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

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

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

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.

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!

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?

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"

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.