First panda!

Haven't upgraded yet, though I would like to try out a monk. But last night, my first time back in since Mists, I caught sight of my first panda at the Brewfest.

In other news, as I slooooowly work my way to FLAMING TREANTS, this improved moonkin form is begging me to get the astral form glyph.

Moonkin want to be free, not armored.  Remember when we could panzerkin and tank IN THE BUFF?!!!

Must... get... Flaming... Treants

Okay. I nearly gave up. I paid my cash, and played twice in a month. Twice. I don't have time for WoW any more. I'd like to play, but I've just plain got too much going on.

Until tonight. I could play tonight. I took the MacBook to work to take advantage of the super-fast internets, as the last two times I tried to play I lost tons of time waiting for updates to download. Good thing I did -- about two gigs before I could start up (see above). And I've only got a week or so to finish... I doubt as many folks will be leveling alts in Cat instances once MoP is out.

So it's tonight. I've got a preferred bitter drink, my Razer Naga hooked up, and I'm all ready for a 2-3 hour push to get my FLAMING TREANTS!!1! And then, wham, it hits me as I try to log in to battle.net -- long story short, I gave my phone to someone else (after resetting it, of course), so I no longer have my authenticator.

ARGH.

To remove the old authenticator, Blizzard asks for your driver's license. No, RLY. Seriously, my Amazon account isn't protected this well.


You may have caught wind of the teapot tempest over Matt Honan's getting hacked by some clever social engineering. You really don't think about how much stuff you've got sitting in your cloud-based email account until, well, you do. It's insane the amount of info you've got there if you don't erase it after downloading.

Why we don't have authenticators for all the cloud-based services, I don't know. Funny that, until Honan's deal convinced me to sign up for more secure services, my Battle.net account was likely my most secure bit of clouded information.

Compulsory note: If you find authenticators, action, guns, more action, and MMORPGs interesting, you should read REAMDE, now.

NO, NOW. KINDLE-I-FY AND READ REAMDE NOW.

If I can't play, nobody can. Seriously, the book's pretty good. Not Stephenson's best (yes, that's my review at the top right now), but very, very good, and germaine to today's blog post.

Sheesh. I sent you my driver's license already. I hope your SSL worked. Let's go! ;^D

EDIT: Ha, to view the status of my ticket to remove my authenticator, I -- yes, you got it -- have to have my authenticator.

Does WoW drive hardware sales?

Quick post: I know lots of folks like to have great rigs, and I've written earlier on how hardware affects gaming. Again, I think everyone in my blogroll should consider putting their rig's specs on their template. Faster hardware is often like the feeling the first time you get prescription glasses. Hello, new world.

But how far does this go? My $20 investment (same link as above) was a no brainer. But a video card "starting at $299"? Does WoW drive sales like that?

I'd be tempted to say no, but I've had guildies who wouldn't stop talking about their liquid-cooled boxen -- one years ago in particular lived, if you believe him, in Alaska, and said he'd run it with the window open so his new card would stay cooler.

People do drop console-level cash on video cards. If they do it for WoW, I wonder why. Are there raids where you really need it? Is it at least partially a class-specific kind of thing? What classes and encounters benefit most from phat hardware? Is it just for those who like to record movies for their guild (which does take a little extra CPU, at least)? I mean, heck, even I don't like to instance on my MacBook, and it's not all that bad. (Here, I'm again reminded of when I used to run on 800x600 soloing on my iBook...)

How do you "know" when you have enough? When can you tell someone's got too much?

EDIT: Looking back, I see "affordability" mentioned in the ad for video cards that start at $299. Does anyone really let that effect their buying? Really? "Hey, Newegg says $299 is affordable! It must be!"

Ironyca's "Myths and Urban Legends in WoW" – The Bengal Tiger Cave

There are blogs you read for kickarse theorycrafting info (Graylo's Grey Matter) and ones just because they're interesting and usually pretty thought provoking (Lissanna's Restokin or Spinks' Welcome to Spinksville! (though, wow, please stop playing Star Wars already!  ;^D), but the blog that is a legitimate treat every time it pops into my RSS reader is Ironyca's Ironyca Stood in the Fire. (The other blog in my blogroll that's more "literature" than magazine? Cricket Bread, though that's not WoW related in the least, except to remind me that there are better things to be doing than playing WoW -- this is the guy who started the Crop Mob movement.)

The stuff at Ironyca's really has an archivist's and an academic's flair.  Not an industrialist academe, determined to, you know, be relevant by applying whatever theory has their goat to today's hot game (okay, no, really, GTA deserves your attention), but a, "Politics and fads be damned; I'm going to do good work and start chronicling and commenting on this [sub]culture," kind of academic. (Though she's light on the Deleuze.)

So I've been meaning to blog this particular post with more context, but I'm going to stop waiting and share the latest excellent series of material Ironyca's been putting together.  Honestly, if you can't let her work spin you forward a few steps, you're not really interested in non-self-hedonistic WoW [1].

Myths and Urban Legends in WoW – The Bengal Tiger Cave | Ironyca Stood in the Fire:

In Stranglethorn Vale near Zul’Gurub hidden in the mountains, there’s a secret cave with an even more secret mount vendor. She sells a cat mount, supposedly a bengal tiger, but she only spawns once a month for 30 minutes.

I'll admit that I'm much bigger into exploration than I am raiding, for instance, so maybe this is more fascinating to me than most.  I cat form prowled around the Scarlet Monastery for hours before I actually ran it, spent waaaay too much time trying to sneak into Dalaran before I'd leveled high enough, died too many times trying to find where I could drop into Un Goro Crater so I didn't have to run the long way around, and ran around Wintergrasp (hard not to call it "Winterfell" now) for a while well before I was the right level.  Soloing for fun can be, well, fun.  It's nice to take some time off from doing things the way the developers intended and instead see if I can't prank the game -- which, of course, was the whole point of the poorly scanned chapter linked to above.

But Ironyca goes well beyond exploration and strongly into the land of metalepsis.  I've wanted to write about gaming's "industry of metalepsis" for years... how the "real world" and [the horribly backwards notion of] the "virtual world" intersect, whether it's a trick like Rockstar's hidden game or the extra levels in N64's San Fran Rush (iirc)... there are things that can't be found without looking at media that exists only outside of the game (see Picard, via imgur with a small decency edit, above).

And that's why this series is so important. There's nothing in the game that's explicitly there to make you think that there's a vendor than spawns thirty minutes a month in some cave selling mounts. Sure, there's a skin, but that's it. Plus, the skin isn't an Easter Egg by any account. It has a good, reasonable explanation. The mount was in an early beta (alpha?) and was removed. It's a true fossil (again, read the previous link).

But through metalepsis, the digital fossil moves from forgotten mount to legend. That's a distinctly human reaction. We explain the unexplainable through story and narrative, and sometimes prefer to be seduced by romanticism rather than apply William's Razor.

Okay, that's enough. Your homework is to read every link in this post, and then find the cave of metaleptic legend.


And speaking of things not changing, you'll never guess what my first LFG instance was. Okay, well, yes, yes you will. The upside is that I sure as heck remember how to run it.

[1] Not that there's anything wrong with that, mind you; beyond capturing the raw materials of my time playing, this blog is essentially just hedonism.

And we're back...

Lessons for those starting back up their main after a year or more away.

Lesson 1: Remember when you had a hard time getting the first move from Valor to Justice points straight? It happened again. Now there's there's some new schmoe selling your Stormrider Leggings as a novelty item for transmogs. And yes, for Justice Points.

Lesson 2: No, you don't have any Valor Points any more. They've all converted.

Lesson 3: Yes, there's a brand new set of Justice Point tiered gear.

Lesson 4: ALL THE DAGGUM WIKI SITES ARE OUT OF DATE. It's like 4.3 hasn't happened on wowwiki or wowpedia minus a few notes about 4.3 at the bottom of pages. Obviously there's some new great place to learn about armor sets, but I don't know what it is. ARGH. Okay. Calmer now.

Lesson 5: This will make getting Flaming Treants lots easier. That's really the take-home, and makes Jal very happy. You can see him smilin'. @ As I mentioned the last time currency swapped, my Justice Points essentially just became Valor Points. I've already got enough for the chestpiece. Wow. Sometimes, deflation is a good thing.


Seriously, I'm much happier that I've only got to run dailies to get my irrational prize. When Mists comes out, you'll be replacing all your purples with greens anyway. I'm kinda happy I didn't spend my time grabbing Valors, but then I haven't gotten a year's use out of them either.

And a very special thank you to the readers that offered to send me a scroll, and an especially big thanks to the two who did -- I'm afraid I caused a mix-up on the email (sent from the "blog" email, but needed the scroll at the account email), so I ended up with two. I haven't claimed an 80 yet. That's proving a tougher decision than I thought. It will be Horde, just so I can play over there a bit. It won't be a Death Knight. I can level from 55-80, but there's almost zero chance outside of Sandy of me going from 1-80. But I can't tell if it should be another druid -- let's face it, Sandy's taught me I really can't play another class without serious study -- or not. Maybe I could spec resto? Out of the box, indeed. You know, I like that idea.

Thanks again, readers, and it's fun to have Jal back, even though I just jumped in for a few minutes this evening.

Free mount! Anybody want to send me a Scroll of Resurrection?

I'm not sure how many regular readers I have -- seems most of the traffic comes from Google searches, and often for images.

But if you are a reader and want a free mount, give me a yell at jal in drine at gmail (no spaces). Jal's ready to drop back in. I did email Lissanna at Restokin first, but haven't heard back in, what, probably all of 18 hours before it hit me I had a blog too. ;)

[Rogue-OT] Sandy's 14 and I'm rogue bitten

Sandy turned 14 without me even noticing. I'm in the middle of some "whack trolls and collect x jujus" quest and WHAM, the sparkly colors are flying. Leveling combat rogues is, after your third point in Sinister Strike, E-Z.

I know some of this is simply because I want to start playing "for real" again, but I've got to say, Sandy finally got me hooked on Combat Rogues. The DPS is insane. After dropping a third point into improved sinister strike, she's hemorrhaging DPS. Greens have started dropping like crazy too. Before, I had trouble with yellow mobs, now oranges and yellow elites are no problem. And, as I read later is common, she doesn't even really have to rest or stealth any more with all this DPS and recuperate. She just waxes one mob after another, leveling like mad.

But though I'm not wasting any time researching quest rewards or items, I am taking a few seconds to maximize stats with what I've got (duh). One thing that was weird -- my 9.1 DPS green sword is in her off-hand, and 5.8 DPS grey is in the main. Huh? When I tried to swap, I was told I wasn't a high enough level to swap hands. But I could drop the green in the main. I just couldn't get the grey into the off. ARGH.

And I'm WoWHeading and WoWWikiing (hello, out of date). Amazing the simple stuff you don't have to know playing different classes. As any n00b rogue (or any n00b dual weilder) knows, there are main hand, off-hand, and one-hand weapons. The first only goes in the main, etc etc.

The formula for DPS is apparently...

Dual Wield: Effective DPS =
0.76 x ( [Main Hand Weapon's DPS] +
( 0.5 x [Off-Hand Weapon's DPS] ) )

Also important: The power of Ambidexterity. It looks like that gives you 87.5% of normal DPS with your off hand. I'm missing something there, though, b/c that gives you more DPS with your off-hand (87.5) than your main (76)?

Anyway, BAM, rogue theorycrafting. Nothing boggling, but I have hit WoWHead and friends pretty hard. I'm looking at lists of twink weapons (not too useful), quests with decent rewards I can use in either hand, searching good drops, finding craftables, and performing weapon searches, you know, just to see what's out there, like this one that I'll never get, or this one that I could grab if I wax enough murlocs.

And at level 22, heeeeello Slice and Dice. No wonder folks love to play these guys. Though I have to remind myself that Mists kills talents. /sigh I hardly knew ye.

These spells and abilities will be trained in the field, appearing immediately in players' spellbooks once they reach the appropriate level. As a result, there will no longer be a need to visit class trainers save to re-spec or purchase Dual Specialization, keeping players engaged and doing what they enjoy.

The more things change, the more crufty old players like have to complain about.

She reminds me of Jal now -- a character I started playing just to see what things were like, no real time spent investigating playstyles, no time wasted (particularly with Sandy) comparing items or figuring out builds. Just grabbing what seemed to make the most sense until, surprise!, you turn the corner and are addicted. I even spent time leveling her cooking. We've bonded.

And finally, I won't keep posting this stuff any more, but here's one final "Sandy's vanishing wardrobe" post. Perhaps I'll follow up with a more sustained post later, but let's just say I didn't really notice Jal's clothes being quite as annoyingly bare.

Before and after...

Who designed this stuff? If you don't want your daughter wearing it, it shouldn't be something a game for kids is using as an easily achieved, low level item either. I'd say it shouldn't be a higher level item either, but I'm betting the number of under fifteen year-olds with tiered armor is much lower than the general WoW population. If you must be crass, do it responsibly [as if that wasn't oxymoronic].