100% as effective as someone who’s specialised in that area, but you will still be able to hold your own in most fights.

To give you an example, Engineers are the main sort of ‘Tanking’ role. They have the best regenerative abilities, and the most skills aimed at soaking up the damage thrown at them. Obviously they still have offensive capabilities, they’re just not as directly strong as a Tactical officers.

So, put an Engineer in the engineer class of ship (can’t recall the name right now) and you get a good tank.

But my Tactical Officer can use an Engineering ships too. As a WoW comparison, it’s the equivalent of a Rogue with Uber-DPS putting on some plate armour, and becoming a Ret Pally. You’d probably sacrifice some pure DPS, but you’d gain much more survivability.

And since you can own multiple ships, you’re given the freedom of choice about how to play.

This was a very clever move on behalf of the Devs. Essentially they only had to design 3 classes, But with all 3 classes of player, having the option of using 3 classes of ship, they get 9 combinations for the price of 6.

You also spend your skill-points to specialise in particular areas. So while my Photon Torpedos may be the bees-knees, they’re quite ineffective against a ship with it’s shields up. Once I’ve got those shields down though, whoever I’m aiming at is soon going to find themselves in trouble.

Another DPS player may specialise in Phaser Weapons, which do good damage to the shields directly, and moderate damage to a ship with it’s shields down.

Both of us will be effective, but in different ways. But put us together, and you get a much better tactical force. This is the way things should be.

A lot of the ship combat is simply about tactics. All ships are shielded on 4 sides, and those 4 shields operate semi-independantly. So taking down the rear shield opens the ship up to more devastating attacks. But if that ship simply turns to face you you’ll be confronted by a fully operational shield again, while the rear one begins to regenerate. It’s more than likely that you’ll also be getting shot at while you’re doing the attacking, so you have to keep an eye on your own shield status, and compensate accordingly. A full-Frontal assault may give you the best DPS, but if you’re front shield is penetrated, then you won’t last long. So you’re going to have to reposition yourself and sacrifice some of your advantage.

It’s actually much simpler than it first seems. But it’s effective, and in battles with multiple enemies, or allies, it can bring a lot of strategy to things.

The other piece of the puzzle is the ground-combat. You will also have to beam-down to planets, star-bases, other ships, etc.. and take on enemies in a more familiar perspective.

This section of the game is controlled by the same skill points, but they need to be spent in different areas of the talent tree. And here is where your main class choice is most important.

When you’ve beamed down to somewhere, you’re either on your own, in a team with other players, or with your bridge crew (as AI controlled Bots). You’re going to need the usual range of Tanks, DPS, and Healers to survive for very long.

When it’s just you and your bridge crew, you’ll probably have specialised them in to each of those types of area. Yes, that’s right, you not only have your own skill-points to consider, but your bridge crews too.

The AI functions reasonably well in these situations, your team will basically follow you around attacking when you attack, and performing their respective actions such as healing, and using special abilities. But much like most squad-based games, you can control their aggressiveness, and order them to take up a position while you flank enemies. Anyone who’s familiar with the Ghost Recon, or Rainbow Six games will recognise the type of thing I mean. It’s a simplified version of those games.

In fact, if you imagined a Rainbow Six RPG with special abilities on cooldowns, and lasers instead of machine guns, and aliens instead of terrorists, you’d be quite close.

Overall, I’m still quite impressed with the game. So much so that I splashed out my £30 and bought the full version yesterday.

With the ‘Munquis’ now formed as a fleet (guild) in the game, it’s going to be time to recruit.

To explore strange new worlds

2010-03-08T23:12:00.000Z

Bronze was good enough to send me a 5-day free trial key for StarTrek Online. I've faniced the game since reading the reviews. But the idea of ship combat, and some of the bad ratings the ground combat recieved put me off buying it blindly.

Having now played it for a few days. (After finally managing to download the 8GB install file, and the 500MB of patches). I really like it.

It's already quite nicely polished, but it also has a lot of potential. The ship combat is difficult enough to keep it interesting, but simple enough not too make it too complicated.
The ground combat is basic, but only in the same way as WoW's is. You have an action bar with abilities that you can use, and they're on cooldown timers. You actually get to control your whole team, but it's mostly a case of positioning them tactically during fights. (i.e. "You lot go and stand over there, while I stand over here"). You get big bonuses for flanking your enemies, so once you've mastered the tactics it's pretty easy to handle even largish groups.

They've also added a few nice touches which WoW really should have too.
Firstly, you can see which of your freinds are online without logging in to the game, just by looking at the website. Secondly, on that same website, you can send and recieve your in-game mail.
So if you see someone online that you want to speak to, but don't want to log in, you can drop them a line... Nice touch.

The best thing about the StarTrek universe though, is that it's potentially limitless.
In WoW, you're pretty restricted by the lore-of-the-land. Look at the problems they had trying to tie Outland in to the main game,
In STO that doesn't apply. Firstly, there are any number of planets / zones out there in space, and StarTrek has always been about how things are different everywhere, while still being slightly familiar (can you tell that I was a fan of the shows?).
If Cryptic (the Devs) wanted to introduce a planet of gigantic pink-and-fluffy killer caterpillars, they don't need to explain much. 'Let's just beam down to this unchartered planet and have a look around... Oh Shit... It's full of gigantic pink-and-fluffy killer caterpillars!'. Last week I was fighting Klingons, yesterday it was the killer caterpillars, and today God himself has issues I'm going to have to deal with.

You can't argue with that sort of freedom.

If the devs actually considered something too over the top, they could always just make it a holodeck simulation, and that way they could get away with anything from a 1940's gangster shoot-out to a 2010 Gulf War scenario.

I'm guessing the devs aren't thinking along those lines right now, but they are doing something else that I've wanted to see in WoW for a while... More events.

And I don't mean 'brewfests' or 'Lunar festivals' I never really got in to the spirit of those anyway. But they have a calendar showing that every few weeks they'll be releasing a sort of mission-pack. Just to add that bit of randomness to the game.
What is currently a safe zone, could simply become the epicentre of a borg invasion, because the devs thought that would be the best place to put it.
Once the attack is repelled the enemies retreat and in a few weeks time, there's another incursion somewhere else, maybe by the same enemy, or maybe something completely different... Excellent idea.
Sort of like the pre-expansion events that Blizz do in WoW, but much more frequent.

Overall, STO has proven much better than I first expected. It's always going to be hard getting to grips with a new MMO, learning the combat systems, and pressing keys that used to do something, and now don't. But Cryptic are obviously well aware that most of their players will be familiar with WoW, and have kept things fairly familiar feeling, while also making them completely different at the same time.

No wonder it's currently the No1 PC hame in the UK charts. Hats off to Cryptic and Atari.

Unfortunately the UK apparently has an ISP issue at the moment, which is why I can't log in right now. But it's nothing to do with the Devs apparently, according to the headline they added not long after the problems started... For now, they've earned my faith, so I'm willing to believe them.

The Moral Majority

2010-03-01T11:20:00.001Z

This isn't really an MMO post. Although it could turn out to be one, since my mind often wanders while I'm writing, and one train of thought can eaily turn in to two.
This is more a continuation of a debate that I had the other day, with a freind of mine (my father-in-law actually).

He is always a very staunch supporter of Unions, and strike activity, and believes that you should never be a 'strike-breaker' or a 'scab' (as they're also called), because you should show your support for the majority. Because you never know when you'll need the support of others yourself.
Now, personally, I'm a cynical bastard, and fully believe that people, even the nicest ones, are fully capable of turning on you when it suits them. No matter how much support you've shown for them in the past.

That aside, I tried to make the point that, more often than not, it isn't the 'majority' that leads. It's the ones who make the most fuss, and the true majority just plods along.
He never understood my explanation of why (or he did but was just being stubborn). But I'm going to explain it again here anyway.

Picture the Small Scene:

A factory has 100 workers. In the real world, only a certain % of them would actually be union members, but that confuses things even more, and doesn't really matter to this point, so we'll assume that 100% of them are in the factory union.

So we have 100 Union members.

5 of those members get together and come up with (what they think is) a great idea:
"Let's start an hour earlier on Friday mornings, so that we can finish an hour earlier on Friday afternoons"
They go to the factory manager, and ask about it. And are told to "Stop pissing about, and get back to work."

They take the hump, and think that everyone will agree with them. But before they can call a strike about it, to try and force the manager to listen, they have to have a vote.

So every union member gets a chance to vote on whether to strike.

31 vote "Yes"
29 vote "No"
40 don't vote at all.

So what happens?... It get's counted as a "Yes". And the strike goes ahead.
All 100 members are then expected to strike regardless of their feelings towards the issue.

So 31 members of the union, are then imposing their will on the 69 others. In what sense is that a majority?

The true majority are the 40 members who didn't bother to vote at all. Presumably because they didn't feel the issue was important enough to warrant a strike action, or couldn't really care about the issue one way or the other.

Add to those the 29 members who voted "No", presumably because they seriously opposed the change. (i.e. Their child-care or family arrangements wouldn't suit the new hours). And you get 69 people who were not in favour of the strike.

This is how unions are run. This is how decisions are made in the workplace. And this is why I can't stand most unions.
In theory Unions are powerful, and representative. in practice they're usually run by a couple of Nob-Heads who think they know what's best for everyone else.

How is that a fair system? And why should I lose a few days / weeks wages for the sake of some prat who's ideas I either don't care about, or totally disagree with?

The Bigger Picture:

The bigger the company, the bigger the union, and the bigger the imbalance.

Personally, I'm a civil servant, and our Union represents hundreds of thousands of civil servants, all across the UK.
So how many of our people vote to determine strike issues?

Well for a start, only about 60% of the staff are in the union. So only 60% actually get to vote. Even though the union has the final say on pay negotiations, and that sort of thing. If I want to negotiate my own wage, I can't. Because, once they're formed, the union are the only ones allowed to do that.

And on any single issue, how many people bother to vote? About 20%.
Remember, that's not 20% of the entire workforce, that's 20% of the union members. About 12% of the total number of workers.
And the "Yes" vote for industrial action is usually about 70%. Again, that's 70% of the voters, not 70% of the total staff. In reality that means only 8.4% of the entire workforce voted "Yes".

But that's it. Decision is made. The union claim that the "People have spoken!". And strike action is approved.
And at that point. The other 91.6% of the staff, who disagreed, couldn't care less, didn't know there was a vote, or didn't even have the right to vote, are then expected to follow the 'Majority'.

100% - 40% (Who don't get a vote) = 60%

60% - 80% (Who don't bother to vote) = 12%

12% - 30% (who vote "No")

= 8.4% who Vote "Yes"

Thanks, but No-Thanks.

The Even Bigger Picture:

Still don't believe that Unions can work this way? Surely people can't be so stupid? No way would hundreds of thousands of people accept that?

For those of you non-UK readers, we have a political party in the UK known as the B.N.P. (British Nationalist Party). They are our political equivalent of the KluKluxKlan.
They don't directly preach about racism, and that sort of thing. But they're generally along the same lines. "Britain should be for 'White' British people".
I don't think anyone's ever pointed out the several thousand years of invasions of Britain, where we were occupied for centuries by the Romans, the Vikings, The French, and every man and his dog. The only reason the Greeks didn't have a go at us was because we had nothing worth travelling all that way for, and besides, half the Romans were Greek by the time they arrived anyway.
I think you get the picture though: The BNP are Prats.

So such a party would never get in to power... right?

Wrong.

The BNP currently hold full political seats in my Hometown of Burnley. Now Burnley isn't generally a racist place. There's a lot of racial tensions, there are enourmous areas of the town that are almost exclusively white, and others that are almost exclusively Asian. And then there's the Chinese, Polish, and other genreic populations in there own little corners of the place.

The average turn out for a local election in this region is about 40%. So only 40% of the voting-age population, bother to vote. The population of Burnley is about 75,000. (Let's just ignore that many of those are kids for now).

So that equates to about 30,000 people who voted. Out of those only about 6.9% voted for the BNP candidates. But it was enough for them to take 4 council seats. (Because there are multiple seats on each council, the top guys can get a huge 'majority' of the vote, meaning that only small percentages are required to take the other seats).
Do the math... This means that only about 2100 people actually voted for the BNP, out of 75,000 living in the town. But now Burnley has 4 BNP councillors.

75,000 - 60% (Who don't bother to vote) = 30,000

30,000 x 6.9% (Who voted BNP) = 2070 People

2070 / 75,000 * 100 (To get the %)

= 2.76% of the population voted BNP

It then got worse, when the BNP also went on to take regional council seats, and they now even have a member in the European parliament, because he got 8% of a vote. Dumbasses.

People are sheep. Every now and again a wolf will come along and eat a few, and that's just nature. But bring along a man who thinks he knows best, and scares the wolves off sometimes, and the sheep will follow him just because all the other sheep are.

Trials and Tribble-ations

2010-02-25T09:26:00.000Z

Something I've come to realise over the past few weeks is how poor the average trial account system is for MMO's.

In WoW, you can get a free 10 day trial, just by clicking a few buttons, and providing your email address. It's simple, it makes sense. Blizzard want people to play and if, by letting 100 people try it out for a week and a bit, it results in 1 more subscriber. Who plays for a year. They'll still make a profit.
I remember buying the original game, and being suprised that there was actually a little flyer inside saying something like "Lend the discs to a freind" and give them one of these voucher codes so they can try it out.

It makes a massive amount of sense in the MMO market, where it isn't how many people 'own' the game, it's about how many 'subscribe' to play it.

For some reason though, it seems that many other MMO developers don't feel the same way. I've looked around at other MMO's recently, and out of the ones that have interested me, only a very few offer trial accounts.

Why?

I'm a working guy, and have the spare cash each month to be able to afford the luxuries like computer games. But that doesn't mean I'm stupid and want to piss that money up the wall by paying for something that I'll never be able to use again.

If I buy a game for my Xbox 360, and think it totally sucked, I could at least take it to the shop and trade it in for something else. I might not make back every penny I spent, but that doesn't bother me. I'm willing to spend money trying things I think I might like.

But if that Xbox game costs £70 (as some have done) and from the minute I play it, it's bound to my console. Then I wouldn't buy it. No matter how much marketing hype there is, or how awesome it looks on the box, I don't like spending my money on something that could be worthless to me within hours.
In the console world, that's where demo's come in. They're obviously the Console version of free-trials.

But in the MMO world, once you've bought that game, it's tied to you. You'll never be able to sell it on (not properly anyway) and, if it sucks, all you're money has been wasted.

With a free trial, you get at least a taste of the game before you lay out your £40+.

So why don't more companies offer a free-trial of their games?

Sure it costs them money, but I'm also sure that if there were more free-trials, they'd also lure more longer-term subscribers.

Or, to cover their costs, why not offer a £5 version of the game?
That way they can cover their costs, and the players can get a slightly longer free-trial. I know there's a lot of MMO's out there that I'd try, if I new it would only cost me a fiver a time.

If it turns out to be trash... *meh*... It's cost me 5 quid, and hasn't cost the Devs anything.
If it turns out to be great, I simply upgrade my account to the full version, and everyones a winner.

StarTrek Online... Atari... StarWars: ToR... BioWare... Take Notes!

Better the Devil I Know

2010-02-24T07:44:00.000Z

Last night I made my return to the World of Warcraft.

Yet again, I couldn't log on to Allods. They've lost my business now.
I wouldn't have spent any money in the cash-shop at the current pricing model, but apparently they're already looking at fixing that.

In my opinion gPotato / AstrumNival have screwed up their priorities big-time. After an initially great reception from the closed beta, they've managed to destroy almost all of that within the first week of release. I'm not one for trying to find blame, but I garauntee that someones head will be rolling for this mess, and if it's not then the Devs really are living on Planet Zod.
At the end of the day, it might be a game to us, but to the Devs, it's a business. And it needs to make a profit, if it doesn't, it won't survive. No matter how good the game itself is.

So I patched up my client, and logged back in to WoW. As usual, after a break like this, I find it difficult to get straight back in to my main character(s), so I've picked up my level 19 mage 'SmythNuke' and he'll be my centre of attention for now.
I didn't really do much last night, just sorted out the UI layout for him, took him over to Stormwind. And spent some of my level 80 Badges and Stone Keeper Shards on some BoA gear for him.
So he's now got the uber Chest, Shoulders, and Staff which should make his levelling nice and quick.

At the moment, everything he throws a fireball at just rolls over and dies. But I'm guessing that's pretty much the mages 'Glass-Cannon' style anyway.

Unfortunately, my internet connection then went down, and didn't come back up until almost midnight. And by that time everyone else was offline.

I doubt I'll be online as much as I used to be (but who knows). And it looks like it's time for the officer list (and maybe the GM'ship) to be reconsidered. The only question now is, Does anyone suitable want the job?

And it was all going so well

2010-02-22T11:08:00.000Z

Allods Online seems to have attracted a lot of attention all of a sudden.

Since going Open-Beta, what was expected of the game hasn't changed, but what the game expects of us seems to have changed quite a lot.

Some classes have been nerfed / tweaked, but that's only to be expected. And shouldn't really come as a suprise to anyone. Even if you did consider yourself a hard-core Closed-Beta player, there's no point QQ'ing about it if your favourite class suddenly isn't as over-powered as they were before. I'm sure the balancing will change again.

There are bigger problems though, which are either only just coming to light, or have always been there but there was a feeling they would be rectified soon. It turns out that's not really the case.

The Cash Shop:

The game is going to be funded by Micro-Transactions, the cash shop was inevitable, but it turns out there's nothing very 'Micro' about it.
I've no idea if it's available in the EU shard (server) yet, for the reasons explained later, but in the US it is. And there's a lot of very unhappy bunnies.
A 24 slot bag, currently costs about $20... Ouch.
They've apprently just added a zero to the end of all the original Russian prices. But at those sort of levels I don't think they're going to get many takers.

Server Issues:

I haven't been able to log on for the majority of the weekend. I get a nice little message telling me that I'm at position 1500 in the queue, before eventually timing-out.
Not good.
When I have been able to get online, the lag has been terrible but still playable. I can accept this sort of thing at the beggining of a games life. Everyone being in the same area, at the same time, is bound to have an impact. And it's only on the scale of a busy Dalaran.
They have promised to open more servers soon, but for an opening week. Not being able to log in is very frustrating, and is surely harming their business model.

Fear of Death:

One of the biggest causes of controversy in the game. And the potential straw-that-breaks-the-camels-back.
When you die in World of Warcraft, you either corpse-run, or get rezzed by a healer. Unless you choose to release, rather than run back to your body, the penalty is simply a repair-bill.
When you die in Allods, there's no repair bills, but you get a debuff known as 'Fear of Death'. This reduces your stats by 25%, and can stack up to 4 times, obviously adding up to a 100% debuff

Picture a raid-situation, you die on a boss, and even if you're rezzed by your team-mates, you're now 25% less effective than you were before dying, meaning your much more liekly to die again.
To get around this, you can give some in-game gold to an NPC, but as the price increases with each death, this would soon become very expensive.
Alternatively, you can use the Cash Shop, to purchase 'Perfume'. While under it's effect, you do not recieve the death penalty.

Now a few people have done the maths on this one, and with the current $US cost of that perfume. And the average number of wipes expected in a raid. The cost per player would be $50 to $75 per month, at end-game. Who the hell is going to pay that?

Oh, and in case you were wondering, the Fear of Death also applies if you are PvP killed... It put's things in a great deal of perspective.

Guild Management:

I've yet to be able to try this, since I haven't been able to log on. But apparently the guild interface is extremely basic, and buggy.
For a game that's going to rely quite heavily on it's social aspect, this is a pretty major flaw, that's goign to have to be resolved fairly soon.

It's a shame about all of the above. There's more faults, but these are some of the more important ones.
But I'm not going to give up on the game just yet. It's still fun to play, and the problems could potentially patched-out.
The general feeling seems to be swinging wildly between "This is a potentially great game" and "WTF!"

If things don't change fairly soon, it's going to end up being just another dissapointing MMO that no one plays.

Munqui Refresh

2010-02-18T09:52:00.000Z

Well, it's now official(ish).

The Munqui Tribe is now a social gaming network, rather than just a guild on the Darkspear EU realm of World of Warcraft.
It's probably the only way to see the Tribe survive the lull in WoW, and the big new MMO's that will be coming out soon.

So, with Brasts blessing, I've given the froums a bit of a spring cleaning, changed the news layouts, and categories, added more info to the 'Leaders' 'FAQs' and 'Ranks' pages... and tried to generally open up the site a bit more, to make it more Multiple-Game freindly.

I've tried not to change too much, I know some people hate change to the point where they'd prefer to keep the same car for 20 years even though the doors fallen off, and the ariel is attached with sticky-tape, just because they feel comfortable in it.

So the themes have been kept, and the general layout of the front page has only had a few button changes.
But it's now a little less WoW-Centric.

Offline Life

2010-02-17T14:19:00.000Z

I'm Offline and I don't care... doo dah... doo dah

The Allods Online open beat began yesterday. Essentially, it's the full release of the game, but with the developers reserving the right to change things at random without explaining, or people getting too upset.

I was looking forward to launch night, but I didn't log on. A few real-life issues have cropped up recently, not leaving me much time for gaming, or leaving me time only to enjoy the pick-up-and-put-down console style.

But here's what I've realised today. I'm not really bothered that I didn't log on yesterday.
If that had been WoW, I'd have felt I was missing out on something, or maybe not doing something productive with my potential time.

But with Allods, I didn't feel that. I'm not paying anything for the game, and my characters aren't going to be suffering because I didn't log on to do my dailies.

It feels a little like an alcoholic standing up in a room full of strangers and admitting his addiction.

"I haven't logged on yet, and that's OK!"

It's not that Allods is an inferior game to WoW (although in many ways it obviously is), but it's the fact that I don't feel punished, in any way, for not logging on.
By waiting a day I'll probably avoid a lot of the quest congestion that's bound to happen on launch day. I'll also benefit from other people having been-there and done-that before me, so the AH will have some stuff on there, and if I ask in chat for advice on quests, someones probably going to know the answer.

It feels... strangely... refreshing.

Tonight I'll probably log on. Make a few characters, level up at least a handful of levels (it'll be slower than in closed beta because all XP was doubled until now). And generally get a feel for how the game is going to pan out, and the society of people that are going to be playing it.

After all, the greatest game on earth would still be a horrible experience if everyone you met was a complete tosser.
Oh wait... that's what they mean by "Real Life", shame there's no alternative MMRLRPGS I can try for a while.

But hey-ho, away I'll go, and I'll be trying to set up the new Munqui Tribe guild within Allods as soon as I get the chance.

Closed Beta... Closed

2010-02-12T19:36:00.000Z

Allods has now shut it's doors until Tuesday, when it re-opens as an 'Open-Beta'.

Quite a few of the Munquis seem to be intrested in giving it a try, and voted heavily for playing as Empire rather than League... so that's where we'll be going.

My son even loves the game. He really wants to play alongside me, but he's also fascinated by the Gibberling race, so he's a little torn.... ah, to be 10 again, and have such difficult choices to make.

My first few attempts at Empire have been pretty succesful. Unlike some games, where you get the feeling the 'evil' or 'opposing' faction was added-in after they'd finished all the 'good' sides stuff, and maybe gets a bit rushed. In Allods Online, I felt the Empire starting quests and area were actually more original and beter done than the League ones, and with slightly more comic effect.

The 'Evil' of the Empire is actually defined by their 'Capitalism' and led by a Dictator, compared to the 'Socialist' views of the League, and their Council led leadership.
It's a Russian game originally, so read in to that what you will.

The item shop was opened-up (and was temporarily free) to give people a chance to see what they could expect from it.
And it looks like the predictions were right... Temporary Boosts and Luxury Items (e.g. bigger bags) but nothing that would give any major advantage, unless someone wanted to invest a fortune in the random chests in the 'hope' that they would get something awesome. But anyone trying this lottery style of playing had better be working on Wall Street to make that way of playing worthwhile.

An interesting part of this is that gold trading will become 'sort-of'' legal too. You will be able to buy items from the shop, and then post those items on the in-game Auction House.

I've read in to the whole Astral ship thing a bit more. They look awesome, and will require a major guild effort to achieve them. Parts will need to be collected by doing major quests and raids, and the ships will require repairs.
For this, some parts will be available on the item-shop, but nothing that you could buy with in-game gold, or find in-game yourself.

And the Ships will require at least 6 players to pilot them, with players taking on roles as Captains, Engineering, Gunners, etc...
But each ship can actually accommodate up to 25 crew-members.

The theory is that you navigate your ship to a far-off place. Complete a major quest, slay some major monster, or enter a major raid, and then return to an Allod (Island) to divide-up the loot.
But Astral space is open PvP territory, so you'd better be prepared to defend your cargo, as other ships can attack you, or even board you, for fighting on-deck.
Getting your precious loot back home could prove harder than the fight to get it in the first place.

What this means though, is that small guilds need only 6 players to be involved in this. And larger guilds can have the full 25 crew, and will obviously be better defended in a fight.

To go the step further, guilds can have more than one ship, so in theory a major guild could have an entire armada at their disposal. Or smaller guilds could band-together for the safety in numbers aspect.
A cool addition to the game, and a good way to promote social activities, in my opinion. Although I've obviously not experienced this in practice yet.

Fingers Crossed, Tuesday comes, Open Beta begins, the Munquis begin their campaign in Allods, and something good comes from it all.
If not.... oh well, no harm done, no cash spent, and we all get to experience another game for a while... Which is never a bad thing.

Alodd'a Fun

2010-02-11T08:07:00.000Z

Vind has now taken Allods Online for a spin.
I was speaking to him in the game last night, and he suggested that we try switching to playing as Empire (Horde), if we're going to give it a serious try.

I'd been toying with the idea myself.
In WoW, Horde have always been viewed as being the more serious of the 2 factions. The kiddies almost always choose Alliance, and the population on the Horde side is almost always lower than the Alliance.

The downside to this is that Allods has a faction restriction. You can only have toons on one side or the other, not both.
The word is that everything is going to get wiped soon, so I haven't really been getting attached to the characters, and have been spending most of my time trying out new classes, and professions.
So with that in mind, I deleted all of my League characters, and re-rolled Empire ones.

gPotato have done something sensible here:
In WoW, they found that one of the main reasons people didn't play as Horde, was that they didn't have 'handsome' character choices. When they introduced BloodElves as a playable race, the Horde gained a lot of popularity.
In Allods, there are humans on both sides of things. We're humans, we can be good or evil, without explanations. And it means that you can choose to play as a 'normalish' character but still mix with Orcs, and the cyber-punk-undead Arisen.
No extra character models, very little extra effort, and problem solved.

In little things like this, gPotato remind me of the Chinese cloning phenomenon.

For those who have no idea what I'm talking about: The Chinese are currently going through a phase of copying everythign in the world, and making it quicker, faster and cheaper.
e.g. The IPhone - Apple is charging £500+ for their 3GS beauty, within a couple of weeks of it's release the Chinese had come up with the IClone, selling it for around £70, with almost all the same features (minus the AppStore) dual sim card slots, memory card expansion slot, and it's sold unlocked, for you to place any sim card you like in to it.
Also e.g. They also did this to an American car, and the copies were so close, but also so cheap, that you could take the door of your Chrysler in the US, buy a chinese door for a few quid, and it would simply slot in to place, with the seals lined up and everything. The American company went ballistic, launched lawsuits, and basically spat their dummy out.
But after a fortune in legal costs, and no sight of a victory, they realised there was nothing they could do to stop this and simply started buying the parts from China themselves to reduce their costs.

Sometimes, the simplest solutions are the best. And that seems to be the case with some of the Allods features.

I found the the Empire starting area to be a much better taster of things to come later in the game, than the typical paradise-island setting of the League starting zone.
You start in a ship under attack from the League... and other things. You get to shoot cannons at another ship, and see one of the collosal Astral-Monsters that you'll be up against later in the game.

Unusually for me I actually read the text of a few of the quests. And was initially suprised about some of the things I was being asked to do.
One of the first quests you get is to beat up rats and slugs, but also Prisoners of War, to see if your brainwaves change while carrying out your orders.
It's just a game, and they're just pixels, and you don't actually kill any PoW's, but I was a little suprised at the order. That's the only example of things like that I've found though.

Once you're past the starting zone, the city feel of the Empire is actually slightly better than the League side.
I got the impression that the league takes itself very seriously, whereas the Empire is much more laid-back and slightly funnier.
For example, in the League City of Novograd it's all guards and swords, and ancient elven mysteries.

In the Empire city it's Orc Policemen (think PIGs from DukeNukem, if you've played it), and the quests are generally more along the lines of "Do me a favour" rather than "Your Empire Commands".
It was quite refreshing actually.

At the end of the day though, Quests are quests, and it's all just XP. And by level 21 Empire and League will be questing in the same zone anyway (Much like in TBC / WotlK). But at that point the open-ish PvP will come in to play.

You wont have to take part in it, you'll never have to PvP if you don't want to. But the flagging system will work differently to WoW's.
If you flag yourself for PvP, you actually recieve a buff that increases your XP gain, if you don't you get a buff that reduces it. You don't have to attack anyone, and you might not get attacked yourself, but it's the chance you'll take for the buff.

Again, a simple solution to something that WoW never really mastered. It's not forcing you to join in, but it's a good encouragement.

The only down-side from Empire so far is that I quite enjoyed the Mage I had on the League side. Unfortunately only the Arisen can be mages on the Empire side, and I'm not keen on their look.
But I'm sure some will much prefer them to playing as a boring Human or a standard Orc.

The Munqui Tribe Corporation?

2010-02-11T07:36:00.000Z

In the guild forums, Lewt posted something interesting:

"I would be happy to try Allods as a kind of holiday but I would be really sad if we didn't all switch back to playing WoW again when the expansion comes out.

I guess the Munqui Tribe should really be viewed as a circle of online gaming friends rather than a WoW guild specifically (damn, we're getting dangerously close to corporate strategy here!)."

I think this pretty much describes how the Tribe has worked up until now anyway. The Munquis have survived a server change from Nordrassil to Darkspear, Key players have come and gone, the GM position has changed hands at least 4 times, the officer-team has rotated fairly regularly. But the Tribe survives, by evolving.

Even players who have left the guild, or left the game altogether, still keep in touch. We're a group of freinds, most of whom met through the playing of the same game, but who have gotten to know each other well enough to keep in touch, even when not playing that game.

There's a lot of members in our guild who left months, or even years ago. Or who don't even play anymore, but who keep in touch, or keep an alt in the guild, just so that they don't lose touch.

When I rejoined the guild I met a bunch of people who I knew in-game. I've now met some of them in real-life, have them as Facebook freinds, MSN buddies, Xbox Live Freinds.
Although they're very underused by the majority of the guildies, the core of the guild tends to use the Munqui Tribe forums as a sort of focused social-networking site.

I'll be trying Cataclysm when it comes out, I'd be a fool not too. Blizzard has the biggest and best MMO on the market right now, and just because it might have gone a little bit stale, doesn't mean that things can't be turned around with the release of a major expansion.

The fastest way to kill a guild is boredom. (Although stealing all the money from the bank and kicking everyone would probably do the trick too).
But if we can adapt, and change, and (like Lewt says) consider ourselves a group of online gaming freinds, rather than specifically just as a WoW guild, then we can probably survive anything.

If enough people are interested in a new MMO, then I think it's worth a try.
I was considering trying to start a new guild in Allods, and not naming it after the Munquis, simply so people knew it was something fresh and different... But having thought about this a bit more, maybe "Munqui Tribe Mk3" is the way to go.

(Mk1 - Nordrassil, Mk2 - Darkspear, Mk3 - Allods?, Mk4 - ???)

Allods Online: 3rd Time Lucky

2010-02-10T10:03:00.000Z

3 days in a row, and 3 posts, that's almost regular... Almost... And the content has obviously been a little shy on World of Warcraft info.
That's just the way it is at the moment. I'm enjoying Allods, and not missing WoW anywhere near as much as I thought I would.

There's now a couple of Munquis that have come to give it a try, and their first impressions also appear to be positive.

The question is: Will Allods Online just be a flash-in-the-pan?

At the moment, I'm enjoying the game immensely. The differences make it fun, while still being familiar enough to remind me of WoW and make me feel immersed in something worth doing.

But if Allods becomes the new flavour of the month, will it last?

There's some big competition on it's way, that could steal a lot of Allods thunder.

Bronze is already playing StarTrek Online, and seems to think it's worth a shot. Although from what I've seen it seems more suited to someone who's also a fan of EVE, rather than WoW. But maybe I'm wrong on that one.
If they offer a free-trial maybe I'll give it a look.

StarWars is going to be the big test though. With WoW appearing to be in a decline, and with all the fan-base that SW:TOR will have even before it's released, it could finally be the WoW-killer.
Only time will tell though, if the game turns out to be a steaming pile of crap, then it might get a few tourists, but they'll all end up runnign back to WoW with the release of Cataclysm.
If it turns out to be everything they've said it will, I can see a lot of people sticking with it.

So where does that leave Allods?

Well it's FREE (Have I mentioned that before?), which gives it a bit of an advantage. And it's available right now, which is obviously another positive. And god knows when we'll see SW:TOR or Cataclysm, so as long as it has a good few months to get its feet under the table, it could turn out to be something worthwhile.

I can't speak for the whole world, but some of the guildies have already made their case on why they will not be playing SW:TOR, or StarTrek, so maybe Allods will be the appealing place for them instead.

If you're a social / casual gamer, for whom it's more about community, crafting, and having fun, than about being the biggest-baddest *Jedi / Sith / Federation / Klingon* (*insert game of choice*). Then Allods could be just what you're looking for.

As an update: I've rolled a second mage (Human this time), just because it doesn't take very long and I wasn't happy about how I'd spent my points, and the profession I'd chosen.
The starting areas are very well designed, with plentiful quests, but the freedom to pick and choose which of them you do. As long as you follow the main storyline to finally leave the island (or Allod, as they call them).

Allods Online: Second Impressions Count

2010-02-09T13:17:00.000Z

Well I've now been joined in the game by another Munqui. 4 more of those, and we can officially form a guild. That's always a good start.

My Warden (Druid / Hunter / Rogue combo) is now level 13. But I thought I'd try and roll a couple of the other classes just to see how they play too.

So first stop, I rolled a mage... And loved it.

He's now level 7, and I love the mage mechanic they've included.

Mage Mechanics:

In this game, It's impossible to have the 'perfect' spell rotation. They've solved the problem of cookie cutter builds with a very simple solution.
Mages have 3 types of spell, Fire, Ice and Lightning.
Whenever you cast a spell you get a stack of that particular type of magic. These have a cooldown of about 10 seconds. If you cast another spell of the same type within that time, you get a second stack.

Alone, these stacks do nothing, but if you reach 5 stacks, and then cast another spell of the same type, you recieve a totally random buff / debuff.
That can range from silences or increased / reduced casting time to a specific class of spells to a total HP / Mana regen or a big HP / Mana reduction. There's no way of knowing what it will do, or which it will be.
It can make you a temporary killing machine, or a temporary pathetic weakling. Or force you to switch to an entirely different class of spells.

This means that you've got to be reactive, and can't just blindly mash the same buttons over and over again.
It's not complicated, you don't have to do anything with the stacks themselves, you just have to be aware of what's going on... I love it.

I've chosen to be a lightning mage, but I'll still have to be well aware of what all my other abilities and spells do for the times when my lightning is debuffed, or the other spells are temporarily over-powered.

I havent tried all classes yet, so maybe this type of thing applies to them too. Probably, since I do know that warriors have a Rage-type mechanic, that druids pets have a seperate energy bar, and that threat generation is done in the familiar way.

Faster Alts?:

I'm not sure how it happened, but second time around, and my character seemd to fly through the starting zone very quickly. He wasn't even presented with the same number of quests that my first toon did, but was still the same level by the time he reached the proper part of the game.
Maybe this is intentionally done to stop the low-level grind, or maybe it was just my perception, since I knew what I was doing that time.

Micro-Transactions:

I've found out a little more about the item-shop (which is how they will eventually fund this game). It looks as though the enitre game will be playable without ever visiting it, but if you want 'luxuries' then that's where you'll find them. Respecs, Fast-Mounts, Bigger Bags, all that sort of thing.
In my opinion that's the perfect way to pitch things. If I'm enjoying the game, I'll happily hand over a few quid to buy a bigger bag, or sort out my talent-spec if I've made a complete mess of it.
Or if I want to level a new toon, and fancy an XP boost to avoid the grind... why not?

I think they've found the right sort of balance for the micro-transaction model. It's not actually up and running yet, so don't hold me to it. But from what I've seen and read, nothing will be impossible without spending money, but for those things that make life that little bit easier, it's there.
The only question is, can they make enough money from it?

Crafting:

I've yet to do any of this, since it requires gold which I don't have much of yet.
But the mechanics of crafting are also randomised. With a mini-game type of situation. You select your ingredients, and then play the game with them. The better you do, the better the quality of the item / elixir / weapon etc... that you create.
Again, this means that there's no perfect way to level your skills, if you're good at crafting, you're good. And if you're crap, then the stuff you produce won't be of the same quality as someone who's a master.

Summary:

I'm enjoying the game, looking forward to seeing things progress. Excited about the possibility of customisable guild-ships. That are manned and piloted by the guild - for the guild.
And I'm enjoying the mechanics of the game.

It isn't perfect, it has a few flaws. But that's OK.
If it had come out at the same time as TBC, I think that it might have given WoW a run for it's money.
As it is now, it's coming out at about the time that people are getting bored with WotLK, and maybe that's even better timing. The general feel of world-chat is that it's full of WoW players, and all pretty happy about it.

It's not better than WoW, but it's close.
And WoW is much much bigger. But...

You can hire a Stretch-Limo to take you and your freinds to town. And it will feel awesome.
Or you could just all jump in a taxi, and have just as much fun once you arrive.

Allods Online: First Thoughts

2010-02-08T07:58:00.000Z

Hey, long, long, long time no post.

It's been a busy few months for me. So my MMO gaming has had to take a back-seat. That's not always a bad thing though. Sometimes it's good to stand-back and look at things from a distance.
And that's pretty much what I've done for the moment.
I do intend to return to WoW. But, if I did it now, I wouldn't be able to commit to raiding. And the only alternative is endless heroics, or rolling yet another toon.

So I went in search of alternatives to fill the gap.

After much deliberation, I decided to give Allods Online a try. So with a sceptical eye, here are my first impressions:

Graphics:
Quite similar to WoW really. Maybe a little more polished, but very comparable, and adequate for the job. A nice variety of effects and different monster models.
It runs nice and smooth, at max res, and draw distance, and effects, in windowed mode on my Laptop, which although a little overpowered compared to most laptops, would be comparable to a reasonable desktop PC.
If WoW is playable for you, this probably will be too.

Sound:
Does it's job. The background music adds atmosphere nicely, without becoming too annoying. There's no speech in the game from any of the NPC's, but there isn't for most of the WoW ones, so again it's very comparable.

Gameplay:
It's basically a WoW clone. In case you hadn't picked up on that fact from reading the lines above. But it's a very very good one.
It describes itself as a 'Space Opera' but to be honest it's more "Burning Crusade" than "Battlestar Galactica".

It's still in 'Closed-Beta'. It has to be the most open closed-beta in the history of games, but still... that's what they want to call it.

I've experienced a couple of game crashes, but nothing that wasn't resolved by just closing the window and logging back in again. So no major problems in that respect.
The game feels very complete. And if it was released tomorrow, it would be worth buying.

But that's another of it's key features... It's free.
It's going down the micro-transaction route, and that part isn't operational yet, but from what I can gather it would seem to be nicely balanced so that it's fairly optional to use. E.g. a character re-spec might cost you real money, but playing the main game and progressing wouldn't.

One of the original things that put me off playing this sooner was that the end-game is supposedly ship-combat. Although I'm not against this in principle, it's new to me, so made me doubt if it was going to work.
But having seen videos and read reviews of how it operates, it seems to fit in well with the game.
You don't do it solo, you do it as a guild. The ships are expensive, and difficult to master. But with team-work you can really go places... .Literally.
I think this could be a great way to encourage guild-participation. And It's a change from the basic raid mechanics of Tank / Healer / DPS. Instead you'd have a Captain, Gunners, and Support Staff.
I'm no where near end-game yet, but I'm actually quite looking forward to seeing this part of the game now.

Which brings me to the negatives of the gameplay. And there aren't many.
The game comes with a built in quest-helper, which shows you quest locations on the world-map. And tutorial hints pop-up whenever something new is available. The interface should be pretty intuitive to anyone who's played MMO's before, but with the differences you'd expect when switching between games.
But for an experienced MMO'er like myself, there's a distinct lack of information sometimes.

For example; I wanted to create a guild in the game. I know it's possible, I've read about others, and you can see the guild interface simply by pressing 'G' in-game. But I couldn't, for the life of me, figure out how to create one. After an hour of googling, I finally found out that it costs 95g to form a guild and you have to buy a token to do it. But this information was found buried at the bottom of an unrelated forum post, that took ages to find.
Anyone who's not 100% internet savvy, would have struggled to find that.
Since my current bank balance is about 2g, I'll have some way to go before the guild is set up. But the idea is there.

There are dungeons, and elite mobs wandering around in the open. Some of them take a team of 5+ people to bring them down, even at low levels.

Some of the quests aren't very clear. The lore has been worked-out nicely. So you know why you're doing what you're doing if you can be bothered to read the text, or you can just skip to the slaughter-at-hand if you can't be arsed.
But occasionally it's not very clear what exactly you're supposed to be doing.

For Example: Take this chalk, and go and mark 6 of the biggest trees in that area, so we can chop them down for timber... Sounds simple. But there's actually only a couple of very specific trees that you can mark, and they despawn when others have marked them... which results in you wandering around a forest trying to mark the trees, that aren't there, until eventually you find one you can click on, that looks exactly like all the other bloody trees.... Bollocks.

But luckily, this problem is rare, and no MMO is perfect anyway. Other than a few minor annoyances like this the game has very few flaws.
If they just provided an instruction manual, or at least a wiki-site that explained things like guilds, or the basic mechanics of each class, my overall enjoyment would have not been hindered by having to google so much to try and figure out why I couldn't do something that seems so obvious.

Pros:
It's free. It runs very smoothly. The class balances seem to be correct. End-Game isn't as weird as it first appears (there are dungeons as well as ship-battles). It's not WoW.

Cons:
It will eventually switch to Micro-Transaction (but this might turn out to be a good thing). There's a lack of some basic information and support. The community is relatively small at the moment (but it is growing).

Summary:
I currently have a level 11 Kanian Warden (a sort of Druid / Hunter combo). And I'm looking forward to logging back on to him tonight to see where things go next.
I've been told, that the first dungeon is around level 13. So it'll be interesting to see how they work too.
On the munqui forums I rated it as a 4.5 star game (with WoW as a 5 star for comparison).
I'm going to drop that to a 4 star game, but only because of the lack of support. Which could put some people off, particularly the more casual, or the WoW tourist. If that was sorted-out, then it'd get it's half a star back.

If you decide to join in the fun /whisper me in game. I'm "Smyth", just to be original.

Out of Tune?

2009-12-18T10:35:00.002Z

You might recognise some of these from last year, but there’s a couple of new ones too.

I’m sure you can figure out the tunes;

Arthas is coming:

You'd better watch out, you might start to cry

But you'd better not pout, I'm telling you why

The Lich King is coming to town.

He's not got a list, and he won't think twice

He already knows who's naughty or nice

The Lich King is coming to town.

Arthas is a'coming to town

Arthas is a'coming to town

Arthas is a'coming to towwwwwn

He'll kill you while you're sleeping,

Or while you're awake

He knows if you've been bad or good

And your soul, his sword, will take.

So you'd better watch out, you might start to cry

But try not to pout I'm telling you why

The Lich King is coming to town.

Arthas is a'coming to town

Arthas is a'coming to town

Arthas is a'coming to towwwwwn

Nightmares before Christmas;

'Twas the weeks before Christmas, and all through the house

Not a sound could be heard, but the click of a mouse

Father Blizzard had come early, or late, I suppose

But all of the big kids were awake with the crows

All of the Munquis had opened their box,

And this was one present, that wasn't going to be socks

So while children were nestled, all snug in their beds

With visions of evil, that danced in their heads

Their mothers and fathers gave up all their naps

To begin the big race, to the new level caps

With new mobs to kill, and achievements to shatter

They were aching and tired, but that didn't matter

Off in to Northrend, they flew like a flash

Wiped out the Vrykul, and found loads of cash

The moon over Northrend, and it's new fallen snow

Looked improved, the new graphics engine, started to show

When what, to our bleeding eyes should appear

But a land full of people living in fear

Arthas was rising, with his legions of dead.

And the dragons were rising, to rip off his head.

On Horses, On Tigers, On Talbuks and Rams

On Dragons and Gryphons to ruin his plans.

The armies of Azeroth rose up to the fight

And among them were outcasts, the converted DeathKnight

The armies united to meet the old foe

But some of the tensions still started to show

In the middle of Northrend stands Lake Wintergrasp

Where battles are fought, to kick the hordes ass.

But after it's done, and the battle is lost

They resume their attack on the kingdom of frost

Before this war's over the evil must be found

Down from the north comes Arthas the Lich-Bound

Dressed in plate armor from his head to his foot

And his gear all tarnished with dried blood and guts.

His eyes.. How they flared, with evil so merry

And lands flowed with blood, as bright as fresh cherry.

His evil smile was drawn up like a bow

And the colour of his skin was as white as the snow

He had a broad face, and no sign of a belly

And carried an aura that some would call smelly

He was tall and looked strong, in the pinnacle of health

But I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself

With a wink of his eye and a twist of his head

He soon gave us to know, we had plenty to dread

He spoke lots of words, and then went to work

And in an opening scene, made Mograine a jerk.

With barely a flinch, he stepped out of sight

Saying "Merry Christmas to all, and to all my DeathKnights!"

Let it snow;

Oh the cold in Icecrowns frightful,

But the epics are so delightful.

Cataclysm has months to go,

So let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.

It didn't show signs of stopping

And old heroics were dropping

Epics that really blow.

So let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.

Well we'd killed all Naxx's DeathKnights

And Ulduar had gone down a storm

KelThuzad had turned in to a pet

And all of us were getting warm

The Munquis were all sighing

for the boredom wasn't dying

But now Blizzard have patched it, so

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.

Arthas & Frostmourne;

Arthas the blue nosed Lich-King

Has a very shiny sword

And if you ever touch it

It will tear out your soul.

All of the other swords,

Used to laugh and call it names

They never let poor Frostmourne

Join in all their swordy games

Then one frosty, fateful night

Arthas came and said

Frostmourne with your evil might.

Wo n't you make me a lich tonight.

Then all of the others feared him

And they all turned to flee

Arthas and his new sword Frostmourne

They went down in history.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow

2009-12-18T07:38:00.001Z

Well... finally.... it's snowing.

I'm a big fan of snow, in the 'it looks very christmassy and makes me feel happy' kind of way.
Of course it's also bloody cold, so no doubt it'll generate a lot of aggro at work from all the staff complaining about how cold it is.

It's just occured to me, while typing that last sentence, how much my role at work is very similar to a tank.

I basically stand at the front, grabbing the attention and all the aggro from everyone. So that the other people behind me can do their jobs properly.

Sometimes I let things past me, to be dealt with by the appropriate person, but only if planned.
My healer (my boss) keeps me alive, and in return I try to keep the mobs off them.
The DPS (the contractors) get on with the real job of nuking all the problems in the buildings.

Funnily enough, the analogy continues as my healer seems to have gone shadow-spec recently. And dropped me right in it.

Anyway, back to topic:

I love snow. I love Christmas. I'm probably the least religious person you'll ever meet (there's probably amazonian pygmy man-eaters that have more chance of reaching heaven than me) but I enjoy the 'family' feel of the season.

My ISP doesn't seem to agree with me though. They seem to feel that 'Tis the season to be DC'd'
A few times recently, I've been DC'd mid-game, and unable to get back online for an hour or two. And while my router says everything is fine, I can't reconnect without re-booting it, to get a fresh connection to my ISP.

Bah Humbug.

But I haven't really commented yet on the new raids and instances with 3.3
I think Blizz's early Christmas present to us is one of their best. I love the new HC's. I like the fact that they're a little harder than some of the normal ones.
I like the fact they're an attunement process.
I even like the new LFG system, although I'm still not a fan of PUGs.

So, all in all, two thumbs up from me.

When they release the giant evil-santa mob on December 24th, I'm sure it will be an awesome world event where everyone tries to bring him down before he reaches the capital cities. (Fingers Crossed).

Attunement

2009-12-16T08:22:00.001Z

I'm a fan of it.

I thought it was good back in the days of Kara, since it showed effort had been put in to be even allowed access to the content.

And I like the way it's been semi-re-introduced (not a real word, I know) with the new ICC heroics.

If you want to be able to complete the higher level content, then I feel that you should have to work for it.

It doesn't have to be a blanket-ban on everything. But simple things such as a keys are fine.
E.g. if you had to complete the ICC heroic trilogy to attune for the ICC raid. It makes a lot of sense, adds to the lore, provides much-needed gear, and it's a reasonable difficulty level.
If you can't master the tactics for the heroics, then you're going to wipe miserably in the raid anyway.

When they removed the attunement for Karazahn, it opened the door to all the moaners and whiners who felt they 'should' have raid-spots because they were level 80's too.
At least the attunement process meant that anyone entering Kara had an idea of the level of difficulty to expect, and had already acquired at least 'some' team-play experience after 80 levels of solo'ing.

And (another pet hate of mine) it meant the PvP kiddies had to learn to play PvE style before they could come and ruin things for everyone else.

Selective Healing and Anti-Socialism

2009-12-15T17:47:00.001Z

Long time no-blog... I know. I've been slacking lately, but I've been a little busy, so you'll have to forgive me.

Hopefully I'll pick up the frequency of my blogs again soon. But I thought i'd spend a few minutes discussing a topic that's quite close to my heart... As in... It's one of my pet hates.

Over Aggro'ing:

I recently commented on Rummys Blog (Flowersz to those in the guild), about letting an over-aggro'er die.
Flow had been PUG'ing as a tank, and had been having some trouble with a numpty Hunter:

     "As a tank, you gain the automatic right to shout at people. It’s part of the requirement of being a tank.
It also comes with the added bonus of being the leader of the party. If you’re not… you usually should be.
If a DPS is stupidly pulling aggro on mobs, it is your god-given right to teach them the error of their ways.
And if the behaviour continues… to remove them from the group.
It’s amazing how many people don’t know the basic reasons for most wipes:
DPS pulls Aggro -> They get Hit -> Healer Spam Heals them -> Healer gets their Aggro -> They get Hit -> Healer Dies -> Group Wipes.
Unless you can break that cycle, it’s an inevitable wipe.
And when the healer dies, everyone points the finger at the tank for not saving them. So you’d be making a rod for your own back not to speak up sooner.
If you have a very sensible (or spiteful) healer, they’ll let any over-agroing DPS’er drop dead, because that way the mob will usually just wander back over to the tank afterwards.
No Tank / Healer = Wipe
A Dead DPS = Slower Win"

At first glance, I'm sure my attitude seems pretty harsh. And, to be honest... It is.
I'm no Gevlon. I 'can' be anti-social, but usually choose not to be.
My social skills tend to serve me fairly well both in-game and in real life. I get what I need, but I don't lose sleep if something isn't going my way, or if I choose to put my own desires first every now and again.

I've often been described as having a 'switch'. I can be the nicest guy you've ever met, until I have a reason not to be.
I find this works quite well for me. It means I can socialise and create freindships with those who I feel are deserving of my time and effort. But I can also blissfully ignore all over those who aren't.
And can happily stomp all over those who intentionally cause problems for me and mine.
The shock I often see on peoples faces when they've finally pushed things too far, or have presumed that I'm a pushover just because I speak nicely to them, and usually offer to help. It often makes me laugh afterwards.

Does it make me a bad person?
Who knows? I don't think so though.

But how does all this apply to the selective healing?

Flow later posted another blog about my comment:
     "...It never occurred to me before that letting them die was a sensible option, I’d always thought it was something you did when you were feeling particularly narked. But maybe letting them die really is the only way they’ll learn..."

Most people would never dream of letting someone die on purpose, Flow included it would seem. They'd heal whoever needed healing, no matter what. Because it feels like the right thing to do. It's the friendly, and 'social' thing to do.

But I'm a big believer that being 'social' doesn't have to equal being 'stupid'.
I think I can honestly earn the right to claim mastery of the Tanking and Healing classes (maybe more-so the healing, than the tanking). And my Hunter has no option but to be a DPS guru. Even if he is a little dusty recently.
But if I was the one who was constantly over-aggro'ing, and I'd been warned not to do it again, I wouldn't start moaning if the healer just let me die the next time.

If someone really needs help, then I'd help them. If they need advice, that I can provide, I'd provide it. But if they're just going to ignore that help and advice then I'm quite happy to let them fail too.

'Letting them die' either in-game or in a real-life social situation (i.e. making a fool out of themselves) is a much better teacher than any text book.
Think about it. If you make a mistake in the privacy of your own home, or on something that no one else will ever see, you might try a bit harder next time.
If you make a big mistake in front of everyone else, after being told how to do it correctly, that's gonna stick with you a lot more, and you'll definitely put more effort in next time.

To reduce the frequency of this situation (at least when I'm tanking) I use a macro to put a skull over my targets head. Players who team with me regularly know what it means, and those who don't shouldn't find it that hard to figure out:
   Place DoTs, and debuffs on anything you like, but focus on the one with the skull over it's head. If not.. it's your repair-bill.

Of course, it's never as straight forward as that. And I make exceptions too. Some of the guildies are almost 'infamous' over-aggro'ers, but their imba DPS is usually the cause. And in some cases it's worth the risk.
If one of them is in danger, and I'm the healer in a raid / party situation, and I know them well. I'll usually try and save them... at least the first few times... but then, that's the bonus of having a plate-wearing healer. Who has more than one "Oh-Shit!" button.

Whatever Happened to all the DK Tanks?

2009-11-27T22:57:00.000Z

I know there's a supposed shortage of Tanks in WoW at the moment, and you can kind of tell. I often get random whispers from pugs asking me to tank Onyxia 10, Sarth, or VoA
I usually decline them simply because I'm doing other things.

If a freind or a guildy asks I'm much more likely to say yes though.

But when WotLK came out DK's were all the rage. They were the apparent answer to the shortage of Tanks in the game. And it worked... for a while... sort of.
In the past few months, I don't think I've seen a single DK Tank around. I definitely havent been in any PUGs with them. And DK's in general seem to have dissapeared in to the woodwork.

I suppose that's only to be expected. All MMO's are bound to have a flavour-of-the-month and maybe the polish of the DK has finally worn off. I never really enjoyed mine that much, but I'm the sort of person who'll wait until everyone else has got bored, and then have a go myself. Maybe that's what'll happen with my DK.

Since people play WoW for fun, most of them don't neccesarily want any responsibility in the game. And this seems to put a lot of people off when it comes to tanking.
It's almost like there's a pressure on tanks to be the best. Tanks are expected to lead, to know all the encounters, to be imba overgeared punch-bags that can take a beating while keeping everything under control.

Healers are in a similar position, but they don't seem to have quite as much pressure on them as the Tanks do.
For some reason, at the bottom of the responsibility list is the DPS.
Before anyone starts jumping down my throat for saying all this. I've played at raid-level as all 3 of the trinity, and this is exactly how the pressure is distributed in my opinion.

But why?

I've tanked Ulduar and some Naxx. I don't know all of the encounters like the back of my hand. I don't speak in raids (which I admit has it's own problems). But we have good raid leaders who can point me in the right direction.

It's not just like this in raids, it's the same in any group-play.

If the DPS sucks, people are much more forgiving than if the tank has 21k HP or isn't uncrittable.

If the tank was a little crappy but the DPS and Healers were overpowered, then the group can still succeed, but probably with great difficulty.
If the healer is undergeared / crap but the Tank and DPS are overpowered, then the group are very likely to succeed, with only a little difficulty.
If the DPS is undergeared / shite but the tank and healer are at least capable, then the chances are that the group will still win, even if it takes longer than it should to kill the mobs.

Everyone has heard of 'Over-Aggroing' but there's also such a thing as 'Under-Tanking'. Sometimes the Tank just doesn't react fast enough, or doesn't have the skills for the job. But once the tank has some experience under his / her belt this is quite rare.

If the DPS pulls aggro they expect the tank to pull it back. Like the tank doesn't already have enough to do controlling the attentions of all the other mobs, or the bosses, the DPS assume that it's the tanks job not to let the mobs run wild, rather than their job not to cause the problem in the first place.
Healers get a bit of a free-pass on this one, as it IS the tanks job to keep the mobs off the healer.

In my case I use the /Focus command alot. When I'm tanking the focus is my main-healer, and when I'm healing my focus is my tank.

The tank is also expected to know which mobs must go down first. Some of this is common sense. But if the tank is focusing on a mob then the DPS need to aim at it, even if they think they know better. By all means tell the tank they've made a mistake, but they should not EVER attack anything that the tank isn't focused on. Unless asked to by the Tank or Raid Leader. It's just asking for a loose mob and a wipe.

I think the DPS classes tend to just play in their own little world, with no real understanding of how tanking works. They don't understand about taunt-cooldowns, or shield-walls, or consecrations, and all the very important stuff that keeps them alive. But the Tanks need to know who else can stun, and who can heal, and who can afford to take a bit of punishment, and make decisions about who to save first if a mob does get loose.

The responsibility should be shared across the whole group. And I think that's why the Munqui raids work so well, simply because everyone is usually well aware of their roles, and has faith in the others to stick to theirs.

If the DPS don't overaggro, and if the healers don't lose their focus, then as long as the tank has enough gear (which can be a challenge in itself) then it'll almost always garauntee a success, even if they're not the most experienced player. So why is all the pressure on the tank.

There's plenty of viable tanking classes in the game, and they're even good for levelling in that spec so all that responsibility on the tanks shoulders must put a lot of people off.

Thanks for giving

2009-11-27T08:45:00.000Z

A non-raid night for me. The Munquis were moving on to TotC last night. Ulduar has now moved to Monday / Tuesday, with TotC on Thursday.

I wasn't in the group, although I did listen in to the first hour or so of conversation on Ventrillo. And It all seemed to be going pretty well. They definitely made some progress, as they were announcing the kills and showing the loot in Guild Chat. Gratz Guys.

I actually enjoyed the more relaxed pace of a non-raid night. I managed to do Heroic ToC as the daily. And it all went very, very, smoothly. I even picked up a new cloak for my Healing-set out of it. Only a minor upgrade, but still an upgrade.

I then spent the rest of the night working on my bank balance. I did the Hodir dailies, the cooking daily, a couple of the thanksgiving quests (simply because I already had some surplus food from levelling my cooking), and a few of the Argent Tournament dailies. So my Pallies wallet is back up to about 350g. And he's slowly leveling the last hundred points of his cooking from the Dalaran dailies.
It felt strange being paid to level my cooking to 350. I think it cost me about 3g to reach 350 skill, but I made back about 12g in the quest rewards.
And I also picked up a lot of achievements. I'm not really in to that sort of thing though. I wasn't expecting any of them, and it was strange being "Gz'd" on stuff that I'd made practically zero effort to achieve.

I'm only dabbling in the Argent Tournament, but I do see it's appeal, even though I started it at the time when most others had already finished it. It's a nice excuse for the extra dungeons, and raids, it provides.
And of course the Argent forces are the main charge against the Lich King.

The dailies are generally simple enough, but I'm not a fan of the jousting challenges, where you have to defeat the NPC aspirants. You have to kill 3 for the daily, and I usually waste so much time trying to get them down that I just give up and move on to another quest instead. It's a much better use of my time.

As with anything, some of the dailies are simpler than the others, and that isn't the only daily I avoid like the plague.

If the Daily HC is Occulus I ignore it. I'll probably do it one day, but my only ever visits there were horrendous, and I didn't like the setup.

The Hodirs Spear daily, where you have to wrestle with a dragon. It's a shame because I could do with the rep at the moment, but the death penalty if the dragon drops you puts me off this one. It's just not time / cost effective.

And I'm not a huge daily fan anyway. I do enough to keep my cash level sufficient, and to grind whatever rep I need. But other than that I don't really make any effort with them.

I did like the Isle of Conquest they brought in at the end of TBC. As it made alot of sense. If you wanted to grind dailies, you went there. It was a fairly small island, that was easy to get to and from. And it had around 10-12 dailies that paid out nicely. And it had decent rep-rewards and vendors that you could spend tokens on. And even it's own raid.
Shame it gets nerfed in relation to your level. I've visited it once since WotLK, and it was deserted. I thought it was a very nicley designed place though.

My neew graphics card continues to amaze me with how much real effort went in to producing some of the areas and zones. And how good a job Blizz did to let the game scale with system specs.

So let's all give thanks to the founding fathers of WarCraft, and slay a few more turkeys in their honor.
I'm not an American, but I think the tradition is a good one.

Wot! No Blog Post Smythy? Too Depressed?

2009-11-24T14:57:00.000Z

Well... in a word... 'No'.
... But it definitely hasn't been the best start to the week.

The Munquis went to take on Ulduar again last night. I was drafted in as the second Tank due to a non-attendance by someone who had actually bothered to sign up.
It's an extension of the last raid, so we begin with Thorim.

Before we even begin, I stand too close to tunnel entrance and aggro the trash.... Wipe.
And a decent amount of stick from the others for achieveing a wipe before everyone was even inside the raid. Not a good start.

I'm quite familiar with this fight now, although I've only downed him once, and that was on my Hunter. So feeling confident, Vind puts me in charge of the Arena, while he takes the tunnel. It makes more sense, since his tank-DPS is imba compared to mine. 10-15 Seconds in, my main healer dies.... Wipe

OK, maybe we're just getting warmed up... Let's try this again.... Wipe.

Right... Well maybe if we switched hea.... Wipe

"We need more DPS in the Arena"... "We haven't got any more DPS... Make do"... Wipe.

Ok one more go... Wipe.

Last Try... We've lost a healer, we've lost another, we've lost DPS... ... ... ... ... Success.

Right, thank fuck for that. Lets hand out this useless set of epics and move on to Mimiron.

Mimiron Trash... Wipe (Semi Saved by A Divine Intervention from myself on to Vind, but still a wipe).

Same Mimiron Trash... Wipe

Same Mimiron Trash... Sucess... Moving on to Second Trash set... Wipe.

Wipe.

3rd Trash set... Miracle... We didn't die... Success.

Vind then spends 10 minutes explaining the Mimiron encounter. Everyones mind starts to wander after Phase 3. Ready-Check.... Everyones ready (Yeah Right)... Wipe.

2nd Try... Wipe

3rd Try... Wipe

Hmmm, one last go..... Amazing!...... Wipe.

So after giving up on mimiron, we return to the Iron Council, which we'd skipped the previous week. Again, I'm feeling confident. I've been here before, and found it pretty straightforward...

I'm tanking Steelbreaker... He goes down... I switch to the next boss... I go down... Vind grabs the boss, I get battle-rezzed... Quick buff-up, and I pull the boss back... We can still do this... Wipe.

Let's try that again, and this time, make sure you keep Smyth alive... We all rezzed-up, buffed-up, and all set to go.
And... Suprisingly..... Didn't Wipe....

... ... Until the final boss was at 2% and there was only Vind left standing.

OK, that's enough. We called it a night. Dusted off our wallets to pay for yet more repair bills (Think my final total was close to 250g) and went away licking our wounds with our measely 1 emblem of conquest, and a few shitty epics.

Vind was swearing (we must really be a bad influence on him). Vedd was swearing (In English, and probably then repeating it in Italian so that his room mates could understand). Grenth was summoned mid-raid to provide us with more fish-feasts because we'd run out.

Let's just put it this way... It wasn't much fun. (I wouldn't say 'No fun' we still had a laugh, but it was more a quiet chuckle than a ROFLcopter).

Hopefully we won't have many more nights like this, they're bad for morale. Not to mention the bank balance. My Pally now has only 70g in his pocket.
On the bright side I took the opportunity to level my cooking with the festive dailies... So I'll probably max it for the cost of just a few gold, and maybe make enough money to be able to raid again on Thursday.

Raiding Rundown?

2009-11-23T15:48:00.000Z

I didn't raid last Thursday. Neither did any of the other Munquis, I'm told.
At least, they didn't do the scheduled Ulduar run. Apparently there weren't enough people around to take on the challenge. It's a shame, but the raid extension still applies to tonight, so if there's a spot for me, maybe I'll finally get to defeat Thorim anyway.

It's dissapointing when raids get cancelled. Obviously real-life takes priority, but it just shows how much guild rely on a main core of players. And if those players aren't around, then things don't happen. I know I wasn;t the only one who knew in advance that they probably weren't going to be able to make it.

I'm sure there would have been more than 10 Munquis online. There's usually more than that online at all times apart from early mornings, or very early mornings. But there weren't enough suitably geared / willing players to make an attempt.

As it gets nearer to Christmas people tend to wind-down their playing commitments a bit. Pick-up-and-play type games tend to get dusted-off. Personally I've been re-enjoying Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, in small doses.
I can't wait to get back in to WarCrack again, but on some occasions, when I've logged on recently I've found myself tapping my foot, and wondering what to do with my time.

I could grind Rep. but I've only really got any use for the Hodir, and that's coming along nicely already. (Not too keen on the Hodir Dailies, but getting there slowly).
I could run Heroics, but there also seems to be less interest in those too. I see HC's as a way to make money. A decent team can easily make money from doing them, and while it may not make as much as grinding dailies, at least it's team-play, social, and good for learning your class properly.
I could learn cooking, but to be honest, I'd rarely ever use it. In raids others always have fish-feasts anyway. My cooking is maxed on my Hunter, so I can make them. It just seems a bit of a waste of money to learn it twice.
I could max my Engineering, but that was never the point in taking the prof. It serves me well at it's current level. I can AH in Dalaran, and can make repair-bots if I can ever be bothered to. I don't intend to spend the money on a chopper, and the bonuses from maxing the profession don't really tally with the costs in my opinion.
I could earn some cash and buy Epic Flying. But why? I can fly around already. And my aura gives me a boost too. My Hunter has the epic skill, and I resented spending the gold on it to be honest.
The moment I bought it, I thought.... "Wow! Don't I look the dogs-bollocks!"... and then never noticed it again.

But Ho-Hum, I guess I'll turn up for the raid tonight, and hopefully there will be a full team. And if I'm in it, hopefully we'll kick Thorims ass, I think the score is 9-0 to him as it stands.

More Tanking Tales

2009-11-17T09:15:00.000Z

I managed to make the tankign team for Ulduar last night. That's quite a few weeks in a row now, on either my Pally or My Hunter, so I'm expecting to be sitting out a run sometime soon. But at least I can now claim to have Tanked, Healed and DPS'd a big percentage of the whole place.

First stop last night was Hodir. A couple of fairly quick wipes , I'm still not sure exactly what was going wrong, but we had a few new people in the team, so maybe it was just the learning curve. 3rd time lucky, and on this attempt I tried to tank him close to the entrance door, so we'd be quicker to recover from any more wipes. But that time he went down.
I've got to say I found him quite hard to tank, the constant moving, the occasional frozen blows, it just seemed a little messy. But maybe it was just down to the new finger positions on my keyboard.

Then it was on to Freya. No problems here, I've tanked her before, and knew exactly what I had to do. She went down first go, and apart from a few squishy deaths on the trash before her all was good.

Next up was Thorim. I was taking the tunnel team, and Bronze the arena team. I'm not fully sure why but I would occasionally lose aggro in the tunnel, and a mob would wander off after one of the others. i think it was minaly the Acolyte mobs, so it could have been when I was changing sides of the tunnel, they weren't, and by leaving my aggro range the DPS were tipping the scales. On 2 of the attempts it got a little messy, but the other 2 were no problem at all, so I'm not going to worry about it too much.
Although 1 reminder for the squishies out there, if a mob attacks you, don't attack it back, run to the tank, and stand next to him / her for a few seconds. The mob will soon leave you alone. Our taunts have quite long cooldowns so we can't always save you with a single click.
In case of emergency, stun / slow them... but never... ever... attack them. It just makes it harder to get them off you.
I think we had 4 tries overall, in 1 case the tunnel team wiped. And in the other 3 it was the arena team. Vind and Bronze switched tanking roles for the last attempt, but it didn't seem to make much difference. Hard to judge exactly what's going wrong on this encounter, because without being able to see the whole team at once, who knows what's happening.

So the raid-lockout has been extended, and Thursday we should be picking up where we left off.

A Whole New World... of Warcraft

2009-11-17T08:19:00.001Z

In all the years I've been playing WoW, I've never realised how good looking it is.

I'm not a graphics whore, and as long as the FPS stays high enough for me to be able to play effectively, it's never really bothered me.
But my new system blows my old one away. On the maximum possible graphics settings, I get 30-40 FPS mid-raid, with spells flying around all over the place, and even manage 20-30 FPS in Lagaran. Although it does dip a little more when it's very busy.

But the main thing is the quality of the graphics and effects. The game looks fantastic with all effects turned-on, and with the maximum view distance. Even just flying around the place it feels like I'm seeing it all properly for the first time.

I never knew how much my weapon glow really glowed. It's almost like having a light-saber!
The sparkle of the spells, the flames on the floor from my consecration, it's all stuff I've never seen.

While fighting the trash mobs before Freya last night I saw spells being cast by the mobs. I always knew the spells were happening, but this time I actually saw a giant bush streaming out from the treants and heading to the players. Normally, I saw nothing at all.

It opened my eyes to just how much work really has gone in to the development of the game, the graphics are never going to be ultra-realistic, but if you've never seen them on the full settings it's a bit of an eye-opener, and it makes me want to go and run some old dungeons just to see them how they were really meant to look.

BTW: My new laptop had a few minor, unexpected, upgrades. 2.1Ghz Dual Core, instead of 2.0Ghz. And it came with the Nvidia 9500, instead of the 8600, graphics. Not major upgrades, but they all count. Now if I can just get the finger-print reader to recognize my print 6 times in a row, and get used to the slightly smaller keyboard, I'll be all sorted.
Apologies in advance for my in-game typing skills for the next few weeks. My Caps-Lock key is now where my 'A' and 'S' keys were previously, so I have a tendancy to stART TYPing in cAPs everytime I reach for the 'A'

Spring / Winter-Cleaning

2009-11-13T15:20:00.000Z

I'm a minimalist sort of guy. At least, I am when it comes to my PC's.

I like the challenge of pushing them harder than they're supposed to go, and of stripping systems back so that they perform better than they normally would.

The new laptop has got me thinking about which applications I reallly need, and which ones I don't.
I hate clogging up my machines with unused stuff. That's what blank DVDs were invented for. I must have hundreds of the things scattered around my house, With everythign from Films I've never watched to Applications I've never used, and Porn I've never.... Well, you get the idea.

So, knowing that I'm going to wipe every hard drive I own very soon, I've been compiling all the apps and utilities that I'll be installing on to each system.
This will be for my daily-use Laptop, my server ex-laptop, and the Old Desktop PC that's being donated to family. Here's what I've come up with;

On all of them:

Windows 7 (Obvious really, I love the new OS)
Open Office (Does everything you need from an Office Suite, and it's free)
K-Lite Codecs (If you don't know what these are, you probably don't do much with videos)
Advanced System Care 3 (This is a system maintenance app. It's freeware, but it's great. Beats most paid-for ones hands down
ClamWin (It's an AntiVirus, and it works, and it doesn't eat half your system)
Firefox (Duh!)
Skype (I don't use it often, but I do need it, so does my son, and so will the sister-in-law)
7Zip (WinZip alternative, handles more file formats)
uTorrent (My .torrent handler of choice)
Infra Recorder (Freeware, but excellent, CD/ DVD Burning software)

That should just about cover everything the 3 systems need to run. But there'll be a few additions to my daily-use laptop too:

Adobe Premiere Pro (It's not the latest version, but I like it, and use it a few times a year at least)
Daemon Tools (Too complicated to explain, if you don;t knwo what this is already)
SpyBot S&D (ASC3 has one built in, but I've always liked SpyBot, in it's passive mode)
GameBooster (Another freeware app, from the team behind ASC3, does exactly what it says on the tin)
World of Warcraft (Not an App, but definitely essential)
Ventrillo (For the singing)

The list looks quite long overall, but it's not really. And most of the apps are either passive, or have a tiny footprint.
Hopefully I'll soon be experiencing the Ulduar raids with graphics that update faster than the GCD.

Whack-a-mole

2009-11-13T08:03:00.000Z

Ulduar, for me, again last night. And I got to bring my Pally.

To be honest I thought I'd be sitting it out last night, because I've been the last few times in a row. But we were mysteriously short of healers, so my Pally was drafted in that role.

Fine by Me. That's what dual-spec is for, and it's not like I'm a total noob at healing.
However, this was my first time raid-healing since Karazahn. And while Prince Malchezzar didn't stand a chance against my leet Healing skills, Ulduar is still a bit of a learning curve for me.

A quick check on my healing gear shows that I'm un-enchanted on most things, so 200g on the AH and rep-vendors soon sorts that out.
I'm still using a few blues, which would hinder me a bit, but generally speaking I should be at least able to hold my own. I don't mind being the lowest healer, as long as I can still contribute to keeping the raid up.

Bronze was our RL last night, and I warned him in advance that I was a little out of practice and undergeared. But since there was no one else anyway, I don't think it really mattered.
Tins and Manda were the other two healers.

So how did it go?

Flame Leviathan - 1 Shotted.
     I took a tanking role in the vehicles for this, since I knew the encounter and Arg was the second tank, and he was an Ulduar Virgin. I died right at the end of the fight, but generally the boss stood no chance.

Deconstructor - 1 Shotted.
     My first taste of real Raid healing, and if I recall correctly, we only lost a couple of squishies. I was on MT healing, and there wasn't really a problem.

Kologarn - 1 Shotted
     Again I was on MT healing, which in these first 2 fights is pretty straight forward, as there's very little unpredictable spike damage. No problems here either, and apart from the laser beams frequently picking on me, it went very smoothly.

Iron Council - Failed
     I think it was Iron Council 4 - Munquis Nil by the time we moved on. We tried a few different healing rotations, but the tactics just weren't falling in to place. Damn.. but "Oh Well".

Auriaya - 1 Shotted
     No problems with this at all. Don't think we lost anybody, and I even got to throw a few Consecrates down for the random adds.

The healing went much better than I expected it to. The meters aren't as straightforward as they are for DPS, but showed me as the top healer overall. I think there was only a few thousand HP between all of the healers though. So generally it was a well balanced healing team.
But I was on roughly 45% Overhealing, Tins on 65%, and Manda on 35%. So Manda was probably the most effective healer overall.

I didn't get any new drops, but there's still quite a few emblem pieces I can pick up, so with a bit of time and money, my healing could be massively improved.
I'll be sticking to the tanking mainly, but at least I'm now confident that, if needed, I can switch roles and perform well enough.

I also finally decided on my Pitbull layout, and I'm fully happy with it. It's not the simplest addon to configure, but I got there in the end. Fingers crossed that the transition to my new laptop goes well, or I'll be back at square one with my Ui.

My New Rig

2009-11-12T09:03:00.000Z

I finally bit the bullet yesterday.

I've been using a Laptop for a few years now, and unfortunately it got dropped about 12 months ago. Since then it's been slowly coming up with more and more faults.

The battery is screwed, and now it won't work unless it's plugged-in to the mains.
Even when plugged in it won't boot the first, or usually second time. Sometimes you've got to power it up 3 times before it kicks in.
You can't re-boot it. For the same reason as above.
The screen first developed a fault where there was static all over it. I rigged something to hold the earthstrap closer to the screen and it worked for a while, but now it just wont have it.
And the hinges on the screen itself have fallen apart. So now the screen is actually loose from the base. I've got it held in place with a little mechano borrowed from my sons kit. So It looks liek a little construction site with cranes is holding my screen to the base. (Yes Mecano really is useful stuff).

So, all in all, it's fucked.

I've been convincing myself that it's still fine, and useable. And it is... If this was a post-apocalyptic world and this was the last computer on the planet, it'd be worth an absolute fortune. It still 'works' it's just not a useful or aesthetically pleasing as it used to be.

So... after lengthy discussions with the better half... I bit the bullet and ordered myself a new one.

And here it is: (note this isn't mine, just a review photo, of someone overclocking one)

Acer 16in AS6920

Intel Core 2 Duo T5900 processor

3Gb RAM

250Gb hard drive

16in WXGA Acer CineBrite TFT LCD display

DVD SuperMulti double-layer drive

NVidia GeForce 8600GT graphics

802.11 a/b/g/n WIFi

Bluetooth 2.0 EDR

0.3Mp CrystalEye webcam

Fingerprint reader

6 in 1 card reader

Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium.

So why did I choose this one?
Well...

Dual Core 2Ghz processor (Nice)
3Gb Ram (Not bad to start with, and easy and cheap to upgrade)
250GB HDD (Drive size wasn't considered as I have a server PC too)
16" Screen (Not the 17" that I have now, but a nice screen, and a sturdy looking build)
DVD Writer (Meh, a writer's a writer for my needs)
NVidia 8699GT (Nice reviews on this, decent performance, and the only alternative laptop had a 9300m which although 'better' only actually performs roughly the same)
WiFi (It's WiFi, who cares)
BlueTooth (Not considered, but a nice extra)
WebCam (Not considered, I don't use them often, but as long as it's got one built in it'd do)
Fingerprint Reader (WTF? A nice 'geeky' extra, not sure if I'll use it though)
6in1 Card Reader (IMHO A requirement on laptops nowadays)
Vista (This will be removed as soon as I receive it, and replaced with Windows 7)
HDMI Output (Handy although not essential)
Dolby Approved Speakers (Very Nice, My current Laptop sucks ass in this department)
Touch-Sensitive Media Controls (I like these, and they glow blue.. how cool is that!)

The downsides - Shiny screens and cases are Fingerprint magnets, but I can live with that. Battery life probably won't be great (Meh, as long as I can actually walk away from my sofa occasionally it's an upgrade). No FireWire (I dont have this on my current Laptop, but was hoping for it on my new system. I do use it occasionally).

The new rig should arrive on Monday, so expect to see me online and happy at some point.

So what to do with my Old Laptop?

Well I currently have an old desktop PC in my sons room, which I use as a server, and he uses for surfing and playing the odd game.
I'm going to donate that to a family member, and then put my old laptop in his room as my new server. I'll probably detach the broken screen and use a spare LCD monitor I have instead.

It'll make an unorthodox type of server, but it'll even have it's own built-in UPS (since the battery will last upto 30 mins on it's own). And because it's knackered anyway, I'm not too worried about it overheating.

So I get a new Laptop, my Son gets a PC upgrade in his room, my server improves, and my sister-in-law gets my old PC which makes her, and Mrs Smythy, happier.

On the very downside it's £55 a month for the next year.... Bugger.

Potentially Potent

2009-11-11T12:24:00.000Z

For weeks now I've been trying to find the '+20 Strength - Potency' enchant for my 1H-Sword.

In my opinion it is most definitely the enchant of choice for a Prot-Pally.
Thanks to the Paladin design, and talents, +20 Strength also provides +12 SpellPower and extra Block Rating. So it's a kind of 3 in 1 deal.

After spending weeks asking around and occasionally joining the dreaded /trade channel, I'd come up empty. And almost given up hope. But I got a whisper from Dray last night (for those who don't know her, Dray is one of the long-serving Munquis, and friend of the Tribe, who also has several other alts with different guilds).

I'd asked her if she could do the enchant a few days ago, and she couldn't. But she then took it upon herself to go and find it. No easy feat in itself, since it was a rare TBC world drop.
So a quick link of the mats, a trip to the ah, about 100g in material costs, and my brand new sword, now has a brand new enchant to go with it. Thanks alot Dray. It was very much appreciated.

Apaprently she'd already tried to sell some of the enchants, and nobody seemed to be interested. I admit, that I had to do a little research to find out about it myself. It just seems to be one of those things that are so simple, yet very few people know about.

With Mat costs of about 100g, it's not overly expensive. It's a TBC enchant, so you don't even need to be max'd to make it. And you could easily sell them, as scrolls, for 150 - 200g a time.
But I suppose if no one takes the time to learn about their class, then they're not going to take the time to find the best enchant either.

Such a shame. Most Pallies I've seen go for the Titanium Weapon chain, but is it really the end of the world for a Prot Pally if he loses his sword, just for a few seconds, every now and again?
Alot more of your spells rely on your shield rather than your main-hand anyway.

If people invested the time in to learning their builds, I'm sure a lot more people would be asking for the potency enchant. And that would give the good people like Dray, a steady Market to work with.

At least I now know where to go to get my next sword enchanted too.

Another day, another raid

2009-11-10T11:38:00.000Z

Well, I did manage to raid last night, but not quite how I wanted to.

I managed to get online at a decent time. Pick up my gem, and get myself back above the Def cap, so I was ready and waiting for the invite. But then the unthinkable happened. Others didn't turn up.

We were missing a Tank / Healer and a ranged DPS. There was no other way around it. Reserves were called-in, and I was asked to bring my Hunter to the group instead... ... ... Bugger.

But, I'm not the kind of person who spits their dummy out about this sort of thing. Although I did make it clear that it wasn't my preffered choice. I relogged on to the Hunter, the reserves arrived, and things got under way.

Thorim, Freya, and Hodir were taken out and a couple of great tanking pieces dropped... Bugger... Again... Bugger, so I obviously didn't get a chance at those.

And a nice Hunter item did drop too. I won the roll for it, but ended up handing it over to Vedds rogue instead. It just makes more sense to do that. It's the second time that I've passed on Ulduar epics for my Hunter. I gave up a Tier roll item to Flow a week or two ago.

My Hunter is still in some Heroic blues, he's nowhere near geared enough for Ulduar really, but he makes a decent back-up ranged DPS. I can only pull off an average of 2.5k DPS with him in there, which looks pretty weedy compared to most of the others, but any damage is better then no damage, I suppose.

I don't want to use my Hunter for raiding (except in cases of emergency), so for me to have accepted the drops would have taken something away from the rest of the team.
Vedd is one of the Raid Leaders, so his rogue is going to be a pretty regular sight in raids. And Flowersz healer is another of the regulars. So by passing on those items with my Hunter, who's a rare attendee, it should improve the overall effectiveness of the rest of the team.

Sure, if I'd taken them my DPS would have improved for that day, and maybe for the next time I'd brought him too. But overall the benefit to the team would have been minimal.
If I'd been on my Paladin, then it would have been a different story, an Upgrade for him would have been better for the whole team, since I plan on raiding with him. But that doesn't mean that I would always jump on a small upgrade if it meant a much larger benefit to the team in general. In all the raids I've ever been in, I've tried to consider 'how-much of an upgrade' something is before going for it.
It also made more sense to pass on any Frost -Lotus to Lisje, since she makes pots for the team all the time. Where as to me, they're just a source of income.

I think that's a good policy to have in raids, and it's a shame not everyone thinks like that.
It also makes more sense when you think about it properly.

If you want to progress, you have to do it as a team. That team might have 15-20 in it, instead of just 10, because of player rotations.
So if I can get an upgrade that will provide me with +100 DPS, that's great for me, and good for the team. But if by passing on it, it means that someone else can get +300 DPS, that's great for the team.
It may not be so good for me, directly, but at least it means that we should be able to progress quicker. And next time we can down the bosses easier, making the chance for personal progression much higher.

Of course, if we reach TotC or even the Citadel, my Hunter is very unlikely to be on the back-up list, simply because he'll be so badly undergeared. But as long as my Pally continues to get the occasional drop, he should be up to scratch.

On a side note: I also managed to squeeze in some dailies for a little extra cash, and gemmed up my Healing set. Now if I can just bolt on a few enchants too I'll be all set as a reserve raid-healer. The few blues he has left aren't really going to limit my healing by too much.

The Cost of Victory

2009-11-09T14:44:00.000Z

As per my previous post, things went very well in Ulduar on Thursday.

I'm looking forward to tonights second half, fingers-crossed that I get a place in the squad, and can live up to my tanking duties resepctfully. Since I've played with my Spec a little, and fuiddled with my Glyphs and rotations a little, I've seen a slight improvement in my tanking skills. I haven't been monitoring them with meters or anything, since that's pretty hard to do. But I've definitely struggled less to grab aggro, and keep it.

What I didn't mention in my previous post is that I actually won a few drops from the last Ulduar run too. A got a couple of Tanking pieces, namely bracers, and a new sword. And a couple of Healing pieces, mainly because no-one else could use them, so it was that or DE'ing them.

My healing set is pretty much just thrown together but, through almost total chance, is now mostly epic. It's badly gemmed (or even not-gemmed, in some cases) but it serves well in cases of emergency, or adequately in Heroic 5-Mans. I haven't found one that I can't heal so far. The bonus to that is that my Healing set requires practically zero cash. Once I'm fully satisfied with my Tanking set, or feeling rich, I'll sort it out properly, but for now it's good-enough for day-to-day use.

My Tanking set is undergoing constant change. Upgrades are coming in from Ulduar, and my stats are generally constantly improving.
The downside to this is the cost. I had some of the best gems and enchants on my gear, and having to replace them on each new tanking piece is costing me a small fortune.
Not only that, but some of the upgrades are not direct stat improvements. For example, my new sword has much better overall stats than my previous one, but the new one has absolutely no +Def on it. Where as the old one had a nice big lump of it.
That leaves me in the position of having to switch my gems again, to put some +Def back in to my other gear.

Unfortunately, that's now left me almost Bankrupt. I haven't done any dailies in weeks, and the costs of flasks, respecs and upgrades has taken it's toll.
I'm now sat at 539 Def, so need the extra point before being crit immune again. I'm in need of an Enduring Eye of Zul gem, to bring me back above the cap. And now it's all going to be a bit rushed.
I have stuff on the AH that should provide enough cash for the 160g price of the Gem, but I'll probably be late online tongiht anyway, so will need to be quick if I'm to cash in at the mailbox, buy the gem, and make it to the raid in a decent time.

Raiding is a gold-intensive sport. It's fun to do, but it costs more and more gold the higher the level you do it at. If you imagine Herocis as being your neighbourhood football team, it costs you bugger-all to go and see them play. Naxx would be your local heroes, who have a stadium, it costs you more to see everything, but nothing that would keep the locals away, and then you have Ulduar and Above. The Premiership, or the European Teams, who can charge an arm and a leg for entry, because even if you won't pay it, they know for a fact that someone else will.
David Beckham might be worth a fortune, but I bet if you added up all the in-game gold spent on defeating Yogg Saron, it'd put some transfer deals to shame.
Not to mention the amount of real money spent on subscriptions to play the game in the first place.

Fingers crossed for tonight. Raids going well = extra gold. And I don't mind grinding the dailies if it's for a good reason... like the enchant on a new shield.

When things just go right

2009-11-06T10:25:00.000Z

Raid night, last night. I signed up to go, but didn't actually expect a place.
In fact, i didn't get a place, but someone didn't turn up so I got called up as the 2nd tank.

I have to say that I was a little nervous after my last attempt at Ulduar. But yesterday was a totally different kettle-of-fish.

Leviathan - 1 Shotted
Razorscale - 1 Shotted
Ignis - 1 Shotted
XT - 1 Shotted
Iron Council - 2 Shotted (1st Wipe was only due to unlucky zone drops)
Kologarn - 1 Shotted
Auriaya - 1 Shotted

7 Bosses downed, with very little fuss. Even though there were bosses that some of us had never seen before, everything just seemed to work.
I think part of that is down to Vind. He's a great Raid Leader, and he's always got his eye on what everyone else is doing in the raid, as well as what he needs to do.

Just to prove that experience helps just as much, if not more than, gear. Alot of the bosses in Ulduar have similar traits to bosses in previous raids. So if you've been ther and done that, and reach a new boss. The raid leader can just say "This is like...." and you'll have a pretty good idea what to expect.

Leviathan was alot like that for me. The description wasn't sinking in, but as soon as someone mentioned 'Big bad wolf' from the Kara days, it all clicked in to place.
And with Ignis, having never tanked him before, the description 'Kite him like Grobbulus' was enough for me to understand the basics of the encounter.

Alot of the early boss encounters in Ulduar seem to be pretty straight-forward. At least from the tanking point of view. but having said that, the first time I went, I was very panicky, but this time was much more controlled.

The only slight moment of madness was during Razorscale when my mouse went haywire and started spinning my screen around, leaving me dis-oriented in the middle of the fight. But the fights themselves all felt very controlled.

On both my runs, so far, Vind has been in control of most of the adds, while I take the bosses. This suits me fine, since I get to learn the encounters. But add control is a much messier role for a tank, and I'm sure the encounters would feel different if I was in that position.

As a tank I'm finding it a little more frustrating that I can't speak during the raids. Sometimes it would just be so simple to shout out something I've spotted, like yelling at a caster standing in a void-zone, or at a healer to 'keep me up' before I have to pop my LoH.

But it's just not going to be possible. I play in my living room, with my laptop on my knees. And I'm pretty sure Mrs Smythy (to be) wouldn't be impressed if I started yelling "Flowersz, HEAL ME!" while she's watching 'Peter Andre: The Next Chapter'.
I already get dis-approving looks for not talking to her, much, during raids.

I like the layout of Ulduar too, with teleports to the various areas. Kara had this with the Library, but you had to clear half the place before you could reach that. With Ulduar, you can jump to wherever you want to be, as long as you've progressed enough. And it means that on wipes, there's no long run back. Fly Up - Run In - Teleport, and you can be back in the action within about 60 seconds.

The extended raid lockouts are a great idea too. Giving you a second week to continue clearing the place makes alot of sense. Especially for the non-hardocre guilds like ours.

So, fingers crossed, the Munquis will soon master Ulduar and then it'll be on to bigger and better things.

Broadening my Horizons

2009-11-04T15:26:00.000Z

In the world of MMORPG's I'm pretty much a stay-at-home kind of guy.
I've been playing WoW for years now, and apart from the brief trip to EVE and City of Heroes, I've barely even left my own backyard.

Oh, sure, sometimes I'll catch a glimpse of a sexy new neighbour, and think "I'll definitely have to pop over and check them out". And I might even stay over for a few nights to get to know them more intimately. But before long I'm right back in the World of Warcraft, safe and warm, and feeling like I belong. (Or at least that I belong there more than anywhere else).

But there's things about Warcraft that I hate.

I hate the way she limits me to spending time solely on her. I've got other things to do, and a life of my own, but if I don't put in the time with her, next thing I know she'll be happily giving all her best bits to everbody but me.
I hate the way she washes her hair at the same time every single week. And it always seems to be at times that I want to have some fun.
I hate the way she makes me spend my hard-earned cash on her, not just every now and again, but every single month. No cash, no fun. It's almost like living with a hooker.
I hate the way she changes every so often, and all the hard work I put in to making myself the best I can possibly be just becomes time that I'll never get back.

Basically, if WoW was a woman, she'd be my wife. And all the other games out there would be the mistreses that looked a lot more interesting. But no matter how often I'd get lead astray I'd 'probably' always end up back at home with her.

Ok, enough of the analogies now. Here's the more serious part:

I'm always interested in looking at new MMORPG's. I don't play many, but I'm usually willing to give them a try if they have a free trial.

WoW isn't going to last forever... I know... It's a shock when someone says it out loud, isn't it.
WotLK was a great expansion, and brought a lot of new stuff into the game. And for a few months it relieved all of the boredom that was beginning to set in with TBC.
Cataclysm could be even better. Alot of the features they're bringing in are exactly what I would have asked for... ... ... But... ... ... ...

At the end of the day it's still the same game I've been playing for years. I know it inside and out. And the challenge is definitely starting to fade. Sure, I could get better gear, and move on to bigger and badder dungeons. But they're really only as difficult as the gear you're wearing, or the level you're at.

Deadmines was a fantastic instance, and at level 18ish it was just as hard as any raid dungeon. But a couple of levels later, and with better gear, and it was simply a push-over. Raiding is no different (apart from staying the same level).
Anyone who'd mastered the Magisters Terrace in TBC could have walked back in to Kara and laid the smack-down much more easily than they could have at the same level but with lesser gear.

Sometimes I think it would be nice to experience something totally new. But there's a few things holding me back.

1) The Graphics - I don't care if the graphics look super-realistic or like simple cartoonish blobs. I'm old enough to know that 'you can't polish a turd' no matter how much you try. Graphics are a nice 'extra' to a game, but shouldn't be the focus of it.
But, on the downside, my current laptop isn't exectly shit-hot, so would struggle to cope with some of todays latest and greatest.

2) The Gameplay - It doesn't have to be WoW. But I like to see the other people around me, doing there thing, and maybe even making a mess of my plans. it all adds to the randomness. EVE, for example, felt more like a single player experience. There was very little point to the nice graphics. it would have functioned almost as well with nothing but a text interface. So it needs to FEEL like an MMO.

3) The Storyline - LotR didn't interest me at all. I couldn't care less if the Orcs were eating babies in the Shire. It's been done to death. EVE didn't even HAVE a storyline to speak of. Here's your ship, go do stuff. It felt more like a sandbox than a game. The RPG in MMORPG is important.

4) The Impact of ME - WoW has only just started to introduce this with Phasing. But even so, it's very scarcely used. I might have helped bring down the biggest baddest monster in the whole game, but give it a few days, and nothign will have changed. The Wrathgate questline is the most impressive in the game, it really feels like you're making a difference to the world. But apart from that, and the Hodir questline, I can't really think of any others.

5) The Munquis - Unfortunately, I don't think I'd be tempted enough to leave them. If a new super-game came along, and the Munquis decided to give it a go, I'd jump at the chance. But it's unlikely.

There's a few games on the horizon with the potential to pull me away from WoW. Fallen Earth looks good and the new StarWars MMO has alot of potential (although the thought of all the fanboi's puts me off a little).

My prophecy of doom sees WoW starting to lose major numbers of players by Christmas next year. It's had it's run, and I'm sure millions will still be playing it for years to come. But given the choice, I'd rather get in at the start of a new game rather than switching when everyone else is already an expert.

Fingers crossed, the super-game will appear soon. The Munquis will all agree, and we'll be off to kick some ass in outerspace, post-apocalyptic earth, or somewhere else that's not Azeroth. And plant the Munqui banner in some Hordie / Mutie / Alien scum suckers.

World of War-CRAFT

2009-10-30T09:14:00.000Z

Keen, from Keen & Graev's gaming blog posted something I agree with quite alot.
Brainstorming ways to make FE even better

Now the post relates to Fallen Earth, which looks like an interesting MMORPG. Definitely one I'll try at some point. But the points he makes really apply to most MMO's.

I'm mainly talking about his reference to Crafting.
In WoW, Crafters are really a so-so requirement. Nobody has to use the services of a crafter... ever. There are numerous ways to obtain armour and weapons of a higher standard then even the greatest crafter can make.
Gems and Enchants require someone to create them and are of a limited time use. Eventually you will find a better piece of gear, and then you'll need to buy that uber enchant / gem again.
But for Weapons and Armour that doesn't apply.

Keen suggests that Durability should be added to Fallen Eath. And I think it should also be added to WoW.

WoW already has a sort of durability, but that's really just a hidden gold-sink for Blizzard to control the amount of cash in-game. And with the amounts of gold available just from dailies, it's a pretty pointless function. It's extremely rare that people can't afford their repairs, no matter what the cost.

In fact I'd bet most people don't even bat an eyelid at paying a 30g repair bill to a vendor, but would be disgusted if they had to give 30g to another player every time they needed repairs.

But why should they? It's the same amount of money, it's not hurting you any more than paying a vendor.

Keen suggests that all items should degrade over time. Make crafted epics the be-all and end-all of quality. Give them the ultimate stats, give them alot more choices, but make every single item degradeable.
In WoW, I'd add 'Take out the huge penalty for dying in your gear'. Does the hit that kills you really need to cause more damage to your gear than the million hits that didn't?

That would create a steady market for Crafters, where people would come to them regularly for their gear, and also return to them for repairs, or renewals of the same gear.

And what if the stats of your gear reduced depending on it's durability? 50% Durability = 50% of the stats?

Or, if you didn't want to go as extreme as that, just remove the NPC vendor repairs from the game. And make it so that only blacksmiths / leatherworkers / tailors can repair the relevant gear. (Of course it would still have a mats cost to make the repairs).
Alternatively, add 'repair-kits' as a craftable item, that way, people can stock up on them, but they'll always be in demand.

I've always seen the crafting system in WoW as a bit weak. That's why, in all the years I've played, I've always avoided being a BS, LW, Tailor, etc... My Pally is the first toon to get a highish level as an Engineer, but that was a choice relating to the AH in Dalaran, the chance for repair bots, and the low costs involved.

I have never once made anything that serves anyone else but myself. It's just not worth it.
And the few rare items I've required the services of a crafter for (apart from Gems and Enchants) have been more a case of lazyness than neccessity. Rather than spend weeks grinding heroics for the best gear. I simply dropped alot of cash on the AH, and for Mats, and bought myself a bit of a boost. Almost all the stuff I've had crafted has now been replaced anyway.

But what would the mobs drop, if crafted gear was always going to be better? Tokens, and gold. You spend the tokens on special materials, or plans, required to make your gear.
If anyone has played any of the Fallout games, they'll have heard of Power-Armor. It's one of the best gear sets in the game, but you can't use it until you've been shown how.
You have to complete a specific quest chain to gain access to that training, and before then, it's nothing more than heavy trash (expensive trash, but still trash).

I actually preferred the old 'attunement' system for raids. It meant that you were more prepared for what to expect in the raid itself.
So if you scrap gear-drops, you could make Naxx drop gear tokens, which could be spent on any level of gear. But. Until you'd completed Naxx you could only wear tier 7 stuff. After killing every boss in Naxx you're rewarded with the training to use t8 gear. Malygos rewards t8.5, and Ulduar t9.
Remember, they're not rewarding the gear itself, just drops to make it with, and the training to be able to use it.

In that way, someone who grinds Naxx constantly, can amass a huge amount of tokens, but they can't just go and spend them all on the best gear in the game. They need to 'progress'. And without spending those tokens to obtain the gear needed to finish Ulduar, they're never going to be able to use t9 gear. Sure, they can spend their tokens on t9 crafting equipment, but they can't put the gear on, because they haven't 'earned' the right too.

So if you see someone in full t9, you know they're not just a wannabe hardcore, they've put in the effort, and achieved a full clear of at least 2 raids to get to that point in the game.

The crafters can make you anything you like, as long as you have the relevant tokens, and they can maintain it for you. But until you've earned the right to wear it, it's just going to be clogging up your inventory.

Return of the Red-Eye's

2009-10-23T12:09:00.000+01:00

I ended up in Ulduar again last night. I logged on with my Paladin (who is also now the GM) and offered my services as a Tank / Healer if they were short.

They weren't short of either, but the guild seems to be back in the fix of lacking ranged DPS. So I was ordered to dust off my Hunter for the the benefit of the others.
I was a little unsure if he was geared enough to be honest. Experience counts for a lot, and with it, you can pull off things that gear can only compensate so much for.
My experiences of Ulduar have been very minimal, but since I was the only other one around, what difference did it make?

It didn't go as badly as I expected. My hunter managed to keep up an average of 2k DPS, and usually more like 2.5k, so I was at least keeping up appearances.
But the problem with being Survival spec'd is that you perform best when you can just stand-still and nuke the targets, which isn't a popular method for Raid Bosses these days. So without all the running around, I could probably have done much better.

Leviathan, Xt-002, Agromer, Auriaya, and Hodir were downed. With only a few wipes, so it went pretty well overall. And on Hodir a T8 emblem dropped for my Hunter and I won the roll. Sweet.

But after getting to the vendor I debated a little about spending it, My Hunter isn't my main, so isn't likely to get very much use out of the gear. and the stats were only marginally better anyway. So weren't going to suddenly make my hunter an uber-DPS again.
I whispered Flow, who'd come second in the roll, and asked him if he wanted the token. He faffed a little to make it seem like he was really thinking hard about it, but before long he realised he was being a muppet and agreed to take it.

It made alot more sense for the progress of the raid team, and the guild, for him to have it rather than me. So that's my good-deed for the week done.

It was a shame I couldn't have gone on my Pally again, there were a couple of exellent plate drops for the tanks, but both of ours are already geared up, so the drops pretty much went to waste.
In fact, alot of the gear dropped was marked for DE'ing, which just shows how easy it is to get epics these days.
Oh well, back to heroics for my Pally, 10 more emblems and he can pick up his new pants. Then it's all up systems go for the full healing set and that's almost ready just through random drops.

Due to all the Heroics I've done with him, he's revered with most of the major factions too, so I don't have to worry about grinding for the vendor enchants.

Vindiana Caputo and The Raiders of the the Lost Cause

2009-10-20T12:35:00.001+01:00

Believe it or not. I went to Ulduar last night.

It wasn't planned, or intentional. I simply logged on, asked if the raid had been cancelled, and before I knew it I had a ticket to tank with the big boys... Nice.

Munqui Raiding used to be a lot like that. It was less organised, and more of a case of "if it happens, it happens" but what that used to end up with was pretty much full officer teams. Which put a few peoples noses out of joint.

"Meh" I say.

But that's pretty much what happened last night anyway. It was Officers, ex-officers and Rumido. After a lot of kerfuffle with who was going and who wasn't (we're all too nice and kept trying to offer our spots to others, while at the same time secretly hoping they say "no thanks") we managed to get inside.
Fortunately we had 2 good raid leaders in Vind and Vedd. Unfortunately we also had a few people (myself included) who wouldn't know what a 'Flame Vent' was, even if it jumped up and smacked them in the mouth.

Cue lot's of wipes on the first boss. Leviathan.
They were silly wipes really, the encounter seemed pretty straightforward. And was a sort of re-working of the Big-Bad-Wolf from Karazahns Opera event. But with some interrupts thrown in. Eventually he went down, with a sigh of relief from everyone. (Not to mention hefty repair bills).

Second Boss. Razorscale. Went down first time. Very little problem. And got my first chance to do some real tanking instead of driving a truck. Vind took the MT role (even though he'll swear there was no MT / OT assigned) but it suited me fine, he's the expert and as long as I just did my job everything would be fine. So taunts came when taunts were needed, and apart from a few people standing in the fire too much it all went well.

Third Boss. Deconstructor. Again, a one-shot attempt. I MT'd this time which seemed more sensible, as the OT's job was more complicated. I didn't have to run around like a loony grabbing stray adds. I just had to keep the aggro up on the boss. All nice and smooth, and another win.

Fourth Boss. No idea. Agromer? Maybe. Can't remember the guys name, but he had big hands and a beard that santa would die for. (If you saw him coming down your chimney at Christmas though, you'd be hoping the next thing you unwrapped was a clean pair of shorts).
I was MT again, while Vind collected the adds. A couple of wipes again on this guy. It was mainly a lack of healing. The healers were too busy dodging his laser beam eyes that they forgot to heal me, never a good idea.
Second attempt, and my Argent Defender had triggered within about 5 seconds, I held on a little longer, but it was a lost-cause.
Third try, and down he went. I was even watching for him grabbing a healer, and managed to bubble Tins when he did, since she'd died every other time.
Somehow things fell into place and we even managed to get the achievement where we killed him within 10 seconds of one arm dying. Vind tells me it's one of the Hard-Mode achievements, I'll take his word for it, but it was a nice way to round off the night.

Expensive on the repair bills, but I also managed to pick up my final epic tanking piece, so I've got new shoulders too. So all in all a good night.

On a side note, I now seem to be over the Def cap. I'm currently at 545, but all except one of my enchants / gems is now +Stam / Dodge / Parry instead of def. And that's before I plant the Hodir shoulder enchant on my new epic, and before I pick up my new Wyrmguard legs that I only need 10 emblems for.

I know that going over the Def cap isn't neccesarily a waste, it still counts for something, it's just not as effective as applying a different stat once you've reached the Cap.

Once I enchant my shoulders, and pick up my new legs, I'll be around 550 Def, so that's 25 Def points I could live without. But no way to not spend them... unless I changed my shoulder enchant?

Rotten to the Core

2009-10-16T10:51:00.000+01:00

In the world of raiding, there seems to be a big distinction made between 'HardCore' and 'Social' raiding.

Those who conisder themselves social look at the hardcore raiders, and scoff. They think they waste their lives playing the game wrong. But secretly, the social (or casual) raiders wish they could be as good, and also wish they could have the gear that the hardcore have. They like to think that they have the same skills as the hardcore, but are just nicer people.

Those who consider themselves harcore raiders, lok at the social raiders and scoff. They think that the socials are just not as good as them. And if they weren't so lazy, they could have epic-epix too. But secretly, the hardcore don't want the socials to improve. They prefer the socials to stay at the lower levels of raiding, because that makes the hardocre feel superior. It gives them a justification for investing the time and effort they have, and makes them feel like they are more skilled than the socials.

So where do the Munquis fit in on this scale?

Well, we're a 'social' guild, but 'social' is a subjective word. What I like to do to 'socialize' is not neccesarily the same as everyone else.
All the 'social' means to us is that we're willing to give anyone a try. It doesn't mean that we'll like them, or put up with crap, or drag their lazy asses through dungeons or raids just because we proudly like to call ourselves 'social'.

The tribe is a pretty big guild. So we've got the advantages (and disadvantages of that). If we want to run any 10 man raid, these days, we can almost garauntee enough players of the required class to set it up. If we organise it in advance.
If we don't organise it in advance, we still have a good chance becuase we'll usually have enough members online to give it a go, and have freinds, and other guilds, that we can call on to fill any vacancies.

In TBC, most Munquis didn't make it past Karazahn. In fact, most Munquis didn't even make it 'into' Karazahn. But that didn't stop us reaching the point where, effectively, we had 2 teams that could farm it.
And eventually progress in to other raids was made.

In WotLK we conquered Naxx fairly quickly. We were only just behind some of the hardcore raiding guilds. And we then moved on to Malygos, and now on to Ulduar.
Although I haven't been, I know that Ulduar is still in the learning stages of being conquered by us. Its not on farm yet. But it won't be long, and then it'll be on to ToC.

Now, the 'average' hardcore raider is just mastering ToC at this point so, again, the Munquis aren't far behind. But the average 'Social' hasn't even set foot in Ulduar, never mind made any progress.

So to go back to the original question: Where do the Munquis fit in on this scale?

Let's take something everyone knows about, as an example: PORN

Don't deny it, you're sat at a computer or digital device right now, and you all know what porn is.
But there's different types of porn, and I don't mean the stuff with Dwarves and Donkeys, and that sort of filth. I mean different ratings.

There's the HardCore Porn. With no holds barred visuals, and usually very bad scripts. but it's effective, and does the job. This is what people usually think of when they think of 'Porn'.

There's also the BBC edited version of sex scenes in mainstream films. It's not really Porn, it's just a little bit of nudity, and usually part of a fantastically scripted story. But it's still too much for some people.
This is what your granny thinks of when you mention 'Porn'. (At least you hope so... although why you and your granny would be discussing porn is another issue).

But in between those two there's the, lesser known, SoftCore Porn. It's not as popular as it used to be. There might be lots of full frontal nudity, but there's also alot left to the imagination. It doesn't leave you in any doubt that it actually is Porn, but it's not as in your face as the HardCore stuff.
Usually the scripts are somewhere between the 2 other versions, with longer storylines, and occasionally 5, or more, minutes where people remain fully dressed.

Now stop thinking about naked ladies (or gents) and lets get back to the main issue:

We're ahead of the average social, and behind the average hardcore. So I'd go with 'SoftCore Raiders'.

We're good at what we do, our experienced members all have the potential to do well in raids, we just don't push as hard as the 'HardCore' do, because that's not what we're about. When we suceed, we do it together, and when we fail, we fail as a team, and try again next time.
We're not in your face, full frontal, 'Raiders'. But we're not pre-watershed, don't let the kids see, 'Socials' either.

So it just goes to show that it is possible to balance 'Social' and 'Raider' at the same time.

You ask any man / woman who's been in the army if they felt closer to their comrades than to any other freind they've ever had. I bet you most would say 'yes'. And for the whole of their time in the military they were being ordered about, forced to do crappy jobs, and putting their lives at risk.

There are always going to be people who disagree. Those for whom the focus, control, patience and effort required to raid are 'not fun'.

But, if you're one of those people, this isn't the army, no one has a gun to your head, so why raid?

For me, I enjoy being 'SoftCore' and I'm proud of it.

And the point is...

2009-10-15T15:32:00.000+01:00

Following on from my previous post, apart from the fun-factor, what's the point in raiding Ulduar?

Imagine a Goblin. He likes making money, and lot's of it. He chooses to always try and achieve the maximum amount of profit from the minimal amount of work. But he's not afraid of hard-work, as long as it pays off in the end.
A true goblin would stay the hell away from Ulduar. If you can farm heroics, which are much easier, to achieve a similar level of loot, then why would you want to go raiding?

According to WowWiki, the time taken on each Heroic is quite high, but speaking from alot of experience, they're not. I think you can easily slash about a third off the times shown on there.
e.g. VH is shown as 24 Minutes, but it's easy to do in 15. UK is 25 Mins, but our runs usually average 11-12 (and occasionally 10).
Even then, I still think that's a little high. Gundrak for example is shown as a 90 Minute run, and it's nothing of the sort.

But applying that to the whole of the list (-1/3 off all the times on WoWWiki) gives a total time of 444 Minutes, or 7 and a half hours. If you run all of them in one day, you would receive 52 Emblems of Conquest, + 2 Emblems of Conquest from the Daily Normal, and 2 Emblems of Triumph from the Daily Heroic.

In Ulduar (10), the Munquis raid twice per week, for around 4-5 Hours per night.And the average raid boss drops only 1 or 2 Emblems of Conquest. (Let's say 2 for ease).
Let's also presume that a good Munqui team can clear Ulduar in the 2 nights. and we'll shave a bit fo the time off too. There's a maximum of 14 Bosses in Ulduar, including optional.

So for Heroics 7 Hours = 54 Emblems of Conquest, 2 Emblems of Triumph, a hell of alot of Reputation gains, and a nice pot of gold to spend on Enchants, Gems etc... And the whole thing can be repeated every single day.

For Ulduar 9 Hours = 28 Emblems of Conquest, 0 Emblems of Triumph, 0 rep gains, possibly some gold (but repair bills might eat in to this), And the run can only be completed once per week.

The next part is easiest to see with a DPS'er. So let's use that as an example.

Let's say the DPS'er has some epic pieces, and can pull off 3k DPS in an average raid. He really wants to reach ToC.

If he grinds heroics, and daily heroics, he's not going to struggle much. It'll be a walk in the park for him, and he can earn loads of emblems every day.
But if he raids, he might get the chance of a random drop which is even better than some of the Emblem gear.

But how much better? Not a lot. And how useful? Again, not as much as it first seems.

Imagine a pair of boots:
The pair you have now has +80 AP. The Emblem / Rep version would have +100 AP, but the random Ulduar drop version has +120AP. That's another 20% increase, that's awesome.. right?
Right, but the Emblem of Triumph version has +150 AP. And you don't get Emblems of Triumph in Ulduar.

Remember though, that you only get a 20% increase in DPS once every piece you're wearing is upgraded too. Until then you only get a small % increase in your stats. There's 11 Equipment slots, not counting tabards. So you'd need 11 upgrades to achieve a full new set of gear.

So, for 3 months of Heroics, the original 3000 DPS -> 3750 DPS in Emblem of Conquest / Rep Gear -> 5400 DPS in Emblem of Triumph Gear

And, for 3 months of Ulduar, the original 300 DPS -> 4500 DPS in Full Ulduar Gear

Even if you didn't get a full set of Emblem of Triumph Gear, you'd still achieve more than the 4500 DPS of the Ulduar Gear. And certainly enough to move on to ToC.

So what's the point in Ulduar?

God Knows, But I'll probably still go.

A tale of 2 Pallies

2009-10-15T13:22:00.000+01:00

Once upon a time, in a land far-far away, but that millions of people visited every day, there was a Paladin.

The Paladin had goals. He had things in life that he strived for. He looked at others, and thought to himself 'I want to be like them'.
So he trudged his way up through the levels, until he reached 70. And when he got there, he threw away his tanking gear, that had supported him well up to that point, and began collecting healing gear.

He knew that to get in to groups, he would need to provide something that others couldn't. And at that time, that was healing. There just weren't very many healers around.

He completed long quest chains for some pieces, for others he entered heroic dungeons, to collect random drops, and badges that he could trade for entry-level gear.
Before long he had picked up enough kit, and invested enough time in perfecting his healing, to enter Karazahn. While there he had a great time. Sometimes it went well, other times it didn't. But it didn't matter, it was alot of fun, and for every boss that was killed he would receive random loot, and even more badges. but these could be exchanged for very high level equipment.
The Paladin thought this was awesome, and he could hopefully move on to bigger and better things, which he had no hope of doing without first mastering Karazahn. He didn't make it very far past Karazahn, but he wasn't too bothered. He still felt that he'd achieved enough to sleep at night. And finally, he retired happily.

12 months later, another Paladin was born. This one had similar dreams of glory, so he set off on his mission to reach level 80. Hoping one day to be good enough to enter raids, and experience all the adventures a young-man could want.
But when he got to 80, things weren't quite what he expected.
He also began to complete heroic dungeons, to gather his gear. In this case he didn't forsake his tanking, since it was still highly sought after in most groups.
At first the dungeons were difficult. He felt like he'd been there before, and knew all of the encounters, but being toe-to-toe from the mobs was much different to standing at the back of the crowd and shooting at them.
But before long the Paladin had mastered his art, and along the way he'd collected lots of nice equipment too.
The badges that were dropped by the bosses in the dungeons also provided him with a few extra nice pieces. Until he reached the point where those badges weren't worth very much to him anymore.

So off he went, all psyched up to enter the dreaded citadel of Naxxramas. Only, he found, nobody else was going there. Naxx was no longer a challenge, since the gear that he'd collected from doing heroics was equivalent or better than the stuff dropped in Naxx.
But he wasn't detered, he dipped his toe into the lava pools of Sartharion, and found it no problem, so he set his sights on the mighty gates of Ulduar, confident that he would eventually master it, and then be able to proceed to enter the Trial of the Crusader. Where, one day, he might be found worthy enough to face Arthas himself.

But.... It turns out that the emblems / badges dropped in Ulduar are exactly the same ones that are dropped in the heroics. So he was going to have to rely and nothing but random drops to provide enough equipment to allow him to reach the next level of uberness... ... ... Bugger.

Ulduar was hard, it was difficult. He was sure it would be a lot of fun to do, but the rewards weren't going to be very worthwhile.
But if he stayed doing nothing but daily heroics between now and the time of Arthas's arrival, he'd be one of the best geared Tanks in the land.
The reward for completing those daily challenges was 2 emblems of Triumph. And the only other way to obtain them was in the higher level dungeons.

The Paladin, being good at maths, sat down and thought it through:

'If I go to Ulduar, and I'm lucky, I could get some more emblems of conquest, and the chance to roll on some random loot. But I'd probably die alot, and waste alot of time. And I can only repeat it once per week.'

'But, if I just spent the same amount of time doing heroics, I'll earn tons of emblems of conquest. Probably enough to buy a full set of healing gear. Loads of cash from quest rewards and mob drops. AND if I do the daily challenge at the same time, I'll also pick up 2 Emblems of Triumph every day too.'

So did the Pally go to Ulduar?

Of course he did. But why?

The same reason a man does many things in his life................ Because his freinds were doing it.

Frequent Forum Miles

2009-10-14T10:17:00.000+01:00

The use of the Munqui Tribe forums seems to have faded off recently. I'm not sure why that is.

The in-game activity still seems to be pretty high, with good numbers of guild members online. Usually at least 10-20, and sometimes reaching 30.
But the forum seems to be slowly dying. People either aren't bothering to read what's written on there, or they have no interest in the guild other than as a place to find groups in-game.

It's a bit of a shame, because the forums used to be a good place to have a chat, or a whinge, or just generally piss about when you were supposed to be doing something else... The good old days.

Luckily, I don't just have to tell you that this is true because I say it is. Brast was kind enough to give me Admin access ages ago, so I can pull some stats from the admin tools:

So here they are: (Keep in mind, these are only since the forum reset, where the original service provider went bust).

Registered Members: 123
Total Shoutbox Posts: 598
Total Forum Posts: 2398

Top Posters:

393 - Smyth
318 - Knicks
184 - Night
158 - Vind
155 - Funk
153 - Vedd
139 - Bronze
123 - Lewt
117 - Flow
106 - Rad
53 - Bolle
38 - Brast
38 - Zuchi
37 - Biafra
29 - Spud
27 - Grenthal
21 - Rumido
21 - Trig
16 - Tinsell

So what do those figures tell us about the forums, and about the guild itself?

Well firstly, Apart from Tins, I only counted people who've made more than 20 posts. So thats 18 People. So out of 123 registered members only 18 of them have been 'active' on the forums. Although it depends how you define 'active'. The forums were reset at the beginning of January, so 20 Posts is still only an average of 2 per month.

Secondly, if you add up all the posts that those 18 have made, you get 2110 posts. That's 88% of the entire forum community being provided by 14% of the members.
It gets worse if you raise the bar to, let's say, 50 posts (around 1 per week).That means 11 people have posted 1899 times between them. So the figures change to 79% of the community being provided by about 9% of the members.
Effectively, only 11 people are investing any real time and effort in to the forums. And 2 of those are Rad and Bolle, who are also in other guilds.

Next, let's look at 'who' is doing the posting, and their status within the guild. Unsuprisingly, the officers and ex-officers are generally the most active. (Above 50 Posts)
The ones with between 20 and 50 are generally the long-serving and loyal members of the guild.
And the ones with less than 20 posts are a mix of everyone.
Maybe the Officers and loyal members feel more inclined to contribute to the guild, rather than just using it for their own ends. That seem to be the case in game, with things like the guild-bank. Officers and loyal Munquis often contribute to, but rarely take from, the GuildBank.

Finally, if you raise the bar for considering a member to be 'active' to 100 - Still only an average of 2 posts per week. It means the whole forum is being maintained for the benefit of just 10 people. And those 10 names at the top of that list are generally people who also have lots to say to each other in-game, and least likely to need the forums.

And as a P.S. to all this... Tins only has 16 Posts since January?!?!
What the hell is going on there? In-Game you can barely get her to shut up.
And Myself and Knicks need to shut-up a bit more on the forums. But if we did, maybe things would be even quieter.

Anti-Raidism?

2009-10-12T14:51:00.000+01:00

To raid, or not to raid. That is the question.

Vind asked me a couple of days ago "When are we going to see you in Ulduar with us?"

The answer flew off my fingers without thinking about it. "Whenever you want me."

My Pally is geared enough now to cope with the basics of raid tanking. He still has blue shoulders, but one night of raiding would give me enough emblems of triumph to replace them quickly anyway. Apart from that, and a couple of 'better' epics I can still get through emblems of conquest, I'm as geared up as I can be at this point.

I'm Def capped, my average HP in a 5-man is a little under 40k, I've got my macros all worked out and my layout and Ui configured well now. So what's stopping me going raiding?

Do I really want to?

I've enjoyed the laid-back approach to Heroics. You know that you're never going to be commited to the game for more than 15-30 minutes per time. It's rare that a run goes badly wrong these days, so emblem grinding is more just a case of scooping them up of the dead bodies every few minutes.
I just find the heroic-scene very sociable.There's no pressure, there's no fuss. There's very little discussion of boss tactics, apart from the occasional "shall we try for the achievement". Things just happen, smoothly, and it feels like things are being achieved.

While my Tanking set is almost where it should be, my healing gear is much more mis-matched. It's pretty epic. I know I've only got a few blues left anyway. But I'm in plate, and mail, and leather, and there might even be some cloth in there too
I know that armor type isn't as important for healers. My last Pally was a mis-match in Kara, and he healed just fine. For healers, it's stats-stats-stats. But it's all wrongly gemmed and I know there are better upgrades out there if I look for them.

Having said that, if I dropped some gold on the AH, I could probably gem my healing gear up nicely, and at least cope as the 2nd / 3rd healer in a 10-man.

I'm also a big believer that skill and experience can make up for lack of gear. There's no point trying to convince me otherwise. I know that it's the truth. The voices in my head tell me.
But in Ulduar, I have no experience, and since I've never even set foot inside, my skills are generic.
It'd be like dropping a freshly dinged level 80 in to the Noth encounter in Naxx. 2 seconds in, WTF, and the group wipes... I don't want to be that nooby.

Tanks are generally the group leaders, it just goes with the territory. And I can't lead what I don't know.
I'd be sat there waiting for Vind to tell me what I need to do, when it would just be simpler and probably more effective for him to do it himself. Why should every body else wait for me? And why should they have to die just because I don't know the encounters that well? They've done their dying, and paid their repair costs to reach the point they're up to.

So do I want to raid in Ulduar?

Yes.

Will I?

I'm not sure right now.

But until I make up my mind, I'll be available for heroics almost any time you see me online.

The Importance of Being Patient

2009-10-06T14:40:00.000+01:00

Continuing from my previous post on cornering markets, here's a few extra tips for you.
They're a little bit anti-goblin, so if you're in to mass production and accepting low profit margins, this is not going to be for you.

Let's say that you've managed to pick up the Titanium Plating plans. (They're only 15g, but I just noticed that you also need Exalted with the Vanguard too... not too big a deal).
If you suddenly start churning out loads of them, people will start to notice. And you might do quite nicely out of it for a while. But before long, people are going to realise there's money to be made and start undercutting you.

Tobold posted something similar recently. And I agree with his theory.
If something is expensive, people will only buy it rarely, and will be less willing to part with it, or buy it more than once. But if it's what they need, they will still buy it at least once.
If something is cheap, people will buy it over and over and over again. But they'll also buy something else if it suits them better.

So which is better?

The Goblin (Gevlons) model is mass-production. Make something as cheap as possible, and sell it as cheaply as possible, but in large quantities. Almost all markets end up this way in the end.
But they don't need to start off that way, and if you're starting up a new market, the last thing you want to do is devalue it too quickly.

Think of DVD players. When they first came out, they cost hundreds of pounds each, that soon dropped below the £100 mark, because more people wanted them. Now, you can pick up a brand new one for about £10 from ASDA (Walmart).

So when you start posting the Titanium plating, keep supply low, and prices high. If other people start undercutting you, undercut them. And not by a few silver. Halve your price. If they go for 120g this week, other people will want a piece of the action. So they'll invest all the time and effort into their production. When they do, slash the value to 60g and they'll be much more wary of competing against you. Because their expectations of profit will be badly shaken.
Repeat the process until the point where either they stop competing, or you can no longer make a profit.

Once the war is over, slowly raise the prices again. If the competition re-appears, lather-rinse-repeat.

So make sure you keep supply low, and only a couple of them on the AH at any one time. Make sure they're priced high. And make as much money you can before the competition tries to muscle in.

Healing Hands

2009-10-06T10:16:00.000+01:00

I ran a few heroics last night. And managed to pick myself up a new set of tanking Bracers a new emblem belt, and a few offspec upgrades. I just need to replace my shoulders now and I'll be fully epic, and a new chestpiece would be nice, since I'm currently using one with +Frost Resistance, and Gemming it up to the eyeballs to add +Def.
So my HP now hovers around 33k SelfBuffed, which would mean 30k Unbuffed (since the BoS is +10%).
And I'm at the defense cap. And I don't struggle with my threat generation as much anymore.

I spent most of the night healing. Since that was what we seemed to be short of at the time. But it was a raid night, so it's sort of understandable.

My healing gear is all a bit mix and match, with some cloth, mail and leather pieces. But at the end of the day, I'm a healer.. I shouldn't be getting hit. But It's almost a full epic set now too.

Speed was the key last night, trying to fit things in with guildies before and after Ulduar (although I wasn't raiding myself). In Culling of Stratholme we cleared the extra boss with about 9 minutes to spare, and I was even having a go at DPS'ing while healing, since the damage was so light
.
In Utgarde Keep, the entire place was cleared within about 10 minutes. We litterally chain pulled the entire place, bosses included. No breaks, no downtime, no deaths, no problem. There really should have been an achievement for that. 3 Emblems in 10 minutes makes it the most worthwhile instance in the game.
Vind was tanking though, and he knows his stuff, it might have been harder with a less experienced tank. But we still managed to boost my brothers DK during the run, and he's never set foot in anything but ToC.

In all of my healing encounters last night, my mana rarely dropped below 70%. Even on the bosses. And no one even came particularly close to dying.
I can't take all the credit for this, the gear and abilities of the teams I was with obviously made up for alot.
But now I've mastered the whole 'Beacon of Light' and 'Sacred Shield' thing, it feels alot easier.

My 2 attempts at tanking last night were AN and AK, An went nice and quick. but AK was a little bit of a mess at one point. A bad placement from myself pulled an extra group of mobs and we wiped. Flow managed to ressurect himself and then me, and Bronze, but our position left us in the path of the 1 remaining mob, who promptly spanked us back to death. So we missed out on the 22g Bonus. Shame.

But apart from that cock-up all seems to be going well with the tanking. And the healing is working out nicely as an offspec.

Strange though, in the CoS run, we had 4 potential tanks in the group to choose from, but only 1 healer. The Munquis used to lack good raid tanks, now they seem to be coming out of our ears. But healers are now a little thin on the ground. Luckily it doesn't affect me at this point, since as long as there's one or the other online, I can fill the alternative spot.

Block and Tackle

2009-10-05T13:31:00.000+01:00

While levelling my Paladin as a tank, I've been looking into the best way to gear him up.
Tanking isn't always as straightforward as DPS.

With most DPS classes, you focus solely on Attack Power, or on Spell Power or on a particular stat that equates to the same. With Tanks (particularly Pallies), it's more of a juggling act.

You need the +Hit to make sure you're not missing the mobs, and they're not Parrying your attacks, which makes them attack faster.
You need +Defense to reach the point where mobs cannot slam you into the floor with one shot.
You need +Stamina to enable the healer to have time to heal you up before the mobs belt you with their next round of attacks.
And +Spell Power comes in handy for Paladins who need to generate enough threat to keep the mobs on them, and off the squishies. (Presumably Warriors have a similar problem, but use Attack Power or something similar to do the same).

So which is more important? They all are.

+Spell Power is probably the least important of the bunch, since it basically just for extra DPS. If everyone is using Omen, and isn't a noob, they shouldn't pull much aggro anyway.

+Hit isn't as essential, but it helps alot. When mobs parry, they attack quicker, which means they're going to do more DPS to you. Which is never a good thing.

+Stamina IS essential but, while not quite subject to the rule of diminishing returns, once you reach a certain point do you really need any more? If you have 40k HP and your healers can keep you up against any raid boss, is having 50k HP actually of any more use? Yes, but it's minimal.

+Defense IS defintiely essential. Getting critted by Heroic and raid bosses is never a good thing. And if one crit takes you from 100% HP to dead, the group is going to wipe.

But then there's other things to consider. +Block, +Dodge and a whole host of other things too. So what should you aim for with Enchants and extras?

In the post before this, I claimed that the +Block from Titanium plating was better than +Stam. (The -50% Disarm is also a great Bonus stat) And here's why:

Block reduces the amount of damage from melee attacks from mobs standing in front of you (It doesn't work from behind, or too much from the side, that's why you see tanks re-positioning themselves alot when surrounded by trash... or why you should see them re-positioning alot).

The amount of damage that's blocked is basic maths: Amount Blocked = Block Value + (Strength / 2) and that is done after all other reductions from armor, dodge, parry, Righteous Fury etc..

(BTW: These are totally random numbers I'm using here)
So if a mob hits for 1000, and I don't dodge it, my Armor mitigates 60% of that, so the amount that actually gets to me is 400. But I also Block some of the damage, so with 100 Block Value and 100 strength (really 200 but halved) only 200 damage actually reaches me.

1000 Damage - 600 from my Plate Armor - 200 from my Block = Only 200 Damage that hits me.

You don't always block, it's a % chance, but for a Tank, it's a very high %. And those figures soon start to add up to alot more than +18 Stamina would give me.

Using my analogy from above - I have 34k HP SelfBuffed, in good groups I have reached a little under 40K fully buffed. The healers no longer have much of a problem keeping me alive. So adding more HP doesn't really add to my usefulness.
However, when grouped with good DPS'ers I struggle to hold the aggro.
Adding +Block not only reduces the overall amount of damage I'll take throughout a fight, but also adds extra DPS to some of my abilities. For example, my Shield Slam, does more DPS the higher my Block is, so it's not only protecting me, it's increasing my threat generation too. Win -Win.

My other choice of Enchant. The weapon 'Potency' one, is a little bit more straightforward, but continues where the last one left off. 'Strength' directly increases the amount of melee damage I do, and increases my Block Value. So more strength is always handy. The melee damage increase for a Pally is minimal, since most of my threat comes from magical damage, but it all adds up, especially in longer fights.

So does that mean I should ignore Stamina, and Dodge, and Parry, just because I can survive on the Armor and Block stats alone?... No.

That's why there's 2 main schools of Tanks. Mitigation (Who can take huge amounts of damage) and Avoidance (Who try to take a little damage as possible).
If I can dodge an attack, I get zero damage, and that's even better than only 20% damage. If I Parry an attack I might still get some damage, but I also get to attack faster myself.

The problem with trying to increase those stats though is that they're more difficult to do. And even if you manage it, they're subject to the rule of diminishing returns. That means that every time I dodge / parry an attack, I have slightly less chance of dodging / parrying the next one. (Block doesn't have that problem).

As an avoidance tank, eventually you WILL get hit, and when you do, if you've sacrificed too much mitigation that hit is going to hurt... alot... and then some more... and then again.... and your healer isn't going to be able to keep you up.

So Balance is the Tanks best weapon. In one particular boss fight, an avoidance tank might do better, in another mitigation is the answer. But overall, balance is everyones freind.

The Munqui's aren't a hardcore raiding guild we're not likely to start pulling extra tanks out for individual boss fights. Although raid guilds do, and this is why.

A word of advice for would-be tanks though. If you're new to tanking or freshly-dinged level 80. +Stam and +Def are the key to survival. The rest of it is just icing on the cake until you're geared up more. If you go tanking heroics with only 20k HP (like I first did) you'd better have alot of healers in your freinds list, because they're going to be exhausted trying to keep you alive.

So for now, I'm happy with my Tank design. I won't be trying to ebb every last point of one stat or another, I'll just go with the flow. As long as my Defense stays at 540, I'll take the rest of my stats a little less seriously.

Market Niches

2009-10-05T11:58:00.000+01:00

Now I know that not everyone plays WoW for the same reasons. Or enjoys the same kind of things.
But persoanlly I like to keep an eye on the AH market. To try and make a few extra gold whenever I see an opportunity.

I don't consider myself an expert on the matter. If you're looking for expertise I'd visit Gevlons site (http://www.greedygoblin.blogspot.com/). But I occasionally come across area where alot of money could be made, from simple recipes that people don't usually seem interested in.

I have 2 examples at the moment:

The first is Titanium Plating. This recipe is sold for only 15g from a vendor. Yet no one seems to have it. The mats are 4x Titanium Bars and 4x Eternal Shadows. And it is generally considered one of the best shield enchants possible at end game. Particularly for Tanks who are already at the Def cap. The extar Block is great, and adds DPS and threat from shield slams, and then throw in the -50% Disarm and it sort of speaks for itself. Some people prefer the +18 Stam enchant, but is +180 HP really that useful?
Anyway, to get back to the point, this item can be crafted by Blacksmiths for only a handful of gold, but the average price I've seen them on the AH for is between 120g-240g each. I've yet to buy one, because I missed my opportunity, and the next time I saw one it was going for over 300g.

The second is Enchant Weapon - Potency. This is a Burning Crusade drop, that can be found anywhere within Outland or in any BC instance (including Karazahn). Apparently it's got a pretty low drop rate, but the scroll isn't BoP so can be traded.
Again, this is probably the single best enchant for a Prot Pally, as the +Strength brings more benefits through talents than any other enchant. (I hate to use the 'single-best' line, but from what I can see, it's true).
And yet you very rarely see it.
Finding the scroll to learn it might be a bugger, but once you know it, you'd have the market cornered for quite a while, and could easily sell a cheap enchant for large amounts of gold on the AH. I have never managed to find anyone on Darkspear who can make this. Never seen it on the AH, and no one in trade knows what I'm talking about. There's big money to be made.

Openish Invitation

2009-10-05T11:26:00.003+01:00

I'm a little busy at work recently, so this blog isn't being updated as often as I'd like it to be. So, rather than let it go to waste, I'm opening it up a little.

Any Munqui Officer, or personal freind of mine, can now also post to this blog.

It's as easy as sending an email to a special address, so there's no technical know-how needed.

If you want to post something, either whisper me in-game, leave a comment on this post, or send me an email.
Once I give you the email address, that's it. You're free to post as little or as often as you like. Or never, if you can never be bothered.

You don't have to agree with all my ideas to post here, and the posts can be as superficial or as detailed as you choose. They should mainly be focused on WoW based issues, or stories of your characters development. But comments on other MMORPGS, excellent game reccomendations, or interesting anecdotes of real world events are just as welcome.

I'll still be moderating the blog, so I'll clean up and formatting problems whenever I see them. (It happens occasionally when things are sent in by email).

Let's hope that at least a few people become regular posters and the blog gets a new lease of life.

Am I Psychic or Am I Just Always Right?

2009-10-02T12:45:00.002+01:00

Another night of heroics for me yesterday. With a bag-full of balls-ups to go with it.

I was tanking in healing gear, players were lying dead, people were casting aggro generating abilities on everyone but the tank. Still, it was alot of fun. Because it was all with the Munquis.
Wasn't very good for my EPH though (Emblems per Hour).

The first run was the daily. Nexus.
Myself, Bronze, Barry and Lis brought along a new guildy (who I won't name here). From the very start of the run I had a bad feeling about him. (I don't know if it was a he or a she, but it was a male toon).
He wasn't doing anything particularly wrong, apart from the jumping up and down, all the time, thing that the PvP kiddies seem to do (That really irritates me). I just found myself thinking less and less of him as the fights went on.

He was polite enough, and ready when he needed to be ready. But he seemed to be a little irritating. No sooner had I mentioned my dislike in Officer Chat than things began to get a little worse.
He started spamming the DPS meters in Party, and in Guild. And he cast Army of the Dead the very second the Keristraza activated, meaning that Bronze had to mash his buttons to try and keep aggro in his direction. After we all survived the fight... luckily.
Myself and Bronze pointed out his error with Army of the Dead and explained about the Dragon Boss NoseCone damage. The new guy apologised, again politely.

And then 5 minutes later he left the guild.

Now me and Bronze weren't particularly hard on him. And anything I said about my concerns was in officer chat only. So why did he leave?

Because I was right all along. There was something Not-Munqui about the guy. Maybe he was just a little immature, maybe he bought his account on eBay, or maybe I'm just Psychic.
Either way, he'd be welcome back into the Tribe, because he didn't do anything 'wrong', and he even said goodbye before he /GQuit, so maybe we'll all see him again.

Do you think we were too harsh on him? Maybe us older and wiser players expect too much of newbies. We all know the rules about dragons facing away from the group, and that it's not socially acceptable to spam DPS meters between every trash fight. But how would a newbie know?

A Born-Again Arsehole?

2009-09-29T15:40:00.003+01:00

I did something unusual yesterday.

I invited a known asshole back into the guild. This guy had been kicked a while ago, for flaming other guildies... what the f*ck was I thinking?

Maybe it was exhaustion from running 6 Heroics in one night. Or maybe it was boredom from jumping at an instance portal for 10 minutes straight to try and get in. But by chance... while jumping at that bloody instance portal, our group happened to come across the asshole in question.

He was a freind of a well respected guildy, and I'd never heard of him before. Apparently he wasn't in the guild very long last time, so maybe I just missed him. I was quickly told who he was, and what had happened last time. But I got talking to him anyway, and he seemed to admit everything that he'd done wrong. And felt he had changed, or at least that he could be different from now on.

I like that in people... Honesty. You can be the biggest jerk in the world but if you're open and honest about it all then people might not be your best freind, but they usually get used to you.
After re-reading that last sentence, maybe it's because he reminded me of myself?

The question is... Have I done the right thing? Can an arsehole really reform? Or is a d*ckhead a d*ckhead forever?

Festival Faux Pas

2009-09-23T07:30:00.002+01:00

I logged on last night, and made myself look dopey.

Someone asked in Guildchat for a tank for the Brewfest Boss. My reply was "Sry but festivals aren't my idea of fun". Now, on the face of it, what I said was true. I usually don't bother with the festival events. I'm not into collecting achievements or costume sets, or the gimmicky stuff that most of the festivals are about.

The one exception was the fire festival, which came in handy while I was levelling for the XP and damage buffs it provided.

But no sooner had I dismissed the Brewfest event, than Bolle and Vind started to laugh at me. It turns out that some of the best Tanking trinkets in the game actually drop from the Brewfest Boss, and he's repeatable as a daily quest by every member of your party. So effectively you can have 5 chances per day to pick them up. Or more if you tag along with other groups or do it with alts.

Both the trinkets provide +170 Stamina. That's not to be sniffed at in anyones book. So luckily 2 of the guildies took pity on me and came along to help me have a couple of tries at him.
First go, he went down easily. But no trinket for me. Although the Brewfest Ram dropped, we all needed and Naru won.
We then used Narus attempt at the boss, and again, no trinket for me.
We couldn't use Biafras go, as he'd already done it that day, but Naru re-logged to give us a 3rd try.

Unfortunately something went wrong, I got feared and the mobs charged at Biafra and Naru, wiping them in seconds.
I carried on fighting the boss, using bubble-healing, a pot and my LoH, but it wasn't to be. I got feared again, and again, and while I couldn't defend myself or attack them the mobs spanked me to the graveyard.
You only get one try, you can't abandon and retry the quest. So that was the chance wasted.

Oh well, lessons learned. And I guess for the next week or so, if someone asks for a tank or healer for the Brewfest boss I won't be so casual about saying "no".

Healy Holy vs Tanky Spanky

2009-09-22T13:04:00.002+01:00

If you've read my previous post, you'll know that I healed last night.

Not my soul, not my broken-heart, not the rift between me and my long-lost brother who lives in Bora-Bora and is married to the leader of a tribe of Amazonian women. No... none of the these mythical things.
What I healed was real... I healed guildies. And I healed them heroically.

If you've been following this blog, you'll have seen me mention that Tanking is my Main-Spec. I plan to keep it that way. However, I couldn't help but enjoy the feeling of well-being I got from keeping people alive last night.
Maybe it was just nostalgia from the Karazahn days, or the fun feeling I get when I feel like I'm mastering something new. (My macros and new set-up made it alot easier to handle).

I liked it.

My healing gear is very minimalistic. Its nothing more than crappy AH blues, and 1 epic set of legs that dropped randomly (which I haven't even bothered to gem and enchant). But I still managed to heal heroic Violet Hold and Utgarde Keep, with zero wipes, and only the occasional death from an over-aggro'er (which doesn't count because it serves them right).
Actually, I died once myself, but that was due to the stupid Axe from the last boss in UK, that just wouldn't leave me alone. But that doesn't count.

With a decent set of healing gear, I could definitely see myself healing a raid. The mechanics are just the same as I remember, apart from the whole Beacon of Light issue, and Judgements of the Pure, Oh and Sacred Shield, Oh and the Overhealing changes, Oh and not forgetting the shared healing from Holy Light. But apart from all that, it was just like the good old days.

Obviously some things have changed from TBC days. Bu underneath it's still the same point-and-click-and-click-and-click-and-click pattern that it used to be. Tanking will be staying my focus, but it's good to know that I've still got the healing hands. And can dust them off if needed.

I really do need to get an addon for Beacon-of-Light though. The macro helped alot, but it still wasn't up anywhere near 100% of the time.

Let them eat cake

2009-09-22T07:22:00.002+01:00

We have an issue in the guild. It's not unique to our guild, and I'm pretty sure every guild out there suffers from it. Particularly bigger guilds. But more and more people are pointing it out to me, so people are obviously finding it more noticeable.

Elitism.

Now, there's two ways of looking at this. At first glance, 'Elitism' sounds like a bad thing. It conjours up visions of snobbery and looking down on others. Or ignoring those less gifted than you are. But there's another way to look at it too:

People have commented that the officers and ex-officers of the tribe always seem to get priority for Raid spots, or Heroic groups, or are much more likely to get help if they ask for it. Sounds like a fair comment to me. The officers themselves have dicussed this issue, and there's no simple answer to it.

Officers (and Ex-Officers) are players too. Most of us have been playing together for upto several years now. We're obviously freinds. And what do freinds do? ... ... They help each other out.

Also, having played for a long-time, many of the officers are also highly skilled players, or experts in their class(es). They are also the kind of person who is willing to accept advice, and help advise others. If they weren't, they wouldn't be officers. The officers in the Munqui Tribe don't get paid. We don't use guild funds for repairs. And, on average, we actually use the guild bank less than the non-officers.
So the officers are already sacrificing their 'game' time, to help run the guild. That's an important word... 'Game'. I've said it before, and I'll say it again. "Officers are players too".

So lets take an example:

Last night Biafra (an ex-officer) asked for a group for a heroic... any heroic. (He's emblem farming, similar to myself). Within a minute he had a full team. Made up of Myself (GM), Vind (Officer), Vedd (Officer), and Spud (Non-Officer). No one else volunteered.
The original plan was that I tanked, and Vind would re-spec. But that would have been a waste, and I felt confident that I could heal enough in simple heroics like VH and UK.

I was right. But how did I know I'd be able to cope? (I ran HoL with another team the other day, and although it was sucessful, it was also a bit of a wipe-fest).
The reason is "I know all of those players well". I've been in countless heroics / raids / encounters with that exact same team before. And I know what Vind is like as a player, I know he's a more than capable tank. I know that Vedd is a Rogue master, since he's been playing one for years, I knew that Kaleo (Biafra's Shammy) could hold his own, since I've teamed with him several tinmes in the last week. And I knew that Spud (on Dups) knew how to be a DPS DK. So I had faith in myself, because I had faith in my team.
If it had been made up of guildies, but ones that I didn't know very well, I wouldn't have offered to heal, because I wouldn't have felt it was possible.

These are my freinds, and I have faith in them.

After VH, Vind and Vedd needed to leave. A quick shout in guild-chat got us two instant replacement DPS. Tins (an officer) and Argas (on Xerxis) (Non-Officer). Both of whom I've teamed with god-knows how many times before.

Now at this point some people will moan. They'll say "Well, whenever I ask for groups, I never get any replies, or if I do, they take forever to set up... How come when an officer asks they get a group straight away?!"

The answer is simple. The officers, ex-officers, and the players who have been in the guild for years are established and respected. People know what they are capable of, and know that they are reliable and skilled. If 'NoobyJohn' joins the guild tomorrow and starts spamming guild-chat asking for groups, people aren't always going to jump to help him, because they're not sure if it's going to be a wipefest, or if that new guildy is a fun person to play with.

So given the choice, what would you do?

More Examples:

For this next section: If you're an officer reading this, imagine you're not an officer. If you're not an officer reading this, just imagine you're you.

Your freinds, who you've been playing with for years, are discussing whether to run a heroic, or do some other fun thing. You're obviously going to be welcome to tag along with them. And you know it'll be fun, and you'll get emblems and drops, even if things don't go well.
'NoobyJohn' is online, and is asking for a group for a Heroic Nexus run. You need an epic drop from the Nexus. And you know that your freinds group definitely won't be going there, because one of them did it earlier. What would you do?

Put yourself in the position of 'NoobyJohn' who's not an officer, and has only been in the guild for a few weeks / months:

'NoobyJohn' thinks this guild is crap. He logs on every day this week, and he's been dying to get a Heroic Nexus run to get a quest item, and hopefully the random epic he knows drops from Kerestraza.
He feels that he's being ignored by the rest of the guild. And maybe he is. Because while he's been begging for a Heroic Nexus run, Lisje has been asking for a Voilet Hold run. But NoobyJohn didn't think to volunteer to help her instead.
He'd still have got emblems, and random drops. And he would have shown to the other guildies, who have no idea who he is, that he can be trusted, and is a reliable player.

Now put yourself in the position of an Officer / Ex-Officer / One who you consider to be 'Elitist':

We'll use Grenth as an example (no offence Grenth). Grenthal is grinding dailies for cash, and for that hard to reach Sons of Hodir rep. He needs about 2k gold for his epic gems and 'enchantment of uberism' on his epic socks. He sees NoobyJohn asking for a group, and considers it, but he wants to focus more on improving his bank balance. So doesn't reply.
Vind then logs on, and asks for a group for a group for Violet Hold. Grenth immediately offers to help Vind out... Why?
Because Grenth is a player too. He knows Vind well, and he knows that any run with him is probably going to be quick and succesful. He'll happily put aside his rep and gold grind for a short while, because Vind has helped Grenth recently in instances that Grenth needed and Vind didn't. Grenth will also make a profit out of the run, because he knows it won't be a wipe-fest. And while he's wearing his Wyrmrest tabard, he'll also be gaining rep towards the dragon he'll eventually pick up.
All NoobyJohn sees is Grenth immediately jumping to the assistance of Vind, he sees Elitism, and it pisses him off.

I garauntee that if NoobyJohn had helped Lis out one day, and wasn't a complete arsehole, Lis and the others he'd teamed with would be much more willing to help him out next time he asked.
If the runs he's involved with keep going well, before long, he'll find himself able to get a group much more easily.

Now NoobyJohn isn't the only one seeing this problem, people who've been in the guild for a while, also see the same thing. But put yourself in the position of others, and then decide if they're being 'Elitist Pigs' or they're just doing what you would do.

It's a 'Game'. People play games for fun. People play games with their freinds. Freindships take effort.

And if, after reading all this, you still think that we're all snobby, stuck-up, arse-licking, brown-nosing, elitist bastards... ... ... Tough Shit. (There's only so much explaining I'm prepared to do).

Balancing Act

2009-09-21T07:43:00.003+01:00

My gearing up for my new Paladin is going quite well. He's now got epic Helm, Boots, Shield, Legs, Gloves, 1H Weapon, Belt, 2x Rings and Neck.

So I've just got to sort my Cloak, Libram, Shoulders and Trinkets. The majority of those will probably be coming from emblem rewards, so the randomness of drops isn't much of an issue any more. He's now upto about 27k HP Unbufed, and 29k with self-buffs. A big improvement from the 22k he started with.
The only thing I've got to watch for is the Defense Cap. I've had to switch alot of my +Stam enchants and Gems for +Def again. The sooner I can get rid of those the better, as it will mean even more HP. Emblems are my freind in this matter.

So, with that in mind, I've been trying to run as many Heroics as possible. It would seem that I'm becoming easier to keep alive, as there haven't been as many wipes as there were when I first began my tanking career.
I still have a little difficulty maintaining my aggro against a 1-1 DPS'er. Particularly Ret Pallies and DK's. They've often pulled aggro from my main target when I've had to switch targets to taunt them off a healer / squishy.

I'm not totally sure if this is entirely my fault. I've always been a believer in the "You taunt it, you tank it" philosophy. Overaggro is no ones freind. And since when did Omen stop being a 'required' addon?

The overaggro'ers are usually fulyl epic'd or raid-DPS spec'd. So maybe they're just used to their tanks being uber threat generators, who couldn't lose aggro if they fell asleep mid-fight. But I'm not one of those... yet.

So for now, I'm quite happy with the way things are going.

For the sake of emblems I also tried doing some healing in my Offspec. This was a mixed result. Generally the healing was fine, but I found myself /OOM too often, and my action bars weren't configured quite right, leaving me missing out on some of the important stuff, simply becaus eI couldn't find it quick enough. Having said that, my attempt at healing HoL wasn't a total failure, the place was cleared. Although repair bills were probably higher than people expected them to be.

After the healing run, I re-jigged my action bar, equipped a few cloth and leather healing items, to help boost my SpellPower and Intell, and made a few macros for the important abilities like Beacon of Light. I think the macros still need tweaking a bit, but it felt much more comfortable using them.

Healing was fun, and brought back memories of the good-old Kara days. When my previous Pally was one of the guilds main healers. The mechanics are mostly the same, but Beacon of Light takes away some of the required concentration on the tank, when I remember to keep it up.
A little of the frantic whack-a-mole healing has been lost though, and that used to be alot of fun in itself.

I'm planning on sticking to the tanking first though. Once I've got a full tanking gear set, I'll look at picking up an epic healing set. If un-needed stuff drops during my heroics I'll obviously pick it up. I've already got epic legs for that set. But I won't be investing any more money into it at this point.

Panning of Gold

2009-09-17T09:31:00.002+01:00

Since hitting level 80 with my Pally, I've been battling to earn enough cash to pick up epics for him.
It seems that these days you're expected to be an uber player from the minute you hit level 80, or you get frowned on even in heroics.

With my Hunter, I had every rep and quest item to the best possible spec before entering a single heroic. What it meant was my DPS was massively higher than everyone elses on every occasion.
Now, months later, my Hunter has had an almost full gear upgrade (mising a few trinkets and rings, simply because I havent come across one better than my blues). And the resut is that his DPS has improved, but everyone elses has improved more. He can still hold his own in a fight where he can stand still and unleash the fury, or AOE the shit out of millions of mobs, but in tactical fights his DPS is a little under par.

Anyway, back to my Pally. I now have epic shield, boots, legs, helm and weapon.
The shield was courtesy of Grenth and his BOE Blacksmithing, as were the boots, my helm is the sob story. I paid out around 500-600g in mats and enchants for another BoE from Grenth, only for a better one to drop first go in Heroic ToC... Bastard. Thats a few days work that I'll never see again.
But it seems it was my night for drops. I also got my Legs, and my Weapon too.
So 3 epics in a day, and my HP has now jumped from 22k (SelfBuffed) to just under 29k. Maybe now people will stop sneering at me when I say I'm the tank.

So after spending a couple of hours questing (and building hodir rep) I'd saved up another 300g, and spent most of it on the AH re-enchanting, and buying gems etc..

I think I still need a bit more practice with my Tanking. I'm getting the hang of it. But I'm still struggling a little bit with multi-mobs. Saying that, overaggro has been a problem from some players. I know that in a raid situation, with a fully geared tank, it's almost impossible to pull the aggro. But with a fresh tank, with nothing but blues, you need to be more careful. Particularly if your fully epic'd yourself. When did Omen stop being an essential requirement at end game?

Anyway, that's enough moaning for now. Things are actually going well with the Paladin. He's already over the Defence cap, I'm already exchanging +Def for +Stam wherever possible, and it won't be too long before he's got a good set of gear and will be able to help out in raids.

Extending my Patience

2009-09-09T11:34:00.002+01:00

Blizz has apparently decided to extend the maintenance on the Darkspear server, until around 2pm today. The cheeky Bastards!

They've thanked me for my patience and understanding, but I don't think they appreciate that today was one of the rare days where I'm actually able to play for the full day. I was obviously expecting to be offline until after 10am due to the regular weekly maintenance, but for christs sake...2pm??

If I wasn't enjoying the game so much at the moment, I'd cancel my subscription in disgust.
OK, now that I've gotten that rant out of the way, I've tried to use my time effectively.

So I've had a look at what gear I can pick up for my Pally's Tanking-Set. And it looks like my best options are BOE Blacksmithing recipes for most of the slots.
Meaning I'll be skipping most of the heroic gear altogether, and jumping directly to Raid levels of gearing.

I know Grenth can make some of this stuff, but that means waiting till he's online. So here's my list of required items, give me a shout in-game if you can make them:

Breastplate of the White Knight
Titanium EarthGuard Chain
Indestructible Plate Girdle
Saronite Swordbreakers
Tempered Titansteel Treads
Tempered Titansteel Helm

I might not be able to buy them all at once, depending on what mats are needed. So I'll probably spend today doing some instances, and trying to grind some more cash. A few thousand gold should be more than enough for my needs. And will just leave me needing trinkets, rings and legs.

Craftingness

2009-09-09T10:44:00.002+01:00

I've always tried to avoid having a crafting profession on any of my toons.
Sometimes when I've rolled a new one, I've started them out with something I thought might be useful. But in the end I've usually ended up switching it for a second gathering prof.

I've just never really seen the point. Most of the end-game gear is better or equal to the crafted items. And it's effectively easier to get, because it either comes from rep rewards or from instances which other people will also be doing, and also provide additional drops and benefits.

I think part of the problem is that the lower level items produced by crafters are just totally pointless now. Essentially you're going to be grinding out the lower levels, and spending extortionate amounts of gold leveling your prof, just to reach the higher levels where things start to become useful again.
Having said that, I've levelled my Engineering on my new Pally. To the point where I can now use the AH in Dalaran. Now it's cost me around 800-1000g to reach that point. But I've also made some ofthat back by selling some of the crafted mats.
I also have maxed mining skill, but I try never to use my own mats. What I do instead is buyout any underpriced ores / bars on the AH, and then post mine at just under the price of the next highest.
This isn't always posible, obviously, if the prices are stable, and there's lots of an item available, sometimes it's just more sensible to use my stuff, rather than paying the posting fee, and letting the AH take its cut too.

But anyway, the point is realy the crafting. Using engineering as an example:

Between certain level ranges, the lower level engineering items are used in higher level items. For example, blasting powders are used in many items, but the powders themselves are crafted at a much lower level than the items they are created for. This makes sense.

But once you pass the next level of the profession (e.g. Moving up to Grandmaster) all the stuff you've made and learned before that level is wasted. The items are useless to you, and with the excpetion of a few crafted materials they're worthless on the AH and with vendors.

Now, in my opinion, what Blizz need to do is allow items to be recycled (this would especially fit in with the engineering prof). Essentially this is the same as dis-enchanting, where materials are extracted from a crafted item.
You wouldn't get back everything that you put into it. But you'd at least salvage some of the mats to re-use or re-sell.
Or, the lower level items should be useable or transmuteable into higher level items. Think of the skinning Prof. Every skin can be transmuted into a higher version. It might need 10 of a certain skin to make 1 of the next level, but so what? If they don't get used, they'll eventually just get vendor'd.

With everyone who's trying to level a profession needing to make exactly the same items just for the sake of levelling, they're bound to be worthless to others, or have little value on the AH.
I know Blizz like their money-pits, but in the case of professions, they're going to be making enough back anyway. Do they really need to have us vendoring all of that crap?

With all that said, I'll be sticking with my engineering, although I won't be pushing hard to max it. It was more for the AH and the funnily-useful stuff like portable mailboxes and repair bots, rather than for epics.

Dings and Dongs

2009-09-09T08:51:00.002+01:00

Well what a surprise that was!

After spending the day slowly levelling my Paladin, through his final level, I got called up to DPS Malygos because some of the raiders hadn't turned up.
I'll be honest, after waiting nearly 35 minutes to start (which is a long time when you were called in as a replacement), meaning that we only agro'd him just after 9pm, when the raid was due to start at 8pm. I was almost ready to say "thanks, but no thanks" and go back to my pally.

But I stuck it out, and I'm glad I did. First try we got to Phase 3 in plenty of time, but about 8 of the raiders were dead within seconds of phase 3 starting. After a quick but effective explanation from Vind, and a demo of the skills using the daily quest dragons, we tried again. The bastard just would not go down though. We got him to 1.8% before the wipe.

Spurred on by our almost-win, we tried again. Didn't do so well on the 3rd try, but on the 4th attempt down he went, easily. Most of the raiders were still alive by the end of it, and the chat screen flooded with achievement dings from all of the players. Good job all....

So after that hour or so of distraction, I relogged on my pally. With only 200k XP to grind. And 20-30 mins later, he Ding'd too.

So off to IF to learn all my final skills, for both specs. And then to the AH to empty my bags and begin my hunt for Epics.
In the last 2 levels of grinding I've made another 2k gold, so I've got a good amount to start me off.
My best investment was a TitanSteel Shield Wall, courtesy of Grenths BS. They sell for around 600g on the AH, but the mats were just short of 400g. (There's a profit to be made there if there are any goblins among you).
I could have also picked up the Tempered TitanSteel Treads, and Helm. (Again selling for 600g, but mats at 400ish) But 1 Epic was enough for the night. And I didn't want to spend all my money at once.

So today I'll check what rep-rewards are available, and then begin my next grind. To achieve 540 defence. I'm at 495 already, so it shouldn't be too hard to reach. (The 2 BS epics might even push me upto that anyway).

So, all in all, it was a good night.

Final(ish) Destinations

2009-09-04T11:58:00.002+01:00

Not planning to play much last night, I logged on while watching Final Destination 3.

Somehow, while watching a couple of bimbos get their boobs fried on a sunbed, a steroid abusing meat-head get his melon squashed by a gym machine, a nail-gun accident that some Goths would beg for, and a roller-coaster ride that makes Blackpool Pleasure Beach look almost 'safe'. I managed to ding to level 77.

I wasn't particularly trying very hard. And I was intended to go to Zul'Drak next. But at the Dalaran FP was a priesty type of NPC offering to give me quick transport to Sholazar. So why not?

100's of Rhinos, Sabres, and Giraffes later, with a bang and a flash, I levelled. Spent my extra talent point on some non-Prot related talent, Soulstoned to Lagaran, and logged off.

Apologies if I didn't say goodbye. But the film was coming to an end, and I'd already been online for longer than I expected to.

Levelling Tip #136:
Place a cheesy film on your TV, pay very little attention to it, apart from the obligatory nudy scenes, of course, and the levels will just fly by.

ABC.. It's easy as PvP

2009-09-03T12:44:00.002+01:00

2 posts in a week about PvP, from a non-PvP player like me... I must be feeling particularly agressive at the moment.

As my post yesterday shows, I'm not at all against PvP content. I'm just not into the ranked matches etc... In my opinion, a good first person shooter shows off my leet skills much better than a turn-based combat system. And there's very little tactical challenge when you need to be within a certain range of any target, to do anything lethal.
Yep... you guessed it... I usually play a sniper in FPS games. And usually a pretty good one at that, patience and planning is my area of expertise.

But I digress.

I think more should be done to encourage World-PvP. Outside the confines of arenas, and battlegrounds. Let things take place in the real-world where random factors can come into play, and the tide of a battle can really be turned by calling in re-inforcements from an ally.

Who else remembers the undercity raid that never was? Or the times when capital cities have been under siege by NPC's? Those are fun times.

I've no idea if anyone from Blizz reads this blog. And they probably don't. But funnily enough they seemed to go along with almost every suggestion I made about the next expansion. So there's no harm in trying again.

I suggest World-PvP. I don't mean forcing everyone to join in if they don't want to. That's what PvP servers are for. But I think there should be more encouragement for kicking off fights with the opposing factions.

How about a daily / weekly quest to kill all the leaders of the opposing faction? Complete it all within the week, and you gain a decent stash of gold, maybe like 1k gold.
I know there's an achievement similar to this. But some of us prefer to spend our time doing more useful things.
If the reward for killing all the leaders was 5k, and could be repeated weekly, how many people do you think would farm that quest? There would be alot more confrontation, as capital cities were constantly raided, and leaders slain.
At the moment. If you complete this feat you get... jack shit. Maybe you get a title... I'm not sure.. and who cares. But what if by completing the quest, not only did you get your 1k. But for the rest of the week all your faction also got a buff, or a bonus?
Maybe access to an extra dungeon, like in Wintergrasp. Or to a Buff that simply provides a 10% Rep gain boost?

Here's how I'd see it working:

All faction leaders have a decent amount of difficulty - Say something equivalent to a raid boss.
If a team defeats a leader, then the leader is captured, and imprisoned in the throne room of an opposing faction.
While their leader is imprisoned, that faction has a small debuff applied. (Along the lines of -5% gold from vendors).
Those leaders can be freed by the Hordies defeating the leader holding them captive. This then returns that leader to their throne room, and imprisons our leader.
If all leaders are captured at the same time, then the conquering faction recieves the a buff for the rest of the week. (10% rep, or extra gold or whatever).

This could help promote a constant battle between the two sides, without affecting the overall lore of the game. No leaders are killed in the making of this lore, and no one has to take part iof they don't want to.

And keep in mind that by Cataclysm, there'll be 6 leaders for each side, that's a big mission for someone to take on. So maybe the rewards need to be higher.
I wouldn't suggest any DPS style buffs / debuffs as a reward though, as that could take alot of balancing.

The one big downside I can see to this is framerates. Some of the capital cities already struggle just to deal with the number of people they hold. Start an all out war inside them, and watch the servers meltdown.

Does my HP look big in this?

2009-09-03T11:07:00.002+01:00

Managed to get some more questing done last night. As well as a normal Azjol-Nerub run with Bolle, DM, a PUG'd DPS, and my old freind Skullz (now known as Volkan).
Turns out that Bolle, and Volkan are now in the same raid guild together... Small world eh?

Random Violence must have a pretty decent raid team, since they left both Bolle, and Volkan out last night. But their loss is my gain. And AN went down without a hitch. Apart from a bugged boss that totally regen'd once he reached 20% HP. The fight lasted about 5 minutes, and we could have kept it up, but we realised it was definitely a no-go'er and a quick Divine Intervention on Bolles preist, meant a quick wipe, and a quick recover. The same boss went down within about 30 seconds on the next go... Pussy.

My Tanking felt a little smoother this time. At least to me.
Marking macros worked well. Remembered to keep Divine Plea up most of the time. And chain pulled whenever possible. Now that I've got my rotation set-up things don't seem quite as hectic during fights.

Since we couldn't find a big enough group to do any other runs, we broke the party up and went off to do our individual things. Personally I went back to the Grizzly Hills, and cleared every single quest in the zone. Giving me a Ding, and I'm already 60% of the way to the next level.

So Smythadin is now officially Level 76, and a half. At no point, in any of the quests in Grizzly hills, have I struggled. I don't think I've even seen a graveyard there. And that includes solo'ing all of the 'group' quests. Prot-Pallies are just too powerful.

The nearest I ever got to death was solo'ing an Elite with over 100k HP, plus 4 adds, plus the 8 worgen he summons during the fight. He got me down to about 10% HP, and he was only at 20%. But even then, all I had to do was click Lay-on-Hands and down he went.
After the fight I even realised that I'd forgotten to pop my trinkets and uber-buff. So more fool me, I could have saved myself the shame of using my 'oh shit' button.
The quest was 'Hour of the Worg', in case you're interested.

Then it was off to defeat Ursoc the bear-god. And luckily enough she was already lying there dead. The quest didn't require me to kill her, just to sprinkle some ashes on her corpse. So bingo, another quest done, and some nice blue plate legs, and a blue shield as a quest reward. Excellent.

I also made the nooby mistake of not reading quest text, so went to the area where you have to set fire to some trolls, and started killing them. Only thing is, they respawn very very fast. So I ended up in a continous fight for about 10 minutes. But at no point did my HP drop below 50% or my Mana below 90%. I was even able to re-read the quest text during the fight and /facepalm myself for being an idiot. Without focusing on the fight.

So I've now cleared Borean Tundra, Howling Fjord, DragonBlight, and Grizzly Hills. So next it's off to Zul'Drak, where the armies of the undead and demons have no idea what they're in for.
If bears and trolls stood no chance against the uber-pally, the ghosts and ghoulies had better take a few days off.

It's taking me about 5 hours per level, but that includes travelling time, and time spent at the AH, and waiting for groups etc.. I think the actually levelling time would be about 4 hours per level if I quested non-stop. So if I can get some time online tonight, then I'll ding 77, and should be looking to hit the level cap probably just after the weekend. Then it's rep grinding time.

I've also sussed why Blizz is only adding 5 levels to the next expansion... They don't need any more.
At level 76, for both my Prot and Holy specs, I'm now wondering where to place those last few talent points. In neither spec wil they actually add to my main jobs of tanking or healing. So they're getting placed into extra DPS, which is always a bit of a bonus.

With Blizz only adding 5 levels to the expansion, that means only 5 extra talent points to play with. And probably only 1 more link in each talent tree. The points are probably going to be pretty uneccesary though.
Unless Blizz change the whole dynamics of combat, my Paladin at level 85, will still be just as unkillable even if he didn't have the extra 5 points.

Damn... that turned into quite a long post. I was only planning to do a quick 2 minute update on my Pally's progress. I think I'll go for a lie-down now.

World of Warcraft: Catechism

2009-09-02T12:10:00.002+01:00

Once upon a time, many many years ago. A young(er) man sat in front of his out-dated PC, playing what he thought was one of the best games he'd ever seen.

The graphics were vivid and colourful, the scenery was beautifully rendered, and the multi-player atmosphere was generally very welcoming. He felt that he was actually part of a major storyline, and was sharing those adventures with the other players around him.

And then he made a decision. He had always wanted to try something different, something even mroe immersive. So he pulled out his wallet, blew the dust off his cash-card and went out to pick up a copy of World of Warcraft.
The graphics weren't as good, the scenery wasn't as nice, the multi-player side of things seemed so overwhelming that it was almost easier just to play the entire game as a single-player and never speak to anyone or share an adventure.

And for all his efforts, he was also having to pay £9 a month, for the privellege.
But for some reason, many many years later, he's still paying his 9 quid, and wouldn't seriously consider going back to his original game. Even though it ran better, looked nicer, and didn't have a monthly fee.... ... But why?

World of Warcraft was dominating, back in 2006 when I began to play it. And by that, I don't mean that it was at the top of the charts, or the best game around. I mean it was 'intimidating' and 'daunting' and lot of other 'ings'.

Guild Wars, where everything is instanced, and the only time you'll even see someone outside your group is in a city, felt very much like the game was on rails. It was a semi-safe environment.
You couldn't even reach the next area without being a certain level, or completing a particular quest.

When I first logged in to Azeroth, and got myself out of the starting zone, the world was my oyster. If I'd wanted to walk from one end of it to the other, I could have done. And it would have taken me hours. And then there was a totally seperate continent, more dominated by the opposing faction, that even today I haven't fully explored.

I loved the fact that not everyone was on the same side. And that if I saw an Orc wandering around in the same place I was, that he'd probably be looking for a fight, and have 10 mates secretly hidden behind a nearby rock.

And then TBC arrived. I missed the actual roll-out because I was moving between houses at the time. But it stopped the Orc from being my enemy. The years I'd spent talking about the 'dirty-hordies' now seemed a little pointless. They were now just people who I couldn't speak to, despite them playing the very same game. I'd see them in the same zones, doing the same quests, and occasionally we'd even help each other out without ever saying a single word or emote.
It felt.... weird.

WotLK didn't help much either. It was the same old story. Apart from the guards in cities, everyone else seemed to have completely forgotten about the old rivalries. They were doing the same quests, and helping the same NPC's as I was. What was the point in being on one side or the other?

I know the storyline was moulded to make the two factions team-up(ish) to defeat a common foe. But if that's the case, how come we still can't speak to each other? Or actually create teams together?

Cataclysm has been announced, and hopefully it will do something to renew the hatred between the 2 sides. I've always wondered if I should have rolled on a PvP server?
I'm not a big PvP player, but it would add an extra dimension to the game if there was always a risk when I was outside of my homelands.

The Orcs and the Humans, The NElfs and the UnDead... we're not supposed to play nicely together. We're supposed to hate each other with a passion, and even if we have a common goal, we'd still give each other a kicking if we thought no one was looking.

So I've got my fingers crossed. That when the new expansion hits, some dirty-hordie will jump out from behind a random tree and spank me. And then I'll have to call in my mates, and he'll call in his mates, and we'll all sort it out like the mass-murdering, plundering and pillaging, homicidal 'Heroes' that we all are.

So paint your faces in blue biro, put on a skirt, grab the nearest dealy object, and repeat after me:

"Our enemies who art nothing but scum. Hordies be they name. Thy time has come, thout will be done. On Azeroth, as it was in early 2007."
"Give us today are daily quests, and forgive not our trespasses, as we do not forgive those who trespass against us"
"For ours are the kingdoms, the power and the glory, forever, and ever Amen!"

Doing the Dual-Spec Disco

2009-09-01T11:10:00.002+01:00

I splashed out 1000g on dual spec'ing my Paladin yesterday.

He's only level 75, but I was going to spend the money at some point anyway, so why not now. I want to get a little healing practice in before the level-cap anyway.

The Pally will be a Tank for main-spec, and a Healer off-spec. I'm getting to grips with the Tanking business now. But still need some more dungeon runs to make sure I've mastered it.

I'm used to Pally healing, my last Pally was one of the main healers in the Karazahn days. But obviously things have changed a little since then.
I haven't had chance to test my healing skills yet, but the 'beacon of light' spell seems so overpowered to me. Unless things have massively changed, I remember being able to keep a group alive while mainly focusing on the MT. Now that you don't even have to really look at the MT as long as your healing 'someone' that's going to be even easier.

I still expect healing to be the equivalent of playing 'whack-a-mole' rather than watching the main action. But since it's only my off-spec I'm not too worried about that.
I do intend to mostly play as a tank, and I'm not the sort of person who's afraid to say 'no' if I'm invited only as a healer, too often. If I need to increase my gear though, and runs are a bit thin on the ground, I can always heal a run but collect the rewards as a tank.

Tribal Dance

2009-09-01T10:35:00.003+01:00

I'm posting this here, and not in the main Munqui Tribe forums as this is my own thoughts on an issue and not, possibly, the right way for the GM of a guild to think.
But having said that, I'm the GM, and I do think this way, and I'm not often wrong, so maybe it is right?

(I know quite a few guildies read this blog anyway, so I'm sure word will get out quickly)

Anyway, we've had issues for the last few weeks with people feeling 'left-out' of the guild. To the point where they feel they're being mis-treated in some way, and have quit the tribe.
Their whole argument is about lack of replies to their requests in G-Chat. And being 'forced' to take a specific type of toon into a raid / heroic, when they want to play on another.

Now, personally, I think all this is a load of rubbish. Even when we have 30+ people online, you can type something into guild chat, and nobody will respond to you. It's because their busy, they're in a raid, or heroic, or AFK, or have gone to make a coffee, or put the kids back into bed, or any other of the million things that people do while they play WoW.
If people are generally just questing, or farming, or those simple sort of things, you'll end up with half a dozen replies before you can even blink. They might not all be helpful, or even make sense (depending who's online) but they'll still be replies.

As for bringing the toon you want, to the heroic / raid you want. Well that's in your own hands. It's simple. Just say "No Thanks". It's completely possible to gear up an toon to be raid ready these days using mostly Rep rewards, or by Pug'ing heroics.
True, I'd much rather play with some guildies than go with a PUG, but it's not always possible. Especially if it's an Alt, and the rest of the guild is all playing on raid-geared level 80's.
But freinds are freinds, and given time you'd always find the group you needed.

But if not getting a reply, or no one wanting to do the things you want at the time you want, upsets you to the point where you feel you need to leave. I'll thank you for your service to the guild so far, and smile and nod, and then I'll hold the door open for you.

But all this brings me to the real point of this post:

With the announcement of Cataclysm comes the new 'Guild Stuff'.
Details are still sketchy, but I've pulled this from Gevlons Blog (The Greedy Goblin). And I think he's got alot of valid points about it.

Players get points for their guilds while playing
Guilds can use this points to get "talents", that have effect to the players, like +7% money from monster loot
Guilds can buy consumables and reagents from the points
Guilds can buy heirloom items and recipes that are bound to the guild, player loses them upon gquitting.

Now if all this had already been in place, the guild members that were upset would almost definitely be making use of this stuff, as they are long-serving members.

Would they have been as eager to leave the guild if all of the above had been in place?

Gevlon thinks that it will cause a lot of guild drama. With people pointing fingers at others to try and save themselves from being kicked, or to try and get more from the guild by eliminating others. But I disagree.

I think these changes will be great for our guild. They'll help promote a sense of community. And, assuming the rewards can be accessed depending on your rank, will encourage players to contribute more to the guild to gain ranks, even if only to access those features. And by doing this they then commit themselves to the guild, with the added penalty of losing items / recipes etc.. if they up and leave.

The tribe is 'social', that doesn't mean we're a push-over. It just means that we're open to accepting all different kinds of players. And if we can reward those who deserve it, and have something for the others to aspire to, then it's all good.

I'm sad to see players leaving the guild, but it's sort of enivitable that people change over time. Their needs are no longer met by us.
I think the new expansion will help this quite alot. By promoting that community spirit. You might even see an entire army of Munquis all wearing their guild tabards, if that's the way points are collected.

Now if they can just sort out some guild housing, I'll might even pre-order myself a special-edition of the expansion for a change.

Come with me if you want to Level

2009-08-27T10:50:00.002+01:00

I'll be Back, the famous words uttered by Ahrnuld in god knows how many movies.

Well, I'm back, and my blog is with me.

As I've said before, I write this blog mostly at work. I've had a little time off for the summer, and when I have been at work it's been pretty hectic, so I just haven't had time to write.

I never actually stopped playing the game. What I've done is take my new Human-Paladin, 'Smythadin' to the lofty heights of level 74.

Now I don't claim to be a power-leveller, and I know that Blizz have been nerfing the levelling speed for a long time now. But by rolling a new toon I've found out just how much.
With only 5 days played he reached level 73. WTF is going on with that??

True, Paladins probably are over-powered at the moment. By levelling as a ProtPally I can massacre an entire army of mobs and come out at the end with full mana and full health. And by an army... I really do mean an army. There's been times when there's been 15-20 mobs!

I've played a ProtPally before, and I thought he was OP then, but these days... Oh My God.

In those usual moments, in solo play, where you acidentally pull extra mobs by getting too close, or with fears, or mobs runnign away it's usually an 'Oh Shit' moment. But with this toon I actually get slightly excited, it adds a little bit of challenge. And the only thing I really have to worry about is my frame rate, with all those numbers flying up my screen.

I tried tanking Old Kingdom with him the other day. It's actually my first time tanking in a group in 2 or 3 years, so I was a little nervous. It takes a lot of concentration to stay aware of what's going on with loose mobs, and controlling CD's to silence casters etc... but it's pretty much exactly what I expected it to be.
Bolle provided me with a few good pointers, mainly about mana regen, divine plea, and the Seal & judge combos. And all that did was serve to make me even more imba.

We wiped once on the Old Kingdom run. On the apostles. I can safely say that it was the DPS fault, since in that encounter lack of DPS on the adds means the boss enrages. She did, Bolel healed his little ass off, but I still went down. Second try and it was all good.

The speed with which this toon has levelled is astounding me. And add into the mix that I've also been levelling my Mining skill, and spent hours playing the AH to level JC'ing, only to decide, once I'd reached around level 300, that engineering was better. So splashed another 1.5k and another few hours on the AH and I'm now a 354 engineer. And, as a bonus, I no longer have to go to IF to use the AH... Nice.

Now all I have on my to-do list is to get some more practice in tanking instances. And sort some sort of addon / macro to mark targets for me. As it slowed me down quite a bit having to do the whole right-click menu thing on the mobs last time.

Guild Mergers?

2009-07-20T08:55:00.005+01:00

I had a funny message last night from Manda.

A guy named Bluestealth had whispered him to ask about a guild merger. Manda passed on my details, and later that day I got a whisper from Bluestealth himself.

He is a RaidLeader in the ENIGMA guild. I'd done a bit of research beforehand, so I already knew who ENIGMA were. They're more raiderish than the Munquis, but not particularly big (which isn't that unusual). The Munquis have been around for god-knows how many years and have had alot of time to grow.

He was suggesting that we merge guilds. And that the Munquis should disband to join them. And that way they would be able to do lots of heroics, and would always be able to find a raid team.

Now, I've no idea why he chose to ask the Munquis to do this, but maybe we weren't the only ones, maybe he's just randomly spamming people to ask.

A couple of facts to explain my stance on this:

1) The Munquis are a 'Social' guild.. not a raiding one. We raid, but only for the fun.
2) The Munquis have been around for several years, across 2 servers
3) We have over 400 Active characters (at least that have logged on within the last 5 months). Obviously alot of those will be alts, but even so, it still leaves a pretty decent number.
4) I am not a raid leader, nor do I want to be an 'officer' in any other guild. The next time I'm an officer again, it'll be because I've stepped down in the Tribe, or because we've all moved to a new game.
5) The skills of a GM and a RaidLeader are completely different. One needs to control around 25 players for a few hours at a time, know raid tactics inside out and enjoy the sound of his / her own voice. The other needs to manage the needs and running of a guild, but over a much longer timescale, and never has to say a word if he / she doesn't want to (or happens to have a difficult to understand northern accent).
6) If the Munquis are ever sturggling for raid members, we have people we can call on to help out. Freinds, Guildies who have alts in raid guilds, and other guilds (like BAD APPLES) that we have a raiding stsaus with.

Offering me an Officership, and a position as a Raid Leader, in return for merging our guilds was just pointless.

ENIGMA had 8 players online at the time (3 lvl 80's). The Munquis had 15 online (8 lvl 80's).

Bluestealth suggested that if we merged "We could do more heroics". I don't believe we have struggled to find enough players for a heroic in a very long time.

The Munquis have around 400 toons, including Alts. I believe has around 80, including Alts.

Given all of the above, why the hell would anyone even ask??

Now, don't get me wrong, I don't think I know anyone from ENIGMA and they may be a great bunch of people, but c'mon... seriously?

I did suggest that they diband and come over to us. The answer was "Hang on, I'll ask" and when I didn't get an answer 60 seconds later I whispered him again and got an 'No player name Bluestealths is currently playing'.... figures.

So if any other guilds are considering asking us to merge. Do your homework first.

Another Day Another Ding

2009-07-14T10:56:00.002+01:00

My new Pally has been getting most of my love and attention recently. And it seems to be paying off nicely.

He went from 47 -50 yesterday, and by the time I logged off he was 80% of the way to 51.

And he's finally reached the Plaguelands which, as everyone knows, is Pally heaven.

I can easily run into a group of melee mobs around my level, aggro 10-12 of them at a time, and come out laughing with full mana by the end of it.
Should any crits land on me, a 2.5 second heal puts me back at almost full health.

My XP bar was filling up so fast it was almost scary.

I havent really played a Pally in a while, but I like what they've done with the Holy Wrath and Exorcism spells. They're now much more useful, and with added crunchiness on the undead / demon mobs.

Agrro 10 zombies / skeletons, holy shield, consecration, holy shield, Holy Wrath, pop a heal if needed (while they are all stunned), lather, rinse, repeat. (Although by the lather they're usually all dead).

Another night or two like this and he'll ding into the high 50's and then it's a quick whizz around Outland before jumping headfirst into Northrend.

Just to prove that Blizz really have nerfed the levelling game... you all remember the gold spam adverts claiming to get you from 1-60 in 10 days?
Well Smythadin is almost 51 and he currently has 2 Days 17 Hours '/Played'. I thought Blizz had only nerfed the levelling time by 20%, but apparently not.

UB40, IB40, EveryBodyB40

2009-07-06T10:14:00.002+01:00

A distinct lack of blogs from me recently, but with good reason or two.

My office firewall has decided that blogs are corrupting all the government workers.
I didn't realise the UK just became part of China, but apparently we are, so my blogs will be more limited for now, until I find a good way around it.

I can already blog by email, but the formatting is a mess when I do, so I'd rather not go down that route.

The other reason is that I've been too busy. I'm levelling up a new Paladin, as some of you may have noticed.
I'm not trying to power-grind him or anything, it's just working out nicely.

And with 1 Day 20 Hours currently '/Played' he is now level 40. 15 more levels and he'll be grinding Hell-Boars in Outland.

I started him as Ret, then switched to prot as soon as it was convenient. Ret was great, solo mobs stood no chance but it wasn't the fastest way to play, and I always missed tankign on my previous Pally.

The fire festival buffs of +10% xp, plus my heirloom shoulders have obviously helped. But these days I can pretty much send Smythadin into a group of 6-8 mobs a few levels above him and, as long as there's no casters, there'll be a pile of bodies a few seconds later. No wonder its going so fast.

The odd boost or designer gear run from freinds has helped too. Boosted through DM, Boosted through Stockades, and a half run of SM to pick up a shield that will last me for several levels to come. Uldaman, Gnomeregan etc... are way too much hassle to be honest. They're far too long to ask someone wasting the time to boost me, and the number of quests there are fairly minimal.

If I had a nice big lump of quests all at once, like you can pick up for DM and Stocks, it would be more worthwhile... Something for blizz to think about maybe.

The next instance I do will probably be Zul'Farak. But maybe not even then.
None of the outland instances are really essential to levelling either. So it's likely that I'll bypass them altogether. I'll stomp through Outland, or maybe fly through it if the patch comes out in time. And then onto Northrend where I'll start in the Borean Tundra for a change. I haven't done a single quest there yet, on any toon.

Don McLean would be turning in his grave!

2009-06-24T07:59:00.011+01:00

A long long time ago,
I can still remember,
How my Pally used to make me smile.
And I knew if he'd had his chance,
He could make those numbers dance,
And Pwn 17 elite mobs at a time.

But being a dwarf it made me shiver,
And he became a healing giver.
Bad news on the doorstep,
I couldn't take one more step.
And I can't remember if I cried,
When I healed my best and the tank still died.
But something touched me deep inside,
The day, the Main Tank Died.

So I was singing:
Bye Bye Mr Paladin I,
Drove your healing to the limit, and the limit was high,
But I've got a good old Hunter I've been itching to try,
So I'm thinking this'll be the day that you die...
This'll be the day that you die.

So I showed my old toon some love
And rained down death from far above
Because WowWiki told me so.
My Hunter became my rock'n'roll,
The music couldn't tame his savage soul,
And he let the arrows fly out from his Bow.

Well I know that everyone loved him
His DPS was the best I'd seen.
And when he kicked off in blues,
He sent his pet in too.
His damage hit mobs like a truck
But he became GM and then got stuck
And I knew he was out of luck
The day, that KT died.

So I was singing:Bye Bye Mr Hunter I,
Drove your damage to the limit, and the limit was high,
But I've got things that I've been itching to try,
So this'll be the day that you die...
This'll be the day that you die.

Now for 5 years I've been rolling toons
On Darkspear and on Nordy too
But it's not how it used to feel.
Of all the toons I'd ever seen
Paladins were the only ones who'd been
Truly great, and were the ones for me.

So while the guild raiding had slowed down
A new Paladin appeared around town
Guild raiding was adjourned
And the Smythadin had returned.

My Dwarf still had his noble arts
By my Human Pally was in the park
And he brought light into my dark
And so far, he's not died.

So now I'm singing:
Hi Hi! Mr Paladin I
Didn't like your Dwarven brother, but I'm willing to try
Grinding 80 levels, with you by my side
Singing this'll be the way the mobs die...
This'll be the way they all die.

Bye Bye, my old Dwarf was a lie
I only rolled it for my brother, and then he left me dry
So I've re-rolled another and I'm gonna try
Singing, this Human is the one that won't die
This'll be the one that won't die.

(If you don't know the tune, it's gonna make me feel really old. Don McLean would be turning in his grave! *
* If he was dead - Which he isn't)

The Circle of Life

2009-05-22T12:09:00.002+01:00

Just to prove that 'End-Game' content isn't the only place to have fun in WoW, the Munquis held an unplanned level 1 race last night.

15 Munquis rolled a new level 1 toon, met at the gates of IF, and ran cross-country to try and reach SouthShore. While wearing nothing but the, newly coloured, guild tabard.

After a few minor niggles explaining what the hell we were talking about. (Some of the guildies had never heard of our previous races). The race was on.

As is usual in these races, being first is not always best. Early leads from some of the runners soon put them behind when they got their faces chewed off by the bears, spiders and wolves that wander near the pathways. Which gave the others a chance to catch up.

A bit of tactical dying, to leap-frog to a new Graveyard was employed, but was well-within the rules of the game.

Most of the runners seemed to find the hardest part in getting from the Arathi GY, through the wall to Hillsbrad.

The dino's in that area were eating players so fast that they'd definitely need a few indigestion tablets later. But people did manage to break through. And first place was finally taken by Grenth, closely... and I do mean 'CLOSELY' followed by Biafra, with Knicks taking 3rd place.

Nofrett looked a sure-fire winner for the majority of the race, with a huge lead, but it just goes to show that anything can change.

Prizes of 150, 75 and 35g were awarded. Those, who wanted, then carried on through to SFK for a 2nd stage. Won by Creepa, who was awarded another 35g.

The original intention was to try and reach Lordaeron (above Undercity) but it was obviously not likely to happen. So SFK was a last minute diversion.

Gratz to all involved, it was alot of fun watching you all get eaten.
Who needs heroics / raiding to have a good time!

Keep your eyes peeled for the return of the "Royal Rumble" event soon.

Dignifying the Dollars

2009-05-20T14:07:00.002+01:00

I feel I need to clarify my intentions of my previous post a little. So here goes;

World of Warcraft is a game...... OK, everyone still with me? No-one died of shock yet?... Good.

Therefore surely the point of playing the game is to be challenged and have fun with freinds.
No-one wants to play a game that's too easy, it gets boring when you always win. And no-one wants to play a game that's no fun because then it's not a game, it's a job.

Yes, some lucky b*st*rds out there, get to play the games that they love for fun, and for a job. but 99.99% of us don't, so I think I'm covering the majority here.

We pay our money to Blizz every month / quarter / year and for that we expect something in return. But I don't think it's what neccesarily everyone instantly thinks we expect;

If all you wanted was to be able to go into a new dungeon, find some new armour, or become the most powerful person on the planet... there's better ways to do it than WoW.

Any single player RPG will make you feel more powerful, and epic than anything WoW has to offer. And if you want new content, go and look in a bargain bin for some of the non-MMO RPG's, you'll find plenty of them I garauntee you. Some of them are even multi-player, so what's not to like?

They're not social. To play on them with your freinds, even in a single dungeon, you need to find the freinds first and then organise yourselves, and then at the end of it, all is usually lost and you've all got to start again from scratch next time you play.

What Blizz (and other MMORPG developers) do is to deal with all that tricky stuff for you. No set-up problems, plenty of things to experience together, occasional new challenges, persistent worlds. And provide the tools for you to do it in a social environment.

I'd bet there's very few people in the world who have actually seen all there is to see in World of Warcraft. Yet many complain about the lack of new content.

I believe that the reason we keep paying our money, and certainly the main reason I pay my money, is for the social aspect.
No freinds = no fun. If I just wanted to go into dungeons and kill stuff I'd play something else, likely without a subscription fee.

But I get the impression that the whole of the WoW player base is becoming too focused on achieving something. And I'm not talking about collecting points that you can't spend.

Everyone seems very eager to be the best, or to conquer the next big thing. But to be honest.. what's the rush?
Once you've done it, you've done it. Hooray! Now what?

Whereas if you play the game simply to do things with people you like it has a lot more life in it.

Don't believe me? Want an example?

Chess.

How old is that game? I bet there's never been an expansion for it. You only have about 6 different characters in the whole thing. But millions of people play it. And probably millions more have tried it. Because the idea isn't to be the best, although some people are exceptionally good. The idea is to do something social and challenging with similarly minded people.

Want another? Cards. Another? Monopoly.

Allright, those games aren't exactly the same as playing WoW, but they've managed to maintain a player-base of millions without all of the bells and whistles that people seem to expect from WoW.

Prior to the pre-WotLK patches, most of the Munquis had never dreamed of setting foot in Zul'Aman.
But were they bothered by that? I don't think they were.
Blizz spent months, if not years, designing the place, so has the content in Zul'Aman suddenly got worse? I doubt it.
So how many players do you think have been back to clear Zul'Aman, and experience all the hard-work that was put into it? You might, only just, have to take your socks off if your the sort of person who counts on their fingers.

The point of all this is that it's not new content that drives WoW. It's the social aspect of it. If people want to be the best, then that's fine... good for them.

But who usually sticks around longer, the ones who are in big social groups like the Munquis, or the ones who are seriously hard-core and 'finish' the game as quickly as possible?

Achieving is good, but imagine the guy who works all his life and dies a lonely old millionaire, with no family and freinds.
He might get to be a regular at the playboy mansion, and he might drive a sports-car, but on the day he dies, all everyone can say is "Oh, he died?... How much?". With Wow, once that player leaves there isn't even a funeral, or a will to argue over, they're just gone.

So let's focus on doing the fun and sociable stuff. And achieve only if it's fun.

The Good the Bad and the Bolle

2009-05-19T15:40:00.004+01:00

Longish Post. No offence to Bolle meant in any of it. And I still love the Munquis.

The Munquis have always been a sort of safe-haven in the World of Warcraft, at least, that's the way I see them.

We're very flexible on our recruiting policies, we basically accept any sort of person / player, and allow people to come and go as they please. We try not to make any serious demands on the players time, unless they want to be a part of orgainsed raiding etc..

We're sort of a jack of all trades guild. Freindly, Sociable, and well bonded together.
I'm pretty sure there's very few players out there who have a truly bad word to say about us.

But that's also part of our problem. Because we're so laid back we can sometimes lose focus on the things that make us a good guild.

I purged the unused toons from the guild the other day. Anyone who hadn't logged on for 6 months or more was out. I probably kicked about 30. And many of them were low level alts.
I think about 4 of them were just Funks! Which was good for a laugh seeing as he was online at the time, and objected to every kick.

But that still left about 300 toons who were regular players, of course many will be alts, but not all of them.
We lose players from time to time because people get borde of WoW, or just end up playing a different game. And that's fine, and to be expected. Some of them might even come back to us after a few months.

But we also lose players like Bolle. And that's a concern for me. Bolle (along with a few others) has always had a history of being more hardcore than the rest of us.
Not in a bad way, at all. He just plays harder, and progresses faster than the average Munqui.
So it's been pretty common for players like him to keep a main in the Munquis and another Main in a raiding guild, and we've generally been happy with that set-up. They usually find a raiding guild that's happy with it too, although there probably aren't many.

Dungeon Raiders deserve an honorable mention at this point. Many of our better players have joined with them for more serious gaming. And they don't seem to have a problem with them maintaining a connection to the Munquis... Kudos.

But recently Bolle took most of his other toons out of the guild too. Not all of them, he still has one or two lurking around. But he took the rest out, and not to join another guild, or to go hardcore on our asses, but just because he felt the guild had changed, and wasn't as suited to him as it used to be.

My first reaction would normally be "maybe it's Bolle that's changed, not us" but it's very clear to me that it's not true. I actually know where he's coming from.
The people aren't the same, the feeling isn't the same, and a little of what makes the tribe a fun place to be has been lost. With Bolle leaving that's made it even worse.

I'm saying Bolle's name alot, and it's not that I'm singling him out or anything, I just feel that he's a perfect example of why the Munquis need to change again. We need to get back to having more fun, and being less serious about stuff. Progress is good, but not at the expense of losing good people.

It's the "Expansion Syndrome" that I blame, there's a new level-cap everyone rushes to reach it, and has alot of fun doing so, but once they're there they don't know what to do with themselves. So they get more serious and start looking for progress.

When I rejoined the Munquis, TBC was already out, and I went back to start from level 1, while some of the guys were already level 70. I was an officer again by level 40, and at level 80 I'm now the GM.
But the reason I gave up everything to switch servers and start again from level 1 was because of the fun I'd have with the Munquis.

I could've stayed on Nordy, formed my own guild, tried to keep it fun, but it'd never have been the same. I've asked myself this question a few times now:

"If I'd joined the Munquis again today though, and had to start from level 1, would I have stuck with it?"

Unfortunately, I think the answer would have been "No". And that's not good.

So let's bring back the fun, win back some players, maybe recruit some fresh blood. And get the Munquis back where they belong. Kicking ass in raids while at the same time doing stupid things just-for-the-sake-of-it.

Who's with me?

Pet Levelling

2009-05-15T09:58:00.002+01:00

After doing a bit more research on the best way to play as a survival hunter, I've re-tuned my rotation and re-specced a couple of my talent points.

Mainly to weave Serpent Sting back into the mix, which now gives me an overall 3% damage increase thanks to 'Noxious Stings'.

I also checked out the rumors about Wolves being the pet of choice for Survival Hunters, and it seems to be correct, if only slightly.

So I set off to pick up a new wolf from the Hellfire Ramparts, and after dying only 3 times, due to having to go with no pet, and being absolute sh*te at melee. I finally grabbed my new mutt. Which instantly began chewing the face off anything nearby. Nice.

I Haven't picked a name for him yet.

The problem now lies in levelling him up. My first lvl 80 pet was my cat, which obviously levelled up with me. My second was a Gorilla which was great for multi-mob grinding, and didn't take too long. But this one has got to make up a whole 5 levels solo'ing mobs one at a time. (It's either that or they'll all come and hit me instead).

I hate grinding, anyone got any better ideas?

The Great Munqui Photo-Shoot (Competition)

2009-05-14T13:20:00.003+01:00

I'm running a competition over on the Munqui Tribe forums:

http://www.munquitribe.dk

First prize is 500g.

I thought of offering more, but I intend to do more things like this and didn't want to bankrupt the guild within a month of taking it over.

It's open to anyone with at least one toon in the guild. So check it out, and spread the word.

Surving as a Hunter

2009-05-13T14:19:00.003+01:00

My recent re-spec to Survival has gone well.. very well in fact.

I'm jumping back up the ranking as one of the top DPS'ers again. It's taken a little while to get used to the new playing style. But if anything it's actually a little simpler than playing as a Beast Master.

On bosses / mobs where I'm allowed to stand still and nuke to my hearts content my DPS (probably thanks to the 'Sniper Training' talent) is awesome. It's a bit less impressive on fights where I've got to move around alot, but still holds its own.

Being used to BM I was used to a differnt shot rotation, and was still stuck on the idea that stings were important. As survival, they're not.
My BM rotation was:
Mark -> Sting -> Multi-Shot -> Steady -> Steady
As Survival it's now:
Mark -> Black Arrow -> Explosive -> Steady -> Steady -> Explosive

Using stings was actually lowering my DPS because of the global cooldown, and the fact that my new glyphs mean that I don't recieve the bonuses from it that I used to.
I miss my traps a little too, since I'm almost always spamming Black-Arrow, which shares a cooldown. But for the times when I do use a trap (when I have time to prepare) they're much more effective.

I managed 2.8k DPS on the VH heroic bosses last night, and can easily put out 2.5k on a target dummy. So it looks like the new spec is here to stay, at least until it gets nerfed.

I believe wolves make better pets for Survival Specs too, so maybe a new pet is also on the cards. I'll research that a bit first.

Edit: I'd better re-install Omen too. Before Vedd starts shouting at me. As BM it was almost impossible to over aggro as my aggro was 50% me and 50% pet... as Survival, my pet is just a side-show.

Free Realms

2009-05-13T11:09:00.002+01:00

Having read so much about Free Realms from Tobolds blog, and follwing my dissapointment in City of Heroes, I thought I'd give it a qucik try.

I wasn't really expecting it to be my sort of game, and my expectations weren't the highest. But I was very pleasantly suprised. The graphics are actually pretty good, the basic gameply elemts all seemed to be there, and although I felt it held your hand a little too much I can see myself playing more of it.

Probably the best thing was that I could easily see my 9 year old son loving the game. He always wants to play on Warcraft, but struggles to do so many things at once on the keyboard.

Funnily enough, give him a Joypad or a Wiimote and he'll kick your ass, with fingers flying faster than the eye can see, but he hasn't fully mastered keyboard gaming yet.

If you have any children who you want to introduce into the world of MMORPG's and spend a little family time together online, Free Realms seems a perfect choice. The 3D graphics are very good, the quality is very polished, the interface is intuitive, and the overall feel is excellent. And best of all... it's "Free". (I know there's micro-transactions but they're optional).

Imagine World of Warcraft between levels 1 -20 and that's pretty much what Free Realms is, albeit quite a bit smaller and with less idiots.

If this was a gaming review blog, I'd be awarding it: 8.5/10

City of Heroes

2009-05-13T00:25:00.002+01:00

It sucks.

Short and sweet, but unfortunately true.
I thought it had alot of potential, and spent ages designing my character, choosing my skills etc.. but in the end, it was laggy, ugly, and I couldn't help but feel the combat was just predetermined, no matter what buttons I pressed.

It's true, I didn't give it much of a chance. But I gave it as much as I thought it deserved.

So much for a 14 day trial.

Ring of Death - Circle of Life

2009-05-12T10:45:00.003+01:00

My Xbox died this weekend. I got the predictable red lights of death almost exactly 1 year to the date I bought my console.
Luckily, the nice people at Microsoft are aware that they little Korean chaps, who actually make the impressive piece of technology, sometimes get a little distracted. So the warranty on all Xbox 360's is now 3 years. Excellent!

Unfortunately, it means that I'll be without my main source of 'casual' entertainment for a few weeks until I get it repaired. I don't find WoW as casual these days, I think Blizz have tuned a little of the fun out of things. It doesn't make WoW bad, it just means I feel the need to invest decent amounts of time in-game to actually achieve anything useful.

Actually, I have two 360's in my House, so I won't be without. But it gives me a chance to try out some other things.

I'd always fancied City of Heroes, it seems a much more casual game, and having been out for a number of years, should be pretty stable and run nicely enough on my laptop.

So before work today, I set the 2.7gb download going, to get the client. And signed myself up to the free 14-day trial.

I don't think it's going to be the game that draws me away from WoW, but it might be a nice distraction for a few weeks, until my Xbox is returned.

Now all I'll have to do is decide if I want to be a Hero or Villian, what special powers I've always wanted, and whether I should go for Leather or Spandex.... choices, choices.
Who knows, if it goes well, maybe I'll set up a 'Supergroup' (aka guild) on there.

Bringing home the baking

2009-05-11T10:44:00.002+01:00

After a week and a bit away from the game (apart from the occasional call-in to see what's happening) things should go back to normal from tonight.

My k*tch*n (it's a dirty word in my mind right now) isn't quite finished, but it's near enough for me to take a night off. So this evening I intend to put my new survival spec to a proper test, either in a raid, or in some heroics.

My DPS isn't seeing the major improvements that it used to, but I suppose that's just to be expected. I got most of the best possible gear quite quickly after reaching the level cap, so any upgrades for me are relatively minor for me. While others who always lagged a littl ebehind in the DPS stakes are seeing much bigger improvements as their gear progresses.

Once I start raiding Ulduar I'm sure I'll see the figures start to move again.

On a side note: The Munquis attacked Undercity and got Lady Sylvanas down to 5% the other night. I missed it unfortunately. But apparently it was alot of fun, and I'm glad to see those sorts of events happening again. They can be much more fun than the average raid / heroic / quest. Ad the randomness keeps things intersting.

Lake Wintergrasp

2009-05-07T10:08:00.002+01:00

Last night, just for the sake of it. Vind, Funk and myself decided to do a bit of PvP.

Not the real thing, obviously, because I really suck at it.
We were goign to start a WSG match and dance naked in the flag-room, just because we can. Unfortunately, we couldn't find 2 other Munquis who wanted to do the same thing.

I think that's a reflection of the changing attitudes towards the game. Once Upon a time, the Munquis would meet-up in capital cities / interesting places just to sit on the floor and chat in each others presence. These days, the Munquis only seem to meet for raids / groups or occasionally by chance. Such a shame... but I digress.

Anyway, somehow or other we ended up doing real PvP in Lake Wintergrasp. A full 40-Man raid was set up by a non-Munqui, and Vind manged to get us all an invite.

Now I'm usually against PvP, but I've got to say that it was quite alot of fun. It was probably the free-for-all aspect of it that appealed to me. There was just a mass of players everywhere, and anything with a red bar above it was fair game.

My FPS almost reached zero at one point, but that didn't stop me somehow being 6th in the overall damage meter (not bad for a group of 40). My recount showed me in 6th, Vind in 10th and Funk in 12th. All round, very good performances.

We did seem to very heavily outweigh the horde, by about 4-1 but in truth I think it would have been even more fun if there'd been more of them. The rewards don't really mean much to me. And I picked up about 6 achievements during the fight, which also mean very little. but the fun factor was pretty high. So I'll probably do it again soon.

The Munquis used to do alot of big PvP raids, for no better reason than "why not". And I think we should bring them back.
I'd bet most of the Munquis have never even seen Thunderbluff or Undercity, and I've never seen Oggrimar or the Belf place, so maybe it's time we got an army of Munquis together and go and kick some hordie ass, just so we can say "Remember when", again.

Online Mafia Games

2009-05-06T12:04:00.001+01:00

I've always been a fan of Mafia / Mobster type games. Gangsters 2, Mafia, Godfather, GTA, Saints Row etc.. etc..

Obviously it would have quite a heavy PvP element to it, but that's all part of the appeal. Guilds / Families would be more important than ever, as there's no way you could take on the other families alone. And a headquarters is an essential part of the play (once your family reaches a certain size and level of influence).

I think what's set this off is my playing of Saints Row 2. Which allows you to go multiplayer throughout the entire storyline, rather than just for a bit of shooty-shooty distraction. An excellent idea, and one that should be implemented in more games.
(I know GoW, R6 etc.. also have similar options, but they're not as open-ended as Saints Row).

I've been having a google around to see if there's any online ones out there. Probably for the PC, rather than the XBox. I could see a mafia-style MMORPG doing quite well. I'd certainly play it... only problem is, I can't find one.

I've played Gangsters 2 online, which was alot of fun. Essentially it's not really any different to playing some of the command & conquer games, only with less units, no tanks, and even more strategy required. The graphics in that game weren't the best, but they were more than enough to make you feel immersed in the atmosphere of the game.

The only games I can find out there are text-based / browser-based games. And as much as they might be good fun for a while, I was looking for something a bit more immersive. It doesn't have to be beautiful, my laptop might melt if I push it anymore, but 2D / 3D would be good.

Anyone know of anything that fits the bill?

How the F*** did that happen?

2009-05-06T10:08:00.002+01:00

This is the second part of the political moving and shaking that's currently going on in the tribe:

I'm soon to become the new Munqui Tribe - Guild Master. Yes, you read that right. No, I haven't been drinking (much). And Yes, I'm definitely awake and not dreaming (I think).

So Lewt and the Officer team are appointing me as the new GM, with the OK from Brast. In my eyes I've always felt that Brast is the true GM of the guild, and the rest of us are just looking after it, feeding the cat, and paying the milkman until his return.

Maybe it's because there's only a few of us original Munquis left now.

Way back, years ago, before any expansion packs and when the level cap was only 60, and the Munquis were still based on Nordrassil. Brast and Vind (called Cyrick at the time) invited a lowby warrior to join them in a Deadmines run. It was good fun, the conversation and banter was excellent, the guys were helpful, and the Deadmines was conquered.
Despite me ninja'ing some of the loot by clicking 'need' (nooby mistake), during the run I was invited to join the guild, and soon found the place I'd call home for years to come.

The GM at the time was Stronghammer, although Brast seemed to mostly run the place.
And before long I was invited to become an officer myself. Unfortunately, my circumstances changed, I moved house, lost my internet conenction for several months and didn't even get chance to say a proper goodbye to the guild.

Many months later, I returned to the game to find the Munquis gone, and spent many long months pining for my missing freinds and trying to find a guild that was as good.
A random google one day churned up the Munqui Tribe forums, I found that the guild had moved to Darkspear, logged on as soon as I got home, "/who Munqui" and bingo, there's a guy named Brastfelt online. Too much of a coincidence. Whispered the man himself, and here I am now, about to take over the leadership.

There may only be a few of the original Munquis left. Just Brast & Piri, Vind and Myself (I think). The new Munquis are just as good, if not better, than the old ones, and I'm proud to call myself a member.

I'll hold the GM position until either I feel someone else can do it better, or until Brast wants his crown back.

Lewt has done a great job so far, and I hope I can keep up the high standards he set.
He's staying in the guild, and he'll still be an officer, so make sure you're extra nice to him, and say thanks.

I said it would never happen... But.

2009-04-30T12:51:00.002+01:00

It's a (semi) well-know fact that I've always been more than slightly against the Survival Spec as a PvE build.

True, in the past, it's been the top raid spec. And also true is the fact that it's become more and more viable as patches have tweaked the hunter role.

After the 3.1 patch, I respecced to MM for a while, in the hope that I could squeeze out a little more pure DPS, but that was a false-hope. All I did was nerf my own pet, and while my own DPS did increase, it wasn't enough to compensate.

Maybe if Trueshot aura was higher in the MM tree it would be more worthwhile investing more points into it. But, for now at least, it's only the top of that tree that I'd consider worthwhile.

But survival now looks like a very promising spec. The "Black Arrow" and "Explosive Shot" look very good, and the potential for DPS from those 2 alone looks like it could be a winner.
It'd mean giving up most of my Macros until I got into the swing of how it all works, but I'm sure I could redesign them later.

I don't have any of the exotic pets anyway, so I'm not going to miss any of those. But it'll feel weird not seeing a giant red Cat ripping the face off anything in front of it.
it wasn't so long ago that I did a little test, just for fun.
I asked Bolle a (full T7.5) Holy Paladin to just stand there and heal himself why my cat attacked him. (I didn't attack). In it's regular attacks he could easily heal himself up forever, but as soon as I popped that big-red-beast button he got his ass handed to him within seconds. He actually spanked my Cat to death rather than just trying to heal out of its DPS. but it proved a point.

So, do I want to lose that feeling of god-like power? Even if it means that I can nuke the crap (even more) out of anything in my path?

Yes.

I'll miss it, but if I really get that sad about it I'll act stupid and pay 1000g for dual specs so I can do it again.

Munqui Lore - The Next Generation

2009-04-28T14:04:00.003+01:00

Munqui Lore - The Next Generation

Chapter 1 - Naxx to the Future

Continuing the traditions of the Tribe, the Munquis decided it was time to put Arthas back in his place. It was fine when he was some random bogey-man that parents told their kids stories about. And whose very name could inspire dread in every non-Munqui in the room. But it just wasn’t on when the bugger started whispering people personally, and turning up in cutscenes.
The guy had obviously developed a “Wizard of Oz” complex. He was all smoke and mirrors, and they must have been fun-house mirrors, because he was never the same size in any of them.
So the Munquis decided to gear-up and get on with it. Arthas was going down, and Frostmourne would be making a great conversation piece, hanging above the fireplace in the guildhall.

To start with, Vedd was put in charge of finding him. There were a few murmurs of “Oh Shit” when Lewt made this decision, but the Munquis were nothing if not loyal. So until Brast returned from babysitting, Lewt was in charge, and his word was law.
(The Munquis were not totally stupid though, and were known to bend laws so much that a even a very big bendy thing, perhaps a willow tree, would normally snap).

After endless moments of searching Vedd found the perfect hiding place for Arthas. Naxxramas. Somehow it had moved from its usual location, and had appeared in Northrend, hovering above a field of undead.
This seemed a little too convenient for some of the Munquis, but action was action, so they dusted the demon guts off their equipment, and set out slaughtering armies of the undead instead.

After just a couple of weeks, they’d reached Wintergarde Keep, and had Naxxramas in their sights. There was just one problem. It was floating 100 feet up in the air.

“Bugger” Said Vedd.
“$£*%!!!” Said Funk.

The Munquis sat in the local inn to ponder the problem, and of-course sample the local ales. This, obviously, then led to more pondering, such as “Why do you need to pee so much” and “Why is there always carrots in it” followed by the desperate desire for thinly sliced generic meat wrapped in stale bread and smothered in a very hot sauce.
Later still, followed by the desire for unprotected sex. And even later still followed by the horrible feeling that the person lying next to them the next morning might either come knocking on their door in about 9 months time or possibly develop a sudden itching sensation in a particularly uncomfortable area for the next few weeks.

After several days of this, the application of numerous jars of ointments, and no less than two shotgun weddings, the Munquis had decided what to do.

“Right,” said Lewt “What we need is plan!”
Bronze, after face-palming himself so hard that he almost fell over, replied “Yeah, we figured that.. How about we fly up there?”
“Excellent idea! Jolly Good Show!” replied Lewt “Promote that man!”
Why Lewt had suddenly turned into a world war 2 army captain, including the big curly moustache and the baton under his arm, no one knew. But they didn’t plan on asking either, the last person to mention it was Shirt, and he was still cleaning those toilets with a toothbrush a week later.

After realising that their flying mounts didn’t work in Northrend, because of something to do with the cold weather, the team set-off to raise enough money to pay for the training.
Along the way, they stumbled across an argument between some dragons around a ‘Wrath’ Gate, A few of the officers tried to point out that the little guy in the full suit of armour was Arthas, and that they should have given him a kicking before he ran back into the giant, evil, impregnable, citadel. But Lewt wouldn’t hear of it.
Several more weeks later, the group had finally acquired enough money to pay for the new training their mounts, supposedly, needed. And were finally ready to enter Naxx.

As a group, they flew on up to the entrance portal, and were confronted by a horrific sight. The place was packed. Obviously other guilds were trying to get a head-strart on Arthas’ ass-kicking and had used devious and under-handed ways to earn their money more quickly. (As opposed to the Munquis way of just killing everything that moved and slaughtering ancient civilisations).

After wading through the mass leather-clad and sweaty bodies, the team dived straight through the first portal they saw. Except for Knicks and Tins, who decided that they needed to do at least 3 more laps of the entrance-hall before finally joining the others.
When they finally did appear, they looked more than a little sweaty themselves, although seemed quite pleased about it. And Tins was briefly seen slipping a phone number into a more secure place.

“Vedd, you’re up!” Commanded Lewt. “Lets get on with this. The general wants an update STAT. And the HQ wants to clear this SNAFU up PDQ, and get us back to base before the locals even know we’ve been here!”
For some reason, Lewt had now shaved off his moustache, along with all the hair on his head, covered his face in grease paint, and was wearing what looked like a necklace made from ears around his neck.
“Hey! Its-a-me Veddy!” Chirpped Vedd.
“Ohhhhhh” groaned the Munquis in unison.
“Vedd, drop the Mario act and get on with it please” begged Vind, with the backing of the entire group.
“OK OK!” Said Vedd. “Enough of the jib-jab you lot, let’s move out. I’m sure Arthas is just around this corner.”
After several minutes of walking around the corner, Vedd finally had to concede that they were going in circles when Biafra started dropping bread-crumbs, and they came across them at least 3 times. It became even more obvious when Funk sat down and started to eat the breadcrumbs, and began waving at the others each time they passed.

“Shall we just turn down one of these side passages?” Suggested Grenth. “It looks to me like they might lead somewhere”.
“Errrrrr, Yeah, sure, I was just about to suggest that anyway.” Said Vedd.

The group turned down the first passage they came to. The giant spider effigy above the arch should have given them a clue what to expect , but I think they were all just so glad for the change of scenery that none of them noticed it.
After disposing of the trashy little spiders that got in their way, the Munquis faced their next big dilemma. More choices. Left… or............ (pause for dramatic effect)......... Right.

“Hold on Lads!” announced Smyth “I’ve got an idea”.

Somewhere, very far from Naxx, someone else spoke those very same words, and a coach full of gold slipped over the edge of a mountain, taking all the passengers with it, and killing them in a horrible and painful way. But the Munquis didn’t know about that, so they just waited to see what Smyth had to say.

Movers and Shakers

2009-04-24T13:07:00.002+01:00

Just a quick update:
The Munquis now have 2 new junior-officers Flowersz and Biafra.

So a big "Welcome" to them both.

This is one part of the political rumblings I mentioned in an earlier post. More will probably follow soon.

The New Munqui Movie Blog

2009-04-22T14:51:00.003+01:00

Instead of making a complete mess of this blog by screwing with the formatting and layouts, I've decided to set up a second blog to do just that with.

So, I'm proud(ish) to present... *drumroll please*... the Smyth Munqui Movie blog.

http://munquimovies.blogspot.com

Read it at your peril.

A style of my own

2009-04-22T11:23:00.001+01:00

I've never really been happy with the style of my blog, so I've decided to do a bit of spring cleaning and change a few things.

Apologies if this means that it looks ugly as sin, if you happen to log on mid-change, but those are the things we all have to put up with.
If it's so bad that it's unreadable, check back in 5 minutes, and hopefully it'll be fixed again.

Saints and Sinners

2009-04-20T13:24:00.002+01:00

It's been the easter holidays, kids off school, family events, and a chance to unwind from my usually hectic lifestyle.
So, needless to say, WOW had to take a bit of a back seat for the last week and a bit. I've been busying myself with other fun activities such as spending time with the family, drinking large amounts of lager, going to funfairs (whilst drinking lager), swimiing in the Leeds / Liverpool canal (after drinking lager), playing football (in between drinking lager), playing cricket instead (after realising how out of shape we all were), watching football (while drinking more lager), and playing poker (which unusually did NOT involve any lager whatsoever, since I had to drive and get up for work today).

In between all that I've mainly been killing my time playing Xbox games. It's much easier to spend an occasional hour or two in Microsoft-Land, than it is in Northrend. And a 'pause' button is a sadly-lacked feature of most mmorpg's. So Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, and Saints Row 2 have been filling my spare time.
Both of which are excellent games. And any GTA fans should definitely pick up SR2.

I've still called in to visit WoW occasionally, and play with some of the new patch 3.1 toys, but haven't really done anything (or found anything) too interesting. Tonight will be my first full night of play again, so maybe I'll discover something.

Dual-Spec doesn't really give many options to someone whose main is a Hunter. I can DPS a bit, or I can DPS a bit more, or I could DPS a hell of alot, it's a no brainer really. That said, if I find myself in the position where I have 1k gold with nothing to spend it on, I might do a BM / MM combo, for the rare occasion where that would suit the group more.

On another note: There's political movings within the guild too, with a potential step-down by a well-known member, I'm not sure if the non-officers know anything about it all yet, so I won't say too much. but watch out for changes sometime this week.

EDIT: Apologies for all the previous spam at the bottom of this post. That's what I get for sending my blogs in from work.

Fear of the Unknown?

2009-04-09T13:44:00.003+01:00

I've posted a poll, over on the Munqui Tribe forums, for our members to have a say on where our official guild raiding goes from here.
The officers often discuss these issues, behind the scenes, but at the end of the day it's not just 'our' guild, although we try not to let too much riff-raff in.

The current raid teams are either already, or soon about to, get bored of running Naxx 10.
We've cleared it, a few times now, and the challenge just doesn't seem to be there anymore. This isn't a bad thing, it's just natural progression.

So where do we go from here?

In my view, it's time we started at least trying to do 25 man raids. And so we have a poll to ask all the non-officers (and officers too I suppose) what they want to do.
The general opinion seems to be split almost 50/50.

Everyone loves the fun of 25 mans, and they're obviously much more social events than the 10 man runs. But people seem to be very wary of them. And I can't help feeling that they just don't understand what it's all about.

When WoW first came out, back in the days where level 60 was the cap, Raiding was only for the elite few. The small percentage of hardcore players who had the time, and patience to reach the pinnacle of the game. I can't remember what the actual percentage of the population of the game ever saw this content, but lets just say, it wasn't very many.

When TBC arrived, Blizz opeend up the idea of entry-level raiding. Why should all the effort they put into the raid dungeons only be accesible to a tiny percentage of the players. For one thing, it excludes people, and for another it's not very cost-effective. And Blizz are in this for the money at the end of the day.
So they introduced 'Heroics' which were designed to be a stepping-stone into raiding, and Karazahn, which was manageable once you were geared with all the drops from heroics. The progression paths were clear.
You hit 80, then you got good gear from regular dungeons / crafting. You then did heroics. Once your gear was good enough, you could do Kara. After that things fell down a little, as Kara was 10-man and the next raids in the progression were 25 man, so it was hard for non-hardcore players to go any further. Blizz realised this.

So with WotLK Blizz have gone the step further, there is now a 10-man and 25 man version of every new raid. So smaller guilds and non-hardcore players can finally reach the parts of the game that they couldn't previously.
But they also changed the progression structure. No longer do you need to grind through Regulars -> Heroics -> Raids.
These days a fresh-faced level 80 can enter Naxx with the gear they buy from the AH, or from emblem drops that are easy to come by, or from rep vendors (with rep that is now also much simpler to achieve).

In a way, this is a curse and a blessing. Raiding just got easy. On the plus side, it means that it's no longer for the elite few, and many more people can enjoy it. But on the negative side, it means that it's no longer for the elite few, and many more people can enjoy it.... Yeah, i know I typed that sentence twice, it was intentional.

So, no longer, is raiding only for the elite. And not only are the 10 man raids possible for non-epic'd players, but the 25 mans are too. Blizz didn't just take the nerf-bat to the raids, they took a bloody great nerf-sledgehammer to them.

That's right, the 25 mans are now an alternative to the 10 mans. You don't "progress" to them anymore. Almost as soon as you're capable of handling the 10 mans, you can also start playing in the 25 mans.

Don't get me wrong, the better the gear you have the easier you'll find it, but that doesn't mean that it's impossible. And considering you can buy fantastic epics and t7 items with tokens dropped from heroics it's easy to give yourself a head start.
We that have been raiding 10-man Naxx collect those exact same tokens. Not special 'raid' tokens that give us an advantage.

So if you were a guild new to raiding, and had the membership numbers, the ideal thing to do would be heorics to get enough basic gear, and then go straight to 25 man runs.

In our case, we have about 19 members who are raid-hardened, almost fully epic'd, and very well co-ordinated (most of the time). Those 19 players could easily take on many of the 25 man bosses alone. They wouldn't even need an extra 6 players... But if there's spaces going spare, why not fill them.

The rewards from 25-man raiding are much greater than 10-mans. 10-mans these days are essentially just heroics with more players, and bigger dungeons (or dungeon, since there's only 1 so far).
When Ulduar arrives you'll need to be pretty well geeared and experienced in Naxx before you can cut it there, but it's not going to be the great leap into the unknown that some of our non-raiders think it is.

I feel that even some of our current raiders are scared of the "big-bad" (to coin a phrase from an ex-cheerleader), and that was defeated at the end of the last series.

Despite everything I wrote above, there's always a downside, and here it is. We need more players. It's not the end of the world if we don't get the full 25, but we would need more commitment from our guildies.

Worth the Upgrade?

2009-04-06T11:37:00.002+01:00

I've been keeping an eye on my gear recently, picking up the odd upgrade whenever possible.
But I'm starting to question how effective the upgrades are for me.

My possible upgrades according to gear-wishlist.appspot.com aren't very much. I'm not even full epic yet, I still have blue rings and trinkets, but my only worthwhile upgrades come from 25 man raids.
There are one or two minor upgrades I could get, but nothing that's going to be worth the hassle until Ulduar comes along.
I think part of the problem is that blues are so damn good these days. Naxx is clearable in nothing but blues, if you have a good team.

I've even picked up one or two raid items recently, but when I've come to equip them, my stats have dropped so much that I've switched back.

I'll be picking up as much "Valorous" gear as I can, to replace my "Heroes" set. As the set bonuses are great, and the stats are big improvements. I'm also workign on my Kirin Tor rep for an epic ring.
But I'm struggling to see the point in paying 900g for a Titanium Impact Band when it's not erally a major upgrde.
Once I get my Kirin Tor Ring, and 12 more emblems of valor, I'll have 2 epic rings, for a fraction of that cost.

The epics dropped by Heroic bosses, and easily available from rep vendors, these days is also Uber. The items are almost identical to 10-man raid drops, meaning you never even have to set foot in a 10 man raid to start doing 25 mans.

Also, in my experience, and from browsing the interweb, many others. 25 man raids are easier than 10 mans. There's alot more room for error. And the rewards are much much greater.

The Munquis easily 19 manned Sarth last week. That means we could happily boost 6 or more brand new level 80's at a time. Achievements all-round, emblems-a-plenty, and gear-upgrades directly from green to purple.

I'm not complaining, I like the level of difficulty. For a social guild, like ours, it's great. And I'll probably return to Naxx even when Uludar is with us. Because there'll be a new troop of level 80's dying to see what it's like.
But instead of taking months to clear the place, it'll probably be only a matter of weeks.

There's nothing like the feeling of GodLike-Power when a bunch of green-geared newbies see you nuking a boss to death single-handedly. And make "ooooooohh" and "ahhhhh" noises.

Random Carnage

2009-04-03T13:56:00.004+01:00

Does anyone else, like me, think that WoW could do with a little more randomness?

I'm talking about events that happen, that not neccesarily affect the whole server, but add a bit of variety in to the game.
Remeber when the Portal was opening for TBC, and a demon attacked IF, or pre- WotLK when zombies started appearing everywhere, and necropolis's (necropoli?) appeared in the zones. And that sort of thing.

Having tried hosting my own server, despite the intial problem of getting it up and running, once it was it was simple to make a dragon appear outside SW. Or to make Hogger 200 feet tall, and give him 10 million HP. It was Point -> Click -> Type -> Done.

I think totally random events liek this would keep things much more interesting. Blizz could just let one of the devs loose for a day or two each week, and give them the freedom to do whatever they wanted.

They're a Hordie Scum-Lover? Fine, send something to attack one of the Alliance Capital cities. The allies wont mind, it keeps things interesting. And if they put it near Westfall the hordies would probably attack it too.

What about an army of 100's of... any sort of mob really, just appearing out of thin air to terrorize a neighbourhood.

There wouldn't even have to be any reward for joining in on things like this. The randomness is what makes it fun. And what happens one day, may never happen again, so people will want to be involved just so they can say "I was there when...." or "Did you see that 500 foot tall Murloc that ran through STV?? It took 50 players to bring him down."

The lowbies can always get out of the way, if the challenge is too much for them. There's plenty of starting zones, and each event might only last 5-10 minutes, or maybe for an hour.

How about if a GM decided it would be fun to drop Prince Malchezzar into the middle of a WSG match. And suddenly both sides had to work together to get rid of him, or lose the match, what would they do?

My head is full of ideas along this line. The possibilities are endless, and the application is simple. 10 minutes later, it's as if nothing had ever happened. But it did. And people will remember it.

Pet Healing

2009-04-03T08:03:00.002+01:00

I'm sure i'm not the only one who remembers the problems Hunters used to have with pets pre-TBC and even pre-WotLK, with pet healing.

When I'm solo'ing mobs or quests, my pet rarely ever dies, because my own pet healing skills are enough to keep him up against anything but multiple elites.

However, stick my pet, especially my cat, in a party / raid with bosses doing AOE, and my focus on the bosses HP bar, and my cooldowns, and my pet can rapidly find itself runnign out of HP.
I cast a heal whenever I notice my pets HP dropping, or even recall it from combat to give me a bit of time to regen it, but there's no way I could keep it alive all on my own.

In previous raids and party groups the policy has always been "The Hunters pet, is the Hunters problem" but this doesn't ring true since WotLK. My pet obviously shouldn't take healing priority over a real player... but it does count for alot of DPS. Usually around 700. This is about the same as some non-raid-geared level 80's.
It also saves squishies when I send it in to get the aggro off them, rather than pulling it myself. And in some encounters, like Gluth, it's great to send it in to attack the boss, while I concentrate on kiting an army of undead. So the boss still gets the 700 DPS, over a 5 minute fight, that adds up to an extra 210k dmg. Not earth shattering, but helpful non the less.
My pets crits also buff the entire raid with extra dmg, so overall, it's effect is very useful. And keeping them up is reccomended.

I'm not trying to sing the praises of my pets here, although they are extremely useful.
I'm just trying to say "Thanks" to the healers who keep them alive in Raids. As an ex-healer myself, your helpfulness has been noticed.

Oh, but to the tanks, when tanking Heigan, pull him a little bit more across the line of the waves, because my pet always attacks from the back, so usually I have to keep him at my side for that fight, or he just dies straight away which lowers my DPS.
The raiders last night pulled him just a little bit further in on each wave, which meant I could send my pet in, for all-out DPS, and Heigan went down after only 2 dances.

Bring on the Dwarves!

2009-04-03T07:37:00.003+01:00

The Munquis entered Naxx again last night. We enter every Monday and Thursday, so it shouldn't be too big a suprise.

I wasn't supposed to be in the team, but a missing DPS meant a spot became available, and I was offered it. And damn did we do well.

Despite a late start while people were waited for, Flying mounts were purchased, and people generally pissed about, once we finally got in there we stormed on ahead. 6-8 manning trash to try and make up a little time.

The Spider wing was cleared without a single hiccup. Had we not stopped mid-way to summon some of the missing members we probably would have earned the 20 minute achievement.

Plague quarter went just as well, with everyone earning the "safety dance" achievement on heigan. (So Flowersz, you're forgiven for last time).

In the Military quarter we had 1 wipe on trash, where we all got a bit carried away. We'd had a 5 minute break, and our healing machine was still not back. So the request to pull bigger groups "when he returned" was half listened to.
Oh well. We lost a single man, to trash, on the Gothik encounter. But we can't blame him, it wasn't really his fault. So that cost us the potential "undying" achievement (but it turns out we wouldn't have made it anyway).

Construct quarter also went smoothly, with no delays, no one falling of pipes, no one dying on frogger. We did wipe, once, on Thaddius when a couple of people missed the jump to the boss platform, and a few got hit by the wrong charge.

Overall, it was about as excellent a night as anyone could have expected. We cleared all 4 wings in one night, and had only 1 boss wipe. So all but Thaddius were single-shotted. The loatheb corridor tactic is now perfected, and it took us no more than 60 seconds to get through there.
We took a vote at the end, to see if we should carry on and try to clear Saph and KT, and get the whole place cleared in one night. A few said 'no', so it's saved until Monday. But with that team I'm sure it would have been very easy.
It's a shame we didn't start on time, as it would have given us at least 1 shot on both of them. 3 ranged DPS would have helped on KT too.

The experience of the raiders really showed last night. Time wasn't wasted explaining all the details of encounters, everyone knew what was expected of them, and if Vedd assigned extra duties like Kiting, Add control, or Horsemen roles it was pretty much just a "Yessir" and the job got done. We actually functioned like a full team of people who knew what they were doing. Despite that same team probably never having raided together. And we had fun.

A "BIG GRATZ" to all those involved in last nights run.
A Simpsons style "Ha Ha!" to Funk for not managing to catch me up.
A "Thankyou" to Vedd, for leading the way.
and A "Come and have a go if you think you're hard enough!" to the Dwarves in Ulduar.

Hall of Fame:

Tanks: Karudan (Vind), Argas
Healers: Biafra, Flowersz, Komatai
Melee: Vedd, Hetebliksem (Babe)
Ranged: Funkadelic, Thundress (Manda), Smythy

Edit: You can tell a raid has gone well when, by the end of it, you've actually earned 100g. Although I did shoot 150g worth of Arrows.
I did 16 Million points of damage with them though. So at less than 10g per Million dmg I think many would consider that a bargain.

Addon-Addoff Addon-Addoff "Goood Daniel-San!"

2009-03-27T09:40:00.003Z

3 Posts in a day, I bet you think you're pretty clever.. don't you boy!
I'm sure there's a lyric in there somewhere.

My bartender addon updated itself yesterday (thanks to WowMatrix) Unfortunately, in doing so, it managed to kill my SpartanUi.

So after about 10 seconds of consideration, about What benefit I was getting from usign SpartanUi, a decision was made. It was going. Along with several other addons of negligible / non-essential use.

Out:

Auctioneer - Yes, I've considered it an almost essential addon for years, but at the end of the day, the market seems to be flucuating so much these days that it's figures are almost always wrong.
SpartanUI - Since it's a bit screwed, and I never really liked the positions it forced Bartender into anyway.
AddonSpam - This stopped my chat log from being flooded with addon loading spam, but at the end of the day, I never really noticed it anyway.
A Few FuBar things - That I'd installed but rarely looked at.
Carbonite Quest - My hunter isn't questing anymore, and if my Pally needs it maybe it'll come back, but I was never keen on it's map interface.
Enchantrix - Haven't been an enchanter for ages, not sure why I still had this. I think it might have come automatically with auctioneer.

In:
AlphaMap - Map replacement, I can't stand the default Blizz Map, and this one includes dungeon maps too. Not that I ever look at them these days.
Glass UnitFrames - Lets you re-position all the unit frames, and makes them look nice. Not sure if I'm keen on thsi one yet though, so it might not stay.
Auctionator - This one's nice. Only runs when at the AH, finds the lowest price item that your trying to sell, and undercuts it. Just what's needed in todays variable AH market. It's not a replacment for Auctioneer, but it's not meant to be.
SexyMap - Minimap replacement - wanted this just to let me move the minimap. I don't like it though, it won't be staying, might choose ChinChilla instead, used that one before.

All these changes probably helped to distract me a little more during Naxx last night. Oh well, I'll make some more changes and hope to have it settled by my next run.

Re-Spec Experiment

2009-03-27T09:08:00.002Z

My experimental re-spec is now over. With less than astounding results:

I took points from Survival Instincts, and Go for the Throat, and re-spent them to get "Aimed Shot".

Now the way it works, is that you can either use Aimed shot or Multi-Shot, but not both.. As they share a CD timer. And the "Increases ranegd damage by 408" is very misleading, in Aimed Shots tooltip. It increases that particular shots dmg by 408. So it basically just becomes White dmg+408 once every 10 seconds. Rubbish.

Multi-Shot can be fired every 10 seconds, but fires 3 arrows, and since my crit rate is about 30%, at least one of them usually crits. When the Crit-Fu is with me, and all 3 crit at once, mobs tend to fall over and die very quickly.

So mid-Naxx I dropped Aimed-Shot, and although I didn't put the points back into their original places. Keeping them in Mortal Shots instead, I saw an instant improvement in my DPS.

Multi-Shot FTW.

Falling on My Sword

2009-03-27T07:21:00.002Z

I'd like to apologise to my fellow guidlies who were in Naxx last night. My performance was very.................... crap. (There isn't a better word to describe it).

Whatever I could do wrong, I did do wrong.
I forgot to eat raid food, I forgot to drink my endless rage pot, I even did half the run using standard arrows instead of my usual Saronite Razorheads (which cost me upto 1/3 of my entire DPS).
I had tried out a minor re-spec, and it wasn't working, so had to go to IF mid-run and respec again.

I finally found my feet and got into the flow of things once we reached the Miltary Quarter, and managed to redeem myself, a little. But it was just "one of those nights".

On the positive side, the strategy I found, on the net, for Loathebs corridor worked perfectly once people got the idea. There'll be no more wiping in that area anymore, which used to cost us massive amounts of time.