Confessions of a Part-time Panzerkin

Sandy the Rogue: Ding 9!

2012-01-18T19:23:00.000-08:00

Seems like Sandy levels insanely quickly, so I finally managed to remember to check /played. I'm not going for any land speed records, but she's got 9 levels in just under 2 hours, 40 minutes. That's three levels per 53 minutes, or a level every 17 min, 47 seconds. That's fast. Jalindrine's screenshot collection doesn't start until level 14, and I'm not sure I checked played much at all, but perhaps there are a few places where I played straight through a level and can approximate his TpL (Time per Level, of course). Sure wasn't this fast... was it?

I also thought I'd mention that this quest map is awful. Look at the range of these quests and turn-ins! Man, I miss being mounted. Almost makes me wistful for the DK alt.

I still don't have time to log Jal back in, so I'll probably keep putting in a few minutes of Sandy now and again. I'd like to give LFR a try. My blog roll keeps coming back to it as a topic, and I'd like to see how it works. And I do occasionally wonder how much trouble it'd be to grab a few more T12 pieces, and if that'd be enough to get Jal into PURs.

Pandaria hasn't really given me much more to be excited about. I've read through some argument about its simplified talent trees (looks like this was Lissanna) being an improvement, saying that the Cataclysm trees were pretty sorry. Though complex, there were (and are), Lissanna argued, essentially "right" and "wrong" talent distributions, where the stuff that's up to personal choice boils down to meaningless fluff.

I did have someone once in a PUG ask me about my points in Cataclysm... second time ever. The first was years ago, in Vanilla, and the fellow said that they liked that I had points in what's now Naturalist (wasn't that before, was it?), showing I knew that I was going to be doing more than just DPSing. This second set of comments that I got told me how I'd gotten the distrib wrong, sure enough. They'd Armoried Jal and very politely told me I should move points around. I did, np, but the point holds: The system still looks complex, but "thanks" to the community of theorycrafters, we "know" there's only a few distribs worth keeping. This will change in Pandaria, and Lissanna thought it was an improvement. I think I tentatively agree, though I don't know much about the expansion yet. Well, other than the Activision-Blizzard-Dreamworks marketing synergy. I did find myself considering a mace for a quest reward tonight, and lamented that there are no longer any weapon skills -- if Sandy wants a mace, there's no reason not to take it, though she's never (iirc) used one herself.

Remember back when you'd have your staff knocked away and your Unarmed combat skill would start shooting up? Ah, the good old days. ;^)

Well, that's it. I'm too tired to write something awfully interesting, it turns out. My only other comment regards the tiny screenshots. They're native res. I've moved, and my only computer right now is an HP Pavilion dm1. It does okay for a really cheap ultraportable with Win7 64-bit, and even runs Visual C# 2010 pretty quickly, all things considered, but it's no screamer. Thus the 800x600 screenshots (I also have an old Dell CRT monitor out; don't ask). fps is sticking in the 30-40 range for Sandy, but I don't think I'd want to raid on this box! Reminds me of the old iBook G4 screenshots I put up.

VP Changes to 4.3 PTR - Forums - World of Warcraft

2011-12-25T15:23:00.000-08:00

VP Changes to 4.3 PTR - Forums - World of Warcraft:

We've made slight adjustments to the Valor Point (VP) drops on the 4.3 PTR which testers can now see. In both 10- and 25-player raids, bosses will now drop 100 VP each (down from 115 and 135 respectively). We’ll also be changing Firelands raid bosses to drop 50 VP per kill upon release of the patch.

This change is being made to further emphasize the desire to kill bosses for the items they drop. In the 4.3 raid, tier sets can only be earned from boss drops, and as Raid Finder will allow for just about anyone to get a chance to kill bosses, we think there will be less need for Valor overall. We want to try to match the lower desire for VP with a slightly slower acquisition rate.

Argh, I'm already looking back into gear. This doesn't sound good for soloers, who could bag three tiered pieces without ever raiding in T12. I hope the LFR tool is as good as they hope, though that would greatly de-emphasize the importance of guilds.

Eridan's comment pretty much sums what I'm thinking/afraid of:

I think you may be vastly overestimating how well the Raid Finder is going to work when you're making these plans. Right now it mostly seems to be allowing people to wipe on Morchok once or twice before the calls of "U ALL BADS" and the ragequits begin.

That won't be any fun at all. You might say, "Join a guild!" but honestly, I just want to solo as much as possible to ensure I'm geared well enough for a few PUG/PUR runs. Not needing a guild to raid would be nice. Kills the mystique of raiding a bit though, I think. Will be interesting to see if LFR works well or not and how it'll affect the game's feel.

So it looks like, if, say, you're a druid who hasn't played since July, that the gear you're hunting is exactly the same as it was when you quit when it comes to valor points. I'd really hoped my old VP had magically appreciated a little. New gear is out there, but it's only from bosses.

The first hit of heroin is always free...

2011-12-25T14:53:00.001-08:00

... as is the one when you've been sober for six months.

I'm trying to keep myself convinced that it's a bad idea to sign back up, even for a free week. It's hard.

Update[d video card for $20] and Pandaria Licensing with DreamWorks

2011-12-08T10:18:00.001-08:00

Okay, I'm still not back-as-in-back to playing. Right now I'm waffling between, "Pandaria seems pretty cool, in spite of it being, um, pandas," and, "How the heck can they release this expansion without paying DreamWorks through the nose?!!"

I mean, really, "bouncy" and "inner peace" racial traits? You've got to be kidding me. Right? This is a giant prank, isn't it?

But then "Activision Blizzard" seems to have Kung-Fu Panda in their licensing bag already? Maybe they're crazy like a fox? Maybe the whole point is to take the standard Oriental Expansion Idea and up some Kung-Fu Panda sales while you're at it? It's so crazy, it just might work, right?

I'll admit that I can't keep up with who owns what company any more. I'd managed to forget about Activision and Blizzard. It's crazy. But let's face it, somebody owns rights to Kung-Fu Panda, and Blizzard (now Act-Bliz) obviously owns WoW. This is cross-promotion of Disney-ESPN proportions.

In any event, I've already seen Kung-Fu Panda 2 (not nearly as good as the first, but there is a bit of the "2 is just here to get us to 3" feeling -- hey, so what are the chances that Kung-Fu Panda 3 is coming out about the same time as this expansion? Imagine the coincidence of that!), and I'm sure I'll bag Mists release day. The attention to the single-player game, if it happens, will be neat, and I'm excited to check out the monk class and new zones, even if I have to do it as a panda. If done right, the zones could be pretty cool.

In other exciting news, I finally broke down and stopped using the GeForce 8500 with 256 megs of VRAM that's still listed on this page, and that I've had for years. People that read this blog too closely know that I've been considering spending as much as $170 for a new card over the last year, but a CyberMonday special at NewEgg had a GT430 with a gig of RAM for $20 shipped after rebate (here's the item, back up to $45 after rebate now). Too good to pass up.

GTA IV finally plays in a resolution over 800x600, which is awesome. I did this with GTA3:SA too... the late video card upgrade was like getting a new game.

I also played Sandraevia, the freeplay Blood-Elf Rogue I've got, for a few more minutes, which means, of course, that I bagged yet another level, though I was a little slow snapping the shot.

Just for kicks, I'll include two pictures, one with something approximating my old settings and another with the new. I'd always kept draw distance to Ultra, as that's the only setting that really affects gameplay (other than summing their performance into fps), but now I've got it all maxed out. Soloing in the starting area is no problem. I'd almost like to raid again just to see what happens.

Old Settings:

New Settings:

It looks better, no doubt, and looks even better in motion. For $20, it's an obvious win. Sure, the fan is a little loud, but my CPU fan doesn't really slow down either, so I can only barely hear the GPU. That said, the CPU fan is so loud, I really can't believe that I can just barely hear this GPU fan over the CPU, but I can. Wow. For $20, I'm not complaining.

I often wonder how a game reviewer should considering each game's "artistic" effects. In short, does pretty eye-candy make for a better game? I hate to say it helps. I still recall being wowed by Ironforge (no pun was intended there, sorry) the first time -- and Darn too, the first time I walked up on it before seeing IF. Blood Elf architecture is cool, and Lich King had some nice expanses too. Each of those impressed me and increased immersion -- not so much because it was realistic, as that the game was essentially imprinting me. These were unforgettable, tell your neighbor moments. I should also add Nagrand to the list. Beautiful. Eye candy is the difference between driving down a bland Interstate and hitting the PCH.

But which setting do you use to review a game when some of your readers are playing on laptops with integrated graphics and others have top of the line SLI? What experience is the "right", representative one that you should be using?

I don't know. But I will say that if it's been a while since you upgraded, keep an eye out. $20 is a no-brainer, and there've got to be similar deals coming up soon.

Item inflation, disillusionment and return

2011-10-14T06:16:00.000-07:00

Well, it's been a while, I'll admit. I hate to say it, but the raiding didn't do it for me. It's fun to be part of a group, and to have the peer pressure on you to get gear, learn the instances, and wack difficult bosses, but, honestly, it's still just grindy. Worse, it's grindiness with deadlines, and that really does turn gaming into work. I'd still like to meet up with a fairly social guild for a weekly run through level-appropriate instances, but I'm not sure I want to commit to 3 hours a night of grinding in preparation.

I mean, if we could even get gear that keeps its power... you know, like a permanent piece each expansion that you'd never really have to grind for again -- and be done with the shoulder slot forever with a heirloom-like scaling as you hit new expansions and gathered better gear in general, then maybe it'd be worth rolling into raids. But to know all these hours go to nothing, that item inflation means your hard-won items will be worthless in six months really makes the all the work feel empty. Sure, you're making your story, but the connection to the main storyline is so tenuous, particularly with the fact that your actions don't have serious, visible consequences for anyone else playing, means there's no real payoff in virtual goods or contributions to the plot.

So Jal took a break.

Yesterday, after a few months off, I finally got sucked back in by one of the "play for free" side banner ads. There're really only a few combinations that are wholly new to me. I've had alts, really low level alts, but alts, in everything but rogues (strange, as I was always a thief of some sort in D&D and AD&D) and orcs. After downloading, I remembered that Burning Crusade was free to everyone now too, and though I'd played a blood elf warlock for a few levels, I didn't care much for the warlock part. So I started putting together a blood elf rogue.

Look, there's no way a guy can play a blood elf guy. There's just not. The guys look too, um, well... feminine. The "facial hair" selections are all soulpatches of one sort or another. Their chests are, well, strange. And the hair seems to suggest they got switched at the unisex-apparently-means-one-sex-not-either salon. So even though my last "mainish" character, Jalyndrine the Death Knight was a chick, so is this one. It's almost as if the blood elves were made not just to have a "pretty" horde race, but to encourage virtual cross-dressing. Honestly, if the percentage of girls-with-guy-avatar ratio isn't highest for blood elves, I'd be surprised. That's a weird race.

One quest later, I'm level two. I guess inflation's hit all over, huh?

(Arg, and their free hit of heroin is already working. Reading back through my own blog, I'm reminded of the burning treant bonus for the T12 gear. Tell me that isn't worth paying to play?!! (Yes, I realize it's really not, but the evil cash-burning magic's still working on me...))

Time to spam Starfall

2011-07-19T15:06:00.000-07:00

And the game gets easier. There are three spells you have to watch very carefully -- well, two spells now. They were Starfall, Force of Nature, and Typhoon. Each of these had the ability to aggro outside of what you were intending to DPS and had to be used very carefully.

Treants will often pursue new groups of trash if you forget to tell them to stop and follow. Starfall would aggro *anything* nearby, which, honestly, was great for the Fireland dailies that require smashing charred mobs. Typhoon travels a ways, and tends to aggro things that seemed to be too far away... or yellows you forgot to factor in. An unglyphed Typhoon is even more difficult, as you sometimes had to make sure you didn't push mobs into the wrong areas. Touchy tanks hate typhoon pushback as well. Both are occasionally reasons to line up to the side of the mobs and Typhoon them into a wall if you're unglyphed. (I really enjoy Typhooning mobs into walls for some reason.)

Anyhow, apparently it's time to strike Starfall from the list of spells that require skillz. I used to be overly careful about using it, as I've accidentally pulled some trash, especially in Grim Batol, with SF. But now, well, SPAM AWAY!! (I'm on a trip right now or I'd check it out.)

Patch 4.2 hotfix roundup:

Starfall is no longer hitting targets that are within 40 yards if they are not in combat with the druid or his/her party/raid members. It is targeting all hostile characters in combat with the druid's party/raid members, is not hitting Stealth characters, is not breaking crowd control effects, and is not targeting nearby critters.

Note to self: T11 and T12 Point Gear

2011-07-17T16:03:00.000-07:00

All six items on WowHead.com.

We go a-raidin'

2011-07-16T06:56:00.000-07:00

Well, I've joined a new raiding guild. Strange how that changes your approach to play. When I don't get every Mark of the World Tree I can each day, I feel I'm falling behind. When I don't get every VP I can each week, I feel like I'm not quite measuring up. This outlook is bonkers, of course, especially as I joined saying that though I was decently geared, I was responding more to the guild leader's call for "social players" than raiders, but I'd raid as much as they'd let me.

We ran through BWD. I watched a few Tankspot and ZAM video guides and glanced at Icy Veins beforehand, which was useful, but probably not absolutely required. Knowing how to jump up on the Nefarian pedestals was probably the most useful result of the preparation. The Aliena guide on ZAM talked about staying away from either end of Oxynia, but I ended up being told to stay firmly behind her. Lots of tail whips there, but very few wipes.

I really was the n00b occasionally. A few times the raid (and guild) leader had to say, "Boomkin, DPS Nefarian now," or something similar. We did wipe four or five times, but there were a few players that were fairly overgeared for BWD, so we didn't have too difficult a time once folks learned strategy.

It was fun, though long. The move away from waves of trash to boss after boss was an interesting change. We turned up Security Measure Alpha at one point, and even though it was my first run, the guild let me have it, which was great. We also have one restokin guildy that took an interest in Jal pre-raid, got my gear and talent tree spec'd "correctly" (I do miss Solar Beam while PvEing, though). He also brezzed me at least three times, and *very* quickly when I went down, which was appreciated. A few well timed whispers also kept me in the right places.

And it's that help that's probably the biggest change for me, other than the sheer number of instance and raid runs the guild does, when moving from small social to medium-sized raiding guild. This guy knew how to play balance, and balance was his off-spec. And he was patient as get-out, minus one communication when I said, "Can you show me your talents for resto?" and he interpreted that as, "Prove to me you're a talented resto player." The guild leader had asked if I could heal initially, and I said I could try, but hadn't off-spec'd yet and didn't strictly have healing gear, so I was asking how to set up the resto tree. That was a quick lol from anything nasty, though.

So raiding is fun. Putting a raid on your schedule is nice. Not really caring if I get any loot -- and getting some anyway -- helps. Having people patiently help you like mad is great. Finding replacements in seconds if someone has to drop is awesome. And the anxiety level during the mostly guild staffed raid run was a heck of a lot cooler than your typical PUG.

In other news, I'm still slowly adding VPs and quickly adding JPs. Bagged the Relic of Norgannon after a PUG Heroic yestehttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifrday. Better than Eonar , I think, because Eonar only adds Spirit, which I think essentially reduces to hit for us, and I'm finally hit capped (note to self: don't reforge SPI to HIT; there's no change). Before that, I went Haunt of Flies, as my cloak stunk. That took me from 333 to 359 on the back. Though I added Stormrider's Leggings, the difference looking back isn't enough over Blazewing's Klt for me to have bit. The thinking was that I'd get the chest and gloves from VPs, so all that was left from JP T11 was legs. /shrug I think next on the JP list is a ring and trinket and then I'm nearly "done".

Jal's first VP item will probably be either Obsidian Arborweave Gloves or the Obsidian Arborweave Vestment. Tyler at Shifting Perspectives argues pretty strongly that I should ignore the gloves, but I'm not as sure. See below for a quick exchange we had over on WoW Insider, edited a bit for stoopid grammar and clarity issues on my end.

rufwork said...

Okay, admittedly, I only read Blood Pact because I *can* find an RSS for Tyler, but not one just for Balance dr00d Shifting Perspectives articles.

That said, how do you quantitatively factor in tier set bonuses? Contra T12, [Tyler] says...

"The most common thing that I see people do in situation such as this is that they always, always rush off for their tier gear first. The simple matter is this: Everything is an upgrade. ... Get the upgrades that you can get now first, and get the ones that come later, later."

Though locks apparently have hands alternatives, they're from Rag. You can PUG Heroics and get T12 gloves after a little over a week. It's tougher to raid in a social guild.

But okay, let's even say you *can* bag raid gear easily. How do you factor in T12 2P bonuses? You know, for laser chicken, how do you measure the worth burning treants? For locks, um, how do you factor in whatever you guys get? Don't Tier bonuses make T12 items disproportionally powerful compared to other Valor Point gear? Or, rather, why *don't* tier bonsues make T12 disproportionally powerful? JP gear is nearly free with 70 points per Heroic boss -- and that bonus doesn't max out; you can run Heroics indefinitely and keep bagging 70 JP a boss. But if I'm spending 2200+1650 = 3850 VP = a pretty solid month of PUGging, what are the numbers on getting 3850 VPs of non-tiered gear [which is essentially what Tyler suggested] before two tiered?

Being a part timer, Valor Points are something I can still earn without raiding. I think I go 2xT12 first, and gloves being only 1650, I think I start there. ?? If I can find 20k, I get valor bracers too. /shrug

7-12-2011 @ 8:29AM

Tyler Caraway said...

Gloves are the cheapest Tier piece option to get with Valor Points, this is true, but that similarly makes them the worst option. Gloves have the lowest "weighted" itemization. Slots are not all created equal, chests, pants, and helms generally have the most stats on them in comparison to gloves, wands, and rings. BH also has a chance to drop gloves for you, so getting your gloves first bars you from benefiting from that option outright.

If you aren't a raider, then does it really matter which pieces you get first? If you want your two piece -- which is all you can get without raiding -- then you would still get the chest and pants over getting the gloves. Further, the gloves, and even the chest to a degree, are rather worthless to non-raiders. They've got a lot of hit on 'em.

As for set bonuses:

All set bonuses are usually pretty decent, and all of them are better than not having them in most cases -- I'm seriously starting to doubt the new balance T11 four-piece does anything -- but what people often overlook is that new set bonuses usually aren't worth more than old set bonuses.

Outliers aside, the paradigam works a little bit like this. Your T11 2-piece is worth, say, 500 DPS and the 4-piece is worth 1,000 DPS (some specs/classes may have that reversed, but generally you have one strong bonus, one weak bonus.) Now, T12 set bonuses aren't actually going to be worth all that much more than T11 bonuses. Set bonuses aren't a scalar thing, they are usually all designed to offer approximately the same level of DPS as before. So, from the above, your T12 2-piece would be worth around 1,000 DPS, maybe 1,100 DPS, and your T12 4-piece would be worth around 500 - 600 DPS.

[This is really confusing the way he wrote it. It sounds like your 2P T11 bonus is the "weak bonus" of the set and the T12 2P is the "strong bonus". So if you have inifinite T11 gear and only 2 T12 pieces, you really want to go 4P T11 and 2P T12, which is perfect, right?]

As long as you retain all set bonuses [he really seems to have missed my point; if I'm only getting soloable items, I can't retain all set bonuses. If fact, I'm only guaranteed three tiered pieces total], you generally don't see a difference in weighting Tier items over other items. The only time you ever want to "rush" Tier first is when you have an exceptionally weak old Tier bonus but an exceptionally strong new Tier bonus. If the old Tier 11 4-piece bonus was the Tier 12 2-piece bonus, then you would absolutely rush for it -- and the reality is that druids probably should be rushing their Tier since the new 4-piece [on Tier 11?] is awful -- but in general set bonuses are fairly well balanced between themselves.

[emph throughout mine]

7-16-2011 @ 12:04AM

rufwork said...

@Tyler -- The what amounts to a "price of entry" logic is interesting. There's a sort of T12 price of entry per piece -- 1650 VPs -- and then a price to get that more efficient piece -- 2200 minus 1650 = 550 VPs. 550 VPs gives me a pretty good jump start on VP bracers if I don't have 20-30k gold sitting around, and gives me the T12 2P.

That's why I'm still thinking that I want a set with the most pieces possible with my VP that still includes a 2P bonus, though. I'm assuming you can keep the T11 2P bonus on top of the T12 2P. Now you're one drop in BoT away from having ((Chest or Legs)+Shoulders) * T11 + (Hands+(Legs or Chest)) * T12, and you can find a good BoT PURaid relatively easily, all things considered.

That's the way I was leaning, anyhow, and with your "T12 set bonus isn't >>> T11 set bonus" suggestion, gloves for VP seems even more like the cheapest way to get "2P+2P ~ 4P" and your valor bracers more quickly.

I mean, sure, if you could have any two T12 pieces and points isn't an object, you go legs and chest. But here, I think it comes down to if having valor bracers more quickly offsets having fewer good stats on the T12 gloves. Is (again, on Boomkin; sorry to hijack the thread)...

86 Int
157 Sta
266 Mastery (1.48)
683 Armor
30 Haste (0.23%)
1 Sockets
-177 SPI (so hit, like you say)

... (the diff of T12 chest over T12 hands) worth 550 VPs? I guess you could argue yes. But 44% of 227 INT = 99.88, and 44% is how close you are to valor bracers and their 227 INT with 550 VPs.

Perhaps it largely matters what T11 pieces you already have.

Thanks for the reply. It's really too much for a casual guy to think through and feel confident about. Bring back BC and point-blank wrath-spam! ;^)

This exchange really shows the disconnect between WoW Insider posts and your typical casual player. Even after I've stressed casual gaming and PUG reward VPs as the only means to getting T12 gear, Tyler continuously seems to be assuming things that casual gamers just don't have access to get -- unlimited valor points and raid drops.

There's a huge disconnect between the "Here are the three best items in each slot" guides we sometimes get and the way most gamers, even max-level gamers, are almost certainly playing. As soon as I get two Tier 12 items, I'm done with the PUG grind. If the guild tells me I need more, no problems, but hopefully we can raid for them. The chest is the only points-only tiered piece, right? I mean everything else in the Tier 12 set potentially drops from somewhere, right? If I was still in casual/social land, if it weren't for what have to be kewl buring treants, I'm probably done chasing VPs after a single item, and the second can show up whenever it wants.

Very Good Zul'Gurub Heroic Guide

2011-07-10T20:28:00.000-07:00

After figuring out that 7x70=490 and I was done with Heroic Valor Point bonuses for this week, I decided I'd read up on and try out the new Zul'Aman randoms. Got sucked into ZG with two bosses already down. Not sure what happened to the last DPS, but I do know I'm always glad when I hit an instance that's nearly done. Seems to happen most in Grim Batol.

Anyhow, this Zul'Gurub Heroic Guide on Icy Veins is quite good. I really didn't know what the heck I was doing, caused at least two wipes, and offered to drop seconds before I saw the finished dungeon plaque appear. Still got to roll on drops, which was nice. I guess I did okay, but boy, I had some learning to do.

Having gone through three bosses now, though, combined with the guide, I think I'm good on at least two.

All +INT Justice Point balance gear from 4.2 that's not a Tier 11 piece

2011-07-07T07:04:00.000-07:00

Panzerkin: Doing the nasty Wowheading so you don't have to. ilvl 359 stuff listed first. (That's the stuff that's new to JPs in 4.2) Some of this is resto stuff, but there are a number of lists that say you'd rather mix in some resto situationally, so it's all here.

EDIT: Now with prices.

Haunt of Flies	359	Back	1250	Cloak
Heavenly Breeze	359	Back	1250	Cloak
Fading Violet Sandals (BoE!)	359	Feet	1650	Leather Armor
Band of Secret Names	359	Finger	1250	Ring
Twined Band of Flowers	359	Finger	1250	Ring
Core of Ripeness	359	Trinket	1650	Trinket
Soul Casket	359	Trinket	1650	Trinket
Relic of Eonar	359	Relic	700	Relic
Relic of Norgannon	359	Relic	700	Relic
Blessed Hands of Elune	346	Hands	1650	Leather Armor
Cluster of Stars	346	Head	2200	Leather Armor
Apple-Bent Bough	346	Held In Off-hand	950	Off-hand Frill
Leggings of Late Blooms	346	Legs	2200	Leather Armor
Celadon Pendant	346	Neck	1250	Amulet
String of Beaded Bubbles	346	Neck	1250	Amulet
Somber Shawl	346	Shoulder	1650	Leather Armor
Thatch Eave Vines	346	Waist	1650	Leather Armor

Smolderskull sighting

2011-07-06T16:09:00.001-07:00

Wow. Thirty grand. I'd guessed between 20-25, and then had a guy in chat offering for 20k, and heard someone else who bought another set of VP 378 bracers for 30k. Guess that's the going price.

Pre-Heroic Druid Guide 4.2 Update

2011-07-06T12:05:00.000-07:00

I made a quick update to the Soloer's Pre-Heroic Gear Guide today to include a bit of 4.2 information. The Chest of Forgetfulness is off. Those 2200 JPs are better spent on the Tier 11 chest. Pretty much all the changes I made are below. I still need to add the 4.2 Firelands grind currency options.

Just quickly, the Jal update: More Firelands grinding while waiting for LFG PUGs. I've gotten in Vortex Pinnacle and The Stonecore that I haven't run before. And after a bit of a sales war between three sellers of the Chestguard of Nature's Wrath(I canceled, dropped price, and relisted twice), I managed to clear 4090g on the AH. Picture above. Four more times and I can buy new bracers. ;^D

Auction House:
Smolderskull Bindings (4.2) -- Going for 20k-30k in chat; haven't seen in AH yet

As Lissanna says, and then there were bracers. The Smolderskull Bindings are new in 4.2, and are actually 1250 Valor Point items. But they're BoE. I think you're better served by saving Valor Points once you earn them for Tier 12 gear. And when you're pre-Heroic, you can't get Valor Points anyway. The price is so high I considered keeping these off, but some folk are so good crafting or have access via guilds or mains that it's good to keep them in mind.

Reputation: Hyjal (again)
Nightweaver's Amulet (4.2)

You've already run Hyjal and gotten good rep just with the quests. That bagged the Aessina Blessed Gloves I mentioned before. With 4.2, you can quickly pick up an ilvl 365 neck for under 90g if you've finished Hyjal and enter the Firelands. It takes a few more Marks of the World Tree to enter the Firelands proper, but it's a minor grind. There are more rewards for grinding Firelands that I'll be adding shortly, but they take 31+ days to unlock, which is insane. Tol Barad-like, but grindier.

Justice Points: (note that the full lists for each of these is in the full guide)
Stormrider's Regalia items

Stormrider's Gloves (1650 JPs)
Stormrider's Leggings (2200 JPs)
Stormrider's Vestment (2200 JPs)

~~Chestguard of Forgetfulness (enchant with Mighty Stats) (2200 JPs)~~

With the addition of Tier 11 to the list of Justice Point gear in 4.2, this list gets lots longer. I'm going to remove my recommendation for the Chestguard of Forgetfulness and replace that with Stormrider's Vestment. That's a no-brainer. The same JP cost for a 359 ilvl with the possibility of tier bonuses instead of 346 is obvious.

At the same time, note that you only get 140 Justice Points per normal Cata dungeon. Getting everything on this list means you're running 59 normal dungeons. That's a lot, obviously. And you don't need all of this gear to be geared for Heroic, which is a change with 4.2. You're easily overgeared, if only slightly. So let's get the Vestment and Cluster (still the best head pre-Heroic). Then if you've got a one-handed weapon, go with Apple-Bent Bough. If not, save for the Stormrider's Leggings. Why? Because when you go Heroic, you'll want the lower price Tier 12 Valor Point gloves first, I think. Honestly, if you've got the Furious Kilt from the AH or farming, you could potentially skip the legs here.

Ultimately it's up to you. Just know if you gloves for the T11 two-piece bonus that you might replace those pretty quickly once you're in Heroics.

Quick item up: Moonwell Chalice Nightweaver's Amulet

2011-07-04T05:10:00.000-07:00

ARGH. At first I thought you could get the Moonwell Chalice immediately upon entering Firelands, but no luck with the vendor for 31 days, apparently.

There is a full month-long chain of dailies to unlock her and the other two vendors.
..
To unlock the first vendor takes 31 days; to unlock all three takes 41 days.

But for your parting gift, I give you the Nightweaver's Amulet, which you can bag essentially immediately after hitting the Firelands.

And now back to the item you can get 31-41 days from now.

I've been trying to update the pre-Heroic gear list for 4.2, and it's been a pain, in part because Wowhead was misreporting Valor Point items as Justice Point ones. I thought I was about to get insane legs, pants, chest, wrists, and rings. Now, not so much.

That said, check this item out. I like the Gale of Shadows as much as the next guy, but this item is ~~apparently purchaseable right inside the Firelands~~ available only after a month of constant daily runs:

Moonwell Chalice - Item - World of Warcraft:

Binds when picked up
Unique-Equipped
Trinket
+340 Intellect
Requires Level 85
Item Level 365
Use: A small moonwell appears, blessing you with 1700 Mastery for 20 sec. (2 Min Cooldown)

Ooops -- WoW's Free To Play to 20

2011-07-03T06:04:00.000-07:00

Boy, I really missed something when I applauded Blizzard's move to open BC to vanilla-only owners.

From Blizzard Support:

The World of Warcraft Starter Edition allows players to access World of Warcraft for free -- all you need is a Battle.net account and an Internet connection. Starter Edition players can play up to a maximum character level of 20 and are able to upgrade to a full, paid account at any time, allowing them to continue their adventures where they left off.

Okay, I'm less happy. It turns out the free BC was just to pacify that I'd paid to level to 20. Matlocker, as you can see, is just barely over level 20. Matlocker's buddy in Recruit-a-Friend is just barely 20. Now of course one bud probably should be in a paid account. If nobody is, they can't play together in a group (if neither can start a group -- and FTP characters can't -- they're just fighting near each other), have one use heirlooms, or get the RaF bonus, but the $15-$5+$30 we paid for Matlocker to get WoW vanilla and a 30 day time card seems a lot stoopider [sic] now.

Oh well, Blizzard robbed me of another $40. What else is new?

I think the real take home for me is that I've got something to do the next time I suspend my account. I still don't have a Horde alt worth a rip. I also planned on checking out the Worgen starting zone at some point. Now I can do both off the clock while Jal's fishing, and that's a good thing.

The Burning Crusade Improved! Now Free as in Beer!

2011-07-02T11:30:00.000-07:00

Well, TBC is now free.

World of Warcraft and The Burning Crusade -- Together at Last! - World of Warcraft:

In addition, anyone who owns the original World of Warcraft, regardless of when they purchased the game, will automatically be able to access all of the content and features from The Burning Crusade expansion at no additional cost. It’s time to set forth from Azeroth, adventurer -- Outland awaits!

The question is why. I mean, Matlocker, my alt account alt that I got to play a little refer-a-friend, is excited. I paid something like, what, $15 for WoW Old World at Xmas with a $5 dollar gift card back, so now I've gotten a month and an expansion for $10, which wasn't bad.[1] I guess maybe this will convince alters and friends to run ten more levels o' fun, which takes another month or two. (Now Matlocker would like his free 10 days to try BC out. ;^D)

Of course this means that BC boxes in Gamestop etc now, if they're still out there, are worthless. Woe to those who buy. I hope they've pulled the SKU. Beware habitual eBayers.

I guess this is good in that Blizzard can get rid of one bit flag. Now everyone can hit BC. Still, I can't imagine that's a huge savings. Perhaps now they have one less client to test. That would be worth a bit of time==cash.

But are there tons of level 60ish characters running around who got Vanilla and stopped? Am I missing something? Though if we assume those folks wouldn't buy BC but will play a month if it's free (especially with a quick email prod), 1% of 11 million * $15 is still a lot of dough, I suppose ($1,650,000).

[1] Okay, okay, I know what you're thinking. A $5 gift card isn't worth a full $5! You're right. It's hard to spend a Gamestop gift card at Burger King. But if you're going to spend that $5 at Gamestop immediately anyhow, well, it's worth $5 to you.

Beginning Firelands/Patch 4.2

2011-06-29T08:09:00.000-07:00

Well, 4.2 is out. I've played a bit -- all on the MacBook -- and it's, well, interesting. It's not so much PvE end game for soloers as much as a minimally interactive movie so far. Sure, I've gotten lazy and dropped two healing pots, but there's really zero strategy and lots of mob clean up stuck between cut scenes. Even though the cut scenes, like the one where Thrall is taken away, are meant to pull you out of the millions of PCs running around HyJal right now and thrust you into what briefly looks like a position of singular fame and power, the facade drops away so quickly once the cutscenes are done that Blizzard'd be better off leaving them out entirely. It'd be better to treat you as what you are -- one of thousands attempting to fight the same thing.

The touch-and-tally quests (instead of "Kill X of Y" we have "Damage X of Y before someone else is done with them") really undercut their difficulty and feeling of accomplishment. I feel like I'm marking time.

Anyhow, the best source I've seen so far in the blogroll for figuring out the big picture for the questline is at Shifting Perspectives in the post "Faction rewards for balance in 4.2". Right now we're all here:

In order to begin your new adventure, simply pick up the starter quest from any of the new adventure boards located in a major city. This will send you out to Sanctuary of Malorne in Hyjal where the druids are under attack. After the initial quest chain, you'll gain access to three daily quests. It takes 20 Marks of the World Tree to open the next stage, which requires three days' worth of questing to get.

After those minimum three days, you've got "at least 10 days" before you can move from the first group of Firelands dailies to "unlock either the Druids of the Talon or the Shadow Warden" who offer you yet more quests that apparently take at least seven days to complete. After that, "you will open up three new quests that will finally net you the rewards that you've been after. Each of these quests require 125 Marks in order to open, which will take you 6 days or so in order to reach."

So, to sum, "From start to finish, it will take you around 36 days, 35 at a minimum, in order to unlock everything." Wow, indeed. If the quests don't get a heck of a lot more enjoyable, and soon, this will redefine the meaning of "grind". If Blizzard loses many more subscribers in a month than they gained from folks coming back, I wouldn't be surprised in the least.

EVE's microtransactions: Developing profit vs. fun? Virtual vs. Real?

2011-06-24T08:54:00.000-07:00

Spinks recently had a post on EVE's apparent plans to put pretty involved microtransactions into the game. Her response was, well, I can't quite say "common", because it's not the most common response, but perhaps it's the most predictable of the interesting, thoughtful responses. Here's a bit.

One of the main reasons that I think long term players get concerned about some of these microtransaction plans is that there’s a point where you wonder how far game devs are putting profit above making fun games. And if your main concern as a consumer is to buy (and pay for) fun games, you’d probably like THAT to be their main focus. [emphasis mine]

These are interesting distinctions. Is there really a fun vs. profit measurement duality for video game developers? Isn't profit always the primary motivator for, say, Blizzard and CCP Games when they're designing a game? Whose job is motivated and measured only by fun maximization? I wonder about playtesters, but I'm having a hard time arguing they're really primarily about fun; having done that a bit, it's more of a bug finding expedition. In fact, the only game designer I can think of that's really gotten away with "fun" (measured perhaps in unconventional ways) rather than profit is id, where johnc seems to be able to release when he's darned well ready, after the game has whatever techs and features he feels are appropriate. It's the one place where "When it's done" is always the deadline, and if there's no id software release for, well, years, that's also okay. But they only get to ignore profit because they already have plenty [and apparently manage that profit fairly well!]. I think you also have to argue that they changed the mode of production with video game design, or at least added an alternative mode, that of shareware. They could make a game on their own schedule and release, give or take, directly to their market. PopCap has a lot to thank id for pioneering.

Well, I guess there's another prime example of a "game dev" who puts "fun" above profits, and that's Jonathan Blow. Braid was a game that was meant to be completely for "fun", though I believe the term of art is (ironically) an "art" game. Watching what he's doing with The Witness, the currently in-dev Braid follow-up, is also interesting, particularly his undercover demo of the game at the Penny Arcade Expo.

I mean, Blow is a guy who says stuff like, "[My presentation is] about 'best practices' of modern game design that I find unsettling, and the way in which 'social games' and 'gamification' are destructive." Though Braid has been horribly successful and, I think it's safe to assume, a serious moneymaker, he's likely (?) not primarily motivated by profit. Rather, he's at the very least actively interested in (vs. id, who was passively hoping to) redefining the mode of production for video game design and consumption.

Anyone who comments on the state of games should watch Blow's MIGS lecture slides with audio here to see a sort of game developer countculture/alternative.

(There are others who might call themselves academic game developers, but honestly, I'm not sure I've seen anyone more motivated as a group by money, with some exceptionally notable exceptions (he said twice), than academics. Academics [in the humanities and in "hybrid" or interdiscplinary fields that include or originate largely in the humanities; engineering professors, eg, are much more honest about their profit-centric research] money fetish is revealed largely by their obsession with repressing their pursuit of cash, you know, like when they frame funding as "a necessarily evil", but love to wield the power from grants like children on their birthday. I can't consider most of these academic game developers in the same boat with Blow though, again, many are doing good stuff. For example, based on their work that I've seen, I'd like to think Michael Mateas or Nick Montfort is trying, but I don't know either well.)

Let me also mention, just for Google, "singular rhythms" here.

Anyhow, here's the discussion from Spink's blog, copied here in case Spinksville ever goes away (not that it should, it's just that I hate when blogs disappear).

on June 23, 2011 at 5:11 pm | Reply jalindrine

we like virtual worlds because they’re separate from the rat race of the real world. It’s because the real world doesn’t have much effect on the game world that the game world can be relaxed and fun

You’re first going to have to show me which games don’t overlap with the “real world”. Some are softballs, like “time”, which is obviously shared. But you also have to think about links between hardware requirements, internet access, and economic status. Think Bot Fighters (a mobile phone game) vs. World of Warcraft. Also think of cultural overlaps — ever seen someone speaking French in game? Fun, isn’t it?

As brief as I can put it: There’s no way I play Sojourn MUD literally for days if I’m not a student in college, you know? I’m not exposed to it, I don’t have the always-on network connection to play, nor the “free” time at 2am to play.

There’s a willful suspension of belief [sic] when someone goes virtual, but virtual is always about potential (sorry to trend Deleuzian here) rather than an alternative to the real.

on June 23, 2011 at 5:34 pm | Reply spinks

“You’re first going to have to show me which games don’t overlap with the “real world”

If you really don’t want to assume people have time and hardware enough to play computer games then I guess board games or storytelling games is where you start, and assume the majority of people could make 20 mins for a social gaming session.

But we’re talking about computer games, so let’s assume a baseline of hardware and some available time. It is pretty easy to suspend disbelief in a virtual setting, even with minimal graphics, so it won’t need to be especially good hardware. I’m quite good at suspending disbelief, but not if game mechanics are constantly throwing RL in my face.

But ultimately it’s easier to think of it as a continuum. Some games or types of games it’ll be easier for a player to immerse and shut the real world aspects out while they play, others it’ll be more in your face the whole time. You can still play Sojourn MUD without playing it for days on end, right? Presumably a game where power is related to time available is more immersive than one where it’s related to both time available AND RL money available. I did say minimal overlap, not none at all. I just meant a game where it’s easy to pretend it really is another world.
- on June 24, 2011 at 3:19 pm jalindrine
  
  First, just to be clear, I never played Sojourn MUD for days on end. It was just that my /played there was the first I’d seen measured in days, which scared me. Little did I know how low that number would be relative to what I’d be playing in a few years… ;^)
  
  In my post, I was just trying to focus you away from virtual vs. real. It’s so much more interesting to talk about how the two interact, as they’re always interacting. The real world always has a direct effect on the game, since there’s really no distinction. Even a board game is highly situated culturally and commercially. What game? Where was it made? How was it made? What supply chains are required for it to be made and distributed? How was it marketed? What are the origins of its rules? Does it require literacy to play? Math? Logic? What types of logic does it favor? How is gender represented in-game? etc etc etc Those are interesting questions, but for me, MMOs raise some more very interesting and specific ones.
  
  So here, I wonder what’s lost by having cosmetic items in game? How does the ability to directly translate conventional cash into goods break your suspension of disbelief — and why? Why is a shirt purchased with traditional 1st world currency any more off-putting than one purchased with in-game only currency? Both require time to amass. Both represent work traded for consumables. Both sorts of goods accumulation represent very similar rat races. Why is it that a highly structured and controlled rat race in-game is more liberating to you than the rat race of a gameless life? What’s the benefit of keeping a mental distinction between the two? Is there a point at which the online rat race could become the drudgery and you’re excited about your job? Do[es] anyone work at Starbucks to escape their boutique in Second Life? ;^) These are interesting questions with potentially enlightening answers, I think.
  
  The lack of virtual vs. real is largely the point of Edward Castronova’s work, but it’s a line of inquiry that’s worth extending. Sure, there’s a relatively minimal overlap somewhere, but that’s only a relative measurement. Dig a bit under the surface, and that perception of a minimum overlap is actually a heck of a deep interconnection.

I guess I would sum by saying, "Games always throw RL in your face, there are just times we've let ourselves get too habitualized to notice it." And it's there that the real politics begin.

Dev Watercooler discusses questing past 85

2011-06-09T16:34:00.000-07:00

It's an interesting discussion, and good to see (duh) that Blizzard realizes there are people who enjoy questing more than instancing -- or at least those whose lifestyles support 20 minutes (sometimes 2 minutes!) of questing, not and hour or five of instancing and raiding. There should be multiple endgames.

Here's some of their take:

In the absence of gaining levels, there are still ways to reward players who want to continue questing or playing through quest-like experiences. Here are some things (there may be more) that might encourage players like this to stick around:

Participation in an epic story
A sense of progress
Discovery of something new or unexpected each day
Earning character customization (including cool mounts!)
Earning fun toys
Making your character more powerful

That's a good start. Story and gear are certainly my two. I want something memorable. That's been rare. I also want to be able to run instances without detracting from the party. The Catch-22 of having to run an instance to get instance-ready gear is a real pita. And when you don't get to instance that much, you want to overgear slightly to make up for your gameplay. I can PvE with the best of 'em. Not so much run Shadowfang.

We've grappled with this problem before, and we'll continue to tinker with solutions. The Isle of Quel'Danas provided people with a great sense of progression, at least on a realm-wide level, and it sure felt epic. The Argent Tournament definitely gave players a sense of personal progress, as well as lots of fun toys.

Ewww. The Argent Tournament stunk. STUNK. Not fun. The Isle was at least an easy, visually impressive grind, and I got to put my items to good use waxing demons, so there was a little strat going from quest to quest, but it was still more grindy than epic storyline. They're overselling themselves here.

The Guardians of Hyjal are getting smart in patch 4.2. They're not just assaulting the Firelands with hardcore raiding guilds… they're attacking that place with everything they've got. That includes you, solo players! We've created a whole zone dedicated to daily questing. There are some 60 new quests in total -- that's about half a zone's worth of quest content. While the raiders are concentrating on taking down the likes of Ragnaros, you'll be securing the rest of his fiery domain.

There's also a story here, a chronicle of a vicious, knock-down, drag-out fight that begins in Hyjal and progresses -- over the course of weeks -- across the mountaintop and then into the Firelands themselves...

The progression is personal: you won’t see it happen until you make it happen.

Well, let's hope. I did enjoy the story in HyJal the most, though Therazane was the most visually impressive and the Wildhammer Clan the most memorable. The developers essentially beg you to beta test Firelands in the Watercooler piece, asking you to tell them where the storyline ain't hot. W[hy]tf do I want to see the storyline to tell you how to make the storyline better? The whole point of being a causal quester is that I like to run through the stuff once. If I just loved questing and didn't mind seeing content over again, I'd be an alt-a-holic.

And though Matlocker, prot-boy extraordinaire is now 21, I realized this week that it's been six years since I last quested in Duskwood. SIX YEARS. That's how long I like between doing and repeating my quests. I hope they go PTR to roll-out for Firelands in less than 6 years. And even then I want a cataclysm in between and a good reason -- Recruit-a-Friend and a friend -- before I'll run it.

Much of the motivation here is nostalgia. Just look at my complaints about what they did to Stitches and Acheus. I'm upset about a sword I never used, for heaven's sake. I'm not replaying just for fun. I'm not going to run the PTR and then run Firelands again when it's released. I've no interest in "What If" Jalindrine. I want good story and gear that rewards my serious questing and allows me to enjoy the periodic instance the first time.

/thus ends the lesson ;^)

Alt Ding -- Prot 20 19

2011-06-07T06:04:00.000-07:00

Not real exciting, but I did grab the MacBook to log back into my alt account for a few minutes last night and dinged my prot warrior to 20 19. I think this means I'm nearly ready for a mount (apparently supposed to get a letter about it ~~soon~~ when I hit 20). Wow, I know I'm a "walked to and from school in the snow, uphill both ways, pelted with tiny rocks" kind of guy here, but sheesh, nerf. That's quick, and I'm not even using heirlooms. He's already half-way to Revered with Darn, but that still means he's far enough away that he's going to have to get a mount from someone else. It's been so long since I had to check this out... and before I had a guildie have pity on me, as I remember being 40 without a mount because I kept putting money into new weapons.

Darkshore was actually quite fun this go through, though I'm not quite done. Some lame stuff, sure, but the quests culminating around the vortex in the middle of the zone was a good lore mnemonic. I really don't remember much from the first go with Jal other than Gubber, the Highborne (and the fairly spooky shrieks), some Naga-ish guys, killing crabs, and the corrupted fauna. I guess there was that mechno-something on the beach I had to wax too. But as far as lore or storyline, the new Darkshore does much better. Good elemental invasion/Twilight Hammer tie-in, we see the Highborne again, and the early appearance of Malfurion is nice. Visuals are more impressive (see fire, above), though they would have killed my iBook G4 in 2005.

I feel a little like a tourist playing it as a gnome, but when your buddy's a night elf, well...

Slowly getting Jal's life up at Picasa. Levels 14-28 are up now. Not sure I have anything earlier. Feel like I should be getting Archeology points for doing this.

Guess that's all. Enjoy the Tuesday downtime.

Ah yes, one more update. Got a new monitor for my office to go dual monitor. Bagged a nice dual monitor stand, and have one in portrait now to preview webpages as I code them. It's a good monitor out of the box, fwiw. Very clear. Much better than my previous monitor's LCD. Speakers can barely be heard over my office fan, but I took the externals off of my desk immediately to save space. The price of the monitor is back up to $130, but it was a steal at $110 shipped.

But the upshot for you, of course, is that Jal'll be going to 1920x1080 screenshots when I'm playing on the tower.

Flickr Fail

2011-06-04T08:05:00.001-07:00

Well, that experiment didn't work so well. I thought 300 mb/month was a ton of pictures -- and it is. Problem being that only the last 200 of them get to show up to everyone else.

Maybe I'll make 'em smaller and put on PicasaWeb.

The most fun part of this so far are the screenshots that show things I was doing around playing. I'll post one without much info here. The iBook G4 had a hard time keeping up at times, so I'd swap to 800x600 from 1024x768. Problem there is that the screen would look crummy if I used fullscreen -- 800x600 doesn't scale to a 1024x768 pixel screen well. When I hooked up to my external CRT monitor at home, it's no problem, but occasionally I wouldn't, and would go to windowed mode, which was still a serious performance boost over fullscreen at 1024.

So, here, we see I'm reading about college football, have that weird duck-themed AIM client running, seem to be playing on dialup and WiFi (? -- guess those icons have changed meanings), and have Preview open with two images. Other snaps show me looking up stuff on Thott, or doing research for grad school with call numbers visible, etc. Interesting look into the life behind my WoW Life.

Of course the chat from in-game on General is pretty classic too.

1) ugh just got back from there and the traininer [sic] is fresh out of stuff for me
2) GO to IF
1) ironforge?
2) yea
1) how do i get there?

Ah, the good old days, when we weren't sure IF meant Ironforge and didn't have any idea how to get from Auberdine to IF.

A week of rest...

2011-06-02T13:23:00.001-07:00

I'm taking a quick week off of WoW to finish some work and get my proverbial ducks into their rows. These ducks include the pre-Heroic level 85 gearing guide and a Flickr account for Jal. I compulsively snap screenshots, and figure I'll put them up, starting with the oldest ones I can find. He's made his way through a number of computers... I'll selfishly take this time to try and remember them.

iBook G4
Rented tower at a gaming bar (2-days)
PowerMac G4 (on campus)
iMac G4
Rented tower at Gamefrog (1 day)
Mac Mini G4
Black self-built Windows tower, incarnation 1
Vostro laptop
Intel Mac Mini
Intel MacBook
Black self-built Windows tower, incarnation 2 (Quad-core)

That's a lot of places for pictures. Can you tell I program for cash and am a little computer crazy? Wonder if I can pick out most of the pictures' sources by resolution. It has been five years, in my defense.

It'll probably only be a week, since my alt account (with just a prot warrior) is only paid up through the 12th, and I'd like to run with my buddy another time or two before that expires. I'd been considering running my alt-account alt through Duskwood during my "time off" as while I wait for my account to come back, as Duskwood was one of my favorite zones for Jal when he was low. I also remembered the Morgan Laidmore/Acheus questline down to being upset I couldn't wield that powerful sword since I was a druid.

Well, turns out my prot warrior can't wield it either. Acheus, and about half of what made Duskwood k3wl, is gone. Goodbye, Real Stitches.

Oh well. It has been fun to run back through the lowbie elf zones, though I miss Gubber.

EDIT: Got the first few/oldest pictures up at http://www.flickr.com/thisisyourwowlife.

4.2 changes to Valor points

2011-05-30T20:26:00.000-07:00

EDIT: STOP SPENDING JUSTICE POINTS NOW. The short story here is that your Justice Points will be worth MORE after 4.2. You'll get serious ilevel 359 gear with Justice Points shortly, instead of the crap you're spending them on now. You will not lose your Valor Points.

(I've reworded this a bit; it looks like a number of people find this post when searching for Valor Point changes.)

Make sense? If you wanted Stormrider's Leggings now and you had 500 Valor Points and 2000 Justice Points, you're toast in 4.1. They cost 2200 Valor Points.

In 4.2, though, your 2000 Old Justice Points will combine with your 500 Old Valor Points, and you'll have 2500 New Justice Points. The Stormrider's Leggings will now only cost 2200 JPs! You're golden!

But if you spent 950 of your 2000 Justice Points on an Apple Bent-Bough during 4.1, an ilvl 346 item, you'd be toast when 4.2 drops. You'd only have 2000-950 = 1050 Old Justice Points + 500 Old Valor Points = 1550 New Justice Points. That's bad. Save your cash and get the good stuff.

So in 4.2 we'll have two new categories of currency. Valor Points v4.1 will become Justice Points v4.2. Justice Points v4.1 will be upgraded to Justice Points v4.2 too. You're going to have a lot of Justice Points v4.2, which can all be used to buy what can currently be purchased with Valor Points v4.1.

There will also be Valor Points v4.2 which can be used to buy gear that's not available in 4.1. Nobody will have any New Valor Points when 4.2 rolls out. Nobody! There's no reason to save VPs 4.1, as you'll be able to buy the same stuff with them in 4.2 as 4.1. But since you'll soon be able to spend Justice Points v4.1 on Valor Points v4.1 gear, you should save all of your Justice Points v4.1 until they appreciate in value in 4.2.

From MMO-Champion - Patch 4.2 Valor Points Rewards, Firelands Ragnaros Video, Blue Posts, Artworks

"Old epic ilvl 359/'Valor' gear is now available from the Justice Points vendor at the same prices.
'Old' rare/Justice Points gear is still for sale at the same price.
When Patch 4.2 is released, your existing Valor Points will be converted to Justice Points.
Normal versions of Bastion of Twilight, Blackwing Descent, and Throne of the Four Winds will be nerfed and will only reward Justice Points.

You can still buy the same pieces with Old (pre-4.2) Valor Points as before. It's just that in 4.2, you can buy them with JP too! It's not really that your old VPs are being nerfed so much as your JPs are getting buffed. You can keep spending your Valor Points on whatever you wanted to spend them on, as their value won't change. Just realize you'll have tons of Old Valor Point equivalents soon when your JPs get buffed.

So you should keep running heroics, knowing you're now getting 70 Old VP equivalents + 70 Old VP equivs per boss now, right?

And randomly -- Why is WoWhead.com so slow recently? We might have too many eggs in that basket. Wish someone had told me about WoWPedia earlier too. I was wondering why WoWWiki was so danged out of date.

On the tax payers of virtual economies

2011-05-30T08:13:00.000-07:00

I promised myself that I'd stop posting comments on Spinks' blog, as they tend to be too long and dominate the comment scroll. I also don't get a lot of follow-up conversation, honestly, so I'm really wasting everyone's time.

Oh well. Here we went again [sic]. Figured this was interesting enough (to me) to capture here too. This is from Spink's "Enchanting and the gear tax"post.

Or in other words, enchanting is an artificial way to stimulate demand in game.

Two long points.

The in-house Ultima Online researcher (years ago) had a great presentation on the way UO initially wanted to simulate a closed economy. Turns out a market flooded with n00b leather caps and sandals doesn't work so well.

The economic paradigm in UO quickly changed from a closed economy to a "faucet and drain" model. You pump gold in, and you provide drains to pull it back out. It's all subsidies and taxes.

Here, you take the players invested in farming mats (faucets) and crafting (small drain with recipes) who create useful enchants (money magnets/tax collectors) and then you hook larger drains up to these harder-core players -- repairs, guild rewards, mounts, etc.

It's not just demand that's stimulated with enchantments. It's a specific implementation of the faucet/drain system, one that involves setting up a system of tax collectors.

Am I really the only person who would prefer to be able to just grab a cool drop and be ready to go without being asked to do all the legwork for an extra minor bonus? It’s funny, once I used to find these extra complexities so cool. I think that I’m over it now, or at least I’ve done it over again in enough games that I’d rather just cut to the chase.

Second point -- you have to striate the market to maximize its appeal. This is the same as with difficult games and game guides. Who would finish all of Metal Gear Solid without a little help? Same with many quests in MMORPGs. Casual players can read guides. Minigame players and completists can take the time to learn professions. Harder-core players can challenge themselves and prepare for Heroic dungeons (and I can't believe how much time I've wasted researching and then gearing up, and I'm not that hard core).

As my third foray into Heroics showed me very quickly, many don't bother with gems, enchants, etc. It's a way of striating your customer base. You have to provide avenues for multiple playstyles to enjoy your content, whether they're completists, or (and I can't find the reference, which is killing me), folks (apparently young girls in the article I can't find) who would rather drive around Liberty City for fun rather than maim and rob. These are all games within games ["within games," Frank Herbert added, "You have to say it three times to achieve full effect."]. It's not that there's no right way to play. There are many right ways to play.

Very little is more fascinating than "virtual" economies -- of gold, of goods, of bits, and, most importantly, of dollars and time.

Unfinished Most Straightforward Pre-Heroic Balance Druid Gear Guide for Cataclysm

2011-05-29T11:01:00.000-07:00

EDIT: This guide moved to a more permanent home here.

And hello heroics

2011-05-28T21:26:00.000-07:00

Though it's technically my second successful heroic, it's the first I've done after completing my mad max gear up and my first since March 17th(!). Had never run Shadowfang before. Was relatively enjoyable. We had one wipe before Lord Godfrey, and then had three. The fourth, we had two go down again, including the priest (who went down first maybe two or three of the four shots; still not sure how that happened), and I hit rebirth to bring her back.

Seconds pass, and no rez. Quick typing (the "@" symbol in my frantic "take the rez!@" is, of course, the Angband guy pleading too) and some mad off-healing later, she's taken my Rebirth and is back, I'm DPSing again, and we finally bring him down (though the priest dies again after we're done. I guess she kept catching the Cursed Bullets, but I wasn't calm enough to see.)

It was one of those exciting gaming moments when you breathe a literal sigh of relief. It's fun and, more importantly, memorable to scoot through by the seat of your pants. I was awfully lucky to have a group patient enough to sit through four wipes and a dungeon guide nice enough to give us the 411 on each boss. And I was even luckier to bag the Chaos Orb when it was done. Strangely, two in the party dropped as soon as Godfrey's loot popped up, not even interested in greeding a few more gold into their pockets.

Overall a good, fun run. I (barely) had burst DPS over 11k when things cut just right, and managed to keep it around 7.5-8.5k outside of trash (ie, bosses) when I wasn't off healing (strangely kept it around 6k+ even when I was). I'm not going to say all those hours of grinding gear paid off, as it's wasted time I could have been spending doing something productive (read: "paid"), but they have made the game more fun.

Wow, as an aside, I just Armoried (this is like Googling a date, isn't it?) the other folks. Gear scores:

Priest 345 (7 unenchanted items)
Shaman 342 (10 unenchanted, 9 empty sockets(!!), no belt buckle, unenchanted ring)
Tank/Prot Paladin 339 (5 unenchanted, 5 missing glyphs, no belt buckle)
DK (Frost) 352 (only thing missing is a Chimera's Eye)

And I thought I was behind. But I'm at 344 equipped and a perfect audit. Makes me wonder how much heroics have changed. The DK was the only guy doing serious damage consistently, but I guess I know why now.

Of course, as I've said before, off-healing is about as fun as it gets, as you really do feel you're the only thing between the group and failure. At least one boss required some off-heals and a tranq pop, and of course I had to heal our way through each of the wipes once the priest died (the first time, some DPS died first and I battle rezzed him, not knowing it was going to get lots worse, which kept me healing for a while). Honestly, that's a ton of fun.

I think the secret to good DPS really is mushroom use. I don't enjoy it, but it's growing on me, har har. I'm also using Pickled Guppy and Scrolls of Intellect, something I haven't done with regularity before.

Phew, I'm going to need to run a little archeology just to calm back down.

In other news, I got a free fishing pole with +25 fishing just for catching up with Nat, and even though some NPCs ignore Deathwing's fire, checking how badly the flames are killing your framerate is not A Good Idea.

The end of a grind in achievements

2011-05-26T05:28:00.000-07:00

It's finally over. I have the Stump of Time, and now have a gear score of 344. I'm not sure there's much higher level that's useful for a Balance druid that I can get on my own pre-Heroic runs, and nothing I think I can get efficiently. I've regemmed, reenchanted, but not quite yet reforged.

I was going to make a huge retrospective post with tons of pictures, but there were too many, so for now I'm just going to slap in a few of the achievements I got while grinding. And, admittedly, much of this -- particularly Archeology -- was done when I was bored out of my freaking mind during the grinding.

There's at least one more. I received an achievement somewhere about getting 50 Chef's Awards, though I was holding 70 and had spent several before I got it. Seems like lots of the counters for achievements didn't start at Day 0 but at some random implementation point in the future.

Also note the "Next Battle" time for the Baradin's Wardens achievement. Cutting it pretty close. ;^)

I'll try to get up the gumption to write a step-by-step, PvE, casual gamer Balance Gear Guide in the coming days. I ended up buying three pieces, and most of my gear from Normals dropped more than once, iirc, so I think I can give a pretty good, specific list for those leveling alts who want a paint by numbers guide, which I haven't found yet -- which zones to run, which rep to grab in what order, what to buy, etc. Not pick from three items, but get this item, you know? It might not be absolutely "right", but when you're researching this crap, being able to offload all this researching would be nice.

Without further ado...

The PUG to raid gap grows

2011-05-17T08:28:00.000-07:00

From Lissanna's Some thoughts on the Dungeon Journal:

To prepare for raids, I read the spell abilities on wowpedia, and THEN I read strategies there. Then, I hop over to watch a Tankspot video on youtube and read the comments on tankspot.

Boy, that sounds like fun, doesn't it?

For raids, okay, I'll allow the point. This isn't that crazy a set of research prereqs. But for heroic dungeons? I really still think the gap between PUGging normals and hitting heroics is too large, from the gear needed to the amount of gaming knowledge before the fact (see "spoiler" comment from Lissanna below). Making a stupid Dungeon Journal is a real coward's fix and, if what Restokin says is true, only a partially successful way to get players up to speed.

Third party sites and addons did the same thing, but better and with more detail.

That's just a sad state of affairs. The game should prepare you for bosses. There should be preparation quests. NPCs helping teach you what's going to go down.

That you're in a state of affairs where...

Most raid groups “spoiler” bosses before they step foot in a raid dungeon

... tells me Blizzard really hasn't finished the game. And with 4.1 only bringing serious new content for those done with heroics (the mini quest line was fun, but really only a distraction. And much MUCH too easy. It was like a 4th grade in-class worksheet), the gap isn't closing and the game isn't approaching finished at all.

I wish we knew why subscription numbers are down. I've seen hard core bloggers say it's because hard core players have finished the content. But you know, I really don't think 10% of the player population is necessarily hard-core, end game finished players. The drop is from the casual player too. It's really no surprise. If I hadn't accidentally forgotten to cancel my autopay, I would probably be taking a week or two break this month myself. I barely have time for Tol Barad (where I've painfully found that I won't yet have the rep to buy Stump of Time when I have the commendations), often squeeze in a few minutes on my underpowered laptop without the Razer Naga (really hurts the DPS), and often just log in for another frostsaber cub whisker. Dude is getting big though. ;^) Watch him shoot up around 0:14...

Gear upgrades and Grinding Tol Barad -- 18 quests a day!

2011-05-05T05:47:00.000-07:00

I've been running archaeology digs, farming for Winterspring Cub Whiskers, and grinding Tol Barad while waiting for running normals recently. I recently bagged a Scepter of Power and traded in some JP for the Apple-Bent Bough. With the off-hand intellect enchant, I think I come out ahead of my old Staff of Siphoned Essences. Here they are compared on WoWhead, though it misses the +40 INT from the off-hand enchant. That with a few smarter enchants and though my iLevel is the same, DPS should start looking up. I also traded out my one piece of Heroic gear, the Corrupted Egg Shell, for the normal Gale of Shadows I picked up in my tenth or so run of Grim Batol last night. It was time to stop worrying about convenient mana and to throw in on more DPS.

But the real lesson for my grind comes from
this comment on Baradin's Wardens at WoWhead:

You can do a maximum of 18 daily quests to earn reputation with Baradin's Wardens [A] or Hellscream's Reach [H].

The post continues to tell you how. I've been stopping after "6 daily quests (out of 22) that you can pick up at Baradin Base Camp [A]", when, "If your faction controls Tol Barad, then there are 12 daily quests that you can pick up at Baradin Hold." Whoops. 18 a day (even the more sure 12, since I won't check in that often) would speed up the grind for the Stump of Time just a little bit!

Cenarion Hatchling: See, that wasn't so tough, was it?

2011-05-02T16:16:00.000-07:00

(the above image unethically stolen straight from Blizzard's site)

After totally screwing up the moonkin pet and Make-a-Wish where half went to charity and half straight to Blizzard's pockets, Blizzard learns most of their lesson with the Cenarion Hatchling for Japan.

For every Cenarion Hatchling purchased between now and July 31, 100% of the $10 USD adoption fee will be donated to the American Red Cross's Japan Earthquake and Pacific Tsunami relief efforts. This support will enable the Red Cross to provide shelter, food, emotional support, and other assistance to victims of this disaster.

About the only thing wrong here is that it'd appear the Hatchling will continue to be sold for cai$h after July, and Valve's fundraiser headgear went kaput once the fundraiser was over. But now I'm splitting hairs. Sorta.

EDIT: Okay, I'm not splitting hairs. Why every pet doesn't give all $10 to the Red Cross right now, I don't know. I like the Monk, I'd rather have the $10 goes somewhere useful, but it's straight cash to Blizzard's pockets. I really prefer the Valve, get it for a donation or don't get it at all, remember this the next time you sit on your hands hard sale better.

Revamping the Hero class: A better alternative than free max level characters

2011-04-25T10:26:00.000-07:00

Spinks recently covered the interesting topic of providing veteran MMORPG players max level characters. On its face, this seems to make a lot of sense. There are certainly two games, at least in WoW, 1.) level grind and 2.) max level, instance-based gear chases. You might separate a third, guild-based, end-game raiding. I, like many who live in 2), would like to be able to play the second with characters I haven't been forced to take through the first.

But *POOF* max level chars seem an ill-thought out money-grab (see UO's advanced characters). Hero classes, or even just plain heroes (high level chars from the start) in conventional classes with their own quick intro quest lines -- combined with alternative and/or class-specific, sped-up quest progressions through old content -- is a better way to go.

So, for instance, our guild needs another tank, and I started a Death Knight this month because I can't stand the thought of leveling from scratch. The DK intro zone was great. Good lore, questionable morals, admittedly, but a decent intro to DK specific talents and abilities.

But what if we had needed a healer? Right now, it's, "Hello, level 1." Imagine starting zones for "hero" druids, pallies, warlocks, etc that are like the DK zone. Give folks just enough time to learn some additional lore and basic class playstyles. It's not a bad compromise.

That said, though the DK was an interesting, mostly successful compromise for Wrath, now running a DK through Cat, I can clearly see that the class has obviously lost some of its prime positioning. A DK starting at a level somewhere between 65 and 75 makes more sense now, and to do it, you're only making minor revamps the starting gear and area. Beautious.

As a DK in Outland, however, it's current the same ole same old. I really don't want to run Zangramash again. That's not compelling. At least in Cat I can run the quest chains I skipped while leveling my main. I took him through Hyjal and Therazane and quickly ended up at 85. There's lots of Vashj'ir and the Egyptian-styled zones I never touched, and I'd like to take a look.

These clearly parallel quest chains in Cat were obviously by design. You could leap from one to another, or you could run them twice. Similar is the literal cataclysm's changes to level 1-60 progressions. Both the parallel quests and remade zones are pretty obvious "New Game+" fixes. I've found myself thinking that Cat's forked quest progression approach to New Game+ might be better handled by one that allows DKs (and other classes) a *class-specific* (or even race-specific) alternative route through Outland and other once-and-done content.

And there's a lot of waste in these "New Games". If I've run both forks in Cat, now what? Also, if I just started WoW, I get exactly zero from the cat-impacted starting zones. Are these progressions better? No, not really, my re-experience of levels 1-14 tells me, it's just new. In a sense, the Cat paradigm for remaking 1-60 is wasted time. You give old players a partial excuse to run 1-60 again, once, but new players are still stuck. Overlaying progressions, Choose Your Own Adventure style, make more sense. Putting the 1-60 revamp work into new 70-80 hero quest lines cut by class and/or race would have been a better use of time.

The heirlooms (and access to gear via shared account gold) sorta provide a Rich Man's alternate to the old grinds, but only in that they make the progressions shorter and share the same logic as instant max level chars. That is, a max level char would skirt the issue completely/take heirlooms to their obvious endpoint. Spinks' comment that, "it's certainly easier than revamping the entire lower level game," is a heck of an understatement, and lets games off too easily. There are better solutions than giving max levels to everyone that allows them to completely skip the often single-player, PvE learning experience.

Strange Trees in the DK quest line

2011-04-21T11:13:00.000-07:00

I've already mentioned that I really appreciated the DK starting quest line. The amount of lore for Wrath that's in there is wonderful, and retroactively makes what Jal did in there make a lot more sense. As I've hinted in comments, I've got some "moral" issues, though that's too strong a word, with some of the forced killings -- the quest lines are really on rails, and there's no alternative to taking out screaming, pleading civilians crying for their wife and kids. I understand it fits, but it'd be better if you could RP a bit, start getting your moral compass back a little early, and find another solution than pulling out the skulls of your kills to drop into a cauldron.

I'll come back to that complaint, as it's probably worth another, longer look, but thought I'd register this one first.

RLY? That's my disguise? A cardboard tree from the scenery of a high school play? And it works? That's just horribly unimaginative. It's not funny or cute, just dumb.

Still, if, after the killings, that's my biggest complaint (next up would probably be the dumb messenger "costume" you wear), I guess we're doing pretty well. It was a good, instructive zone. Now I can't say the same for Honor Hold. I'm waxing the crud out of everything that walks.

DK-OT: Gear buying guide

2011-04-19T05:41:00.000-07:00

Now this Death Knight Shopping List is the sort of thing I wish we had more often, or at least that I could find more often and easily. I mean, even if it's not perfect, it's going to be an improvement over just questing around, and it's going to save a lot of time over doing the mathes yourself.

So Jalyndrine, with a "y", is done with the Death Knight starting area. I'll post more Death Knight-Off Topic about it later. Overall, though, it made Wrath make a ton more sense. In a way, the DK starting area was an extended intro to Wrath lore, and should have been a required exercise for anyone playing over the age of 13. (Under 13-14 might have been surprised at some of the, um, questionable things your DK was doing.)

Heirloom enchants

2011-04-10T05:28:00.000-07:00

WowWiki has an excellent list of enchantments that work on heirlooms:

Heirlooms can be enchanted only with enhancements that will not bind the item to the character. The items are treated as item level 1, and as such can not use most Burning Crusade or higher enhancements, which included Death Knight runes until 4.0.1. Also worth considering is the fact that some of the enhancements that can be used will not actually take effect unless the character using them is of the appropriate level. [Chart that lists enchants follows]

We recently tried a guild heroic run, and it was capital F fail, largely because we didn't have quite the dps we needed, but also largely because we only have four 85s and none are tanks. If we had a tank in-guild, I'm betting they'd be patient enough as we learned how to bring down each boss.

(Probably didn't help that we had three boomkin. Not the most varied set of buffs.)

Anyhow, I've been considering going death knight. There's no way I'm leveling from scratch to 85. I'm almost too lazy to go 55 to 85. But with the right heirlooms, things will go 20% more quickly. I recently heirloomed an alt that I let a friend play as we did recruit-a-friend, and the one +INT enchanted hammer on their druid made it seem like we were cheating.

I know what you're thinking -- just regear Jal to bear for off-spec. I'm considering it, but I haven't heard much bear love recently, and haven't run an instance with a bear tank yet in Cat. I'm betting there's a reason.

Rep Ding! Exalted Therazane

2011-04-06T09:18:00.000-07:00

What's new with Jal? Not much. I've been running daily normals for Justice Points, and wearing my Therazane tabard for rep. The daily rep quests were boring enough that I've been traveling up in Winterspring grinding Wintersaber Trainer rep instead as I wait for LFG, in part because I saw that, come 4.1, Wintersaber Trainer rep is getting nerfed, and when I say nerfed, I mean homogenized. I should also admit that I spent hours and hours in vanilla farming rugged and other leather from the frostsabers under the rock without ever knowing the trainer was up there, scowling at me killing the wild cats. It was a great place to farm. Rarely anyone there, and nobody really taking down the sabers, who would respawn very quickly. If I'd only known. I did wonder what my mount, a frostsaber, thought about it...

Even so, it didn't take long to get exalted with Therazane. After a few runs, I was just a few hundred points of rep away, and I went back for a final quest. That apparently makes for five exalted reps. Funny, I'm not sure what they are offhand. Therazane (shoulder enchants), Wildhammer (great rep gear for Cat), Sons of Hodir (LK shoulders)... um... (runs to Armory) Apparently the Alliance Vanguard and Stormwind. Who knew?

That said, who really cares? What a payoff!

Wow. Now you know why swag motivates workers, I guess. I remember when I worked at a shop that gave out bonuses for each additional billable hour you clocked, but if you did the math, the percentage of each hour you were bagging dropped after a certain point. If your own company doesn't value each extra hour of your time more, why should you want to give them? Well, that never stopped the company hawks. Anyhow... Looks like I'm susceptible after all.

And for those reading hoping this'll serve as a sort of guide, next is Tol Barad commendations for the Stump of Time, though I'll probably get the frostsaber mount first.

During my daily runs, I'm gradually performing better. The below Recount for Halls of Origination (I came in part-way) is pretty good, and I was off-healing much of the time for our ungeared Shammy.

Shammy follows:

It's not a big deal, and I don't mind our three wipes (!), but I was surprised to feel my own reaction when I saw the lack of enchants and gemming.

Though I didn't have a violent reaction and am actually happy to pull along newbies, I see now why people get so irate when undergeared folk try running heroics. And it's much easier to carry undergeared dps (not that I've been yelled at, as I've only run one heroic) than healz. She just couldn't keep up. So I went elven for a while and threw around some resto-ige (still spec'd balance) and had fun. I also have to take some grief for not knowing that Void Seekers heal themselves if you left two stay close to each other. Whoops.

In other news, Spinks has stopped playing. No big deal. I think it's funny to hear someone trying to figure out the distinction between quitting and quitting for a while. Goodness knows, if you've read this blog at all, you know I take breaks for months at a time. Blizzard expects you to at this point, I believe. Doesn't want you to, but expects it.

Ah yes, I also dodged the temptation to buy a MSI R6850 Cyclone PE/OC Radeon HD 6850 with a gig of VRAM for what's now under $170 with rebate. I decided this was what I wanted when I put together my new rig, but I've been sliding by with what's almost a four year-old card. I mean, look at the roller coaster heatsink! Still, $170 is just $70 shy of what I paid for a quad-core AMD Athlon II at 3 GHz, a new mobo, and four gigs of RAM. Crazy.

The only other thing I've got is that the Frostesaber Stalkers really have it in for the bunnies. I mean, wow. They'll leap four times their body length, it seems, to take one down, and then they don't even bother eating it. See the pic of three going after one at once. INSANE. ;^)

That last one looks stepped on.

Collage brought to you by the fine folk at Microsoft Paint.

Belated April Fools

2011-04-03T13:16:00.001-07:00

On: Winterspring Frostsaber Mount Grind Changed in 4.1 - The Wowhead Blog

2011-04-03T10:45:00.000-07:00

More of my comment crossposts. I've started running Frostsaber rep now 1.) to pretend I'm protesting and 2.) because I'm bored out of my mind as I wait for a PUG to show up.

Winterspring Frostsaber Mount Grind Changed in 4.1 - The Wowhead Blog:

I don't understand the point of this change.

Why this obsession the new dev team has with homogenizing everything?

+1

There was a time when you could argue that a set of of Nature's Wrath gear was a good poor man's tiered armor for a boomkin. Then it didn't matter that Wrath was Nature dmg and Starfire was Arcane. Resistances nearly disappeared. Instead of type-specific spellpower boosts, it was just "spellpower." Then "of healing" was the same as "of spellpower".

This might seem unrelated, but it's the same sort of homogenization. Gear standardized. Rep runs standardized. Is it really wrong that the Alliance can get a crappy but pretty ground mount in a day and Horde can't? Dude, I farmed frostsabers for weeks for leather in vanilla and never even saw the guy on top of the rock. If 80% of the Alliance don't know he's there, what percent of the Horde care?

I wonder what percent of WoWers depend on WoWhead.com and similar, outside of the game, help sites? Doesn't anyone play casually? Why pander to either type of player (casual gamers who don't want to learn the difference between healing and spellpower, and hardcore gamers who don't want cross-faction mounts to be different. At all. No matter what.) to the point that the whole game is watered down? Does "of Nature's Wrath" or grinding rep really kill the game?

If anything, they should put the rep right back like it was in vanilla and make it a serious, long-term grind that only the truly crazy complete.

Valve shows Blizzard how to give to charity

2011-03-25T07:22:00.000-07:00

To follow up on my post on the ~~vanity~~, ur, charity moonkin pets from last year, here's Valve, selling hats for Team Fortress 2, and doing it The Right Way. I'm not going to fault Valve for not paying their taxes out of their own pockets. Give to Caesar and all that.

Team Fortress 2 Blog:

Today, we'd like to offer a chance to help out at a time when that help matters most. To support the relief efforts currently underway in Japan, we're introducing three limited edition hats and two special noisemakers to the Mann Co. store. The 'Humanitarian's Hachimaki' ($7.99), the 'Benefactor's Kanmuri' ($19.99) and the most prestigious 'Magnanimous Monarch' ($99.99) will be available from now through April 6. All proceeds (net of applicable taxes) will go directly towards the Japanese disaster relief fund that the American Red Cross has set up.

What's more? They point you to the website directly to donate if you'd prefer to use it as a tax deduction and potentially give more by giving the same.

While your Mann Co. store purchases cannot be written off as tax deductions, those who would prefer to donate directly to the American Red Cross fund can do so at their website.

That wasn't so hard, was it?

Next Justice Point goal

2011-03-23T19:56:00.001-07:00

I'd kinda stopped going for the random normals, as I'd gotten my Cluster of Stars and have been just repping Therazane for the most part, getting ready to run Grim Batol next time I had a spare 90 minutes. My plan was to keep running GB until I had the three Chaos Orbs for the Chestguard of Nature's Fury. In the meanwhile, I've been using my Bloodied Wyrmhide Chest which, honestly, stinks. It's a PvP piece, and I don't PvP.

Justice Points really aren't hard to come by. If I didn't have a twink recruit-a-friending, I might have figured this out earlier, but the Robes of Forgetfulness are lots better than the Wyrmhide, and only run 2200 JPs. I just forgot to take a look.

That's a big enough difference to care. And then some. Time to crank daily normals back up.

(What does recruit-a-friend has to do with Justice Points? I just spent 2725 points on a Devout Aurastone Hammer for the friend (I'm twinking the off-account). Would have gone for the heirloom staff, but I think I'd like to try a Pally next. /sigh Would like to have the Robes already, but that Hammer plus a level 1 Intellect enchant has us geared well above the mobs we're tagging. Easy.)

Worst Cat Heroic? Lots say Grim Batol.

2011-03-23T18:34:00.000-07:00

Breakfast Topic: Which Cataclysm heroic do you dread seeing on your loading screen? - WoW Insider:

A million times this. It's long, boring, unforgiving in a PuG and makes you do that tedious drake thing every single time.

Remember that feeling when you would get Oculus pop up as your random, or when it was the daily dungeon? That's how the Grim Batol loading screen makes me feel.

Maybe I should start learning another run, eh?

Hey, wow, I'm buying a moonkin pet FOR CHARITY!!!1!

2011-03-21T14:42:00.000-07:00

I couldn't believe the venom directed my way when I was a (admittedly) a little snarky on WoW Insider about the moonkin ~~vanity~~ charity pet announcement last year. I sorta suggested to the folks saying how wonderful it was that buying the pet would give $5 to Make-A-Wish Foundation that they, um, could give twice as much if they, say, gave the charity all $10.

Blizzard wasn't being magnanimous. Add up the amount they make on the pets, subtract the amount they spent making the pets, and you still got a number that's a bit larger than zero. And if you divided the amount of cash they make each month by the amount of cash they gave to a charity with the last pet, well, it ain't a real high percentage. I, iirc, even admitted that they could be giving more elsewhere and that even the cash they pay their employees could very well be going to charities as well. Still, my guess is that Blizzard isn't tithing.

They used charity as a cover discourse for profit. Come on folks. If you want to donate, donate. And heck, if you want to waste money on vanity pets, waste your money and own it.

Nice to see that somebody else agrees.

Dalaran Crater -- What are they doing?

2011-03-20T08:50:00.001-07:00

Okay, it's funny, but what are they doing there now other than standing in as foils for this quest? You can jump right through the Dalaran force field now and, of course, Dalaran's gone. What's their angle? A few workers are banging on farm equipment, but there are no Alliance quests that I saw.

"Kick boomkins on sight"

2011-03-19T17:24:00.000-07:00

Ouch. General Umbriss - NPC - World of Warcraft:

PRO TIP: tanks do yourselves a a favor and kick boomkins from your group on sight if they end up in your random Heroic group none of them are of any use to your group at all and they are usually bad, especially consider this if you're in Heroic Grim Batol and invite a good mage from your guild, preferably frost.

Granted, the comment is rated so low as to be purged, but why the hate? Is it because of the Typhoon? I for the first time had a tank in normal complain about that making the mobs harder to tank, but I'm not sure I know why just yet. Won't they come right back to you? Is it the lost 2 seconds of rage while DPS keeps pounding? I started only using Typhoon when mobs had a wall to their backs. Works okay.

Is it the Starfall? I'll admit that I'm so gun-shy on this now that I only use it when there's nothing near us but the group we're tanking, and I mean nothing.

But if it's not Typhoon or Starfall, I don't get it.

What's the INT to Spellpower conversion? Read on...

2011-03-18T09:51:00.000-07:00

One thing that's been driving me crazy is the INT to spellpower conversion. I thought it was give or take 1 to 1. Close.

Druid: Balance PvE (updated for Cataclysm release) - Elitist Jerks:

Intellect:
Intellect provides 1 spellpower and 0.00154% to crit per point. With Mark of the Wild, Heart of the Wild, and Astral Leather Specialization, it provides 1.169 spellpower and 0.0018% crit (555 points per 1% crit, a bit under 1/3 of a crit rating).
Similarly, with these talents, one point of Intellect increases your maximum mana by 17.53, and your regen from Replenishment, Euphoria, and Innervate correspondingly.
These things together make Int the best stat for both DPS and mana.

Spellpower:
Intellect, without the talent bonuses, crit bonus, or mana gains. Basically a weaker form of Intellect that only appears on weapons and trinkets, but is still good.

Heroic -- It's a different world

2011-03-17T21:17:00.000-07:00

Well, the good news is that I've gone through Grim Batol, my first heroic. I lost the Chaos Orb roll, which stinks, but do have a heroic Corrupted Egg Shell, which is at least a good mana replenisher.

Note to self: Use this macro
#showtooltip Corrupted Egg Shell /cast [@player] Corrupted Egg Shell

The real take-home though is that the Heroic dungeon is a completely different animal socially. It's every bit as bad as you've read. Here's the sum of today's fun, just in case you haven't experienced it firsthand.

I came in part-way through the dungeon with the pre-Umbriss trash already down. Guess that's a bad sign. We have our tank drop soon after, pretty much embarrassed out by the rest of the party (minus me, who stayed silent) for not keeping aggro, which was a legit complaint. "They're casters! They'll attack anybody!" was his response, I believe. Gone. New tank rocks. Knows the instance. Keeps aggro. Tells everyone what to do. Good communicator. I have to race to Finkle's Skinner to beat another skinner to the corpse. Woohoo. One Savage Leather.

(What is the decorum on skinning? I tried to leave about half for him/her, but will admit I raced to skin Umbriss, if only to get some use out of Finkle's Skinner.)

Then, a while later, I have a guy say our dps is low. He's including himself, but mine is awful. At the same time, our healer is over-freakin whelmed with Shadowburner. I'm off-healing like maaaaad, popping tranq, lifeblooming & potting myself, and Healing Touch-ing the tank. We wipe twice. We eventually have to skip Shadowburner. I whisper this to the "low dps" commenter to help him understand why my numbers aren't where they should be, who, it turns out, just turned 85 himself and, though he wouldn't tell me his after asking about mine, has an iLevel of 334 (mine was 340). He defends healz, says that she (?) heals their guild in raids all the time. I say I'll trust him. I could certainly be taking too much damage from not knowing what's up in Heroic as well as I do reg. Seems about as far as I can go towards being nice, right?

We wipe one more time with trash. I'm not healing at all now. /sigh

We get to Erudax. Wipe at least twice. The new tank leaves. I ask if we're calling it. No.

New tank pops in. It's another good tank. I miss the Gale circle somehow, though I would have sworn I was in it, and was stacked right nearly on everyone else. Still, obviously my mistake. I party tell, "the hell? I thought I was in the circle." There's a wipe not 30 sec after (seriously? There are fewer people to heal now, and she can't keep up. Look, I don't expect them to win, but I expect her to keep the tank up long enough for a full party to do so. And no, Erudax wasn't nearly down). By the time I get the tell out, healz has already gone crazy in party chat about Gales being in reg too, referring back to my "Fair Warning Admission (c) 2011" that this is my first heroic run. I whisper, "dude, I've run reg 7 times and read the guides on this. I know the gale."

"^&*! you" is her reply.
"?" is mine, and it comes a millisecond after she's dropped. So does our mage, whose iLevel is apparently 330. Wow, that's low. I'm our best geared dps, and it's my first heroic. Healz' guildie doesn't drop.

Wow, healz even has an iLevel of 350 and has completed Baradin Hold. I don't get it. Resto Shaman, but couldn't keep up with a good tank... with two good tanks... on a sub-boss -- even with trash. I'll take some of the blame, certainly, but I don't think I get it all. Low dps commenter admits later that his weapon broke during the second Erudax wipe and that he, a rogue, was using his hands. "my weapons broke." Seriously? I've got two backup weapon sets, my best one-handed/off-hand combo and a DPS staff, just for fun in my bag, as that's something you can switch during a fight. Explains the horrible dps a bit, though.

Anyhow, we get new dps and healz, a real priest this time. I'm biased. I love priests. We wipe. Np. We wipe again. Np. We finally get dps lined up on the adds in a way that works, and we're golden. Freakin' golden. Erudax drops, I lose out on the Chaos Orb, I win the Egg Shell, all is good, except Mr. "She's Great, Don't Heal" gets the Chaos Orb. ;^)

Wow. Drama. Gear to 21% durability. Hours of life lost. Chaos Orb missed. The drops I want don't happen. We skip Shadowburner. But, ultimately, I've got to admit, a pretty good time.

Another positive (in addition to enjoying the final battle) is that I ended with 2nd in dps on Erudax, even though I was taking time out to drop shrooms to slow the adds. This guy kicked my arse in dps, but looking on the Armory, I guess that makes sense (though why nobody has the Ebonsteel Belt Buckle, I don't know).

Anyhow, you've been warned.

Selling Gold, WoW Insider, and workers' rights

2011-03-13T07:10:00.000-07:00

I'll probably take this up in length in a forthcoming post, but figured I'd include what I posted to WoW Insider here to remind me to go ballistic later.

From The Lawbringer: Fighting the gold fight -- the world as it is:

At one time in the history of MMOs, gold and item selling was a quaint notion. We had not yet been introduced to a world of horse armor and new mission DLC.

I had a hard time getting past this, in the intro. Did you ever install Ultima Online? They allowed to the point of *encouraging* your eBaying items. When was this quaint time of gold and item selling, exactly?

There's nothing quaint about Blizzard deciding that selling bits is illegal. That's a very calculated move designed to ensure players don't own the fruits of what is, at times, very tedious labor.

Grim Batol: 5th run and Heroic Prep

2011-03-12T14:18:00.001-08:00

Finally Cataclysmically Epic. Broke down and grabbed a Tattooed Eyeball for just under 1300g. That means I spent 1300+750 (bracers)+2700 (Blazewing) = 3750g for my gear. A little lazy, but I'm done.

I'm also getting lots of achievements in a row like this -- I got credit for Epic Waist at the same time I got Cataclysmically Epic Waist, for instance, and I made my own Lava Belt years ago, right after BC's release. It's surprising how much Blizzard apparently didn't track in vanilla and later.

I've now run Grim Batol (normal) five times. I guess it's got the best loot, because it seems to be the most popular PUG/random LFG instance by a long shot. My last run saw two folks drop, one after each of the two sub-bosses when I suppose they got or didn't get the items they wanted. Folks didn't seem to be real familiar with the instance. I ended up dropping into healz for the last two bosses once our Shammy dropped and a gnome priest filled in; we wiped during trash when someone sheeped someone in the next group, and I had to run Tranquility maybe three times total. Nobody even knew to kite Shadowburner's adds, nor did they have much interest after I spend a few seconds dropping into chat to tell them what's up. /sigh

(As an aside, I've been thinking about dedicating a button on the mouse to the WoW in-game voice chat for times like this. I've yet to hear someone on voicechat in a PUG, which seems strange, since even our guild uses Skype when we make guild runs.)

Anyhow, I've done GB enough now to try out heroic. I'm carrying around two pieces of GB (normal) loot already: the Staff of Siphoned Essences and Azureborne Cloak. It'd be nice to get upgrades -- and start collecting some Chaos Orbs.

This looks like an interesting Grim Batol Heroic guide. It feels a little, um, unedited, but has most of the info I've Googled up elsewhere with maps for each boss. I'm a little embarrassed I didn't realize I needed to get behind the Forgemaster when he went with shield, for instance. Shifting Perspective's guide is here, and lets you supplement with a little balance-specific info.

My last experience with GB also has me nearly ready to break down and just slog through heroics I don't know too, admittedly. We'll see if I force myself onto unsuspecting PUGgers. Poor saps. Hopefully I'll stay strong.

Ah, yes, one final point. My trash DPS picked up like mad. I wasn't going around Moonfire and Insect Swarming everyone first. Now I typically rush in with Typhoon, if nobody is CCing, then MF and IS everyone before either tossing off a Starsurge (if its instant-cast procs) to lead into Hurricaning (if the trash is mostly still up) or running to the normal Eclipse rotation. Much better. I'm still not grabbing the top spot on bosses, but I do think I'm trying to do too much, especially this run (lots of needed off-healing).

RepDing! Exalted Wildhammer

2011-03-10T20:20:00.000-08:00

One down, at least one more to go. Honestly, I'm going to have to find a new guild soon. What's left to do other than run back through questlines? Well, obviously, learn dungeons. I see how hardcore folk are getting bored.

I've installed Recount. I'm not doing well. I was third in a normal Cat dungeon run tonight, though I was off-healing like mad. I wonder what's up with my rotation that sux0rz. Guess I could double check the gear of the other party members to see if I'm still too noob (, but I'm still embarrassed. I'm doing everything I'm supposed to, I believe. Must be under-enchanted.

Party-mates:
Boogerford with a 337 item level (though it says "339 equipped"), but +526 AGI for an assassination rogue. Boogerford also has 109,329 honorable kills. How is that even possible? 8825 achievement score (I've got 2110).
Seakdeth -- worse ilevel (334 vs. 339, though he's got "341 equipped"), but much much better enchant -- +529 AGI vs. +169 INT for me. 4090 achievement score.

They've both done significant raiding in Wrath as well. (The Armory updates, btw, are pretty cool.)

Even then I was 2nd for the first third of the instance. Guess that's okay, though I got blown out of the water once Boogerford picked up.

Here's my played, which I'm going to suggest every blogger should post weekly, for their readers to form expectations and for bloggers to gauge their addiction.

Heroic Gearing: Poor Man's Enchants (and some glyphing)

2011-03-08T07:01:00.000-08:00

Gear Update
Well, it's happened. A week or so ago, Jal finally got good enough gear to run heroics. I'm impressed with the new Armory's "advanced" view, shown above, which shows not only a quick snapshot with names of your current gear, but also yells at you for where you haven't enchanted. It's enough to drive even me to review my almost complete lack of enchants.

Most of the gear I've got comes from the Shifting Perspectives list I've been working from. I did finally shell out about 750g for the Bracers of Caustic Purification, and, after watching the AH for weeks, another 2500g for Blazewing's Furious Kilt. Those aren't horrible prices for good pre-raid gear, but I feel a little badly about the shortcut. But unlike the other slots, good pants and bracers didn't seem to be popping up without more work, so the squeaky wheels got the gold.

I've admittedly used a lot of Bloodied Wyrmhide to fill in spots I haven't earned yet. The resilience is worthless. The Wyrmhide has been slight upgrades over what I had anyhow, but I know on some level I'm using it not only to increase my leatherworking but also for the extra ilevel. I only have the chest and belt left. The belt will be replaced as soon as I'm done with Wildhammer rep, and the chestpiece will have to wait until I've got three Chaos Orbs and can fashion its replacement. I'm still running normals, and will try to run each normal at least once before going heroic, but running Grim Batol over and over with the "random" LFG is getting really really old. I'm up to four out of maybe six or seven runs now.

Poor Man's Enchanting
The enchanting lesson: Don't let your lack of time stop you from poor man's enchanting. I was going to run Therazane rep for the Cat shoulder enchant after I went exalted with Wildhammer (81% there now), and figured I'd do all my enchanting then. Dumb. I pity the fool who doesn't use Wrath enchants! I've had my Spaulders of the Endless Plains for weeks, and only now did it occur to me to run back by the Sons of Hodir for their enchants. The Greater Inscription of the Storm is 24 sp and 15 crit that I didn't have before. I bought two, just in case. Then I remembered that I was one arctic fur away from the spellpower fur lining for bracers. There's another 76 sp I was walking around without. I've also filled in too many slots with Savage Armor kits. I don't really need the extra STA, but with all the leather in Tol Barad, it's essentially free.

I did get a guildie to throw Avalanche on the Staff of Siphoned Essences. Stinks that the staff has its own glow and doesn't show the explosion of snow, but it looks like that should increase DPS by 3-4%. My next step is to install Recount again to see if I'm not doing better. Honestly, I've usually been just barely third on Recounts during PUG runs. I'm used to blowing folks out of the water in LK. I'm using Starfall and Typhoon a good deal. Though I do tend to off-heal when things get nasty, throw innervates when healz needs it, and "waste" my time on things that cause damage but don't hit my scale, I'm still lower than I'd like. I hope the enchants help enough to get me to second routinely (I've probably been an Avalanche behind), as well as the new gear (Blazewing, eg, is brand new).

Glyphs
I'll have to post on Glyphing later, but the quick lesson is that there are more purely positive glyphs than I remember from earlier. Before, it was a devil's deal. Get more damage, but lose range. Or typhoon gets more damage but doesn't push enemies back. Well, I often bank on those extra seconds to loot something (usually a keg of ale) or to throw half a starsurge. Now, there are (more?) unadulterated gains. The Wrath glyph is a must. +10% damage to Wrath. The end. Why I hadn't bothered before, I don't know. I'm hoping it changed from when I first played around with glyphs. Getting 50% of Innervate when you cast it on someone else is spiffy. And 50% faster swimming? Why not?

And here ends another unedited post brought to you by the panzerkin.

EDIT: Shifting Perspectives on enchants and glyphs. Sorry if this edit causes the post to pop back up in anyone's RSS feed.

Blazewing's Furious Kilt and the AH

2011-02-20T14:03:00.000-08:00

There are two items on the Shifting Perspectives gear list that are BoE, and both come from rare spawns. The first is Blazewing's Furious Kilt and the second is Tarvus's Poison-Scarred Boots. I've flown through the cave for Tarvus four or five times (seen Lucy on Proudmoore there twice, camping), but no boots yet. Blazewing is in Mount Hyjal, and since that's not part of my circuit, I haven't tried to find him.

I've also been keeping an eye for Blaze's Kilt on the AH. It typically goes for 4-5k asking price for buy out on Proudmoore in the last week or so. I've bid once for 2000g and was outbid. (I've yet to see the boots, fwiw.)

Well, today I'm on for a few minutes, and catch it for 1056g buyout. Stupidly, I waited a few seconds before buying to make sure it wasn't the wrong thing, and luckily it was still there when I recovered. Mine. All mine!

But, um, now what? The next Kilt is up for 3400g buyout. Do I try to make cash or wear the kilt? 2000g is a lot of LW mats.

I listed it. And an hour later, it's gone. For 3142g. /jawDrop Nice. I cleared over 2000g in an hour. I'm still stunned, and stunned worse than the free leather in Tol Barad.

I'm not sure if I made the right decision. I mean, making Pristine Hides might be a better way to make cash, and I may never get better pants with the limited gaming I've been doing. I'll see how close 2000g gets me to the Chestguard and get back to you.

Ah, and I should add, I've found the Mobile Armory to be a painfully addictive timesink while looking for these two items on the AH.

Finkle's skinner in the bag

2011-02-18T04:56:00.001-08:00

If you were wondering about soloing Upper Blackrock Spire (UBRS) at 85, it's straightforward and easy. You can honestly DPS (lots of Starfall and Hurricane) your way through the whole thing like a demigod, no problem. Lots of runecloth and rugged leather if you've got too much time on your hands.

The only pain is the amount of time it takes to beat the Rend Blackhand waves in the Coliseum or whatever. Hint: Don't walk through the big gate. It makes it easier to kill all the mobs quickly (they spawn immediately), but if you watch some of the dopes walk into the coliseum proper, the gate eventually closes back on you. Rend declares victory, and you have to hearth out.

I remember trying to sneak in via the balcony with a guildie back when we weren't quite level appropriate and waxing a few orcs before deciding to sneak on back out.

If you're not familiar with BRS, there's a good YouTube video that WoWwiki links.

In any event, after two tries on The Beast, that's a good +10 skinning now. The bad is that it's another spot in the bag even though it's a skinning knife; I still need the Gnomish Army Knife for its flint & tender. The good is that it'll live in the leatherworking bag... as will the army knife, it turns out. If that's not a change, I've been a dope for years.

And, of course, going to UBRS has some fringe benefits.

Gear from PUGging > Gear from rep?

2011-02-17T07:29:00.001-08:00

Honestly, I feel the same way as I did in Wrath. I'm just barely strong enough to PUG now, and I've run Grim Batol and Halls of Origination down. And, of course, I'm also starting to get gear I feel I don't deserve (I'm maxing out at about 30% DPS on bosses; much less on trash) that ruins any gear chasing guide.

So the TL:DR version of this post is: Run instances for gear until you're done! The Aessina-Blessed Gloves are really the only no-brainer so far of gear to get via rep. Level 346 for rep I've already got...

I bagged Anhurr's Hymnal from Halls, level 333.

From Grim Batol, I just Needed the Staff of Siphoned Essences, level 333 (see a pattern?) and bagged the Helm of Secret Knowledge from Kill the Courier.

The helm really isn't worth much, though it was the best of the quest reward choices for Jal. Without INT and SPI, it's not really going to make the gear rotation. I looked, and I can only get 63 spirit on there by reforging. What's the point? I hadn't really read up on reforging, but had hoped to get lots more out of it. The helm's art even looks a little, well, odd. I'll also admit I thought spell crit and physical crit had been rolled into one like spellpower did with damage and healing. They haven't. /sigh

(I also didn't know Wild Quilvine is toast now. Well, duh. There's no more MotW, dude.)

Regardless, the Helm, too, is 333.

If I keep bagging a 333 every normal dungeon run, my long, slow march through Wildhammer rep might not be as useful as I'd thought. It's really more fun to PUG than grind, though, again, I'm not DPSing as well as I'd like yet and feel a little like I'm mooching. That doesn't happen when I'm making a a Beer Run.

My equally slow march through Leatherworking to make the Chestguard of Nature's Fury might not be as pertinent either, but since the Chestguard is level 359, I'm guessing I'll still be glad I did. And they sell for megabucks.

In other news, I'm upset I so quickly grabbed a staff with so little DPS. The days of the Panzerkin are over, though I do keep a melee DPS staff in my bag. And, finally, I need that Skinner, well, thirty minutes ago.

OMGWTFBBQ!! UNLIMTED FREE SAVAGE LEATHER IN TOL BARAD!!shift-1!

2011-02-16T07:39:00.000-08:00

I promise not to make another post title like that again. At least any time soon. BUT OMGWTFBBQ!!!! This, my friends, is why soloers/PvErs run druids.

Travel Form + Hibernate == Unlimited, pain-free savage leather.

Ding! 85

2011-02-15T21:21:00.000-08:00

And it's happened. I'm finally 85. And it seems appropriate I dinged while turning in Wildhammer reputation quests, as I'll be running that for quite a while.

Continuing the thread from my last few posts, I quickly picked up Aessina-Blessed Gloves (actually did that at 84; they req 85 to equip) and the Mantle of Wild Feathers, which is the Alliance version of Spaulders of the Endless Plains.

Though that bags me the steps Completed step [Shoulder] of achievement [Cataclysmically Superior]. - Tuesday, February 15, 2011 and Completed step [Hands] of achievement [Cataclysmically Superior]. - Tuesday, February 15, 2011, the bonuses are really pretty minor.

Once socketed, it'll be a little better, but still, minor gains. This ain't no tiered armor. ;^D

I started looking at Leatherworking guides like this one to see what it'd take to get to get to the Chestguard of Nature's Fury. I've been vulturing leather like crazy. There have been a few spots where, especially closer to Cat's release, people were smacking mobs and leaving corpses to skin like mad. But even then I've only got about 180 savage leathers and 21 dragonscales. I hate to cheap out, but with 5k gold in the bank, I'll at least take a glance at the AH today.

Also worth noting:
Oasis Bracers BoE drop, Lost City of the Tol'Vir

Shifting Perspectives at WoW Insider said these are BoE. WoWhead lists these as BoP and the comments seem to support that. Shifting seems to have gotten that wrong, so I'll need to 1.) Check the AH to double-check and 2.) Start looking for new bracers.

I think I'll keep running Wildhammer and start checking out Tol Barad. There are apparently a few good places to skin there as part of dailies.

And finally, of all the things I did during 84...

BEST! WEDDING! EVAR! *Hic*

Gear hunting

2011-02-15T06:26:00.000-08:00

Okay, I took a look through Shifting Perspective's gear list, which nostalgeek suggested last time. It's a good list, though much is from heroic dungeons, which is probably beyond my part-time gatherer status.

There are many things that are easy enough to grab, though. I'm going to cut and paste a hacked version of the Shifting Perspectives list here which includes helm, neck, shoulders, chest, wrists, hands, and belt. I figured that was enough to start.

Much of the commentary is Caraway's (the post's author). I mark mine with -P. I've cut tons, though, so go "RTFA" (where F=Fabulous, I guess) for the rest of the info.

Tyler Caraway
http://wow.joystiq.com/2010/12/17/shifting-perspectives-balance-druid-pre-raid-gear-guide/#continued

Helms

Cluster of Stars 2,200 justice points

Helm of Reorigination Doing it the Hard Way, Halls of Origination

For your helm, the best choice to go for is honestly the Cluster of Stars. .... If you don't have enough to get it quite yet, then I would at least queue up to run normal Halls of Reorigination at least once so you can get the helm from a quest you'll find there.

Necks

Yellow Smoke Pendant Dragonmaw / Wildhammer Exalted

Eye of Many Deaths Jewelcrafting

Shoulders

Spaulders of the Endless Plains Dragonmaw / Wildhammer Honored

Chests

Wrap of the Fallen City The Fall of Neferset City, Uldum

(There's some debate on wowhead on if the Chestguard of Nature's Fury is worth a rip or not. -P)
The quest reward from Uldum (note: This is apparently a really easy quest - P) is going to be the best chest that you can really get until you start heroics or purchase the JP one.

Wrists

Oasis Bracers BoE drop, Lost City of the Tol'Vir

(Note that these are BoE and can be purchased on the Auction House! -P EDIT: WoWhead lists these as BoP and the comments seem to support that. Shifting Perspectives seems to have gotten that wrong. -P)

Hands

Aessina-Blessed Gloves Guardians of Hyjal revered

To be perfectly honest, there isn't much reason to not go for the rep reward gloves, especially considering that you can reach revered merely by completing all of the quests in Hyjal. ...

Belts

Withered Dream Belt Dragonmaw / Wildhammer exalted

(The Lightning Lash is apparently about equal to the Wildhammer rep item, with some arguing its gem slot makes it BiS pre-raid. -P)
I'm honestly not even going to bother listing any other belts out there, because nothing compares to this belt at all. ...

Two things jump out.
1.) I should've already gotten the Aessina-Blessed Gloves but I haven't. I've finished HyJal, so I should be revered, it appears (green, above).

2.) Three of these items (and four on the whole list) are based on Wildhammer rep (yellow, above). Guess where I'm farming next?

3.) Okay, three. Wrap of the Fallen City seems easy to get iff you've done Uldum. I started there, but quickly went Highlands. I can't tell how many of these questlines you need to do, but it appears to require a few. I might not be pulling in the Wrap.

I'll admit that I'm miffed that none of this is Leatherworking craftable. /sigh There's some debate on wowhead on if the Chestguard of Nature's Fury is worth a rip or not. The Lightning Lash is apparently about equal to the Wildhammer rep item, with some arguing its gem slot makes it BiS pre-raid.

I'll add some of that and do more research.

One final bit: It looks like you might need a Finkle's Skinner to skin some bosses. It looks like The Beast is soloable now. Here's one guide. I really shoulda gotten this years ago. I'm also going to need some Pristine Hide if I'm going to craft the chestpiece instead of going to Uldum.

WoW Rookie: How to get up to speed for heroics

2011-02-11T18:53:00.000-08:00

Wish they could name it something other than WoW Rookie, but that's the sort of guide I'd hoped to find for gearing. Not quite as detailed as I'd like, but a good start. Example...

Reputations

As we talked about a few weeks ago, Cataclysm reputations can provide significantly useful gear. There are 20 epic items available for purchase with reputations, all at item level 359. There are dozens of item level 346 items available.

This also gives decent starts to wowhead searches for, say, craftables. Here's the list narrowed to items that are Druid useable. Next, picking out what's good for Balance. Nothing gives spellpower, so it'll take a little bit of thinking.

I'd really have preferred to see a list of items by dungeon, but obviously it'd be a lot of work listing everything for each class and talent spec. I'll dig around some more and get balance specific.

Ding! 2 (for the guild!)

2011-02-10T10:19:00.000-08:00

It finally happened. We really only have one active guild member at this point, and that's not me. I think I'm the second most active. The guild is sort of the end of a spinoff from my original guild, which split after getting serious, over-recruiting, and having the proverbial Guild Implosion (c) 2005.

It'll be nice to have a bonus 5% experience for the last half of 84, but the guild leader has already hit 85 (twice?!) so it's a little too late for him to get too excited. I feel kinda badly I put us over the edge into 2 while he wasn't on. I wonder if we all would see the Ding! on our screen. I'd imagine so... that'd be neat.

If I get geared enough to raid, I'll probably take my main to a new guild (the guild leader already did the same, so I'm not too worried that'll be a problem!). The folks in the guild are good, fun folk, but I don't see more than two on regularly any more.

Still, level 2! Woohoo!

I might also mention, since the pic is of the fishing daily in SW, that I finally bagged a Weather-beaten fishing hat, which Jal is wearing in the pic. Guess I won't feel badly about not making it to STV on Sundays any more.

And yes, I still need to clean my bags.

Does this say anything?

2011-01-27T14:31:00.000-08:00

I'd be lamenting how few books are interactive in the expansions, but when I checked this one out in the Wildhammer inn, I figured there's at least a chance it actually says something.

Anyone know? (Clicking makes it a little bigger, I think.)

Hey, I'm famous! Sorta. In April of 2009

2011-01-26T08:33:00.000-08:00

Look, I was quoted on WoW Insider... [1.Local]: Patch week patter:

Some readers ranted that $15 a month should provide smooth, uninterrupted service. Others felt that at something like 50 cents a day, they were getting a reasonable value.

'Interesting comments on the worth of WoW,' observed Jalindrine. 'The 50-cents-a-day logic, though, is obviously flawed. The question isn't 'Can I afford to spend 50 cents a day on a product?', but 'How many products/services can I afford to buy at 50 cents (more or less) a day?' Every so often, WoW's the one not worth it, which is much harder to realize when you're literally addicted.'

I think I got the tone right on that one. Post is here, followed by a perplexingly incoherent response. I often wish I didn't feel compelled to post on message boards, blogs, and websites, but finally realized back in my Slashdot days that it wasn't going to stop. ;^)

A UI worth considering

2011-01-25T14:38:00.000-08:00

I usually just glance over the WoW Insider UI of the week, but this week's caught my eye. At first glance, without reading anything, I thought it was a good, clean, likely DPS UI. I liked it. Little did I know...

Hi! I have been reading the UI of the week column for a while, and since I just redid my UI for Cata, I thought I would try and share it. I started with what was essentially a blank slate, a need for simplicity and clean lines, and a desire for a functional and fairly minimalistic UI. I play a resto/boomkin druid as well as a ret/holy pally, so versatility is also very important. I need to be able to switch specs and have my UI be usable for healing as well as DPSing.

I try to stay as UI free as possible to minimize the impact of client upgrades, with only Auctioneer running as a general practice. I'm adding Recount now, but this one looks functional enough I might be induced to try it on my gaming tower.

In other news, I'm behind on posting. I hit level 84 a while back. Ding! post to follow when I'm back at home. For a second, I missed that the Tanaris quest was a breadcrumb (thought it was just for an archeology intro) and was stuck going to Vash'jr, which still, for whatever reason, doesn't do it for me. Finally got the Tanaris quest, enjoyed returning there and the start of that area, and then lucked into 84 and the mission board's move to Twilight Highlands. Things are enjoyable again. And the new headpiece for the Ulysses siren quest was both a nice upgrade and a good break from the standard quest gear sets.

Pretty high sys reqs in Highlands. I'm consistently getting 20 fps at everything set to Fair except draw distance at Ultra. Still, I'm loving the new tower's power. Anybody got $200 I could sink into a new video card to go with it?!

And, finally, I listened through all of the first podcast from Team Waffle. Not bad. A little overly hardcore for me. Talk about getting to 85 in 36 hours is, obviously, not what this blog (or my gameplay) is about. I was surprised how little time they spent on leveling -- most of it is about 45 minutes in.

It's worth listening to if you're a druid with a commute. I'll probably submit a question or two from your friendly-neighborhood part-timer. Support your local druids, d00dz. You know it takes three times as long to put together as you'd initially expect.

Ding! 84

2011-01-18T22:15:00.000-08:00

I was only in Uldum for about an hour, but dinged while I was there. I'm not sure where my /played shot is, but I'll dig one up once the maintenance is done (I'm backfilling this post almost a month after dinging, I'm afraid).

The Uldum quests were a lot more fun than Vash'jr, but I quickly went Wildhammer, which I just recently finished.

Panzerkin finally D-E-D

2011-01-15T13:27:00.000-08:00

I found out reading Restokin:

Moonkin Form now grants 15% damage reduction instead of increased armor.

See, what the armor bonus did was allow you to put together mitigation gear, just like any other tank or off-tank. Now, the benefit is flat. I'll have to double check the mathes, since I really am mostly a non-mathes player, but I don't think 15% is going to be as good as max leather armor with the proper enchantments, etc.

This is really another watering down of the game, "Dungeons are hard" aside. Not only does the quest reward gear look exactly the same with small changes during upgrades, saying that you're essentially marching your way through a pre-defined route of gearing when questing, now, just as with the switch from +healing gear to just generic spellpower and the elimination of spell type specific bonuses, every Boomkin is marching along, playing just like every other.

The character of the game is taking a hit. Playstyles are becoming more standardized by the standardization of gear and gear bonuses.

How about you teach us instead? Re: Wow, Dungeons are Hard!

2011-01-12T06:10:00.000-08:00

Wow, Dungeons are Hard! - World of Warcraft:

DPS specs often get blamed the most for not knowing what is going on. It should be your business to understand the mechanics of the fights. You’re a member of a team, not a follower who can always rely on someone else to tell them what to do. Which are the spells that need to be interrupted? Which are the void zones that you absolutely must get out of? Which are the adds that must be burned down (and conversely, when should you ignore the adds and focus on the boss instead)? If you aren’t sure, then ask. [emph mine]

No, you shouldn't have to ask. Nor should DPS stay in the LK theme of button spamming. Instead, the game should teach you each instance fight.

Essentially, what Blizzard's saying here is if you're not in a hardcore, first-run guild that's going to blast through the instances first, you must learn from what those guys have said. If you're part of the second wave, it's your responsibility to figure out the instances from outside of the game. You must read Thott/WoWhead. You must have someone in your guild that has already run the instance. You can't do this on your own, Nemo. You just can't!

The attitude's a cop out. If [PU]group members are going to continue to expect you to get it right the first time or they'll drop -- an attitude, it should be pointed out, this blog post by Blizzard reinforces -- then the game must include clues, preferably from the content of quest lines that teaches you how to handle an instance. There must be in-game methods to learn the lore. As much as gaming is an industry of metalepsis, how to run an instance should be taught in-game.

There's no RP reason not to think that the weaknesses and powers of the instances aren't known by some NPCs, and there's no reason not to make quests, accessible in solo PvE, that prepare us for boss battles in instances. I think I've mentioned that here before. I know I've thought it. It's not rocket science. The move's obvious. Lore in game, please.

Ding! 83

2011-01-07T19:09:00.000-08:00

Hyjal was the right choice. That said, I feel the narrative skews too far to favor your importance. I mean, come on, when there are so many people farming mobs, I can't very well honestly think the mountain's mine or that I personally turned the tide for the World Tree. If it were written so that I'm doing something helpful, but not singular, and if the quests were written in a way so that, say, every twenty schmoes had some variation on the same quest (so that it felt let we were working together), that'd reduce the barrier to suspending my disbelief. Jal's not the most important guy in Azeroth. I'm comfortable with knowing that.

Other quick comments:

Deepholm, so far, is fairly enjoyable.

Dailies were waaaaay overcamped today.

Leveling to 83 seemed to take much longer than to 82. Not sure why.

Finished up Sirana Iceshriek while flying around doing Dalaran dailies (I decided I wanted the chef hat). That was nice closure. It also happened to give me 100 Storm Peak quests, so there's another achievement.

Ah, yes, if you want to know the difference between the Rippling Ooze Chestguard versus the slightly less powerful Tunic of Soaring Safety, I've got a great screengrab. I can't recall who said that the new practice in Cat of provided matched quest armor was a good thing, but I disagree. The before/after pic, below, should help show you why (sorry for the darkness).

See the difference? STARK.

Who cares? Where's the reward? Where's the individuality? I can barely tell I've upgraded anything... we go from rust-er to grey-er. Wow. Helmet's the same deal. I think I've gone through three staves that look exactly the same.

I liked mismatched. I liked the drinking hat. ;^)

With the new leather armor specialization that killed the clothkin combined with this cruddy quest armor upgrades, I'm really unimpressed with the quest gear. Spend a little time creating the models next time, okay?

Waited 20-25 minutes in LFG to hit a random Cat dungeon. Got a bad group. Some Leeeeeeroy got us wiped before the fifth even had time to show up. Note to self: Yes, when you see part of an instance's cleared and lots of people running, you're probably joining a group that has no idea what's going on.

For this, I got to wait another 10 minutes before I could even LFG again. I know Blizzard's looking to change LFG to make sure you get in with people who know what's going on, not just folks appropriately geared, but for tonight, I got the short stick. /sigh

EDIT: Meant to include a /played.

One must always come clean in the midst of an addiction.

Working on rotations

2010-12-29T10:38:00.000-08:00

With the Razer Naga, I've already added several spells into the PvE rotation, though I haven't done any of the requisite mathes. Solar Beam-ing a spell casting mob, causing them to charge you, followed by a Typhoon, is a fun way to aggravate mobs and keep damage down. But I Googled around a bit to see if anyone has The Right Way to rotate these spells I've now got at my thumb-tip.

Elitist Jerks seemed to have the best guide:

This is a compendium of information on raiding as a Balance Druid. It contains everything a beginner needs to achieve basic competence at raid DPS, as well more detailed discussion for people more interested in understanding the theory or more advanced play. The article is supplemented by the attached spreadsheet.

I haven't mathed up Starsurge, but I think it's to your advantage to cast even in the midst of an eclipse, something Jerks seems to agree with, though it's written just ambiguously enough I won't swear to it.

Casting Starfall during Lunar isn't something I'd considered closely enough. Good point.

EDIT: For some reason, I conflated Thorns and Roots, below. Honestly, I've completely forgotten about Thorns. In the Recruit-a-friend, I'm playing with a druid who is Thorning, and I caught the mistake. I should throw it onto the Naga rotation.

I may be underutilizing Thorns, which, since it doesn't set up melee mobs for Wrath-spams any more, has fallen off of my rotation in PvE almost entirely. Jerks suggests it does enough dps to keep it up. From outdoor only to ubiquitous use to nothing, it's been a real pain to keep up with Thorns. I'm also likely underusing Insect Swarm. I only use it and Faerie Fire for long fights in instances, though Jerks would have me believe that I should keep IS and scrap FF almost entirely -- "Faerie Fire: We no longer need to use this unless the raid is missing an Armor debuff." /shrug

Honestly, though, this is the sort of stuff that kills the enjoyment for part-timers like me, yet I'm just math-inclined enough (and efficiency worried) that I keep getting drawn back in. There's probably also a small tinge of worry that a PUG might get upset that I'm not using my skillz The Right Way. I don't know why. I've never been called out for not putting out enough dps.

And, honestly, for PvE, the fights are too short for maxing DPS and Innverate too good at keeping you at max mana for much to matter, afaict. Fire and forget.

In any event, Jerks' is a good guide, and the Naga really does change the way I play.

MMO-Champion BlueTracker

2010-12-27T20:26:00.001-08:00

MMO-Champion BlueTracker:

Vrakthris
Blue Poster
#3 - 2010/12/10 12:57:16 AM
12/09/2010 4:53 PMPosted by Bucktown

Why am I being treated as though i'm less of a customer than anyone else?

It isn't that, Bucktown. It is priority in queue is given to full accounts before ones listed as trials. Now I understand that you recently upgraded online but unfortunately you may have missed the warnings that trial restrictions may remain for approximately 72 hours while the purchase is processed.

The leveling restrictions are lifted immediately, unfortunately due to possible fraudulent purchases those other restrictions are not removed until the purchase is finalized. I am very sorry for what frustration this may cause, hopefully your purchase will process sooner rather than later.

/le sigh

I wish somebody had let us know about these trial account limitations mas sooner. There's nothing quite like watching yourself get within 40 waiting in the queue just to watch it pop back up to 80. We're about an hour in, and back to 74.

Recruit-a-friend, but don't expect to play unless it's down time! Too bad I decided it'd be better to stick with Proudmoore so that I could load up a twink.

Ding! 82

2010-12-27T09:29:00.001-08:00

Requisite /played output:

Quick notes:
I've spent too much time going back and forth between Hyjal and Vashj'ir trying to decide where to level. Waaaay too much time. I like the story in Hyjal better, but thought I enjoyed the visuals with Vashj'ir. But after the quest line named after Stones songs (and perhaps they're covers of someone else? -- and note that I love the Stones; it's just the lack of imagination), I finally quit Vashj'ir and decided I'd run Hyjal to its finish. The seahorse combined with the stupid air cave and tired quests was too much.

A MacBook 2.26 GHz is approximately equal in hardware performance as my new tower with the old GeForce 8500 GT.

/timetest from SW to IF on Fair with the tower gave me:
Low: 7.1652
Max: 477.241
Avg: 47.169

with High:
Low: 2.438
Max: 210.373
Avg: 18.675

I'll post MacBook numbers later, but for now it's hosting the trial account for Recruit a Friend. Not sure if that'd be apples to apples.

Right now, I'm gaming with Fair settings on the tower with draw distance (the only thing that really affects gameplay -- Can I see the mobs/sparkly collectable?) set to Ultra. I think that's a fair enough compromise. Man, I'm tired of seeing GeForce GTS 450 give-aways on WoW Insider. I want a better card.

Ah yes, two links to share on the hardware front.

Great review of all cards at each price "point" (I hate that term, price point. I understand it, but isn't "point" enough for casual use?)
Great guest post on WoW Insider talking about upgrading your box to get ready to play. Heck, it even covers if your computer is stuck on AGP.
Compare that super-useful post to this commercial for Nvidia masquerading as a hardware post at WoW Insider. ;^)

If I was buying today, I think I'm down to either the...
MSI R5770 Hawk Radeon HD 5770 1GB ($150 after rebate)
or the...
MSI N460GTX CYCLONE 1GD5/OC GeForce GTX 460 (Fermi) 1GB for $210

... depending on how serious I want to get about graphics. Honestly, the 5770 feels a little like a tide-me-over card, so I think I'll keep using my 8500 GT until I puke and then hit the GTX 460 (or whatever's the best deal with those specs when I finally give in). Still, $50 is a lot of Steam games on sale!

Back to notes:

Recruit-a-Friend levels you much too quickly. It's also crappy if you immediately quest together. The intro-to-your-class quests in Shadowglen, at least, cannot be accessed by a non-elf. I tried making a warrior gnome, thinking I would have access to the elven warrior trainer quests. No luck. You get two early, then no more quests until you take the road south out of Shadowglen, leaving the elf at level 7 and me at 5. Stuff's picked back up now that we're out of Shadowglen, though. Minor complaint.

Also annoyed with the inability to trade with a trial account. I completely understand why, but we've got one well geared twink with as much gold as she can carry and one poor gnome sap who barely has cash to train, much less overgear himself. Would it really have killed Blizzard to allow you to carry, oh, 20s from some benefactor, with your trial? We're already leveling like it's going out of style. I don't know that a few pieces of level-appropriate gear would be a serious issue.

I think that's about it. I feel like I'm leveling too quickly in Cat as well. I haven't had much time to play, especially with the new recruit a friend diversion, but when I do, I'm leveling pretty quickly, especially considering that I'm still running dailies and taking time to run /timetest, etc.

New integrated vs. old discrete video cards

2010-12-25T10:20:00.000-08:00

I've recently been playing WoW on my MacBook, which does fine (ob a huge step up over my iBook G4 from a few years back!), but not great. That MacBook also had a copy of Vista Ultimate on it that I'd been using with Boot Camp. I'd put away my dedicated Windows tower to save space during a move, and hadn't pulled it back out.

Enter Anandtech's System Buyers' Guide last month. I've built three systems now, and none of them involved me really canvasing every mobo out there. I usually rely on a combo of Anandtech, friends' input, and Newegg reviews. This time, though I have an older discrete video card (MSI's overclocked GeForce 8500 GT with 256MB of VRAM), I went ahead and got the budget board Anandtech recommended, which comes with ATI Radeon HD 4250 integrated video. I also bought the AMD Athlon II X4 640 Propus 3.0GHz they suggested and upgraded the Crucial RAM they had listed to something that looked like it was legitimately paired for dual channel use. The rest (case, power supply, hard drive, optical drive, and, of course, Vista) is all recycled from my last box.

Old as the hills card
I was suspicious that I'd wasted $10-15 on integrated video, but figured it was worth $10 of my time to go with Anand after I tried to find another board that was cheaper without. Nothing without integrated video in this price range absolutely jumped out at me from Asus or Gigabyte, which were the two brands that seemed to have the best reviews, or MSI, which I've used in a previous build and was suggested here by Anand. There was one with two PCI-E slots for SLI, but it had some northbridge compromises that seemed questionable, and the chances that I buy two video cards down the road is pretty slim. Chalk up the extra cash to not knowing enough about mobos, I figured, and got Anand's suggested budget MSI board.

But after playing with the new mobo and old card a while -- I finally finished up GTA:SA and messed around with GTA:IV some more -- I started wondering how today's integrated video matches up with three and a half year-old budget gaming discrete cards.

So here are the results. With Doom 3 with randomly selected video settings I felt were best, the 4250 integrated chip gave me 17.5 fps. With the 8500 GT, I got 139.4. I must have pooched some display setting, as I did edit the config file by hand to get widescreen on my monitor, but you get the idea (and I didn't feel like pulling the GT again). The 8500 killed the 4250. In GTA:IV's benchmark test, I got the following.

Integrated 4250

Discrete 8500 GT

Statistics
Average FPS: 14.71
Duration: 37.52 sec
CPU Usage: 40%
System memory usage: 56%
Video memory usage: 96%

Graphics Settings
Video Mode: 800 x 600 (56 Hz)
Texture Quality: Low
Shadow Quality: Low
Reflection Resolution: Low
Water Quality: Low
Texture Filter Quality: 
     Anisotropic x2
Night Shadows: Off
View Distance: 10
Detail Distance: 10

Hardware
Microsoft® Windows Vista" Ultimate 
Service Pack 1
Video Adapter: ATI Radeon HD 4250      
Video Driver version: 8.17.10.1059
Audio Adapter: Speakers 
(High Definition Audio Device)
AMD Athlon(tm) II X4 640 Processor

File ID: Benchmark.cli

Statistics
Average FPS: 30.42
Duration: 37.02 sec
CPU Usage: 77%
System memory usage: 58%
Video memory usage: 97%

Graphics Settings
Video Mode: 800 x 600 (56 Hz)
Texture Quality: Low
Shadow Quality: Low
Reflection Resolution: Low
Water Quality: Low
Texture Filter Quality: 
     Anisotropic x2
Night Shadows: Off
View Distance: 10
Detail Distance: 10

Hardware
Microsoft® Windows Vista" Ultimate 
Service Pack 1
Video Adapter: NVIDIA GeForce 8500 GT
Video Driver version: 260.99
Audio Adapter: Speakers 
(High Definition Audio Device)
AMD Athlon(tm) II X4 640 Processor

File ID: Benchmark.cli

That seems pretty telling. Though the GT seems to be plenty for Doom 3, it's pushing it in GTA:IV. To play with eye candy, I need a new video card. With the integrated video, though, I'm barely playing at all and the processor is downright bored -- 40% of the processor has anything to do. With the 8500, the processor's at least working a little at 77%. Once again, the GT is doing loads better than the new integrated chip.

I'll give WoW a shot tonight when I reactivate. Cat seems to be just enough of a push that it might give the 8500 a quick test. The GT looked great in Nagrand when I first bought it, but I didn't play much with it in WotLK, and basically stuck with the MacBook. I just hope I'm not dying for one of the $250 cards WoW Insider's giving away (a deal at $190 at Newegg right now though a reliable model will run you $210) once I do fire things back up.

Regardless, the real lesson is that hardware can make the game. For GTA:IV, the improvement is a clear one. GTA:SA looked great, but IV requires a multi-core processor, and these four cores plus the 8500 have proven a big step up over the MacBook (though I was too stupid to run a benchmark before blasting the Boot Camp partition). Here's to hoping I'm pleasantly surprised tonight.

And the secondary lesson is that integrated video still sux0rz. Almost anything discrete is a step up. If you're stuck on a box with integrated video, go to Newegg or, heck, eBay and grab whatever you want, and enjoy Azeroth anew.

And though I enjoy the relatively inexpensive nature of building, upgrading, and recycling towers, I did briefly consider Alienware's m11x during its Black Friday sale for $599. I think that version, however, had an even less powerful processor than the Core 2 Duo offered at $799 now, and I didn't bite in part because I already have a decently powered MacBook.

Regardless, the m11x has the NVIDIA 335M with a Gig of VRAM across the line. The size looks good and battery life for normal work, when you switch the 335M off, is pretty good. If I was considering a laptop purchase and played WoW, I would wait for the next hardware bump and then grab this laptop ASAP.

Quick hiatus to administer exams

2010-12-14T18:18:00.000-08:00

Why, oh why does year-end grading torment me so?

Remind me never to give the class the option to turn in assignments "on your own schedule" at any point in the semester. They do not take advantage of the situation. Rather, they only take advantage of the situation. /sigh It's been a couple of fun days of grading. With an exam given today and another Thursday, Jal's going to have to wait.

Amazing how many WoW bloggers and players have some foot in academia. One of our most active guildies is an interim principal, and Spinks apparently is doing graduate work (Lissanna too?).

The good news is that I should have a AMD Athlon II X4 640 Propus 3.0GHz Quad-Core waiting on me once I'm done. The MacBook, he tries, but he's really not up to serious WOWing (says the guy who was playing on an iBook and Mac Mini G4 not two or three years ago). I've thought back to the times I've been really impressed with WoW's scenery, and they're when I played in Auberdine at a LAN bar nearly five years ago, another "bar" almost four years ago in Winterspring, and when I got a new computer and flew through Nagrand, what, a year and a half ago?

Hardware really makes the game.

Eclipse and reconfiguring action bars

2010-12-11T09:20:00.000-08:00

As any astute/obsessive screenshot studier can tell, after years of 2 is Starfire, 3 is Wrath, 4 is Healing Touch, and 5 is Moonfire, I've finally given in and changed. I've slowly been moving stuff around, adding Starfall, Insect Swarm, and Forces of Nature to the main action bar, and occasionally now swapping Travel Form (great for PvE escapes) with Moonbeam or whatever it is that silences folk. The new Eclipse dynamic plus the addition of Hurricane, Innervate, and Moonbeam to my situational rotation finally required an Action Bar rethink.

The Main action bar now has Starsurge at 2. Though the mouseover doesn't say what the dmg is, it's a lot. I haven't bothered with mathes, but I use Starsurge whenever it hits cooldown. It's my lead pulling shot the way Starfire used to be. Starfire used to be the choice because it had greater range than Wrath and because its slow casting speed didn't matter for the first shot. Now Starsurge's cooldown plus insane damage says it's the new "2".

3 stays Wrath. I wish I could force Eclipse to start off going Lunar, as I still want to smash 3 after 2, but for me, Starsurge seems to always give me 15 towards Lunar the first time through. Perhaps I should swap Starfire and Wrath so that 3 is Starfire, but I also like knowing 3 represents Wrath's speed. Anyhow....

Note: Actually 3 and 5 are macros that proc my spellpower trinkets and then cast Wrath or Starfire. This is an absolute must, folks. Macro-ing trinkets is the easiest dps upgrade there is.

4 is now Moonfire, which throws me off a little. I accidentally hit 5 off and on for a few hours. The muscle memory is scary. But the move down makes it easier to think of [towards] Solar at 5, [towards] Lunar at 3, with both dancing around 4 as it fades.

5 is, duh, Starfire. I hate having three keys spent where I used to have two for the same purposes, but I'm getting used to it. It has pushed me to reconfigure more keys, however (see below).

I'm debating permanently swapping 8 from travel form to moonbeam (?), and have tried it out a few times, as silencing folk looks cool and has its practical side. I just use travel form so often -- running from the bank to AH, eg -- that it's hard to take off of the main bar.

Before now I, admittedly, moused everything else. I had a few more bars set up, like Shift-4 for when I needed to go healz for an extended period of time (see? Healing touch was 4 on my main bar, originally, and Shift-4 is a bar full o' healing), but I've broken down and set up my Num Pad for the left action bar above the main. It's mostly in order of the picture, above. Heals are 4-6 to keep with the 4 theme. 1-3 are aggressive. 0 is to pop Tranquility in a 5-man emergency, which happens more than I'd like. (Anyone notice that they were doing more off-healing right before Cat? I'm thinking lots of Priests were alts.) + is to take a healing pot.

I'm eying the Razer Naga to make this all even easier, moving those num pad selections to the right hand, keeping the movement, esp strafing, easier to reach with the left. I might eventually end up swapping the main action bar to the mouse instead. Can't tell what would be best.

So my only "heady" point here is to say to people who think real-world cash doesn't influence virtual world performance, even beyond the ability to buy the game and expansions, beyond buying net access, and beyond the computer's hardware so that you can see more than 14 fps, we can drill all the way down to a $70 mouse allowing you to access more spells quickly and efficiently. It's a one-dollar one-vote system for everything past Angband, I think.

Ding! 81

2010-12-09T19:51:00.000-08:00

Welp, even a part-timer levels up pretty quickly in Cat. I'm on 81, though I saw worgen druids at 81 before I dinged, which is just painful to think about. I've been running with Jal off and on since, what, March 2005? Sheesh. And somebody else had caught up with all I've done in about 32 hours. It's painful seeing how quickly your virtual work is made obsolete.

So far, the game is fine, but painfully more of the same as before. Kill X of Y then report back to (x,y). Read backstory if you really want, wash, rinse, repeat. Five years in, Blizzard could be figuring out better ways to tell stories. The full motion video (though rendered in-game) continues to be used a bit (see below), but overall the game mechanics simply haven't changed enough.

Now just as BC wowed me with its scenery, both Hyjal and Vashj'ir are visually impressive. I was planning on upgrading my PC's hardware to get a decent GTA IV experience already and look forward to seeing the improvement for WoW. I'm saving Vashj'ir until I have better gear before playing much more. That said, all the crabs sitting around have gotten me about 50 points of skinning in no time flat.

The new level feedback is both neat and n00bish.

Yes, I realize I have a new talent point. Yes, I know I should check a trainer for new skills. Got it. Still, it's an extra layer of professionalism that makes the game feel a little more polished, even if Cindermaul requires a logout, cache deletion, and restart to clear and going back to grab Finkle's Skinner causes a hard lock.

Sheesh, okay! I've still got 400 in front of me in Proudmoore. Sign off already! Good thing half the server lives in Aussieland -- or is it morning there already?

Gear inflation. Goodbye purple, hello green.

2010-12-08T06:23:00.000-08:00

It surprised me in BC, but by LK I'd gotten used to it. And it's happening again. All the virtual rewards from those hours you played are gone in just a few minutes playing Cat. My Blood Boil Lancet that I'd used as a near end-game weapon is gone. The Wrathful Gladiator's Cloak I picked up with honor points I didn't realize I had right before Cat went live is doomed. It's just a matter of time.

Spinks beat me to it a bit, but the green drops aren't always bad either:

One thing I have noticed though is that random green drops in Vash’jir look to be better quality than similar green quest rewards. (For example, I picked up a level 79 dagger with 963 spellpower on it – that’s a similar item level (283) to the caster drops from heroic 25 man Lich King. Level 79.)

I'm mostly running Hyjal, but it's true. I mentioned in April 2009 that I rarely find drops that instantly replace something I'm using (they usually go to the AH for me; Spinks say she automatically DEs), and have a green drop already in there from Cat.

I can't decide if Blizzard is virtually bribing us to buy or if this is actually a way LK-only players could be kept separate from Catters. I used to be sure it was the former, and now I'm not as sure. I'm confident more are interested in the first, though.

Anyhow, here are some pix of the greens with comparisons with my current gear that I either took or considered as quest rewards (or got as a drop) that have likely already hit the gear rotation. Admittedly, some of my gear is crud (this is when I remind you that I'm a "part-time" player), but it's interesting to see. You'll probably have to click them to read some, as Blogger will miniaturize the shots to fit. I mean, seriously, +260 spellpower out of the gate? Sheesh. I ran Heroic Azjol-Nerub while playing just for fun and, boy, I'm already nearly an end gamer for LK.

(Note: I didn't get them all. For whatever reason, taking a screenshot (there's no screenshot key on my MacBook's keyboard, and I haven't remapped for when I'm playing away from my KVM) only comes out about 40-50% of the time.)

Btw, don't forget to pay for Illustrious skinning (any skinning trainer, afaict), first aid, etc.

Has anyone else noticed the reroute landing page for the Armory is pretty facebooky now?

Cataclysm Starts

2010-12-07T04:14:00.001-08:00

Welp, I didn't make it out like I'd planned at midnight, but did log in quickly at 7am EST to see what's still a steady stream of folk taking off from Moonglade over to Mount Hyjal (I believe). And Blizzard wasn't lying. I can't fly in the old world, though it's neat seeing everybody who is.

People start riding Arorus around 0:40.

I wonder if anybody's level 85 yet. ;^)

Cat -- Where do I start?

2010-12-05T16:56:00.000-08:00

In the interest of serving part-timers like myself, who haven't beta'd or know where they're going on Tuesday...

First off, most say to buy Old World Flying from Bralla Cloudwing in Stormwind first. The comments there on WowHead suggest 250g is the gold sink.

You've then got two choices of where to start, apparently. First, it sounded like Vashj'ir would be an interesting place to start, as I ultimately enjoyed the Indian-themed demons from BC. But then it turns out the entire zone is under water and that you end up riding seahorses or something, nearly or more wack than the Draenai spaceship storyline I'm still essentially ignoring.

The other choice is Mount Hyjal, which is even better because you're apparently helping save Nordrassil, the other world tree.

The Mount Hyjal quest line is also easy to access. You click on one of the help wanted boards in SW or IF or Darn and are told to go all the way to Moonglade. That's tough for druids to pull off, right?

Mount Hyjal is one of the two 80-82 level-up zones in Cataclysm. Breadcrumbs come from Stormwind and Orgrimmar from the Hero's Call and Warchief's Command billboards, which send players to Moonglade. There, the breadcrumb As Hyjal Burns directs players to the zone, where the chain proper starts underneath Nordrassil, the world tree, with Inciting the Elements and The Earth Rises.

That should last us a while.

Restokin talks raid gear

2010-11-30T18:18:00.000-08:00

Gosh, I hate betas. I wish there was some way to test expansion betas kinda like they test new cars, with lots of stuff so that nobody can really tell what the testers are driving. As I've lamented before, by virtue of not beta testing, I'm weeks behind on learning what to do once Cat hits. Someone was asking an honest question about Cat via Proudmoore's capital Trade channel a week or so ago and one of the unhelpful answers was, "That's what playing the beta is for." /sigh

Anyway, it looks like Lissanna at Restokin is helping make up for my lack o' beta:

So, my guild officers asked everyone to look into what their pre-raid gear options are. So, I spent several hours one day looking at all the instance drops, reputation items, and badge rewards. I thought that I would post it here on my blog for other people to benefit from, rather than only posting it on my guild forums. Since moonkin & resto share caster leather gear, I’m including both in this gear list.

Below she lists the gear that makes the GS cut and the sources for each, as well as another page on faction rewards. Honestly, though, in RP-land, nobody should know this stuff yet. Like Spinks said recently, iirc, it's not like I want to RP, but I would prefer a little consistency in the game, whether that's timeline (the post I'm talking about concentrated on how new starting zones act like LK events, etc, hadn't yet happened, even if you were running back to do low level quests with your main) or other players' knowledge.

So these guides are still not as good as having already scoped everything out, but a great benefit over starting from scratch. Seems like I just did this for LK, but there you go.

At times, it feels like theorycrafting gets in the way of playing the game. Oh well. Thanks for the info and work, Lissanna!

Jal the Pilgrim

2010-11-26T20:13:00.000-08:00

Well, for you clones, Now I'm done.

The best pilgrim's bounty guide I found was
The OverAchiever's at WoW Insider. Here's the bit for finding Horde tables for the Pilgrim's Peril achievement.

Orgrimmar
Southeast of the main gates (just south of the path to the Undercity/Grom'Gol zeppelin tower). Alliance players will not flagged here on PvE servers.

Undercity
In the Ruins of Lordaeron courtyard immediately inside the main entrance to the city. Despite not being located far into the complex, this is the nastiest area for Alliance to reach, as there's steady Horde traffic from both the zeppelins and Silvermoon teleport, and the entrance to the Ruins is an unfortunate choke point. Don't go at server high time.

Thunder Bluff
Directly below the western elevators [note that that isn't the western mesa, but the elevator on the western side of the city -- Jal]. Despite appearing to be outside of the city, the feast area is still within it and will get Alliance players flagged.

Silvermoon
City South of the city's main gates. Alliance players will not get flagged here on PvE servers.

Silvermoon was easy to aggro if you came in the back to the table and not from the path. Stay on the path.

Remember that you only have to sit down at the tables for Pilgrim's peril!! I ate five of each item in Orgrimmar and Thunder Bluff. Luckily the only curious Horde in Thunder Bluff, where you do, sure enough, get flagged for PvP when you approach the table, were all well below 70. Kinda wanted the three obviously watching to give me their best shot, but no luck.

For Turkey Lurkey, I got everyone but the Dwarf, Orc, and Troll rogue turke-i-fied without trouble, but had to get the dwarf from a level one near the flight master in IF and the orc from someone who was politely dancing outside of Stormwind. Several people are putting n00b rolled PCs for easy featherings within shot of the Alliance city tables.

For the troll, I finally gave up waiting for a hand-out and went to the troll starting area, remembering Malone's advice about not going to the barrel (though I did waste some time hovering over Dalaran) and heading to the tree. Remember that the troll rogue starting area isn't on the mainland but on the small island to the east. Picture of me feathering a n00b troll rogue in the starting area below (check minimap).

And then, to find Talon King Ikiss. Reports seem to suggest you can gank him whenever you want, not just during the Pilgrim's Bounty event (which ends tomorrow), so I saved this until last.

Might be useful to recall that you can port to the Outlands now: How to get to the Outlands portal from any Major city in World of Warcraft | eHow.com

1. In Stormwind coming from main gates turn left out of trade district cross bridge go through tunnel to mage corner. Climb the ramp going into the mage tower and its right inside the door.
2. Darnassus go to the middle bridge and straight ahead in the Temple of the Moon
3. Iron Forge[sic] from the front gate turn left its in the Mystic ward in the hall of mysteries
4. Exodar the center of the city take the middle ramp it is in the Vault of Lights

Then you'll want the Sethekk Halls Map from WoWpedia. And don't forget to put on your pilgrim gear (hat and outfit) before waxing Ilkiss. Yes, I forgot too the first time. If you do forget, exit (a tedious process) and right-click your portrait to reset all instances. That'll bring him back to life. I was able to stealth in without incident and all but walk on top of the patrolling mobs. I did accidentally aggro once, and lots of Avian Rippers had heck to pay.

For Turkey Lurky, I had some trouble getting 40 turkeys 30 seconds apart until I went to Tirisfal Glades. And note that the Turkey Caller does not give a legit wild turkey. The turkey it summons is, however, killable (and lootable) for other quests.

And man, does travel form made hunting turkeys a heck of a lot easier. Run, smack once, loot, run some more.

Worth it? I don't know. Probably not. The pet is cute. I didn't have any title to date, so I figured I'd go for this one. It was fun-ish, and without any clear direction for WotLK until Cata really busts out, it was something to help get me used to playing again.

And here's some requisite video of the pet reward getting a little too close to the cooking fire. Start about 30 seconds in.

Pilgrim's Peril: Getting to Thunder Bluff

2010-11-24T07:58:00.000-08:00

I'm giving the Pilgrim title a run this year, and Pilgrim's Peril is a bit of a pain. Getting to Orgrimmar was straightforward, but I was scared that Nijel's Point might not get me to Thunder Bluff directly; too many mountains and I couldn't remember if there was a good pass through them.

This page at World of Warcraft Pro has maps for getting to Thunder Bluff. It's explaining how to get to Thrall (isn't he in Nagrand now?), but the map would likely work for us too.

Getting to Him: Have your raid assemble in Astrannar, Ashenvale and then ride the road east and then south into the Barrens. From there ride east along the northern Barrens until you reach Orgrimmar's side entrance. The goal is to take the significantly less guarded side entrance that leads directly to Thrall's room.

There seem to be many more flight points closer to The Gate now, like Fort Triumph, below, but I guess I'll hoof it from Theramore, since I don't have any of those flight points active/discovered.

This will be much easier in a week, when we can get to level 85, throw gold down a gold sink, and fly around the Old World.

Screenshot Bugs

2010-11-17T20:26:00.000-08:00

Well, I can say 4.0.3 ain't real stable. I had two hard lock/crashes while compressing movies, and the screenshots are still wacky. When I took this shot (and the blank shots I mentioned yesterday), there were folks on the screen. Honestly, it's bizarre. That's my Blood Boil Lancet pulling a Fantasia in the middle of the shot.

I think I brought down the Crown Princess four or five times today as folks mined a shield. These elemental bosses are much too easy. I haven't played for gear in months, yet we're downing these things with 79s, poorly equipped 80s, and even, during yesterday's screw-up, a boomkin holding a fishing pole. It's a joke, really. At least add some strategy. These are all, so far, eclipse spam events. Flamelash at least had a more impressive background.

And finally, as I mentioned in the last post, the below is A Bad Idea.

Um, how do I get back in?

2010-11-17T18:50:00.000-08:00

And thank you:

Does the question 'where the hell is entrance' sounds ridiculous? Actually it is not. Everybody should know where Icecrown Citadel is - if not, it's easy to see on the map. But entrance to new 5man instance set is cleverly placed on ridiculous place and hard to find. Well, here is easy� help - see the picture.

I was dumb enough to try and watch the scenes around Sword's Rest and, well, didn't get out of there quickly enough. In case you're wondering, Barkskin doesn't prevent your hearthstone from being interrupted. /sigh

... and we're back

2010-11-16T15:39:00.001-08:00

Dropped back into WoW. As a guildie said, there's something about it that calls to you, even if I resisted 10 months.

Finally got The Right Stuff after running a few quests. I only have about 100g now, but wow, can I fly fast. Why didn't I do this earlier, again? It did help that running some elemental quests got me to Revered with Stormwind, which cut the price to 4250.

I also cleaned out the bank, selling stuff I'd been holding onto just in case I wanted to panzer/up haste/max gearscore, etc. Now I'm down to one set of gear, boomkin. If BC was any indication, the quest rewards for 81-85 will quickly outstrip the stats of the stuff I've got now.

Also lucked into a Prince Sarsarun run. Strangely, the screengrabs I took of the battle didn't come out. They're black. No kidding. I did need roll a Cloak of Mocking Winds. I always feel badly when I need, but this thing was such an upgrade on what I was wearing, it immediately hit my back. I figured everyone had 2 hours to complain if they needed it, and was happy I won.

Was embarrassed to see I'd used a graphite fishing pole during the fight. I'm rusty. In related news, that photo of my Cloak and fishing pole also has someone in SW milking a tiger. Must be tough to get supplies during the invasions. The kids are still running around the town like clockwork, however.

Show me your papers was another one of those painful ethics-on-rails quest. I think it's possible that the cultists are "venting" elements, and stopping them might speed up the Cataclysm. Arresting everyone at the gates is also painful, both in that I don't know that I'd do it, myself, and that it's a pretty transparent attempt at commentary on the TSA.

But ain't those the happiest cultists you've ever seen? I'm also impressed that they can find and mount horses even when handcuffed. (start around 1:12)

Anyhow, I'm playing now for the world events. I suppose I'll expansion up when it comes out. Right now, there's not much to do that's too exciting.

Blizzard tells me I'm in virtual poverty

2010-11-07T08:22:00.000-08:00

I'm on the phone, waiting for Blizzard to let me back in (to see if I can't bag the Gnomeregan Drape before Cat) after having lost my iPod touch this summer. Thanks, authenticator! The on-hold warnings make things sound dire. If you don't have your authenticator serial num or [something I didn't hear about another serial number], they might ask for a picture id. Blizzard is Blizzare. Thanks Blizzard qua police.

Looks like I might be on a while and will hear what I might need lots of times. Here's the list.
* serial from the back of your [stand-alone] authenticator or
* serial code to your mobile authenticator
* blizzard key from your classic World of Warcraft

Digging up the last of which scored me a 60 day game card I forgot I'd grabbed. Score! Hope they don't expire.

In any event, I stumbled over this snippet about character transfers while waiting.

- Characters carrying too much gold are not eligible for transfer, as follows:
- Level 10-30: 300 gold limit
- Level 31-50: 1000 gold limit
- Level 51-69: 5000 gold limit
- Level 70 - 80: 20000 gold limit

Makes sense, of course. You don't want to enable gold farmers any more than you have to. And $25 to move 20000 gold is a little steep.

But on the other hand, the alternate, implied message is that you need about 20,000 gold to support a good 70-80. I'm not taking this as the most a character should have, as it's easy to dump your holdings before moving to a new server. Hello Mr. Alt; it's your lucky day! Instead, what they're saying is that they understand that a level 80 character could need at least 20,000 just to get around. This is sorta like when folks were smuggling fuel out of Iraq in giant tanks ostensibly for the tractor-trailers' tractors. "Oh, um, this gold is just for my favorite character, XygGHETdss!"

How much gold does Jal have? Sheesh. I don't know. I haven't played since January, and I don't see anything in my fairly recent posts. I do know I haven't looked much north of 1000g since I paid to dual spec -- which I've paid but haven't actually spec'd out, and which I see now costs 100g. THANKS, Blizzard! Nor did I have enough for artisan flying or what have you. I tend to live pretty hand-to-mouth and haven't found a good, dependable, and fun means of making money. Leatherworking takes forever to farm up the mats and grab the pattern of the week. I guess I'm just not a patient farmer, though I put in a fair bit of time farming motes of air in BC... Usually I just hack up something for myself and keep running. Pots, repairs, and the occasional gear splurge (Graylo had plenty of goldsinks) seem to keep me close enough to zero most of the time.

But the bottom line is that Blizzard suggests a good 80 will have 20,000 gold, and Jal's lucky to have over 1000. As Keith sings, sad sad sad.

Note to Self: Relevart's Moonkin Class Guide

2010-10-10T17:52:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm looking forward to 12/7, and hoping someone will tell me a world event worth watching will occur a week or two earlier so that I can go ahead and reactivate.

I'm a little miffed by how much half the serious players already know about Cataclysm's content -- folks like me will be n00bs in what's ostensibly brand-new content -- but I'm still looking forward to a few more levels of soloing, and a good excuse to take a stroll throw the [now changed] Old World (ie, pre-BC lands).

Anyhow, once I do, Relevart's Moonkin Class Guide looks like a good place to start:

Welcome to Relevart’s Moonkin Class Guide! This class guide has been updated for 4.0.1/Cataclysm and is designed for the beginning to expert PvE Moonkin, although much of the information contained within transcends those boundaries. I hope you find the information that follows to be useful and if you find any errors, don’t hesitate to contact me. Thanks for browsing and may Nature guide your Path!

Who really are the Gear Score Fools, us or Blizzard?

2010-04-01T05:10:00.000-07:00

I rushed over to worldofwarcraft.com this morning, as I've always enjoyed the April Fools jokes, and I imagine most have seen this year's joke from Blizzard on the Equipment Potency EquivalencE Number. The funny thing is that it's not really a joke, is it?

As your number grows, the game world will tailor itself to you in other subtle ways: as the pool of players you interact with becomes more and more exclusive, you’ll no longer need to stand still in prominent locations quite so often to allow others to inspect your gear; you’ll have fewer time-wasting calendar invitations to sift through; and your friends list will become increasingly more manageable, reducing needless scrolling time. Any negative repercussions of these changes will be offset by the satisfaction you’ll receive knowing your equipment is significantly more impressive than average.

Sure, the EPEEN is Gear Score. Here's the problem: I really don't feel that Blizzard is being self-deprecating here, past possibly Binky the Rooster, which kills the joke. The joke isn't on us; the game is overly much about numbers and gear. Gear does work like leveling. People don't interact with others based on a Gear Score number because that number does have a direct correlation with successful gaming.

I loved the in-game /panda joke a year or two back. This year's joke, however, is too close to the truth to do more than make me melancholy.

Spinks on "Gearing, Gating, Attuning. And sometimes I miss the resistance fights …"

2010-02-17T08:15:00.000-08:00

I thought this post was well-written enough to share... Gearing, Gating, Attuning. And sometimes I miss the resistance fights:

We had tanks in fire resist gear to tank the drake bosses. Everyone needed their own Onyxia scale cloak for the last boss also. And in that way, BWL was tied both mechanically as well as thematically to Onyxia (another black dragon boss). You HAD to kill Onyxia enough times to provide materials for cloaks for your whole raid before you could attempt Nefarian. The raid needed good crafters who had collected the right recipes – which also either dropped in raids or were bought with reputation that was collected in raids.

I realize I harp too much on the value of having the game force preparation and learning [from within the game], but Spinks is pointing out exactly the sorts of relatively simple design decisions that make the Old World a fun place to play.

Honestly, I wonder sometimes why my HUD even bothers with resistance scores anymore (though I realize Naxx benefits some from Frost resist). Good thing we simplified the game. SO much more complicated than it needed to be [he said dripping with sarcasm].

Ewwww. Drippy sarcasm.

Hey, Dad, step away from the keyboard

2010-02-03T08:48:00.000-08:00

FML - Today, I had to...:

Today, I had to explain to my son that his dad was too busy in a raid on World of Warcraft to be at his award ceremony. FML

$4 Day Passes, please?!

2010-01-23T06:59:00.001-08:00

As a part-timer, I've let my subscription lapse again. The productivity drops I see when I'm playing WoW are insane. Insane. Sometimes, I've been working hard enough during even my discretionary time that WoW for a week or two is the perfect break. It's certainly like a drug in that respect -- once I start playing, I can't help but relax. But I relax too much, and have to come back up for air by putting the game away.

Part of the issue is needing to be more disciplined about how I play. If I only raided two nights a week or, more realistically, capped play at two or three hours twice or thrice a week, things wouldn't be so bad. But I can't do it. I go in to run a few rep runs, and before I know it I've run Dalaran Dailies, two factions of rep, and normal and heroic random PUGs for emblems.

In any event, both to help me keep playing to manageable and to put a few bucks into Blizzard's pocket, I'd suggest day passes. I don't even play every other month now, so they're already getting less than $10/mth from me. Why not let me supplement the months where I break down completely with a $4 day pass every week or two? I don't think I'd play fewer full months, and I know that having a strict 24-hr window when I don't have the time to veg for weeks would help me out IRL as well. And seriously, $4x4 Saturdays is nearly a month's worth of income for Blizzard anyhow. What's the worst that could happen from their perspective? I play 24 hours and buy another? I break down and buy a full month?

Cash on the table, G. They're leaving cash on the table.

"Ding": GS 3500+

2010-01-18T08:15:00.000-08:00

Saturday I managed to run a normal & a Heroic LK instance, which put me over 50 EoT. I bagged the Malfurion's Cover of Conquest to get rid of my last green. The chestpiece at the same cost, iirc, was tempting, but I settled on the headpiece. My meta gem isn't proc'ing because right now it's the only gemmed piece I've got, but I filled it in with something awfully cheap anyway to get the +9 spellpower bonus. Coincidental that I bagged the Coil of Missing Gems shortly before. Also coincidental that Chromie would score me another green (from a quest, no less) that quickly made it into the rotation, pushing out a blue.

Other instance drop upgrades include the Sash of Blood Removal and Papa's New Bag, which, though only a 20 slotter, was an upgrade for one of my bag slots. I'd just planned to hit up the AH for a bag earlier in the day, and this saved me a gold or two.

My only complaint? Why does the Cover look so, um, dorky?

Most fun thing to happen over the weekend was a PUG to the Trial of Champions, which I usually dislike because of the unimaginative routine. Joust joust joust, DPS DPS, look away from light of radiance or whatever it is, DPS.

In this case, our healer DC'd after the jousting, and we started waiting for LFG to kick in. Healers, natch, are in some demand, and just as I sent in a, "It's been a while since I healed, but I'd be happy to give it a go," another group member said, "Jal, want to try and heal?" The tank was suspicious ("There's lots of healing in here," or some such), but we went through. I can't heal for spit -- mostly kept up lifebloom, rejuv, and the occasional regrowth when things got ugly (and HT when things got really ugly) -- but I wasn't even mana challenged four-manning into the black knight. We almost had him down when our LFG priest appeared. A few Wraths later, we were done. I'm not sure the priest knew what happened, but he did start healing the right folk as soon as he appeared, which was professional and impressive, and allowed me to shift into 'kin and cut loose.

I'm pretty sure I should've learned Nourish or whatever it is at some point, but the lesson remains that a good DPS can easily heal through normal Trial of Champions. And I mean easily.

I debated running heroics until I had enough EoT to buy another piece, but instead started going after Kirin Tor rep for the head enchant, after searching and finding out player enchanters can't make head enchants like they can't make ones shoulders (or at least not spellpower ones; no reason to waste good borean leather for 18 STA when the Kirin Tor have much better stuff). Was upset to see that daily dungeons are a thing of the past, eliminating one easy route to Kirin Tor rep. Now we have weekly raids. I'm not sure that at 3500 GS I'm ready for 10 man raids; I simply have no idea. I seem to be consistently bringing in the highest DPS on PUGs now, however, when I'm not boneheadedly throwing Wraths at guys who are immune (nexus? /sigh). I may have to add recount to the addon list now, though I try to keep addons out as a rule. I did buy a tabard from the Kirin Tor to "champion" them in a run through Hall of Lightening for rep, which I'll probably do with some regularity for a while, since I know that instance fairly well. Also kept running the cooking quests (which I'd been doing with some regularity just for fun) and did my first Dalaran fishing quest to make my way to revered with the Kirin Tor. Great whale statue.

Also got major (?) spellpower on the Blood Boil Lancet, expecting it to last longer than the last time I enchanted a weapon. Also caught a Phaelia's Vestments of the Sprouting Seed on the AH for just under 2k, which was just enough for me not to buy, even with the context. Resto4life was a very good blog (he said uncontroversially).

Which brings me to my last quandary: Do I spend my 4200g on fast flying finally, or put that into mats to leatherwork my way to more cash, or spend on gear to make runs a little easier and the GS a little higher? I believe the artisan flying will be the most good for the longest, but I'm hardly flying much now. I'd go with gear, but the chance of accidentally scoring a replacement in a run is so high, I could make myself go mad. The right answer might be that it takes money to make money, but I really don't want to have to waste the time finding out the most efficient way to score dough through LW. Decisions, decisions.

In other news, the new armory additions are interesting. I should see if I can get Jal's RSS feed to show up on the blog.

Gray Matter to the rescue

2010-01-15T08:18:00.000-08:00

I've been overwhelmed with emblems, obviously. Today's Googling popped up a post over at Gray Matter from about a week and a half ago, however, that nearly ends the trouble. It's a list of 'kin raiding gear, ranked by what Graylo thinks is the appropriate DPS for each piece.

Now I realize he says...

This list is a tool, not a blue print for how to gear. I’ve never intended these lists to be the definitive guide on how to gear a raiding moonkin.

... and I get it. But I just don't have the time to do this right. Let's cherry pick from the excellent research and posting Graylo and Cowtarus have done to see what direction a part-timer should go with their emblems.

So though he says not to, I'm going to pretend that Graylo's lists are hierarchical BiS lists (BiS, I've learned, meaning "Best in Slot") so that I can save some time. I really don't have the energy to figure out how close to accurate he is. He's done better than I could by miles and miles, and I'm happy enough as is.

I'm taking Graylo's list and only including items that fit one of these "part-timer accessible" categories.

Bought with emblems that you can grab from 5-man dungeons.
Craftables that aren't BoC (ie, items you could find in the AH)
Fall from a 5-man instance, heroic or normal.
Rep rewards (though I think the ICC (Icecrown Citadel) rep is beyond us).
The Kirin Tor will sell it to you for enough gold to buy most of Shattrath.

EoT items are in bold. I'll try to clean up the html at some point.

Legs

Leggings of Woven Death	Crafting	399.2	399.2
Legwraps of Unleashed Nature	Crafting	381.5	381.5
Lightweave Leggings	Crafting	378.1	378.1

Sanctified Lasherweave Trousers

95 EoF + Conq Mark

533.7

351.6

Lasherweave Trousers

95 EoF

473.2

314.9

Malfurion's Trousers of Triumph

75 EoT + 1 ToC

429.6

251.5

Malfurion's Trousers of Conquest

50 EoT

384

225.7

Head

Helm of Clouded Sight	75 EoT	430.8	430.8
Helm of Abundant Growth	75 EoT	417.5	417.5

Fallen Sentry's Hood

Falric 5man

398.4

Hood of Fiery Aftermath	75 EoT	536.4	390
Malfurion's Cover of Conquest	50 EoT	519.1	376.6

Sightless Crown of Ulmaas	Marwyn - H 5man	490.9	368.3
Tattered Glacial-Woven Hood	Halls Chest 5man	363.6	363.6

shoulders

Lasherweave Mantle

60 EoF

263.7

Shoulders of the Fateful Accord

45 EoT

231.6

Malfurion's Mantle of Conquest

30 EoT

207.4

Mantle of Tattered Feathers

Trash 5man

173.6

Grim Lasher Shoulderguards	Halls Chest 5man	167.2	167.2
Very Fashionable Shoulders	Bronjahm - H 5man	284.2	161.5

Chest

Meteor Chaser's Raiment	95 EoF	399.2	399.2
Ermine Coronation Robes	95 EoF	388.2	388.2

Vestments of Spruce and Fir

95 EoF

363.9

Lasherweave Vestment

95 EoF

337

Malfurion's Vestments of Conquest

50 EoT

295.2

Mord'rethar Robes

Devourer - H

259.8

Palebone Robes

Tyrannus

247.2

Chestguard of Broken Branches	Halls Chest - H	234.2	234.2
Ancient Polar Bear Hide	Ick - H	347.5	226.8
Robes of the Cheating Heart	Bronjahm	216	216

Hands

Gloves of False Gestures	60 EoF	299.6	299.6
Gloves of the Great Horned Owl	60 EoF	288.1	288.1
Gloves of Ambivalence	60 EoF	280.3	280.3

Malfurion's Gloves of Conquest

30 EoT

200.6

Suspiciously Soft Gloves

Marwyn - H 5man

197.6

Marwyn's Macabre Fingertips	Falric 5man	181.9	181.9
Essence of Desire	Devourer - H 5man	181.5	181.5

Cold Sweat Grips

Bronjahm 5man

250.2

157.2

wrists

Bejeweled Wizard's Bracers

Pattern from 25man [mats includes 60 EoT; 3339g at AH today - Panzer]

182

Ghostly Wristwraps

Trash - H 5man

148.2

Bracer of Worn Molars

Falric - H 5man

217.6

132.5

Wristguards of Subterranean Moss

Ick 5man

121.1

This is an interesting slot, as Graylo explains that if you can get this to drop, from the top of the list, that you, as a boomkin, shouldn't have too much competition for the piece. Bad in that there's nothing on this list that's from EoT or EoF. The Bejeweled Bracers look like about it, as I think you could swipe a crafted pair from the AH.

Bracers of Eternal Dreaming

Valithria - 25

204.5

There's also limited evidence that you can bag the Bracers for playing Bejeweled, or at could at one point (man, that'd be nice, but I don't see it corroborated anywhere). Note also that the mats for those gloves require 60 EoT themselves! (15 EoT times four Crusader Orbs).

belt

Belt of Petrified Ivy

60 EoF

303

Cord of the White Dawn [4586g on AH today - Panzer]

Crafted H

207.9

Strip of Remorse

Halls Chest - H 5man

206.9

Braid of Salt and Fire	Ick - H 5man	182.7	182.7
Sash of Ancient Power	Crafted H	263.1	178.1

Essence of Anger

Devourer 5man

230.1

141

boots

Sandals of Consecration [15k on AH today -Panzer]

Crafting

280.3

Blessed Cenarion Boots	Crafting	267.5	267.5
Deathfrost Boots [18k on AH today]	Crafting	391.4	264.8

Boots of Wintery Endurance	Crafted H	204.8	204.8
Savior's Slippers	Crafted H	199.8	199.8

Spellslinger's Slippers	Crafted H	195.6	195.6
Prelate's Snowshoes	Tyrannus - H 5man	183.1	183.1

Barkhide Treads	Eadric's Cache - H	231.4	164.1
Ice-Steeped Sandals	Garfrost 5man	161.1	161.1

back

Volde's Cloak of the Night Sky

50 EoF

208.8

neck

Arcane Loops of Anger

Devourer - H 5man

155.2

Coil of Missing Gems

Devourer 5man

193.1

117.9

trinket

Sundial of the Exiled

40 EoH

171

Nevermelting Ice Crystal

Tyrannus - H 5man

156.4

Talisman of Resurgence

50 EoT

151.3

Maghia's Misguided Quill

60 EoF

420.7

120

Shard of the Crystal Heart

50 EoT

297.4

44.1

From Graylo:

Disclaimer: I urge you to view the trinkets with some level of skepticism. A lot of the trinkets have proc with unknown rates and cooldowns. Additionally, the trinkets that proc mobs to fight for you are hard to evaluate.

Rings

Ashen Band of Endless Destruction

Ashen Verdict Exalted

319.8

218.9

Ashen Band of Unmatched Destruction

Ashen Verdict Revered

294.3

195.4

Runed Signet of the Kirin Tor

10,750 Gold

184.5

Polished Dragonslayer's Signet

Onyxia Head

163.7

Ashen Band of Greater Destruction

Ashen Verdict Honored

259.3

160.4

Band of the Invoker

35 EoT

155.6

Ashen Band of Destruction

Ashen Verdict Friendly

241.7

148.8

Off-hand

Shriveled Heart

Halls Chest - H 5man

156.8

Ward of the Violet Citadel

25 EoH

166.7

91.6

Main hand

Hammer of Purified Flame

5man Quests

752.9

Chilled Heart of the Glacier

Halls Chest 5man

608.5

553.1

Dagger of Lunar purity

25 Champion's Seals

451.9

Two-handed

Unspeakable Secret	Garfrost 5man	673.2	673.2
Engraved Gargoyle Femur	Tyrannus - H 5man	885.8	662.2
Blood Boil Lancet	Devourer 5man	644.8	644.8

Fun to see that I've already got the Blood Boil Lancet. I'm on the list!

Idol

From Graylo:

At this point you should only be thinking about two idols. The [Idol of Lunar Eclipse] is the best and it is purchasable with Emblems of Frost. However, you may be saving your Emblems for your Tier Set or another item. In such a case you should at least have the [Idol of Lunar Fury]. It is purchase able with Emblems of Triumph. Since it is incredibly easy to farm EoTs at the moment, using anything less then the Idol of Lunar Fury is pretty stupid.

Wow. Graylo's list is wonderful. And I'm also able to quit irrationally leaving out slots that I usually ignore, like rings and trinkets. So now I'm not so interested in shoulders and gloves anymore -- those are the only things I could even get enough EoF to grab at the rate I'm going. They're tabled. Although the following back item:

Volde's Cloak of the Night Sky

50 EoF

208.8

... is probably the first thing to grab with Frost. It's the only cloak on Graylo's list that fits part-timer accessible gear.

After some thinking, I'm down to a ring or a helm. Here's the comparison. The order shouldn't matter too much; it's the same number of emblems (duh) no matter what I buy first. Since I already have 43, the question is if I'd rather have neither for three days, max, or the ring for those three extra days and the helm later.

Ring gives me 58 Int, 39 Sta, 50 Spi, 50 Haste (1.52%), and 56 Spell Power over what I have now for 35 emblems.
The helm gives me 92 Int, 56 Sta, 313 Armor, 13 Crit (0.28%), 72 Hit (2.2%), 31 Spell Power, and 1 Socket over what I have now for 50 EoTs.

I'm tempted to go helm. 92x15 mana is nice, and that's 34x15 more mana than the ring. Extra hit, a little crit, and armor is also nice. Downside is minus 15 spell power and a little haste. Yeah, I think I go helm (though I should've given idols more thought).

What a waste of time. Sheesh. How can this possibly be fun?! ;^)

So much for more emblems primer

2010-01-15T05:00:00.000-08:00

Well, I"ve run a few more runs, and am up to 43 Emblems of Triumph, with two more pretty easily within reach after a run today. It's pretty much time to buy.

Here's my only question: Without WoWHead, WoW Wiki, or Thottbot, how was I supposed to figure out all the different choices for the emblems? That is, where is the in-game primer on emblems and gear? Because boy, I missed with my first swipe. Now that everyone's getting emblems thrown at them for logging on, it might be useful to include some info on them.

First, there's not just one person selling gear for emblems, there are, count 'em, at least three, and at least two are selling completely different stuff.

Two are at the tournament grounds.
Magistrix Iruvia (horde only? Didn't think to look)
Aspirant Forudir

And one in Dalaran (the only one I'd found previously):
Arcanist Miluria

And then some of these are Horde folk, and some are Alliance. Some items require battleground ratings. Some don't. Some are part of T9 and others are more expensive (and more powerful, if you don't plan to hit tier bonuses).

In any event, the state of things for n00bs like me sux0rz. I really don't have the time to sort through all this crap, and my social guild doesn't have another boomkin to give me their quick recommendation. I mean, heck, after looking through last night, my best bet appears to be to bag a ring or two. My current ring gear stinks too. But then I'll never grab even a 2t9 bonus.

Lets just say that there are options for gear upgrades that are much cheaper than I thought before, and there's no place that I've stumbled over yet that clearly explains the druid options for those who are only planning to earn enough EoTs to grab one or two pieces. /sigh

In other news, I've upgraded a few Cloth purples for Leather, got a Core Hound Pup in the mail, though I'm not sure why, ran Grundak (Heroic), and become Exalted with Sons of Hodir -- first exalted rep for Jal. Time to find another grind for my spare time.

Confessions of a Part-time Panzerkin

Sandy the Rogue: Ding 9!

VP Changes to 4.3 PTR - Forums - World of Warcraft

The first hit of heroin is always free...

Update[d video card for $20] and Pandaria Licensing with DreamWorks

Item inflation, disillusionment and return

Time to spam Starfall

Note to self: T11 and T12 Point Gear

We go a-raidin'

rufwork said...

Tyler Caraway said...

rufwork said...

Very Good Zul'Gurub Heroic Guide

All +INT Justice Point balance gear from 4.2 that's not a Tier 11 piece

Smolderskull sighting

Pre-Heroic Druid Guide 4.2 Update

Quick item up: Moonwell Chalice Nightweaver's Amulet

Ooops -- WoW's Free To Play to 20

The Burning Crusade Improved! Now Free as in Beer!

Beginning Firelands/Patch 4.2

EVE's microtransactions: Developing profit vs. fun? Virtual vs. Real?

Dev Watercooler discusses questing past 85

Alt Ding -- Prot 20 19

Flickr Fail

A week of rest...

4.2 changes to Valor points

On the tax payers of virtual economies

*Unfinished* Most Straightforward Pre-Heroic Balance Druid Gear Guide for Cataclysm

And hello heroics

The end of a grind in achievements

The PUG to raid gap grows

Gear upgrades and Grinding Tol Barad -- 18 quests a day!

Cenarion Hatchling: See, that wasn't so tough, was it?

Revamping the Hero class: A better alternative than free max level characters

Strange Trees in the DK quest line

DK-OT: Gear buying guide

Heirloom enchants

Rep Ding! Exalted Therazane

Belated April Fools

On: Winterspring Frostsaber Mount Grind Changed in 4.1 - The Wowhead Blog

Valve shows Blizzard how to give to charity

Next Justice Point goal

Worst Cat Heroic? Lots say Grim Batol.

Hey, wow, I'm buying a moonkin pet FOR CHARITY!!!1!

Dalaran Crater -- What are they doing?

"Kick boomkins on sight"

What's the INT to Spellpower conversion? Read on...

Heroic -- It's a different world

Selling Gold, WoW Insider, and workers' rights

Grim Batol: 5th run and Heroic Prep

RepDing! Exalted Wildhammer

Heroic Gearing: Poor Man's Enchants (and some glyphing)

Blazewing's Furious Kilt and the AH

Finkle's skinner in the bag

Gear from PUGging > Gear from rep?

OMGWTFBBQ!! UNLIMTED FREE SAVAGE LEATHER IN TOL BARAD!!shift-1!

Ding! 85

Gear hunting

WoW Rookie: How to get up to speed for heroics

Ding! 2 (for the guild!)

Does this say anything?

Hey, I'm famous! Sorta. In April of 2009

A UI worth considering

Ding! 84

Panzerkin finally D-E-D

How about you teach us instead? Re: Wow, Dungeons are Hard!

Ding! 83

Working on rotations

MMO-Champion BlueTracker

Ding! 82

New integrated vs. old discrete video cards

Quick hiatus to administer exams

Eclipse and reconfiguring action bars

Ding! 81

Gear inflation. Goodbye purple, hello green.

Cataclysm Starts

Cat -- Where do I start?

Restokin talks raid gear

Jal the Pilgrim

Pilgrim's Peril: Getting to Thunder Bluff

Unfinished Most Straightforward Pre-Heroic Balance Druid Gear Guide for Cataclysm