Offline Life

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It feels... strangely... refreshing.

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

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

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

Closed Beta... Closed

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alodd'a Fun

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Munqui Tribe Corporation?

In the guild forums, Lewt posted something interesting:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Allods Online: 3rd Time Lucky

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So where does that leave Allods?

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

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

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


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

Allods Online: Second Impressions Count

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

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

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

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

Mage Mechanics:

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

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

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

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

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

Faster Alts?:

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

Micro-Transactions:

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

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

Crafting:

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


Summary:

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

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

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

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

Allods Online: First Thoughts

Hey, long, long, long time no post.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

Out of Tune?

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


I’m sure you can figure out the tunes;







Arthas is coming:



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

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

The Lich King is coming to town.



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

He already knows who's naughty or nice

The Lich King is coming to town.



Arthas is a'coming to town

Arthas is a'coming to town

Arthas is a'coming to towwwwwn



He'll kill you while you're sleeping,

Or while you're awake

He knows if you've been bad or good

And your soul, his sword, will take.



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

But try not to pout I'm telling you why

The Lich King is coming to town.



Arthas is a'coming to town

Arthas is a'coming to town

Arthas is a'coming to towwwwwn





Nightmares before Christmas;



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

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

Father Blizzard had come early, or late, I suppose

But all of the big kids were awake with the crows

All of the Munquis had opened their box,

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



So while children were nestled, all snug in their beds

With visions of evil, that danced in their heads

Their mothers and fathers gave up all their naps

To begin the big race, to the new level caps

With new mobs to kill, and achievements to shatter

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



Off in to Northrend, they flew like a flash

Wiped out the Vrykul, and found loads of cash

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

Looked improved, the new graphics engine, started to show

When what, to our bleeding eyes should appear

But a land full of people living in fear



Arthas was rising, with his legions of dead.

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

On Horses, On Tigers, On Talbuks and Rams

On Dragons and Gryphons to ruin his plans.

The armies of Azeroth rose up to the fight

And among them were outcasts, the converted DeathKnight



The armies united to meet the old foe

But some of the tensions still started to show

In the middle of Northrend stands Lake Wintergrasp

Where battles are fought, to kick the hordes ass.

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

They resume their attack on the kingdom of frost



Before this war's over the evil must be found

Down from the north comes Arthas the Lich-Bound

Dressed in plate armor from his head to his foot

And his gear all tarnished with dried blood and guts.

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

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



His evil smile was drawn up like a bow

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

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

And carried an aura that some would call smelly

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

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



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

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

He spoke lots of words, and then went to work

And in an opening scene, made Mograine a jerk.

With barely a flinch, he stepped out of sight

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





Let it snow;



Oh the cold in Icecrowns frightful,

But the epics are so delightful.

Cataclysm has months to go,

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



It didn't show signs of stopping

And old heroics were dropping

Epics that really blow.

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



Well we'd killed all Naxx's DeathKnights

And Ulduar had gone down a storm

KelThuzad had turned in to a pet

And all of us were getting warm



The Munquis were all sighing

for the boredom wasn't dying

But now Blizzard have patched it, so

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





Arthas & Frostmourne;



Arthas the blue nosed Lich-King

Has a very shiny sword

And if you ever touch it

It will tear out your soul.



All of the other swords,

Used to laugh and call it names

They never let poor Frostmourne

Join in all their swordy games



Then one frosty, fateful night

Arthas came and said

Frostmourne with your evil might.

Wo n't you make me a lich tonight.



Then all of the others feared him

And they all turned to flee

Arthas and his new sword Frostmourne

They went down in history.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anyway, back to topic:

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

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

Bah Humbug.

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

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

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

Attunement

I'm a fan of it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

More wasted content

Anyone who's read my blog, or known me, for a while, probably knows how I feel about wasted content.
I'd love to see the old instances re-vamped and brought back to heroic level.

Lots of time and effort has gone in to producing some of the most beautiful dungeons and instances ever seen in a game. And these days they are mostly wasted.

Blizz obviously listen to every word I say, since they're now planning to upgrade some of the 'classic' dungeons like the DeadMines when Cataclysm comes along.
However, what about all the rest of the stuff that's being wasted?

I popped over to Outland the other day, for a quick look around. 'Deserted' was not the word for it.
Any minute I was expecting to see a mushroom cloud or a giant crater explaining where all the people went.

Outland had plenty of heroic instances to. And some of them were a lot of fun.
I think Blizz should ditch the plan to simply upgrade a select-few of the classic dungeons and go for a game-wide change to all heroic encounters.

Once you select 'Heroic mode' from that drop down menu, all the dungeons should be at the difficulty of whatever the current level-cap is.
Sure, some would be harder than others, and some might need the odd tweak to make them even more difficult. But imagine the possibilities:

WotLK has a good number of Heroics, and the list is growing, so theirs a fair bit of choice.
But imagine if you had every single instance in the game to choose from, and all of them had bosses that dropped tokens. (no need to complicate things by adding extra epic drops).
The chances of getting bored would be pretty slim.

As I said, some would be easy, and some would be harder, just because of the nature of the encounters.

I can imagine heroic Deadmines being quite hard. But I can also imagine heroic Stockades being quite easy. But since you'll only be able to do it once per day, you wouldn't 'just' farm that one for your tokens.

I could quite easily see teams of Munquis running ShadowFang Keep or Hellfire Citadel again. And loving every minute of it.
With the instances spread all over the continents, it could even help balance the loads on the server. Since you wouldn't have the immense groups of people all in one place like you do at the moment.
And with the new cross-realm LFG system, finding groups to do even the most unusual of the dungeons shouldn't be too difficult. (Thumbs-up on that one Blizz).

Edit: While they're at it, why not include old raid content, like they've done with Onyxia. But tuned to be more 'hard-heroic' level than 'epic-raid'. A level 85 Karazahn would be alot of fun.

Selective Healing and Anti-Socialism

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

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

Over Aggro'ing:

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

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


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

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

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

But how does all this apply to the selective healing?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Whatever Happened to all the DK Tanks?

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

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

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

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

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

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

But why?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks for giving

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wot! No Blog Post Smythy? Too Depressed?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ok one more go... Wipe.

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


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


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

Same Mimiron Trash... Wipe

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

Wipe.

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

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

2nd Try... Wipe

3rd Try... Wipe

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

Raiding Rundown?

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

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

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

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

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

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

More Tanking Tales

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

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

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

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

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

A Whole New World... of Warcraft

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Spring / Winter-Cleaning

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

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

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

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

On all of them:

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

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

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

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

Whack-a-mole

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

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

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

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

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

So how did it go?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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