For anything interesting go to my new site

www.dwism.com

Big changes, new site Dwism.com

Look at how my title is not cryptic at all.

strange stuff is happening indeed!

First off the pre-rant summary: this blog is dead, go to dwism.com (yes i own a .com nau! i R ish pro)

Explanation: There are a bunch of reasons for this change. One of the more subtle one is the fact that I've gotten myself a promotion at work. A great one at that! One of the tasks in my new position involves writing internet bullitins for young readers, about games. (age at around 8-12).

And writing for that age-group is not something I am very good at. Yet.

This is where my new blog comes in, I will be using this as a testing ground to see if I can keep my normal way of writing pruned out. (this post particulary is not an example of my new way of writing, this post is very much evident of how I write today).

No, I will not be writing blog posts as if my readers are 10 year olds. (although...)

But I will try and use some of the methods ill have to use in my job.

Writing precicesly, keeping one point in one paragraph, making the intent of my post clear from title to sub-title to end. - Stuff like that.

I -may- also cut down on swearing. Fuck that.

The other reason I wanted a new site, is that dwarfdk sort of locks me very much in a theme, that says

"a blog about dwarfs that are Death Knights"

Although I am very much still playing a Dwarf that is a Death Knight (and I've even cut down on my alt-o-loch'ism), I felt very locked in at times about the signal the title of the blog had, and the content.

Another topic I wanted to touch in on, is other games. I do sometimes play other games, and I just might want to talk about them too. -sometimes-

Dwism suits all of these intentions.

There will be an overall theme in my new blog. You will notice it when you log in:

Because being selfish in social games is equal to wanting to pick flowers in a battlefield.

A very very sublte and cool sub-title, if I do say so myself. (in the sense that it is both pointless, silly and a very stupid thing to be doing.. Picking flowers in the middle of a battle).

For too long have I been silent about things that are wrong on the internet  because i had an idea that bloggers who wrote the truth where very much... you know, saying what was true, and bloggers who where not, where just wrong. And I ended it there. because I used to think that deep down people knew what was right.

They knew that selling 100 bullets at the price of 1000 bullets where a wrong thing to do, they knew that stupidly sexist, racist and especially homophobic comments where wrong, they just tried to be popular.

I am one of those people who honestly thinks that none really thinks that big lipped plastic surgery-filled 50 year old women can possibly be perceived as "hot". Because I found them repulsive.

I thought in my teens that guys who had Pamela Anderson posters on their walls where just trying to play into what they thought everyone else would think was cool. Or had not yet come to terms with their sexuality and tried to be manly men. I've since found out that there are people who's most basic understanding of what is the right thing to do, and the right way to behave is very different from mine.

I am naive. I am proud of that. I do like to believe in the best of my fellow man. I do believe that gamers who gank needs a hug and for their dad to tell them that they are alright. I believe that people who brag about being a lone wolf that goes against the norm and fights for individualism and putting themselves over others, severely lack the selfconfidence to say that they need love and think little of themselves, so they try and be big tough men on the interweb.

I feel sorry for them. Or rather I felt sorry for them. I will use my new platform to show why it will always be better to put faith in your fellow-human being. And why believing in others to do the right thing will -in the end be the best option for you. You might get screwed over, but if you put your trust in others they will give it back. That is why we have cities and technology and money, becuase we basically trust each other. If we did not, we would all live -alone- in caves.

I am sure the games I play and the stories i hear, will prove me right.

That, or ill be end up a bitter world-hating man. And then I'll roll a goblin-warlock or something.

The overall feel of the Class changes

...

I think I've moaned enough about the Cataclysm changes for Death Knights. And after taking a breather and spend some nights drunk on the moon, I thought it was time to look at how Cataclysm is shaping up.

(btw, take a deep breath, don't panic, this is me being... happy and positive.)

It is looking really really great. 

I am genuinely happy and excited about how I think Cataclysm is shaping up. Bare in mind that most of the things I am happy about coming, where the same things I was happy about coming to Wrath, but alas they never did come. 

1. Dance studio... oh wait ehm..

Seriously, Spinks formulated really well what tanking seems to be shaping up to be, and I couldn't agree more. Especially since she (when you play a female toon, and I'm in doubt, you are a 'she'... sorry) also adds some hopes that I just adore! So go read that post.

For Death Knights, after the initial shock and the underwhelming feeling and the fact that Blizzard staff really ought to sometimes just stfu - I am really excited. Granted, I do not understand what I am excited about. 

But the reasoning behind the changes to runes, sounds absolutely in line with something I have been moaning about for a long time (how our rotations are not all to well, how we will either be overpowered or underpowered (due to our cool-downs). So them changing this will be great. 

The new spells... They are horribly boring! Adding our new 85 top exciting spell to be a weak version of what mages learned at 70 or what warriors learned at 64 seems so incredibly stupid, that I do not understand why they would even brag about it.

But then I remembered that it is never the new spells that are the cool stuff (except what shamans get), but its the new talents that bare the great fun exciting abilities. Like wearing 2 handers in both hands, like turning into a space-chicken. Like conjuring a great big copy of your own sword to duplicate what you do. That is what is thrilling, and those things we have not seen... yet. 

So I'll remain optimistic. 

I will also buy the expansion. 

This -until now- was far from a given. And I am still planing to leave WoW once Star wars come out. (depending on what beta says).

But the great thing about cataclysm is that I won't have to wait for Star wars any more. WoW is bringing star wars to me! Or rather, to my hunter. This is - to me (please don't sue)- point by point a rip-off... erhm a very inspired copy of the Trooper class from swtor works according to the test-run given to VIP's recently. 

You build up energy over time, and by a special attack, and use that energy on various abilities. And it sounds like a very cool and fun class change. Think gunship cannons but with variety. 

I am extremely excited about this. My hunter will most likely no longer be my grind-alt, but my secondary alt to my DK in Cataclysm. That is how much I like this change (and maybe how little I care for priests/paladin/druid changes). 

So bring on Cataclysm.

Oh and as a PS Chastity over at Righteous orbs, has once again proven why he is my absolute favorite blogger (sorry Mum, I like your knitting blog too, I swear)

Also check out his data collection thread. This is solid gold!

Death knight class preview

Ending my 3-day 'Yelling at Blizz over Death knights' with this post.

Our Class preview finally hit the Forums sometime tonight. If you follow this link you can read all about it
I won't go into detail about the abilities and the changes for two very good reasons: I am not the best "read-text-then-analyse-the-consequenses" type of fellow (or rttatc) and I hate hate hate reading rttatc-types of posts.
I will say this little angry tid-bit:
shamans level 85 ability was: When this self-targeted buff is active, your spells are no longer interrupted by movement and possibly even by your own attacks.

Just an example...
Death Knights got: The death knight strikes a target, applying a debuff that allows the death knight to copy the opponent's next spell cast and unleash it. Unlike Spell Reflection, Dark Simulacrum does not cancel the incoming spell. In general, if you can't reflect an ability, you won't be able to copy it either.

Or in laymans terms: DKs get a weak version of spell-reflect, shamans get to do something extremely cool.

I think the only class that got a level 85 ability that is as underwhelming as ours, is warriors. (so far).

All in all I am Jacks complete lack of awe over the new abilities we will get. Where is the Runic Power aoe ability?
Having been mad and angry enough (for now, don't worry ill yell more about something else another day) over DK changes for Cataclysm, i'll touch on cool stuff!

We’re not sure how we’re going to handle presences yet. We recognize the oddness of Blood death knights playing in Frost Presence and Frost death knights not playing in Frost Presences. We might rename the presences or take some other action

No shit Sherlock. Good call! (its totally because Zarhym reads my blog, and not because a gazillion posts on the WoW forums covered this too).

I like it when the developers say these sorts of things. They recognize that they are aware of a problem, but that they have not figured out a solution yet. That - to me- means they care.

I am really curious (in the best possible sense of the word) about the changes to our rune-system. I really really really agree with their thinking and reasoning behind the change, but I don't honestly understand how their proposed change will work.

A lesson in Spin
( know this is pretty much all of yesterdays post again)
Ghostcrawler had some spin-doctor look at what he had written. Then they had the public relations department look at what they had written, and now this:

the Blood tree was going to cause a lot of reworking anyway. Plus there were mechanics that just never quite gelled, like Heart Strike itself.

...

I know there are DK players who loved Blood, but they never seemed as passionate as the Frost and Unholy players. I'm not saying it was a popularity content. But I can imagine a lot more upset players if we had made Unholy the tanking tree.

....

We just think the current Frost dps tree is cooler than the current Blood dps tree. It's subjective, I realize.

The Frost tree mostly works, so let's not reinvent it. The Blood tree needs a lot of work, and in the meantime DKs have some tanking problems, so let's fill up a tree that needs new talents with talents needed by tanks.

Became this:

One of the biggest changes we're making is converting Blood into a dedicated tanking tree. While we feel that having three tanking trees was successful overall, it's less necessary in a world with dual-specialization. In addition, the current breakdown isn't as compatible with the Mastery-based passive talent-tree bonuses we want to add (see below). We'd rather spend time tweaking and balancing one good tanking tree rather than having a tank always wondering if they picked the "correct" tree out of three possibilities.

Blood seemed like the best fit for tanking. Unholy has always had a strong niche with diseases, magic, and command over pets. Frost now feels like a solid dual-wield tree with Frost magic damage and decent crowd control. Blood's niche was self-healing -- fitting for a tank -- as well as strong weapon swings, which could easily be migrated to Frost and Unholy.

I know which one sounds the better. And to be fair, I'm dumb enough to have fallen for it, if they had only published the latter version. I guess this is a lesson in when to be brutally honest with your customers and when not to be. The first quote about presences, sends a very positive message, the latter on how they took the easy way out to avoid forum-yelling - does not.

Oh and in the same breath they talk about how frost has found its place as CC and DW-tree, they immidialty state that they want frost to be a viable 2handing specc!

Hey left hand, what are you doing?

Nothing right hand, Im just chillin' i swear!

lazy and "we dont like it when people moan on forums" the two new design-philosophies

the Blood tree was going to cause a lot of reworking anyway. Plus there were mechanics that just never quite gelled, like Heart Strike itself.

I know there are DK players who loved Blood, but they never seemed as passionate as the Frost and Unholy players. I'm not saying it was a popularity content. But I can imagine a lot more upset players if we had made Unholy the tanking tree.

Theres more

We just think the current Frost dps tree is cooler than the current Blood dps tree. It's subjective, I realize.

The Frost tree mostly works, so let's not reinvent it. The Blood tree needs a lot of work, and in the meantime DKs have some tanking problems, so let's fill up a tree that needs new talents with talents needed by tanks.

I am not having a fun time waiting for the DK preview no more.
(all quotes GC)

Im sorry, i was just going to let the qoutes speak for themselves but: "but they never seemed as passionate as the Frost and Unholy players" as a reason for chosing a design for a whole expansion. I am just...angry and old and ranty.

One tanking specc? Brilliant! Blood? not so much

...

If you have not noticed that for Cata we (being the Deathknights of awsome) will only get one specc designed for tanking.

Hell its about time.

It really really is. 2 months into Wrath, and everyone knew that 3 tanking speccs where a failure. That tuning this, would take as much time in itself, as balancing all other tanking classes combined. 

Everyone except GC (I hate to bash on him, but that was a stubburn decision he made in sticking with this, and it has hurt DKs as a whole- ill get more into why, at a later time).

Well hope is brigtly green for Cataclysm, that we will be considered a real tanking class, and that we will get real tanking abilities, and not just "watered down dps abilities", to chose from. 

So far, so good.

But it gets better: hopefully this will mean that we will get to chose from more of the (tanking) features from the other trees available. Hopefully.

But there are drawbacks. There are many drawbacks. Most of them, I am certain Blizzard will catch (like the lack of tanks to bring the deep frost haste bonus or the deep deep unholy added spell dmg), and do.... something... about. 

What bothers me the most is how insanely STUPID (yes, caps) the choice was/is to make blood the tanking specc.

Don't get me wrong, at the moment I am specced blood for tanking, because it offers me what I need in tanking. And I have spoken up for blood as the specc of my love ever since wrath beta.

  

And it was in beta, Blizzards trouble began. As I look back at how my class has developed since early open beta-testing (that I was fortunate enough to be a part of) and till todays news about blood, it seems clear that, whoever had her hands in designing this (oh snap, no women in blizz, maybe thats why this is such a clusterfekk), had no idea what the rest of the team was planning.

In the announcement declaring the change, GC admits as much as to the fact that they had no idea what they... well what they where doing

A lot has happened since that time. We introduced the dual-spec feature, allowing players to have a tanking spec and dps spec that they could switch between.

To me that says: "Ehm, we didnt think this one through".

So they decided to revert back to what DKs where in beta: one specc for tonk (and im guessing) one for dps and one for pvp. only... And this is where it gets so insanely stupid to be honest: They switched around what was the tanking specc and what was the dps specc(s).

Back in beta- and back in the design of the class (even back at when they first previewed the class at wow-invitational in paris in 08), they made the class so that it had 3 stances: one for faster movement (pvp), one for taking hits (tonk) and one for moar dmg (dps). green, blue and red. Or unholy, frost and blood.

The stances matched the talent trees, the talent-trees reflected the intentions of the stances.

Then Wrath launched and all of a sudden all 3 speccs where all 3 things.

But the stances remained: blood:dps, frost:tank and Unholy:pvp.

Get where I'm going with this?

Why chose to make blood a tank tree all of a sudden? Because its the best tanking tree now? That can be changed. That should be changed.

It makes no bleeding sense. 

Imagine explaining this to new players: "hai guy, here is how DKs work: If you want to be a tank, you specc into blood. and then you use frost presence. Frost is a dps specc so..." "I get it, frost usesthe green one, right?" "no, uhm, frost uses blood presense, because blood presence from a lore view is more of a damage thing" "but what does Unholy use?" "Thats easy: unholy presence". "but why"

BUT WHY?

It makes no effing sense to have the tank specc use frost presence and have the 1 or two dps trees use blood. It's so completly horribly illogical and from a teaching viewpoint is just horrible.

What could be done?

Make frost the tanking specc. That was easy. Or at least make blood presence the tanking presence. Although that would be like making fireballs have freeze effect for mages. It makes no point in any setting. This is a bad decision hidden in bad choices.

  

An argument against everything I've written so far.  

With the comming of Cataclysm and the proposed changes to the healing/tanking synergy, blood health-return will make for the most interesting most fun and most viable and usable specc for Dks to tank with.

Besides, frost is well-established as the dw specc and Unholy as the hard-hitting big swordwielding dps specc. This is how I think they will end up setting the speccs.

Guess i'll be blood/frost come Cat.

It just bugs the hell out of me that they made this chance so..patchy and.
Well let me put it this way:

This reeks of something that has been put together last minute over the weekend before easter holidays. This chance should have come in some form much sooner, but they where too stubborn to admit that this was ruining DKs (the trying to make 3 speccs both pvp, dps and tonk fit). So when they found out that this was not viable any longer they stiched this solution together over the idea that "hell, this is how most players play anyways".

That that really is no way to take desing choices. Please show me some sign that there is a meaning to having blood be the tanking choice when you have to use FROST presence to tank in it. It is so clear that the original intent was to tank with frost, why not go back to that? Is blood presence going to be the new tank presence? Will firebolts get the chance to freeze targets in a solid iceblock? Will hamstring add spelldamage?? Please sort stuff out so it makes frikking sense!

Does sex sell in games?

...
A little while back I wrote a [brilliant] post about how *some* gamers and some game companies seem to think that just because we are mature adults, we want content that is aimed for what the porn industry calls "mature adult content". And like Tesh added

the game industry in general doesn't understand the meaning of the word "mature"

 AKA when people who want to make money hear that men (primarily) has an interest in something (this time games), they can make money if they take that interest and add BOOOBs (glorious boooobs, oh to look at the hills that make her bussom, and the way her breath maketh theese hills alive and rolling with each in and out-take.)

Where was I?

Because Boobs will do just this to men. All blood circulation will leave our heads and travel to... our wallets. How mature.

As a by-product of my post about this, i decided to give my angry rant some very creative search labels (or search terms, this is what search engines use to locate sites for people, so be sure to fill those out when you make posts). Most of these had to do with Pr0n and WoW terms combined.

Well, time has passed and lets look at how magnificent a success this little test has been.

Well. Uhm.

(crap)


Its been a tremendous success. Almost 33% more visitors than normally on the day that my [brilliant] little post about boobs where posted.
Damn. Im going to add more search terms about draienie sex and Blood elf chicks.

But wait, what statistics beyond the horizon, it is the link love and Spinks is the sun
What?
Well, okay, that was me trying to be all Shakespeare like Tam (and doing a WAY way better job at it than him, i might add.) but there is much more to this story.
In the days up to my post about men and S E X, i wrote a couple of very differently themed posts, that got some link-love from the big blog guys. ´
You see, I have a small niche blog. My theme is "old-but-not-as-old-as-calli-guy-rants-angrily-at-things-that-piss-him-off-and-plays-a-dwarf-deathknight-and-likes-to-trash-talk-bloggers-who-are-better-than-him sort of blog, and that do not attract 10s of thusands of readers a day (schocking i know). Maybe if I spend more than 5 minutes a day on my posts, I'd get somewhere, but that really isn't me, and loads of readers really isn't my goal.
So whenever one of the big guys of the blogsphere comments or links to my posts, I can effectively see that on my read-counts for days. Some even stay for longer than that. As a matter of fact 80% of my traffic is from other sites. Reference's, so to speak. Where only 10% is from search engines.
And the reason why I know that this blog post did not get found due to combining WoW terms and sex terms, is that google analytics tracks the search-terms used to find my site, and the top is still:
"Variations of Dwarf Death Knight" ("dwarfdeathknight", "dwarf deathknight", "WoW dwarf deathknight", "funny names for dwarf deathknight" and "a dwarf married with normal person" "apple +dwarf men(i did it)" and "snottydin".) And, NO, I did not make any of these up. This is how people using google find my site.


So internet love for anyone who can give me a good suggestion to what the fekk "apple +dwarf men(i did it)" means.....