The Moral Majority

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

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

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

Picture the Small Scene:

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

So we have 100 Union members.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Bigger Picture:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

= 8.4% who Vote "Yes"

Thanks, but No-Thanks.

The Even Bigger Picture:

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

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

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

Wrong.

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

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

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

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

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

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

= 2.76% of the population voted BNP

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

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

Trials and Tribble-ations

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

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

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

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

Why?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Better the Devil I Know

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And it was all going so well

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

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

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

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

The Cash Shop:

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

Server Issues:

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

Fear of Death:

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

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

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

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

Guild Management:

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


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

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

Munqui Refresh

Well, it's now official(ish).

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

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

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

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

Offline Life

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.