Doing the Dual-Spec Disco

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

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

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?

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

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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?

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

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

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!

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!"

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

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

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.

Why I chose, what I chose

For any budding hunters out there, here's my current build and my reasons for each point spent:
(Note: this obviously might change a little when 3.1 hits)

My Build

Beast Mastery:

Improved Aspect of the Hawk - This is pretty self-explanatory, it gives a solid and reliable DPS buff, and since it procs on 10% of all normal shots, and I fire god-knows-how-many arrows per fight, it's almost always up. Which gives me a permanent 15% speed increase, which then becomes a self-fulfiling prophecy.

Endurance Training - Not really essential for DPS, but the points have to be spent high up in this tree, and no other talent provides a more useful stat boost. Could be swapped for others if needed.

Focused Fire - Another bog-standard "does what it says on the tin" talent. A permanent 2% damage increase.

Aspect Mastery - Yet more Attack Power from Aspect of the Hawk, which should be your main aspect, and less of a DPS drop from Viper, which is also handy.

Unleashed Fury - It's all about the DPS baby. And this one gives 15% extra to your pet at all times.

Ferocity - More Crits = more DPS... Simples

Intimidation - Rarely useful, in my case, but required for the talents below it in the tree.

Bestial Discipline - More focus = more special attacks, and more special attacks = more DPS

Frenzy - The 'Aspect of the Hawk' for your pet... Again, self-fulfilling, more attacks = more crits = faster attacks = more attacks.

Ferocious Inspiration - Party Buff from the pet on every crit, and my pet crits alot. And 9% extra dmg for my arcane shot. No good reason not to take this.

Bestial Wrath - The hulking great damage bonus to all BM hunters. Get this talent, and reduce its cooldowns as much as possibe, and you can spend 18 seconds out of every 60 as a giant red carnage machine.

Serpents Swiftness - More attacks for me, and more attacks for my pet. Follows the basic more is always better principal.

Longevity - See Bestial Wrath

The Beast Within - See Bestial Wrath

Cobra Strikes - When I crit, my pet crits, when my pet crits the party gets buffed, and I and my pet do more dmg.

Kindred Spirits - The movement speed increase is negligible, but the 9% dmg increase for all pet attacks is a bonus. Only 3/5 on this one though, to make the trees points up to reach the bottom.

Beast Mastery - It's what the tree is all about. Exotic pets are fancy, though I don't have any. But the main use for this is the 4 extra points for my pet, which count for alot.


MarksmanShip:

Focused Aim - Chance to hit increased by 3%. At endgame this is one of the most important stats. Pushback mitigation... meh... you shouldnt be getting hit anyway.

Lethal Shots - 5% extra chance to crit. More crit = more dmg + pet crits =... you get the idea.

Careful Aim - 100% of my Intel becomes AP.... absolutely no reason not to have this one.

Go for the Throat - This talent is negotiable, it could be placed in one of a few talents instead, but all generally give the same amount of boost. But when I crit, my pet gets to pull off more special moves, which is always good.


Survival:

Improved Tracking - 5% dmg increase to all mobs. Wonderful talent, but best when teamed with an addon like AutoTrack, which will switch tracking for you automatically.

Survival Instincts - Less dmg taken is always better, but you shouldn't be getting hit. however 4% extra chance to crit with your main shot types is a big plus.


Notes:

I'm considering switching the points in Go For the Throat and Survival Instincts for 4 in Mortal Shots. I crit around 30-35% of the time, so that could provide much better overall DPS.
I might also move a point or two from lethal shots into Aimed Shot, and weave it into my rotation. + 408 dmg on every shot, and I shoot at least once per second, could potentially mean +408 DPS. I'll be giving it a try.

Improved Hunters Mark - Is nowhere near as good as it looks. The bonus doesn't scale at endgame. As it's a fixed increase, not a % of my stats.

Kel'ThuBad

The Munquis cleared Naxx, again, last night.
2nd time in a row, looks like we're starting to make a habit of it.

Horsemen, Plague Quarter, Saph and KT all taken down. Most in one shot.

It was a bit of a mixed affair though, every boss except the last in the plague quarter (and some players had never met him before) was single-shotted, with very little problem. People did what they needed to do, when they needed to do it, and everything went smoothly.

But from there on, things started to fall apart a little. We had Over-Aggroing, Under-Healing, and a lack of situational awareness.
I don't want to take away the glory of having cleared Naxx, but it could have gone so much smoother had people just paid a little more attention.

It reached the point where we all voted on whether to have one-last-try at KT, and I actually voted "No". but the majority said "yes", and that was the time we downed him.

When we did finally down him, it was done almost perfectly. Vedd died, but he's a squishy Melee DPS, and not having him in the centre created less problems with KT's Ice Blocks. So I'll chalk that one up to tactical-suicide by the raid leader.

But it goes to show that the team was more than capable of the challenge, so there wasn't really any need for the wipes and mistakes previously.

It wasn't all bad though. The 4 Horsemen, which I think is one of the most tactical fights, went very smoothly, and Grobbulus went down without a single cloud in the middle of the room. The kiting was done well on Gluth, and I don't think a single zombie reached him during a decimate.
On Last Thursdays run, we came very close to achieveing the Heigan Dance achievement, if it hadn't been for Flow's fraction of a second lag.

For some reason, some, raiders find the simplest thigns the hardest. Dieing while playing frogger in the plague qurater, for example, or falling off the pipe at the entrance to Gluth... Go figure.

At least 2 of the wipes on KT could also be attributed to attacking the banshees too quickly. Aparently, if you attack them before they're fully out of their archway, there is a chance you can aggro the mobs behind them too.

And a note to Shamans: Don't drop totems at the entrance to the room, they instantly aggro a group of mobs when the encounter starts, if they are still up.

All in all GRATZ to all involved, next time there's no excuse, we've all been there and done that. More focus, and the whole place can be a one-shot.

On a personal note, I also picked up epic shoulders and helm, so now I've just got my 2 rings, and 1 trinket to replace. Running short on gold now though, need to get some grinding in.

To Roll or Not-to-Roll

There's a little uncomfortableness in the raiding guildies at the moment, about the number of drops people are getting.
People seem a little unhappy with the way the loot is being distributed. The intention was, originally, to keep it as fair as possible. Anyone who is in the raid, with their main, may roll on any drop that is an upgrade for their main-spec.

If there are no takers, then it is offered to roll for off-specs, if nobody wants it after that it gets DE'd for shards in the guild bank.

If a BoE item drops, then the same rules apply, but instead of DE'ing it at the end, it gets put on the AH, and the raiders that night split the cash from the sale.

This seems a pretty straightforward system. And it doesn't favour the more hard-core raiders over the newbies, as everyone gets an equal chance to roll.
Sure, this might mean that someone who is new to the raid, or has sketchy attendance, gets a major upgrade, meaning that someone who has been loyally raiding every week, misses out. But I don't see any fairer, and as uncomplicated, way of distributing it.

Buty people are unhappy... So would it be fairer to bring in a DKP system (Dragon Kill Points)?

My understanding of DKP is this:

Every raider who is present at a boss-kill gets points awarded. When a drop appears, that they want, they use those points to bid for the item. The points roll-over in to all future raids, so people can build up a larger number of points.
This means that regular raiders obviously have more points, and have more bargaining power, and newer raiders have fewer points and so less chance of winning an item.
But this also means that people are more likely to pass on a minor upgrade, with the intention of saving their points to bid for that special drop that they want.

In some ways this seems even fairer than the system that we use now. And new raiders aren't going to miss out on every drop simply because they don't have any bidding power, as the more experienced raiders will either already have the item, or will be saving their points, and so will pass on the item anyway.

I know there's addons to help with the DKP systems, but having never used one, or been in a guild with a DKP system, I'm not sure how much work it would be to manage one. Or whether it would be worth the hassle.

Unfortunately for me, it wouldn't help much, as my main competition for drops is the only rogue in the team, who happens to be the raid leader, and so will always have more DKP's than me. But I'm not worried about that. Besides, his DPS could do with the upgrade more than mine ;P

Everyone's a Crit-ic

Apolgies for the delay between my posts again, but I'm sure the world isn't going to come to a standstill just because I stop babbling on.
Things at work are going to get a little more back to normal from this week, so my frequency of posts should go back up too.

Anyway.... Crit vs AP... Discuss.

My DPS is usually at the top of the meters for an overall run, but that doesn't necesarily mean that I do the most damage on bosses. Particularly on ones like Heigan, where I can't even send in my pet.
But generally speaking I'm happy with the amount of damage that I'm doing.
My question is, how do I do more?

At first I was stacking as much AP as possible, and it was working, I saw a steady increase in my DPS. Until I reached 4k AP unbuffed. At that point, my DPS seemed to level out a bit, and even when buffed up to 6k+, I didn't necessarily notice the major improvements that I would have expected.

So I switched out as many gems as I could for +Crit instead of +AP. Which now gives me just under 4k AP (Unbuffed), and about 28% Crit (Unbuffed).
Lookign at my last ReCount meter from Naxx, it shows I averaged 36% overall Crit, and yes I was 1 Million dmg above 2nd place (overall), but my DPS hasn't really moved at all.

I've also picked up t7 Gloves and Chest, so my pet is now 5% dmg higher (which should equate to about 50DPS)
Although I'm still stuck with my Blue helm and shoulders, and both rings, and 1 blue trinket. Unfortunately, the only place I can pick up decent upgrades for all of them is Raids, and my luck on drops hasn't been too good.

So, any ideas? Should I be stacking Crit, or should I go back to raw Attack Power?

Smythy

Naxx-Woes

I filled in for a missing ranged DPS spot last night. In the guilds Naxx(10) run.
Military Quarter and Frostwyrm lair.

The DPS was high, the healers were capable, the tanks were tough enough, but it just goes to show that sometimes a team just doesn't work.

The organisation was just not working, people weren't sure of their roles, there was a little confusion about positioning, and a few cases of people just not listening, or not paying attention during fights.

Result? About 10 wipes. Saph finally downed, and 1 attempt at KT was enough to know it was a definite no-go.

With the new raiding style, movement and positioning is key. Tactics can be learned, but unless everyone reacts at the right time. It's going to be a wipe. Unfortunately, 1 slow reaction, or mis-placed player can wipe a team. And that's what was happening.

I'm sure Thursdays team will do much better though, they're the more experienced and more team-work oriented group.

If you read this though Vedd, I'd really suggest that we don't leave the military quarter until last anymore.
In my opinion, it's a much easier set of fights than the Construct Quarter, so if we pull of the Arachnids, Plague, and Military in one-shots.
We'd even have time to start on the Constructs in advance of the following Monday. Meaning more time to perfect the KT tactics, and possibly move on to harder things.

For anyone who doesn't know. Sapphiron is basically just a tank and spank, with only a few minor twists.

Team-Work and positioning is king in the new raid design, and it's hard, but I like it.
It reminds me of the Shade of Aran encounter in Kara. Difficult to master, but alot of fun.

Happy EVEr after?

No, not really.
My trail period of EVE is reachign a close, and to be honest I'm very underwhelmed by the whole experience.

The game felt like I was just going through the motions, trying to achieve something that wasn't really going to make a difference anyway.

Despite all the training, and despite several ship upgrades, and despite seeing marked improvements in my stats. Not just in numbers, but in actual battle situations. I was bored.

Maybe I just couldn't relate to my ship being my character. Especially when I could change it at will, or adapt it to take on any challenge. In PvE encounters, it was ridiculously easy to fight off an attack by upto 20 enemies, in what I expected to be a very difficult encounter.

I did actually manage to lose one of my ships, but since money was also unexpectedly easy to come by, I simply replaced it with an even better one.
Also, the majority of the time, you're not actually face-to-face with whoever / whatever it is you're even fighting. They're nothing more than a reference in one of your control panels. Getting toe to toe with them was a bad idea anyway, and since my attack range and damage output was so high it was a simple case of "Lock-On Target"->"Orbit 5km"->"F1+F2+F3+F4"->"Boom". I never saw them, they never saw me...... Lather, rinse, repeat.
I spent longer looting the ships than I did fighting them.

So my days with EVE are over, and I don't see myself going back there unless the Munquis decide to up and leave Darkspear for the 'New Eden' realm, in which case, It'll suddenly become alot more fun.

Food glorious food

It's been a while since my last post... again.

Apologies if any of you ahve been waiting with baited breath for the next installment of my rantings. But I doubt there's many (if any) of you.
I've just been too busy at work recently, and with a pending promotion possibility, that is obviously taking priority right now.

But I haven't been neglecting my WoW duties either. More progress in Naxx, the Munquis have reached Kel'Thuzad but, despite tactical changes and hours of wipes, the Positional-Fu was just not with us that night. And we had to give it up. But it's a definite win for next time.

I've been using the rest of my spare time to level up my cooking skills.
Not too bad at all. I'm now on 420 cooking. And it cost me a minimal 400g on the AH to buy all the mats I needed.
Many of which I then re-sold for a small profit, and so off-set some of the cost.

The rest I picked up myself. Which made me even more money, since animals tend to have nice skins, which I also take, and are often surrounded by herbs which I also take, and occasionally they also drop nice items, which I take.
So after almost reaching the max cooking skill, I now have 1500g in the bank (1k more than I started with), and another 1kg sat on the AH. What credit crunch?

As a side efffect of killing all of those mobs, my gorrila also hit 80, and has become a practically unstoppable killing machine. He's more than capable of tanking about 10-12 level 80ish mobs, and since my DPS is high, I can nuke them all within seconds, and we move on to the next batch.

It's got to the point where, if I see a group of mobs close together, I'll even dismount, just because it's so quick for me to kill them, and the rewards are so high.

Unless Blizz bring in a patch that makes them uncrittable I don't think he's going to be tanking any heroics, but he's more than suitable for an overgeared group, or for trash.

It's like having my own personal Paladin. Can't wait until next patch when I can take my DPS pet out, and switch between them without having to visit a stable.

Online with EVE

Well, I signed up with steam for my 21 day free trial of EVE. And then un-installed steam and used the seperately downloaded client.

It was a 1.1GB download but luckily I live in a city, the same one where my ISP has it's head office, so I generally get decent speeds. Last night, my 8Mb connection was actually running at 9Mb for some reason, so it took me about 26 minutes to get the full game. Not bad at all.
So I used the time to finish off another few levels of Army of Two.

Anyway, I installed the game, tweaked a few things, and logged in. After being guided through the setup process, I was dropped into the middle of the universe in a ship. And a little system-shock style computer guided me through a few of the basics.

Before long, I'd destroyed 3 other ships and mined a little ore. And then My other half came home so that was the end of the nights exploring. In total, I think I moved about 30km from my starting position. I guess it's "One small step for man" in this case.

My first impressions are good. It's a nice looking game, but only after much tweaking of graphics settings. At first I had giant black blobs on my screen where something was wrong with the clipping and shadow effects. But managed to get it sorted with only a couple of attempts.

The UI is a bit daunting at first, but I was expecting that anyway. At one point I lost one of my info screens, and never figured out how to get it back up. (The one that shows me what's nearby).
This was probably the most useful screen, so I was a bit lost without it.

The other good news is that at least 2 of the other Munquis also play EVE, and that would obviously make the whole experience much better. And from what I've read, it's much easier to function as a group, and easier to make profits etc...

I haven't made a decision on the game, after my only minimal amount of play, but things are positive so far. Who knows, if things pan-out maybe there'll be a Munqui Corporation?

Don't worry though WoW fans, I'm not planning on hanging up my hunters bow at any time soon. But it's nice to have a change of scenery now and then. And you couldn't ask for a bigger change than WoW -> EVE.

Watch this space... or that space... or any space for that matter, you just might see a player named Smythy flying through it.

EDIT: BTW Brast, I don't know if it's only happening to me, but every time I try to log onto the Munqui forums my Browser crashes. Never done it before. Any ideas?